Jay Currie

The European Union insisted Friday that governments and the private sector must share the responsibility of overseeing the Internet, setting the stage for a showdown with the United States on the future of Internet governance.

A senior U.S. official reiterated Thursday that the country wants to remain the Internet’s ultimate authority, rejecting calls in a United Nations meeting in Geneva for a U.N. body to take over.

EU spokesman Martin Selmayr said a new cooperation model was important “because the Internet is a global resource.”

“The EU … is very firm on this position,” he added.
globe and mail

Watching the Chinese try to censor the net – with more success than they should be having – you can imagine my delight at the thought of the EU/UN taking control of the net. Imagine, if you will, the happy possibility that a bunch of essentially technically incapable nations decided that there will be no connections to Israel. Or that the Chinese model of all filtering all the time made a lot of sense for places like Zimbabwe or Yemen where the net is one of the few modes of free expression left.

Say what you will about the Americans but, with the exception of their silly idea that boobies are shocking and that you can win the “War on Drugs” they actually have pretty strong law preventing the censorship of speech. Better to have them in charge than a bunch of international bureaucrats who know what’s best.