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UN Wants To Regulate Internet
LegendOfLink writes "News.com has good interview with the UN's ITU Director, Houlin Zhao, and his desire to regulate the internet. He says
"One of the most important changes was the early stages, when the Internet started, when ICANN started in 1998. The purpose was to exclude governments (but that didn't work). People realize today that the governments worldwide have to play a role.
People say the Internet flourished because of the absence of government control. I do not agree with this view. I argue that in any country, if the government opposed Internet service, how do you get Internet service? If there are any Internet governance structure changes in the future, I think government rules will be more important and more respected." "
No, US, UK, France, China and Russia are pernament members of the security council which gives them veto rights. If a resolution is to be passed, these five members must all agree to it otherwise it doesn't happen. This gives them a great deal of power.
Wikipedia article on UN Security Council
There are three kinds of resolutions that the UN can adopt: General Assembly resolutions, and two kinds of Security Council resolutions. All three of these are defined by the UN Charter.
The powers of the UN General Assembly are defined in chapter IV of the Charter, "The General Assembly." Article 14 says,
Subject to the provisions of Article 12, the General Assembly may recommend measures for the peaceful adjustment of any situation, regardless of origin, which it deems likely to impair the general welfare or friendly relations among nations, including situations resulting from a violation of the provisions of the present Charter setting forth the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations.
So the General Assembly can adopt resolutions that are essentially recommendations. These resolutions are not binding on the membership, and there is no authority granted in the UN Charter either to the membership or to any agency to enforce them. The most famous General Assembly resolution was 181, the resolution in which the UN proposed its partition plan for Israel and Palestine.
The Security Council has the power to pass two different types of resolution. The first is defined in chapter VI of the UN Charter, "Pacific Settlement of Disputes." Article 36 says, in relevant part,
The Security Council may, at any stage of a dispute of the nature referred to in Article 33 or of a situation of like nature, recommend appropriate procedures or methods of adjustment.
These resolutions are just like General Assembly resolutions: they're not binding, and no authority is granted to anyone to enforce them.
The other type of Security Council resolution is defined by chapter VII of the Charter, "Action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression." Article 39 says,
The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.
Article 41 gives the Council the authority to impose non-military means to resolve threats to peace:
The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.
Article 42, the big one, gives the Council the authority to use military force to enforce its resolutions.
Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations.
And, finally, Article 43 places on the membership of the UN the obligation to enforce Security Council resolutions when called upon.
All Members of the United Nations, in order to contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security, undertake to make available to the Security Council, on its call and in accordance with a special agreement or agreements, armed forces, assistance, and facilities, including rights of passage, necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.
It's very important to remember that chapter VI and chapter VII are completely separate parts of the Charter. Resolutions adopted under chapter VI can only be dealt with under the terms defined in chapter VI; neither the Council nor the membership has the authority to "promote
Hey... Your phone line works to call anywhere in the world (think about it for a second). Modems and faxes too. Same for leased data lines. The bird your satellite TV comes from does not talk over its neighbourgh. Deregulation and uniform interconnection rates make you life easier and cheaper. H.264 is pretty neat. Cut them some slack...
ITu has a fairly good track record at making stuff work behind the scenes. It also has way more engineers in house than diplomats.
There are many good things to question in this article but UN bashing, ITU bashing or WSIS bashing (for the few who seem to be able to tell the difference), or even China bashing, just wastes electrons.
All of those who are so prompt to jump at power grabs by private compagnies over their beloved internet should think twice: maybe this level of oversight would reduce such interferences.
Although I'm deeply impressed by your ability to copy and paste things you don't understand, the basic fact remains that the war against Iraq was not sanctioned by the UN security council, that neither the US nor the UK were obliged to go to war, that they went to war against the expressed will of the other members of the security council.
And no, a 1990 resolution does not mean that for all time everyone who feels like it can invade Iraq, claiming Iraq is in breach of a relevant resolution, that's just ridiculous.
And again, you are totally ignoring the fact the actions were taken, remember, inspectors were on the ground, hadn't found any WMDs and reported that they were making progress. This was the situation in which the US decided to attack, against the will of the security council.
So to claim there was no action is again a lie.
I shouldn't reply to trolls, but what the hell:
CNN
MSNBC
CBS
ABC
And, in the interests of impartiality:
Fox News.
Sorry, what was your point?
Forgot to credit the Aussie military that was right there alongside the US military for the Boxing day disaster relief.
People aren't worried ENOUGH about spam. for you to be saying the above means you really have no clue as to what ISP's do to try to reduce the amount of spam you, as one of their customers, ever received even BEFORE you go to work with spamassassin and/or clamav...
Every major ISP spends hundreds of thousands in hardware and manhours every year to control the spam problem. I should know, I work for one!
Spam is a major problem. If you own any major e-mail accounts (gmail, yahoo, hotmail, roadrunner, comcast, etc) you are being "saved" by your ISP.
Did you know for every legitimate message that makes it through, roughly 20-30 spam messages are thrown away?
I can continue on for a very long time as to why spam is something to worry about. But I'll just say this, all the man hours and equipment costs that your ISP runs into get's passed down to you, the consumer. SPAM has a detrimental effect on your pocketbook as well as our servers.
Meep Meep!
The Third Reich wasn't a guy. If you're referring to the guys of the Third Reich, most of them would have been Catholic. Hitler was a Catholic. He was baptised and as a child he was an altar boy. In Mein Kampf he wrote...
In 1938 he said at the Reichstag speech.
Of course, the relationship is never quite that simple. The Catholic church opposed the violence and intolerance of the Nazis but the Nazi party enacted swift and severe retribution against the church. Priests were threatened and harmed. The church printing presses were shut down. It would not be accurate to say that the Catholic church condoned the Third Reich. The church was under considerable pressure from the German public for their opposition to the actions of the Nazis. It is true that Catholicism flourished under the Third Reich, but I'd daresay this had more to do with people's basic need for religious comfort during war, rather than any wrongdoing of the church.
I think it's fairer to say that humans have caused considerable harm over the past 1000s of years, and that religion or lack of religion had very little to do with it. Religion is a scapegoat for war.
one thing to remember is the EU is far far less fedralised than the US
essentially the EU is a trade group thats grown out of hand rather than a true federation many things including the military and law enforcement are still very seperate (i don't think the eu has any equivilent to the likes of the FBI)
do remember also that britan and france have nukes (weapons not powerplants) the rest of europe afaict does not and i think it unlikely that britan and france would supply the rest of the EU with them. whereas the us nukes are federal.....
if the EU federalises its nukes and armies then it may be time to give it a single permanent seat on the security council but right now the countries are very much seperate from a military POV.