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!
The internet should not be the product of politics and debate. Absolute lunacy, and a totally stupid idea, as well.
When its controlled by the government, it will be lobbied into a capitalist tool of consumer exploitation. Profit at its best.
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.
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
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.
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.
>>If it were up to me, i'd give it to a UN body.
And why do you think the UN body would do better?
Its a bad opinion to say that a Gov. of any type or description should control the web. Look at china, where the Gov. tries to control what is read and seen on the net. What has it done? Its only created the need to bypass what prevents them from doing so.
If you give the control to a Gov. body, weather it be from any of the offical 192 countries (192? i think its about that many...) in the world, you destroy the point of the web, which is what it is now, its avaiable to all those who can find it.
Its not restricted, confied, censored, or banned to the masses of users (unless you happen to be under control of a admin or netnanny style software). And it should stay that way.
NeoThermic
Use my link above, or to view my server, NeoThermic.com
Giving control of something to the UN is the best way to insure it'll get censored and controlled the most in the near future.
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.
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
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.
Wrong, business and industry have both profit and power motives. If government can fuck it up, industry will fuck it up even more ( and without accountability).
It's really wonderful that the United Nations wants to help one- armed chicken farmers in Bangladesh surf the Web. But maybe these sanctimonious bureaucrats should focus on more pressing issues - like providing plumbing, electricity and medicine - before obsessing over whether malnourished children in Ethiopia have DSL access. Besides, the only Macintosh a starving North Korean wants to see is the bright red fruit. And what good does a flat-panel monitor do if reading the opinions expressed thereon gets you hanged from the nearest apple tree? As with most U.N. summits, there is a dark side to this all-expenses-paid cocktail party in Geneva. Countries like China, Egypt, Syria and Vietnam are lobbying hard to wrest control of the Internet from the United States. Despite ICANN's weaknesses, giving U.N. bureaucrats the key to the Internet's chastity belt would be a certain disaster. For starters, if the United Nations had to pass a simple resolution stating "the cyber-sky is blue," it would take three years and include a condemnation of Zionism. Getting scores of U.N. member states to agree on complex technical standards would be next to impossible. But there's a much bigger problem with giving the United Nations regulatory control of the Internet. Despite the sunny charm of countries like Cuba and Iran, the United Nations is populated with many despots who strive to censor anything that might enlighten their own people. They regard freedom of speech and individual rights - which are the life-blood of the Internet - with contempt. In some countries, sending the wrong e-mail can get you killed. These tyrannical regimes would love to regulate cyberspace through the United Nations. But the Internet doesn't need their help. It already works splendidly well. Indeed, for many of the world's oppressed people, the Internet is a source of liberation, where they can access uncensored information. Ruled largely by free-market forces, the Internet has become one of the miracles of our times. Sure, cyberspace has its problems. But if you think pop-up ads and spam are annoying, wait until China and Syria start meddling with your e-mail.
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
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.
We not only allow images of bestiality, we allow them to be seen on the public streets. Our art books are full of them.
Leda Lights Up
The internet is publishing. It is no different from any other kind of publishing, other than the difficulty of effectively censoring it.
KFG
Democracy was also invented in Europe (by Greeks and Celts, later adopted by the Romans), does that mean the US can't be a democracy?? Oh wait..
Anyway, at present the biggest part of the internet is outside the US so control by the US government would be ridiculous.
Another bad property of the US is that it has too much political power in the world, and is thus hated passionately by some, and is untrustworthy at best to many other countries. This should be enough of an argument in itself to keep the US government from controlling the global internet.
Individual governments? They just all create their own great firewall around them, eliminating the current free exchange of information. There are always a few bad apples. There was kiddie and beastie porn before the web, and it'll probably be there if the web goes away.
The internet is the first medium that allows users to publish information themselves outside the control of the government, and without the need for enormous capital investment. This is threatening for many governments an corps, but will in the long term only benefit the world as a whole. Keep the internet free!
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
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.
The United States of America is a republic, dumb ass.
Why don't you, and everyone reading this who doesn't understand this simple point, just repeat to themselves 30 times every night before they go to bed:
A republic and a democracy are not two mutually exclusive things.
A republic and a democracy are not two mutually exclusive things.
A republic and a democracy are not two mutually exclusive things.
