UN Pushes Plan To Assume Internet Governance Role 287
no0b writes with an Op-Ed by the FCC Commissioner on a UN plan to gain more control over Internet regulation. From the article: "On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year's end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish 'international control over the Internet' through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices. "
BoingBoing offers a slightly different perspective; The Register offers a quite different perspective.
No improvement over the current setup (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No improvement over the current setup (Score:5, Interesting)
The most appropriate regulation for the 'net would be of two parts:
1. There shall be common standards that may be utilized by anyone without cost.
2. If you get a packet, you send it on, no matter who it is from or to whom it is going.
2a. You can charge for a connection and by bandwidth, but not for transference of data.
3. There shall not be any more regulation imposed on the 'net.
But... we'll never get this. Why? Because the powers that be can go full time on their efforts to control; the politicians who are bought and the folks doing the buying don't need to take time to go to work - that is their work. Just as the mega-corporations who are fighting for their own control don't have to spend their evenings taking care of the kids.
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Ack - I can't count. Guess that's why I'll never run the 'net *sheepish look*
Re:No improvement over the current setup (Score:5, Funny)
First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three.
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The most appropriate regulation for the 'net would be of two parts:
1. There shall be common standards that may be utilized by anyone without cost.
2. If you get a packet, you send it on, no matter who it is from or to whom it is going.
2a. You can charge for a connection and by bandwidth, but not for transference of data.
3. There shall not be any more regulation imposed on the 'net.
But... we'll never get this. Why? Because the powers that be can go full time on their efforts to control; the politicians who are bought and the folks doing the buying don't need to take time to go to work - that is their work. Just as the mega-corporations who are fighting for their own control don't have to spend their evenings taking care of the kids.
I guess you haven't had much real world Network experience.
1. Common standards? What isn't a common standard? Are you talking about flash? Or are you referring to BGP, OSPF, IS-IS, and TCP/IP?
2. Not all data is worth forwarding. Have you heard of QoS? It achieves its end result by not trying to forward every packet.
2a. Why wouldn't they have the right to charge for transference of data? It's their network. They can charge you whatever they want. If you don't like it, choose a different way to connect to the
Re:No improvement over the current setup (Score:4, Interesting)
2. If you get a packet, you send it on, no matter who it is from or to whom it is going.
2a. You can charge for a connection and by bandwidth, but not for transference of data.
I see that you are trying to write network neutrality in here, but it won't work with these rules. I suspect you are trying to make sure that an ISP doesn't charge the user some kind of special premium for a packet that goes to a particular web site or competing ISP. That is a good rule. But it isn't that they can't charge for data: they simply must charge equally for all data. So I propose a revision:
Rule 2: All packets are charged equally, regardless of source, destination, or content.
Otherwise, your rule 2 violates routing rules (some packets must be discarded). Internet backbones wouldn't work with rule 2A since their entire business model is charging per packet. Peering agreements would also be in a gray area of rule 2A since the count the transference of data but don't explicitly charge for it. Those are good things we would not want to interfere with.
Re:No improvement over the current setup (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, c'mon, that's covered in RFC1918, isn't it? I didn't even have to look the number up. Step One was observe the standards.
The real problem is 800 lb gorillas [rfc-ignorant.org] who ignore [rfc-ignorant.org] and subvert [groklaw.net] Internet standards for competitive advantage, and the ITU is not exactly set up to chastise that sort of actor. These are the people who gave us X.500, for chrissakes! If there's anybody less trustworthy than the US government it would be a consortium of telecommunications giants.
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Well yes. But the matter still is that the Internet will need a globally owned controlling
entity if it is going to continue. ATM too much of the control resides on the US.
Re:No improvement over the current setup (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? All the US controls is the .com TLD (and some others), a component of DNS. The rest of the world could happily build their own Internet with their own DNS and completely cut out the US, if they were so inclined. It's not as if we control some key piece of infrastructure that no one else could possibly duplicate.
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ICANN and IANA
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And all the money that has been shoved inot the IETF.
But that is more of a problem of the rest of the world being ignorant tightwads
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The US controls the .com TLD only on the DNS it controls.
At the end of the day the DNS used is currently the end users choice.
Really UN control, should really be about each country doing it's own thing and should only establish treaties over mirroring and through traffic.
How a country uses, abuses, unsecured it's internal internet is up to it. How it deals with traffic entering from or exiting to foreign destinations needs to be covered by treaties, covering legal responsibilities. No country should
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ITU standards are a bear to read, understand, and implement, I'll give you that.
But after that, we part ways.
The US has recently and repeatedly demonstrated that the neutrality of the internet is a thing of the past as the USG gives in to pressure from industry lobbyists who demand that sites be taken down on their say-so without any provisioning for due process. They even tried to LEGISLATE such behaviour because it was proving too difficult to comply with international law that requires the home nat
Doesn't matter - won't happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Two bad choices (Score:5, Interesting)
Two bad choices:
1) Led by the US = megacorps have purchased both political parties so its basically megacorp-net. Expect lots of censorship and control focused around maximizing profits.
2) Led by the UN = most of the UN members are crooks, dictators, religious extremists, military leaders who killed the civilian leaders to gain control, basically the scum of the non-business society so its basically dictator-net. Expect lots of censorship and control around killing all dissenters and forcing one lunatic religions beliefs upon people of other lunatic religious beliefs (or non-beliefs)
Re:Two bad choices (Score:5, Insightful)
What I fear is that we'll wind up having to chose our poisons.
Because it looks like there's no way in hell that it will be left in the hands of those who built it, maintain it and understand it.
Re:Two bad choices (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, now there's an idea- the workers at backbone stations take a global week-long break and let the chips fall as they will. See if they figure out the real owners then.
Re:Two bad choices (Score:5, Funny)
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Who is John Galt's IT guy?
Whoever he hires.
Re:Two bad choices (Score:5, Funny)
Who run Bartertown?
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See if they figure out the real owners then.
The folks with eminent domain rights, unless those backbones operate via telepathy.
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Re:Two bad choices (Score:5, Insightful)
What I fear is that we'll wind up having to chose our poisons.
When was the last time the US government let us choose anything?
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Even the US Gov has trouble asserting itself over many of the self-governing bits of the Internet. Yes, ICANN is a tool of the US Gov, but many other elements are both international in membership (IETF) and very much interested in keeping governments out of the underpinnings (IEEE).
The UN, in my belief, is ineffective. So is the US Gov, but once in a while they get it right so long as Congress doesn't get involved.
Re:Two bad choices (Score:4, Funny)
You know, I heard from someone that theyre doing it right now! Something about "Primaries" and "November 2012"....youll want to google for the details.
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What I fear is that we'll wind up having to chose our poisons.
Because it looks like there's no way in hell that it will be left in the hands of those who built it, maintain it and understand it.
Then, when attacked, perhaps they should declare war on those that didn't.
Unless you are willing to die to protect your freedoms, you don't have any. What? You though freedom was cheap?
Re:Two bad choices (Score:5, Insightful)
The Internet has simply become too big and too important to remain apolitical forever. Think of how much has changed just in the past few years:
* Groups like Anonymous have done real-world damage to businesses and governments by bringing down servers and stealing private information.
* Wikileaks has embarrassed numerous governments by exposing their dirty laundry and even illegal activities.
* Twitter has been instrumental in organizing and spreading resistance movements, particularly during the Arab Spring.
* Bitcoin has allowed underground economies like Silk Road to flourish.
* The proliferation of strong encryption has presented new challenges for law enforcement and government eavesdropping.
* Onion protocols like Tor make it easier for people to hide their illegal/rebellious activities.
* The ease-of-use of BitTorrent and its clients have made copyright infringement easier than ever.
Taken by themselves, each of these things is a nuisance at best. Taken as part of a larger pattern, governments around the world see the Internet as a platform that's simply out of their control. Under the pretense of stopping criminal activity, they would also gladly lock it down to quash dissent. What originally came to prominence as a new engine for business has evolved as a viable platform for organized dissidence as well as criminal activity. The difficulty is in fighting in the latter without stopping the former. I know around here, the preference would be to maximize freedom even if that means criminal elements remain unthwarted and unpunished. Unfortunately, most people understand too little of these issues and most governments are too singularly focused on serving their own interests to see the Internet as a global public good that should be preserved. Instead, it's considered another vector for terrorism, criminality, and disruption, and therefore it must be sanitized to make it into a more suitable vehicle for commerce and propaganda.
Much of the business community would be happy to see the Internet become a "push" medium. Allowing users to generate content and express themselves opens site owners/operators up to more and more liability. I don't think it will ever come to outright banning of particular technologies, but policies, legal precedents, and broader governmental involvement in Internet affairs will result in a chilling effect, to the point that it won't be a good idea to speak your mind about most things, and the number of venues you'll have in which to do that will be limited anyway.
I think we have a long way to go before that happens, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't fight it every step of the way.
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Re:Two bad choices (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know who you are, or even what your name is, but you already have my vote.
Re:Two bad choices (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Two bad choices (Score:5, Insightful)
Pick the one most likely to result in a leadership that is crippled in from disagreement. The less they do, the better.
Re:Two bad choices (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, I'd vote for the UN. It took them what, like two years to write a letter to Syria to ask them to stop murdering civilians? They still haven't sorted out Darfur. They'll stand idly by while thousands of people die of thirst EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
How long is it going to take to get consensus to write a letter to ask someone to please stop offending FSM / downloading something / critiquing some government? If I got one I'd frame it and keep it in my office.
Worst case, we can just group together and make
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Poland had a House of Representatives that effectively ruled by unanimous consent for several hundred years.
It didn't go well for them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto [wikipedia.org]
Re:Two bad choices (Score:5, Interesting)
> Led by the UN = most of the UN members are crooks, dictators, religious extremists, military leaders...
What is really horrible is that this state of affairs isn't an accident. It was designed that way, to be a Parliment of Tyrants. When the UN was proposed and designed most nation states were unfree hellholes and with the Soviet Block and ChiComs on the rise at the time the trend was not our friend. Yet the design called for one nation state one vote in the General Assembly and with both China and the Soviet Union getting a veto in the Security Council there was zero chance of anything positive ever happening and every chance of great harm. And it was designed that way. Think about it.
So lets turn over control of the Internet to the same bunch of misfits who thought seating Iran to an organization to pontificate on human rights was a good idea. And lets not forget Libya having to get booted out of the Human Rights Council when Kadaffy's body count got so high even the other tyrants were getting embarrased. So oh heck yea, lets turn the Internet over to these thugs, what could possibly go wrong when the Axis of Evil starts writing the RFCs for the Evil Bit and it ain't April Fools.
Re:Two bad choices (Score:5, Informative)
When the UN was proposed and designed most nation states were unfree hellholes and with the Soviet Block and ChiComs on the rise at the time the trend was not our friend.
When the UN was proposed and designed, there were far fewer nation-states than there are today; Africa and much of Asia were represented by their colonial masters in Europe (and/or occupied by the Japanese). And the "ChiComs," as you put it, weren't among them either. Recognition, including a permanent seat on the Security Council, went to the ROC, the government that is now in Taiwan. Transferring that recognition to the PRC is much more recent.
Re:Two bad choices (Score:5, Informative)
It wasn't founded to support tyranny, but to setup a system for cooperation and world stability. Whether a country was a dictatorship or not was considered "Internal Affairs" and by mutual agreement ignored temporarily to solve the then-bigger issue of regional wars.
Is your criticism really the case anymore? According to Freedom House [freedomhouse.org], in 2007 there were 123 electoral democracies (up from 40 in 1972). According to World Forum on Democracy, electoral democracies now represent 120 of the 192 existing countries and constitute 58.2 percent of the world's population. That's not including the new democracies from Iraq, the Arab Spring, independence of Kosovo, and South Sudan, etc. That's a huge amount of progress.
Re:Two bad choices (Score:5, Insightful)
Aaaaand you neglect to point out that it was made that way for a reason. It's purpose wasn't to be the Justice League, populated only with the good and righteous Free Western World. If we wanted that, we would have made NATO and not the UN.
The purpose of the UN was to get everyone together in the same room and talk. Sometimes that talk has been ugly, but by keeping everyone talking we can keep reminding ourselves that they are human, too, and maybe that kept us from destroying the planet in WWIII. And if something happens that's actually able to unite the UN in response? Well then there's a strong worldwide mandate to take action. It doesn't happen every time it should, but when it happens it works well.
So yes, it's extremely important and I'm extremely happy that the UN included all those unfree hellholes, the Soviet Block, "ChiComs", and even Iran and Libya. It wouldn't have worked any other way, and it's possible neither you nor I would have "worked" either.
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i am baffled by why this is modded down. Its pretty much dead on.
...and the other surviving member of the John Birch Society pipes up.
Re:Two bad choices (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah. This.
I'm of two minds, too.
On the one hand, we've all seen the situation as it is currently with the US on past Slashdot stories (shutting down websites, taking domains, etc.)
So you start to think, maybe the US shouldn't have control.
The problem is, the UN could be worse.
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The problem is, the UN could be worse.
This is what I fear... right now, though dictators can oppress Internet access for their "citizens", people in other nations can speak out against that dictatorship without fear of attack. If we made an "International Body" to oversee the Internet, ran by such dictators, other people can't speak up for the oppressed- it would be censored. The reason networks like Tor can route information is because it is free in some countries, and not in others. This idea, giving control of the Internet to the UN, will
Re:Two bad choices (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other side, you have an agency who is partially controlled by Russia and China, who don't respect free speech, and actively favor censoring the internet. At least in the US, politicians will all say they oppose censorship if you ask them. In China, most of them favor it, and actively use it as an opportunity to destroy their political enemies. Do you want someone with that kind of attitude to have any say in what happens on the internet?
The proper function of the UN is not to tell us what to do, it's not to be a governing body of the world. It's designed to be a place where the powerful (and to a lesser degree, the less powerful) countries of the world can get together and discuss things, and if possible, avoid going to war. Furthermore it is mechanism to take action once all parties are agreed. These reasons are why any member of the security council can veto action.
It was designed for that purpose, and it does it well. If you want to make the UN an international leading body, a true world government, then you'll need to change its structure.
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It was designed for that purpose, and it does it well. If you want to make the UN an international leading body, a true world government, then you'll need to change its structure.
Precisely. The UN, as much good as it does through its mere existence, would be a disaster as the official controlling body of the Internet. It is set up as a talking shop, and designed to allow for compromise along the lowest common denominator. Unfortunately, in the area of free speech, that means almost nothing.
Screw SOPA and ACTA - UN control of the Internet might very well be what kicks off the Darknet explosion.
Re:Two bad choices (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a lot of things I hate about the US, but free speech is NOT one of them. The first amendment is one of the most amazing pieces of legislation ever and people like me in India can only drool in envy. But I'm not complaining. Even if I don't personally live in a country where free speech is not...you know...free, at least I can be happy that it EXISTS somewhere on this planet. At least I can be grateful that my ideals are upheld SOMEWHERE.
But give the Internet to the UN, and all that goes out of the window. I don't like the net being run by megacorps. But I like it being run by countries like dictatorial countries like China, India and the Middle East even less.
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There are a lot of things I hate about the US, but free speech is NOT one of them.
Unfortunately the biggest hater of free speech nowadays seems to be the US...
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What do you think the chances are that this "one world government" will place your rights (the individual) over the rights these people (who are also merely individuals) have assigned to themselves?
None at all. Case in point, Article 29 of the UN's "Universal Declaration of Human Rights":
Drama queens... (Score:4, Interesting)
The register seems to have it quite spot on, somebody is being a drama queen and AT&T+friends probably paid for the drama because they want to increase roaming charges.
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Why protest? (Score:2)
Re:Why protest? (Score:5, Insightful)
The average Slashdotter wants global governance of meatspace
Huh? Care to elaborate? In my experience, if you pick a random Slashdotter, he is most likely to be an economic socialist/social libertarian. I really don't get a "global government" vibe here.
Putin's elections (Score:5, Insightful)
Putin wants to make sure that there is no way for Russian dissidents to post information about the election fraud. He is angry that people can put videos of fraud online somewhere else, not in Russia and others can view that video.
Putin's party in Russia would NOT win in real elections, but the way it's done, he is getting the votes he needs, because of all the fraud.
Re:Putin's elections (Score:4, Informative)
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You know, I'm very curious about this. I've read a lot of articles, including Wikipedia's, about Russia's current voting incidents. While there is always some mention of possible vote tampering, and some outrage, in general it's more-or-less just passed over as "that's how Russia's system is."
You seem to know more about it than others, perhaps you can link to some articles, or enlighten me as to why this kind of blatant anti-democratic is allowed by the Russian people with little protest, and why it's barel
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why this kind of blatant anti-democratic is allowed by the Russian people with little protest
I don't know, 70 plus years of living in a police state where protestors were shipped off to prisons, mental health facilities or killed outright, many of those years as part of the first hand experience of roughly half the population?
Then there's the last 10 years experience with protest, investigatory journalism, corruption..
Good luck ruling it without ICANN (Score:3)
Oh, you think the U.S. is giving that up just because you say so? Or sign some treaty just because you threaten them with...what?
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You do understand mutually assured destruction right? The US could easily give the finger and default on the loans. That alone would instantly tank the world market across the board. Much of China's economy is based on selling cheap shit to other countries, primarily the US. They're not quite to the point of subsisting on their own yet.
It would be disastrous, but it means the loan holders don't have the control one might think.
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Yeah, as an agrarian society...
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Not with the population they have today, living where they do today. How quickly do you think all those people could return to their native villages and learn subsistence farming? And you think those villages could absorb all those people and share the available food until more can be grown?
Re:Good luck ruling it without ICANN (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it did. And then the Opium Wars happened.
Despite its own propaganda, the People's Republic of China is essentially a modern construct. The Chinese Empire you refer to certainly did not "always" have the same borders the PRC has today, any more than did the Russian Empire "always" have the same borders as the Soviet Union.
The Chinese people are currently bound together more by force of will than any cultural affinity; the country doesn't even share a common spoken language. If the state loses enough power to maintain that for any reason, the resulting breakup would resemble the USSR if they're lucky, Yugoslavia if they're not.
Re:Good luck ruling it without ICANN (Score:5, Informative)
People and countries that own US debt can not 'call in' their loans. The best they can do is sell them on the open market.. and if they do that the price will decline.. which means they'll have to take a loss.
And the US can't become Greece because we control our currency. If we had more debt than we could ever repay, we could simply print money to pay out debtors. They wouldn't like it, there would be inflation, and other unfavorable consequences, but we would not default and would not need a bailout. This is the option Greece doesn't have, and why they need a bailout.
Truth is, there is little the UN can threaten the US with. We have a veto on the security council, and provide 22% of the UNs budget -- which gives us a lot of power over the UNs agenda.
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Threaten them (the US) with calling in all the outstanding monitary loans it owes. You know, "sign this, or become the next Greece" sort of thing.
Or what? I'm really interested in hearing the whole story behind this logic? Really, what these countries that the US owe money to going to do? This isn't some redneck trailer in bumfuck alabama you can reposes. Sure, it may bring the US economy down but there are a lot of people who say this would be a good thing. Plus, you can be damn sure the US economy goes down the rest of the world will follow.
China goes pay up and the US goes no. And that is pretty much where it ends.
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Later: "WHY ARE YOU JUST LYING ON THE BEACH?!?" "We were a superpower 2500 years ago. Shit job. Have fun with it."
You know, in a strange way you actually have a very good point there.
Re:Good luck ruling it without ICANN (Score:4, Insightful)
Threaten them (the US) with calling in all the outstanding monitary loans it owes. You know, "sign this, or become the next Greece" sort of thing.
US Federal debt is sold in varying maturities [treasurydirect.gov], some bonds and TIPS do not mature until 2041.
Also US Federal debt remains one of the few safe places for international investors (such as banks or foreign reserves held by countries trying to stabilize their currency). Global BASEL capital requirements on banks make it particularly beneficial for banks to hold US Federal debt (considered "risk free").
US Federal debt is not purchased because people like the US. It is purchased because it is an economic necessity in an unstable world.
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One world order (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One world order (Score:5, Interesting)
You cannot stop criminal use of the internet (Score:5, Interesting)
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Drug and gun laws make things illegal that weren't illegal before, so your argument fails.
Drug laws increase violent crime. Gun laws, in the short term, increase gun violence, and long-term slowly replace it with other forms of violence.
