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Imagine A UN-Run Internet
Damon Dimmick writes "Small countries in the United Nations have been arguing to put the Internet under the control of the UN so that countries can more easily monitor (read: control) Internet content. It's on hold for now, but this could become a very real censorship problem, very soon. Some nations have gone so far as to suggest "monitoring boards" for internet content. Here is the link to the Financial Times article. It briefly describes the current situation. Just something to keep an eye on."
Imagine A UN-Run Internet
A prophetic subject line? If they run it as well as other things, the internet may be un-run.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Well then, we just have the US intranet. We only export those sites who wish to be under the UN's thumb. I find it very difficult to have respect for governments who think they need to control the information their populous sees.
Since USA is just a dominate force in the UN, would this really affect us? Yes... it may decrease our freedom of press!
Defenders of the status quo say handing over power to governments could threaten the untrammelled flow of information and ideas that many see as the very essence of the borderless internet.
The internet is based on the ability to put up a web page and shout out my message to whoever wishes to wander by. It's even more powerful than dead-tree press because it reaches more people in a quicker fashion.
UN control is just that--control.
Not only do I not want UN control... I want as little government control as possible! Inforce the laws of your own country on the people in your own country... and leave the rest of us alone.
Davak
Replace one sluggish bureaucracy with another one that's even larger and more sluggish. Then stand back and watch the fights about funding and budgetary contributions. That should be very helpful.
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Exactly how would the international control improve the internet? What control is currently placed on it by the US? Besides assignment of IP's and domain names, what US control is affecting you? Most of the internet is privately owned. Its controlled by whoever owns the routers.
no, an internet controlled by the UN would be controlled by a council that is under control of the general assembly. a straight up or down vote can determine who is on it, and given that the human rights council is run by every country that gives no rights to its citizens, I would not hold my breath for a council run by the UN to be anything resembling fair and Free.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The UN can try to regulate things all they want. In the US at least, it's all but meaningless. Why?
Well, for the US to even recognize a UN ruling requires approval of the president and 2/3 of the House and Senate. Technically, UN rulings are considered treaties. Even when it's recognized, it still requires an act of Congress to enact some sort of legislation before anyone can be prosecuted.
The one thing our government does well is ensuring that we're the only ones making bonehead laws that are enforcable in this country.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
The 3rd world countries should work on getting less corrupt goverments installed first.
They could also try working on the ability to feed themselves before they do another inet.
hmm, I know that the human rights council is run by Despotic regimes....why should I hold any hope for an internet council being run by free nations?
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
huh? says who? i thought it was a network of networks.
some of those networks most definately have controls/policies against free speech.
FUD. The Internet is far from being under the control of the U.S.
In most ways it's under the control of wherever the lines happen to run.
Examples:
--China has no problem effectively blocking 3/4 of the Internet from viewing.
--Germany/France have effectively censored certain portions of the net.
--Many countries have unique top level domains hosted within their countries.
The list goes on...
The point being, while the U.S. is definitely HEAVILY involved in the development, maintenence, and overall culture of the Internet (not surprising given the history of the network) it also far from being in any real control of it. Certain members of the U.S. government would like us to sieze control through a variety of means (primarily applying economic pressure to other countries), none of it has been particularly succesful (it turns out that most politicians A) don't care or B) 'get it').
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Nope, just a whole bunch of "little" wars in non-Western-European nations that have killed millions over the years.
Is the world's first supra-national organization and, more remarkably, has had its power seriously challenged only a few times.
What about the League of Nations? Or for that matter, the Hanseatic League?
Finding God in a Dog
I support the concept of world government, but before the UN can assume that role, a few things need to happen.
- The UN needs a split houses concept similar to the US and other democratic nation. One house gets a number of representatives dependent on a nations population, and in the other house all nations have equal numbers of representatives. This is the ONLY fair way to ensure that all nations are heard regardless of size or population.
- Abolish the security council. It made sense 50 years ago, but not today.
- All representatives should be ELECTED by the people in their nations, with reasonably limited terms (5 or six years max). If these people are going to determine my fate and run my Internet, I'd damned well better get a say in who represents me. Undemocratic nations that don't allow their citizens to vote should NOT get voting seats in the UN.
- It should respect the constitutions of its member nations. The UN should not have the ability to override, veto, or limit decisions or rights made or granted by their sovereign member states.
You'll pardon me for not holding my breath for these changes. The UN is a flawed, crippled organization that tries to grab onto any semblance of real power that it can, and it's in the interests of this worlds powerful nations to make sure it stays right where it is.There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
God Bless America, with the worst crime levels in the first world
Where even criminals have civil rights.
God Bless America, so happy to violate international laws
When those laws are put together by the dictator's club called the UN, you bet. You know, the place that puts Syria and Libya on the "human rights committee"?
God Bless America, where "freedom of speech" means race-hate groups like KKK
Where freedom of speech applies to EVERYBODY, even the ones with unpopular causes. Hint: popular causes don't NEED freedom of speech.
God Bless America, with barely 300 years of dire history and culture
Hint: we're still on our first Republic. France is on their fifth, with intervening Reigns of Terror, anarchy, kings, emperors, and Nazi collaborationist regimes.
Hint: our popular culture dominates the world. Deal with it.
God Bless America, with the highest obesity levels in the developed world
Where food is so cheap that even the poorest can (over)eat.
God Bless America, wasting billions to attack foreign countries
They're ours to "waste", Saddam-lover.
Great. So now I'll have to worry about staying in the good graces of the Seven Patriarchs of Outer Boobistan, as if avoiding the wrath of my own enlightened, free, democratic government wasn't getting hard enough as it is.
Seriously, I say this is bad. The UN should be finding ways to get force countries to accept disagreeable content, not finding ways to make it easier for them to export censorship. Besides, there already is a way for military and religious dictatorships to shield their populations from the horrors of free speech and bare nipples: don't connect to the global internet. Run your own damn closed TCP/IP networks; I'll even send a free CD with all the software they'll need to the first dictator to call.
Of course, just not listening/reading/watching stuff you don't like is a strategy that, while damn near 100% effective, never seems to occur to these paleolithic troglodytes. That goes for Outer Boobistan no less than it does for Inner GOPistan.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I never said the USA didn't have corruption in its goverment. But, you have to admin, that the USA doesn't use food as a weapon against its own citizens.
I must assume this was a sarcastic post. The ITU is perhaps one of the most unfit organizations for this or even it's own purpose that exists today. Basically, it is composed of representitives from different countries, true; however, unlike the IETF, for example, they don't nessisary represent true "experts" in their chosen field. For example, US representation in the ITU is appointed by the State Department.
The ITU has a history of mandating REQUIRED international standards that include patented (and without royalty free/non-rand requirements...). Nor is their standards formation promotion open to the public, nor even the resulting standards available except at (sometimes considerable) cost.
To the ITU? No thank you...
given the current mess of objectionable content floating around on the internet it is about time we get our act together.
:)
Before you flame me about how your favorite information should be free consider that information includes:
- child porn pictures or other snuff
- virus/worm/hacking tool source code and instructions
- stolen intelectual property (for example: HL2 source)
- [fill in other human rights violation here]
Some of the above might still not be a black and white example of where to draw the line, but at least there are gray areas that need to be discussed on an international level. The conclusion will likely be the need for more then the current inability to remove internationally-agreed-upon unwanted content.
The UN seems to be the right place for this discussion. Just say it out loud "United Nations".
Discussions about wether this organization is efficient at all are to be taken up with your national representatives
Agreed, I'm not sure I trust the bureaucracy of the UN to be able to how to properly run the Internet.
