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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." "
It could provide a mechanism for shutting down spam relays in China.
This quote disturbs me though:If I am not standing on your neck, do I not deserve credit for everything you do?
Government control could be risky. For example China might be able to manipulate the internet so that they have greater controls on their citizens right to free speech and maybe of other citizens such as those of Taiwan.
:(
As the EU grows, some countries such as Germany might push through an agenda of regulating against the discussion of Nazi ideals. This is bad for free speach.
If these things do happen, a second internet might spring up. After all it would only take a few ppl to connect to each other with modems to bypass any new regualtions. The second internet could be largely based on a P2P system and avoid ISPs, and thus government control.
I'm rambling on again
If governments step in to regulate the internet instead of some organization like ICANN, then it's possible that we will see a lot of controversial decisions made on behalf of the internet that might not make a lot of sense to us. Or governments might feel compelled to exert even more control over the information that travels throught the network.
In other words: the Internet is dead, people. First ICANN, then this. Prepare for an Internet that will be increasingly segmented by the cultural, religious and political preferences of each and every dictatorship in the world.
Islamic country? No sex and no equality for women, please.
Dictatorship? No free expression of anything, please.
Corporate state? No piracy and peer-to-peer, please.
Of course, it won't work, because technology will increasingly make it possible to go around the censorship, but, please, don't tell them that. They have to keep their illusions.
As a matter of fact, even countries like Iran find it hard to control things like satellite television. Wait until they discover satellite Internet providers.
Maybe, in the near future, we will see revolutions because people want to be free... to vote, to express themselves and to surf the Internet. Who knows?
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
"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?"
The author moves right from talking about "control" to "opposition", as though any government with laws regarding the net opposes it. Seems like a bit of an argumentative trick to me.
Why doesn't the UN go and create it's own internet? Remember the Internet (capatial I) isn't the only internet out there. Another large one is Internet 2, which is a university/research instution only network. The US government also have several internets for different levels and classifications of data.
So if the UN is so convinced they can do a great job running a net that all the governments in the world, including the dicataorships, will be happy with, go to it. If it really is such a better place, you shouldn't have trouble convincing people to switch. Heck, you can even implement it such that it's not exclusive with the Internet. You can have gateways that allows controlled traffic exchange.
That sounds like a much better idea to me.
However having the UN regulate the Internet sounds like a disaster to me. Partly because the UN has a poor record running things, partly because that wasn't the reason for the UN to be (it's a forum for internatonal relations, not an international government) but mostly because different nations and cultures have different ideas of what's ok. What we consider to be ok in the US isn't the same as what's ok in France, or in China or in Iran. Now that's fine. I'd like to think there is more than one way people can live, and that different cultures have a right to different values.
The problem will be if all these governments get together and start trying to decide what needs to be "regulated" which in this case probably means not allowed. In cases like that, you invariably end up getting the most restrictive thing possible to try and satisfy everyone. China is going to want no speech against their government. France is going to want no pro-Nazi speech. The US is going to want no pornography of individuals under 18, and so on.
I think a much better method is leave the net alone, let countries, ISPs and individuals regulate it as tehy see fit. If they want to block something, block it. But don't try and force it on the whole world.
If the UN was just talking about IP and DNS regulations, well I might be open to that, but you read the article, it's clear he sees their role as a whole lot more oversight including content. I see nothing good comming from that.
If they think they can build a nice, sterile, regulated internet, by all means do. Let those that want get on UNnet. Perhaps it's totally SPAM and virus free its so well regulated, and people find that worth the loss of information and control. But let people and nations make that choice, don't try and for it on an existing infastructure that really is working quite well when you get down to it, despite problems.
Most spam is illegally sent through breached and trojaned computers.
In short, spamming regulation and penalties are nothing more than enforcement of existing property laws. It has nothing to do whatsoever with censorship nor frea speach.
Winner : "leave the internets alone"
Loser: "let the UN regulate the internets"
Yeah, right.
Good idea: A global, decentralized communications tool which anyone can have access to and participate in.
Bad idea: Putting it in the hands of the UN. Or any government agency, for that matter.
