It would be broke if the UN fixed it
To hear the MSM tell it, the United States was graciously permitted to continue stewardship of ICANN and the servers that route the Internet after the UN convened a meeting to discuss the matter. After all, the Internet is very important! Business (they want to tax it), Information (they want to censor it), and a wonderful, diverse, culturally-rich environment (WARNING! contains content that others may find offensive, such as references to women driving, voting, thinking, and showing skin; the existence of Israel;people speaking disrespectfully of sin;Republicans who don't think they are wrong.)
It was particularly amusing to see the wisps of understanding floating around the UNophiles (the brainer ones, that is) who began to grasp that they could not, in fact, force the world's only superpower to do anything it didn't want to do. All that diplomatic skill for naught ...
Even the most rabid anti-American UN fans had to admit we'd done a pretty good job not messing with Internet freedom so far. The arguments they used were along the lines of we *could*, maybe, someday go to the bad and decide to Abuse our Power so why not take that power away now instead of waiting?
Funny, the people they were going to hand it over to have a HISTORY of abusing power and squashing free speech like a bug, but they aren't the US -- and that's really all that mattered. I would like to point out that even at the height of the Iraq war Al Jazeera's website remained unmolested, despite their (shall we say) fondness for slaughtered Westerners. If they couldn't tick us off enough to go postal on them, who could? Besides, those darling little technophobes persist in thinking the Internet is a *thing*, that can be put in a crate and controlled. What it really is is a collection of protocols and agreements. Nothing stops anyone, even me, from setting up my own root server. The difficulty is getting other people to agree mine is better than ICANN's. It really boils down to who wants to talk to whom. This is going to be rude and insensitive, but most of the world wants to be able to communicate with the United States of America. We have money to spend, and information that isn't filtered through five hundred mullahs.
It was particularly amusing to see the wisps of understanding floating around the UNophiles (the brainer ones, that is) who began to grasp that they could not, in fact, force the world's only superpower to do anything it didn't want to do. All that diplomatic skill for naught ...
Even the most rabid anti-American UN fans had to admit we'd done a pretty good job not messing with Internet freedom so far. The arguments they used were along the lines of we *could*, maybe, someday go to the bad and decide to Abuse our Power so why not take that power away now instead of waiting?
Funny, the people they were going to hand it over to have a HISTORY of abusing power and squashing free speech like a bug, but they aren't the US -- and that's really all that mattered. I would like to point out that even at the height of the Iraq war Al Jazeera's website remained unmolested, despite their (shall we say) fondness for slaughtered Westerners. If they couldn't tick us off enough to go postal on them, who could? Besides, those darling little technophobes persist in thinking the Internet is a *thing*, that can be put in a crate and controlled. What it really is is a collection of protocols and agreements. Nothing stops anyone, even me, from setting up my own root server. The difficulty is getting other people to agree mine is better than ICANN's. It really boils down to who wants to talk to whom. This is going to be rude and insensitive, but most of the world wants to be able to communicate with the United States of America. We have money to spend, and information that isn't filtered through five hundred mullahs.
posted by Snarkatron at 3:52 PM
2 Comments:
Yep - they are still waiting for someone to hand them the DVD set for review so they can check up on us ... Heh!
Where's a clue-bat when you need one?
John, send the logo you want to me and I'll see what I can do.
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