UN Takeover of Internet Must Be Stopped, US Warns 454
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the it's-hard-to-let-go dept.
benfrog writes "In a rare show of bipartisan agreement, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle warned this morning that a United Nations summit in December will lead to a virtual takeover of the Internet if proposals from China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are adopted. Called the World Conference on International Telecommunications, the summit would consider proposals including '[using] international mandates to charge certain Web destinations on a "per-click" basis to fund the build-out of broadband infrastructure across the globe' and allowing 'governments to monitor and restrict content or impose economic costs upon international data flows.' Concerns regarding the possible proposals were both aired at a congressional hearing this morning and drafted in a congressional resolution (PDF)."
UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing they are worried about is that the US would not control it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Funny)
Ok. But, help me out here, which one is bad, and which one is worse?
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
...proposals from China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia...
Yeah, I totally want those guys making suggestions about the internet.....
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry, which government was it that started seizing.com domains without warning?
The article itself is full of "could allow", "might allow", "tries to" language that never goes quite far enough to say that things will definitely pan out the way the US government wants you to think it will. The US is scared that it's own control will be eroded by others. Given the way they've abused that control, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to see what other people make of it.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
So you think that having all of the above-mentioned countries controlling the Internet would be better?
I don't disagree that the US has a deplorable history of behavior towards the Internet, but it could be *a lot* worse.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
So you think that having all of the above-mentioned countries controlling the Internet would be better?
The above mentioned countries were only mentioned because those are the states you're scared of.
My point is mainly that the US government is trying to say "Hey, don't let these guys control the internet - they might be as bad or worse than we've already proved ourselves to be!"
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But that's like Obama's argument for re-election, yet you'll still vote for him.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not American, so it's fairly unlikely that I'll vote in your elections.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4, Funny)
But if you get an American's CC number you can donate to him, seeing as his campaign disabled(It's turned on by default) CVN and doesn't do name verification.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not American, so it's fairly unlikely that I'll vote in your elections.
Just because you're not American doesn't mean you can't be patriotic and support the US!
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Well, yes. Obama's not been a great President, but he's at least average. From what I've seen of him, Romney could be even worse than Bush. If there was no Libertarian or Green party I'd vote for Obama's reelection. Actually, if Obama supported pot legalization I could vote for him, but everyone in the US has a brother, sister, father, friend, son, or someone else close to them who smokes the stuff. How can you vote for a man (both major candidates) who would put your loved ones in prison? So I vote either
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Hey, don't let these guys control the internet - they've actively attempted at every juncture and publicly stated a future intention to be worse than we've already proved ourselves to be"
Fixed that for you.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4, Insightful)
My point is mainly that the US government is trying to say "Hey, don't let these guys control the internet - they might be as bad or worse than we've already proved ourselves to be!"
It does actually remind me of Hosni Mubarak's "Support me or you might get the Muslim Brotherhood". Or Ali Abdullah Saleh's "Support me or you might get Al Qaeda". Or Ben Ali's "Support me or you might get the Taliban". In every case it was just a scarecrow used by an abusive regime to cling to power...
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4, Informative)
It wasn't a scare tactic. Have you SEEN the elections in Egypt? In case you weren't following, The Muslim Brotherhood WON (Under the moniker of the "Freedom and Justice Party"). Same thing is happening in Libya. Exactly as predicted.
Mubarak and Ghaddaffi may have both been totalitarian assholes, but at least they were CONTROLLABLE assholes that did what was necessary to keep Islamic extremists under control in their countries. Mubarak went out of his way to protect the minority Copts in his country. Not because he loved them, but because he feared international backlash if he didn't.
The Muslim Brotherhood has no such compunctions. They are driven by ideology, not statecraft. Expect the slaughter of the Copts, and the destruction of Egyptian historical monuments (as "offenses to Allah", like Bhuddhist monuments in Afghanistan, Jewish temple relics in Palestine, and ancient Christian churches in Turkey) to follow. This is what happens EVERY TIME that truly committed Muslims gain control of a country politically. it's happened before, it will happen again.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4, Insightful)
The real question is thus not weither they will fight until one is victorious, but how and when we will organise against their control.
Actions like the "Pirate Party" tend to fight this trend in a legal way, but what governements and corporations should understand is that using steganography, create VPN's and mesh networks (ever setup a pirate box?) is only a consequence of their inability to find suitable legislation - and most likely a cause of their demisal.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, this is merely scaremongering at it's greatest.
