Slashdot Mirror
Moving Net Control From ICANN to Governments?
a whoabot writes "The BBC has a piece by Bill Thompson suggesting that "control" of the internet should move away from corporate groups(ICANN and the Web Consortium) and to governments. We previously had an article on ICANN and the UN World Summit on the Information Society. One quote: "We allow images of consensual sex in our cinemas, but not images of bestiality or child abuse. Why should the net be any different?" My personal answer: because the internet should not be another TV or cinema, it should be a free, user-as-peer and user-controllable media; a "reversible" media, as Baudrillard would put it; not user-as-consumer."
beastie porn is a small price to pay for free speech!
or if not possible, any Scandinavian country. They have a very good culture of privacy. Plus nobody will ever tell the Swiss what to do or bomb them because everyone has their money there.
The internet should not be the product of politics and debate. Absolute lunacy, and a totally stupid idea, as well.
Worst. Idea. Ever.
When its controlled by the government, it will be lobbied into a capitalist tool of consumer exploitation. Profit at its best.
Even Adam Smith 200 years ago realised that companies control important objects of society was a poor idea; the incentive for profit and exploiting the system for the benifit of the companies and their shareholders is just too much.
If it were up to me, i'd give it to a UN body. The last people i'd want to give it to is the US government, not because i'm anti US, but because i don't think one country should have control of such a multi-national object. The arguement that "we made it" doesn't hold any water.
The problem with government control is 'which' government? How do they agree? A lot of governments wouldn't want anything opposing the dominant political group/party/mindset. Other governments wouldn't want any religious references to anything other then Jesus/Buddah/Muhammed/etc.
If a government wants to impose restrictions on servers in their own countries, fine, but not outside.
lets not make another tv here
something different for a change please
Then Corporate @#$@#!@%$s can buy their way into controlling it.
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
Network solutions shouldn't have been allowed to get into any business besides selling domain names and providing DNS. Anything else (like selling ads on their sitefinder) and there is a risk they will do something to DNS to promote their other products rather than improve usability (as they did). They shouldn't even be allowed to send unlimited e-mails to domain name owners.
TLD registrars and DNS providers should be small companies, run by people who are content to do a job and make a small profit, but not have unlimited freedom/growth potential of a private company that doesn't provide any exclusive service to the public.
I hope ICANN moves in that direction right away and not even bother with separate lawsuits for various small points.
I think the problem here is that most people will think that the internet is either entirely its own thing, or a computer-network equivalent of television, that it is EITHER one thing OR another. In fact, it can have some of the same attributes of TV (like superbowl half time shows...) and none of the others (commercials every 3 minutes, content regulations, content restrictions). There is an error in thinking it must be an extreme case of either. Some error of logic that probably has a specific name.
I think the internet must be subject to certain restrictions (e.g. pedo-porn, bestiality) but that number should be small.
The articles author starts out with "How to control what is online..." but never asks the question if it should be controlled. (To a very limited extent, yes, but certainly not to the degree he's suggesting.)
;) )
;) We're responsible for our own actions.
Then, he goes on to give an example of a woman who was killed by "someone whose fantasies of killing were nurtured, if not engendered, by the pornographic images he found so easily on the web". I find it difficult to believe that someone went from being a perfectly normal person to a killer sjust he viewed some internet porn. (If that were true, half of Slashdot readership could turn into killers!
Then, his solution to all this is to let the government control the internet, and to "change" it to support that control. There are two problems with that:
1) The government is not some giant parental figure who's supposed to protect us from harm, no matter how much liberalism would like us to believe that.
2) Since he suggests "changing" the internet, but provides no plan on doing that, I have to question whether he has any idea of what would be involved. Market-driven forces are the only thing that really make significant changes now, and giving control the the government would completely undermine that. It would have to be in the interest of the market to have changes made to the internet, and until that happens, change won't.
libertarianswag.com
... myDNS.
C'mon, we always dreamed of an internet in which all the subversive stuff would be only available to people in the know when playing Cyberpunk 2020 in the early 1990s anyway...
Someone, somewhere gets murdered and the victims blame the internet. Johnny Lydon curses and someone gets their panties in a bunch.
There is no aspect of anybodies life that the government does not seek to control. They will attempt to control the net. There will always be some whining class of people victimized by something they see as evil. Government now switches between liberal/conservative politicians each with their own sets of victim classes expecting special treatment. I don't expect the future to be bright for an unregulated internet.
I guess he's a columnist and therefore paid to think the unthinkable, but there are more productive ways of doing that than by making yourself a laughing stock whom nobody listens to. A simple search of this site would have given him an idea of the problems with "just replacing email with something better and spam-proof", and that's a tiny part of what he's suggesting. The way the internet is built may have aspects that suck pretty badly, but like it or not we're stuck with it. Perhaps if someone had made these suggestions in 1990 there'd be a chance of replacing it wholesale, but not now. Too much has been built on it.
Besides which, he'll need to do a lot more to convince me that the internet is better in the hands of governments than bodies like ICANN than just say "because I say so". He glosses over issues like repressive regimes with little more than "well if the people don't like their government they can always kick them out".
If this was a one-off piece I'd be prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt but you can read for yourselves his previous pieces on the BBC website - they're almost without exception inane, badly-researched drivel.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Who the hell trusts their government? Who the hell wants someone else to tell them, and everybody what they can and cannot see. Information should not be controlled, and it can't ever be completely controlled.
Define regression.
...and a prentious one at that. You can rest assured whatever the prevalent geek view, Bill Thomson will differ. He tries so desperately hard to make everybody think he is knowledgeable, and represents US, but the guy is a tosser and and an ignorant one at at that.
He thinks because he has a beard he has the right to put right the geek community. He is seriously that shallow. We shouldn't even waste breath on this guy.
Wanker.
by someone(I can't remember who), it should not go to the UN or EU. Last I remember the internet was created here in the USA.
Cyberbite Networks - Web Hosting, Dedicated Servers & Colocati
Good call, the internet is about freedom-- Fahrenheit 451-- awesome book to read, and that's what the world is coming to (in a less extreme level, of course). Censorship sucks, considering I own www.pleaseeat.us and i'm sure that the domain will get suspended sooner or later... goatse.cx had it happen to them.
Pls No Negative Modding!
One quote: "We allow images of consensual sex in our cinemas, but not images of bestiality or child abuse. Why should the net be any different?"
Not only should the internet "...not be another TV or cinema, it should be a free, user-as-peer and user-controllable media an essential (perhaps the most) tenet of "hacker metaphysics" is that "whatever one mind can achieve, another can duplicate and surpass". Control the content of the Internet? Impossible. Just ask the Chinese.
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
Government control is worse, not better!
On the whole, government control of these resources is a bad thing. The best thing is to engineer it so that is no need for a single governing body at all. That way there is no lock-in to any governing body.
