Internet, Fuck Yeah!

It looks like the Internet's managerial body will remain under U.S. oversight, rather than that of the U.N. or any other international body, for the time being. That's good news, but I still stand by the two points I made a few weeks ago. First, as Tim Lee explains rather better than I did, this wasn't nearly as big a deal as some made it out to be. (Which is to say, it would not have been the equivalent of letting Hitler annex the Sudetenland.) Second, this is at best a delay, not a final resolution to the debate. The proportion of U.S. citizens on the Net is only going to keep shrinking, and sooner or later, we're bound to see a repeat of the .xxx bruhaha, where the government either overtly overturns an ICANN decision or (as in that case) makes a "suggestion" with the threat of veto looming implicit in the background. Opponents of international (and, more to the point, intergovernmental) Net oversight made much of the fact that the U.S. doesn't generally exercise that authority. Great. So cut the umbilical cord once and for all. So long as some government gets to oversee the Net, we're going to keep facing insistent questions about why the U.S. is uniquely qualified to fill that role.