While other more controversial policies may be getting most of the attention at this week’s U.S. Republican Party convention in Tampa, Gratt Gross of PC World reports party delegates also approved a platform plank related to Internet freedom:
Delegates to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, approved on Tuesday a platform that embraces private-sector autonomy on the Internet and opposes efforts to move Internet governance from the current model to the United Nations or other international organizations.
“The Internet has unleashed innovation, enabled growth, and inspired freedom more rapidly and extensively than any other technological advance in human history,” the platform reads. “Its independence is its power. The Internet offers a communications system uniquely free from government intervention.”
(Click here to read “US Republicans back Internet ‘freedom’“)
Internet freedom activists hope to see the Democratic Party also address Internet freedom at its convention next week. The situation is a bit bleaker in Canada, where the Conservative government seems poised to move ahead with Bill C-30, its controversial Internet surveillance legislation that privacy advocates have attacked for overreach. While opposition parties have raised issues with the Bill, the government’s parliamentary majority means it’s likely to be passed into law.