When the Internet becomes two or three...

It appears that a battle may have erupted over who governs the internet, with America demanding to maintain a key role in the network it helped create and other countries demanding more control. In an article by Richard Wray of The Guardian - EU says internet could fall apart - the European Commission is warning that if a deal cannot be reached at a meeting in Tunisia next month the internet will split apart, i.e. if a multilateral approach cannot be agreed, countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and some Arab states could start operating their own versions of the internet and the ubiquity that has made it such a success will disappear.

The main thing I took from the article is that if the Internet does crumble because it is seen to be over-dominated by one nation, even if this one nation - the USA - may well have played a major role in creating and developing the network, the alternative - i.e. competing 'Internets', would arguably divide the world in an unprecedented way and further reinforce ethnic conflicts. Let's hope the talks in Tunisia arrests the chances of an Internet apartheid.

The following articles seem trivial by comparison. In Blogs vie with news for eyeballs it is suggested that bloggers are gaining a higher profile alongside traditional news sources with Yahoo including blogs in its expanding news search system (BBC News). Secondly, in Bang blast, is the story of how British blogs have recently found themselves getting comments from a fictional character who promotes a household cleaner - a new, personalised form of advertising(BBC News).