VeryBadPlan.com

Meelis Kitsing sobre os perigos de a Internet ficar sob o domínio da ONU. Esta é uma questão cuja importância tem passado em larga medida despercebida mas que será decisiva para o futuro da Internet e das telecomunicações em geral. Na raíz do problema, como em outras matérias de política internacional, está a letal combinação do anti-capitalismo com o anti-americanismo:

The UN has a large number of non-democracies as its members, and the ITU is dominated by monopolistic incumbent telecom companies and former monopolistic telecom companies, as well as their pals from respective government ministries. Giving representatives of incumbent telecom companies from non-democratic countries the right to vote on issues of Internet governance would increase the level of politicization of global Internet governance. It is doubtful that such governance would be more transparent than its current state.

The real reason for wanting to throw the current arrangement out the window is much simpler: a desire to end perceived US hegemony in Internet governance. The US formally controls the domain name system root, even if international treaty organizations and other governments have a significant input in regard to the ICANN agenda. EU spokesman David Hendon told Reuters that many EU nations "just cannot accept that the Americans have control of the Internet in their countries." Such criticism of American hegemony in Internet governance seems to rest on some kind of romantic notion of autarky.###

Most importantly, the United States has been a benign hegemon in the global Internet governance and has efficiently delivered a global public good that has not conflicted with the interests of economically and politically open countries. So far, there is no evidence that US dominance has seriously hindered countries' ability to use and diffuse the Internet. Actually, quite the opposite is true. Instead of spending their energy on efforts to throw sand into the mechanism of global governance, interested parties should look at other international and domestic arrangements that continue to pose serious obstacles for Internet use and diffusion around the globe.

If the priority of the EU and other countries is to facilitate Internet diffusion and encourage its use, then the list of priorities should head in the direction of further reform of domestic telecom markets instead of spending energy on transforming the global Internet governance from ICANN to the ITU. The current arrangement of Internet governance is far from perfect, but the EU-proposed alternative is far worse.