Department of Desperately Stupid Ideas

Why resist the UN's drive to gobble up the Internet?

Let the National Taxpayers Union count the ways.

The story discusses the UN's drive to absorb the current addressing authority - currently run by a series of non-profits based in the US - into the United Nations bureaucracy.

So if it ain't broke, why fix it?

[National Taxpayers' Union spokesperson Kristina] Rasmussen's study traces the push for a government-dominated online environment to the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), created by the UN in response to detractors of the current, US-based International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ( ICANN). As the author notes, the advertised reasons for this proposal - increasing access and receiving global input -seem to be masking some less noble motives and outcomes:

-- Censorship. Despite having made a declaration of support for freedom of speech, many WGIG members come from nations that severely curtail this right; China, for example, has one of the most restrictive and sophisticated Internet control mechanisms in the world. Just as other UN bodies have been "co-opted" by non- democratic governments, "an 'International Internet Commission' chaired by China might not be far off," Rasmussen observed.

-- Taxes. Since the Internet's infancy the UN has crafted detailed proposals to tax online traffic. Rasmussen calculates that one 1999 plan for a "bit tax," adjusted for today's number of Internet users, would raise 12 trillion dollars this year - roughly equal to America's Gross Domestic Product. Even less ambitious money-raising models such as the independent, Switzerland-based "Digital Solidarity Fund" could feasibly be transformed into future collectors of compulsory Internet taxes and fees.

-- Bureaucratic Corruption. Given recent oil-for-food scandals, UN-style Internet agencies would present the inherent risk of "giving ruling members of regimes in the developing world shiny new computers rather than furnishing the poor with Internet access," Rasmussen said.

OK, all you UN defenders; what's the upside here?

Posted by Mitch at November 15, 2005 12:07 PM | TrackBack