Weekly column: Should the United Nations run the Internet?

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://news.com.com/2010-1028-5181327.html

Should the United Nations run the Internet?
March 30, 2004, 4:00 AM PT
By Declan McCullagh

The United Nations wants to expand its influence over the Internet, but 
would it be wise to let that happen?

That question follows the conclusion of a two-day U.N. summit last week, 
in which delegates from sundry countries such as Cuba, Ghana, Bolivia 
and Venezula lectured North American, Asian and European countries about 
how best to run the Internet.

Their demands varied, but the bottom line was the same: They want a 
piece of the action in just about every way. The event's agenda was 
breathtakingly broad, taking in everything from spam and privacy to 
intellectual property, network security and the operation of root domain 
name servers.

Juan Fernandez, the delegate from Cuba's Ministry of Informatics and 
Communications, no doubt was sincere in the speeches he delivered at the 
summit.

Iran was also among the delegates hoping to inject the United Nations 
into the process of overseeing Internet protocols, domain names and 
network stability. Before taking these folks too seriously, though, 
let's recall that Iran ranks in the bottom few percent of the 2004 Index 
of Economic Freedom, bans more than 10,000 "immoral" Web sites and 
jailed Iranian journalist and Web logger Sina Motallebi last year.

All this raises the question whether these are nations that should 
decide the rules for a worldwide Internet.

[...remainder snipped...]
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