UN Considering Control of the Internet

Dangerous_Minds writes "News has surfaced in the wake of the WikiLeaks story that the United Nations is mulling total inter-government regulation of the internet. The initiative was spearheaded by Brazil and supported by other countries including India, China, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. Drew Wilson of ZeroPaid commented that while the Cablegate story may be bad, attempting to destroy WikiLeaks would only make matters worse for various governments around the world, given what happened when the music industry shut down Napster ten years ago."

Comments

Re:global standards for policing the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Lowest common denominator sounds nice. The set of regulations that all nation states can agree on should be fairly lightweight, and the decision making process involved in keeping it up to date far less agile than the network itself. Now if governments also agree not to add their own layers on top this would be total win.

Re:global standards for policing the internet

[Jason Levine]

To be fair, a lot of right-wingers want government control of the Internet also. They just differ on what they want controlled. The religious right would love it if everything "harmful to children" (read: anything inappropriate for a 5 year old to read) was taken off the Internet. They've tried multiple times to get laws passed enforcing this but it has always been struck down in the courts. (This coming from the father of a 7 year old and a 3 year old... I'll police how my kids use the Internet, I don't need the government to do my job for me!)

Re:global standards for policing the internet

[click2005]

Only until the UN allows then to block these kinds of stories.

Think again

[Anonymous Coward]

This IS democracy. It just isn't what you dreamed it would be. Quite a rude awakening, isn't it?

I have long believed that democracy is every bit as likely to deteriorate into authoritarianism as monarchy, dictatorship, communism, or any other form of government you can name -- possibly even more likely since democracy removes the element of ownership from government. A king, for example, wouldn't be nearly as quick to risk billions on war, because those billions actually belong to him, and he actually risks losing his royalty forever.

When you're spending other people's money, on the other hand, you have nothing to lose -- and therefore you can exploit that cash flow for personal gain. For those at the top of a democratic pyramid, the more spending the better.

So what can be done? There's only one solution: strict limits on government power and revenue. STRICT limits, as the founders of the US intended. Of course, strict limits on the scope of government is nothing but a pipe dream for radicals and libertarians, right?

Re:How much more

[crunchygranola]

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis

Interesting quote. Here is another similar, but even more revealing, statement by Lewis: "The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point may be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent" (from Reflections on the Psalms, Chapter 3.).

We have seen over the last half century a revolution in American political philosophy - that of self-justifying wealth. Ayn Rand style Objectivism/Libertarianism holds that self-interest is the highest moral principle and altruism is evil; wealth is proof of moral rectitude, and poverty is proof of sloth and moral degeneracy. This philosophy has provided us with the perfection of the robber baron, now dominating American political life - cupidity that is never satiated, and extinguishing all moral doubt. Wealth is virtue; there can be nothing wrong with how the wealthy acquire or use their wealth; there is nothing to repent, and thus there is no possibility that the robber baron will change.

Re:Just Say No

[cronius]

Having a minimal amount of classified material will cut down on the risk of loosing it. Document classification should be used to guard national security interests (e.g. the keys to the castle) instead of hiding potentially embarrassing material or promoting a political agenda.

Just a comment on that: None of the cables that wikileaks has their hands on are classified as top secret. That's why a lot of it is basically gossip: It was given a low classification because it's simply unimportant (which is why someone was able to so easily get their hands on it, if the rumour of the press is correct). So in that regards, the classification system is working as intended: The really nasty stuff (US national security etc.) is literally top secret and still remains undisclosed.

Wikileaks cables:

# 15, 652 secret
# 101,748 confidential
# 133,887 unclassified

Re:Common Sense

[morethanapapercert]

Sorry, but that just sounds too damn much like "Won't someone pleeeaase think of the children!" for my liking.

Do you have any idea how many injuries and injustices have been committed in an attempt to control thought? Let me throw some terms at you to look up on your own:

1) The Cultural Revolution

2) The Killing Fields

3) Punitive psychiatry

4) McCarthyism

5) Dear Leader

6) The Inquistion (Blasphemy, Apostasy and Heresy )

UN = Bad Idea

[couchslug]

The United Nations was a horrid mistake like the League of Nations before it.

World government by lawfare in a world mostly composed of anti-freedom governments was never a good idea. People should fear international law more than its absence.

Law is fine locally, useless internationally, because in the international context being free of law is an overwhelming advantage.

One thing they can agree on

[GameboyRMH]

There's one thing every government in the world can agree to ban from the Internet:

Classified government documents.

Second most likely to be banned is corporate trade secrets, third most likely is child porn, fourth is unauthorized copyrighted material and cicumvention tools, and fifth is pics of Mohammed.