From ZDNet.com
COMMENTARY BY Charles Cooper
The do-gooders have found a new cause for 2003: Saving the Internet from the private interests intent on mucking up the cyber landscape.
Considering that 40 percent of all U.S. citizens have been online for more than three years and that most are able to find the information they seek when surfing the Web (according to a Dec. 29 Pew study on the Internet and American life) that’s a curious cause.
No matter. This story line is going to get played out in the next 12 months and how it concludes will leave an indelible imprint on the future of the Internet.
The only surprise is that these folks took so long to get involved. In a world of nation-states, the pre-9/11 Internet era enjoyed a remarkably long run marked by self-regulation, decentralization and individual control. As the Web went global, I was sure policy-makers would move faster to bend the anarchistic nobody-owns-it philosophy of the Internet to their liking.
Public interest advocates are making up for lost time. Urging far more muscular government oversight and involvement, they are keen on making sure the public gets to represent its interest in the development of the Internet. One of the most articulate and forceful examples of the something-must-be-done mind-set was recently served up by Zoe Baird, president of the Markle Foundation.
The people staffing these agencies are hard-working and mean well. But technological innovation-through-committee-work is, at best, a hopeless laboratory concept. To be sure, the new realities of our times require some accommodation with the security and geopolitical environment, but putting government in the driver’s seat is a mistake.
That’s especially true when the governments in question are cyber scofflaws, such as Saudi Arabia and China, where the authorities block access to Web sites they don’t like. In my mind, that should automatically disqualify them from participation in the formulation of policy that affects tens of millions of Internet users. But would any U.N. task force have the guts to make that sort of politically incorrect declaration? I don’t think so.
The fact is we will never be able to ensure that all the private and public interests in the world are “fairly” represented. But it’s a mistake to think about the Internet in terms of fairness in the first place. Do that and you invite the bureaucrats in to stultify the vitality that first created the World Wide Web.
You can read the entire story here.
