The very thought of this makes my skin crawl...

quote:

Monday, July 18, 2005 Hands Off The Net United Nations: A notoriously inefficient, corrupt bureaucracy wants to regulate the world's fastest-growing industry. Note to Internet companies: Start worrying. The U.N., home to the ever-burgeoning oil-for-food scandal, among other fiascoes, has a task force that last week outlined four possible options for the future of the Internet. Those options will be considered at an "Information Society" summit in November. The idea behind at least three of the four options is to end U.S. control of the Internet — a move to which the U.S., to its credit, has steadfastly objected. We should continue to do so. If any of these proposals comes to pass, the Internet as we know it will be finished. U.N. control would lead to the loss of billions of dollars in revenue and hundreds of thousands of jobs, plus the death of innovation. Some countries have long dreamed of ending America's domination of high tech, and of asserting "international" control over it. In the case of the Internet, the main movers are South Africa, China and especially Brazil. Not coincidentally, all three are major violators of intellectual property rights, stealing billions from U.S. high-tech and drug firms each year. And this isn't the first time. An earlier attempt at seizing control of the Internet took place in 2003. It failed. Even earlier, in the 1970s and 1980s, the U.N. promulgated the "new world information order" — an Orwellian attempt to manage the news on behalf of corrupt, nondemocratic governments. It too got shot down. What's funny is that all of this is so unnecessary. As it stands now, the Internet is managed by a nonprofit organization — the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, based in California. ICANN, as it's known, handles all the routine business of the Internet. Nothing is perfect, certainly not ICANN. Some have criticized it as lacking accountability. Others argue that ICANN's role in imposing mandatory arbitration in trademark disputes is a kind of institutional overreach. These complaints aside, ICANN's stewardship has so far been outstanding. The rapid growth of the Internet — and its emergence as an irreplaceable source of information, commerce and communication — is at least partly a result of ICANN's management. The U.N.'s Working Group on Internet Governance would end all that by taking over ICANN's role or bringing ICANN itself under U.N. control. Some of the proposals that have emerged from the U.N.'s wannabe Internet czars are alarming. Like a larger role for "governance arrangements," just another way of saying more control by U.N. bureaucrats and member nations whose governments are inimical to democracy, free speech and free trade. More arbitrary rules, less free market — this is a recipe for Internet stagnation, not growth. As we noted earlier, the Internet's astounding expansion, from 2.2 million nodes at the start of 1994 to more than 320 million today (see chart), is largely due to ICANN's light touch in managing it. "If the Internet was a postal system," said ICANN CEO Paul Twomey, "what we ensure is that the addresses on the letters work. We don't think we're a regulator. We think we're a technical coordinator." That is what the Net needs — a technical coordinator. Not a hobnailed boot on its neck. Given its record of mismanagement and corruption, the U.N. shouldn't be handed the keys to the Internet. It's too precious a resource. We need look only as far as the oil-for-food scandal — possibly the largest fraud in history — for evidence as to why this is true. Giving the U.N. control over the Internet would be giving it control over the future — which rightly belongs to entrepreneurs, inventors and dreamers, not faceless bureaucrats who can scarcely conceal their loathing for the free-market success the U.S. represents.

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"...End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path...one that we all must take.
The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all change to silver glass...and then you see it...
...white shores...and beyond...the far green country under a swift sunrise."