WSIS to Consider Internet Governance Under U.N.

penciling_in writes "The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) starting next week in Geneva is expected to attract more than 50 heads of state and 6,000 delegates who will address issues from the digital divide to Internet governance. It will be addressing the broad range of themes concerning the Information Society and adoption of a Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action, which reportedly includes a recommendation to place the governance of the Internet under the United Nations. In response to issues leading up to this event, CircleID has been running a number of articles including Karl Auerbach's piece, 'Will ICANN Reveal Its True Self To WSIS?' and an extensive Interview (Part I | Part II) by Geert Lovink with Milton Mueller, author of 'Ruling the Root', one of the first detailed investigations into the Internet domain name policies." There's a Reuters story on this conference.

Comments

Bad idea

[meta-monkey]

Bad news.

I am completely against U.N. control of the Internet, because I believe it would lead to censorship. I believe the U.N. would use its power to deny domains to those critical of the U.N., or those who hold unpopular opinions in opposition to the U.N.

Exhibit A is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It all sounds pretty good. I think the particularly applicable Article to this case is #19:

Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

That sounds to me like one should be able to say whatever one wants over the Internet. i.e., to impart information and ideas through any media.

Now kindly review Article 29, section 3:

(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

What exactly are the purposes and principles of the United Nations? If I were to try to register 'theUNsucks.com' would they stop me? My right to free speech ends when I exercise that right contrary to the purposes of the U.N. The U.N. holds all kinds of conferences where they condemn racism and sexism. What if I wanted to create a website about the inferiority of a certain race or sex? Would they stop me? Sure, the opinions I express may be wrong, stupid, and unpopular, but popular opinions are those that don't need protecting.

The U.N. will pry control of the Internet from my cold, dead DNS server.

Lowest Common Denominator

[nurb432]

It would also force other nations to abide by the rest of the 'groups' concepts of morality.

If country A, doesnt belive in, lets say nazi relics, and forbids them to be on their network, then the rest of the countries must also abide by that ruling, as it would be a ban 'net-wide..

That is, if one controlling mulitnational entity was in control...

What Authority?

[rstultz]

Did they pay for the basic infrastructure?
Do they own a significant portion of the "net"?
Where they involved in the risk taking that made the net successful?

No. No. No.

Quite frankly if the western world wants to run the internet by their own (fair or unfair) rules, they are allowed to. The internet isn't some gift to the world. It was designed by certain groups (okay, lots of groups, working together) and they should be able to maintain control.

If third-world dictators want an internet to control, why don't they invest in the infrastructure, setup their own governing body, and create their own network. It isn't like anything would stop them from doing so.

Other than lack of money and technologically skilled workers.

Ryan

Re:What crap.

[meta-monkey]

You're either

a) making the logical fallacy of the false choice, or
b) putting words in my mouth.

I never said the U.S. should be in control of the Internet. I said the U.N. should not be in control of the Internet. Just because the U.N. should not be in control, does not mean that the U.S. should, I made no statement as to whether or not the U.S. should control the Internet.

While you obviously have reading comprehension problems, this statement of yours is truly laughable: ...it's about accepting that there are some things that affect all of us that use the internet, so they should be in the hands of all of us, not of one country.

Great. So who's your elected representative in the United Nations, to whom you can complain if you don't like the way they run the Internet? Who is it? Oh...wait, you don't have elected representation in the U.N., do you? Right. None of us do, I keep forgetting. However, every petty dictatorship does have a seat in the U.N., so, essentially, Fidel Castro himself gets a vote equal to the entire democratic state of, say, Sweden. That's a great place to put control of the Internet. Then it'll truly be "in the hands of all of us," won't it?