New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | October 24, 2005

If the only option is to turn the internet's roots over to the "international community," Julian Sanchez would rather take a page from Sammy Davis Jr. and say "Yes ICANN."

Comments

|10.24.05 @ 5:50PM|#

Happy UN Day, Everyone!

|10.24.05 @ 5:57PM|#

"The Internet may have grown out of a government project, but it has never really been a creature of government. Why, then, is the debate over the Net's future being framed as a contest between whether one government or a group of them will get to breathe down the neck of ICANN or its successor organization? We have an opportunity now to put the root in the hands of an organization that is not international�in the sense of being "between nations," though still defined by them�but truly global, responsible to the citizens and stakeholders of the world rather than its governments."

What "opportunity" does Julian speak of? He conveniently skirts around the rather important detail of exactly how we simply declare that ICANN runs the net and is 100% free of government restrictions.

And, yes, it is "responsible to the shareholders and citizens of the world", but that is a far cry from actually being free from government restriction and coercion. Show me a corporation that is truly "free"? Julian mentions, almost under his breath, that ICANN is "defined" by whichever nation-state it resides in - but until it can form its own standing army, I'd say that it most assuredly is under the control of whichever government it resides under - no matter how big and powerful it is.

|10.24.05 @ 5:59PM|#

Minitel

Amazingly, wikipedia seems to run on a server that's in even worse shape than reason's...

|10.24.05 @ 6:13PM|#

Heh, from the Minitel article at Wikipedia:

The messageries roses and other pornographic sites were also criticized for their possible use by under-age children; however, the government chose not to enact coercive measures, claiming that regulating the online access of children is up to their parents, not the government; it also enacted a tax on pornographic online services.

So it turns out that France is Libertopia after all.

|10.24.05 @ 6:37PM|#

Yes ICANN, if Kofi says it's OK.
Think of the billions to be made by UN beaurecrats with a puny 1% tax for e-commerce transactions...Italian Villas for everyone!