But I don't understand the intense negative reaction to this idea, particularly by the submitter. The UN is not a repressive dictatorship. Sure, some of its members are, but I highly doubt that a UN-controlled Internet administrative body would have been to stupidly designed that it would impose restrictions on the 'Net just because some UN member applied pressure.
In any case, why can we trust the U.S. government to take a hands-off role towards the Internet any more than we can trust the UN?
Ah, and France, Britain, Russia and China don't have veto powers, and they of course NEVER put preasure on nations. France CERTAINLY wouldn't threaten nations seeking to join the EU or NATO in order to get them to vote their way. What strange alternate reality do you live in?
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
Wouldn't it be even better if the internet were simply an amorphous social mass that couldn't be directly controled by anyone?
Open standards that can be implemented by any geek in his mom's basement and distributability.
These are the real enemies governments are fighting. They want control for the purpose of control, not insure openess to the international community.
As for the UN being an international orginisation of nations you have to bear in mind that they have always been nothing more than a permenent meeting hall to engage in otherwise normal diplomatic practices. A permenent base for ambassadors, not a governing body of any kind.
It doesn't change anything about historical diplomatic process between nations other than creating a central point for participation in a city known for really good delis when they break for lunch.
KFG
In the other, we have the rest of the world: protector of political speech restriction...
Perhaps you could be so good as to remind me when exactly we of the rest of the world came out in favour of 'political speech restriction'?
Wasn't it Ari Fleischer who suggested that "Americans should watch what they say"?
I suppose many Slashdotters are too young to remember UNESCO's scheme to "license" and "regulate" journalism in all countries. This is why Ronald Reagam quite rightly pulled all U.S. funding from UNESCO until they reformed.
The UN is an organization that does things like putting Libya in charge of its commission on human rights. Do you really want North Korea or Communist China to have a say in what YOU can or can't read online?
The UN is in no way, shape or form dedicated to the idea of democracy and individual rights. It is an organization by and for bureaucratic elites looking to expand their power and pretiege and ensure themselves easy employment. It has no moral standing, and only the power that is allowed it by the Security Council. It is not now, nor will it ever be, a "World Government," and thank God for that.
There are very few nations in the world that have a guaranteed right to free speech and a free press the way the U.S. does. (In France it's illegal to "insult the dignity" of the French President.) Putting the UN in chaarge of the Internet would be an unmittigated disaster for freedom.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Why does everybody automaticly think this has anything to do with censorship? The national Internet-censorship already works just fine in a lot of countries. Thank you very much. Its just that a lot of people dont like to depend on something that is operated by an american company. If it would be better in the hands of the UN? I dont know and it will never happen anyway...
Anyone in to international law would see the problems with getting this implemented. Just read the basics of the UN charter, and you will see that countries are extremely protective of their sovereignty, and that such a serious infraction of this would be very unlikely. It could even be interpreted as a breach of some major international treaties on civil and political rights, or maybe even of the non-intervention principle of international law, which, apart from recognized, unregulated rules, the UN also has
codified in its charter. It would seriously affect the national sovereignty, and could therefore be seen as a breach of articles in the UN charter.
On the other hand, I would rather see the UN doing this than ISP:s doing it at their own will..
I wasn't the AC, but if you want proof of this just do a search for agricultural subsidies in industrialized nations. The US and the EU preach free trade and dropping barriers to trade, but they are just as guiltly of not doing this as are the less developed nations. They put up numerous obstacles so that developing nations cannot sell their agricultural products in the industrialized world. Yet this is the one product that those poorer nations are actually capable of competing with the richer nations on.
Root for ICANN. As bad as they are, at least the people on that board have a reasonable sense of what they are doing.
If you put control of the Internet under the umbrella of the UN, we will see situations like what happened with South Africa.
No, the Bush administration was able to both pass and enforce its policies. Whether or not you agree with them does not make the Bush administration ineffective. It may, however, make the Bush administration dangerous.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
How would the UN define what the (big I) Internet is? Something about address allocation body and DNS I suspect.
If this got annoying, couldn't we start another network? I can't think of any reason this wouldn't be fairly easy if there was a demand for it. Start new root name servers, setup a new IP allocation agency. Need new routers, but not new cable as they wouldn't be regulating at the MAC level.
Personally, I suspect multiple Internets are going to be the way of the future. Think Xbox Live.
Private ownership is only as good as the law its based on. I'm not a nutjob or anything, but 'ownership' is a fairly flexible term when the state/federal government's needs must be met.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I'm a believer that, at least at this point, that sort of thing needs to remain in the control of nations. Let's break it down:
Child porn: Sorry, but I do not agree with the US position that 18 is some magical age when sex become ok. If other countries wish to have a lower age of consent, that's their right. Then there are those countries that want ALL pornagraphy to be illegal. So if it's ok for us to tell a nation that 18 must be the minimum age for porn, why is it not ok for a different country to tell us that NO age is ok for porn?
Virus/hax0r source: Should be legal. Hacking should be illegal, as should releasing viruses to the Internet. The knowledge itself should not be made illegal. That is a stick your head in teh sand approach. You think that security experts are experts because they know nothing about hacking tools? No, they are experts because they know LOTS about them, what they do and how to stop them.
Stolen IP: Again, who are we to tell countries that they must have the concept of intellectual property?
Sorry, but nations just have real different ideas of what is ok and what is not. It needs to be up to them to decide what they consider acceptable, and how they are going to deal with the Internet in their country. I don't want some dictatorships telling us that we can't have free speech on the Internet any more than they'd want us telling them that they MUST allow it.
In any case, why can we trust the U.S. government to take a hands-off role towards the Internet any more than we can trust the UN?
Because the US has taken a generally hands-off role towards the Internet. Because the U.S. courts have struck down laws trying to restict speech on the Internet not once but twice. Because the U.S., where DARPANET was born, has generally been protective of its intellectual child.
The U.N. is a useless body. In its entire history, it has never accomplished anything without the substantial agreement and cooperation of the Great Powers. Where they have disagreed, it has been powerless. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a perfect example of the kind of claptrap they come up with. Vague, contradictory, and ultimately useless because it is never enforced.
The truth is that anarchy serves the Internet better. What would it be like if the US could enforce its draconian and restrictive view of intellectual property on 'Net locations overseas? What if the Chinese could compel compliance with their censorship regime beyond their own borders?
Historically, the inevitable result of unification of political and social power in one organization or entity has been stagnation. A certain amount of ambiguity, of room for true dissent, a refuge from one authority in the shelter of another, is necessary to human advancement. There are some who will abuse that liberty. But it is not for their benefit that we seek to preserve the ambiguous boundaries of the 'Net. It is for ourselves.
Wrong, except for murder, the UK exceeds the US in all crime areas.
God Bless America, where "democracy" means a rich, white male as President
Unlike Europe, where "democracy" means a rich, white male as Prime Minster.
God Bless America, the biggest consumer of the world's natural resources
Purchased at the fair market value. Too bad you can't afford to consume more.
God Bless America, so happy to violate international laws
The highest legal authority for Lawmaking in the US is Congress. Any such "international laws" unconfirmed by Congress are not laws at all.
God Bless America, where "freedom of speech" means race-hate groups like KKK
Yes, by definition of freedom, it will annoy those uninterested in true freedom.
God Bless America, and its massive and ever-growing poverty gap
You can't earn your money while sitting on the couch. Your unemployment benefits won't make you rich.
God Bless America, with barely 300 years of dire history and culture
And yet, still better than Europe.
God Bless America, all its appalling "sitcoms" with no grasp of irony
Just like Anonymous Cowards
God Bless America, with the highest obesity levels in the developed world
Best Medical system too to take care of it, since its not overwhelmed with the non-paying poor.
God Bless America, because corporations should be allowed to run amok
If your definition of amok is "without crippling restrictions" then yes, God Bless America.
