A Narrow Internet Escape

[Commentary] The good news is that last week the U.S. walked out of a United Nations confab in Dubai to regulate the Internet. The not-so-good news is that the movement by unsavory governments to control the Web now has an official U.N. imprimatur, which can only lead to trouble.

The Administration's mistake was in playing along with the ITU in the first place. This White House and State Department have an undying faith in multilateral diplomacy, even when the rest of the world wants to use it to harm U.S. interests. Autocrats rightly see the open Web as a threat to their political control, which is precisely why it is in the U.S. interest to keep the U.N.'s hands off. Given the ITU's Dubai double-cross, the U.S. has good cause to quit the agency. If that's too much, then perhaps the next Secretary of State will make it a theme of his tenure to preach the virtues of an unregulated Internet.