UN Pushes Plan To Assume Internet Governance Role

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @05:15AM from the the-un-is-always-right dept.

no0b writes with an Op-Ed by the FCC Commissioner on a UN plan to gain more control over Internet regulation. From the article: "On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year's end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish 'international control over the Internet' through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices. " BoingBoing offers a slightly different perspective; The Register offers a quite different perspective.

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Re:Good luck ruling it without ICANN by rgbrenner · 2012-02-22 06:02 · Score: 5, Informative

People and countries that own US debt can not 'call in' their loans. The best they can do is sell them on the open market.. and if they do that the price will decline.. which means they'll have to take a loss.
And the US can't become Greece because we control our currency. If we had more debt than we could ever repay, we could simply print money to pay out debtors. They wouldn't like it, there would be inflation, and other unfavorable consequences, but we would not default and would not need a bailout. This is the option Greece doesn't have, and why they need a bailout.
Truth is, there is little the UN can threaten the US with. We have a veto on the security council, and provide 22% of the UNs budget -- which gives us a lot of power over the UNs agenda.