The point of non-neutrality internet regulations is, in fact, to restrict honest use of it. The power to suppress political speech is overwhelmingly more important to any government than the power to briefly annoy copyright violators or whateverthefuck.
the Internet is doomed! (Score:2)
I will be canceling as soon as the keys to the net is turned over to the tyrants, bye bye slashdot
The wrong goal (Score:5, Insightful)
Holy crap ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Holy crap! If China and Russia are in favor of this, it simply can't be allowed to happen.
I can only imagine how badly the internet would be broken by every piss-pot government bureaucrat around the world decides the internet should (or shouldn't) be allowed to work in a given way.
Criticize the government? Banned. Point out that a politician is a philandering, lying bastard? Banned.
There's already actions in the UN to make it a crime to say mean things about religion ... this will only make it worse, and then some. It's my legal right to say that your imaginary friend can mind his own damned business and that I don't wish to be bound by your scripture.
Go with a central control over the internet, and you're in a race to the bottom to appease the most backwards of governments, and pretty much do whatever the copyright lobby wants out of it.
Keep your hands off my fucking internet.
Re:Holy crap ... (Score:4, Insightful)
> Keep your hands off my fucking internet.
It's not our internet anymore. It hasn't been for quite a while now.
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Who are those who think it needs fixing? (Score:5, Interesting)
The answer to the question "Who believes UN governance will result in improvement?" will give a lot of insight into the motives behind transferring control to a UN agency. My immediate suspicions include: the copyright cartels, repressive governments, and telecoms/tier 1's seeking to create international monopolies.
Sure there are technical improvements that arguably can be made at various layers, but does anyone think that the UN can or will do any better at managing them than the current system?
The UN can go pound sand (Score:4, Insightful)
The UN fancies itself as a nascent world government. I don't know about the rest of the world, but the US isn't going to go along with putting the Internet in the hands of the same people that made Qaddafi's Libya chair of the Human Rights Commission.
No friggin way (Score:4, Insightful)
The UN is totally dysfunctional in way that makes Washington DC look like a Bastian of efficiency, honesty, and virtue. The problem with the UN is there is also the matter that the UN is made up of members that have little to no respect for basic human freedoms, and that includes places like Western Europe where its say illegal to question certain historic view points. That same organization than has the gal to berate us here in the USA on human rights for say executing adult criminals (18 years old), while they would classify all kinds of behavior as criminal which we would never criminalize in the first place.
No I am not a fan of government but when it comes to Internet governance I would much much rather have the USA (who is entitled to by the way as we build the thing) with its still relatively strong Constitutional protections running the Net, than some international body.
Personally if the rest of the world thinks they should govern the Net I say let them build their own, but as soon as packet touches one of our Edge routers, OUR RULES APPLY.
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The problem with the UN is there is also the matter that the UN is made up of members that have little to no respect for basic human freedoms, and that includes places like Western Europe where its say illegal to question certain historic view points.
Care to elaborate? Maybe you're referring to Germany's laws against nazi symbols? You have to remember that nazists did cause some horrible sufferings, not just to the Germans but to many other countries. Even so, this is a law specific to Germany and I haven't heard any Germans trying to push them to other countries.
That same organization than has the gal to berate us here in the USA on human rights for say executing adult criminals (18 years old), while they would classify all kinds of behavior as criminal which we would never criminalize in the first place.
You are speaking out of your ass here. If you weren't, you would have some examples.
The truth is that the UN, while by design not the most effective organization on earth, is doing a lot of goo
FUD? (Score:2)
So the question becomes not if anyone is trying to take over the internet, but who stands to gain by spreading the rumour that such a takeover is on the cards. ITU reps, speaking off the record, are starting to fear some sort of conspiracy themselves: they've adamantly stated that they have neither the desire, nor the budget, nor the mandate, to interfere with governance of the internet, and yet the scare stories just refuse to die.
RTFS, guys (Score:5, Informative)
Those of you who are panicked and/or outraged might want to read the Register article, which strongly suggests that none of this is actually happening. In particular, these paragraphs:
Just like EasyPass (Score:2)
I don't have one, but IIRC, when the systems were initially put in place, everyone swore up and down that they would only use them for collecting money and would never, EVER permit the data to be used to spy on people or to be used to track their location, etc..., etc..
