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Vint Cerf on Internet Governance and Beyond
scebo writes "With the first phase of United Nations World Summit (WSIS) held in Dec of 2003 and the next phase to be held in 2005, there have been extensive debates regarding Internet Governance. Can it be governed? Who should govern it? What is Internet governance? Vint Cerf has offered his own opinion on the subject over at CircleID which attempts to answer some of the key questions raised: 'It has been suggested by some participants in the WSIS discussions that the role of ICANN might be undertaken by the traditional International Telecommunications Union (ITU). While the ITU has served the world as the international forum for the handling of many international issues associated with traditional tele-communications, the Internet has disrupted the neat categorization of various telecommunications media. It is the potential bearer of every form of communication. ICANN has evolved international processes and structures over the last six years to cope with a limited set of issues associated with this rich, complex and rapidly evolving infrastructure. The world needs an effective and well-supported ICANN but the participants in the World Summit on the Information Society and the Working Group on Internet Governance now need to turn their attention to the full panoply of public policy issues that, as discussed above, lie outside the mandate of ICANN. These need a thorough and open airing in this next phase of the World Summit on the Information Society.'"
Fraud, misinformation, harassment, illegal transactions, theft of resources, breaking and entering (hacking into computers), copyright infringement, and many other exact or approximate electronic analogs of improper behavior can be found on the Internet.
And thats just the corporations! Seriously though, it would be great if someone could just set up a few basic rules that everyone could agree to and enforce those and only those. And have a mandate limiting them to that. maybe like a Wyat Erp of the old west?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Governance is needed to establish and eforce rules so that the general public, ie, society, can operate.
On the internet, these rules are already agreed to. TCP/IP, FTP, HTTP, and other wonderful acronyms.
The things that are illegal online are also illegal irl. If you enforce the general societal rules already on the books, then there is no need for a Internet government.
At least, in my opinion.
no
LOL! That was funny..
Oh wait, they're serious?!
The net is a virtual reality.. it certainly has real world effects, but let's not get over-zealous here.. I vote for an unruly cyber-mob over state-controlled media outlet.
JUST SAY NO.
I am of the belief that if there is any internet governance, it should restrict itself to functions that affect the actual interoperation of the networks involved. Enforcing individual geopolitical issues should be left to that country to do so as it sees fit.
The job of such a governing agency, if one existed, would be limited to policing and correcting traffic flow issues and mandating the use of egress filters at an ISP level in order to block spoofed packets from the ISP's lusers.
Not much funding would be needed for such a minimalistic organization, making the "who the heck would pay for this" issue much smaller.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Good to know the internet and everything we say and see will be controlled people who know their facts, and not just a bunch of mindless fundamentalists who would gladly own us as slaves, isn't it?
So the world government starts via the internet. I feel kinda stupid for not seeing that coming.
I guess our fifteen minutes of freedom went out the window once CEOs took over the internet anyway. No surprise really.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
Pornography ... should not be grouped in with them as an "abuse" of the Internet.
Yes, it fact it is part of the reason the internet is popular. If it weren't for the infringing of pop music and hollywood, all traffic would be pr0n. (OK couple of percent email and http software downloads, plus some small percentage of "informational" web sites (pr0n reviews and such)). Doesn't everyone remember the first pr0n search you did. "HOLY F**K, that's a lot of naked pictures. And all I got to do is pretend the internet is useful??? Hell ya!"
Isn't there a saying that no medium will be popular w/o porn (think cable and VCRs). I would bet that the second guy after Guttenberg printed porn, not the bible. I'd look it up, but it might slow down this damn interesting mpeg file I'm downloading.
Of course some people, like Cerf, might try to do real things, like communicate, with this network of autonomous networks. Thanks for letting us pretend, though.
"This here InterWEB is making me sore."