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A Net mired in red tape?

Let's face it, the United Nations is a joke.

It is a joke perpetrated at great expense to the public and taxpayers of the world.

What do you get when you gather huge numbers of career diplomats, retired politicians and bureaucrats then gift them significant amounts of money and tell them to take care of important global issues.

Well you get a whole lot of hot air but very little action.

In my opinion, the United Nations is little more than social club with perks.

Unfortunately, seemingly for lack of anything else to do, they've now turned their sights on the internet and a number of key figures within the online industry believe we should be worried -- very worried.

The ITU (International Telecommunications Union) is a UN body charged with the control and regulation of the telecoms industry.

Until now, the scope of its coverage has been limited to traditional voice and mobile communications but, like all bureaucratic institutions, it is seeking to grow and expand, snaring the Net and its industries with its red tape and regulations.

So why am I cynical about this?

Well firstly, the ITU's debating with respect to regulation and control of the Net is being done largely in secret, behind closed doors.

Why?

Only those with something to fear have anything to hide -- and perhaps this little bunch of bureaucrats are worried that public scrutiny of their deliberations would not be well accepted by the public at large.

Already, the ITU has adopted a confidential standard for deep packet inspection (DPI), a mechanism designed to rip apart the data that flows through networks in order to fully examine its contents. The obvious use for this is to detect and monitor things such as P2P streams and other file-trading mechanisms.

If that's all it was used for then few people could be upset - but it can also be a mechanism ripe for abuse by those who simply wish to spy on the activities of those who use the Net.

Meanwhile, a USA and Canadian proposal to protect the Net from the ITU's regulations fell short of gaining the support it needed to be effective.

There are huge concerns about the effect that allowing the ITU to extend its regulations and rules beyond telcos and into the realm of Net companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and the like could have.

One of the key factors that scares people is the way the ITU could mandate new fees and charges for things such as network termination -- effectively forcing some countries to pay for connecting to others in a way that could impede the growth of the Net.

Inventor of the WWW, Sir Tim Berners-Lee has come out strongly criticising the prospect of UN involvement in the running of the Net, labeling it as "a disruptive threat to the stability of the system".

He points to all sorts of problem that ITU regulation could produce -- such as forcing censorship on unwilling nations and stripping them of the right to independence in their management of their portion of the Net.

Surely, based on the UN's woeful performance in saving mankind from itself in skirmishes across the globe and its seeming endless desire to engage in unlimited rhetoric and debate -- without actually achieving anything other than burning huge amounts of money, we should all stand up and say "thanks but no thanks" to the UN's management of the Net.

As a member of the UN, I wonder what NZ's official position on this is?

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