UN Considering Control of the Internet 402
Dangerous_Minds writes "News has surfaced in the wake of the WikiLeaks story that the United Nations is mulling total inter-government regulation of the internet. The initiative was spearheaded by Brazil and supported by other countries including India, China, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. Drew Wilson of ZeroPaid commented that while the Cablegate story may be bad, attempting to destroy WikiLeaks would only make matters worse for various governments around the world, given what happened when the music industry shut down Napster ten years ago."
Napster was ten years ago? (Score:2, Informative)
Holy crap, I'm old!
Cry, the beloved country. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm from South Africa and I cannot believe a government that was once itself censored heavily, and violently when speaking out against such censorship, is now becoming one of it's staunchest supporters. First (draft) domestic legislation regulating what newspapers can publish, and now this.
Freedom? No, it doesn't seem to me like that was the end-goal of the struggle.
Inclusive ? (Score:5, Informative)
The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has been grinding along for almost five years, so this is something of late news. Unlike the Australian commenter in the original article, the process is inclusive only as to governments, not people or even NGOs. This has the Internet Society (ISOC) worried enough that they have an online petition on it :
The UN Needs to Ensure an Open and Inclusive Approach to Internet Governance [ipetitions.com]
(Yes, you will get a fundraising pitch at the end, but that's not the reason for this petition.)
Re:global standards for policing the internet (Score:5, Informative)