Don't get me wrong. I'm an old school, dyed-in-the-wool Protestant liberal who is pro-UN and all that. I just don't trust *anyone* to be in control of the Internet (if such a thing is possible, anyway). Special interests in the US are trying hard enough to seize control of the Internet as it is, and some US companies are even contributing to software that censors the Internet in other countries (is there a more blatant violation of American values?). If we let the UN have control over it, more nations will find reasons to censor parts of the Internet and simply tear it apart.
Hm. On the other hand, the UN might just get so bogged down in their own quagmire of argumentation and endless debate that maybe nothing would ever happen anyway.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
i am in china, i can visit most sites just not all, access speeds have slowed to a crawl, china telecom blames an increase in users, i doubt that, a drop from 30kbs on a single socket down to 1-2kbs, seems a bit ridiculas in just one year, hey i've still got next year to look forward to!
but its not just china, look at france and germany working with google to *help the end user* get the right search results. (previous slashdot artical)
my 2 jiao
I think it's vital that we somehow find a way to prevent this individual and anybody else who thinks like him from getting what they want. Contrary to what he might say, the system we have right now *does* work, and has worked well. The only reason why he is trying to make people believe that it hasn't worked is so that he can institute his own system.
The UN wants to have jurisdiction over *everything.* Nothing makes Kofi Annan start foaming at the mouth more than when he hears the phrase "national sovereignty." In practice however, the only thing the UN really amounts to is the Third World's vehicle for trying to fulfill Pinky and the Brain's primary objective. Everyone wants to take over the world...no huge conspiracy theory there. The US govt, the Israeli govt, the EU govts; everyone. The thing we have to somehow try and do though is make sure that none of them manage it...and the UN succeeding in doing it wouldn't be any more desirable than anyone else managing to.
The UN, contrary to what some highly emotive left-wing types will have you believe, (and before you make the assumption, no, I'm not a fascist...I've been called left myself) is most definitely NOT "our last, best hope for peace." This is not Star Trek, and the UN are NOT the Federation. This is the real world, and the only thing the UN are our "last, best hope" for is a centralised global government...something which would ultimately cause a greater level of tyranny and suffering possibly than we've ever seen before. (And yes, I know we saw a lot in WW2. That's part of my point.)
Repeat after me, kids:- The UN is NOT my friend.
Today government control seems to
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cross the line into morality control.
Thanks but no thanks.
If I want to look at porn,
(no link necc.here)
have my blood made into stem cells
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=10
take handfuls of vitamins
http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2003/200
or drink water without fluoride added,
its MY DAMN BUSINESS. As long as I don't
force my viewes on anyone else BACK OFF!
Stop trying to force your whiny puritan views
on citizens of the world. Go fiddle with
your V-Chip and leave the rest of us alone.
Ummm....no. The root DNS servers are geographically disperse and at least three are in locations outside of the United States. Check your facts before you start spouting bullshit.
Wikipedia article
Tangent here, but the UN security council is overrepresented by "Western" countries. Honestly, what business do both the UK and France have on the security council? There are a number of countries that play a bigger role than (in particular) France. It seems that maybe it's time for a reorg. Take away the UK and France seats, give one seat to the EU instead, and anther to a different large country like India, Brazil, or Indonesia. A reorg has been done before - when they took the vote from Taiwaan and gave it to China.
So maybe what we really need are enforced laws preventing anyone running windows from connecting to the internet. And before you bill gates fanbois get your panties all in a bunch, the same law should apply to any other software manufacturer's product that is installed on sufficiently high numbers of machines and so easily compremised.
The Farewell Tour II
Say what you want about the UN, but I think the ITU has done its job very well. My only concern about the current chairman is that he might be tempted to reach beyond the Union's proper role as a standards body. ITU standards are the reason that international calling works, even to China and post-Soviet countries where they might otherwise have been tempted to roll their own "superior" Communist telephony standard that was incompatiable with the West. Yes, Zhao may have an agenda, but at least he hasn't made the +886 country code (Taiwan) fall off the map (yet) like the Central Committee probably wants him to.
They say the mind is the first thing to
"Slippery slope" is a logical fallacy
Not always
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
In short, spamming regulation and penalties are nothing more than enforcement of existing property laws.
So why do we have to pass new laws. Why not just enforce the existing laws?
Because, to protect the rights of individuals, laws are written in a very specific and situational fashion. This means that whenever you run into a new application or some situation that looks novel, the courts and legislature have to decide whether or not the existing laws apply.
