Hey, Europe – don’t like U.S. control of the internet? Then build your own.

posted at 4:13 pm on May 4, 2009 by Laura Curtis
[ Obama ]   

ICANN is a non-profit organization that coordinates things like the system that allows you to type hotair.com instead of 67.192.179.13 into your browser’s address bar. It has that authority thanks to a Joint Project Agreement with the Department of Commerce. It also manages domain name disputes like the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals vs. People Eating Tasty Animals fight over peta.org. (The carnivores lost.) That JPA is going to expire on September 30th, and the United Nations and the European Union are continuing their ongoing fight to gain control. Eurocrat Viviane Reding is making news this week with a demand for a “G12-style group” to run things.

“In the long run, it is not defendable that the government department of only one country has oversight of an Internet function which is used by hundreds of millions of people in countries all over the world,” Reding said.

If Ms. Reding is dissatisfied, I’d like to take this opportunity to invite her to build her own internet and run it however she pleases. She certainly hasn’t taken the trouble to explain how she and her fellow Eurocrats will do a better job then we have. She just whines that it isn’t fair that they are restricted to input at ICANN and not control.

I’m not a big fan of ICANN for a number of reasons. But turning control of basic internet functions that we’ve come to take for granted over to the nanny-state Europeans is even worse. People who “issue binding regulations governing all aspects of public life on all member states, right down to the sizes of apples and oranges in street markets” are not fit guardians of the internet.

They micromanage business and their impulse is to criminalize and control dissenting opinion:

The Council of Europe has adopted a measure that would criminalize Internet hate speech, including hyperlinks to pages that contain offensive content.

The provision, which was passed by the council’s decision-making body (the Committee of Ministers), updates the European Convention on Cybercrime.

Specifically, the amendment bans “any written material, any image or any other representation of ideas or theories, which advocates, promotes or incites hatred, discrimination or violence, against any individual or group of individuals, based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin, as well as religion if used as pretext for any of these factors.”

What could a bunch of Eurocrats with no respect for free speech do with the domain naming system? How about taking away the domain name for sites that oppose elected officials like aaronbroussard.info by calling it cybersquatting? (You may remember Aaron Broussard’s infamous post-Katrina breakdown on Meet The Press; later proved by blogger Wuzzadem to be a lie.) While they could not, under the current system, directly control website content, they could certainly make it very hard to reach. And by their own admission, they’ve wanted control of content for years; ceding control over the system that controls the names and numbers currently managed by ICANN would be a step towards that goal.

One Obama advisor is Susan Crawford, former ICANN board member and founder of OneWebDay. She is at least against internet censorship… or was when Bush was President. People on the left have undergone some shocking entirely predictable transformations on Things To Desperately Fear when Bush did/thought about/was accused of them, vs. Things to Reluctantly Approve when The One does them.

Senators John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) and Olympia J. Snowe (RINO-Maine) introduced a real game-changer where ICANN is concerned last month, which could facilitate a handover of ICANN’s functions or bring them more firmly back into U.S. government control: The CyberSecurity Act of 2009. Among other things, it creates a panel with authority to veto the government’s domain name management contract with ICANN.

As to whether the Obama administration is going cede control to the UN, the European Union, or some newly created international body, as of this March they’re not saying. I don’t see any benefit whatsoever to our giving up control other than placating a bunch of Euroweenies who don’t like us and never will. But  given his history and stated views, I wouldn’t bet on President Obama telling them “No.”

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Cross posted at PH

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