It's the UN. It's a week in Brazil.
So did anyone really expect them to actually do something?
The end of this year will see yet one more effort by some governments to grab greater control of the internet when the United Nations General Assembly meets in New York. As an appetizer to that main event, the annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) took place this week in Brazil and at the center of the debate was how …
One of my favourite scenes in HHGTTG sums up how I think most of these meetings go.....
CHAIRMAN: Listen! I would like to call to order the five-hundred-and-seventy-third meeting of the colonization committee of the planet of Fintlewoodlewix. And furthermore -
FORD: Oh this is futile! Five-hundred-and-seventy-three committee meetings and you haven’t even discovered fire yet!
MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT: If you would care to look at the agenda sheet -
GUY: Agenda rock, yes…
FORD: Oh, go on back home or something will ya?
MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT: …you will see that we are about to have a report from the hairdressers fire development subcommittee today.
HAIRDRESSER: That’s me.
FORD: Yeah well you know what they’ve done don’t you? You gave them a couple of sticks and they’ve gone and developed them in to a pair of bloody scissors!
MARKETING GIRL: When you have been in marketing as long as I have, you’ll know that before any new product can be developed, it has to be properly researched. I mean yes, yes we’ve got to find out what people want from fire, I mean how do they relate to it, the image -
FORD: Oh, stick it up your nose.
MARKETING GIRL: Yes which is precisely the sort of thing we need to know, I mean do people want fire that can be fitted nasally.
CHAIRMAN: Yes, and, and, and the wheel. What about this wheel thingy? Sounds a terribly interesting project to me.
MARKETING GIRL: Er, yeah, well we’re having a little, er, difficulty here…
FORD: Difficulty?! It’s the single simplest machine in the entire universe!
MARKETING GIRL: Well alright mister wise guy, if you’re so clever you tell us what colour it should be!
- Hitchhikers's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
This is why the UN or an offshoot should run the internet. Not because they won't have their snouts in the trough, but because 50+ years of checks, balances and competing interests means that any one little piggy can't get too fat. Additionally the bureaucrats will be more likely to be too busy playing their little games of oneupmanship to actually fundamentally impact the day to day running of the internet.
Contrast that with ICANN who are basically the FIFA of the internet who's primary mission seems to be that a couple of snouts get fat, and be actually diametrically opposed to anything that makes the internet a better place.
Now all we have to do is overcome the loopy USian meme that makes them think the whole UN is a communist plot.
"anything that makes the internet a better place."
You mean idiocy like non ascii DNS names? So making it to all intents and purposes impossible to type some addresses on soma machines. Icann restisted that yet were forced to do it by pressure from the international community who clearly didnt get the fact (or didnt care) that ascii is a common denominator wrt to computer keyboards worldwide.
The problem here is that "multistakeholder" and "multilateral" actually mean the same thing. A massive committee of chair-polishing tossers arguing about trivial minutiae and never actually achieving anything. The only difference is whose arses get to polish the chairs.....like it makes any difference, both approaches spell decay via stagnation for the internet.
It's a bit like being offered the choice of being boiled in oil or immersed in acid.......
AT&T? Its not 1981. They usually aren't even the only choice even if you insist on GSM (please no LTE pedantry) phone service (which tends to be inferior anyway away from the coasts in the US). Never mind general cellular service and internet access. Unless you mean for AT&T to be a metaphor for the cable and telecom pigopoly in general I guess.
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Technically, the UN can start its own 'Internet'. If you get enough people converting to it, there would be some interest in either ALL converting to it OR 'bridging' it to the IAB's internet. The Deep Web already functionally does this (there ARE reasons that it is tricky to be on the Deep Web, though).