Throughout 2012, the 193 member states of the United Nations will be considering whether to change the way the Internet is governed.  These changes could affect the daily lives of all Americans and threaten freedom and prosperity across the globe, were a centralized, government-run Internet authority to be adopted.

The process begins formally on Monday, February 27, in Geneva and will culminate in a December Dubai International Telecommunications Union (ITU) treaty conference.  This process could result in a treaty that would give the United Nations through the ITU unprecedented powers over the Internet. If this regulatory model is accepted, the effects on the World Wide Web would be “devastating”, as FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell states in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “A balkanized Internet would impair Internet growth most severely in the developing world but also globally as technologists are forced to seek bureaucratic permission to innovate and invest.”

In 2011, more than two billion people were online worldwide, and that number continues to grow by half a million each day. Access to the Internet is helping to expand economies and raise the standard of living across the globe, especially in developing nations. Under the current multi-stakeholder governance model – which is substantially free of government controls – the Internet has yielded benefits for individuals and businesses alike.

“No government, let alone an intergovernmental body, can make engineering and economic decisions in lightning-fast Internet time. Productivity and rising living standards would grind to a halt as engineering and business decisions become politically paralyzed within a global regulatory body,” Commissioner McDowell writes.

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