I have been giving a good deal of thought lately to the words of the Declaration of Independence that read "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Its a tough concept to wrap my mind around when I put this in context of some of the things I see happening.

The Supreme Court of the United States looked at a piece of legislation designed to limit political speech and judged it against language that reads "Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech" and ruled that it stands.

The same court ruled that a town taking property from a private citizen to hand over to a developer who can bring the town better tax receipts meets the standard of "public use."

Little by little individual rights and freedom are being eroded and for a significant portion of the population, it seems as though it is being done with the consent of the governed.

One of the last wide open spaces of freedom is the internet and now it too is under threat.

We should not be too comforted by the recent compromise in Tunis that kept control out of internet governance out of the hands of the United Nations. It is at best a temporary stay. The agreement in Tunis established the Internet Governance Forum which as of now, has no authority over any aspect of the internet. Yet.

And make no mistake the U.N. push for internet is not over and it has little or nothing to do with the management and distribution of domain name databases. This is about control of internet content. The free flow of information is too hazardous to too many of the U.N.'s member despots.

When you consider what a U.N. controlled internet would like like remember that this is the organization that was about to put Hussein's Iraq in the chair of its non-proliferation commission and Libya in the chair of it's human rights commission.

What will happen to the free flow of information when internet governance is in the hands of a U.N commission which will have members like China, Cuba, Iran or Syria?

Will there be blogs on the UNternet?

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 06:07 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment