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Comment by epenn | Hacker News Reader

While I certainly acknowledge everything that America has done for the Internet from its beginning up through now, it's long since established itself as a global institution. As such, shouldn't the faculties in charge of running it be global institutions as well?

The premise of the article seems to be that America needs to be careful lest it lose its current Internet dominance. I'm an American myself and I'm very proud of the fact that we initiated something as amazing as the Internet. However, is it fair for us to hold that dominant position in perpetuum? The Internet is a global community.

(edit: spelling, structure)

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I don't think SOPA has much to do with Internet governance. It doesn't contemplate any changes to IP addressing, DNS, or BGP. It doesn't really attempt to reach outside the US. (ACTA is another matter.)

shouldn't the faculties in charge of running it be global institutions as well?

This has been discussed in great length elsewhere, but I'll give a few points. While in principle of course the whole world should have a say in Internet governance, in reality all the specific proposals that I've seen are about making the Internet worse in some way. The good thing about ICANN is that it's so ineffectual and slow-moving that it can't cause much damage.

Consider the global telephone network which is regulated by the ITU, an organization that appears to be 100% captured by telcos, many of whom are national PTTs that make AT&T look friendly. Right now the ITU is trying to figure out how to take control of the Internet from ICANN so they can "recognize local values" (i.e. censorship) and make everything much more expensive by e.g. eliminating settlement-free peering.

As such, shouldn't the faculties in charge of running it be global institutions as well?

My opinion is no, but it's just that. On the one hand I can see why you would think that, but the second half of your comment sort of belies the first: The internet is a global community.

Outside of that though, the ramifications for SOPA are, in my view less tied to simply what the American government will (potentially) be able to control on the Internet, and more likely to create a slippery slope of legislation regarding free-speech at the behest of private industries.

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