Next G8 President Wants To "Regulate the Internet" 279
antispam_ben writes "The President of Italy, which will have the Presidency of the G8 starting January 1, says he wants to use the future position of Italy to 'Regulate the Internet.' Italy's President Berlusconi appears to be a cantankerous character, prompting riots when Italy last had the G8 presidency in 2001. This will no doubt be a serious effort, but knowing the fundamental design of the Internet involves routing around damage, the efforts could be more amusing than threatening."
Update — 12/5 at 00:04 by SS: Reader fondacio noted that Silvio Berlusconi is Italy's Prime Minister, not its President. He is Italy's G8 representative, and Italy will hold the presidency in 2009.
Media mogul wants to restrict bad press (Score:2, Insightful)
Typical from the people in power nowadays
No authority (Score:5, Insightful)
Enforcement not regulation is the answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop him! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not specific enough! (Score:5, Insightful)
What the fuck does "regulate the inernet" actually mean? It could mean anything!
1. announce plans to regulate internet
2. ???
3. profit
hooray, win will ensue! (Score:5, Insightful)
It has been said before, and I will repeat it here.
The internet treats censorship like damage and simply routes around it.
This "war on free information" (isn't the the en vogue thing to call a power struggle?) like every other idealogical war, cannot be won, and is counterproductive.
With every "blow" to us (us being those that desire freedom of information) we simply grow smarter, stronger, and more sophisticated in our measures to ensure the integrity of our freedoms.
Our numbers are so so so so so much greater than theirs. Every time one of us is jailed, or sued, or defamed 10 pop up as replacements. Every attempt to silence our voices results in us retreating further and further into obscurity and anonymity.
I welcome an information war between those of us who want freedom of communication and those that don't. We, who have greater resources, intellect, and numbers, will prevail.
Re:Enforcement not regulation is the answer (Score:5, Insightful)
The Internet is already regulated (Score:5, Insightful)
Since Berlusconi didn't expand on what he meant, the Register article is slightly alarmist. Maybe he wants to regulate download speeds, or legislate net neutrality? The bald statement of wanting to "regulate the internet" is worthless. If he did want to restrict freedom of speech, and an E.U. directive were put forward, it would still need to be passed into national law by the E.U. member states, and even if that occurred it could still be challenged at the European Court under the Human Rights legislation.
But realistically, the Internet is already regulated. Try putting a copy of Photoshop or pornography involving a 15 year old girl on your web page and see how long it lasts. The question is not whether the Internet is regulated, but the level of regulation. In China, criticising the government is prohibited. In the Middle East, pornography is prohibited. In the United States, reproducing commercial sensitive data is prohibited via copyright and patent laws, in Germany Nazi memorabilia is prohibited. Every society has its limits.
Streissand effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at what happend to 4chan and "anonymous" over the last year of so. Somebody posted a video of Tom Cruise acting like...well...like himself. Scientology's attempts to take this video down caused a bunch of idiots to start posting videos on youtube and..well...acting like idiots. Scientology's further attempts to silence them have caused what started as a joke to turn into a national-news-making group of resourceful, hate-filled individuals bent on "dispelling your organization from the internet and systematically dismantling it blah blah blah"
I predict: Cisco makes a shitload of money selling filters
a shitload of jobs are created to maintain all the censoring equipment
a shitload of our money is spent to prevent us from communicating with one another
a shitload of computer illiterates get angry when whatever side effects of this "regulation" start occuring
a small number of geeks create a tool to allow a slightly larger number of geeks to continue doing what geeks have done since their beginning...that is: whatever they want.
Re:hooray, win will ensue! (Score:2, Insightful)
I welcome an information war between those of us who want freedom of communication and those that don't. We, who have greater resources, intellect, and numbers, will prevail.
Except if we're complacent in the face of truly massive damage to the internet because we think we'll somehow automagically prevail. Sorry, but the internet's capacity to route around damage is limited, as any network admin can tell you. If you don't keep fighting every day to defend internet liberty, one day it'll be gone. Attackers only need to win once, defenders need to win always.
