Slashdot Mirror

would America (and by america i mean the right wing and left wing traitors to the constitution) like it if say China controlled major aspects of the internet? how about North Korea?

No, and that is kind of the point. No, the US does not want two nations famous for their censorship of the Internet to have any more control then they already do.

Oh... what is this fine gem from the UN? http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/docume nts/APCITY/UNPAN016881.pdf
Is this China asking for more control over the Internet?

And lookie here.
http://www.wgig.org/docs/WGIGREPORT.doc
The original report on Internet governance. Hrm, who signed this merry little report... China, Cuba, Egypt, Russia, and Saudi Arabia to name a few. Now, I now the US is the great Satan and all, but do you really want those nations to dictate internet governance? Me personally? I'll pass and take my chances with the nation that has seemed to have done a marvelous job keeping their hands completely off of ICANN.

It is interesting to see that U.S. says that it is defendding free spech, while U.N. says exactly the same, that it is defending freedom of expression (check here)...

Very interesting, because freedom of speech for U.N. seems to be: "We want a rich public domain and no government looking into our conversation.", and for U.S., it seems to be: "If they make racism illegal, the next one will be porn.". I can see why U.S. government is concerned by the U.N. idea of free speech, but I can't see how U.S. people can't realize that the second argument is a non sequitur.

Also, I loved that phrase:
"Turning the Internet over to countries with problematic human-rights records, muted free-speech laws, and questionable taxation practices will prevent the Internet from remaining the thriving medium it has become today"

Let's forget that the U.S. viewed today as exaclty a country with problematic human-rights records and questionable taxation practices! Let's blame the rest of the World for those thigs.

Its pretty clear this isnt about just domain names. From http://www.wgig.org/index.html:

12. It should be made clear, however, that Internet governance includes more than Internet names and addresses, issues dealt with by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN): it also includes other significant public policy issues, such as critical Internet resources, the security and safety of the Internet, and developmental aspects and issues pertaining to the use of the Internet.

The really rediculous quote from the paper though is:

Internet governance is the development and application by Governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.

Whats this in their respective roles crap? Who is it thats going to define what ones 'respective role' is? Why should we accept some UN idiots labeling of different groups? What the hell is the difference between the private sector and civil society? If govt supposedly reflects the values of a society, what is the difference between governments and civil society? What moron wrote this rag?

In general they rationalize this decentralized governance by claiming the woes of spam, porn and of all things hardware costs. None of those things have anything to do with some administrative technical controls. Have no doubts representatives of the UN who are clamoring for some sort of control, want that control for only one reason and that reason is power.

For example. In the second meeting of this body that wants to govern the Internet, Brazil had this to say; http://www.wgig.org/docs/Brazil.pdf
Madame Chair,
Allow me to focus our discussion on internet governance beyond Principles and towards practical matters that our citizens are in need. Our citizens are demanding cheaper access. This could be translated here by:
a) lower internet interconnection costs;
b) affordable hardware;
c) free and open source software;
c) regional administration of the root server system;
d) national administration of courty code top level domains (ccTLSs);

I'm sure there's a joke in there regarding reasons c & c but the whole flavor of the language is interesting. What even half of that has to do with a hands off administrative control I have no idea. This governing body is somehow going to make all this happen?

The EU reps had this to say; http://www.wgig.org/docs/EU-PrepCom.doc

As we have had the opportunity to state before, the EU believes that the WGIG should concentrate on the stable and secure functioning of the Internet, by addressing issues related to:

The organisation and administration of naming and numbering, including the operation of the root server system;

The internationalisation of Internet Governance, taking into account public interest concerns and participation of developing countries in the governance structures;

The stability, dependability and robustness of the Internet, including the impact of spam.

Spam? Well, that sounds to me like this new governing body wants to control content (which is evidenced elsewhere by UN reps, this is really no revelation but few people seem to see it or wish to look for the motivations behind this move). If all they want to do is sing Kumbaya and peacefully administer some DNS server then why, pray tell would they have anything to do with spam control? What's spam to Brazil, yet information to another? The great thing about the Internet is what makes the Internet a bad place at the same time, freedom. The examples of UN reps citing issues OTHER than DNS administration are numerous and distrubing. They want to actively participate in governing a rich and wonderfully free form of communication and trade. It's time that some government officials here in US started asking themselves why. We need more libitarian thinkers like Coleman and I don't care which side of the political isle they come from.

