Wednesday, September 28, 2005

UN to Control the Net?

This NRO article about the UN's attempt to take international control of the internet is a pretty good summary of arguments and collection of links on the issue. My major reasons for opposing such a move (and these are in the article as well) are:
  1. The UN has a tendency to treat tyrannical dictatorships on the same moral level as free democracies. This problem would arise in that China, among other nations, censors the internet (to the disgraceful cooperation of some American companies, such as Yahoo). Would an internet under UN control find itself without the freedom of expression that it currently has (more or less)?
  2. The UN is also quite famous for having officials who line their pockets from major enterprises such as this. I'd be quite ticked to find out that registering a domain name would suddenly cost me $50, with $40 of those going into Kofi Annan's pockets.

Let's just agree that the UN shouldn't control this thing, okay? It screws up everything else it touches already. I like the internet. Don't take that away from me.

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