America can quote the names of countries it believes instills fear in it's populace all it wants, but those countries can't do jack shit when the rest of the world would oppose it.
The fact is, if a proposal couldn't get the EU and US on board, then it wouldn't stand a chance in hell of passing anyway, so the only reason this fear mongering would ever hold true is if America sided with Iran, China, Russia, North Korea or whatever other country names it's trying to cause fear with.
But then, maybe that's the problem? maybe the US is afraid it would side with them given the fact it's to date the only country that has enforced it's national principles on the global internet with ICE domain seizures of international domains, owned by international businesses.
This article is a perfect example of the term FUD, it is 100% FUD, an attempt to retain control of the internet by the US so it can enforce it's ridiculous IP policies on the rest of the internet against the will of the rest of the world.
UN control of the internet would never be dictated by a minority in the way some special interest UN committees and groupings are like the WTO, which is a puppet of US trade policy, historically setup because WIPO was previously too democratic for the US and didn't let the US push it's self-interest globally due to numerous democratic defeats by countries like Africa disagreeing with the lengths of America's patent and copyright terms for example.
Really, the solution is simple - tenatively support transfer of control to the UN, and see what's proposed, if the proposal is that any one country can do something nasty, then refuse to participate in the process and hence prevent it going ahead. If however a proposal is put forward that protects neutrality of the internet, prevents arbitrary censorship by any one nation, etc. then we're in a far far better situation than we are now. The US doesn't want that though, because it wants to enforce it's own arbitrary censorship on the globe, and THAT is why it's spreading this FUD, rather than offering to engage in the process of making the internet safer from government meddling and censorship by forcing it into an organisation that requires consensus.
Really, between ICE seizures, and the whole custom TLD thing which seems merely designed to make ICANN billions of dollars in revenue whilst completely fucking up the hierachial structure of the DNS I don't know how the US can claim either moral, or technical superiority as an excuse to continue controlling the internet. With the US becoming ever more right wing, and ever more religiously zealous it's becoming ever less trustworthy as a guardian of the internet. Things are only going to continue to get worse under US stewardship of the internet, PIPA, SOPA, ACTA et. al. have only been a preview of that, Obama said he'd have vetoed the bills had they made it to him, would Romney? would the next Bush?
So to take the parents point about "could allow", "might allow", "tries to", I'd like to point out that these statements also apply to the US though personally I'd replace these with "probably will within the next couple of decades".
Re: (Score:3)
The rest of the world won't oppose "it", as long as "it" is censorship. No politician on Earth has anything to gain from free flow of information, and plenty to gain from controlling what their citizens see, so the one thing they all can agree on is that the Internet needs to be censored. That's why more and more countries erect
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason you're arguing in favor of giving them more power is because you think knee-jerk anti-Americanism makes you cool and edgy
I'm arguing that giving any one country all the power to control an international resource like the internet is a bad idea in both the short and the long term. It doesn't matter how democratic you think that country is right now - their standards are not necessarily your standards, and other people also have different moral values too. In any country where copyright laws are different from the US, ripping.com domains off the internet for US copyright violation is indistinguishable from censorship.
some blathering about China
Nobody advocating granted all power over the internet to China, either.
Grow the hell up and stop reflexively hating on the US, or else you'll end up supporting the very sort of Orwellian control you hope to avoid.
Calm the fuck down and try reading what I wrote, rather than letting what you think I think enrage you.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't like it either, but all the domains seized were registered with a US company (as ultimately every.com is). The US had jurisdiction. If you don't want your domain seized by the US, don't register in a US domain.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
The countries picked in the (as usual) inflammatory summary are only examples of countries that have other ideas for the internet. They do not, and would not, have complete control over the internet if control was passed to the UN. However, right now, one country has control of the large majority of TLDs, and also has the power to create/remove TLDs - the US. When this means they get to act on their own laws against citizens of other countries without due process, that is dangerous. When they actually do that, and disable access to foreign websites hosted in other countries with no recourse under international law, which has happened, I struggle very hard to define that as anything other than abuse of power.
However, I clearly owe you an apology. I didn't realise pointing out things that actually happened, and then deriving potential motivations, was a sign that I'm "reflexively hating on the US". I was positive that I was allowed to have critical opinions on any government that I derive from facts and logical thinking, but that's offended your sensibilities. Let this be my last word on the subject, in case I say more and you actually physically explode with rage.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4, Insightful)
Typical arrogance. Pretend the person who disagrees with you is frothing with rage, because clearly that means that they're wrong. Sorry to disappoint, but I've got a huge smile on my face after watching (on DVR) the Red Sox get humiliated by the Tigers in the 9th.
