Fergie's Tech Blog

U.N. Internet summit draws rights groups' fire

Michael Moran writes for MSNBC:

A United Nations organization created to settle disputes between the world’s broadcast and telecommunications giants is preparing this summer for one of its most important, and possibly most contentious meetings in decades: an Internet summit aimed at giving the world a greater voice in the governance of the World Wide Web, which to this point has been handled primarily by the United States.

Yet even as battle lines are drawn between those who seek greater “democracy” in doling out addresses on the Web and the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Addresses (ICANN), advocates for free speech and the Internet are attacking the summit for a different reason: its location.

“Putting a summit on the future of Internet in society in a country like Tunisia is like holding an environmental summit in a nuclear power plant,” says Alexis Krikorian, director of Freedom to Publish, International Publishers Association in Geneva. “We believe it is a very inappropriate place for such a meeting to take place.”

posted by Fergie @ 7/27/2005 07:02:00 AM