Surf free or die

"We know what's best for you. Trust us."\nAt the moment, the United Nations, the European Union and a coalition of countries, including such human rights champions as China, Cuba and Iran, are seeking to take control of the Internet -- history's greatest medium for free expression. Why? Because they know what's best for you -- and, really, you should trust them. \nUh-huh ...\nTwo weeks ago, at a meeting in advance of November's World Summit on the Information Society, the United Nations and its International Telecommunications Union assailed U.S. "monopolization" of the root servers that form the Web's technical backbone. These root servers are managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a private company under U.S. Department of Commerce oversight. London's Guardian newspaper, which never allows its own (supposedly) liberal principles to interfere with a dig at America or the Bush administration, gushed over how the U.K.'s representative "explained the EU had decided to end the U.S. government's unilateral control of the Internet and put in place a new body that would now run this revolutionary communications medium" (Oct. 6).\nSome of you might be saying, "Good! Take the Internet out of the hands of those religious fundamentalists and neocons!" But the fact is the Internet has grown into a free forum precisely because those root servers are held by the United States. The Bush administration's support for free speech may be dubious -- its mobilization of the FBI against consenting-adult pornography attests to such (Washington Post, Sept. 20). But this ill-conceived waste of FBI resources will eventually crash headlong into the Supreme Court, the First Amendment, a civil society packed with investigative journalists, non-profit organizations and ultimately an American public that dislikes being dominated (well, by its government, anyway). \nThe same cannot be said for the Internet's aspiring masters. In the United Kingdom, for example, the House of Lords is currently delaying the Labour government's attempt to pass a Racial and Religious Hatred Bill that, while seeking to silence bigots and terrorist sympathizers, also threatens to restrict individuals' ability to criticize or mock a religion. As Mr. Bean himself, Rowan Atkinson has said: "A law which attempts to say that you can ridicule ideas, as long as they are not religious ideas, is a very peculiar law indeed" (The Times (London), Oct. 9). Imperfect though American government might be, such a law could never survive our system of checks and balances.\nThe EU has threatened that it might set up another Internet, one it can control (UPI, Oct. 12). Let it. And let's see which one the Googles and Googlers flow into. During the 1950s, the German people got to choose between living in a free society and living under tight government control. And by 1961, the government of East Germany had to build a 26-mile-long concrete wall to keep them in.