On this issue, you should be aware that the countries listed in the summary are chosen because they are among the ones pushing hardest for this. Why? Because they have the greatest incentive. Maybe you don't give a shit about the billions of people who live in places with abusive governments. But I do, and anything that helps those governments be more abusive is a bad thing.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, a change from a 1 country control to control by committee can only make things worse. The US is controlled by business interests. The rest of the UN is a bit more varied.
Your problem is you're only focusing on the "bad" parts of the UN.. the US is in there also, as are the UK, and a lot of other democracies. The UN can't agree on mass murdering dictatorships, Why would they all of a sudden be on the same page wrt the internet?
Re: (Score:3)
the thing I liked about this was the "changing web destinations on a per click basis to fund..." - in other words, the UN is going to become a world government funded by advertising!
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4, Interesting)
You do realize that governments allowing freedom of expression are a minority at the UN, right ? Dictatorships are by far the majority, both by numbers of people and by numbers of countries. I'm sure they'll all agree that anything slightly controversial is to be kicked off the internet immediately.
Also handing someone a gun because you think them moronically incapable of using it... strikes me as a level of stupidity that borders on the imbecilic.
Re: (Score:3)
"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."..."
"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a flashlight."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Prefer the UN rather then the US
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
.
USA has only succeeded in fragmenting the internet. For all its talk about wanting to help activists across the world, and instill democracy in non-democratic countries, it has succeeded in taking away the biggest weapon that the activists in such regimes had, by choosing to abuse its monopoly on behalf of greedy MPAA/RIAA. And you allowed this to happen, by not stopping your senators from voting such corporate-paid laws into effect. So yeah, you *totally* did want this to happen apparently.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not American, by the way.
The USA government is not perfect. Far from it. The domain seizure (not the entire internet, just the big 3 TLDs) without due process is awful. The wheels of justice turn slowly, and often very slowly in America. As Winston Churchill put it:
"Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities."
this is in contrast to most other countries which will stop short. I know mine (UK) will. We have a shadowy organisation (the IWF) responsible for blocking child pronography. The list of blocked sites has not yet been leaked, but in every other country where a direct analog list has been leaked it's turned out that there's plenty more than just child pronography on that list. I doubt that our blocklist is any better. And they're always looking to expand it to other objectionable content like "hate speech". And the government are now looking to put filters everywhere.
Look at any other European (or Australia) country and it's the same. Look anywhere else and it's worse.
The USA is, frankly, the only organisation that I would trust to any reasonable degree to actually run the internet. They will do it badly, and have long periods of injustice. But they have the strongest free speech protections of anywhere in the world and will almost certainly do it better and with less injustice that anyone else.
Who do you think would do a better job than the USA and why?
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Interesting)
I must say that I think exactly like you on this topic. I'm not American - but when I read the list of countries this proposal came from, I nearly had to puke.
The US are not a judicial miracle wonderland - but they are certainly the best option we have.
And *anything* handed over to the UN is bound to finally be controlled by dictatorships in the worst case, or a complete bureaucratic dystopian organization in the best case. Better leave it with the US for now.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nobody. As in "I think Nobody should have complete control over the internet".
The internet is a global "region". I don't use the word "resource" here because I don't consider it a resource in this context. I think it's more comparable to international waters. There are globally accepted rules about international waters and the global community enforces them. Any country with a coast also has a portion of the sea which is considered "theirs" and within it their rules apply. But the rest of it belongs to no one.
I think the same thing should happen to the internet. And let's be frank, by "the internet" here we mean control of TLDs, as everything else derives from that. The US government can then block "fuckamerica.com" from within the US, but not completely take it down in the rest of the world. That's the way it should be.
Re: (Score:3)
The Vatican is a bunch of religious zealots which are rarely if ever neutral about anything. The only state I
Re: (Score:3)
Posting due to lack of a +1-hypocritical option.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, its totally not like the US puts people in indefinite detention or tortures prisoners or assassinates people without any evidence right?
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
I like how they are already starting to talk about taxing it to pay for it's regulation by them. As far as I can tell, the Internet is working fine without them, so I am not sure what click taxes are going to buy for anyone, other than funding regulations that only certain governments who dislike current liberties on the Internet would be interested in.
This goes to show my usual theory about politicians. They're mostly technically ignorant, but they can usually muster just enough insight to know that they should avoid nightmare scenarios like this. It's more of a survival instinct than anything else.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
Power is a zero-sum game. The more empowered "the people" become, the less powerful governments become. And vice versa.
Inasmuch as the Internet empowers people, every government in the world sees it as a power sink and wants to put a nice tight leash on it.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing they are worried about is that the US would not control it.
Did you bother reading even the summary? I'm usually pro-U.N. but here they're sanctioning government censorship of the Internet. This is seriously messed up and there is no way the U.S. should support it.
Re: (Score:2)
I was being facetious - every government wants to control whatever they can. While I would rather no one controls the Internet, and having Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and Iran guiding matters would be disastrous, it is probably only a matter of time when the game will be over, the Internet becomes just another tool of governments and corporations, and we'll all have to go home. I do despair....
Such as the US wanting to censor porn? (Score:3, Insightful)
How about US censorship of porn and gambling? Or do you think the.xxx domain will not be used by republicans to make a push in the future to force all porn on to that new domain and then block it everywhere?
How about the DMCA which has been used to censor material considered undesirable by both parties funders?
Censorship comes in many forms. Frankly it is no issue to me if Iranians can't see some stuff, but the DMCA hits everyone in the whole world. The US dictating its laws world wide is far worse then a
Re: (Score:3)
How about US censorship of porn and gambling? Or do you think the.xxx domain will not be used by republicans to make a push in the future to force all porn on to that new domain and then block it everywhere?
I distrust moral crusaders as much as anyone, but are you seriously using a hypothetical future event as an example? What the hell sort of logic is that?
Re:Such as the US wanting to censor porn? (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. I don't know how the GP got modded so highly. It did rail against the DMCA, the government in general, Republicans in particular, and it called the US government a slave to its "corporate masters"--all of which wins the/. popularity contest--but still, it's so... stupid.
To be specific....xxx scenario he outlined is ridiculously implausible. Porn was around in images, magazines, and film for decades or centuries in the US before the internet came around. It would take a fundamental, radical shift away from the First Amendment to "block it everywhere". It's just not going to happen. If anything the US is getting less conservative with time, not more.
* The
* The idea that Iranians can "get rid of their government if they want an uncensored net" is naive in the extreme. Revolutions are terrible--they're bloody economic disasters that might not even do anything substantial when the dust finally settles. And it's not as if any large group of people ever agrees on anything. The way the sentence is phrased makes it seem as if Iranians are actually a single entity which is, well, stupid.
it's much worse internationally (Score:5, Insightful)
If the UN gets control of the Internet, there is a real risk that you won't get to see what Muslim clerics and conservative Christians deem offensive, because together, they control a large number of powerful governments.
Porn and gambling are highly restricted in most places around the world, including parts of Europe. When you compare free speech rights around the world, the US is still better than almost all other places.
Bad as the DMCA is, it is still better than the legal situation that exists in many European countries. Look at France's HADOPI or the ability of Germany's GEMA to restrict music distribution in Germany.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
The US demonstrated it is prepared to censor the Internet when they disrupted wikileaks.
The US has demonstrated it is not capable of behaving responsibly when it has influence over DNS.
Maybe the UN might be just as bad as the US, but they havent demonstrated that failure like the US has.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the UN might be just as bad as the US, but they havent demonstrated that failure like the US has.
Have you seen the list of countries which make up the UN?
Can you name one country which is less keen on censorship than the US? The US is not perfect, far from it, but is there anyone else who isn't actually worse?
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're ACTUALLY worried about Sweden or the Netherlands gaining control.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because we know what a great job the US has done of controlling it. I think it needs to leave the US as that becomes dependant on the whims of the crazy legal and commercial interests. It needs to be independent of any government. The only way that can be achieved is through the UN.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty arrogant of you to presume such powerful forces can't successfully intervene in the Internet. Look at the censorship we have today.
Re: (Score:3)
The internet is designed to survive a nuclear strike. The forces of bribery, stupidity, and politics may be able to slow or damage parts of the internet, but those parts are cut-off or rerouted as soon as the damage is discovered.
It should be a bigger worry to those countries who ARE cut off from the internet when everyone else's are not.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
It was. A long time ago. This hyperbole needs to die.
The internet is not like that these days. Witness one example of a relatively minor disaster causing massive problems.
Lets also take a look at the - pretty large impact for two damaged links. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Fucking slashdot eating anchor links.
This one went missing [spacemart.com] (it was my "one example")
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
It was. [designed to survive a nuclear strike.] A long time ago.
