EU Passes Resolution Against ITU Asserting Control Over Internet 133
An anonymous reader writes "Today, the European Parliament passed a resolution that condemns the upcoming attempt from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to assert control over the Internet, and instructed its 27 Member States to act accordingly. This follows an attempt from the ITU to assert itself as the governing body and control the Internet. From the article: 'The resolution, which was passed with a large majority, included Members of European Parliament (MEPs) from all major party groups, and the Pirate Party’s Amelia Andersdotter had been playing a central role in its drafting, together with MEPs Marietje Schaake and Judith Sargentini from the Netherlands, Sabine Verheyen and Petra Kammerevert from Germany, Ivailo Kalfin from Bulgaria, and Catherine Trautmann from France.'"
Proud to be European (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite all the failing and shortcomings, mother Europe still delivers.
Re:Proud to be European (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neelie_Kroes [wikipedia.org]
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Kroes is a snake. But surprisingly, in spite of her history, she's something of a "people's snake". Or more accurately, competitiveness' snake.
Re:Yeah right (Score:4, Informative)
To be frank, after having travelled with railways in many places. I must say that the Dutch railways are probably the best working ones on the entire continent (except for when it is snowing).
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You haven't been to the Netherlands recently. NS should stand for "No Show"!
In my experience, while traveling between FR, DE, BE, LX, CH, AT and the NL, once a train (including a high speed train) crosses the Dutch border it's instantly delayed. Should I count the part where they are changing the trains to between NL and BE to "high-speed" trains, even if they are traveling at normal speed, is just an excuse for making the prices 3-4 times higher and with mandatory reservations (unless you buy the tickets f
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Too bad they're in the process of completely fucking up the ticket system. I used to be a fan of public transportation, but they're making it impossible for me now.
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'a VVD whore who sells voters to big business everytime she gets the chance'
[citation needed]
Looks like someone didn't vote for one of the current government coalition parties and is now grumpy!
Re:Yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
it was this whore
Starting with a stupid sexist accusation like that makes me and many other people ignore the rest of your comment. Perhaps you have a valid point about her behaviour in office, but if you're unable to make it without a completely unjustified sexual slur, then you don't deserve to be heard.
Grow the fuck up.
Re:Yeah right (Score:4, Informative)
The Dutch railroads are among the best in the world, with huge double-decker passenger trains between major cities with the frequency that some large cities don't even get on their metro lines. The cost of a ticket on Dutch trains is significantly lower than on the French or UK trains, and they are easier to get (from the machines), without the need of a stupid reservation. Even if a train is delayed, this delay is mostly measured in mere minutes. Only real accidents or failures will result on longer delays. And snow. Snow f***s everything up, because the Dutch don't invest enough to avoid that. But this is a sensible choice, not a failure. It just happens that it snowed in the last 2 years.
I never understand why the Dutch complain so much about their train system. I guess this is just because they never take the trains abroad.
The VVD may be wrong on many things, but they haven't messed up the trains.
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I like her about a million times better as Eurocommissioner than as a minister. She's seriously doing some really good stuff now, and is the only Eurocommissioner that I regularly hear something positive from.
Re:Proud to be European (Score:5, Interesting)
To be honest, while I don't like the ITU either I think we shouldn't give our support to the US for free. We should try to exploit our leverage in this situation and tell the Americans that if they want us to support them keeping their 'net they have to govern it more responsibly. Particularly the area of gTLDs is one where there's lots of room for improvement, and Europe shouldn't give up its bargaining positions for free.
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If you want to look a the future of an internationalized internet, just look to the UN where recently we had the human rights commission (or some such body) being controlled by a majority of dictatorships famous for suppressing human rights. The world was stood on it's head.
Face it, the US has done a great job of "managing the internet". The biggest non-US player is CHINA. Do we really want the world's largest non-democracy to be given control of the world's telecommunications infrastructure? The recent
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Just because I point a gun at your head doesn't mean I want to pull the trigger. I don't want to take control away from America, but I don't want them to get all comfortable and abuse that control to further their economic interests. I want to keep America on their heels, in constant fear that if they play too unfair the world will get fed up and take their power away. Because the only thing politicians respond to is the fear of losing power.
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The entire reason they passed this was to retain complete control of their local nets. In other words, Business as usual. If France decides to block objectional content from the Beeb in the U.K. they can continue to do so. If the Irish want to beat up the French, then they can do so on their local network and what ever else they want.
What thei ITU was proposing was a total takeover of the internet and I do agree that the idiots need to be shot, then drawn and quartered then those remains exposed to sunlight
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The same day this was going on they appointed Tonio Borg as health commissioner.
Epic FAIL.
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What!?
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And probably the fact that after poll suggests a majority of Britons are at least moderate Eurosceptic.
I wish (Score:2)
we had Andersdotters here in India. Young politicians here are 40+, most are 60+ who can't understand tech if their lives depended on it. hence the facebook-post-arrests seen recently.
Re:I wish (Score:5, Funny)
we had Andersdotters here in India. Young politicians here are 40+, most are 60+ who can't understand tech if their lives depended on it. hence the facebook-post-arrests seen recently.
I don't see anything wrong with arresting someone for using facebook. A few more cases pour encourager les autres and with any luck we could get the whole fucking thing shut down.
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Hm, this reminds me a little bit about non-cooperation, non-violence and peaceful resistance. These people seem too old to understand tech, and too young to understand how Ghandi obtained Indian independence.
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I wish we had a few hundred more Ameila Andersdotters in the the European Parliament and in legislatures and governments across the world. While most politicians I have met want to do the right thing, she's one of the very few (if only one) who seems to know enough, be sharp enough and care enough to do it.
On the other hand, she does make the rest of us look bad...
Ouch... That has to sting. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that having the EU tell you "STFU and leave it to the yanks" is one of the harsher put-downs that a multinational treaty organization can suffer...
Re:Ouch... That has to sting. (Score:5, Informative)
> I don't think that anything in their resolution suggests that "the yanks" have or should have any special role in internet regulation.
Well, that's the current situation, so that's implicitly the result..
Re:Ouch... That has to sting. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ouch... That has to sting. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the Europeans recognize that a move to the ITU regulating the Net would result in a situation where all sorts of shennanigans could happen. Yes, the ITU has done a fine job up to now, but that is because they set technical specs and didn't have much power. If they got power then companies and countries would almost certainly corrupt this body to the detriment of ordinary citizens (who have no way of opposing or correcting the regulations that are produced - at least in the US you can take organizations to court, and the EFF often does).
The EU has seen the dangers and has done well to prevent possible problems in the future - such as the ITU being subverted. Just think of the Microsoft orchestrated voted stuffing of ISO in the Open XML fiasco a few years back; we don't want similar things to break the freedom of the Internet. For example, think of the move to ban criticism of religion, which is exactly opposed to free speech principles of the important freedom to criticize and even offend.
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ETSI have done a fine job until now. The IETF have done a fine job until now. When was the last time ITU did anything good? Apart from being a mouthpiece for Microsoft or trying to do a power-grab over the Internet?
Phillip.
Re:Ouch... That has to sting. (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the main problem is not the organisation itself, but how much political are the problems there deal with. "Control over Internet" is something that is now highly political. ITU is an organisation that historically faced some political problems and have show how complex there can be. Not certain that others international organisations will better face the same complexity. The political questions are complex, regardless the organisation where there take place. See for example the ISO, that have also faced some highly political problems, for questions that was simple in comparison..
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It doesn't help that the ITU is basically the UN for the Ma Bells of the world... They did a technologically adequate job of ensuring that the hapless customer of incumbent telco A in country B can call the hapless customer of state monopoly telco C in country D; but it's a great deal harder to get excited about bringing them back into the picture when you are starting with a superior successor to antiquated phone systems.
It'd be like putting the RIAA in charge of digital music distribution. Sure, they did
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ITU is involved in a lot more activities than the "antiquated phone systems" ! Please read some up to date information about it. It's true that there used a terribly slow process until about 20 years ago. It'a actually far more better.
Organisation like ITU or ISO do not really create standards most of the time. There are mostly a place where the political process of countries accepting a standard can take place. There is a lot of entities that creates standards. The large majority of them are composed by p
What's the catch? (Score:3)
But as with all things of this nature, I can't help but wonder where the catch is - sensible sounding legislation always comes back to bite us doesn't it?
Re:What's the catch? (Score:5, Informative)
its not really legislation as it has no binding power whatsoever. Its pretty much "Hey, we dont like this idea" shout from them.
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With the caveat that those people saying that eventually get a veto vote on any law they don't like.
So although it doesn't mean it it *mustn't* happen, the chances of any change not respecting that opinion are unlikely to make it into law in the end. It's a warning. "You can waste years of drafting law if you want, but we get the ultimate say when any of this is actually challenged and our opinion currently is..."
Re:What's the catch? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's both a giant stab at the ITU and the US. They don't want a single entity in control, and they want to make sure all stakeholders are considered collaboratively (which is what the ITU is anyway, but at a different level). In other words, we don't like the current setup, but we thing the ITU being in charge could be worse.
It plants itself firmly in the camp of open internet, something the US has consistently stood against in one way or another (blocking foreign sports betting, arresting Kim Dotcom, Going after wikileaks payments etc.).
Now what will plan B look like...
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That is what this is going to have to come to.
The US demonstrably cannot be trusted, people have bought into the propaganda that the ITU doing it must be bad, so time to move on.
Re:What's the catch? (Score:5, Interesting)
Anonymous Douche fails to understand GP's points. An open internet would prohibit and prevent the abominations of "justice" that have been perpetrated on Kim Dotcom and on Wikileaks. The United States has gone out of it's way repeatedly to prevent an open internet. ACTA and NPP are two fine examples of that. In effect, both are government blessings on corporate attempts to strangle the internet.
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An open internet would prohibit and prevent the abominations of "justice" that have been perpetrated on Kim Dotcom and on Wikileaks
I don't think so. "Open" does not imply anarchic, nor does it reach beyond the virtual borders of the Internet. Visa and Mastercard would still have blocked payments to WikiLeaks, Amazon would still have kicked WL of their S3 network and New Zealand's police would still have raided Dotcom's home.
None of those events have anything to do with the openness of the Internet. If anything, the likelihood of those events is larger with an open Internet because with a regulated Internet the MAFIAA c.s. would have ha
Re:What's the catch? (Score:5, Interesting)
These aren't things that would change if the US didn't hold the keys to the internet.
The control of the internet lands on one organization: IANA. Right now, IANA delegates its powers to ICANN. IANA is merely responsible for deciding who gets what IP addresses and domain names. The ITU wants to usurp that power for themselves, for who knows what ends, or why they think the status quo is wrong.
In any case, even if say the ITU, the EU, China, or even nobody at all had the keys to IANA, the US would still be able to go after Dotcom and Wikileaks due to pre-existing treaties and strong arming tactics that don't require the internet to even exist in the first place.
Regardless though, there is no such thing as an "open internet" in your definition of the term. SOMEBODY has to decide who gets what names and numbers. There are theoretical ways of decentralizing DNS, (which in my opinion will be riddled with problems, although it will at least perform the intended function) but you CAN NOT decentralize IP address assignments without introducing a whole mess of other problems. It would be akin to not having a regulatory authority on who gets licenses to any given RF spectrum.
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you CAN NOT decentralize IP address assignments without introducing a whole mess of other problems
This is something that should probably be addressed in further detail. Geographical routing, I suppose? You already have to trust your gateway so nothing changes there.
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Don't forget that ICANN gets its authority from a contract with the US Department of Commerce and the DoC can still exert veto power or sidestep IANA should it choose to do so and has done so in the past. Then there's also the root zones which the DoC still has complete control over
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IANA is the hand of the department of commerce, they answer directly to them.
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It used to be, but not anymore.
IANA handles administration and implementation of internet protocols, numbers, and symbols as specified by the various policy and engineering groups such as W3C, IETF, and ICANN.
ICANN handles development, policy and coordination. In addition to this it also operates IANA from an arms length (this keeping policy and administration separate).
ICANN (which is a non-profit corporation) was created by the US DoC specifically to take control of IANA (which is a division, not a corpor
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This is the problem with the pirate party writing half of it. They believe in an anarchic internet, when none such a thing can exist easily.
What the ITU probably wants, like with phone service and radio communications, is to make sure that, for example, all DNS servers on 'the Internet' can talk to each other in some agreed upon fashion (if you want your countries DNS to talk to the others, if not that's on you, but if I type a russian URL into a canadian DNS it should have the same results as one in Russi
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The google incident also happened with youtube, and it didn't have anything to do with DNS or any kind of name services.
