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Will the U.S. Lose Control of the Internet?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the could-be dept.

MattSparkes writes "The first UN-sponsored Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting is taking place next week in Athens, which aims to 'contribute to a better understanding of how the internet can be used to its full potential.' It is likely that several countries will object to the US monopoly on Internet governance, as they did at the last meeting, where the US cited fears of a loss of freedom of speech as the reason for retaining power. Other topics to be discussed include online security, access for non-English users and spam."

4 of 553 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Control vs Bureaucracy by Epeeist · · Score: 2, Informative

    "The US started the internet"

    No, but

    "The US started the Internet"

    is true. Lots of other countries had public internets, not necessarily using IP, at the same time as ARPAnet.

  2. Re:Who would you trust? by Bogtha · · Score: 4, Informative

    We have significantly higher standards for free speech rights than the rest of the world

    Have you seen the news today? Journalists fall victim to ethnic and sectarian violence, US troops carry out more unlawful arrests. Oh, and you've dropped even further down the Press Freedom Index. Far from "higher standards than the rest of the world"; there are over fifty countries with freer speech than the USA.

    --
    Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
  3. Access for Non-English by IcEMaN252 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Access for non-English actually means something entirely different from what you think. Right now DNS names are restricted to ASCII characters. If you live in China, Japan, Russia, or any of a number of other places, you can't use your own alphabet to get to a website. Even if the entire site is in your native language, you still have to use English to get there.

    There's something called IDN (Internationalized Domain Names) that is an effort to change that by allowing DNS to use Unicode characters. That way you could have native language DNS names.

    How would you like it if you had to type in something in Chinese to get to /.???

    --
    CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
  4. Re:Who would you trust? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Yet another fucktard mods me flamebait without providing any arguments to back it up.

    Try providing some arguments to back yourself up, fucktard, and maybe you won't get modded flamebait.