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A Monroe Doctrine for the Internet

Posted by Zonk on from the ours-all-ours dept.

InklingBooks writes "An article in Foreign Affairs suggests that in a tersely worded statement the United States has issued a 'Monroe Doctrine' for the Internet. The Monroe Doctrine was a unilateral declaration by the U.S. that it would not permit European powers to establish new colonies in the Western Hemisphere." From the article: "Everyone understands that the Internet is crucial for the functioning of modern economies, societies, and even governments, and everyone has an interest in seeing that it is secure and reliable. But at the same time, many governments are bothered that such a vital resource exists outside their control and, even worse, that it is under the thumb of an already dominant United States. Washington's answer to these concerns -- the Commerce Department's four terse paragraphs, released at the end of June, announcing that the United States plans to retain control of the Internet indefinitely -- was intended as a sort of Monroe Doctrine for our times. It was received abroad with just the anger one would expect, setting the stage for further controversy."

5 of 708 comments (clear)

  1. a new internet by ajdlinux · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's still the possibility of an alternate internet. The US can't enforce rules online.

    1. Re:a new internet by l2718 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      There's still the possibility of an alternate internet. The US can't enforce rules online.

      The situation is more complicated than that. You can't have conflicting IP addresses without having completely separate networks, which is impractical (everyone will want to be able to connect to sites under the American Hegemony), and you don't want to have conflicting DNS records either. Indeed the rest of the world can set up their own DNS servers for a new TLD (say '.earth'), but they can't force anyone to contact the root server for that domain. The result will be chaos.

      Now, the US stands to benefit from controlling a global resource (just like oil-producing countries benefit from controlling the oil supply). The article seems to hint that it's wrong. You can hardly fault a government from wielding its power to make the world better for its citizens (isn't that's their function, after all?). Of course the US government doens't always seem to have the benefit of all its citizens in mind most of the time, but that's a separate issue. If we don't like what the US government does, we can ask our governments to negotiate with them to change their behaviour. And naturally we will have to offer them something in return -- TANSTAAFL.

  2. How about we go halfsies? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    American can control the '1's and the rest of the world can control the '0's. France gets the occasional '2.'

  3. I have to agree with the author by greenguy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think it's pretty ridiculous to argue that the governance of the Internet should remain in the hands of any one government, even the US. There are those who would say especially the US. Most of the counter-arguments go something like this: "What, you want Cuba running the Internet?" No, I don't. But I think it's really small-minded, not to mention willfully blind, to think that the US has a monopoly on goodness and freedom. The Internet is global, and no one nation should have a chokehold over a global system. If it were any other nation, the US government would be on the side of those calling for it to surrender control to an international body.

    --
    What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
  4. Re:even as a european... by QBRADQ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    FYI: It's the Child Internet Protection Act, but that's not very relivant right now.

    What is relivant is the fact that the US governing bodies have been in a trend of increased censorship and denial of liberties to it's citizens since the information boom began. Don't get me wrong, I am a US citizen, and I love my country, but my government has been placing a higher and higher value on the needs and wants of the few as opposed to the many. The liberties of the majority are now infringed upon and at times out-right denied in order to maintain the liberties of the minority. Let's think about some issues here:

    Ok, without getting into a political argument, let's just all quitely reflect on some major issues in the US in recent times with regards to fair access and technology.

    Affirmative Action (forcing companies to hire certain people based on ethnic background rather than employable skill or experiance)
    Excerting influance on video game companies, example is Grand Thieft Auto: San Andreas (the game was pulled from shelves after comming under heavy fire because it was posible to hack the game to show sexualy explicit content)
    Pressuring and even prosecuting P2P networks because thier service could be used for illegal activities. I'd like to point out that I can commit a felony crime with a telephone, but they're legal.
    Prosecuted Microsoft for having a monopoly on the OS market (a market with very little competition outside of the Open Source world, BTW, TUX=ROX).
    Forcing broadcasters to switch to digital signals (it's been passed already, it just won't come into effect for a few years).

    And the list goes on and on and on. Our governemnt seems technologicaly ignorant at every turn. The conservatives cling to the dead and dieing, the liberals want Hippy Freedom which just doesn't work (that was proven in the 60's, sure it was fun, but the 80's really sucked because of it), and the moderates just don't care. Put that together with the foringe policy tendancies to be the global watch-dog, and see what happens:

    1) Argentina calls for a boycott of US trade policy (this was on CNN THIS MORNING by the way).
    2) The US responds by inacting a trade embargo of Argentina.
    3) This embargo includes de-registering all Argentinian domains from the global DNS.
    4) Well, you can see how this would be bad.

    Think this would never happen? Think again. The US is famous for it's trade embargos. Cuba, Iran (I think), Iraq pre-war, North Korea at varous times, the USSR, and the list goes on. Does anyone honestly believe that a nation that has such policies would wave them for the most valuable resource on the planet (free exchange of information)? I think not.

    Just think about it for a minute. Some of the US's chief threats now reside on the Internet. The terrorist groups, the US-hostile news agencies, and the governments of the world are all online. If the US is to control how it's enimies are addressed on the global intranet, you can be certain of the answer. "port.iran.ml could not be found. Please check the name and try again later".

    But the rabit hole goes much deeper my friends. The US doesn't do anything piece-meal. Think about it: this country was started by a minority of people that didn't like thier current government, so they rebeled and won. Just a few short decades later and this country was "Manifestly predestined by God to expand over the whole of the continent". And once that was done, we started taking over yet more places, such as Hawiai and Alaska, and accquired yet more so-called "protectorites" such as Guam and Purto Rico. And now durring the 2000's, we're reshaping countries in our own image. We didn't like the Taliban, so we took over thier country. We didn't like Saddam, so we took over thier country.

    What's the point in all of this? The US won't stop with DNS, oh no my friends. That may be what is at issue currently, but if the US is allowed control it won't be the issue tomo