From the article: "Xenophobes and technocrats have found something they can agree
on: The United Nations shouldn’t be in charge of the Internet… So if the United
States doesn’t control the Internet in the future, who will? Calls to keep the Internet free
sound good, but they tend to overlook the fact that the Web is already not
entirely anarchic. Between bodies such as ICANN, IETF, and the WC3, it’s more
of a laissez-faire technocracy.
That system has worked gloriously so far, helping the Internet grow in ways
no bureaucrat could have imagined, let alone planned. But as appealing as it
may be to you and me and Vincent Cerf, it
is not a system of government that has proven particularly tenable through the
ages. Countries tend to be either authoritarian and repressive or democratic
and populist. As the Internet becomes increasingly central to people’s lives
around the world, state governments will not be content to entrust its
governance to a bunch of benign wonks. This round may go to the engineers, but
the political struggle has just begun." Read more