So, while intuition says that the class of actions which we categorize as theft of services, trespass, etc. should apply to spam and other such things, the laws actually do not address that particular usage.
Specifically, the reason Spam was legal originally was the implicit permission you grant, as a condition of having an internet mail address, for mail to be delivered to that address. Since there is no way for the transport mechanism to know whether the mail is from someone you want to hear from (it's not psychic) it must accept anything. Spammers, once they had a working address, had permission to send to it.
The laws were changed to make this illegal - unsolicited commercial email, fraud, and malware of all sorts were criminalized.
But they had to be changed, because the previous laws really did not apply directly.
What bothers me about how the US went to war was how it was sold - only a fraction of the rhetoric in the run-up to war was "We're doing it because the UN won't". The majority of the sales pitch was "WMDs!", "Uranium!", "Imminent threat!".
I don't agree with the philosophy of "the ends justify the means". If we go to war because we're told (or its not-so-subtly implied) that Saddam is building nuclear & biological weapons to attack the US with, and then we find out a year or two later that there were no such weapons and in fact that "evidence" was fabricated, then the war is unjustified and wrong. Coming up with alternate (even if factual) rationale for why we went to war doesn't fly - if they really are worthwhile reasons, then why weren't they used originally, instead of the original fabricated BS? And I think enough evidence has come out to indicate that Bush known, or should have known as the Commander-in-Chief, that his original reasons for going into Iraq were not solid & factual.
Lying to get what you want, even if it may end up being a good thing, is a dangerous precedent to set (or continue, as the case may be in US politics).
As long as China remains an oppressive, authoritarian regime, people from the free world will continue to use China and Chinese in such a negative sense. Unless, of course your taking offense to that comment indicates that you like the Chinese government? Welcome to the free world.
Yeah, so that was a joke. Maybe i had to make that joke so that you can understand. Making spam or any other form of communication illegal is a violation of free speech. By allowing these laws to be approved because of the popularity allows other laws to regulate a resource that is not supposed to be regulated.
And i wouldn't use your example that most spam is illegally send through breached and trojaned computers as a reason why it should be outlawed. That same logic can be applied (and is currently) to just about anything. P2P is the perfect example.
IMO, the marketplace shoud determine which standards get adopted and what the most efficient ways are for address allocation. Sure, governments have a role to play. But where we've seen nations restrict the type and content of 'Net access available to their citizenry (China, Iran), we've also seen persons in those countries look for ways to get around or soften the impact of those restrictions.
He talked about how the ITU is 140 years old, but the ITU was created to plan, build and expand on telegraph lines. We're so far past those challenges, by now. I'd rather see the ITU pay more attention to the planning, expansion and maintenance of stable telephone networks worldwide than mucking about with the 'Net.
The quote in the synopsis comes from the end of the interview, and it pretty much shows what he's missing. He's missing the fact that the 'Net may have been developed as a civil defense project, but it grew and evolved so quickly precisely because the government didn't try to shape it any more than it had to. His assumption that you have the 'Net precisely because the government wants you to have it (because it's not explicitly denied) is whack doubletalk.
When I started BBSing 20+ years ago with an acoustically-coupled 300baud modem, the government had no idea what I was doing, and really didn't care, anyway. No government agency told me "Here's this civil defense network that links the county bomb shelters. You can use it to play poker and look at pr0n. Go for it!" Instead, I learned to use it by hanging out with the other kids who liked to play with the telephone and camp out with the teletype after school, sending messages to the other kids at other schools on the Jeffco CDN. It was fun because nobody was watching and there were no rules other than what most kids already learn at home -- "be nice and don't break stuff".
The UN has many great roles to play in the world, but expanding the territory of the ITU mandate is just dopey. IMHO.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
I know this is might be strange, but this fellow spent the entirety of his professional life (pre-UN) working for the Chinese government, specifically building communication networks for the Chinese people. Considering his background with one of the most regulated networks in the world I can see how he might believe his own rhetoric. Considering his background, I don't.
Spam isn't limited to email...
Simply put I think many governments fear a free and uncontrolled Internet.The idea that their citizens can directly, or indirectly through proxies, read things that the government doesn't think "proper" drives them up the wall.