God Bless America, wasting billions to attack foreign countries
God Bless America where we have billions to attack foreign countries.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Hint: we're still on our first Republic.
After the civil war I'd say we are on our second.
Eliot Cohen would be grossly mistaken. No single military action/campagin of the last 50 years has compared in scope to either WWI or WWII. Consider that in WWII the total combined forces of allied + axis forces numbered well over 120 million -- indeed it was much closer to 200 million if you count total number who served and died. Find me a war that involves that many men in uniform in the last 50 years.
Also important to note is that while the cold war might be called WWIII, simply because of the resources involved, it did not involve a major direct military confrontation between superpowers. Flares up did occur but they were regional confrontations between world superpowers, not a direct war.
Calling the "war on terror" world war IV is... wrong. While the war on terror does indeed have a worldwide scope it, once again, doesn't involve the resources or amount of men that others did. It is also limited to a relative few countries and is against, in reality, very few people.
Would that be the UN who couldn't bring itself to condemn Iraq for human rights abuses?
Yes! Damn them! Damn them and the tens of millions of protesters worldwide who rallied against the righteous invasion! I mean, so what if it was the largest protest ever in the history of mankind? Those crazy non-Americans (and un-American Americans) deserve to be shot! What do they know about what's right?
Only fools and crackpot leftists take representative democracy seriously. Only educated men of property and good character should be allowed to vote or participate in the political process. That is of course how it used to be in the good old days.
It is a den of dictators, murders, theives and their apologists.
How did this nut-case slander get rated as "Insightful"? You're arguing that 90% of the world's population are "apologists". Wake up: Bush has managed to make most of the world angry at the US's foreigh policy - and this is not just dictators but the educated informed newspaper-reading middle classes of Western democracies. You know, it is possible these "apologists" might be right; recent events in Iraq certainly bear out their concerns. In any case, even if you disagree with someone please don't automatically impugn their character and motives.
The so-called ICC makes a mockery out of due process of law. Secret witnesses, evidence, no right to trial by jury.
I think you're confused. The mockery of the due process of law is promulgated by Bush/Ashcroft. Detainees face secret witnesses, evidence, no right to trial by jury. If you have something concrete (not paranoid fantasies) where the ICC was abusive, please post a link. (Also, trial by jury is not a requirement for due process, and may be detrimental when jurors can be retaliated against. Plus from where would you recruit jurors? Think about it before spouting nonsense.)
Here are 5 off of the top of me head:
1. Iraq -> Kuwait
2. Iraq -> Iran
3. Argentina -> Fauklands
4. Russia -> Afghanistan
5. Everyone -> Israel (twice)
Not all were successful, but the UN had a small hand in only one of them (number 1), and the rest were condemned, talked about, but prosecuted anyway.
And this does not even get into African "countries" and their various tribal/civil wars.
-Donut
Oh for God's sake...
The US has tons of problems and our government is neither perfectly transparent nor corruption free. However, to have the gall to compare the government of the US (or Australia, or Belgium, or what have you) to the murderous, thoroughly corrupt regimes that make so much of the 3rd world a living hell is moral blindness of the worst kind.
And you don't have to remind me that the US founded or propped up many of those murderous, thoroughly corrupt regimes. That is true, and we have a grave responsibility to the citizens of those countries. But that still doesn't make it OK to pretend that all nations are equally good. Some are better than others.
I'll put my cards on the table and say I believe that humans have (by nature, God, whatever you choose), fundamental and inalienable rights; these rights are facts regardless of the system of government they live under. All humans have always had those rights. Some political systems recognize those rights better than others. For example, the United States recognizes those rights better than the Syria does. I think it is morally wrong to give Syria the same (or greater) voice on questions of human rights than the US.
All's true that is mistrusted
No, they can suffer and die in silence like good little wage slaves! If you aren't productive, you're just a waste of resources!
God, this country must have sold its humanity.