Aren't there already several alternate roots for DNS we could all be supprting? That's the way to keep DNS free--have many competing providers. Some can be corporate, some volunteer.
As for ridding the system of assigned numbers (IANA), that's tougher.
Just great... Let's give the government more power.... Let see our free speech, and digital civil liberties erode when/if the government takes over control of the net (which is futile anyways)..
Governments cannot be trusted because their is too much corruption (aka lobbyism).
If we had a United Digital Nations, then maybe it wouldnt be as bad, however it would still give the U.S. power to bully other nations because the U.S. "is always right", you know, just like the war with Iraq was 100% right...
The Net should be controlled purely by the people that use it. That means everyone, every slashdot user, every joe blow internet user, not by corps (like it is now), or worse even government. This medium has the ability to continue to change the world for the better (hopefully). Atleast it would have the ability to unite us closer, and IMHO that is what its going to take to solve a lot of these problems in the world we have today, not by being repressed by some corporation or lobbied government...
It may be fucked up now, but how much do you want to bet that Gov't can fuck it up even more? At least business and industry consortiums have a profit motive; governments only have a power motive.
C|N>K
I feel that Slashdot is the bestest of all discussion sites on teh Intarweb. The signal-to-noise ratio is so high! It's a good thing we all get along and have a functional moderation system. I love Slashdot!
Stupid people like this BBC a**hole are *asking* for terrorism.
have control of the internet. It is the best and the worst of society, and while I agree it should be policed by enforcement agencies against crimes committed by citizens of that country that are illegal in that country, it should never be up to those same countries to censor content that may not be illegal in other countries.
There can also be standards bodies, who are a community of users who recommend standards for the rest of the community to follow, but they should not have control either.
Disagree? Reply, don't mod down.
- not free speech. If the Internet were ever government controlled, their actions would become more anti-freedom and pro-tyranny. A perfect example of this comes off the news today. The story of a serial killer in Canada is being quashed in Canada BY THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT!! There should be unified identification methods to allow the people to decide what they want/get to see, but that is the end of it. Personal responsibility should be the new benchmark to which everyone adheres.
Also, once the dodo bird is dead, we can use the newly-empty continent to store our garbage and nuclear waste. It's a win-win situation.
btw, Baudrillard's audience is rapidly shrinking to lit-crit departments, and those who find the Matrix to be philosophical. His chief use to scholarship is to provide the muddle-headed with clever sounding catchphrases that can be bandied about with abandon.
Since when are cinemas run by the state over there?
And if we give it to 'a' country - like the US government, who already seems to think they own it - we'll all be more subject to their insanities.
In addition, the whole concept of 'excluding content' is simply the wrong way to go about it. Censorship never accomplishes its goals, nor does it elevate content. Any step in that direction is a 'foot in the door', and excluding things because we find them objectionable is poor practice; I can probably find someone (or even a 'category' of someones) who dislikes what any given post on /. says.
The way to deal with child pornography is not "banning" it; it's prosecuting people who create and purchase it. It's working to fix the economic problems that create situations where parents will submit their children to such indignities; it's finding the sick bastards that molest and photograph children in the more affluent parts of the world. It's not giving some entity a mandate to protect us from viewing something we find offensive - because it's only a short step to protecting us from viewing something they find offensive. Like, say, open source software that doesn't honor DRM legislation.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
Thinking outside my Head
>"We allow images of consensual sex in our cinemas, but not images of bestiality or child abuse. Why
>should the net be any different?" My personal answer: because the internet should not be another TV
There is no reason why we should allow things like that on the internet, it is much harder to catch the offenders and it might require international cooperation (or even be impossible if some country decides it wants to make money by protecting them). Never the less there are no reasons to ALLOW it on the net.
Ofcourse thats not an excuse to pass new laws and grant the government addiotional rights, but thats a diffrent issue.
The Internet is about freedom, not about censorship by the Government. Screw Them.
Note the excessively arrogant language, and the prevailing assumption that the author is already right, and the implication all that remains is to hammer out the implementation details of his perfectly reasonable proposal. This is pure flamebait. Thompson might as well have called this "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Internet from being a Burden to the Children and Despotic Governments of the World, and for making it Beneficial to Media Conglomorates."
I'm tempted to guess that he wrote it with the intention of raising the ire of slashdot readers, and getting the expected bazillion comments that every idiotic net-reform proposal gets.
Of course, there's always the chance that he really did think the proposal reasonable, and didn't intend to be trolling. If you believe that, check out his closing paragraphs:
Lumping the United States with China on a list of countries that "[deny] human rights"? News flash, Thompson! Can you guess what would have happened to Dan Ellsberg if he'd stolen the Pentagon Papers from the British government and published them in the NY Times? He'd STILL be in jail under the Offical Secrets Act! (Of course, the real irony is that Thompson is complaing about the U.S.-controlled internet because it's too free.) Your flamebait counter should be redlined about now.
It's a troll. Nothing to see here, move along.
Part of the beauty of the Internet is that no single entity has control over it. It's simply a giant network; you can do anything you want with it, whether it's mirroring the Linux Kernel Archive, running a domain name registration business, or hosting pornographic images.
I don't think these people have quite the right idea of what exactly the Internet is. It isn't just another distributor/consumer medium, like radio or television. The Internet is an interactive environment in which information is distributed on an on-demand basis; that is, the user chooses what content is delivered to him. Because the medium is "ask and ye shall receive," rather than "we're stuffing this junk down your throat whether you like it or not," such stringent control of content as that found on radio or television is really unnecessary. On the Internet, any user who knows what he's doing will be quite capable of protecting himself.
Unless, of course, your goal is to stifle the free exchange of information...
"Screw slashdot." -- Linus Torvalds
Idiocy at its finest. The last thing we need is a censored internet as broadcast television has been censored. Some countries have prohibitions and regulations which stop their "netizens" from viewing any such content which that government deems "inappropriate". I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't live in Vietnam or North Korea because I choose not to.
I'll take my internet uncut please. Thank you.
...For a news organisation that's becoming government controlled in itself.
Get rid of that so called "geek" and bring back the bastions of independance of the BBC - namely Greg Dyke and Gavyn Davies before Britian slides into a New Labour totalitarian tate, with the BBC as its lapdog.
It seems to me that this piece conflates two issues:
- Should the net be controlled by large corporations?
- Should the content of the net be regulated?
and that it gets the priorities backwards. It only briefly addresses the problem of having a network controlled by large corporations and focusses on regulation. In my view, corporate control is dangerous, as is regulation.The primary problem with corporate control is that the corporations will act in their own business interests rather than in the interests of users and people in general. So far things haven't been too bad, but it is easy to see what could happen. We could get lockin to particular proprietary technologies, e.g. MS Windows and IE, including things like DRM and spyware. Furthermore, precisely because corporations are not governments, they are exempt from constraints on censorship such as the First Amendment in the United States. They could censor content in their own interests. So I would like to see control of the net taken away from the big corporations.
