Good News From Tunisia

Updated

From Larry Kudlow's blog:

Negotiators from around the globe threw in the towel and agreed late
Tuesday to leave the United States in charge of the Internet's addressing system
known as ICANN, averting an international showdown at this week's U.N.
technology summit.

Update: Here's a link to the UN news release, which leads with:

A non-profit United States-based body will remain in charge of technical management of the Internet, according to an agreement reached late last night on one of the most contentious issues in the lead-up to the Tunis phase of the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which opened today. ...

According to the agreement, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will retain ultimate oversight for the system, but individual countries will manage their own country-code Top-Level Domains.

In addition, it recognizes that all governments have equal roles and responsibilities when it comes to Internet governance. In that light, it asks Secretary-General Kofi Annan to convene a new, democratic Internet governance forum, which would ... would allow for dialogue among stakeholders.

Here's how I see that last paragraph working: They convene the forum and claim ICANN isn't doing enough to ensure that residents of third world nations are getting full access to the Internet in their language. Aware that there's nothing they can do and that this is just a global shakedown, the US gives more money to the UN.