For example. In the second meeting of this body that wants to govern the Internet, Brazil had this to say; http://www.wgig.org/docs/Brazil.pdf
Madame Chair,
Allow me to focus our discussion on internet governance beyond Principles and towards practical matters that our citizens are in need. Our citizens are demanding cheaper access. This could be translated here by:
a) lower internet interconnection costs;
b) affordable hardware;
c) free and open source software;
c) regional administration of the root server system;
d) national administration of courty code top level domains (ccTLSs);

I'm sure there's a joke in there regarding reasons c & c but the whole flavor of the language is interesting. What even half of that has to do with a hands off administrative control I have no idea. This governing body is somehow going to make all this happen?

The EU reps had this to say; http://www.wgig.org/docs/EU-PrepCom.doc

As we have had the opportunity to state before, the EU believes that the WGIG should concentrate on the stable and secure functioning of the Internet, by addressing issues related to:

The organisation and administration of naming and numbering, including the operation of the root server system;

The internationalisation of Internet Governance, taking into account public interest concerns and participation of developing countries in the governance structures;

The stability, dependability and robustness of the Internet, including the impact of spam.

Spam? Well, that sounds to me like this new governing body wants to control content (which is evidenced elsewhere by UN reps, this is really no revelation but few people seem to see it or wish to look for the motivations behind this move). If all they want to do is sing Kumbaya and peacefully administer some DNS server then why, pray tell would they have anything to do with spam control? What's spam to Brazil, yet information to another? The great thing about the Internet is what makes the Internet a bad place at the same time, freedom. The examples of UN reps citing issues OTHER than DNS administration are numerous and distrubing. They want to actively participate in governing a rich and wonderfully free form of communication and trade. It's time that some government officials here in US started asking themselves why. We need more libitarian thinkers like Coleman and I don't care which side of the political isle they come from.

For example. In the second meeting of this body that wants to govern the Internet, Brazil had this to say; http://www.wgig.org/docs/Brazil.pdf
Madame Chair,
Allow me to focus our discussion on internet governance beyond Principles and towards practical matters that our citizens are in need. Our citizens are demanding cheaper access. This could be translated here by:
a) lower internet interconnection costs;
b) affordable hardware;
c) free and open source software;
c) regional administration of the root server system;
d) national administration of courty code top level domains (ccTLSs);

I'm sure there's a joke in there regarding reasons c & c but the whole flavor of the language is interesting. What even half of that has to do with a hands off administrative control I have no idea. This governing body is somehow going to make all this happen?

The EU reps had this to say; http://www.wgig.org/docs/EU-PrepCom.doc

As we have had the opportunity to state before, the EU believes that the WGIG should concentrate on the stable and secure functioning of the Internet, by addressing issues related to:

The organisation and administration of naming and numbering, including the operation of the root server system;

The internationalisation of Internet Governance, taking into account public interest concerns and participation of developing countries in the governance structures;

The stability, dependability and robustness of the Internet, including the impact of spam.

Spam? Well, that sounds to me like this new governing body wants to control content (which is evidenced elsewhere by UN reps, this is really no revelation but few people seem to see it or wish to look for the motivations behind this move). If all they want to do is sing Kumbaya and peacefully administer some DNS server then why, pray tell would they have anything to do with spam control? What's spam to Brazil, yet information to another? The great thing about the Internet is what makes the Internet a bad place at the same time, freedom. The examples of UN reps citing issues OTHER than DNS administration are numerous and distrubing. They want to actively participate in governing a rich and wonderfully free form of communication and trade. It's time that some government officials here in US started asking themselves why. We need more libitarian thinkers like Coleman and I don't care which side of the political isle they come from.

Hmm... don't you think it's kinda strange that the worlds number one spam arsehole is arrested just days before important discussions concerning the future of the Internet are held particularly when a number of countries have expressed serious concerns at the lack of aciton against SPAM + PORN?

Brazil: "For those that are still wondering what Triple-X means, let's be specific, Mr. Chairman. They are talking about pornography. These are things that go very deep in our values in many of our countries."

Syria: "There's more and more spam every day. Who are the victims? Developing and least-developed countries, too. There is no serious intention to stop this spam by those who are the transporters of the spam, because they benefit...The only solution is for us to buy equipment from the countries which send this spam in order to deal with spam. However, this, we believe, is not acceptable.