However, transferring control to governments is also a bad idea, precisely because that will facilitate regulation. The fact is, most countries in the world are not open and democratic. Many, probably most governments engage in censorship and would do what they could to censor the net. There is a long-standing movement in the United Nations for a "New International Communication Order". Some of the arguments for this reflect the legitiamte desire of less developed countries not to be dominated by rich, developed countries, but the actual proposals that have been made periodically in the UN, particularly by UNESCO, have clearly had censorship as their primary objective. The current political movement to transfer control of the net to governments is just the latest incarnation of this movement.
The argument for regulation made in the BBC piece is weak. It merely repeats tired old arguments that violent publications (whether on the net or on paper) foster violence and that there is too much porn. The evidence for this is incredibly weak. And in view of the very limited harm that certain kinds of content can be argued to do, as opposed to the very great harm that censorship would do, it seems clear to me that facilitating censorship is a bad idea.
Mod grandparent up, parent is a filthy troll!
Problems CowboyKneel regarding accounts or CowboyKneel comment roasting would be sent to CowboyKneel
Problems retarding accounts or comment toasting could CowboyKneel be sent to CrowboySeal. Pronto regarding amounts or comment posting should be meant for CowboyWheel CowboyKneel CowboyWHEEEEEEE.
Problems regarding amounts or comment posting could be sent to CowboyVeal. Progress regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyWheel.
Problems retarding CowboyKneel accounts or comment posting should be sent to KowboyWheel.
LAMENESS FILTER IS TEH SUCKY-SUCKY!!!!!!1111one
what govt would own it? the us may have thought up the idea but the actual WWW that we use before us now is british in origin, basically, this is a joke. maybe the UN should run it? haha.
--- any post that takes longer than 20 seconds to write, isn't worth writing
I gots the Slashdot love, too!
asl?
The Internet is not a thing, it's an agreement.
See What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else.
One of the top countries pushing for gubmint control over the Internet is China. You know the country that has it's own firewall to help them government sniff out subversives.
Finally there are a few EU countries (France) that really like the idea as well. They want to protect their innocent youngsters from "American Culture which is so pervasive on the Internet".
I'd am VERY suspicious of such gubmints, the motives behind them dont seem very "egalitarian". They are self serving, and mostly trying to prevent the free exchange of ideas IMHO.
Bill Thompson's BBC articles epitomise what is wrong with the BBC's current attitude to journalism.
For months they were running one of his articles every week or so, and most times the feedback section would fill up with comments from people disagreeing with him, pointing out the flaws in his arguments, explaining how/what he had misunderstood, detailing factual errors, etc. In my mind, and I'm sure in the minds of others, his articles were becoming a joke and must have been causing some embarrassment at the BBC.
So how did the BBC react?
Did they insist on him doing better research and presenting more sensible arguments? Did they cut back on the number of ill-conceived, subjective crusades he was allowed to go on? Did they decide to drop him entirely?
No.
They dropped the comments section.
The internet is the modern equivalent of the post office or phone or public cafe. No-one except repressive governments censors the phones, mail, or public conversation.
Sure there are some restrictions (you can't send anthrax through the mail or yell 'fire' in a crowded movie theatre) but over all, it's free.
From my cold, dead hands.
ok so that was a joke.
Can anyone say "Hobson's choice"?
Jesus Christ people, if you hang your free speech arguments on the right to show videos of daddy fucking a dog, you will lose those rights.
This is my sig.
I should own the internet.
Dear Mr Thompson Should we see the BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3465383.stm as Blair, Birt, the 'new BBC' (post Hutton. Dyke) floating an idea using Bill Thompson as mouthpiece? This an unquestionable piece of rubbish, filled with sensationalism, specious argument and alarmism. Let's take something rather simple. The Metropolitain Police clear-up rate is about 10%, so government 'policing' of the internet is going to have no good effect anyway. Let's take something specious: Malcolm Sentence, her partner, spoke for many when he said: "Jane would still be here if it wasn't for the internet." You know this, presumably, a priori or have you been conducting opinion polls specifically for this article? Let's take something vague AND specious: If we don't like the fact that the net allows traffic to cross national borders without any controls, then we can build a new network that does allow monitoring. Yes? Monitoring of what? Fleshy jpg packets? Anything encrypted? Anything from dodgy states which may have thought about WMD at some stage (thoughtcrime, but I don't suppose you have read THAT book, you're a 'journalism' lecturer). Still, I suppose that you and the BBC are pleased that you have been 'controversial' and 'contemporary', simply based on the fact that you've made a few people angry. Best regards Hugh Barnard
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Everything in the world should be in control of who knows best about it. One of the major problems in the (western) world today is that every corporation is ruled and owned by businessmen. They only know about business. That's not the way it should be. The music industry should be headed by people who know about music. A car factory should be headed by people who know a lot about cars. The owner of a football team should be someone who knows a lot about football. The computer geeks should be in charge of the internet.
Too often now what happens is some rich person who knows little to nothing about the actual product or industry heads the group/corporation and hires those who do to work for it. Reversing this and putting knowledgable folk in charge of respective organization will solve most of the problems we have today.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
The author is firmly in favor of beastiality, child abuse, kiddie porn, and all that stuff?
George Orwell would turn in his grave
Here in Finland, and in other contries in Europe (don't know if all, but at least in the ones where I lived) the gov't is the one who assigns domains. THAT SUCKS because only if you are a company/corporation can get a .fi domain.
.fi domain for whatever the teck they want it. Want to put your software or hardware projects online? Want to make a family website? A club website? In Finland you can't!
.com domain.
.fi. Well, just go ahead and control it.
So, normal folks do not have the option to get a
So you see, this system is much more biased against the citizen and in favor of corporations.
So, what I did was, I found a cheap registrar in the US (godaddy.com seems to be rock bottom cheapest) and registered my own
Yeah, my money went to the US, because the fscking government wants to keep control of
Sigged!
Liar!
privacy is very bad in switzerland.
as long as you do like everybody else
you privacy is okay, else you're
f#cked!
believe me, lived there.
actually switzerland is a very
poor country (they know it),
but un-understandable every
dummy wants to put their money in a
"swiss bank number account".
poor like in: "you have any natural resources?"
oh yah! and they're arrogant too.
the swiss government has orderd swisscom
telephone/internet operator to backup
location of mobile phonecalls made for three
months.
like someone famous said: "switzerland is
baren rock with a bit of dirt throw on."
Go on, drop him an email: bill@andfinally.com
omg lolzor i m n my parentz bassmint 2! onlee i have onleee one celeryon but it is superpooperclocked to 666 mangahurts!!!!!!! and im a loneleee 44 yr old man 2!!!!!
want 2 cyber????
We must fight this before the internet becomes as regulated as television. We need to form a group of people who can be trusted to host the root name servers. I know it won't be easy, but if we don't do it, we will end up with an internet where many controvertial web sites go the way of goatse.
Remember, the root name servers can only be abused if we choose to use them. There is no reason we can't set the rules ourselves, and if the domain registrars disagree, we just use our own servers and pretend they don't exist.
P.S. The Slashdot editors should be embarrased for not covering the goatse.cx domain removal in the Your Rights Online section! This is such a huge story, with censorship of a site so central to slashdot culture (troll culture admittedly, but the importance can't be ignored).
First they came for goatse.cx, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a slashdot troll. (Google "Martin Niemoller")
Why is everyone so gung ho to privatize things nowadays? The only thing we as a people have any control over is the preserve of government. Corporations are accountable only to their shareholders...a handful of wealthy men who care little or or nothing for the welfare of the rest of us. Corporations have the rights of citizens, but not the responsibilities. They exist only to make money. They give nothing to anyone. The government is...in democratic nations, at least...elected by the people, and accountable to their wishes. They do not unexpectedly go bankrupt (usually), merge with other companies, or sell your private information to the highest bidder. We all enjoy the fruits of their labors (roads, schools, new technologies) equally. When the phone companies were privatized, a phone call was a dime. Now they are fifty cents, and we have enjoyed such new innovations as slamming and telemarketer harassment. Can you imagine Microsoft's "Driver Certification Program"...a three-day, 1000-dollar now-you-can-drive, too, seminar? How about Adobe awarding and revoking copyrights? (Dang, they got bought out...guess all my copyrights are worthless now!) What if your water supply was dependent upon the whims of Verisign? (No, I don't want to hold, I've had no water for two weeks...hello?) Thanks, anyway, but I prefer the red tape and innefficancy of MY government to the greed and calousness of THEIR corporation any day of the week.
This is the crux of the problem of this sort of plan.
Who is defined as 'we'? Do we just take everything to the lowest common denominator, and censor the rest? ( once its government control it qualifies as censorship )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
want 2 cyber????
that really depends on your distro. i only get out the genitals for genitoo.
Governments are such good managers and because all the governments of the world get along so well, you can be sure they'll have no problems making progress on every need that arises. Oh yeah, this is simply a brilliant idea.
I love the quote "It will be a network on which freedom of speech is guaranteed by law, not simply allowed because of technical decisions on network architecture made 30 years ago by a bunch of academic computer scientists." Yeah, I see China hopping right on board with this.
And let's face it, rebuilding the internet from scratch, as he proposes, poses no real technical challenge. All we have to do is come up with a new set of standards and a new set of hardware and software that supports those standards. That'll only take a week or two, right? At a cost of maybe a few hundred dollars, right?
This guy is clearly brilliant and sees things much clearer than "a bunch of academic computer scientists."
he talks about goatse.cx which is yucky, mod this fucker down into oblivion hes obviously a filthy troll with nothing to say!! goatse is doubleplusungood /friendly neighborhood slashbot
"Threatening" people with BULLSHIT is now called journalism?
This is as stupid as the idea of email taxes to prevent spammers from spamming.
But it obviously takes a supreme TROLL like me to figure that out.
The article demonstrates an appalling lack of skepticism and common sense. We are supposed to trust the British government just because they are "not like the United States or China"? Maybe they are not, at the moment, but they could become so at any time. Voluntarily giving extra power to the governments is one of the stupidest ideas suggestable.
K
In the event of a globally united democracy this might be a good idea, but now: nah.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
i use red firehat and teh yellow dog!!!!!!11 omg lol k thx bye.
I wonder what he, a Briton, would think of turning it over to the French? Will he object when the Academie Francaise demands that he write his articles only in French?
Chip H.
I still don't see the problem with the internet as it currently is. Sure, we have to beat back the corporations occasionally, but overall it works.
I don't understand how the porn fits in.... do they actually believe that by passing control to a government body, porn and such will disappear? These are the people who can't agree what color the sky is without several years of debate, forget coming up with a censorship standard (and even if they could, it would still be a bad thing).
but i think the Internet should become even MORE peer-to-peer.
a broadband server in every home and in every building!
what about a greazy jar jar?
Oh Jar Jar, everyone hates you but me.
i'm against all kinds of abuse, be it against ...
animals, children, woman, men
the problem is the human factor.
you can make laws for everyone but
times change. laws are for general
public, but they do not garanty
that the public as a whole will have
good ethic standards.
this is up to every individual
him/herself to "enforce" on themselfs.
methinsk every *.cn / *.dk / *.sg / etc.
should be controlled by the said country.
me also wishes that U.S.A would stop using
"*.com / *.net / *.gov" but use "*.co.us"
like every other country.
me also wishes that computers located
in china can ONLY apply for a "*.*.cn" ending.
or computers physically located in japan
can only apply for "*.*.jp"
at least abuses can be pinpointed to
certain "decadent" countries this way.
Sorry, but some women do have cocks.
Whether it's the UN, the US government, certain companies, or even the Slashdot membership controlling the Internet, there is always the possibility of abuse. That's why we need a constitution of sorts. Just as with the constitutions of nations, if there is a clear set of rules about what those in power can do and especially what they cannot do, then I for one would have a lot less issues with handing over control to a government or even a company.
The question then becomes: who will write this constitution? There's no easy answer, but at least the rules and limitations will be out in the open and up for criticism up front. Much better than just putting someone in charge, who might then feel within his rights to, say, point all unresolved DNS lookups at their own registrar service page.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
This is so true. Slashbot moderation is really getting on my nerves lately. What exactly makes this post flamebait? Seriously. I don't see it.
Neither corporations or government should control the net! There is no reason that a diversity of private persons and institutions can not own and control the network. For example, there is no reason that private organizations can not run top level domain servers! Some are already doing so! If corporations or government attempt to control the net in ways detrimental to the people by using control of top level DNS servers, then private DNS servers are a way for the people to short circuit this control! "The net interprets censorship (control) as damage and routes around." The same with IP allocation under IPV6! If some "official" organization attempts to tax this essentially infinite resource, then private more reasonable IP allocation organization should spring into being! The private org should inform the "official organization" that they are requsitioning such and such block of IP addresses for free use! The official org would then have an interesting choice: acquiesce and not allocating any "official" IP addresses in this block. Or be responsible for conflicts. This is a choice between two things: Lose its position as a monopoly source of IP addresses, or loose the ability to claim that its IP addresses are without conflicts! Either way the official org looses power. The smartest thing for the official org to do is: Don't tax IP addresses in the first place or keep the tax completely nominal. In this way the official org may prevent the rebellion from starting in the first place!
