The Internet, in John Perry Barlow’s famously purple description, is a happy anarchy “naturally independent” of government; it is an “act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.” That was always, alas, a slightly starry-eyed description of the Pentagon’s most precocious baby, which is why a growing conflict over who will manage the Net’s basic virtual infrastructure will take center stage next month in Tunis, Tunisia, at the second meeting of the World Summit on the Information Society, where some are proposing that the United Nations take the helm.
At the level of content”the myriad websites, audio streams, and e-mails produced by millions of individuals, companies, and virtual communities”Barlow’s description is not far off. And though the Internet’s physical infrastructure or “backbone” is owned by a far smaller number of commercial firms, they’ve largely treated the content level with a policy of benevolent neglect.
The Internet’s basic virtual infrastructure, however, is in the hands of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, better known by the feel-good acronym ICANN. When you point your browser to “reason.com,” the network knows that’s just what friends call the site: In the more formal world of machines, it goes by 204.200.197.158. ICANN is in charge of allocating blocks of those numerical strings, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, and maintaining the “root lists” that tell your computer where to start looking to link up names with numbers.
ICANN took over these tasks in 1998 when the U.S. government, in a shocking display of sensible self-restraint, recognized that it was in the best interests of cyberspace that they not be tied too tightly to any one government. But there’s growing international dissatisfaction with that arrangement…
Make sure you read the rest of this article at Reason Online. It does a very nice job discussing some of how the internet runs that I doubt most of us know about as well as taking a bit of a look at both sides of the argument. I’ll admit that as much as I use the net I barely knew anything that was in the article beforehand. There’s definitely a decent thought to both sides of the brewing argument, and I can’t help but want to look towards Barlow’s vision for the net.
I think we need to ask Mr. Al Gore’s opinion. After all, he invented it.
:lol::lol:
The UN want to monitor and control the internet we need to have our privacy and to just evect the UN from american soil just think of what a nice parking lot that place would make:roll:
Parking lot hell, that’s some damn prime office space there and it’s already wired for internet and phone service. That’s a BIG bonus when showing to potential tenants.:grin: