Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
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
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.