Personally I think it's all quite irrelavant. By the time they could even finish concieveing such a gargantuan project, the internet will have evolved into something beyond even the control of the corps. Anyone who doesn't see that needs to pay closer attention. Technology will inevitably push the internet into the sole control of it's members, and by members, I mean the users, US! The internet is democrocy in it's purest form. It is the community that will decide what is and is not acceptable. And fortunatly they so far have chose what can be considered the closest incarnation of freedom yet to be seen. I personally would love to see some government spend billions of dollars developing this 3rd internet, only to find that no one but the corps use it. That is if I didn't know it would further cut education and medical. Because we know they won't cut military spending. Maybe they'll try to mold Internet 2 into what they envision as the perfect dystopia, but that's not really where "their" problem will lie.
In truth, the "new" internet will fly through the airwaves and be relayed by we the people. We will be the gatekeepers. We will hold the keys. The govs and the corps will be but another node in a sea of webs. We will own the pipes. We will own it all.
Greed should be a four letter word.
o)
I think the point is not controlling information flow but cash flow.
producing pedo-porn is expensive. some perverts pay for it. how do they pay? they pay by credit card. THATs the point where the law could hit these guys.
the "greatest evils" of the net are only possible because of the international bank secret. a bank which does not reveal customer-data to the police should be closed right away... but how should ie the us close an swiss bank? perhaps this swiss bank should be forbidden to operate in us / us citizen be forbidden to work with this specific bank.
why is this impossible?
because these, who have the power to abolish inpenetrable bank secrets need exactly these banks in order to avoid paying taxes.
well, not meant as a flame or whatever, but really..
the govt controls every single "public service" in the country. yes theres degrulation, and some major corporatiosn run certain things, depending on what country you are in, but really.
is not the internet a public service like any other? like radio, tv, newspaper, etc etc ?
radio is free for me to listen to, multiple stations, channels, etc. but it is regulated. like everything else.
illegal acts should not be tolerated in any sense of the words.Its not tolerated in any other public service, so why this one? Yes, ok the adage of "if you don't like it, change the channel", but that doesn't apply to the extremes. like beastiality, and child porn, etc etc. those should never be allowed in any context. regardless.
and there are certain other things that fall into the same categories...
As a society in whatever country, we need to have a certain amount of mimimum standards adhered to.
Apparently no one.
The UN is the last place you want with any control over the internet. Why you ask? Simple, outside of the Security Council the UN is proof of what is wrong with a pure democracy. Piss-ant countries have votes of equal strength of large countries. This allows them to band together to punish countries which adopt ideals they don't like, have flourishing economies, complain about the piss-ant countries human rights violations, and etc.
Look at the crap that goes on in the GA concerning Israel. No one takes the GA seriously anymore. Armnament comittees and Human Rights committees are routinely stacked with the worst abusers if not directly chaired by them. The Iraq Oil for Food program was a cash cow for the UN. The admin fees were exhorbinant and when some countries complained they got bought off.
If anything the net should be controlled by a publically controlled body. Something that people can get a hand on. Governments and world governments make businesses look like saints.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
// This post was originated byJakub Friedl. // Some modification by geekoid.
//relesed under the GPL. //
" yes. but the world wide web, which is the most important part of internet today (and the part which is used by muggles and other non-geeks almost exclusivelly) is European creation (CERN, Switzerland), and I am a doofus for using the term muggles in a non harry potter conversation"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Who the hell trusts their government? Who the hell wants someone else to tell them, and everybody what they can and cannot see. Information should not be controlled, and it can't ever be completely controlled.
Thanks, there seems to be this attitude that the internet cant thrive without some kind of centralized controll (corporate, government, or otherwise). I disagree - routing, protocool, addressing, and DNS can (and will) all be done indepentently of any centralized authority if needed. I envision something that is self organized (Like linux development, no central government, no central corporation, natural pressures not to fork the standard) The question we should really be asking is how to redo the DNS so that it's completely non centralized, and how to redo the address assignemnts so that you can just randomly pick out one out of 2^128 addresses, and everybody will learn how to route to you and lookup your name. Then natural pressures will keep anyone else from trying to co-opt it.
Certain Governments are currently led by staunchly religious premiers and their ministers. Is it not the case that many religions are responsible for widespread, unabated and terrifying abuse and misery the world over?
Imagine if the internet was presided over by the Vatican for example...
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
I working out a way to break up ICANN and allow lots of competing, innovating domain registrars, I designed the following way to allow the governing body to exist independent of any country.
No government would have the power to change its policies, other than by passing laws on its own citizens.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
A great FUD merchant if ever I saw one.
The above article, on Linux not having controls to ensure that contributed code is not protected by copyright was the most ignorant piece of junk written. It's interesting to note that when IBM took over a software company, they found numerous open source code contributions inserted into their closed product, and reduced the sale cost of the company by approximately 12 million dollars to allow for the cost of remedying this fact. Linux version control is probably not perfect, but it is transparent and public, and where copyright/ patent transgressions have been found, code has been removed or rejected.
The latest article proposes a totally repugnant idea, the total control of online media. As he mentioned, not all of us live in China, but unfortunately about 25% of the population do, and total government control would be anathema to those people brave enough to oppose the regime.
The internet arose from secure military communications, and later a need for scientists and engineers to diseminate papers and information worldwide. Hundreds of thousands of people have contributed to its development and the results are enjoyed by hundreds of millions. While we may not approve of the child we've created, in general it gives us what we as individuals want, not what Nanny thinks is good for us. There is no denying the internet is exploited by some people, but that is universally true of all theatres of life. Even if the government ran it, can you guarentee that noone would exploit the system? The most classic exploitation has often had the connivance of members of the government.
In addition, anonymity is precious on the net. It should be hard for people to be traced if they do not want to be. This fact alone allows freedom of expression. If Bill wants a different net, he's free to go and develop it.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
"We allow images of consensual sex in our cinemas, but not images of bestiality or child abuse. Why should the net be any different?"
"Freddy Got Fingered" contained images of bestiality. I know there are tons of movies with images of child abuse.
As for real-life bestiality or child abuse, there are already laws for that.
Use their feedback form and let them know what you think. Be polite. Here is what I wrote:
------------------
A poor article with several serious flaws.
Firstly, it accepts without discussion the proposition that people are simply influenced by what they see on the Internet. This is far from obvious.
Secondly, it pretends that the Internet is simple to change. This is hubris. The Internet has grown, not been built. There is a fundamental difference.
Thirdly, it pretends that the Internet is a channel like cinema. It is not. It is fundamentally about individuals choosing protocols and applications with which to exchange ideas. The sheer force behind individual's desire to choose and control their personal communications with other individuals means that censoring the Internet is not just a bad idea, it is impossible.
Responsible authors should not pretend that this is a simple matter of social and technical engineering. If the 20th century taught us one thing, it is that such projects fail, miserably, and often at great cost.
