Internet Interruption Intermission

The Washington Post again leads today in raising national consciousness of sanity. Its editorial, “The Internet at Risk,” addresses the so-called compromise reached last week at the U.N. conference in Tunisia on the Internet. The editorial reminds those who may get lost in theory, or in approval of thrusts against democracy by U.S. adversaries, “In an ideal world, unilateralism should be avoided. But in an imperfect world, unilateral solutions that run efficiently can be better than multilateral ones that don’t.”

The full editorial is one to read and clip for its lucid internment of the contending viewpoints, at least as regards the Internet.

CNET’s report of the results in Tunis is a useful summary of the doings. Endorsed in the “Net détente” with the U.N. was creation of an Internet Governance Forum, which will begin meeting in 2006, to continue “global discussions” of everything Internet. As CNET reports, this “effectively postpones a long-simmering dispute over the future of Internet management.” U.S. ambassador David Gross put the positive spin on: We have “no concerns that it would morph into something unsavory.” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan put his spin on, more representative of the views of most U.N. members, saying the agreement supports “the need for more international participation in discussions of Internet governance issues.” Aside from the U.N. members wishing greater censorship of views they see as undermining their despotism, the U.N. and some in Europe look at the Internet as a source of tax revenue, even on emails, another way to suppress the free exchange of ideas. The Prime Minister of Mozambique called U.N. control of the Internet “a matter of justice and legitimacy that all people have a say in the way the Internet is governed.”

The Washington Post editorial rejoinder:

“The job of assigning domain names offers huge opportunities for abuse. Whoever controls this function can decide to keep certain types of individuals or organizations offline (dissidents or opposition political groups, for example). Or it can allow them on in exchange for large fees. The striking feature of U.S. oversight of the Internet is that such abuses have not occurred….Indeed, governments’ ample ability to regulate the Internet has already been demonstrated by some of the countries pushing for reform, such as authoritarian China.”

The Washington Post recognizes that the battle over Internet freedom has not been won, just is on intermission, awaiting the mustering of more pressure from those who wish its restriction and, perhaps, a more “multilateralist” administration.

Bob Goodlatte is the Congressman from Virginia who serves as the co-chair of the Congressional Internet Caucus. In the Augusta Free Press newspaper from there that also publishes my column, he points out: “An Internet that is fractured and censored is not one that can support the economic and social uses that consumers and businesses alike have come to expect.” Goodlatte co-sponsored House Congressional Resolution 268 that on November 16 garnered a 423-0 (obviously bipartisan for those who prefer to think all measures Congressional are or need be bitterly partisan) endorsement of the House’s sense that “the administration of the Internet should remain in the U.S. under private control.” It has been forwarded to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, whose members hopefully read today’s Washington Post editorial.