Frankly, I for one think we need to go on the attack - destroy corrupt politicians proactively. Hack their systems and leak damaging information. They'll label us criminals. But - guess what - they already do that regardless of what we actually do. They don't care about the truth, they want control.
Its inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
Not today, not tomorrow, but someday you can expect content regulation to take place.
As we lose control little by little of our hardware, software, documents ( DRM ), its just a matter of time.
Re:Censorship - not Regulation (Score:4, Insightful)
It is just a matter of time until they will block sites criticizing the government itself.
You've nailed it in one.
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Regulation of commerce != censorship of media.
The former is a matter of preventing industrial sharks from taking over and squeezing every last penny from consumers while offering sub-par service, the latter involves imposing someone else's subjective moral values on the general populace. Not the same thing at all.
Berlusconi v The Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
I expect that Berlusconi's definition of "regulate the Internet" is "make it stop competing with my television stations". Italians are to get their porn exclusively from him.
Re:Stop him! (Score:2, Insightful)
Until they pass laws that makes such measures illegal. They want to know what every citizen is doing at all times, makes it easier to stop people who oppose the government.
The economy is screwed, the governments pissed it all away on wars nobody can win in an attempt to get even richer but know that but the only way they'll keep people in line is to make them too afraid to do anything.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely! No more allowing people just to connect to the Internet with any address they choose! Instead, I propose some sort of standard Internet Protocol address. And a central organization to assign everyone those addresses. Then, we can have some sort of header on every packet that will describe the source and destination address.
Perhaps we could have a central organization who would assign names to those addresses. And they could standardize the naming schemes, and the protocols the naming servers use!
nahh... that's just too much regulation :)
Re:The Internet is already regulated (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is precisely why G8 is the wrong group to tackle Internet regulation. Every society has its limits, but no society has exactly the same limits as the others. G8 is too far removed from the public interest to do any good here, and the interests of those who would regulate the Internet too different to lead to anything but an unreasonable "middle ground".
Re:hooray, win will ensue! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Every attempt to silence our voices results in us retreating further and further into obscurity and anonymity."
Yeah, sounds like we're really winning the war on censorship and defending our rights to free speech... Here's a hint, if you have to say something in increasingly anonymous and more obscure ways, you're losing.
No government can ever prevent anything completely, only to degrees. The more they crack down, the more things will be done in secrecy, and the less people will actually do them at all. This is why the wars on drugs and terror have been such abysmal failures, they failed to curb the behaviors at all (perhaps even encouraging them!) and have had hardly any effect on the degree of publicity people who do them are willing to expose themselves to; by comparison, the war on child pornography has gotten people using increasingly obscure means of communication and distribution, kiddie porn still exists and probably always will, but I remember a time not so long ago when one could actually come across http sites openly hosting child porn for all to see.
This post is not intended to support or endorse any particular view on the issues it mentions, simply to state a point on government suppression in general.
Re:Good (Score:1, Insightful)
Sarcasm, right? I hope so, because -- absent any evidence of deliberate fraud, which is illegal in its own right -- the former is also "imposing someone else's subjective moral values on the general populace."
As the President Anonymous of the Internet... (Score:1, Insightful)
I promise the "President of the G8" that we will fight any oppression and any restriction of our freedoms online, anywhere and anyhow.
Just remember who controls the bytes...
The Internet is Berlusconi's worst enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
the Internet is Berlusconi's worst enemy. His control of printed media and private as well as public televisions prompted the Financial Times to talk of a situation similar to North Korea.
However, he has no control of what happens on the 'Net and he makes no money out of it.
For both financial and political reasons Internet is bad for him.
Unsurprisingly, the government hasn't done anything to increase the use of Internet in Italy and it now lags almost at the bottom of Europe.
Re:It'll never happen. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Enforcement not regulation is the answer (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, thats EXACTLY what the internet needs. A world wide police force with global access and the right to opperate with impunity in any country.
RIIIIGHT.
The RIAA tried that and this community screamed blue bloody murder. Now because the flag is "fraud" we're going to back it? I don't think so.
Is internet fraud the /. version of think of the children?
Memetic Manipulation & Differentiation (Score:5, Insightful)
China, Australia and now Italy are moving towards Internet censorship. In 2006, at Defcon 14, I predicted that the Internet would move towards greater memetic differentiation to prevent widescale manipulation, that is, the ability to influence audiences would be dialed down to smaller and more local groups.
http://www.realmeme.com/Main/about/Defcon14.ppt [realmeme.com]
I wasn't sure of how it would happen, the mechanism which would start up but I know think "national security" is it.
Here's an experiment I conducted last month along with a brief commentary.
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entry=gaming_calculatedrisk2 [realmeme.com]
After execution, I was surprised at how many foreign government hits I got, many of them associated with national security. I wouldn't underestimate what's happening. There are serious economic and cultural forces at work and self-preservation is involved.
Re:It routes around damage? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who needs wires?
Slashdotters, let's get to work on mesh networking. Everyone set up a "piece" of the mesh, and we just keep rolling until we get entire provinces/states covered. Wires work great when you can go over 300ft without it starting to die.
And with wireless the truly anon are free to stalk as they like. :)
Re:The Internet is already regulated (Score:3, Insightful)
As the G8 president he can use his position to set agendas and to push his position on other members, hopefully they won't take it any further.
The G8 is just yet another platform of power on the international level, it doesn't matter that it's too far removed from the public - that's likely of no matter; getting other high-ranking officials to take it on-board may lead to setting their own policies in a similar vain.
Re:Berlusconi v The Internet (Score:1, Insightful)
I expect that Berlusconi's definition of "regulate the Internet" is "make it stop competing with my television stations". Italians are to get their porn exclusively from him.
This is a key thing most people don't know....Berlusconi owns some absurdly high percentage of mass-media in Italy. TV, newspapers, etc....this guy has one giant propaganda machine.
Re:No authority (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, he does set the agenda for the meeting, so if he is serious, he could dedicate a fairly large chunk of the meeting time to this topic.
Now, theoretically the rest of them could just tell him off on this topic. But lets face it: they all need to justify being at a meeting that took a huge effort to organize with thousands of cops protecting them, tens of thousands of people demonstrating etc. In other words, they need a result. ANY result. Internet regulation is an easy topic in that respect, since the wish for some amount of control over the internet is widespread among politicians of many countries. So the meeting dynamics could very easily be stacked against common sense and individual right.
But what else is new?
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
No, because economic regulation has nothing to do with "moral values" (which are, of course, inherently subjective). Rather, it's a purely utilitarian activity - maximizing the benefit for the society as a whole.
Re:It'll never happen. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Italy is a very nice country with all its arts and good food, but there are too many idiots and bigots.
And how is that different from any other country? Let take as an example the country where I live. Germany. Not much different. Idiots and bigots are an overwhelming majority in every country...
Roberto
Re:It'll never happen. (Score:1, Insightful)
Well I don't know where you are an which "italians" you have met.
But we have even a word for that: campanilismo
campanile is the bell tower.
Basically piedmont conquered the rest of italy around 1860.
The north and some parts of the centre had strong political movements towards a united Italy (although at the time a hard political fight was going on about who should. A strong political current advocated for the Pope .... think Iran ...)
The south which was the biggest italian state at the time and the less developed, basically stuck at a medival political system, ....
well the south was basically conquered against its people will.
A long "police operation" was launched to stop the brigantaggio and bring order.
Basically a small civil war went on for nearly two decades. Italians have been force fed an heroic image of a national struggle for reunification for generations but the differences are still there. It took the draft in WWI for italians to start mixing, basically nobody spoke italian at home until the 1950s.
Exporting democracy has always been a pretty mess...
Some sociologists say that the mafias stemmed into simple criminal activity in the second half of the 20th century after they had lost the cultural origin as a cultural resistance movement.