Hate Internet censorship? What about Internet taxes and regulation?
As noted by Robert McDowell in The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom, if the bureaucrats at the United Nations have their way, you’ll be getting a lot more of all three under the auspices of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
Think of the inefficiency of the U.S. Postal Service, and combine it with global-scale greed and corruption. Throw in for good measure a disregard of individual liberty.
If the International Telecommunication Union puts together a new treaty that gets ratified by your country, you can kiss your online freedom goodbye.
If such a treaty is ratified by participant nations, you can expect some countries to secede from participation in a WWW and operate national and regional Nets instead. The relative boundarylessness of today’s Internet will be gone for good.
To be sure, there are authoritarian regimes like China that attempt to wall off their citizens from the rest of the world online through censorship and intimidation. Any treaty to manage the Internet via U.N. or some other global body is likely to expand these negative characteristics instead of eliminating them.
Whatever comes out of the current ITU talks, it is essential that individual and sovereign powers not be ceded in the process to an international organization, including issues of free speech, taxation, and regulation. To do no harm, the best that can come out of the negotiations is a nonbinding resolution that promotes the Internet as it exists rather than as micromanaged by the United Nations.
Just say no to the International Telecommunication Union. And if a global regulatory framework comes to pass, say yes to Internet secession.
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