[Brazil's] leftist president, Dilma Rousseff, opened the conference by declaring: "The participation of governments should occur with equality so that no country has more weight than others." The Russian representative objected to "the control of one government," calling for the United Nations to decide "international norms and other standards on Internet governance." Last week Vladimir Putin called the Internet a "CIA project" and said "we must purposefully fight for our interests."
Authoritarian regimes want to control the Internet to preserve their power. "National sovereignty should rule Internet policy and governance," the Chinese representative said. "Each government should build its own infrastructure, undertake its own governance and enforce its own laws." The Saudi Arabian delegate said: "International public policy in regard to the Internet is the right of governments and that public policy should be developed by all governments on an equal footing."
Even nominal supporters of the existing multi-stakeholder model embraced the end of Internet self-governance. The delegate from India declared a greater role for the world's governments "an imperative that can't be ignored." Neelie Kroes of the European Commission said: "The Internet is now a global resource demanding global governance."
Philip Corwin, a U.S. lawyer who represents Internet companies, noted that 27 of the first 30 speakers at NetMundial were from governments or U.N. agencies—at a "meeting supposedly conceived to strengthen the private-sector-led multi-stakeholder, consensus-based policy-making model."
We've heard constant promises that the as-yet nonexistent international body that will take over ICANN will not be dominated by these authoritarian governments, but they certainly seem to think they'll be running the show. As I've noted since March, many of the ostensibly "private" parties involved in the "multi-stakeholder" model are actually extensions of their all-powerful governments. And the rest of the world simply does not have the same understanding of free expression that the America of 2014 does... which is saying something, because America 2014 Edition doesn't have the same understanding of free expression that America 1984 Edition did.
The Journal's conclusion is absolutely correct: "President Obama should revoke the plan to abandon the open Internet. The ugly spectacle of countries jockeying to control the Internet is a timely reminder of why the U.S. should never give them the chance."
http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2014/04/29/As-expected-authoritarian-governments-line-up-to-control-the-Internethttp-online-wsj-com-news-articles-SB10001424052702304518704579523342997462478
