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Wednesday, December 14, 2005

More Reason To Resist Net Internationalization

Early efforts to co-opt control of the internet to the United Nations have crashed before liftoff, but the creeping clutch of international elites never retreats. To remind us of just why the United States remains the safest place for the internet to remain unregulated, free, and uncensored, consider the case of Kazakhstan. It’s funny, but it is emblematic. A British comedian called Sacha Baron Cohen had given the nation its share of jibes, pretending to be a bawdy Kazakh television news reporter named Borat on his HBO program. In response, the foreign ministry threatened to bring suit against Cohen. Naturally, the comedian constructed Borat.kz, using Kazakhstan’s national top-level domain. Typical diplomatic repartee between a comic and a country.

Then the site vanished. Today, the New York Times reports:

[T]he government-appointed organization that regulates Web sites ending in the .kz domain name for Kazakhstan confirmed that Mr. Cohen’s site had been suspended. Nurlan Isin, president of the Association of Kazakh IT Companies, said: “We’ve done this so he can’t badmouth Kazakhstan under the .kz domain name. He can go and do whatever he wants at other domains.”

The Borat-hating autocrats have every legal right to revoke Cohen’s domain, just as Washington can, in theory, give the boot to users of .com and .us. What’s important to understand is that, while countries may do this, they just don’t. Countries whose governments profess any passing interest in liberty simply do not revoke domains because of the content being broadcast there. Just as they simply do not pull the plug on the internet at large; just as they simply do not tell private radio or television broadcasters what opinions they may express.

The internet, as has been every construction of free men, is a vulnerable thing. This case, frivolous as it may appear, proves it.

Posted on December 14, 2005 10:15 PM. Permalink