UN Will Not Get Control Of Web

The US thumbed its digital nose at the UN today, telling them to keep their hands off the Internet. AP reports:

"We will not agree to the U.N. taking over the management of the Internet," said Ambassador David Gross, the U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy at the State Department. "Some countries want that. We think that's unacceptable." ...

One proposal that countries have been discussing would wrest control of domain names from the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, and place it with an intergovernmental group, possibly under the United Nations.

Gross dismissed it as unacceptable.

"We've been very, very clear throughout the process that there are certain things we can agree to and certain things we can't agree to," Gross told reporters at U.N. offices in Geneva. "It's not a negotiating issue. This is a matter of national policy."

It's hard imagine a scenario worse than putting the globe's emerging economic engine into the hands of as corrupt and selfish despots, oppressors and enemies of free speech as those who sit on the floor of the UN General Assembly.

Or put more simply, it's our ball. Play our way, or go home.