[governance] US [LAN Party] position: "protect the Net from hostile takeover at the summit"

[Jim Fleming]

US [LAN Party] position: "protect the Net from hostile takeover at the
summit"

People NOT at the LAN Party, unfortunately, do not get it. They never will.
The Lower-48 is a very unique market. There are many people in the world
that want to destroy that market and move the LAN Party to their market. It
Ain't going to happen. Americans are not stupid. As both Presidents Bush
have said, "The American Lifestyle is non-negotiable". The LAN Party rages
on and is growing, and other places will be de-peered and will have to pay
to get into the party. A plane ticket may be required to connect, or a lot
of money and some very short fast fibers which do not exist. Even if the
fibers existed, they would have to run directly to all of the major metro
markets and that will be very expensive. That is where the people and
eyeballs are and that is where the resources go. Obviously, other
governments may not like that.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,39020369,39232718,00.htm

One reason why businesses are alarmed is the lengthy list of suggestions
that have been advanced by nations participating in the UN process. Those
include new mandates for "consumer protection", the power to tax domain
names to pay for "universal access", and folding the ICANN into a UN agency.
The UN has previously suggested creating an international tax bureaucracy
and once floated the idea of taxing email, saying in a report that a 1 cent
tax on 100 messages would be "negligible."



At Thursday's meeting of the State Department's Advisory Committee on
International Communications and Information Policy, officials stressed that
the US government is not about to relinquish its influence over a system
that has performed well for decades.



"For all of you involved in Internet governance and the model that has been
set up, we support it and we believe it's what's good for the world," said
Josette Shiner, the State Department's undersecretary for economic,
business, and agricultural affairs. "In no way can we imagine a situation in
which we will allow what works very well to be undone."



Sometimes the normal diplomatic ground rules should be discarded, Gross
said: "We want to be very clear, and not necessarily fuzz things up with
diplomatic language that may get us in trouble down the road."



The US position is bipartisan. Democrats and Republicans in the US House of
Representatives have sent Gross a letter urging him not to succumb to
international pressure, and a US senator has introduced a nonbinding
resolution that would protect the Net from hostile takeover at the summit in
Tunisia.


_______________________________________________
governance mailing list
governance at lists.cpsr.org
https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/governance