Find more comments here

P.S thank you to the posters of this insightful post and this one.

P.P.S Just a personal message to Alan: Hope you die in prison you scum sucking lazy obese cocksucker.

Syria: "There's more and more spam every day. Who are the victims? Developing and least-developed countries, too. There is no serious intention to stop this spam by those who are the transporters of the spam, because they benefit...The only solution is for us to buy equipment from the countries which send this spam in order to deal with spam. However, this, we believe, is not acceptable."

All these comments and more can be found at http://www.wgig.org/June-scriptmorning.html at the fourth meeting of this body on Internet "governance". "Governance" by the way isn't my term, it's theirs.

UN partners want content control.

http://www.wgig.org/June-scriptmorning.html
Syria: "There's more and more spam every day. Who are the victims? Developing and least-developed countries, too. There is no serious intention to stop this spam by those who are the transporters of the spam, because they benefit...The only solution is for us to buy equipment from the countries which send this spam in order to deal with spam. However, this, we believe, is not acceptable."

Brazil, responding to ICANN's approval of .xxx domains: "For those that are still wondering what Triple-X means, let's be specific, Mr. Chairman. They are talking about pornography. These are things that go very deep in our values in many of our countries. In my country, Brazil, we are very worried about this kind of decision-making process where they simply decide upon creating such new top-level generic domain names."

Syria: "There's more and more spam every day. Who are the victims? Developing and least-developed countries, too. There is no serious intention to stop this spam by those who are the transporters of the spam, because they benefit...The only solution is for us to buy equipment from the countries which send this spam in order to deal with spam. However, this, we believe, is not acceptable."

Brazil, responding to ICANN's approval of .xxx domains: "For those that are still wondering what Triple-X means, let's be specific, Mr. Chairman. They are talking about pornography. These are things that go very deep in our values in many of our countries. In my country, Brazil, we are very worried about this kind of decision-making process where they simply decide upon creating such new top-level generic domain names."

China: "We feel that the public policy issue of Internet should be solved jointly by the sovereign states in the U.N. framework...For instance, spam, network security and cyberspace--we should look for an appropriate specialized agency of the United Nations as a competent body."

Ghana: "There was unanimity for the need for an additional body...This body would therefore address all issues relating to the Internet within the confines of the available expertise which would be anchored at the U.N."

These are the people that want to control the internet. They don't want some hands off technical control, they have specific cultural, moral and economic ideals they wish to implement in relation to the Internet. Yes, spam is bad. But "stopping spam" by a macro control mechanism is a control on information. This is contrary to the legal and user technological controls we are implementing now. Do you trust the UN to actually handle specific information on the Internet via their multicultralism moral compass? I don't.

Ok, I think I have a suitable smoking gun document.

First you'll need this definition:
ICT = Information (and) Communication Technologies.

Document. At first it sounds potentially innocent, but about half way through it becomes explicit that it is talking about a 2010 agenda for a Single European Information Space, a unified Trusted interoperable DRM Information Society. The source for it is the European Union's official portal for "institutions and bodies of the European Union, including the European Parliament, the Council of the Union, the Commission, the Court of Justice, the Court of Auditors, the Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions, the European Central Bank and the European Investment Bank."

The following list is merely to cite the government bodies, not specific documents...
The United Nations Press Release establishing the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG). WGIG still seems relatively small and relatively early in their work. Far bigger and more developed is the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). And of course there's the Whitehouse with the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, almost a Megabyte worth of PDFs I haven't even begun to dig through.

-

Take a look at the UN sponsored (and ITU run) initiative called the "World Summit on the Information Society [WSIS]. This is the group that is looking to replace ICANN.

They have a working group called the "Working Group on Internet Governance" [WGIG] that is proposing IP address allocation by country. The stated reason is that it would be more "fair" but in truth, this would put control over the access to information in the hands of those we should distrust the most.

What happens when you're a dissident in China (or gasp! the U.S) and can't even get an IP address? You won't even be able to "roll your own" as it were because it won't be routed.

Yes, blocking access to websites and online content is bad, but giving governments direct control over IP addressing would be like them owning printing presses 230+ years ago. Not only would you not be able to read content, you wouldn't even be able to publish content without being on your government's good side.