No, that was always something of an urban legend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET#Misconceptions_of_design_goals [wikipedia.org]
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that it's not economical to have high level redundancy.
Transoceanic cables are fucking expensive, so naturally the law of diminishing returns makes any above and beyond the bare minimum a fool's errand in the vast majority of time where things work properly.
This, in turn, creates a hierarchial structure instead of a partial mesh topology, which in turn makes every node between points A and B a single point of failure.
The famed resiliency of the internet requires redundant connections, and economics by and large suppresses redundancy as inefficient except in cases where information is important enough to demand backup routes for the sake of guaranteed uptime.
And I'm not really surprised. TCP/IP was developed for a military topology with redundant links whereas the real world is a for profit endeavor where lean and mean brings in the green.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4)
The famed resiliency of the internet requires redundant connections, and economics by and large suppresses redundancy as inefficient except in cases where information is important enough to demand backup routes for the sake of guaranteed uptime.
The internet has porn and flamewars. That doesn't merit guaranteed uptime ?!???!!!!?
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4, Insightful)
.
'They could allow (other) "governments to monitor and restrict content or impose economic costs upon international data flows," added Ambassador Philip Verveer, a deputy assistant secretary of state'
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but you should keep in mind that the US is essentially only trying to impose copyright on the internet. What the UN clowns are trying to do will make you wish that the MPAA was the sole internet provider in the US.
I don't want the UN nor US interference !! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't they just leave us alone?
I mean, why do the governments want to interfere with the Net, a medium whereby people from all corners of the world can share information, and discuss, and plan, and scheme?
Oh, wai...
Re:I don't want the UN nor US interference !! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't want the UN nor US interference !! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
The government can certainly try to control the internet.
They can block a few websites, or even firewall off must parts of it, but people will always find a way to get around it, just like they have gotten around other forms of government control.
The internet is more than the hardware, it's also an idea. And that's not so easy to take down.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean like tax it?
Like require all content providers to screen things that are posted to pre-approve them?
Like they control the phones? Or newspapers? Or TV?
Nah. I'm sure it'll be fine.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4, Insightful)
Taxing = slowing = the introduction of more 'hiccups' into the taxer's economy. Get enough hiccups of sufficient magnitude often enough, and there won't be an economy anymore.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4, Insightful)
They're not asking to control their own internet. They can and do that today. They're asking to "jointly" control everyone else's internet.
Specifically these people [dailymail.co.uk]. Don't worry ! He was cleared of all charges... by his nephew. I'm sure they had a big laugh about it around the dinner table. What do you expect from islamic theocracies ?
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet recently catalyzed revolutions in several middle east countries. If the internet were wide open worldwide, that would be a tool against human rights suppression, and is one of the only real effective tools against that.
If they make it such that uploading or viewing videos of police beating down protestors is impossible for 90% of the users out there, then that's not a completely effective control, but it could be enough to stave off corrective action on the part of the citizenry.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine a world run by librarians... (Score:3)
Imagine a world run by librarians...all information is free and uncensored but we all have to speak in whisper voices and women have to wear their hair in buns and sensible shoes and tearing pages out of library books would punishable by a year in jail.
Re: (Score:3)
The internet recently catalyzed revolutions in several middle east countries.
I suppose if enough peple say this enough times, it will become accepted as the truth, and spare everyone the bother of looking at the particular political and economic circumstances obtaining in each country, or wondering why Syria is still under the leadership of Bashar al-Assad, while Gadaffi was ousted in a few months.
Re:UN takeover must be stopped? (Score:4, Interesting)
The U.S. has been imposing itself on the world since the end of WWII, and that's not going to change as long as the U.S. is in the position of dominance it's enjoyed since then.
True, mostly. I'm quite happy with the results by the way.
I trust a group made up of representatives from every country on earth a lot more than one comprised solely of representatives from just one of them, and that includes my own U.S. representatives. We gave birth to the TSA for Christ's sake. If anything stands testament to the abuse of authority, it's the fucking TSA.
Then you're insane. It would essentially end democratic control of the internet, as dictatorships and other oppressive regimes (islamic hellholes, communist states, "communist" states like China,...) essentially control the UN by shear numbers.
You really think they'd be an improvement over the US ? How can anyone in their right mind think like that ?
