I was reading this article and another at the BBC news site and miraculously both had the same underlying theme
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071110/ap_on_hi_te/internet_governanceDebate over U.S. control of core Internet systems threatens to overtake an international meeting in Brazil next week that was meant to cover topics including spam, free speech and cheaper access.
The Internet Governance Forum is the result of a compromise world leaders reached at a U.N. summit in Tunisia two years ago. They agreed to let the United States remain in charge.
But they established an annual forum to discuss emerging issues, including whether control of how Internet addresses are assigned — and thus how people use the Internet — should remain with the U.S. government and an American nonprofit.
Some governments, particularly in developing countries, sought to strip the United States of its oversight so they could have more say over such policies as domain names in languages other than English.
They failed — at the U.N. World Summit on the Information Society, first in Geneva in 2003, then in Tunis in 2005 — and some worry that attempts to renew the debate in Rio would overshadow the rest of the forum's agenda.
Reading between the lines here both governments are indicating that they would rather the debate over who controls the net should be "discussed " perhaps but that its ok for them to ignore the growing voice of global concern regarding the matter as the prefer discussion over action or negotiation.
Of course this would be the case in normal times but extra pressure is on the western allies now to keep control of the net for one simple reason, its so much easier to tap into the world internet and financial traffic if it passes through your hands and what with many countries now getting wary and restless over NSA trawling of all traffic passing through the US ( and most likely the UK ) they have serious reason for concern, even if its just in terms of financial privacy and economic welfare.
