wrong paper

Submitted by cvt (United States), Jan 10, 2008 at 09:39

This review should have been written for the Washington Post. While bogeymen like Lenin,Stalin and Mussolini no longer exist (I'm holding my opinion of Putin for a year or two), the state machinery still does. It's the root cause of the antagonism between members of the EU and the USA, as their overwhelming apparatus chokes innovation, and ambition, from their populace.

We, on the other hand, continue to make it up as we go along. Take this internet that allows me to communicate globally. In France, where virtually every home was connected to Minitel decades ago, thereby providing an excellent backbone for national connectivity, the only data available was train schedules! Why? Because everything had to pass through the state filters.

Who is going to spend money and time in that fruitless exercise? Here it was like the wild west, some great services, some not so great, all free from state supervision. This battle is not over, as there is a continuing effort by several countries to wrest control of ICANN, and it's internet authority, away from the US Dept of Commerce and place it under UN control.

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