Ejected in Geneva
<p>The organizers of the Internet Summit in Geneva have had Dr. Paul<br />
Twomey, the president of ICANN (the organization that&#8217;s chartered to<br />
administer the international domain-name system), ejected by security<br />
guards after he&#8217;d flown twenty hours to participate in the<br />
meeting.</p>
<p>I was not especially surprised.  The organizers of the Geneva<br />
summit seem to be very much the same scum of the planet that one<br />
normally finds running these U.N. events &mdash; third-string<br />
diplomatic timeservers, addle-brained NGO moonbats, a scattering of<br />
celebrity Eurotrash, and a legion of gray apparatchiks from<br />
authoritarian Third World pestholes.  It didn&#8217;t astonish me that<br />
they&#8217;d use force to keep out anyone who might interfere with their<br />
plans for a government-friendly, politically-correct, censored, and<br />
very thoroughly <em>controlled</em> Internet.</p>
<p>No, the really surprising part is that I found myself sympathizing<br />
with Dr. Twomey.  ICANN&#8217;s performance, while not the unmitigated<br />
disaster many of its critics like to portray, has not been glorious.<br />
Way too many deals have been done in back rooms and the organization has<br />
been far too kind to expansive trademark claims and other sorts of<br />
corporate land-grab.</p>
<p>Perhaps the one salutary effect of the Geneva summit is to remind us<br />
that things could easily be worse &mdash; and almost certainly will be, if<br />
the U.N. gets control.</p>