You fools! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You fools! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You fools! (Score:4, Insightful)
US not great, UN would be worse (Score:5, Insightful)
The US is not great. The US does things like seizing domain names based on minimal cause and then spending years before they give them back. A lot of those seized have been over copyright issues and in some cases they haven't even been clearly infringing. This is similar to how many states in the US have assert forfeiture laws which allow police to confiscate large sums of money or cars under minimal suspicion of involvement with illegal drug dealing, and getting them back is difficult.
But the UN would be worse. The UN contains many countries with little conception of free speech. Even allies of the US like Canada and Britain have substantially less free speech than the US does. In the case of Britain libel although being reformed is still very much a danger. In Canada, speech which specifically targets minorities or criticizes religions can be labeled as hate speech with fines given. And most of the world, is much much worse. Consistently a large fraction of the Islamic countries have tried to push through anti-blasphemy regulations in the UN. So far they've failed. But it is easy to imagine what would happen if they could actually block pictures of Muhammad. Similarly. China would slaver at the thought of not having to do its own censorship but simply have no websites discussing Tiananmen Square at all. Letting even weak internet control get in the hands of the UN is a recipe for disaster. Maybe in 20 or 30 years when the free speech situation has improved. But not right now.
Re:US not great, UN would be worse (Score:5, Insightful)
I seriously doubt in 20 or 30 years the free speech situation will improve. Going by recent history, I'd say it's a full tilt sucker bet that the situation will get worse.
Re: (Score:3)
The UN contains many countries with little conception of free speech. Even allies of the US like Canada and Britain have substantially less free speech than the US does. In the case of Britain libel although being reformed is still very much a danger. In Canada, speech which specifically targets minorities or criticizes religions can be labeled as hate speech with fines given. And most of the world, is much much worse.
While it is completely true that there are many countries in the UN that definitely don't have proper free speech your comment highlights a major difference in the European and American interpretation of the term "free speech". In most of Europe free speech means the freedom to express your thoughts and opinions. Free speech is not considered the freedom to say anything you please.
For example if I were to set up a web site proclaiming that all black people are simply not human and that black women should be
Re:US not great, UN would be worse (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be legal. The US does have some limitations on incitements to violence, but a webpage expressing the things you described wouldn't fit the bill. You pretty much have to be pointing at a person, yelling "Hey everyone, kick that n*****/f*****/etc.'s ass!" in order for the first amendment not to protect you.
Re:US not great, UN would be worse (Score:5, Informative)
The US has a very strict standard of what constitutes incitement to violence. It comes from the Supreme Court decision in Brandenburg v Ohio. To count as incitement, the speech has to meet three criteria:
1) It has to be intended to incite violence (the website meets this one)
2) The violence being incited must be "imminent" (this is the real killer, as written word is unlikely to be an incitement to any "imminent" action)
3) It has to be "likely" that violence will result (this could go either way... given the sort of crap you read on forums, the judge might rule that internet postings are often extreme and unlikely to be taken seriously)
As I said, the only way to pass the "Brandenburg test" is to basically be at the scene of the crime, pointing and yelling "Get 'em!"
A rock and a hard place. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
I think the question lies in what you consider worse. Do you fear unlimited, unaccountable, and unbridled surveillance, like the kind that's being proposed in the US... or are you more worried about censorship
Unfortunately it's not either/or. We're all likely to eventually get both.
It's pretty obvious which is FAR worse (Score:4, Insightful)
Who cares if anyone can surveil was is sent across the internet. That is rather the point of a public network, and if you don't want others to snoop then you encrypt.
ANY of the other stuff inherently breaks the internet or at least seals it off to a huge portion of the planet.
It's not even close which is why even in the middle of an election season two diametrically opposed parties are dead set against it, in unison.
Re:A rock and a hard place. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the question lies in what you consider worse. Do you fear unlimited, unaccountable, and unbridled surveillance, like the kind that's being proposed in the US, that effectively covers the entire world... or are you more worried about censorship, virtual toll roads that make the doing business more expensive, and totally unrepresented taxation?
They are both part of the same thing : finding dissident voices and shutting them up.
And I want neither.
Re:A rock and a hard place. (Score:4, Insightful)
You think the US has unbridled surveillance?
Compared to what is going on in China, one of the parties to this proposal?
It's not an either-or. With the US you will get surveillance with at least a little accountability. With the UN you will get unbridled surveillance, censorship, toll roads and no accountability.
To Whomever it may concern: (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet was designed to be open and free. Leave it be.
The internet was designed to be unregulated. Leave it be.
The internet was designed with open access for everyone in mind. Leave it be.
The internet was designed to be unhindered, unfettered, unfiltered, uncapped. Leave it be.