Evils and evil people are a product of human nature and its many faces, not of the Internet. It would be more constructive to analyse how violent and dangerous individuals can be identified and isolated from the general population than to pretend that a simple tweaking of our communications infrastructure can eliminate this kind of tragedy.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
While I agree with you that the UN General Assembly suffers from a lack of moral clarity, I think you are confusing the GA with the entire UN System of Organizations.
It is highly unlikely that if the UN were given administrative control of the Internet that the General Assembly would be dealing with day-to-day policy. Instead, the GA would draft a charter for a UN organization, which would then be given somewhat free reign to manage and implement those policies. UN organizations are frequently endowed with very strongly pro-human-rights-and-democracy charters and are not obviously controlled by any particular country.
So while I agree with you that the UN is an imperfect organization, its track record is largely positive (which, of course, isn't newsworthy) and therefore I would be more comfortable giving control of the Internet to them than any other body proposed so far.
Before we can change the net, and make it more able to reflect the real public interest, taking it under democratic control, we must remove it from the hands of these groups, whose time, like that of the elves in Middle-Earth, is over.
So what's more democratic than a system that allows anyone to create content that anyone else on Earth can read?
The places where that doesn't hold true -- China, frex -- just happen to be the same places where the government controls the Internet. I don't think that's a coincidence.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
Those kind compassionate people in the UN?
The same UN who has Siria and Cuba on the human rights oversight board?
The same UN who lined Koffi Anan's pockets witht he oil for food money?
WTF are you smoking?
Create a French i-net, or an affrikan i-net. let there be competition, and see if the world wants to use america's internet, or one of their own. The free US internet, or the controlled UN one... our choice, choose wisely.
i have a server. upwards of 99.9% of the uploads from my server are pornographic. sure, one could ask 'why do you serve porn to the internet', well, i serve most or all of my files(not including some legal copies of copyrighted materials;) )...and it just so happens some 0.1% of my files happen to be porn. :/) with good percentages of uploads of files like 'childporn.mp3'(sean kennedy, 'sluts.mp3' and now 'rocked by rape'(evolution control comittee) ranks in the top 20 or so. neither of these are pornographic, although they discuss sexual issues.
:/
not only is 99% of my uploads porn, but i have had servers in the past(i think i've mentioned this before, but i can't find it due to slashdot's 24-comment-and-no-next-page limitation
why is it that most of the time when i look for porn online i find lolita-9 year old virgin preteen incest files before i find anything i'd want to fuck? because this is what appeals to people and that it wouldn't be there if there wasn't massive demand.
people are fucked up, okay?! if you legislate or in any way break the freedom of the internet up, you aren't *solving* anything. you are merely ignoring the fact that there are some perverted, nay, most of the people in the world are perverted sadistic sick fucks to whom raping children on film is something they can get off to. sure, YOU and your ancestors have evolved past this but THEY have not.
isn't it better to admit this, and as a community come to grips with this and then MABYE try to HELP this massive amounts of people bootstrap themselves into some sort of greater civility should one exist? someone suggested this awhile back but did not emphasize that humanity-as-a-whole-is-messed-up and i wish i had acess to their post as well
the problem is that by and large, human beings who are connected to the internet are messeed up. breaking the internet solves nothing.and furthermore...
"the government is not your freind"-sktfm
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Has anyone considered an Open control of the web? I know the domain registration would pose a serious block but seriously couldn't it be done? I think people with technical knowledge would do an incredibly better job at regulating the `Net vs. a bunch of hairy, old, and stupid men in whichever government is around [my apologies to the few clean-shaven, intelligent men in government]. I really believe that such a move is possible and would be a lot better for the network...children safety ie. .xxx suffix and possibly even an anti-spam army because I really don't need any more herbal viagra, and I don't need more than one or two mortgage refinancings a day.
-- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
How would Sealand be a good choice? A frigate from any country in the world could destroy the "island" upon which Sealand resides.
call it what you will, it appears that the thieving/murdering felonious corepirate nazis are deepending on most all 100 some million of you to stay easily deceivable? that in itself, shows whoreabull lack of consideration, amongst other things.
.asp, right?
it's also not a good bet. lookout bullow.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators.... the light has definitely intervened.
tell 'em robbIE? search engines my
va.gov.msn.controll? not much chance of that won either?
Keep Govt the fuck away from my internet
... not user-as-consumer."
Which is exactly why don't want it in the hands of corporations or corporate bodies such as ICANN. By their very nature, they view everyone as one of
* competitor
* supplier
* customer
(sometimes more than one at a time)
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The sad truth is that if you like incompetent, lying, fumbling, greedy national goverments, you will love the UN: it has historically proven it can actually one-up governments in every aspect.
At least, the few national governments that are regularly elected are accountable to their voters (or lobbies). The UN civil servants are just nominated. They couldn't care less about the public.
Don't be naive. You shouldn't be tempted to give UN the time of day, much less control over the Internet!
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
The whole idea of trying to censor the Internet is pointless anyway. It CAN'T BE censored. Even the friggin' murderous Chicoms can't censor their part of the web, and they have 100% control over all servers and switches. They can and do shoot people for posting politically incorrect things, but they can't keep a lid on it. Truth is getting out anyway, as is beastie porn.
It -can't- be regulated. That's what makes it wonderful
He suggests that the World Wide Web Consortium is an example of a standards organization that should be done away with, but at the same time rails against the notion that corporate interests control the internet. He ignores the fact that if no one sets the standards for the internet, we'll be left with a bottomless quagmire of incompatibility.
His being ignorant of this fact, I assume that the workable solution he's after is to make the W3 more accountable to governments and less accountable to corporate interests (lesser of two evils, I suppoe).
liberalism isnt about government paternalism...liberalism is pro-market thats why the lefties call themselves "progressives" now so as not to be confused with those "awful neoliberals".
No one group whether it be big government or big corporations or big media should get control of the internet. ICANN works because it is content neutral, and somewhat independent and it doesnt care who controls the internet it just cares about numbers and names.
I saw this movie once where a woman bent over and let a dog do her doggy style. It did'nt look very cruel to the dog, in fact several times during the movie, i wished i was that dog!
And besides, what should we base our free speach arguments on? Stuff that the goverment whould allow anyway if they were allowed to cencur anything they wanted?
FRA: STFU GTFO
> "When its controlled by the government, it will be lobbied into a capitalist tool of consumer exploitation. Profit at its best"
.edu. Nice little payoff. Esther was by her own admission clueless about the whole thing and did nothing. It's probably just a concidence she was in IBM commercials at the time.
Wake up, it's already happened. At the end of one meeting 4 years ago the head trademark lawyer for IBM bragged they'd spend 2 years of their $30M a year Washington lobbying budget to make sure no new top level domains had been created to protect their intellectual property interests. Dave Farber was at that meeting (as was Vint "Darth" Cerf).