Without going into details of how dynamic routing protocols work, what I can tell you is that in order for one router to determine which direction a packet should go, some body or some thing has to tell it where it should go. In the case of ISP routers, this routing protocol is BGP, or Border Gateway Protocol. What happened here is that a major Pakistani provider wanted to censor youtube i
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No, boo fucking hoo for crybabies like yourself, who seem to believe that writing a few words or a few notes should give you a guaranteed income for the rest of your miserable life.
If you're an entertainer, then entertain people. Stop signing stupid fucking contracts that guarantee that only douches can ever profit from your work. I don't even like the fat fuck, but he was breaking no law that made any sense.
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The foreign sports betting thing I think was actually the most agregious of the lot. They other two were accusations of criminal activity, how those were dealt with were part law enforcement issues and part internet bully. Blocking a spanish sports betting website, that was legally operating in Spain, for spanish customers (and not US customers) is a serious governance problem.
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the catch is the copyright trolls still run the internet
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It actually makes a lot of sense, even when you're reading the legalese, the influence of having the Pirate Party on board (and actually drafting a lot of it) shows.
I do hope everyone applauding this initiative make sure to vote for their local Pirate Party [wikipedia.org] (represented in over 40 countries). Sweden did in 2009 and our two representatives have been doing great work in parliament ever since.
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This would be the Pirate Parties that haven't any manifesto beyond "movies should be free"?
Strange claim, since it's very far from the truth :) I suggest going through the manifestos and policies of both the German Piratenpartei as well as the Swedish Pirate Party - both having been elected by voters into local and international parliaments.
German (in English): http://www.piratenpartei.de/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/parteiprogramm-englisch.pdf [piratenpartei.de]
Swedish: http://annatroberg.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Piratpartiets_principprogram.pdf [annatroberg.com]
(to be updated with results from the autumn conference just held -
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
The anti-innovation, anti-competition strategy of the telcos must be stopped. The only thing as dysfunctional was the old USSR planned-economy model.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing as dysfunctional was the old USSR planned-economy model.
How about the "unplanned" international banking crisis?
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Goldman Sachs re-invested the "un" in "unplanned" into credit default swaps on hybrid futures on the USSR planned-economy model [memegenerator.net].... aaaand it's GONE!
Laughable (Score:1, Informative)
Today, the European Parliament passed a resolution that condemns the upcoming attempt from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to assert control over the Internet, and instructed its 27 Member States to act accordingly
The EU Parliament can instruct whatever it likes but it has no power over the member states. It might as well instruct all other world governments to agree as well, instruct the ITU to change track and instruct the weather to improve.
The most an instruction from the EU parliament to nationals governments can achieve is to raise enough outrage from nationalists that they take the opposite stand. In practice though nobody's likely to do more than roll their eyes at them.
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Despite the ludicrous summary, the actual wording of that part was was:
[The European Parliament] calls on the Member States to prevent any changes to the International Telecommunication Regulations which would be harmful to the openness of the internet, net neutrality, the end-to-end principle, universal service obligations, and the participatory governance entrusted to multiple actors such as governments, supranational institutions, non-governmental organisations, large and small businesses, the technological community and internet users and consumers at large
Obviously that's not an instruction.
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It is. EP has no power over governments and their stance. They're sovereign. It can only take an "advisory" vote on such issues, which is non-binding.
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No, the vote signals the stance of the EP, this is important as the council is more aware of the current mood in the parliament and they need to take this into account when negotiating new rules in the council and the commission since the rules must go through the EP in a final vote anyhow. It is not just related to the specific question on hand.
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While it is true that vote will eventually have to go through EP, EP has no power to set the issue itself (which is what it is trying to do here). It can only vote on the issue presented before it.
This issue was not presented before it, therefore vote is purely advisory and has no binding effect on member states.
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Hub? Each of the EU members has passed enabling legislation giving laws by MEPs the force of domestic law.
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MEPs cannot initiate law. The commission is the only body that can propose new directives, but they will do so under advice from the parliament and the council.
Can the EP take over my country, please? (Score:4)
Seriously, between the shittiness that is our national government and the shittiness that is the European Commission (fairly well demonstrated by having put my countryman Barroso in "charge"), the European Parliament seems like the only sane institution around here.
Re:Can the EP take over my country, please? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's because it's elected by proportional representation.
That's what happens when you have politicians who actually have to represent the people who vote them in, and this is why all governments should move to a porportional system if they genuinely want to class themselves as democratic societies and legitimate representatives of the people.
