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EU, UN to Wrestle Internet Control From US
Anonymous Coward writes "The Guardian is reporting that the EU, obviously unimpressed with the US's refusal to relinguish control of the Internet, will be forming several comittees and forums with a mind to forcibly remove control of the Internet from the United States." From the article: "Old allies in world politics, representatives from the UK and US sat just feet away from each other, but all looked straight ahead as Hendon explained the EU had decided to end the US government's unilateral control of the internet and put in place a new body that would now run this revolutionary communications medium. The issue of who should control the net had proved an extremely divisive issue, and for 11 days the world's governments traded blows. For the vast majority of people who use the internet, the only real concern is getting on it. But with the internet now essential to countries' basic infrastructure - Brazil relies on it for 90% of its tax collection - the question of who has control has become critical."
All I have to say to the EU and UN is good luck. They can barely managed to manage themselves and they somehow think they can manage the Internet? The UN, as a body of managing anything, sucks. As a forumn to discuss and agree on things it works, sometimes. However, most anything that the UN "manages" fails miserably. Just what we want for the Internet that everyone sees as so critical to them.
If they (other countries) are so dependent on the Interent, then they should have set up redundancies LONG ago that would allow them to "survive" on their own. They should already be managing their own root servers, even though it is unlikely that the US will ever recognize them, or that software will without being manually changed. This is just moronic political positioning. They don't need to "wrestle control" from the US, and, frankly, they're not going to be able to. The US ignores most of the UN anyway, and only pays attention to the EU when it wants something from them. The whole point of this is the UN and EU trying to show some independence, and I suspect it will fail miserably.
In the end, this will fade from the media and the UN and EU will have another black eye of stupidity. Frankly, no one country has "control" over the internet anyway. Absolutely nothing stops any other country from setting up it's own networks (physical), root servers, dns servers, etc. If anyone decides to pay attention to what they set up is a completely different issue, and the real reason that they are trying to have the UN manage it.
As far as their statements on governments being invovled.... Uhm, duh? The UN is just a massive, dysfunctional collection of....you got it...GOVERNMENTS.
- AMW
"recommend that the US resign from the UN and see how long it holds together without our monetary support."
Silly guy, the US is not contributing to the UN, both financially and military.
Prepare to have the internet as we know it go away. The Europeans aren't just interested in control of the roots. They will also want to rewrite all of the 'standards'. As they have done with telephone networks in the past. As soon as the europeans started upgrading to digital standards, they immediately rewrote all of the pre-existing standards to make sense. Taking the 24 channel T-1 and making it a 32 channel E1. Sure, it made sense, but it created an unecessary incompatibility. Same goes for cellular standards. Also prepare for European style billing, where every packet is measured and metered. Wanna pay a UN Internet Tarif? Often times Europeans will want to change standards just to make them less 'American'. As they have fought over their own consititions, fearing they are becomming too Americanized in the process. I believe one constitution draft nearly caused a riot when it's title was something akin to "The United States of Europe". The American's and the Canadian's spent decades fighting over and developing these standards from scratch. The Europeans, with the benefits of the decades of that work, will create new standards (just because it makes sense, hindsite is 20/20 after all), and to make them less American. Breaking all old software and hardware compatibility in the process.
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
I have a whole lot of problems with them and since it was my tax dollars and not the EU's that paid for the Internet in the first place (from the R&D to the initial deployments) I'll be damned if my Government turns it over to the World
No, you'd rather have them hand it over to private corporations.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
After all, we Europeans designed and built it!!!!1111!!!111
And while we are at it, would you please stop using telephones, computers, automobiles and TVs!!!1111
Thank you,
Your European friends!!
P.S.:
China insists on the US not using explosives and paper!!!!111
A bunch of people got a bright (read "fucking retarded") idea and told their relative heads of state that we need to take control of the internet away from the US because that way we'll look important and stuff. Then the politician does what they say because they truly believe (read "were bribed/threatened") that the idea is a good one. Don't take into account that the UN is involved in a multi-billion dollar oil scandal that it still hasn't answered for (not to mention Kofi's son is involved in a nice little scandal of his own). The US is far from perfect, but the thought of handing control (if we even could) to another controlling body that's just as, if not more, corrupt and has ZERO experience in running these kinds of things just seems Special Ed retarded. I mean....it's like retarded on a whole other level....you'd have to combine Downs syndrome with autism and a couple others just to get up to that level of retardedness. Then again, I just like saying retarded. Boobs
Many people view the UN as an attempt at a World Government. We are automatically suspicious of everything that the UN does or says. The EU creates a new dynamic in the UN that was not there before, because the EU is comprised of multiple countries united together, that gives this EU entity multiple seats at the UN. The US and a few others still have veto power. But that still does not mean the US is on equal footing with the EU when it comes to UN affairs.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire