Fed-Up With The Yanks!!

Europe Is Discontent with US Internet Management

The European Union has decided that it has had enough of the American management of the worldwide web. Europe will push for diminished influence of the United States on Internet governance, claiming that it lost confidence in the US-centric model.

European Union issued a draft policy paper, which would propose a series of steps to globalize Internet governance functions and get the United States out of it. Apparently, America has only itself to blame, because it started to believe that it ruled the world and could spy on everyone. In the meantime, the recent spying scandal has made Brussels believe that it would be better off having someone more reliable running the Internet.

According to the draft paper, large-scale surveillance and intelligence activities by the United States have caused a loss of confidence in both the Internet and its present governance arrangements.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, located in California, in currently responsible for overseeing Internet governance, including the assignment of top-level domains. The government of the United States and ICANN have a long-standing operating agreement, but this arrangement has been questioned by many countries in recent years.

A number of governments all over the world, including Brazil, China and Russia, have called for more international governance of the worldwide web in recent years. Moreover, after last year’s revelations about broad NSA surveillance programs, Brazil has even suggested to wall off its Internet traffic from American networks. However, the experts can only propose a world standard Internet controlled away from the United States. Eventually the country would have to buy into it, otherwise it would be cut off from the rest of the world.