Roger Cochetti, then a VP of IBM, helped Ira Magazier pick the "interim" ICANN board in secret - when that was supposed to have been done by the internet community. Cochetti is now an NSI VP and figures prominently behind the scenes of ICANN.
The IFWP effort, started in Becky Burr's (US Department of Commerce who have oversight over ICANN) office at the suggestion of Kathy Kleinman and Mikki Barry and had 3 meetings worldwide - Reston Va, Geneva, Singapore to determins consensus points to use as guidelines to create bylaws and elect a board for the organization that would replace IANA. While this was going on Cochetti and Magaziner were running around in secret getting the likes of Ether Dysan and Mike Roberts on board. Mike Single handedly tanked the IFWP effort (notice he has Farbers ear) and became the first president of ICANN and his organization was the recipeint of the "intellectual infrastructure fund" - the domain tax fund that we all paid into back then, and and
(" Esther Dyson says that she was approached by Roger Cochetti of IBM and Ira Magaziner in Aspen, Colorado and asked if she would be interested in joining the ICANN Board. The IFWP wrap up was finally completely derailed by ICANN's refusal to participate in the meeting."
ICANN was created to do one thing: make new tlds at a time when it seemed (at least to the US government) the US government had to step in to solve the war between the IAHC camp (who had just been shut down) and the alt root camp (who seemed to be making progress). Magaziner met with us all and created the "white paper" that was going to create 7 new tlds immediatly. Trademark lawyers and the EU freaked and when it was revised as the "green paper" it had punted to "ICANN will create a method to elect a board and a process to create new tlds". Instead they spent 3 years futzing around with the UDRP and other things trademaek laywrs wanted and didn't get round to new tlds till the fall of 2000 and it must have had all of ten minutes thought put into it and was intentinally lame as hell. To this day the new tlds that were picked are still viewed by ICANN as a "feasability study" to deteremine the effect of net stability when adding new tlds. Never mind in that period 100 new cctlds were added almost all of which were commmercial in nature.
Then you have the "Government Advisory Committe" the well named GAC of ICANN. Governments of the world get to meet in secret and "advise" ICANN.
Govrernments and the Tradmark Lobby have already coopted ICANN. It's foolish to worry that the ITU/UN will let this happen if they're in control, it's already happened.
So, don't move control of the internet to ineffective treaty organizations, move it to you
Need Mercedes parts ?
Bill Thompson is the same man wo said that Google should be privatised like a public utility simply because it has become so powerful.
The BBC has a couple of crackpots with writing priveledges, like the one that recently trolled for attention.
Personally, I cannot stomach control addicts like Thompson who are terrified of the ad hoc nature of the internet. They dont understand how it works, why it works so well, and....you know the story.
What I also fail to understand is how the BBC cannot find anyone with a brain cell to write about the internet. They are making some very interesting and fun work at the moment, surely someone somewhere in the BBC has a clue and can write.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
translation:- this means war!
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
Yeah, right. Bill Thompson had less role in "creating this network" than Al Gore (and unlike Gore he really is making this preposterouos claim, and compounds the sin by suggesting it as a basis for policy).
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
There's a lot of ways you can set each of them up, but the only fundamental difference is who those bodies are accountable to. Corporations are accountable to their shareholders. Governments are accountable to their citizens. The latter is based on the principle of one person, one vote; the former is based on the principle of one dollar*, one vote.
I don't trust either kind of body, but I distrust governments less.
*or equivalent in local currency
No, that isn't is at all, as demonstrated by the existence of dozens of governments that clearly don't give a rat's rump about their citizens' opinions or welfare, and go along indefinitely without being held to account.
The actual difference is that a government has a monopoly on the use of force (i.e. the government may use force at its discretion; others within its borders may use force only insofar as the government permits).
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
I partially agree with the post's final point, but really, the internet is not just a form of "media", so that broadens the reason not to treat it as such.
From what I can gather from the various bestiality guides around:
For females: if you try mount the animal, and she tries to escape from you or makes a threatening noise, chances are she's not consenting. If she's aroused, she's definitely consenting. As for any gray area left -- well, that's (if you'll excuse me) the nature of the beast.
For males: if you can't tell, you should be castrated.
We need a way to translate names to numbers, not a new world government.
This takes a clue, and a willingness to cooperate.
Look at how usenet is managed. Without the central point of capture DNS suffers from (the root zone) usenet cannot be controlled and it's administration is a boring technical fact, not an object of a power grab by bored Swiss political wonks.
Need Mercedes parts ?
> "Not very well acquainted with the darker side of human nature, are you? "
He reads slashdot doesn't he?
Need Mercedes parts ?
ICANN was promising when it chose its directors by proportional voting. Since it has jettisoned even the appearance of leadership from membership, it is a joke. But the original NSF governance is not only long gone, but no longer viable given the scale and corruptable power of the Net.
The Internet, with its decentralized interactive selforganization, allows people to organize without the old central government model, or the oligarchy of corporate control. One model is an ICANN governed by a board which votes a tribunal into temporary power, once a year, with special elections whenever voted necessary by the board. Board members themselves would be voted in by those meeting some participation criteria, like any RFC author. Anyone could become a "member at large", and that membership would also have a vote, maybe 10% of the total voting power in the elections, to the board and to the tribunal. Every vote would be decided proportionally ("instant runoff"), as is the current satisfactory practice. The Internet makes this governance possible, and necessary. We don't have to choose between 19th Century governments and 20th Century corporations: we can be the people of the 21st Century that the Internet is making.
--
make install -not war
ICANN has _nothing_ to do with what particular machines are able to serve. It's jurisdiction ends at what IP addresses a machine has, and the DNS.
Seems we're once again dealing with political forces who simply don't understand that by design, that level of control over the internet simply does not exist.
Most of these governments can't keep THEIR OWN shit straight ON STUFF THEY CURRENTLY HAVE TO DEAL WITH.
But they're going to run the Internet better than ICANN?
(Sorry about the bad pun there, not intentional....)
As for letting a consortium of governments run it? Hello? Has anybody seen that toothless old nag known as the UN? These governments' inability to act in a coherent, rational, beneficial fashion INTERNALLY is only exceeded by their inability to agree on a coherent, rational, beneficial policy in a cooperative fashion!
Sure. ICANN sucks at what it's doing right now. But compared to this alternative, it sucks MUCH LESS.
As it is right now, as a pseudo-private operation whose only stake is to make the thing work, we have plenty of freedoms.
Turn it over to the government(s), and all of the sudden I'm getting harrassed and attacked because somebody in Outer Buttfuckistan disagrees with me or with my views. Or just happens to take a not-liking to me or my activities. Even if what I'm doing IN NO WAY infringes upon his rights and privileges.
In short, no, HELL NO, and FUCKING HELL NO!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Instead, they should move government functions to ICANN. Seriously. Internet is international and thus it has to be controlled by international organization.
