Six months ago Barack Obama seized the Internet for himself, an action that was preceded nearly a year earlier by his equally lawless scheme to turn the 'Net - an American creation from beginning to end - over to "international interests" and the "global Internet community". Which is syrupy euphemistic way of saying "America's enemies," who are scarcely any less eager to crack down on online speech they don't like than is The One himself.
Well, it now appears that POTUS wants some more time to play with his new toy:
The Commerce Department is delaying for at least a year a controversial plan to internationalize Internet control by giving up oversight of its names and addresses system.
The department is instead renewing its contract for a year with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which contracts with companies that sell domain names and addresses, Assistant Commerce Secretary Lawrence Strickling writes in a blog post Monday.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the posting.
Commerce has overseen ICANN since it was created in 1998, but last year, the Obama administration said it planned to transfer its oversight to a group of international stakeholders by September 2015.
The Journal notes critics fear the shift could clear the way for influence from foreign governments not committed to Western principles of free expression, and which might want different rules for administering the Internet in different parts of the world.
"It has become increasingly apparent over the last few months that the community needs time to complete its work, have the plan reviewed by the U.S. government and then implement it if it is approved," Strickling writes.
Strickling said the government will extend its contract with ICANN to September 30th, 2016, with options to extend it another three years.
The extension, he writes, gives the department time to work out additional details on how a "multistakeholder" governance might work.
Since both the Obama Regime and "international stakeholders" want to censor the 'Net, and the ends to which each would do so overlap almost entirely, I can only conclude that this is some sort of turf dispute over who will make the final call on what ideological content on which to pull the plug and expunge from cyberspace. This would be consistent with the White House blithely thinking that they would be calling those shots - oh, my apologies, building the international consensus - and thus they'd only need a year and change to make this transition. Evidently the "international stakeholders" aren't paying Red Barry much, if any, heed, and want to put the 'Net into its intended tourniquet in their own way, on their own timetable, and O appears to have been less than entirely cool with that. Surely an extra year will provide more than sufficient time for his "unique heritage" and "funny name" and "soaring oratory" to have the "international stakeholders" swooning and ready to follow his lead.
If not, well, it's not like he's going anywhere 521 days from now.
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