Irony, thy name is World Summit...

I find it deliciously ironic that Tunesia, the host of the World Summit on the Information Society, actively engages in filtering the Internet for its citizens, according to an article in The Register.

There are a large number of sites it does this to, including Reporters Sans Frontieres (www.rsf.fr), Tunisian opposition political party CPR (www.cprtunisie.com), and Tunisian human rights organisation LTDH (www.ltdh.org), but the one that caused the biggest ruckus this week was Swiss news website Swissinfo.org, which was added to the list while the summit was still going on because it printed details of its president's speech. The speech was very critical of the Tunisian's government censoring and, ironically and inevitably, was itself was censored across Tunisia.

The agreement reached on domain name management at the summit had very little to do with the often open contempt expressed regarding the U.S. role in the Internet, as if creating a free (as in speech) and relatively open system was somehow a bad thing. A quote from an article on c|net:

The U.S. and other Western nations "insist on being world policemen on the management of the Internet," Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, who has been the country's leader since 1987, said at a United Nations information society summit here.

"Those who have supported nihilistic and disorderly freedom of expression are beginning to see the fruits" of their efforts, Mugabe said, adding that Zimbabwe will be "challenging the bully-boy mentality that has driven the unipolar world."

Mugabe sounds like he's ready to go and answer some softball questions on Meet the Press, doesn't he? And make no mistake, when Fidel Castro also starts to sing about how "it is necessary to create a multinational democratic (institution) which administers this network of networks," it's not hard to believe that such an institution would be assigned the task of restricting access to the 'net, as is currently the situation with the state-run netadministration in Cuba. Having a sympathetic ear at the non-Cuban administrative end of the network would be a great boost, as it would reduce even further the opportunities of in-country dissidents to engage in their nefarious deeds.

And if the words of the smooth-tongued wizards from Zimbabwe and Cuba weren't enough to get your antennae quivering, here's what Iran's minister of communications and information technology had to say, using similar, seemingly inoffensive words: "Changing the current Internet governance to a participatory, legitimate and accountable system under an international authority is imperative."

The next such event in Greece in '06 oughta be a real knee-slapper and will likely go a long way toward answering the question: "Can the genie be put back in the bottle?"

Cheers...