A War Over The Internet? Doubt it.

From the way the Guardian's Kieren McCarthy described last week's European Union sucker punch to United States ambassadors, a tiff that began over the who should control Internet's root servers, you'd think that World War III was about to break out next month in Tunisia. US officials walked away from the Geneva meeting, the final preparatory meeting before November's World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis, Tunisia, a little stunned at the overwhelming and sudden collective demand on behalf of the UK, the EU, China, Iran, Tunisia, Cuba, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil that the United States government hand over control of the Internet's 13 root servers to international governance--perhaps under the watchful and efficient (please read that part with sarcasm) eye of the United Nations. David Gross, the US State Dept.'s coordinator for international communications and information policy, answered them with, "some countries want that. We think that's unacceptable," which was much more diplomatic than flipping them the bird and squealing out of the parking lot. The perspective stateside on this issue is that the story pretty much ended there. It was a preposterous proposal for the US to give up even a little sovereignty to be governed by other countries, many of whom had done nothing but quell freedom of speech and commerce and freedom of pretty much anything else, all of whom had no real investment in building, paying for, or maintaining of these crucial root servers. It's very simple. They're ours. We paid for them. You can't have them. Everything runs just fine as it is. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The end. But a week later you learn that the other side of the ocean is still smoldering over the rejection, even if was based upon some very