Unfortunatly true : (
The Internet is teaching these governments fear, and now they will try to use the UN as a tool to restrain what they view as dangerous knowledge.
Well, I haven't made up my mind on this U.N.-internet thing, but what if the U.N. internet rules included disallowing some forms of censoship? Sure, coming from a chinese official, that sounds douptfull, but it could be well done. I mean, it's improbable, there's, as you pointed out, a lot of opposition to basic freedoms, but the U.N. has had some sucesses in the past, maybe this could turn out allright. Maybe.
I'd be thrilled if the U.N. banned nations from blocking acess to health information. The religious nutjobs wouldn't be able to pass laws forbidding access to sites containing real information on contraception and other "touchy" subjects.
You can't take the sky from me...
When discussing the problem with the UN Security Council, I agree with you. I liken it to a felon on probation who has to take a piss test every month. Just because the felon knows he isn't doing drugs doesn't mean he gets to tell the probation officer to fuck off. And the probation officer has a duty to bring the felon in for breaking the terms of his parole. How pissed would you be if you found out the parole officers in your neighborhood were just letting the people run about willy nilly?
However, when it comes to our government, it DOES matter. They assured us - and the world - but most importantly us that Iraq posessed weapons of mass destruction and showed intent to use them. They were wrong. As much as I hate Bush (mainly because I hate can't stand someone religious telling me what to do, but that's neither here nor there), I can't hold him responsible for this. It isn't his job to tell his subordinates to double - or triple - check their facts. They should have been double and triple checked before they ever even got there. What I did want to hear, however, was "hey, we made a mistake. our bad. we've taken steps to assure this never happens again."
Before the war started, I didn't believe Saddam had WMDs, but I did believe he was in breach of the UN resolution. I was against the war in Iraq, not because I enjoy letting people take advantage of me (or my country), but because I thought we had bigger fish to fry elsewhere. North Korea being the big one. I also thought we should make sure Osama Bin Laden was taken care of and Afghanistan was completely under control before we started ANYTHING. Sure, Saddam was an asshole. As someone once said, "there isn't a person in America who hasn't said 'you know, if Saddam ever comes to my bar, I'll beat the fuck out of him.'" Saddam was a despot. There is no question about that. I didn't question the act of war itself so much as the timing of the act.
But I digress.
Doesn't the UN do background checks when they hire people?
I mean really... is Porter Goss next up for the job? Or John Ashcroft?
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.
You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.
You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.
Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.
We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.
We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.
Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.
Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.
In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.
You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.
In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.
Your increasingly obsolete in
Deliriant isti Americani.
I think it's a bit one sided to say the US Military invented the net. The US have done well in technical innovations over the last century, and they were home to quite a few important milestones on the road to the net. But the net is more than al gore, and more the the USA.
The UN may be somewhat corrupt and inneffient but they are safer like that.
In some ways I would prefer ultra powerful organisations to be corrupt and innefficent. While they are busy being corrupt and inefficient they are not regieme-changing or collateral-ing or buzzwording large numbers of people like me. And paying off UN envoys or Euro MPs is only millions from the public purse - another carrier group to take the navy into the 21st century and someone else into the 15th costs billions and hurts more.
I thank God I was born in a country that owns submarines and big stock exchange. Saves having to suck up to the bully, at least in principle.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
saying the above means you really have no clue as to what ISP's do
Actually I run my own corporate email servers and web servers and you are correct. There probably are 20-30 spam messages thrown away for every one that gets through. I don't have current stats, but I probably get 500+ spam messages on my domains at work. 90% of this gets tossed and I have to deal with about 20 messages a day, not a big deal.
I currently don't have a gmail, hotmail or other account, I bought my own domain so I didn't have to deal with those, but how is anyone being "saved" by their ISP when getting mail through those accounts? They are all web based email. I don't know how my ISP has any control over that at all.
I won't disagree that SPAM hit's my pocketbook as well s my ISP's (although I would fall over shocked if comcast came out and said they'd cut the price of their service because congress magically made spam stop), but sometime that's a price of a free society. We have to take the long way around to make sure everyone's rights are protected. If the major ISPs did an adequate job of controlling the spam problem, spam would be minimized and no longer profitable. Maybe you should just work a little harder.
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