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

global standards for policing the internet

[YrWrstNtmr]

global standards for policing the internet
Otherwise known as least common denominator. Say what you want about the US, but do you really want China and Saudi Arabia defining global internet standards?

Re:global standards for policing the internet

[duggi]

What it means in Diplomatese is that they are going to set up a commiteee first, talk to each and every nation about their preferences, and then create a document, laying the bare minimum regulations that need to be imposed. Of course, some countries will not like this, and will not opt-in. A few will opt in, but the implementation will be so broken, that each country will set up its own regulation mechanism on the top of it. As these clash with the UN, the UN regulation mechanism will be completely broken.
The UN cannot tie its own shoe laces. This will only justify the creation of a government approved 'regulation' process, which is often referred to as cencorship.
The Internet was nice while it lasted.

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

[TaoPhoenix]

US - China - North Korea - France - Australia - Britain -

Aren't these the countries always hitting YRO for opressive initiatives?

Re:global standards for policing the internet

[click2005]

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

Re:global standards for policing the internet

[JackieBrown]

Lowest common denominator sounds nice. The set of regulations that all nation states can agree on should be fairly lightweight,

You are assuming they start with an "allow everything" policy. If they start with a "deny everything" policy then "the set of regulations that all nation states can agree on should be fairly lightweight" will result with a very heavily restricted internet.

Re:global standards for policing the internet

[Quince alPillan]

In an age that multiple gigabytes of information can fit in a card the size of a fingernail, sneakernet is alive and well. Even if the government starts policing the internet, the underground will still live on in the shadows as it does in China today.

Re:global standards for policing the internet

[mcgrew]

Agreed, it's YOUR job as a parent, not the government. It's YOUR choice what you think is appropriate, not the government. When my kids were still young, there were NC-17 movies I didn't mind them seeing, while at the same time there were PG-13 movies I thought were too violent for them.

I didn't mind them watching Cheech and Chong with me (especially the ones with Pee Wee Herman, they loved his kid show on Saturday mornings, and so did I), but I wouldn't let them watch the "sanitized for TV" (read "dirty words and sex scene cut out") version of the Terminator.

Who would want their kids having nightmares?

How much more

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Will nobody rid us of these lawyer politicians, whose only understanding of communication is how it can be used to control others? For countless millenia, these fools have been holding back humanity, calling themselves priests, or the aristocracy, or the upper class, or whatever. Enough! Can we not have a "normal people's congress" on the internet or something. They want to control the internet? I say let the internet control them.

Re:How much more

[DrgnDancer]

He didn't say stupid. He said followers. Most people are followers. It's a reasonably well established fact of the pack dynamic. Under the right circumstances nearly anyone becomes a follower. Have you ever noticed that most groups, no matter how loosely organized, have leaders? From a gang of kids, to a raid group in an MMO, to a multibillion dollar company, if there's no one in charge, we put someone in charge. Depending on their personal charisma and the institutional nature of the group in question they may answer to rest of the group to one extent or another, but they're still "in charge". Even when the group rises up against the leader, the usual result isn't "no leader" it's a new leader.

We're hard wired to want someone in charge. Some of us want to be in charge, and some don't, but we all feel better if there is some one who is in charge. Of course we're all different, we want to have have various relationships with authority (possessing it, being close to it, being ignored by it, etc), and a very few of us would actually prefer to live completely outside of it, but in general its existence makes the vast majority of us happy.

Re:How much more

[jandersen]

Can we not have a "normal people's congress" on the internet or something.

The problem with The People is that it consists of, well, people. This is something revolutionary do-gooders have come face to face with many times throughout history; and ordinary people aren't highminded, good or noble, they are just average. They don't care all that much for liberty when it comes to it, they are not all that concerned about democracy or justice in general. They just want life to be relatively easy to live from day to day.

Don't you realise that your democracy and your Congress etc were once exactly the "normal people's democracy/congress"? Only, normal people don't care enough to take part, so it always ends like this, and that is the fundamental problem we have to solve.

Apart from that - what kind of ordinary people did you have in mind? What if it turned out that what a large majority really wanted was to to ban firearms? Or were in favour of something you would find intolerable - would you still want that kind of democracy? Ordinary people are not necessarily nice.

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:How much more

[MindKata]

@”Will nobody rid us of these lawyer politicians, whose only understanding of communication is how it can be used to control others? “

@Darkman, Walkin Dude ... Brilliantly said. Your whole post sums up so many centuries of problems, repeated all around the world, caused by these same kind of greedy, corrupt, two faced, lying, control freaks that each generation has to suffer.

But then from so many diplomatic leaks, regardless of what we think of the leaks, one fact remains. We now have absolute confirmation our control freak governments (in almost every country) lie endlessly to us (so our leaders can get their own way and so they show they don't really work for us), yet they say they represent us even though their actions prove they are really seeking to deceive us. That isn't Democracy. It shows we are really dealing with an increasingly Authoritarian lying greedy Kleptocracy which is increasingly showing signs of becoming an outright Totalitarian Dictatorship. Worse still its becoming a global problem.

But then the act of seeking power over someone else, is the act of seeking to dictate their will over the wishes of others. So is it any wonder people who seek power over others end up seeking to dictate their will over us on the Internet. After all, the Internet is helping to highlight how much our power hungry leaders lie to us and so don't really represent us. They know if we see the truth, we can argue against them, so they lie to us, for their own greedy gain.

If that isn't bad enough, here's a shocking dictionary definition that shows how bad our lying greedy leaders actions really are against all of us. See if you can guess the word it defines. "A violation of allegiance to one's sovereign or to one's state. The betrayal of a trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery." The word it defines is Treason. Its shocking to think of it, but our leaders really our in complete betrayal of our trust and confidence; breach of faith; treachery against their entire country, all for their own greedy gain. They really are showing acts of Treason!. They don't represent us, even though they say they do, when they want us to vote them into power.

Some countries still have the death sentence for Treason. So is it any wonder more people are getting angry at all our leaders in most countries and why our leaders seek to control the Internet even more, to cut off ways for us to see the truth and discuss what our leaders are doing.

The Internet has revolutionised many industries already so perhaps its time it also revolutionised the management of everyone where openness is forced into our two faced leaders, to stop them being able to lie to us all. After all if they want to represent us, then they take the job on that basis.

Cry, the beloved country.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm from South Africa and I cannot believe a government that was once itself censored heavily, and violently when speaking out against such censorship, is now becoming one of it's staunchest supporters. First (draft) domestic legislation regulating what newspapers can publish, and now this.

Freedom? No, it doesn't seem to me like that was the end-goal of the struggle.

In the wake of Thursday...

[Tom Rothamel]

News has surfaced in the wake of Thursday that the UN is mulling total inter-governmental regulation of the internet.

The UN has wanted control of the net for a while now, the WikiLeaks thing is just the excuse of the day for trying to take it.If it wasn't WikiLeaks, it would be some other reason.

Re:Anonymous stands ready

[paiute]

Thing is, reality is not a movie. Rarely do the well-intentioned, rag-tag band of rebels overthrow the evil world government and usher in a new era of freedom and prosperity.

Usually, when the well-intentioned, rag-tag band of rebels do win, the resulting government devolves into a totalitarian regime as bad as what was deposed. In the US, our view is skewed because our well-intentioned, rag-tag band of rebels was not headed by such. Recall that some wanted to make Washington King of America, but he bared his wooden teeth at them and refused.

NO controls

[Wowsers]

Hang on, all these countries that want control of the internet, they are some of the biggest despots out there and love censorship. Why don't they have their own version like China, and keep everyone else that loves freedom and democracy stick to the "Wild Wild West" internet.

The UN are a bunch of retards who's time to disbanding has come. They claim to represent international laws, but enforce them for some countries, and ignore others. Get rid of the UN.

Just Say No

[Valen0]

Let me get this straight: The Emperor was caught with his pants down, some people took pictures and posted it to etc.com, people started learning via etc.com that the Emperor has no clothes on, and now the Emperor wants to ban all knowledge of the incident by destroying the greatest communications invention since the printing press. I think the approach in this situation is completely wrong. Several common sayings such as "we had to destroy the village in order to save it," "shoot first and ask questions later," and "shoot the messenger" all come to mind and none of them should be encouraged.

I propose the following solution to the problem: Do a comprehensive security audit of the information and everyone that had access to it. Find out who leaked the information, how they received access to the information, and how they removed the information from secured storage. In addition, do a comprehensive audit on the classification of documents. 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. When you have successfully identified the responsible party and method of attack, fix the glitch and prosecute the offender to the fullest extent of the law. The Internet does not need collective punishment for the actions of a select few individuals.

Common Sense

[cstacy]

They are merely proposing common sense communication safety legislation. Surely we can all get on board with that? Do you have any idea how many injuries and injustices unpoliced thought caused last year?

The end of democracy

[gmuslera]

No freedom of information means no freedom of choice. You could hang the label you want over the governments after that gets passed, but none would really be democracy.

Stop that!

[killmenow]

You'll let your kids watch the government approved violence on TV and youtube and we'll protect them from any and all kinds of human sexuality (except the Disney approved sexualization of teen/tween "stars", of course) AND YOU'LL LIKE IT!

Re:Only the naive didn't see this coming

[moeinvt]

"You poke a dog with a stick often enough and eventually it'll go for you. "

I agree with that, but are you suggesting that the U.S. government is analogous to the dog and Wikileaks and its supporters are poking said dog with a stick? That's how I'M reading your words. It is with a mixture of sadness and frustration that I listen to the argument: "We better behave ourselves, or the government will crack down on the Internet!" I'm not saying that Wikileaks and Anonymous won't be used as an EXCUSE for government attempts to implement greater control of the Internet. That's a certainty. Actually ADVOCATING that we change our behavior to appease the government is the mentality of a serf or a slave. Better not do anything to make the Lord/Master angry because he'll punish us? Not only does that indicate a belief that the government has assumed the role of RULER of the people as opposed to "Representative" of the people, it indicates that the servitude is something that we must accept.

Wow! That thought just blows my mind. It just seems like we've very abruptly crossed a threshold into a whole new paradigm.

Re:Sure, UN, Sure

[Ltap]

If you think that the UN taking control of the Internet involves the United States losing control rather than gaining it, you're remarkably ignorant of the true state of international politics.

Inclusive ?

[mbone]

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has been grinding along for almost five years, so this is something of late news. Unlike the Australian commenter in the original article, the process is inclusive only as to governments, not people or even NGOs. This has the Internet Society (ISOC) worried enough that they have an online petition on it :

The UN Needs to Ensure an Open and Inclusive Approach to Internet Governance

(Yes, you will get a fundraising pitch at the end, but that's not the reason for this petition.)

Government censorship of the internet?

[grasshoppa]

Are they insane? Do they have any idea what this will do to the economy, let alone the precious information they are trying to hide? It's almost like...wait, it's the UN?

Nevermind. Here's hoping they'll be as effective in this initiative as they are in everything else.

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.