DEATH OF THE INTERNET

The internet as we know it is doomed if this happens:

Who should run the internet? Until recently it was an academic question. After all, the United States - thanks to public money and (later on) private entrepreneurialism - had been the midwife of the net in the 1960s and had assumed de facto maternal control. But this divine right is now being challenged. Last week the EU proposed new global institutions, possibly under UN control, to replace existing organisations such as Icann which controls the issuing of domain names such as ".com" and the "root servers" critical for the working of the net's infrastructure. This is to be decided at next month's UN world summit in Tunis on the information society, where the US is likely to be in a tiny minority against the rest of he world.

There's no way a UN bureaucracy dominated by Eurocrats will be able to resist the temptation to regulate to the max:

Tech lobby groups in the UK have warned that proposed changes to European TV regulation could stifle net content.

"Our members are seriously concerned that the European Commission's proposals will inhibit growth of the content and new media market in Europe," said Antony Walker, Director of the Knowledge Economy at Intellect.

"New audio-visual content services, made possible through innovation in digital technology and the internet, should be given time to evolve and develop rather than being shackled by premature and unnecessary regulation intervention by the EU," he added.

Hands up all those who think the internet would be better run by the UN than by the US.