To Regulate or Not to Regulate?

In less than two weeks, nations of the world will gather at the U.N.'s World Summit on the Information Society (known as WSIS) in Tunisia. The WSIS process started two years ago, and during most of that time UN and government reps insisted that this wasn’t about taking control over the Internet. Until three weeks ago, when the EU said it was.

Now the United States is pitted against the EU and UN. The media typically paints it as a “US vs. The World” stand-off, but that’s oversimplifying it. It’s much more a question of businesses vs. governments....

In the United States and other free-market countries, they look at the Internet’s track record – a billion users globally and hundreds of billions of dollars or e-commerce – and come to the conclusion it’s best to leave it as is. That means letting the business community take the lead with consultation with governments. But in countries where free markets don’t rule, they take those very same facts and if it’s that critical than government has to play the lead role. Anything that important must be government run.

Which means that come Tunisia we are likely to see a stand-off. The issue will die down for a while but continue to fester and find a new way to pop up.

China, Syria and Iran – three of the countries leading the pro-regulation charge – have a clear political interest in ensuring that they have more, not less, control over the Internet.

And they won’t give up just because they didn’t get what they want in Tunisia.

Comments

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