The US press is ramping up a PR offensive on the UN in a bid to put the fear of God into those who think the World owns the Internet. To be fair the UN idea is not that great for the universe either, particularly as it has the backing of such leading human rights based countries such as China, and Russia.

But at the same time the fear that the US has of handing over the world wide web to the UN is equally as dumb. The way things are, the US president could switch off the Internet because of some nonsense that they came up with the original idea.

If you look at the press this morning, it seems the majority of them fear a UN controlled internet more than they do another Celine Dion album.  But if you scratch the surface you discover the reason that they are so against it is a rumor that the UN is thinking of taxing big IT corporations, such as Google, to pay to make sure the world has broadband. So the big tech outfits, who pay little tax to anyone, immediately rush to complain to their congressman to end this sort of talk now.

Currently the Internet is monitored by a largely apolitical private company, which is all well and good.  However the US has an input into that body, and at the end of the day it still sings the Star Spangled Banner more than it hums the March of the Volunteers.

The move to shift control of the Internet to a UN commission does make a lot of sense. The world really does own the Internet, not just one country. The difficulty will be how such a commission would make things work in a way that would keep such technology neutral.

Meanwhile the press is muttering all sorts of fear stories about what will happen if those nasty communists in the UN get their way. In fact it is possible that with the right commission, it really could make broadband internet open, free and global.