UN Dilutes Language; Still Wants Internet Control

I can't see but I just had to go here, late in the day: the UN still wants control of the internet but is softening a bit of its language in hopes of ameliorating some US concerns -- but make no mistake, it still believes the United States is being oppressive in its ICANN control insistence -- despite the internet having been developed under a US DARPA heritage.

Tomorrow's start of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunisia was originally to be about funding projects for technologically-poor nations. Instead, it will center primarily around Internet governance: oversight of the main computers that control traffic on the Internet by acting as its master directories so Web browsers and e-mail programs can find other computers.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a semi-independent group that ultimately answers to the U.S. government, "is responsible for managing and coordinating the Domain Name System (DNS) to ensure that every Internet address is unique and that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses. It does this by overseeing the distribution of unique IP addresses and domain names. It also ensures that each domain name maps to the correct IP address."

The UN wants to replace ICANN with a multinational group answering only to the United Nations. The new language, however, has been typified as "far less specific" than prior drafts.

Further, the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) says, in a new study, that relinquishing control to the UN could have far reaching dangers which could jeopardize freedoms and fleece taxpayers -- US taxpayers.

After so many conspiracy hoaxes over the years, there is now a serious, ominous effort to replace the efficient and adaptable non-profit entity guiding the Internet with a new UN-sponsored agency," said NTU Government Affairs Manager and Issue Brief author Kristina Rasmussen.

Censorship, bureaucratic corruption (in re the UN "oil for food" program) and taxes are all huge unanswered issues. Specifically, in terms of taxes, the NTU writes:

Since the Internet's infancy the UN has crafted detailed proposals to tax online traffic. Rasmussen calculates that one 1999 plan for a "bit tax," adjusted for today's number of Internet users, would raise 12 trillion dollars this year -- roughly equal to America's Gross Domestic Product. Even less ambitious money-raising models such as the independent, Switzerland-based "Digital Solidarity Fund" could feasibly be transformed into future collectors of compulsory Internet taxes and fees.

Corruption, censorship, control and unlimited taxation -- all reasons that the European Union is pushing its compromise proposal on how to govern the Internet. The EU's executive commission said today that their new proposal is "gaining international support ahead of this week's U.N. technology summit."

We shall see.