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CONTROLLING THE INTERNET - THE NEXT CHAPTER

The UN, filled with excess numbers of pilfering, incompetent bureaucrats, is always short of money. It hates the fact that it has to rely for its income on the dues paid by its member nations - a source of income that is not always reliable. It also resents the fact that 22% of its income is donated by the US with whom UN bureaucrats are frequently at odds.

As a result, the UN has been looking for an alternative source of income. It thought it had found it. The idea was to acquire control of the Internet. This would give it a thousand ways to raise money. For example, Internet users could be required to pay a tax merely to find an Internet provider. Then the provider would tax every transaction. Purchasing an appliance via the Internet could require a Value Added Tax (VAT) awarded to the UN. When one asks driving directions or a weather forecast for a city to which one plans to fly, or when one helps grandchildren with their homework, taxes could be required to be paid to the UN and its work. Secretary General Kofi Annan and France's President, Jacques Chirac, have long dreamt of a global "solidarity" tax online such as this. The plan, however, had one complication in that the Internet was created in the United States initially as a Pentagon project in the late 1960's and early 1970's for military intelligence purposes. Since the US Department of Defense has funded much of the Internet's early development, it therefore is, technically, the property of the US. which controls the dispensation of IP addresses and domain names and 10 of the Internet's 13 root servers.

Internet Still in its Infancy

Initially, as stated above, the Internet was developed by the US Department of Defense for military purposes only. In the late 1980's, it began to be used for higher education purposes. By 1990, the general public began to use the Internet. Not a day goes by when the Internet somehow is not improved. For example, the invention of search engines alone was a monumental achievement. The potential for the Internet is merely beginning. It is at the stage now that television was in 1956. There is no question either that the Internet has enormous significance for the global economy.

It's not that the US completely controls the Internet. Rather this is done through the California based, impossibly named, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), formed in 1998 by the US to handle the Internet's daily operations under an advisory committee, which has representatives from more than 100 countries.

The US nonetheless retains veto power over ICANN's decisions although there are just 3 Americans on ICANN's 15 member Board of Directors. The US government set up the non-profit ICANN specifically to keep government out of the Internet, on the basis that a more responsive, and private sector is better suited to operate the Internet. ICANN, however, explicitly does not oversee the content of the Internet - a job that the UN would be only too happy to assume. ICANN administers the "root zone file" the master list of all Web addresses world-wide, which the US has kept since the creation of the Internet. Its job then is to keep track of which Web sites are assigned to which electronic addresses. Ensuring that any given Web address or domain name is assigned to only one Web site is a key reason why the Internet has become such a powerful tool.

Canada, Japan and Australia support this approach. Undaunted, however, the UN has established a forty-nation committee to encourage the US to hand ownership of the Internet over to the UN.
The argument used to urge the US to relinquish control of the Internet is that no country ought to be the ultimate authority over such a vital part of the global economy. Also there is some indication that some nations feel discomfort that the US, as the world's only superpower, has the power to take unilateral action over the Internet. This fear intensified in August when the US government asked ICANN to table or put off an initiative to add a new domain name for pornography in Web sites. ICANN had tentatively approved the new domain name, called .xxx, but at the last minute, the Department of Commerce removed its support, based on thousands of letters of complaint it had received from conservative Christian groups and others.

Rethinking about the Internet has also arisen in part because of its global growth and growing importance in many areas. Widely available to the public and for commercial purposes in the past decade, the Internet now has close to a billion users. It has become a critical means for conducting business, as well as for receiving services, such as video and phoning so that its importance cannot be underestimated.

The economic and social strength of the Internet today, however, derives from its open and decentralized structure, which enables access to users anywhere in the world. If governments began to create their own distinct Internets, this would undermine the essence of what makes the Internet so powerful.

US Showdown Over the Internet

The showdown between the UN and the US over the Internet took place at the UN 's World Summit on the Information Society held in Tunisia November 15 - 16, 2005.

There was also something else at stake at this meeting than merely money for the UN. What was at stake was the chilling impact on the use of the Internet for the free flow of information. Not surprisingly, some of the loudest opponents to the American control of the Internet have been China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Cuba. In fact China now intentionally blocks Internet free speech from its people. It is a crime in China to download information from free-speech web sites. The Chinese government employs 40,000 full time technicians to monitor and block out free-speech web sites and certain other media.

The UN had argued that it would respect freedom of expression if it controlled the Internet. It claimed that one of its key principles would be to "respect the cultural and linguistic diversity as well as tradition [and] religion" and would provide "multilingual, diverse and culturally appropriate content." But who will decide whether content is culturally or otherwise "appropriate"? Today, no one. But tomorrow the UN! We already know that the UN does not respect culture and religion since it has attempted to establish policies at conference after conference to subvert religion and culture so that they are secondary to other "prior" rights such as "the right to abortion" and "homosexual rights." Control over the Internet will only enable the UN to impose control of these "rights" with no opposing voices allowed.

US Retains Control Over the Internet

It was a relief that the US won its bid at the UN conference in Tunisia, in November 2005, to retain control over the Internet. This means ICANN will remain in charge of the computer systems that control the free flow of information.

Unfortunately, Washington doesn't hold all the cards here. Countries can create parallel Internets. The same Web address might take users in China and the US to different Web sites. This would be a nightmare outcome for online business as well as the vibrant marketplace of ideas that the Internet has fostered. For now, at least, the matter is still under control, but for how long?

Maurice Strong Moving on the Internet

Maurice Strong is a Canadian who is a global gadfly - especially at the UN. He was Secretary General of the UN Conference on the Environment in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. He and his associate Mikhail Gorbachev among others developed the Earth Charter, which they hope will replace the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. This Charter includes reproductive (abortion) rights for women and human rights including homosexual rights and special protection for the environment etc. Mr. Strong is a powerful advocate of the left wing and dreams about imposing on the whole world all the policies set out in his Earth Charter.

Consequently, Mr. Strong and other left wing activists have recently decided to move in on the Internet by establishing "ManyOne" Networks for a new, whiz-bang 3-D platform for the "digital Universe". The technology for it however is still in development. The guiding document for the proposed network is Strong's Earth Charter. According to his plans, the technology for "ManyOne" will allow one to soar over the Earth or through the solar system and then click on the topic one wishes to know more about. Sounds great, except when you get down to who provides the information.

"ManyOne", according to the company's blurb, sent out in January, "has been carefully designed with socially responsible ownership, governance and advisory architecture to ensure that it can play a pivotal role in the ethical revolution of the Internet and the World Wide Web".

This is alarming coming from Mr. Strong. "ManyOne" plans to access myriad portals put out by NGO and government organizations that are working for "positive social and environmental change". That is, the left wing ideological zealots will be doing the writing and editing of the new technology.

The "ethical" claims of "ManyOne" are somewhat undermined by Mr. Strong's involvement in Iraq's Oil for Food affair. He has lately disappeared into China but will certainly return in order to pursue his vision of a new world order by way of the Internet.

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