Amy Payne
The Foundry
Heritage.org
4/29/2014
Russian President Vladimir Putin is already at the forefront of Internet censorship, cracking down on blogger freedom. Russia’s upper house of parliament just approved a new law that will expand government control over websites.
This comes as no surprise following Russia’s comments at last week’s international Internet conference. If the Obama administration was unsure what would happen when it suggested removing the Internet from U.S. oversight, the global conference provided some hints.
Representatives from 80 countries met to discuss the future of the Internet—and each nation seemed eager to stake its own claim. Russia was no exception…
The Internet ran smoothly for 25 years because the U.S. ensured that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, known as ICANN, operated without government interference. Authoritarian regimes can censor the Internet in their own countries and jail their bloggers, but until now had no way to get control over the root zone filenames and addresses of the global Internet. Handing over control could allow them to undermine the open Internet globally, including Americans’ access to U.S. websites…
The entire article is at Heritage.org