People think electoral reform in most countries is just a fringe side issue, but it's the single most important issue in improving accountability and hence decreasing corruption and increasing quality of representation IMO. Things still wont be perfect with true proportional representation, but as the EP shows, they're a damn sight better than many of the individual national european governments by themselves and than the likes of the EC.
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It's because it's elected by proportional representation.
It also works through compromise and agreement (rather than divisiveness and opposition), is much harder to lobby (due to there being MEPs from all different areas) and much harder to pressure (mainly because most people don't know/care what goes on).
There's also the fact that MEP elections tend to have much lower turnouts, so a much higher percentage of voters know what's going on, and don't just vote for the party they like the sound of.
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Yes, but my country has proportional representation and yet has been government by shitty, corrupt parties since the 70s, when we transitioned from a fascist to a democratic state.
I think it has much to do with the electorate and culture of the institutions.
This is good thing, right? (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite the US still being conservative compared to the progessive world, it is definetly far more liberal than nations such as Saudi Arabia where everyone citizen has to belong to the state sanctioned religion and women barely get by with showing their faces in public. Sure the current situation isn't ideal, but the ITU's solution is far worse.
Re:This is good thing, right? (Score:5, Interesting)
In my opinion, the US isn't conservative, more like individualistic. Yes, there are religious loudmouths, but they aren't common, you just hear about them more because they are loud where the others are not. Most people, republican or democrat, have religious views on the back of their mind but don't proselytize them. Except, of course, politicians like Jesse Jackson Jr. or Rick Santorum.
Conservatives say ban sex from the internet. Progressives say ban anything that somebody might consider offensive, even going so far as to put harmless internet trolls in jail. Individualists say that if you don't like what you see, change the channel.
The US, by and large, is the later of the three. We don't ban pornography, and we don't have hate speech laws. Freedom of speech is more absolute here than anywhere else, pretty much the only limit is speech that causes physical harm.
Though the left likes to claim that deregulation and austerity is conservative, and so does the media at large, it isn't. It is very much libertarian.
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Re:This is good thing, right? (Score:4, Informative)
So-called libertarians who say they are "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" are, in plain English, conservative.
By deifying freedom of the individual to do as they wish above everything else, you are simply ensuring that those in power continue to do what they want while living like parasites on the body of society as a whole.
"Deregulation and austerity" are indeed libertarian, which is to say conservative, as they sit the agenda of those in power perfectly. It is sad that all you rugged American individualists are so blind to this obvious truth.
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By deifying freedom of the individual to do as they wish above everything else, you are simply ensuring that those in power continue to do what they want while living like parasites on the body of society as a whole.
Whereas you apparently think that you can somehow limit the ability of those in power to do what they want while living like parasites on the body of society as a whole by giving them more power. That seems counter-intuitive to me.
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So-called libertarians who say they are "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" are, in plain English, conservative.
That depends, do they mean conservative or neoconservative? A libertarian is basically a more anarchist person than a liberal or a conservative, as they want less government control over both business and your bedroom habits. A conservative's fiscal view is that business can look after itself, but their social view is that morality should be regulated. If they actually believe that both business and morality should be regulated, then they're more a fascist than a conservative.
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What's in a label? The left in England call themselves conservatives. That those in the US on the right identify as conservative also hold strong individualistic views, doesn't necessarily make them conservative.
In my mind, western conservatives would be like Italy, where there are blaspheme laws:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/02/07/10/0450203/italian-police-censor-blasphemous-websites [slashdot.org]
Compared to them, I think the US would fit the classic definition of being progressive.
Notice though that I disclaimed my pos
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Related to that, one idea is, when people wonder, why is there poverty? or why is there this or that problem? the left blames the system, whereas the right blames the individual. So the left wants to fix the system, make it more fair, whereas the right wants to fix the individual, make him or her more capable.
Add the older or newer strategies, like pre-modern and modern, or 'conservative' or 'progressive', and you can have a oldy style right winger who says religion is the moral guide to stamping out person
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Yes, there are religious loudmouths, but they aren't common, you just hear about them more because they are loud where the others are not. Most people, republican or democrat, have religious views on the back of their mind but don't proselytize them.
When looking from the far north of europe, where we generally tend to be atheists, all your politicians seem like fanatic believers. The ones you think of as fanatics seem to be ready for mental institution.
