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Vint Cerf, US Congresswoman Oppose Net Regulation
schliz writes "Vint Cerf, Google, ICANN and California Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack have opposed a recently revealed UN initiative to regulate the internet. Congresswoman Mack put forward a US resolution that the United Nations and other international governmental organisations maintain a 'hands-off approach' to the internet, arguing that 'the internet has progressed and thrived precisely because it has not been subjected to the suffocating effect of a governmental organization's heavy hand.' Meanwhile, the so-called 'father of the internet,' Vint Cerf, called on stakeholders to sign a petition to mobilize opposition of the UN's plan. 'Today, I have signed that petition on Google's behalf because we don't believe governments should be allowed to grant themselves a monopoly on Internet governance,' said Cerf, who is also Google's chief internet lobbyist."
Wait wait wait... Am I supposed to be for or against regulation of the internet to keep it free?
They'd make us acquire licenses to setup websites, yank those same sites w/o a trial (which just happened last month), apply a fairness doctrine so that when you visit msnbc.com, you also get a big popup asking if you want to visit foxnews.com too..... and so on. (Taken from the FCC Chair's own speech.)
It violates free speech, free press, and free expression. Liberty works best without limits.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
What are they going to do? Send blue helmet troops to Google and hand over relief goods to Yahoo for a few years? Come on, they're little more than ineffectual Nerf saber rattlers.
"I call on the President and his Administration to oppose any effort to transfer control of the Internet to the United Nations or any other international governmental entity ."
It's not over folks. Keep your Tor up and running.
BTW, I really hate it when media spins it to the advertisers. Wonder if an 'open' news site exists. One that gives me plain texts and actual information, not commentary along with facts.
http://monkeynesianeconomics.blogspot.com/
This is the same Google who recently joined Verizon and came out in favor of using DPI to monetize connectivity based on site/packet-type? A rose by any other name....
the UN is ineffective. it is an expensive bureaucracy good for debating the exact wording of pronouncements that are always carefully worded to not offend anyone, including those who are actual perpetrators of crimes in this world. every good cause and good instinct is mired down in the structure of the UN, in which those with vested interests can block anything and everything, and they do. all countries represent themselves there so as to do exactly that: protect their interests, which are always balanced by someone else's. so nothing gets done. the UN is a colossal expensive painful exercise in stasis.
if the UN were given control of the internet, nothing would change. because member countries would merely block every effort to do anything, no matter how innocuous
the UN needs teeth. meaning: resolutions should take effect with only a majority vote, rather than 100% consensus. until then, the UN is a joke, and no one should consider it a threat to anything, good or bad
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why is this tagged Wikileaks?
Sent from my CR-48
Without regulation there's no effective way to control people's thoughts. Plus (double plus actually), as long as your thoughts conform you have nothing to worry about, so this really isn't an issue at all. [br]
By limiting nonconformity we should also regain some bandwidth on the internet for wholesome media.
the internet is prolly more U.N. then the U.N.
Who was it trampled the xxx domain? How about all this regulation against "illegal" content on the internet? Would that not be interference in the internet?
PS dragonhunter, it's tagged Wikileaks because the US want to regulate the internet so that you can't get to WL.
It is the natural trend of every government to centralize and consolidate power into the hands of the elite few over time. They do this not for the benefit of the populace they control through force; they do it precisely for personal gain. They do it purely out of self-interest, the very thing governments claim to save us all from.
I wish people would realize that every time they cheer for more government (either in terms of power or revenue), what they are really cheering for is consolidation of power into the hands of the elite few. Wake up -- governments around the world today have more than enough power and revenue. WAY more than enough. The problem is where the money is spent, not lack of it.
This latest power grab is nothing but yet another attempt to centralize and consolidate power into the hands of the elite few. Picture a corporation with piles of cash in the bank and only a tiny executive team with a handful of shareholders -- because that is exactly what the people at the top of government are dreaming about.
Regulating the internet means telling people what they can and cannot use.
Regulating ISPs means preventing them from telling people what they can and cannot use.
Some of my older relatives find it bewildering that so many decisions about the direction of the Internet, a "public resource," are made by private bodies from corporations to the IETF and not governments. These are from the older generations that were spoon-fed that bullshit about how we are all Free and Equal Citizens participating in our democratic process, "we're the government," etc. The idea that it's being guided by a fairly enlightened, techno/meritocratic elite and not by "democracy" is scary to them.