Fast forward to today.
- What's one of the first thing to be subpoenaed in divorce proceedings? That's right: EasyPass records.
- What can the FBI pull up with a NSL? (heck -- I don't even know if they need one these days. Last I heard they wer
The Internet deserves the highest level of freedom (Score:2, Insightful)
The UN does NOT represent YOU (Score:4, Insightful)
One thing people often forget is that individual citizens are NOT constituents of the UN. The UN does not represent you, your rights, or your interests.
The UN represents GOVERNMENTS, whose interests are often at odds with, or diametrically opposed to, the interests of the people they govern. Indeed, the UN only represents people's intrests when they happen to coincide with the interests of a sufficient number of sufficiently powerful governments, which is quite rare (WHO and the Human Rights folks notwithstanding). Moving authority from a democratically elected government (however dysfunctional, however provincial) to an unelected body that represents government interests over human interests is not a change for the better.
quota filled (Score:2)
This shows what people ACTUALLY think of the UN. (Score:3)
How often do some people say "oh you should let the UN take care of that" or "did you ask the UN?" or "what was the consensus of the international community"...
But offer that same august body control over the internet and everyone won't trust anywhere near it.
Exactly. And that's why it's hard to interact with the UN in all those other circumstances. It's a mess, corrupt, and highly incompetent. Count on it and it will drop you baby on the head every time... repeatedly... possibly on purpose.
No thanks. (Score:2)
There is currently no governing body that is sufficiently dedicated to freedom of expression to be even remotely worthy of governing and/or regulating the Internet. The US government comes closer than most, leading to a relatively non-intolerable situation as compared to most other situations. Sealand might do better, but that's not really a practical solution, and I can't particularly think of anyone else. Certainly not the UN, which not only lacks any procedure to exclude known foxes from duties that incl
Written by the FCC comm. against Net Neutrality. (Score:2)
Don't worry (Score:2)
Who controls the Internet today? (Score:2)
This is all a load of crock. It's not as if US is controlling the Internet today. If they were, then there would be no great firewall of China, no filtering of tweets in India and probably no net neutrality. Also, what is "US" that controls the Internet according to this - the government or the military or the people or what? Because I did not see any changes in the Internet when the US government changed. The packets didn't start flowing in different ways just because there was a new guy in the Oval Office
Reject the UN. (Score:3)
There is some hope of changing what the (corrupt) US government does, but none of changing what the coalition of evil known as the United Nations does.
That's the flaw in attempts at "world government", which in reality means loss of sovereignty and that is all.
Darknets? (Score:3)
Darknets 2.0 plz hurry.
In the absence of peering agreements between the major service providers, how are the darknets going to communicate? Using dark energy or what? Are the "internet dark users" going to take over and run the fiber/satellite infrastructure?
Re: (Score:2)
the way we did it before service providers took over the tedious task of assigning IPs and charging obscene amounts of money for the privilege: point to point, over telephone lines.
Just because technology's "obsoleted" because something "newer, faster, *better*" comes along, does not mean it should be forgotten. One of these days you might find yourself with no power and no matches. How will you keep your family warm? Rail at the power company? Or get off your duff and learn a technology that's been known f
Re: (Score:3)
Learn how to use a computer. Learn how to build your own network.
Sorry, I can't afford that many pigeons to implement RFC1149 [ietf.org]. And using smoke means more greenhouse gases.
Because when TPTB take the Internet and emasculate it, turning it into Encarta 2.0, you'll wonder why you spent stupid money on that thing that just became a very expensive doorstop.
the way we did it before service providers took over the tedious task of assigning IPs and charging obscene amounts of money for the privilege: point to point, over telephone lines.
Mate, I'm old enough to know how to setup and use a BBS (just haven't had enough time to join /. earlier).
Actually old enough to remember that they used to charge obscene amount of money for the privilege of using telephone lines - otherwise why you reckon the first crackers needed to invent and master the phreaking art?
You reckon they would be so magnanimous to refrain in doing it again after they emas
Re: (Score:2)
And, I wouldn't be surprised if the UN tried to implement all the awful things the US has tried over the years on top of that. Don't forget, many different countries cooperated on ACTA.
Re: (Score:2)
A new age!