U.S. Losing Control of Internet
December 09, 2005 09:30 AM EST
by Cliff Kincaid

"U.S. Keeps its Control of Internet" was a typical headline when stories appeared about the end of the U.N.'s World Summit on the Information Society. A UPI story put it this way:

"The United States kept control of the Internet at an international meeting about how cyberspace should be run." But such stories and headlines were extremely misleading. It wasn't emphasized that the conference agreed to put U.N. boss Kofi Annan in charge of an "Internet Governance Forum" to decide the future of the World Wide Web.

You had to read to the end of the stories and understand the fine print. For instance, the UPI story noted that the "deal" left the current regime in place but established "two sets of multilateral talks, one focused on oversight and public policy issues, the other on problems like spam, security issues and viruses…" That's U.N. doublespeak designed to conceal what will be going on behind the scenes. Analysis