BREAKING NEWS: Internet governance 'UN-style' moves a step closer

A new website entitled The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was just been launched. The site is clearly under construction but what its appearance reveals plainly is that the push to wrest Internet governance away from its US authorities may today have moved a step closer.

The site notes that the new IGF has convened a preliminary meeting on 16-17 February at the UN HQ in Geneva. Invitations to that meeting were sent out on 11 January. The man behind a "highly commended report" on Internet governance, Nitin Desai, has been asked to head IGF discussions. The function of this meeting, according to its agenda, is the formulation of its own aims and objectives. The first formal meeting of the IGF proper, under the terms agreed in Tunis in 2005, is due to take place in the Autumn of 2006.

The Register, a UK-based sci/tech news site, here reports that "The IGF is charged with discussing all public policy issues surrounding the internet and will be multi-stakeholder in that everyone and not just governments will be given equal billing in its processes. It wil be expected to come up with solutions and best practices to accepted problems such as security and availability of the Internet. While its conclusions will not be binding, they will carry enormous weight."

As the same article notes, "Its (IGF's) formation and remit is likely to prove controversial however. Some governments, and in particular the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), are hoping to use the IGF as a backroute for taking power away from the US government and US private company ICANN, which currently act as internet authorities."

The days of the Net as a place of 'anarchic' yet 'breath of fresh air' freedom, so it appears, may be numbered. Once again the prospect of governance via the stultifying end of free speech and political-correctness that marks all UN-style ventures casts its shadow over the Internet as the last bastion of  genuine  free communication.

As with the advent of the printing press, while its use has indeed been bent to many illicit ends, so to it has also released a propitious culture of communication freedom and truth long lost in the print and broadcast media. Freedom and truth are hardly two epithets that the UN and its agencies are known for.

I for one would be pleased to see the IGF fail in its central aim of arogating Internet governance to itself. If anyone should retain this authority I would be pleased for it to remain in the hands of the Americans. Why not? Have they not done a fine job thus far? At least the USA, as a nation, still understands the notion of political incorrectness, freedom and truth.

God help us should the culture of UN-style governance replace it.