Message to the UN – Hands Off the Internet

Internet search engine giant Google is campaigning to keep the UN’s hands off the Internet, urging 2 billion users worldwide to show their support for a free and open Internet.

Google is running a campaign to keep UN’s less democratic members from crippling the Internet. Do sign the petition

Having the Internet rewired by bureaucrats would be like handing a Stradivarius to a gorilla – WSJ.

In a statement on its website Google says: “Starting December 3, the world’s governments meet behind closed doors to discuss the future of the Internet. This meeting of the International Telecommunication Union or #ITU will take place in Dubai. Some governments want to use this meeting in Dubai to increase censorship and regulate the Internet … A free and open world depends on a free and open Internet. And a #freeandopen Internet depends on you.
Learn more about what’s at stake and how you can get involved: http://google.com/takeaction”

A free and open world depends on a free and open web. | Google »

A free and open world depends on a free and open Internet. Governments alone, working behind closed doors, should not direct its future.

In an article published November 25 the Wall Street Journal writes:
“Who runs the Internet? For now, the answer remains no one, or at least no government, which explains the Web’s success as a new technology. But as of next week, unless the U.S. gets serious, the answer could be the United Nations.

“Many of the U.N.’s 193 member states oppose the open, uncontrolled nature of the Internet. Its interconnected global networks ignore national boundaries, making it hard for governments to censor or tax. And so, to send the freewheeling digital world back to the state control of the analog era, China, Russia, Iran and Arab countries are trying to hijack a U.N. agency that has nothing to do with the Internet.”

As the Paris-based OECD-Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development noted earlier this month, keeping the running of the Internet out of the clutches of the ITU can only be beneficial to developing and developed economies around the world.  See our report Bye-bye Unlimited Broadband Internet?

Google is urging concerned users to join its campaign and pledge support here.

(Read more on threats to French net neutrality here and here)

Story: Ken Pottinger
editorial@french-news-online.com

(Full disclosure: French News Online depends wholly on the Internet for its business)

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