Slashdot Mirror
Moving Net Control From ICANN to Governments?
a whoabot writes "The BBC has a piece by Bill Thompson suggesting that "control" of the internet should move away from corporate groups(ICANN and the Web Consortium) and to governments. We previously had an article on ICANN and the UN World Summit on the Information Society. One quote: "We allow images of consensual sex in our cinemas, but not images of bestiality or child abuse. Why should the net be any different?" My personal answer: because the internet should not be another TV or cinema, it should be a free, user-as-peer and user-controllable media; a "reversible" media, as Baudrillard would put it; not user-as-consumer."
If it were up to me, i'd give it to a UN body.
So, what you're saying is that you want Libya, Syria, Iran and North Korea to have a vote on what you can and can't download onto your own computer? 'Cos, y'know, Libya and Syria, despite both having an appalling record on human rights, were appointed to the UN's Human Rights committee, responsible for monitoring other nations. The UN stands for consensus - but doesn't care about anything else save consensus. Nations like the US and UK get it wrong sometimes but are also willing to ignore consensus in order to do what's right.
So much for freedom of, well, anything.