The U.N.’s play on Internet control

The UN may be poised to take over Internet regulation.

Much of the success of the Internet can be attributed to it’s open nature. No single government controls it. Since it’s inception, the Internet has been self regulated, with some of the earliest engineers still involved in setting standards.

At it’s purest, it can cross geographic and idealogical boundaries. That can cause a problem if you run a nation that tries to set some pretty strict idealogical boundaries (or even tax boundaries).

A number of UN nations would love to see that change.

From the Wall Street Journal:

For more than a year, these countries have lobbied an agency called the International Telecommunications Union to take over the rules and workings of the Internet. Created in 1865 as the International Telegraph Union, the ITU last drafted a treaty on communications in 1988, before the commercial Internet, when telecommunications meant voice telephone calls via national telephone monopolies.

 

Having the Internet rewired by bureaucrats would be like handing a Stradivarius to a gorilla. 

via: Crovitz: The U.N.’s Internet Sneak Attack – WSJ.