The Bombshell That Could Detonate Your Internet
Written by Robert McGarvey
9/30/2011The question does not get more savagely blunt: Do you want government running your Internet -- deciding what is permissible content, or what could land you in jail?
That debate is not academic. It is happening in real time, as you read this, in Nairobi, Kenya, at this year’s Internet Governance Forum.
Haven’t heard of the IGF? Join the club. Created out of an initiative by then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2006, the IGF is an attempt to impose some UN-style supervision on the Internet Wild West. A lot of what it covers is the expected: how to stop spam, how to protect children, how to bring the Internet to rural communities... Hard to get much friction on those topics.
But if you want real friction, the IGF indeed is the place to be, because while some are discussing the harmless (how to insure linguistic diversity online), others are zeroing in on the very issues that will shape our Internet experience.
Read the entire article here.