Paxety Pages

The U.N. with the support of dictators such as fidel and with the support of the EU is attempting to take over control of the Internet. Coleman writes his warning in The Wall Street Journal. He says the Internet as we know it, an unprecedented communications medium, faces a grave threat which will take place at a meeting in Tunisia later this month.

The low point of that planning session was the European Union's shameful endorsement of a plan favored by China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Cuba that would terminate the historic U.S. role in Internet government oversight, relegate both private enterprise and non-governmental organizations to the sidelines, and place a U.N.-dominated group in charge of the Internet's operation and future. The EU's declaration was a "political coup," according to London's Guardian newspaper, which predicted that once the world's governments awarded themselves control of the Internet, the U.S. would be able to do little but acquiesce.

I disagree. Such acquiescence would amount to appeasement. We cannot allow Tunis to become a digital Munich.

Coleman says the supporters of the new measure fear the freedom of communication presented by the Internet. We've seen how even castro can't control fully the export of information from his workers' paradise. Photos of damage caused by Hurricane Wilma have been smuggled out over the Internet and posted on sites all over the world, including this one.

Opposition to U.N. control doesn't come only from the U.S. Many European Internet providers and telecommunications companies oppose the change.

Read the whole thing.