Save up to $300/year on phone billsLast modified: May 18, 1996 7:00 AM PDT
Net effect of CDA unclear worldwide
(continued from previous page)
The logical destination for these conflicts would be the United Nations. There, diplomatic officials say, Internet regulation could be handled as any other international issue, such as human rights, environmental abuse, or maritime law. A common standard could be negotiated through arbitration, tribunals, formal treaties, or other U.N.-sanctioned mechanisms.
"This would have to be done in the form of a convention: countries of the world getting together and agreeing on a treaty," said Palitha Kohona, chief of the U.N. Treaty Section, which handles all legal issues for the international body. "It would be the same as is done in cases such as climate change, various human rights conventions. The United Nations sets the process in motion."
Kohona stressed that the global organization takes no stand on the issue and that no member nations have requested a forum. But some are getting close.
Steve Ronaghan, a consultant to the U.N. Division of Public Administration and Development, said that a number of Internet-related legal issues have been raised at various meetings and that policy papers are being prepared for draft resolutions that will eventually go before the General Assembly for a vote, he added.
Regardless of what they pronounce, such resolutions would be non-binding and therefore not subject to enforcement. But Ronaghan said they shouldn't be dismissed, for they at least allow "some of these issues to then come into play."
Because the Internet is largely a U.S. phenomenon, it is understandable that much of the politics among Netizens is rooted in basic American principles of free speech. "It allows people to draw together as birds of a feather, not by geographic boundaries," said Lori Fena, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the many civil rights groups challenging the CDA. "We've seen that, if anything, it's given us windows on each other's worlds and cultures. The first thing is to understand, not to push your own beliefs."
Yet some would say that Fena's position is itself an imposition of cultural values. Not all societies value free speech in the same way as the United States, and some see this assumption as yet another form of Western imperialism.
As a case in point, one U.S. government official looks to Singapore, "the most aggressive and articulate proponent of 'Asian values'--the rejection of traditional Western freedoms." The island nation is planning to register all online content providers with a national agency to ensure that discussion "does not undermine moral values, political stability or religious harmony."