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Re:This is good thing, right? (Score:4)
The US, by and large, is the later of the three. We don't ban pornography
You still have the Miller test. And there are still a bunch of states banning sale of sex toys. Some also had sodomy laws on the books until a few years ago (even if they were ineffective in practice after SCOTUS decision back in 80s).
Then there's this whole business with creationism and Ten Commandments and prayers in schools. And the whole nation-wide controversy about gay marriage and abortion.
So, yes, you definitely are conservative, very much so.
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The parent say exactly the opposite.
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...but the ITU's solution is far worse.
I'm still left wondering what the problem is.
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But anyhow, to your point; as I have heard it, there is concern that traffic is now paid for in a socialist fashion - everyone pays a part - somewhat evened out. If the ITU gets control that will change. What will happen if Africa, all of sudden has to pay what it actually costs to access data from e
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Why? Did the hardware technology become free somewhere I did not read about?
Your question was rhetorical because you think corporations should just do it for free. It is really not such a rhetorical question, as long as someone is spending their money on it. I for one, do not think I should have to pay to give Africa access to US content. Especially as long as Africa does not think they should pay to access to
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Your question was rhetorical because you think corporations should just do it for free.
No, I think governments should do it for free using universities and other non-partisan orgs as proxies, as they do now. Stop assuming, etc...
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"Despite the US still being conservative compared to the progessive world, it is definetly far more liberal than nations such as Saudi Arabia"
You're way the hell off base. Liberal vs conservative is completely irrelevant to proper stewardship of the internet. The defining question is how highly you regard freedom of speech, and the US is decidedly number one in the world, at least among large nations.
European countries would censor the internet... Posting a negative review about a merchant EVEN IF COMPLE
Women in control? (Score:1)
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Found an interesting document from my parliament (warning - PDF): http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN01250.pdf [parliament.uk]. From this it seems that 35% of the EU Parliament are women. (The corresponding percentage for the UK is 22%. No idea what it is for the US after the recent elections, but according to the document in 2010 it was 17%).
Still could be better, of course. Only tw
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Why would it matter at all what gender a member of parliament is?
The gender of an *individual* member of parliament shouldn't matter, but the *aggregate* number of women who are influential in some political process that is *not* specifically a "woman's issue" matters if you are keeping score on political equality of the sexes.
The point where women routinely take leadership roles on issues that aren't "just women's issues" is a significant milestone on the path to political equality. We weren't there twenty years ago, when it wouldn't raise any eyebrows to have an all m
As usual, people don't understand the internet. (Score:2)
I have a naive and maybe stoopid question : If ITU wants to grab the authority that IANA has now, how the hell are they going to enforce it ?
Root servers are not going to magically change overnight, and people in the US and Europe are certainly not going to switch to whatever the ITU decides, just because the ITU decides.
It would be nice for the ITU to remember that the Internet works because everybody agrees with it. If people start to disagree, it will only lead to a split in the internet, and I'm prett
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They could start by restricting the DNS servers people from a certain geographic area can access.
So for Europeans, you have this, this and this DNS server. Try any other ip address and it's blackholed.
Same goes for the US, South America, Asia etc... The start of new balkanized internet, with the compliment of the ITU and cooperative governments.
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They could start by restricting the DNS servers people from a certain geographic area can access.
So for Europeans, you have this, this and this DNS server. Try any other ip address and it's blackholed.
I think you completely missed what the GP was saying. Sure, the ITU can decide that DNS servers will be regional. So they pass their resolution and go to, for example, Telekom in Germany, and say, "You will blackhole all traffic on port 53 sent to hosts outside of Germany." At which point, Telekom will reply, "Who the hell are you to decide this? Fuck off."
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Good point. And if a country doesn't play nice (e.g. opposes a new rule the ITU decides on like "don't criticize religions"), they could route that county's DNS servers to a special "black hole" server that doesn't route at all - effectively knocking out Internet until that country complies. They might not have the clout to push around the US to start with, but they could bully smaller countries into submission and work their way up.
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I was wondering this as well. Suppose the ITU gains control tomorrow and, with their first act, confirms everyone's worst suspicions and bans all religious criticism online. I doubt the US would go along with it and - given the EU's resolution - the EU might stand with them. How, then, would the ITU enforce the "don't criticize any religions" rule on the Internet as a whole? (Granted, I wouldn't want them to get in that position whether they could enforce that rule or not.)