UN pulls out of internet takeover.
ICAAN is the American company that runs the internet. Well they don't rally run it, the internet runs itself, but they are the ones who assign ISP numbers and domain names. Most folks in the know will agree that they've done a pretty good job. Koki Anan decided that even though they had no complaints int the way things were handled, It was to important to be handled by an American Company. So they decided to have a summit meating in Tunis to decide when and how to take the internet away from the American swine.The United Nations' so-called World Summit on the Information Society opens today in Tunis, Tunisia, proposing to set up U.N. sway over the Internet under the slogan of bridging the "digital divide." But that's the wrong metaphor. This three-day jamboree is a U.N. turf grab: the latest case of the U.N. misinterpreting its noble mandate to promote peace as a license to take a piece of anything it can get.So they meet at Tunisia, and decide not to attempt the big take over.
As usual, the U.N. for reasons sadly unrelated to actual performance, is styling itself as the champion of the poorest people, in the poorest countries. (This is the same U.N. that still hasn't repaid or even apologized to the people of Iraq for the billions worth of their national assets that were grafted, stolen and wasted under U.N. supervision in the Oil for Food program). In the face of mounting public concern over the Tunis summit, Secretary-General Kofi Annan betook himself recently to the pages of the Washington Post to argue that the main aim is "to ensure that poor countries get the full benefits that new information and communication technologies--including the Internet--can bring to economic and social development." Mr. Annan concluded with what I suppose was meant to be a clarion call: "I urge all stakeholders to come to Tunis ready to bridge the digital divide," etc., etc.What Mr. Annan evidently does not care to understand, and after his zillion-year career at the U.N. probably never will, is that for purposes of helping the poor, the problem is not a digital divide. It is not the bytes, gigs, blogs and digital wing-dings that define that terrible line between the haves and the have-nots. These are symptoms of the real difference, which we would do better to call the dictatorial divide.
In free societies, all sorts of good things flourish, including technology and highly productive uses of the Internet. In despotic systems, human potential withers and dies, strangled by censorship, starved by central controls, and rotted by the corruption that inevitably accompanies such arrangements. That poisonous mix is what prevents the spread of prosperity in Africa, and blocks peace in the Middle East, and access to computers, or for that matter, food, in North Korea (which is of course sending a delegate to Tunis).
All this is good news, but there are lessons to be learned. I think the whole idea of this was to punnish the U.S. to fund the 3rd world dictatorships. Joe's Dartblog presents his thoughts.Negotiators from more than 100 countries agreed late Tuesday to leave the United States in charge of the Internet's addressing system, averting a U.S.-EU showdown at this week's U.N. technology summit.
U.S. officials said early Wednesday that instead of transferring management of the system to an international body such as the United Nations, an international forum would be created to address concerns. The forum, however, would have no binding authority.
What is the import of this pact? I think what is immediately remarkable is that stateside opposition to the UN/EU takeover attempt was—and remains—barely a blip on the international scene. There have been a few op-eds and one or two leaders in Congress, but no big, resounding show was ever made by American citizens to protect the internet from falling under the UN’s pocked auspices. And yet, what a thorough deal this seems to be. It is a complete “hands off!” as regards the administration of assigned names and numbers. It seems likely that elites at the United Nations foresaw that, if the debate penetrated deep into America, and if our private sector and citizenry were awakened to it, the movement to hold firmly onto the ‘net would be nothing short of a groundswell. There was going to be no co-opting the internet unless the debate remained restrained, technical, and quiet. International institutionalists here chose their battle wisely, and compromised all of their demands for internationalizing control of the internet.Be ever vigilent the thieving bastards are everywhere.
posted by Liberty @ 8:34 PM
1 Comments:
I wihs we could pull out fo the UN, but it seems we must stay involved in it if only to stop all the anti-American scheming.
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