UN is not good for it - it's created 50 years ago to react on conflicts, not for operational day-to-day management. Internet requires operation control and thus it has to be controlled by the organization with operaton management capabilities.
Less is more !
you'll get my donkey-porn when you pry it from my cold, dead, sticky fingers!
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
How can a rant about the UN be "Insightful"?
Just becouse you feel the same way dont mod it "Insightful" when it just a persons bullshit views of something. Maybe if he had included same links to puplic information to what he was saying it would rate "Interesting" but "Insightful"! FUGK@!!
CIA Factbook 2002 (US):"Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households
Because our stupid Government will just sell it to wholely owned subsiduary of a US owned company.
Hedgehogbrains:"...As an parent of two children - if you don't like it - pull the plug."
Right on.
Ever notice that half this shit about government taking control of X service or institution is based on parents not wanting to bother with raising their own children?
You had the kids, Thompson, YOU raise them. I'll not have my rights restricted or the internet neutered because you don't want to put in the effort you signed up for when you spermed up your woman. Twice.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
another case of papa governments trying to decide what's best for everyone in the world.
the whole principle of the net is freedom, freedom of information, the internet is just the pipe. it's up to the individual LANs of the internet to control content.
people want to make the internet just like TV, which if you havent noticed, it incredibly shitty, and people are flocking to the net for entertainment, so now big companies behind the government or governments who control the media want to turn the net into another television..
last I checked, the net was for development and the trade of ideas and information, if a few weirdos want to express their horrid obsessions, and it's legal where it is.. fine, it's up to where it isnt legal to block that content.
thing is, the US government would get in trouble for blocking sites as of the current situation, but if th net is a controlled medium by large governments, they cant get yelled at.
in most other countries, it'll be taken just like that, here in the states, it'll be taken away, with the horribll ie of "It's to protect you from yourselves and terrorism, because we care about your safety!"
ah, this is the problem, see, the US government can be changed the way it currently stands, though it's getting harder every day. they keep wanting to do things that will make it harder for us to run our own lives independently.
before you know it, we'll have to call the local police to ask if we can go play in the kiddy pool because those big deep pools are dangerous for people who are even in their 20's.(note: sarcasm)
keep the internet open, it isnt television, and I think this is why developers of various universities are repeating what was made in the 60's and 70's with the internet2, because intener 1 will be a pile of ash within the next ten years at this rate with ads everywhere and TV commercials popping up on your monitor every 5 minutes, or propaganda ads reminding you that the government is your all knowing source of protection, etc, along with those required safety cameras in your monitors to ensure that you're safe all the time.
we're living the last days of internet freedom here, enjoy them while you can.
and I wouldnt be surprised if independent companies start their own networks again like back in the early 90's with aol and compuserve and link together to provide a friendlier internet if at all possible.
Sorry folks. You will all need to pay me one US dollar each time you make an HTTP request.
What is your penile percentile?
It's taken decades to build the Internet, we're not going to "rebuild" it just so the government can censor it. Besides, who would fund such a project? And is it even possible? If nodes A and B can communicate and they can encrypt their conversation,
how can you censor them? Interesting corollary: Communities of computers have secret handshakes just like humans.
I wouldn't (and don't) trust my government (USA), or ANY government to police what I can and cannot talk about, listen to, view, or publish on the internet. Frankly, the way the conservatives are rampaging over civil rights in this country, I'm about ready to emigrate... and you want to hand them MORE power to censor speech and try to mandate what happens between consenting adults?
Go live in China for a few years if you want to see the results of what you're suggesting up close and in person.
You need to go back to first principles and examine the legal framework of the internet. A lot of people refer to it as "the public internet" or some sort of global resource.
It is absolutely not.
What it is is a network of networks. We all agree, implicitly by our use of a specific protocol suite, to interchage packets. But each piece is privatly owned. I own mine, you own yours, and every bit in the middle is owned by somebody else.
None of it is publically owned or a public resource. It is a network of private networks.
There is no central control, no government licenses. ICANN/UN/ITU only has control for as much as you're willing to let them have it.
You'll notice that routing is and under the aegis of ICANN or any government. That's because there was a very sensible decision made when breaking up the AUP defined arpanet to pass this off to the community. Sadly, registration of names and number was neglected, and this left a critical choke point for power hungry lawyers to rush in to fill the vacuum that a lack of control leads to in situations like this.
So here we end up talking about which is worse, ICANN, the UN or the ITU while usenet, routing and a host of other coordinated activities hum merrily along freely (as in software and beer) with no need for "coordination" from governments of any kind.
Question everything, then follow the money.
Need Mercedes parts ?
ICANN just controls or maintains the registration of domain names. Since when did they exercise control of the content of the internet? And if we move web registration from ICANN to a government that is still not control.
The simplest solution is to limit content on machine based on the laws of the country they are placed. Other countries should not believe they can dictate to others what is allowed.
Euphemism, what is that a euphemism for something.
The only way to counteract Government and corporation's attempts to censor the internet is to use p2p technology that prevents this, usually anonymous p2p technologies. Freenet and Mute (both on sourceforge) are good places to start.
Also show people this article on internet censorship:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimat ur/
"...Americans also say that all that time. Read the 10th Amendment to our Constitution. If you fail to understand where we are coming from then you fail to understand a basic fact about Americans. It'll be a cold day in hell before we surrender our sovereignty to the UN, World Court or any other institution that allows the likes of Libya and Syria to chair Human Rights commissions..."
I really wouldn't be beating the human rights drum w.r.t the US very loudly, especially right now.
T&K.
Political language
Reading this article nearly brought me to tears. The person who wrote this article must be brain dead. The 'net is already truly democratic. Everything that is possible is there. The people who use it put it there!!!! How much more democratic could you hope for? What makes me sad is not the sentiment of the article but the fact that there are a HUGE number of people who let the media be their brains. Many will think this is a GOOD idea. Censorship. This will finally kill ALL of uor personal freedoms. The only last freedom is suicide, but the attempt is illegal anyway.
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
Not on ground of religion, morals or what not, but on scientific grounds.
Cross breeding, whether successful or not, creates another way for diseases to jump species.
If living in close quarters with animal excretions opens the whole world up to terrible respiratory problems, (SARS, bird flu, 1918 flu) imagine how much worse a direct injection of infested semen would do?
SARS most definitely came from animals in China, same with the bird flu. HIV is thought to have come from monkeys, and since the only way it is transferred is through bodily fluids that leaves blood and sexual contact as the only means of delivery.
There are diseases in pigs that could very easily be mutated slightly and be viable in humans. This is one of the big fears slowing the use of pig organs as helper organs for disease people while waiting for a transplant.
Blogs have been torpedoeing the main media outlets' pretensions to objectivity for years now, so it makes sense that the BBC should push such a concept.
This is fun...perhaps, as we say in the UK (not part of Texas...), you need to get out a little more!
On y va, qui mal y pense!