Worldwide but HomegrownEditorial
New York Times, 10/30/2005
Some foreign governments are uncomfortable with the United States' controlling the nuts and bolts of the Internet. That is understandable. So much of the success of the global economy depends on its smooth functioning and the United States has not been a model of receptiveness to other nations' concerns in recent years. There may be a multilateral solution down the road, but right now it is in everyone's best interest to keep control of the Internet where it was founded, in America.
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Expanding Internet Access Must Remain World Focus at Summitby Charlene Porter
USINFO.STATE.GOV, 10/28/2005
The future of the Internet and its role in the lives of people around the world come into international focus November 16-18 as negotiators gather in Tunis, Tunisia, for the final round of discussions in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).
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Will the Internet become the UNTERNET?by Carroll Andrew Morse
TCS Daily, 10/28/2005
The United Nations wants control of the internet. At its November 2005 meeting in Tunis, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) will deliberate its second phase of creating a bureaucracy to manage internet governance. The WSIS is run by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a specialized agency of the UN. At the WSIS Preparatory Commission meeting held this past September in Geneva, the European Union joined with countries like China and Iran in rejecting the concept of not fixing what is not broken and decided that increased international supervision -- maybe even international control -- of the internet has become necessary. Why the United Nations should have a special right to manage internet governance is unclear. The claim -- like most UN claims -- is based on the idea that, because it has the form of a government, the UN can grant itself whatever government-like powers it desires. In this case, the UN has decided it has an information age power of eminent domain and can take over any communications network of international scope.
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Web of the Freeby Mark Shiffrin and Avi Silberschatz
New York Times, 10/23/2005
THERE is a move afoot at the United Nations and in the European Union to get the United States to give up control of the Internet - a medium that America created and on which it now critically relies.
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