A republic and a democracy are not two mutually exclusive things.
A republic and a democracy are not two mutually exclusive things.
"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
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
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
To follow this up, the Internet --and computing in general-- is truly a global phenomenon. It's true the original networks (ARPANet, DARPANet) were created and based in the U.S., but there are many technologies that are critical to the overall Interent that were developed overseas. One notable example, as pointed out by the parent) is the original HTTP draft protocols and implementations (CERN) that we now know as the World Wide Web. Another obvious example is Linux (Finland), the OS of choice for many of the servers that exist on the Internet, and which is used in some fashion by nearly every government in existance.
The idea that computing resources, especially the internet, should be under the control of government entities is really laughable. Furthermore, it simply can't be done, no matter the intentions or abilities of said government. For examples, look to China and the Great Red Firewall. Then there is the U.S.'s attempt to restrict exports of 128 bit encryption technologies - we all know how well that worked.
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
> If You mean we show unwillingness to build the infrastructure and hand it over to a bunch of idiots
> to destroy, then you are right. The unwashed anarchists of the world will have it destroyed
> within months, no matter what the other 95% of the world wishes!
I see, the Internet only lasted months (and just a hint, the US government controls the internet only within the USA, 95% of the peopel live outside the USA)
> Consider it a stewardship instead of ownership if it makes it easier to swallow - A stewardship
> that is going rather well so far.
First of all, by action, the USA tries to claim ownership, not stewardship, change attitude and we mmmay start seeing that differently, second, if that has been going well is quite a matter of opinion. Seeing how almost all spam is related to attempts at doing business in the USA, seeing how spam is making email unusable.. I dono, it seems that the USA did a good job with its 'stewardship' a decade ago, but has not beind doing a good job at all in recent times, rather the opposite in fact.
> You are cooperating with the 800kg Gorilla by following his lead. If you want to lead, become a 801kg gorilla!
THe problem with this is that the USA says that it respects things like international treaties, fair treatment of people etc etc.
If your statement is true then the average American government is a bunch of liars. Well, seems that in fact your statement is true, and the conclusion is no surprise for anyone who has been trying to follow what the US government is saying.
Are you proud of what you are? In all the American enthousiasm about the 'morally right thing', do you feel good now?
I dono, I'd feel terrible in your place really, terrible and ashamed.
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.
> It's a trend among idealists to glorify the UN...
It is a trend among neo conservatives to put a bad light on everything the UN does, disregardign the huge responsibility the US government has in that all.
Example?
Regardless of content, any resolution that has critical comments on Israel will get vetoed by the USA, yet the USA whines about the UN not beign able to decide on things. Do they really not realize that their own behavior, and identical behavior by 4 outher countires is why that is the case? Oh, and just lookign at history, the USA used its veto more often then all other permanent members together.
Yet, according to many Americans, this problem is caused by the UN, and the USA si trying to solve it or get around it.....
No, the UN is not perfect, but you should really try to get a few things into your mind if you have one:
1. The USA government is far from perfect as well
2. The UN is not evil
Actually yes, Americans (myself included) do think that. Read some of the writings of our founding fathers. They were terrified of the idea of the Centralized Government. Central Governments combine power at the expense of the individual. They created a Republican system of Government that kept the Federal Government as weak as possible -- yet still strong and effective enough to accomplish it's main goals (insuring the security and survival of the individual states being number one on the list).
that is like saying "I will not sign away the rights of my state to the federal government"
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.
And for all of Europe's support of the EU and the UN I question how long the EU will survive. How long do you think before the union becomes oppressive and little states like Belgium or Denmark (or states that aren't economic powerhouses like Poland or Norway) start to feel oppressed by the Germans and the French? You've already got the Brits refusing to adopt your currency. At least the British still have some amount of self-pride and the backbone not to surrender to the bureaucrats in Brussels.
You'd probably be much better off with some sort of Republican system of Government as opposed to your bureaucratic mandates from Brussels, rotating presidencies and page after page of dictations from Paris and Berlin about "How things are going to be". Not that any of you will listen to that suggestion.
Ever hear of the oppression of the majority? I say the EU is dead in 15-20 years tops.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
He's obviously bringing in more readers. Isn't that what their goal is?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
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.
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 ?