Who’ll Control The Internet, EU * UN * US,

For the present, the US controls the Internet. We invented it and we're keeping it ours, we hope. The Internet is one of the last few places man has an uncensored voice. That’s because the Internet isn’t controlled by any government agency. If the European Union or the United Nations allowed to take over issuing domain names, as they’re planning to do it will make the Oil for Food debacle look like child’s play. Taxing the Internet offers the greatest potential for fraud that exists anywhere today’s world and for all the today’s to follow.

Much to the regret of today’s politicians the U S Military developed the Internet and because it was thought to be too complicated for the average individual to master, they gave it to private businesses to administer. Once the Internet system got in the hands of the individual, and WWW. and dot something’s were established it began to grow and grow and grow. It moved so rapidly across the world no government was able to keep up or even get close to finding ways of regulating it. The Internet is an 800-pound Gorilla that can’t be tamed, nor should it be. It’s mans last vestige against taxation and regulation, and for free speech.

Lets assume the UN or the EU gets control over issuing domain names. Dot com and dot net will be fragmented into dot UK, dot FR, dot IS, dot US. In other words countries would be identified by individual dots. It could go further to add any identification they chose to limit free speech. You can bet the first country to have their Internet service locked would be Israel, the second would be the United States. Do we trust those people in the UN and those in the EU to manage the most influential communication system in the world? The United States either by design or through ignorance we developed an entry system that makes it virtually impossible to lock anyone out. All that’s necessary is to keep you phone or cable bills paid and the Internet is yours for the taking.

The political world has finally awakened and smelled the money to be made by taxing the Internet. Not to worry in order to enforce taxation of the Internet it would take years to reprogram the areas necessary to enforce their laws.

Governor Granholm of Michigan is one of the first to take on the challenge of taxing purchases made on the Internet. She’s relying on the publics ignorance to enforce her ruling. In order to enforce her new tax she would have to violate a number of guarantees given in the constitution. The first being an invasion of privacy. I am advising any citizen of the State of Michigan who is charged Michigan sales tax on anything bought out of state on the Internet to refuse to pay the tax, go elsewhere for your purchase. Few vendors outside of Michigan will abide by the Granholm law; they don’t need to because Michigan has no jurisdiction over them. The political world is watching to see if a petite little blond governor can bamboozle the entire Internet world of commerce.

Any government who thinks they can control the Internet is whistling into the wind. There’re just too many ways around government control. There’re too many corrupt governments who would be willing to sell out for a fast buck. The Internet travels by satellite and by landlines. Does anyone think the UN or any government would cutoff communications with another country because someone didn’t pay an Internet tax. Some say Internet regulation is coming. I say by the time it gets here it won’t make a difference, we’ll have moved on to something bigger and better.

If I were King I would require anyone running for Congress have a reasonable knowledge of computer functions, at least enough to know how to look up the laws derived from the constitution.

E-mail Ken Hughes at ken-hughes@comcast.net