Patrick O’Keefe

I just got done reading this article. Give it a read. The question here… do you want the internet being controlled by the United Nations? As someone who has been a user of the Internet for about a decade, as someone whose entire business and livelihood/future livelihood is online… I don’t.

For whatever you might think about the United States or our President, the internet does run well. It’s an open medium and with that, comes problems. It brings inappropriate, hateful content online and it brings idiots to our websites. It’s not perfect and it’s not going to be. But, when you think of the flipside - of what the opposite would be - there really is no other way that I would prefer. It’s a small concession for the openness that we enjoy in this medium. In fact, it is a vital part of that openness. The fact is - the way that the United States has set the Internet up is great. Anyone with a credit card (or a PayPal account, even) can pay $10 and get a domain name and pay a certain fee every month for hosting - or even sign up for a free hosting account - and put their message online. They can talk about their favorite sports team, they can bash the President’s policies, they can do whatever they like as long as it isn’t illegal (libelous, stalking, etc.). And that’s cool. That’s the way it should be. And the U.S. deserves credit for inventing the Internet and allowing it to become what it has.

In my own personal experiences… as a teenager, I was able to buy domain names, set up websites, join ad networks and make money. How cool is/was that? Freaking awesome. If you have a great idea, if you work hard - you can be successful online. You can start a business online. You don’t need to be rich to start. It’s beautiful. I hope that people don’t judge this issue on hatred of us, but on what has actually happened with the internet and how easy it is to use and start using. I, for one, don’t want Cuba having a hand how the internet is managed. I don’t want China having a hand in how the internet is managed. I don’t want Iran having a hand in how the internet is managed. Hindsight is always 20/20 and everyone is an expert, but the internet has not been managed poorly. The fact that you are reading this message right now is testament to that.

Via Cox & Forkum via Free2Innovate.net.

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 3rd, 2005 at 1:07 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.