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US Internet Control To Be Topic #1 In Rio
Crazy Taco writes "It looks as though the next meeting of the UN's Internet Governance Forum is about to descend into another heated debate about US control of key Internet systems. Although the initial purpose of this year's summit was to cover such issues as spam, free speech and cheaper access, it appears that nations such as China, Iran, and Russia, among others, would rather discuss US control of the Internet. In meetings leading to up to the second annual meeting of the IGF in Rio de Janiero on Monday, these nations won the right to hold an opening-day panel devoted to 'critical Internet resources.' While a number of countries wanting to internationalize Internet control simply want to have more say over policies such as creating domain names in languages other than English, we can only speculate what additional motives might be driving nations that heavily censor the Internet and lock down the flow of information across it."
I work for a small ISP and can tell you that the largest carrier of Asian traffic is NTT and all their infrastructure goes from east to west from a European point of view.
There is very little in the way of west to east Internet infrastructure east of the turkey and ukraine.
Check your BGP routing table and you will see I am right.
france and germany actively prosecute people selling paraphanelia from the 3rd reich on auction sites, and france has attempted to enforce this policy on the site itself, regardless of where the auction is being held.
north korea, china and most of the middle east actively filters what its citizens are allowed to read. china has imprisoned journalists for publishing information it does not want posted, and have frequently deemed things 'state secrets' to cover up goings on inside their borders.
meanwhile the US is not perfect, however a group of senators recently had a very rough conversation with the yahoo execs regarding china and what happened with a journalist there. its better than nothing.
youll understand why im somewhat hesitant about allowing iran and china a say in how this whole thing is being run.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
so how is that the USs fault? because russia and other states in the region havent laid sufficient fiber, the US is somehow responsible?
You miss the point. It isn't about who's "responsible" for anything. We recently passed something called the "Protect America Act"- in full view of everyone, ironically with limited public debate- that allows the American government to engage in warrantless surveillance of any Internet traffic routed through the United States if either or (commonly) both endpoints of that traffic lie in a foreign country.
And it turns out, surprise surprise, that most people in the world would rather not have their packets routed through a police state.