For those bastards who think they have the right and the need to control it, regulate it, tax it, reroute it, filter it, cap it, limit it, contain it - leave it be.
Information wants to be free, it will find a way. The internet, like nature will evolve until it does so.
The internet does have a central authority (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty common to believe that no central source can control the internet - and it's true for the most part - with one major exception: IANA ultimately answers to the US Department of Commerce.
In order for the internet to function, there has to be a central authority who determines who gets what IP addresses and domain names. That authority is under the control of the US. Sure you could create your own internets (yes, plural) with your own name and number rules, however if you can't all agree upon who gets what IP address blocks and domain names, you aren't going to have a very cohesive and universal network like the one we have today.
Honestly, I am perfectly fine with the US having control over that, and in fact would much rather they hold the keys rather than the UN. If the UN had their way, that would mean countries who have heavy influence of the UN (e.g. China) would have their way.
So far, the US has done a great job. Sure, we've had talks about filtering the internet (e.g. SOPA) many times, but unlike 90% of the other countries out there (Australia, UK, Germany, China, Iran, just to name a few,) we haven't acted upon any of them. Granted, we have taken extraordinary and unnecessary if not unethical measures, such as taking down megaupload, we didn't do so by ordering IANA to break the infrastructure.
The best thing about the US having control, is that we've never done anything to dismantle the infrastructure in the name of politics. The UN wants control because they plan on doing exactly that.
Re: (Score:3)
It's pretty common to believe that no central source can control the internet - and it's true for the most part - with one major exception: IANA ultimately answers to the US Department of Commerce.
In order for the internet to function, there has to be a central authority who determines who gets what IP addresses and domain names. That authority is under the control of the US. Sure you could create your own internets (yes, plural) with your own name and number rules, however if you can't all agree upon who gets what IP address blocks and domain names, you aren't going to have a very cohesive and universal network like the one we have today.
Honestly, I am perfectly fine with the US having control over that, and in fact would much rather they hold the keys rather than the UN. If the UN had their way, that would mean countries who have heavy influence of the UN (e.g. China) would have their way.
So far, the US has done a great job. Sure, we've had talks about filtering the internet (e.g. SOPA) many times, but unlike 90% of the other countries out there (Australia, UK, Germany, China, Iran, just to name a few,) we haven't acted upon any of them. Granted, we have taken extraordinary and unnecessary if not unethical measures, such as taking down megaupload, we didn't do so by ordering IANA to break the infrastructure.
The best thing about the US having control, is that we've never done anything to dismantle the infrastructure in the name of politics. The UN wants control because they plan on doing exactly that.
More governments arguing for control over the internet is better than just having one government and fewer people deciding,
"free from government control"? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is all a bit rich, reading the resolution, considering that is is coming from the country which unilaterally seizes [easydns.org] domains [arstechnica.com]at will [wired.com].
Don't forget as well that this is coming from the same government that proposed a kill switch [wikipedia.org] for the Internet. Sounds more like "nobody should control the Internet, unless it is us" (well, this arguably applies to the US part of the Internet).
The resolution also says: "Whereas the world deserves the access to knowledge,... and the informed discussion that is the bedrock of democratic self-government that the Internet provides;"
I thought that WikiLeaks and cablegate were exactly the kind of things which promote a healthy discussion in a democracy, but I doubt that that's what they had in mind when they drafted this resolution, free access to knowledge and all.
This all seems more like a bit of patriotic posturing. Blah blah land of the free blah blah cannot trust anybody else to be as free as we are blah blah. Seriously, it does not matter one bit what will be proposed at this conference; how exactly are you going to *force* the US to relinquish control? Not going to happen.
Still far worse (Score:2)
You mentioned the U.S. seized a few domains. I also think that was wrong.
But the U.N. would block whole CATEGORIES of domains from even existing.
You are worried about a theoretical Kill Switch on the internet. The U.N. wants a Kill Switch on every website...
to be pressed by the Chinese or Russians as they see fit.
And you are seriously arguing against the U.S. on this one? Yes they could improve but you don't seem to be grasping how much worse things could get, very quickly.
This is a complete fiction (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is a complete fiction (Score:5, Insightful)
"It is at first denied that any radical new plan exists; it is then conceded that it exists but ministers swear blind that it is not even on the political agenda; it is then noted that it might well be on the agenda but is not a serious proposition; it is later conceded that it is a serious proposition but that it will never be implemented; after that it is acknowledged that it will be implemented but in such a diluted form that it will make no difference to the lives of ordinary people; at some point it is finally recognised that it has made such a difference, but it was always known that it would and voters were told so from the outset."
