Off To Tunisia To Save The Internet

Republican John Doolittle, who represents suburban Sacramento, will be the only congressional representative in Tunisia next week to battle for continued US control of the Internet. (source)

He'll be joined by reps from State, Commerce, Defence and others at the UN's World Summit on the Informaiton Society. That the summit is being held in Tunisia is an indication of just how bad things could get if the UN wrestles control of the Internet away from the fiercy independent and open Americans.

• The Tunisian government has been in the firm hold of one man since 1987, hardly an example of openness
  
• Literacy is between 60 and 75 percent, with women lagging behind (by comparison, in the US, it's 97% for both men and women)
  
• There's just one phone line for every three people -- one for every ten if you don't count cellular phones (In the US, we have about 1.2 phones per person, with a land line for every half-person or so)
  
• Tunisia had 281 internet hosts (2004) and only about six percent of the population uses the Internet. (In the US, there were 115.3 million internet hosts in 2002, and more than half the population were plugged in then -- and it's grown hugely since 2002)

(source: CIA World Fact Book)

Some would argue these stats show we have to lower the Internet's common denominator and make it more available. I say we keep it right where it is and raise the freedoms and economies in repressed nations, so more use it.