[KLUG Advocacy] Re: [KLUG Members] Should the United Nations run the Internet?

[Robert G. Brown]

On Mon, 01 Dec 2003 19:55:01 -0500, Adam Williams <awilliam@whitemice.org>wrote:

>>>http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,104413,00.html
>>One of many articles on this topic.
>Actually this has been percolating for some time.  I remember reading
>snippets about this quite awhile ago....
Yes, this is what I mean by "One of many articles..."

>It seems like the natural progression to move this now-major conduit of 
>information and commerce to the world's primary administrative body.
Seems like a reasonable time to start. I tend to discount a lot of the 
shrill whining that seems to surround this sort of topic as well as the
rather unrealisitc crowing of UN (perhaps non-) functionaries about how
they are going to "liberate these resources from the clutches of the
developed countries".

>>This is one of those things which sounds good in principle and is likely to
>>happen at some point in the future. I suspect that ITU itself may not have
>>the technical expertise to do this now.
>>A constructive process to go to ITU-administered Internet oversight could be
>>executed over a 3-5 year period, IMO.
>Sure, anything like this takes a LONG time.
Given the way of lot of this develops, 3-5 years is not condiered a long
time. It's my estimate, based on observing how the ITU works over about
25 years, and it's offered FWIW.

>>For those readers who have some philosopical objection to this transition, I
>Personally, I agree with the policies of the UN more often than our own
>national policies.
In general, or is there something about this US administration that casues
you to say this.

>So I'd feel better about this than creating some
>board of corporate oligarchs to oversee it, as currently exists at ICANN
>and other multi-national "regulartory" bodies.
It is interesting to see how "un-American" ICANN actually is, for those
who think this is a power play to "take the Internet away from the Americans".

>>need merely point out that the radio spectrum has been under general ITU ad-
>>ministration since the 1950's, as have other forms...
>Shocking!
Background, for those who are not as up on this stuff as our Program 
Director and resident LDAPper par excellence....

I'm still looking forward to Mr. Yonkers reasons for dumping the UN or
whatever...
							Regards,
							---> RGB <---