Rosio Pavoris a blog

Internet should be run by key players: new ITU boss
“The Internet should continue to be overseen by major agencies including ICANN and the ITU, rather than any new “superstructure”, the new head of the International Telecommunications Union said on Friday.”

What this means is that the UN will not be making an attempt at taking over the services that keep our internets alive.

In one way, that’s a damn shame, because the Internet desperately needs to be regulated by some international, transgovernmental body if we are to have any hope at it not being crippled by incompetent US lawmakers pandering to special interests and operating with next to no understanding of technology.
On the other hand, the UN has proven itself pretty consistently to be worthless when it comes to dealing with technology itself, so maybe they aren’t the people to do it.

Still, as one Slashdot commenter more or less said: “I would prefer to have essential functions under the control of a bureaucracy that has no effective leadership when it comes to divisive issues than to a bureaucracy that caves to special interests every single time.”
Most other Slashdot comments seem to be in the vein of “UN sux lol!”, though.

The main problem, I guess, isn’t that the Internet needs more regulation, it’s that people who don’t understand it are trying to add more, and the UN could really go either way on that. Still, Ban Ki-moon is no Ted Stevens.

(Via Slashdot, obviously.)