-- Times editorial, published on August 28, 2002
I'm missing something... (Score:5, Insightful)
What I miss in both the summary and the linked articles are two things:
Frankly, all I see right now is the usual anti-UN hit piece written by a lazy American journalist, and a Slashdot audience of complete chumps who fall for it.
Least of two evils (Score:3)
Which is better/worse: The known evil of the US abusing their control power to steal domains and disrupt business for those they do not like (as the result of bribes, misguided politics or plain stupidity), or the possible evil of groups in the UN imposing national politics on the greater Internet?
I personally prefer to deal with the known, and the known is that the US has been grossly abusing their current power on the Internet - and that needs to be stopped.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:America the Right (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it that Americans always use kindergarten proverbs when debating? Just shows how dumb and ignorant you are..com, .net and .org are supposed to be international, but the USA have given themselves the right to seize domains using these extensions, in effect killing the political neutrality of the web.
The US government has overtaken the Internet when they started seizing domain names without due process.
This is a serious mistakes and the USA deserve to lose their current control of the web over this!
Also, ICANN is corrupt and broken. They're creating new TLDs like it's something amazing, when in fact there's simply no reason not to let anyone name their website whatever they want. And they're charging crazy sums of money for these new TLDs too..com, .en, .us, .fr, etc. are just part of the name. ICANN just decides each website name has to end in dot-something, and from a technical point of view whether it's .com or .octopus makes absolutely no difference, it doesn't require extra work or extra infrastructure/configuration/whatever. But ICANN just wanted control, they felt it was their job to organize TLDs, and now they want to charge money for giving us the freedom to name our websites.
And I wouldn't worry about China or Russia taking control. If the UN takes control, it means every country will get their say.
And if somehow China manages to pass rules about the web that we don't like, it will be the excuse we've been waiting all these years to nuke these assfucks.
My captcha was "fuck off".
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The US made it (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite
The Internet protocol suite resulted from research and development conducted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the early 1970s. After initiating the pioneering ARPANET in 1969, DARPA started work on a number of other data transmission technologies. In 1972, Robert E. Kahn joined the DARPA Information Processing Technology Office, where he worked on both satellite packet networks and ground-based radio packet networks, and recognized the value of being able to communicate across both. In the spring of 1973, Vinton Cerf, the developer of the existing ARPANET Network Control Program (NCP) protocol, joined Kahn to work on open-architecture interconnection models with the goal of designing the next protocol generation for the ARPANET.
By the summer of 1973, Kahn and Cerf had worked out a fundamental reformulation, where the differences between network protocols were hidden by using a common internetwork protocol, and, instead of the network being responsible for reliability, as in the ARPANET, the hosts became responsible. Cerf credits Hubert Zimmerman and Louis Pouzin, designer of the CYCLADES network, with important influences on this design.
The network's design included the recognition it should provide only the functions of efficiently transmitting and routing traffic between end nodes and that all other intelligence should be located at the edge of the network, in the end nodes. Using a simple design, it became possible to connect almost any network to the ARPANET, irrespective of their local characteristics, thereby solving Kahn's initial problem. One popular expression is that TCP/IP, the eventual product of Cerf and Kahn's work, will run over "two tin cans and a string."
A computer, called a router, is provided with an interface to each network. It forwards packets back and forth between them.[3] Originally a router was called gateway, but the term was changed to avoid confusion with other types of gateways.
Yes the United States did make the internet. You're welcome.
Re: (Score:3)
Your quotes don't support your claim. Some Europeans invented a few of the underlying technologies. So what? The first car was made by Karl Benz (yes, as in Mercedes-Benz) in Germany. Would you claim that Germany didn't invent the car because the internal combustion engine was invented elsewhere?
Re:The US made it (Score:4, Insightful)
It's worse than that. It like claiming that Germany invented GPS because they created the V2 rocket.
Re: (Score:3)
The US did not make the Internet. Quoting from this history [nethistory.info], "The earliest pioneers included a Frenchman, Louis Pouzin, who introduced the idea of data grams and an Englishman, Donald W. Davies, who was one of the inventors of packet-switching.
I realise you're quoting, but just in case there's any confusion, Donald W Davies was a Welshman, not an Englishman
Re:The US made it (Score:5, Funny)
yeah well, TCP/IP is kinda useless without Maths. so i guess the greeks invented the internet.