Oh Dear

Who wants the UN to control the internet?

Apparently, China is leading the effort to achieve this. Is this not a worry since China only allows its citizerns online acccess with government control?

In fact the UN itself doesn't have a crash hot record in the area of free speech. Here are some examples from TCS.

During the 1970s and 1980s, a number of Third World countries used the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to press for a "new world information order." This grand-sounding project claimed that governments around the world needed to be more involved in "managing" information flows to better serve the "public interest." Part of this new order was the idea of forcing journalists to obtain government licensing in order to report the news. American journalists were quick to point out the dangers this system posed to media independence -- if a reporter uncovers news a government doesn't like, and exposes it, she could lose her license.
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In 1995, delegates attending a UNESCO-convened meeting on "Women and the Media" held in Toronto, Canada called for various forms of government control on the media. These included taking legislative action to combat the "predominantly male culture of the mainstream media" by passing laws mandating "gender-sensitive" hiring practices for media outlets.
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The UN's readiness to sympathize with supporters of censorship made an appearance last year. Its 2002 Human Development Report praised South Africa's Human Rights Commission (a government-funded body) for persecuting journalists in 2000 who dared to write investigative reports of high-level corruption. The Commission slapped the journalists with trumped-up charges of "subliminal racism." The UN, bizarrely, said that this persecution helped to build "respect for human rights."