A rebuttal to Stephan Molyneux by Philippe David

 

Hi Stefan,  

Let me start with the flowers. I've been watching your videos for years and I'm a pretty big fan of yours, but I think you're not only misinformed on this issue, but you're also being a tad incoherent in pleading for which criminal gang should «control the internet».  

To begin with, ICANN denies the US government even had any control over their activities, They claim to have always been independent. Furthermore, your argument that ICANN must be overseen by some governmental agency in order to remain exempt of the anti-trust laws doesn't hold any water as ICANN never had any such exemption and has always been subject to anti-trust laws. Therefore, there never was any need for government oversight of ICANN before and there is no need to seek oversight moving forward. What happened on Oct 1st was actually ICANN breaking off any sort of ties with government and had been planned since 1998. It should be celebrated by  voluntaryists all over the world as a liberation.    

Secondly, even if it were true that the US stewardship by the Dept. of Commerce over ICANN meant some kind of government control over the internet that only remained very mild thanks to the constitutional protection of the US, as your narrative suggests, there is nothing to prevent the US from becoming tyrannical and we both know that it's becoming more tyrannical everyday. So continued stewardship of the IANA functions by the US government is no guarantee of internet freedom by any stretch of the imagination.   

Thirdly, even if a takeover of ICANN were to  become a reality, there is actually nothing that prevents DNS systems from being started to compete with ICANN and indeed, one such competitor actually exists and had introduced a new TLD (.bit). This new DNS system, called Namecoin, is based on a blockchain and thus completely decentralized and secure, which means no single entity can ever control it. So you see, even if the UN tried to «take over the internet», the market will always find a way to get around such an attempt. (Oh ye of little faith!)   

So let’s stop all the scaremongering. The internet is anarchy and will always remain so.  

Best regards,  

Philippe David 

Philippe David is an IT consultant from Montreal, Quebec who is also the editor of the french-language libertarian news site contrepoids.com and the french-speaking voluntaryist community site projetv.org