World Summit On The Internet And IT

eegad writes "The Seattle PI reports on the upcoming first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society to be held in Geneva on December 10-12. 192 nations are involved in the effort to set some ground rules for the Internet (a little late, eh?) including ways to deal with spam, a possible "digital solidarity fund" to help developing nations, and discussion of UN regulation. The goal of this phase is to adopt a "Declaration of Principles" and "Plan of Action". Some countries plan on asking for a UN commission to study new ways of running the Internet aimed at the 2005 phase. The official website will provide coverage of the event. How come I wasn't invited?" The Washington Times also has a piece on it, as well. We had covered this a bit before.

Comments

cross your fingers..

[grub]

192 nations are involved in the effort to set some ground rules for the Internet ... including ways to deal with spam

I hope Nigeria doesn't have any sort of veto power at this summit.

Re:cross your fingers..

[Zocalo]

Actually, given the probable means of applying the death penalty in Nigeria (stoning), combined with the Nigerian government's efforts to crack down on 419 scams, I rather hope Nigeria *does* have a big say at the conference... I'll be right at the front of the queue for a bag of gravel, and some nice pointy rocks when the first spammers get marched out.

NYTimes has an article too...

[astroview]

Check out the NYTimes article, it points out a bit of the criticism of the whole process.

Link (reigstration req'd, blah blah)

Bad idea?

[stry_cat]

The goal of this phase is to adopt a "Declaration of Principles" and "Plan of Action".

Seems like we're doing ok without this stuff.

Some countries plan on asking for a UN commission to study new ways of running the Internet aimed at the 2005 phase.

Am I the only one who thinks this is going to be a bad idea? It's like getting the government involved only there is no way for citizens to influence the policy.

Re:Bad idea?

[pla]

Well, a centralized authority in control of the internet, while possibly restricting some current freedoms could make tremendous positive impacts in others. For example:
<snip>
This doesn't sound all bad to me

Or for a few more examples that appeal to various major world governments:

• Outlaw the use of all "hard" cryptography.
• Centralized taxation (Did you forget your meds this morning?????)
• No more porn, or at least nothing hard-core
• "Perfect" monitoring of all traffic, shared with all member governments
• Extradition to, say, Syria, for exercising my American freedom of speech and religion

Sorry, but this has a LOT more potential for a bad outcome than for improvement on the few flaws the internet currently has. Keep the governments (any or all, doesn't matter to me) the hell away from the net!

"a little late, eh?"

[musikit]

not really. considering it takes OUR government 10-20 years to recognize technology. i would say this is a rather fast turn around for a body of government set up by bodies of government.

Al Gore

[pdjohe]

I heard they are going to make Al Gore in charge of the whole meeting.

After all, he did create the thing, right? ;)

hunt down spammers

[m0rphin3]

The best thing they can do is make it illegal for spammers to get safe harbor anywhere.
Or, failing that, to make sure that spam only gets sent to the country of origin somehow. That would eliminate 90% of my spam, which is from the US.

Probably it will only end up in another treaty the US will refuse to ratify, like Kyoto and the International Court of Justice.

Re:hunt down spammers

[sulli]

Yes. But the best thing they can do is have a talkfest accomplishing nothing, like all the other UN world summits. As long as they issue some bland communique talking about how we need to make technology better for the children, that is fine. If the ITU tries to take over the internet, the US needs to shitcan that treaty faster than Kyoto.

(If they don't like the internet, they can always build their own. I hear Minitel is a nice technology built by an ITU member.)

Re:hunt down spammers

[thrillseeker]

it will only end up in another treaty the US will refuse to ratify, like Kyoto and the International Court of Justice.

The U.S. should rightfully continue to refuse to agree to any treaty that has not been shown to be in the best interests of the citizens of the U.S.

UN/ITU Power Grab?

[fuzzybunny]

There's an interesting article about this at El Reg. I'm pretty worried about what's going on there; for all the failing of ICANN, it's always been sort of emblematic of the prevailing idea in western countries to keep bureaucracy from throttling the Internet. Think what you will about various nations bad handling of Internet traffic and user rights, the over-corporatization of the net, and ICANN's distasteful tactics over domain handling; the Internet as we know it is a far cry from what it might have been had the ITU been allowed to be the driving force behind it.

I don't relish the idea of the type of bureaucrat who brought us WIPO deciding by fiat where the greatest communications revolution in human history is going to go.

So long Internet, it was nice knowing you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Organizations like the UN, unaccountable by most means in their actions, will only try to leverage further control by government authorities to make sure we're all trackable and monitored for "appropriate behavior". Nothing good will come from this. Kiss the "free" anarchy-style of the Internet goodbye.

Such a bad idea.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I know others ahve already commented about this, but honestly what good can come from this? I don't want any part of the internet under UN control. Right now the internet is mostly apolitical and thats the way it should stay. I cannot believe this could lead to anything good.

Re:Such a bad idea.

[jxs2151]

I don't want any part of the internet under UN control.

I find it hilarious that the same Slashdot crew that was screaming for UN control of the Iraq situation now wants nothing to do with the UN when it comes to the Internet. Seems to me the desire for the UN to intervene was mere anti-Bush propganda.

