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."
If it were up to me, i'd give it to a UN body.
So, what you're saying is that you want Libya, Syria, Iran and North Korea to have a vote on what you can and can't download onto your own computer? 'Cos, y'know, Libya and Syria, despite both having an appalling record on human rights, were appointed to the UN's Human Rights committee, responsible for monitoring other nations. The UN stands for consensus - but doesn't care about anything else save consensus. Nations like the US and UK get it wrong sometimes but are also willing to ignore consensus in order to do what's right.
So much for freedom of, well, anything.
hehehe. I love that argument. That's like saying: "If you're against murder, don't do it!"
I bet when you see your kid getting ready to jump off the roof of your garage to see if he can fly he says things like, "Hey, if you are against flight, dad, don't try it!" OR, more sensibly you believe that it is BAD for your child and you try to stop them.
I think I just read in Time magazine that something like 80% of divorce lawyers these days cite internet porn as a major factor in the divorce cases they handle. Society is composed of families. Break down in families like this means break down in society. This means more crime, etc. There IS such a thing as the common good, and, belive it or not, one persons actions have a huge rippling effect on the rest of society's members.