Keep the United Nations Away From the Internet

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The New York Sun

In Geneva last week, delegates at a U.N. conference recommended that an intergovernmental body should oversee the Internet. At last, according to the European press, pressure from the United Nations and others would result in the American government’s loss of control over the Internet.


The only problem is that our government does not actually control the Internet. Still, the United Nations may attempt to seize control of it – the world body’s motivation is empire-building.


The Geneva conference was the third preparatory meeting for the U.N. World Summit on the Information Society to be held next month in Tunis. At the Tunis meeting, the United Nations will call for an international body to take over the governance of the Internet. That this resolution will pass is a foregone conclusion. John Bolton, beware.


The U.N. revolution is not about new technologies, but about new empires. The United Nations proposes to take a stateless enterprise, the Internet, and move it under the umbrella of the U.N.


In December 2003, the United Nations, in typical understatement, issued a proclamation: “We, the representatives of the peoples of the world … declare our common desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society … premised on the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respecting fully and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”


Last June, Secretary-General Annan released the report of the U.N. Working Group on Internet Governance, which, not surprisingly, called for the United Nations to govern the Internet. In September, the European Union followed suit, calling for an intergovernmental body to take over. Now we have last week’s calls for international control. The repeated posturing for U.N. control of the Internet is not based on any shortcoming. Rather, the Internet works all too well but is associated with a country that has proven to be unpopular around the world. America is the parent and perhaps even the guardian of the Internet. But it does not govern or control it. For decades, our government funded research and did work on what would eventually become the Internet. Then, rather than exercising a legitimate parentalism, America allowed the Internet to develop free of government guidance or interference.


America could have kept it as a government-only network, excluded other countries or political enemies from using it, taxed or censored it, or monitored every activity imaginable. But it didn’t. Americans could have controlled access to the Internet to promote national interests. But we did not.


Our government initially set Internet protocol standards, organized name assignments, and assigned responsibility to third parties for address identifications and look-up procedures for Internet users. In 1998, those responsibilities were transferred to an internationally organized nonprofit group, the Internet Corporation for the Assignment of Names and Numbers. Icann has an international board, meets around the world, and does not take instructions from any government. Its bylaws don’t even mention the American government. Icann’s budget of less than $23 million is lilliputian by U.N. standards.


Today, with the exception of a few totalitarian countries, Internet users don’t need to pay any government. Consumers and businesses around the world have prospered with an Internet that is free of the United Nations. Through its proposals next month in Tunis, the world body wants to enrich itself and unwittingly impoverish the Internet. Our challenge is to defend the Internet by keeping it out of the hands of an international bureaucracy.



A former FCC commissioner, Mr. Furchtgott-Roth is president of Furchtgott-Roth Economic Enterprises. He can be reached athfr@furchtgott-roth.com.


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