Its like giving a nuclear sub commander both missle keys. He isn't actively excercising his powers, but should he fancy launching a few missles, the power is at his fingertips. Isn't everything these days about pre-empting a threat? In this case the threat would be one country having the ability to severly curtial access to the domain name servers.
this is a little scenario for your post over here:
Imagine Party C = CIA, Party B = You, Party A = The Federal Government.
Now according to your theory, you have the right to STFU when requesting information from the CIA. Congress disagrees with you, as do I, thats why the Freedom of Information Act was created. The idea behind freedom of speech isn't that you have the right to STFU, its the opposite. If someone says something you don't like, you can bitch, moan, complain, and create public pressure to change that thing... because its your right.
Another scenario: A = Media Execs, B = You, C = News Outlets & D = Federal Government
Same as above, except (as they often do) D asks A not to break a story for a few days. A agrees, passes that to C and B is the loser. Is that censorship?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Why I would step into this cesspool of a thread, I don't know.
But, I think this post raises a fascinating point about what constitutues a culture and a race. Culture is often considered to be associated with language which would probably still make China far more multicultural then the US since even the rural people tend to be bilingual in spoken tongues. The characters, which are functionally somewhat akin to a huge alphabet, don't change, but the spoken tongues vary literally from province to province and are mutually unintelligible wihtout a doubt and for good historical reasons.
So, if we use language as a basis for culture, we can indeed say that China is much more multicultural than the US and have a factual basis for this assertion.
But race as a reference to a group of genetically similar or dissimilar populations is an even more interesting way to define "culture" becasue if you look at it carefully you find that even the notion of race itself is defined differently in different cultures. So, of course, to an American looking at China, there's not question that there is a wider range of racial representation in the US than China because they're using the American definition of race. But if you were to take, for instance, a medical view of race, you might look at bone marrow compatibilities. Apparently it's true that one distinction between, for instance, blacks and whites in America is their high liklihood of inability to exchange bone marrow.
However, if you look in China, you will find that there are over seventeen types of incompatible bone marrow that you could technically argue are racially unique blood lines.
So, the definition of multicultural is not as clear cut as it seems. There's a context to every instance of language use that is ignored in casual conversation, but comes into play when talking about enormous notions like "cultlure" that is ignored at peril when you're using the phrase in American English and assuming your reader shares your background. Given that context, it's not surprising that your results appear to prove your point. However, appearances can be deceiving when dealing with the BIG issues.
- There is no infrastructure to be rebuilt, it has to be built from the ground up.
- There is no education system in place.
- It is very unclear if there is anyone we can trust to not abuse authority when we want to hand it over and leave. This was especially true in Monrovia.
- Considering the racial politic in the U.S., any pre-emptive move on any country in Africa would likely spark insurrection here.
- France considers Africa its personal playground, and would take steps to make our stay there distinctly uncomfortable.
- Last but not least, there are an unknown number of health hazards in Africa. I could just see it...after six months of war in the middle of the jungle we finally arrive at peace, only to witness an outbreak of a cousin of Ebola. Just peachy.
The reason we didn't knock off Hussein earlier was simple: we didn't know if the next Baathist nutjob(maybe one of his sons, maybe not) would be worse. We didn't go in there to knock him off. We went in there to knock off him and his power base.It's amazing to me that people expect things to be so kind and peaceful over there....crying out loud, it took a whole lot longer than that after the U.S. won its independence from Britain & after the U.S. Civil War for things to settle down. In fact, I would say that things are still settling down from the latter...
Ahh well. You're right. Invasions are nasty business. No, not much nastier than I'd think. I think we've had it pretty easy. We've lost more people to murder in Chicago over the same period of time than we have in Iraq. I think the best we can do is set Iraq up with a government and let them sort it out. Will we be sending them money for the next 50 years? Yep. Look at the bright side...at least now, when we send twice what we sent to Israel to Iraq people won't claim we're Zionists.