Changing your position when it suits you is intellectually dishonest and is known as hypocrisy. Have the balls to hold your position.

The UN has no business in anything. Intelligent people can look at their track record and come to the conclusion that they are more fucked up than a football bat.

Heh, gotta love the U.N.

[mikesab]

Since the U.N. is inherently a governing entity, it will invariably feel the need to regulate everything it can. It is in its very nature to regulate. They even managed to throw in the word "solidarity". Every time I hear that word, my ears perk up.

analysis

[theMerovingian]

The goal of this phase is to adopt a "Declaration of Principles" and "Plan of Action".

Person 1: Sounds like it was created by an MBA.

Person 2: Actually, it was a committee.

Person 1: OK, a committee of MBA's.

Person 2: A committee of MBA's who work for the government!

Both: (run away and hide under cubicles)

Re:Best thing they can do

[Hubert Q. Gruntley]

Agreed on most points.

I'm not sure PKI needs to be part of the SPAM solution. Three reasons:
1) The same clueless ficktwizzles that set up their mail servers as open relays (224K of them? according to ORDB.org) will also be setting up their mail server certificates. No, this isn't fraught with peril.

2) There isn't a black market (that I'm aware of, doh) of private keys. Client certificates are useless, server certificates are useless unless you also own the domain name, code signing certificates, well, um, yeah I guess those are dangerous. But we've seen the lengths spammers will go, and I can easily foresee a huge market for stolen certificates, if now every domain has one to send mail.

3) The _last_ thing we need to do is get Verisign slobbering over using certificates for email. Over in the SPF discussion mailing list there are Verisign people who want certificates in the DNS records published by SPF.

just say NO to the UN

[Shivetya]

Sorry, but they can't manage anything. The United Nations is a failed idea looking for relevance. Unfortunately anything they take over becomes a mockery of what it is supposed to.

Worse, the UN routinely caves into member states that are notorious violators of human rights. What good can from an organization that has human rights committees comprised of brutal dictatorships? Of disarnament committees run by the same?

Sorry, a UN managed internet would simply give certain 3rd world countries (and some European) a new means to bash or otherwise attempt to restrict prospering Western countries. It would advance anti-Jewish attitudes, probably going as far as to restrict Israel! China would be given free reign to threaten Tiawan and run ramshackle over tibet. Can you imagine what these nations would want to classify as SPAM?

No thank you. ICANN might be annoying but at least we can lay hands on them

Re:First Election

[Mohammed Al-Sahaf]

Do not believe the lies my friend. There is only one man for this job. Make no mistake, when I am made Minister of the Information Society the blood of the spammers will flow like wine. Our low price septic tanks will be full of the corpses of the armies of slaughtered spammers. We shall strike them down like the dogs they are. They are superpower of villains. They are superpower of Al Capone. And we shall destroy them.

Lesseg and RMS will be there, and so will I

[Hesperus]

I'm a programmer working at the W.H.O., which is just down the road from the exibition hall, so I've been looking at the schedule to see what events might be interesting or useful to attend.

Looks like a lot of local linux users (see G.U.L.L) are planning to attend at least the panel with Larry Lessig and RMS on Wednesday. RMS is also speaking on Thursday.

The Marxist Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

"Spam could be outlawed once and for all worldwide, with harsh penalties for violation."

Should we apply Marxist solutions: gulags (Stalin), death farms (Cambodia) or rape camps (Serbia)?

"An international agreement of standards for content could bring freedom of information to places where there is a lack of information"

Yes. We know that government control always makes things more free!

"Centralized taxation..."

Yes. The greedy ruling class must get a cut!

"Elimination of various objectively hateful websites from the internet, e.g., holocaust denial, neo-nazis, gun merchants"

And, of course, left-wing hate sites (MLM, neo-soviets) all remain uncensored.

WSIS has nothing to do with society.

[Wolfbone]

I notice that none of the articles mentioned the opposition to the corrupt way the WSIS has banned various interest groups and fudged their Declaration of Principles and Action Plan so as not to offend the mighty corporate interests who don't like the ideas of freedom of information and basic human rights.

This summit is a betrayal of it's original ideals, and especially of the World's poor. Various groups are intending to strongly oppose this travesty; there is more information and here.

Where is freedom of expression?

[rumblin'rabbit]

Under "What values should underlie the foundations of the information society", WSIS says this: "The universal human values of equality, and justice, democracy, solidarity, mutual tolerance, human dignity, economic progress, protection of the environment, and respect for diversity are the foundations for a truly inclusive global information society."

Where oh where is freedom of expression in all this? Or is that too much of a threat to the organizations sponsering this summit?

Ground Rules. such as :

[nurb432]

New rules:

1 - No individual anonymity
2 - No free speech for individuals
3 - No national information sovereignty.
4 - Taxation to pay for enforcement of the new rules
5 - Jails to house all the new criminals.

Are you sure?

[Raven42rac]

Are you sure there are 192 nations participating, and not 192.168 nations? What about the 10.x or the 169.254 nations you insensitive clods?

html

[loconet]

They should start by banning frontpage as a tool to create webpages. Yes that would mean they'll have to recode their official website as well