The savants at Turtle Bay believe the United Nations operates with such admirable efficiency and absence of corruption that the international confabulation should take over control of the Internet. The global body’s effort to commandeer the Internet is likely to progress at a November meeting in Tunis, the next gathering of the World Summit on the Information Society. Propelled by anti-American grievance, envy, and resentment, the debacle is rolling downhill and gathering momentum, with serious consequences for ordinary users. If you think your computer is slow now, just wait until a U.N. commission based in Geneva gets its bureaucratic clutches on the World Wide Web.

The humbuggery traces back to Bill Clinton and the inventor of the Internet himself, Al Gore. They first proposed the world summit, which in 2003 spawned the Working Group on Internet Governance to examine the “problems” surrounding the Internet.

It hardly seems to matter that there are few significant “problems” with the current system of Internet governance. Following the American military’s invention of the Net, America wisely made the technology available to the private sector. Entrepreneurs soon produced the Internet as we know it today. The Internet is managed, not “controlled,” by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a quasi-governmental non-profit corporation created by the Department of Commerce. ICANN assigns Web site names, manages routing, and generally keeps the trains running on time.

Today, more than 1 billion people have access to and use a free, open, secure and accessible Internet. Under America’s benevolent management the Internet has become a powerful engine for commerce and the movement of information across borders, and is birthing an information revolution potentially as powerful as the invention of the printing press. The explosive growth of the Internet is due precisely to the fact that it has been free of government control and has flourished in a private-sector, free-market environment.

But in the eyes of all too many U.N. bureaucrats, freedom looks like chaos, hence the movement to deliver control of the Internet to a U.N. commissariat. To that end, the 40-nation member working group produced a report in June that proposes four models for global Internet governance, three of which envision international government control through a United Nations-based commission – a prospect that should send shivers through the Internet community’s collective circuitry.

Because few can point to technical problems with the current system, the chief refrain that runs through the working group’s report in support of internationalized control is the notion that it is “unfair” that any one nation (read: America) should “control” such a global technology as the Internet. All nations have a stake in the Internet, the report asserts, and therefore have an interest in controlling it.

The list of countries sitting on the working group sheds light on what that interest might be. The report pays lip service to the importance of “freedom of expression,” but that statement rings hollow when Saudi Arabia is one of the 40 nation-members sitting on the working group. Authoritarian governments fear the Internet. China reportedly keeps more than 40,000 computer geeks burrowing away full time monitoring Web blogs and sites for dangerously subversive ideas and pressures Internet providers into accepting censorship and government surveillance as the cost of doing business.

Not only are tyrants seeking to control this technology as a way to control dissent, but the working group report also envisions a tax scheme to fund Internet governance. Surely the kleptocrats are salivating at the looting potential of the Internet. But in the aftermath of the oil-for-food scandal, handing control of the Internet to the United Nations would be an act of epic stupidity. Internet regulation presents a whole new opportunity for bribes, extortion, kickbacks, and payoffs.

When the world summit assembles again in Tunis this November, the report in all likelihood will be adopted. The next step will be the drafting of a treaty or convention to set up an international commission to take control of the Internet. Because only sovereign governments can be parties to treaties and conventions, any Internet governance pact by its nature would cede control to governments. The private sector would be relegated to mere on looker status by any treaty arrangement.

Thankfully, the Bush administration opposes the working group’s schemes. Even the State Department has been stalwart in arguing that the current regime of Internet governance is working just fine and does not require U.N. tinkering. Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota, who has led the charge on the oil-for-food scandal, also has been raising the alarm on the impending U.N. threat to the freedom of the Internet.

But that won’t stop a Kyoto redux. Just as with the climate treaty, once a global Internet treaty is drafted and approved, it will be signed overnight by more than 100 developing nations as well as most of the European Union member states. Then the pressure on America to ratify the treaty will begin to increase. All the usual suspects here will push for America to get on board with the rest of the world and cease its unilateral arrogance and imperialistic control of the Internet. Jimmy Carter and Ted Turner will speak out. The New York Times will demand to know why America once again is standing alone against the collective will of the so-called international community.

Government control of the Internet is inimical to its nature as a free, open, and accessible medium. No collection of U.N. panjandrums could possibly keep pace with the accelerating rate of technological innovation and change. If anything can slow down the Internet, U.N. control would be it. This mischief needs to be stopped before it gains any more momentum. An Internet free of government control must be preserved and allowed to flourish. Toward that end, a coalition of tech industries and free-market advocates, the Global Internet Governance Alliance, has been set up to promote the benefits of a free Internet and to oppose the UN scheme to seize control. GIGAlliance will soon have a Web site up and running – but for how long?

Mr. Lessner, a former executive director of the American Conservative Union, is an associate of Capital City Partners, a Washington public affairs firm that represents the Global Internet Governance Alliance. Mr. Lessner is helping to organize the alliance.