Considering the fact that the number of states that can even reasonably claim to be "free, democratic societies" are a minority in the UN, it **should** go without saying that this is bad. The UN as a forum has not done much of anything good in a long time. Just recently, it resurrected a proposal against "defamation of religion" which, if adopted by member states, would do things like make you a criminal for pointing out that Mohammed was a pedophile even by the standards of his day (marrying and deflowering a 9 year old was considered deviant even back then, as 9 was not a common marriage age for girls).
If the Internet really does fall firmly into government controls, it'll present a scenario for individual liberty that makes the surveillance states of the Warsaw Pact look like nothing. It really is the most dangerous tool that mankind has ever created aside from nuclear technology, in its ability to be used to reshape societies for good or bad.
Agreed.
An organization in which a member not paying its dues has absolute veto right clearly has some kind of problem.
Vint Cerf is the acclaimed father of the internet. I think this is a bit of a desperate move bringing him in on it. A member have congress has always opposed regulation, its like the principle dragging Dad in to school to sort out the school yard fight. In politics it will come off looking weak.
Google can lobby all it want, it can stick too its guns like it did in China, but Wikileaks showed every Govt and Company in the world how some guy with a couple of servers can walk on water and do and say what he wants.
Google has its own agenda, Vint as well. We'll need more than that to keep the Govts from taking away the freedom of the internet.
Anyone else see this as ironic, considering that Congresswoman Mack was married to Sonny Bono when he introduced that most-horrible piece of retroactive-copyright-extension legislation?
I'm reading this as "How dare anyone [except *us*] attempt to regulate the intarwebs!"
People don't seem to understand but there's no such thing as freedom. Anarchy is unsustainable.
This is for all cases, if there is nobody who controls (or has the right to) an object, then someone WILL control it.
This goes for everything - from society, to law, to the internet.
If the government doesn't call dibs on controlling the internet, someone else will. Do Visa and Mastercard control the internet? They can suffocate donations to any website they want. Do web providers control the internet? They can take down their own sites at will. Do ISPs control the internet? They can filter out sites if they want to.
In the end, someone is always going to carve out a portion and control that. Always. Now I'd rather have the government, or a large body of governments doing that. Because governments at least have to pretend their doing it for the good of the people. Companies can just do so because it suits them.
And this is precisely true of the free market. This is why everyone gets Marxism wrong. The capitalist system consolidates power in the hands of the few wealthy and, after revolution, the communist system begins. communism consolidates power in the hands of the few in government and, after revolution, you have utopia where there is neither capitalism nor comminism because the people have worked out that you can't allow any power structure to consolidate power.
To a large extent, this is the espoused intent of the Liberals
funny how they complain of maxist government, yet themselves are proponents of the very thing they profess to hate.
The list of countries supporting this reads like a who's who of human rights abusers and countries that'd censor the moon from the night sky if it negatively impacted their power. Just the people we want having a say in how the rest of the world accesses the Internet.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
No. Al Gore was the guy who took the initiative in the creation of the internet. If you're certain that "took the initiative in the creation of" means "invented", then either you're not that bright, or your translator ring works a hell of a lot better than mine.
I say, I was quite surprised at this news.
This headline could have benefitted from the addition of a word such as "and".
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The problem here is the working group wants to limit participation to UN member states only. However, the group's charter says that members ought to be composed of "governments, the private sector, and civil society" , according to this ISOC letter.
I signed the petition and commented that as the value of the Internet is based on the contributions of everyone, it is manifestly unfair not to have open representation in a forum discussing the future of the Internet.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
and the monopoly of the US in international transactions - after the EU let the US spy on its money traffic?>
- and I guess there is also a monopoly of the Internet - or at least a pretty far reaching monitoring if not control of the very Internet!
- Dear Vint - you know who gave the money for developing the 'net' - don't you ?
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oops - just recently the US paid its debts accumulated over 20 years to the UN !
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sorry - maybe you mean - whom?
the communist system begins. communism consolidates power in the hands of the few in government and, after revolution, you have utopia where there is neither capitalism nor comminism because the people have worked out that you can't allow any power structure to consolidate power.
I'll tell you how it happened in reality. The revolution failed (Russian interventntion), the communist leaders realized they have to loosen the leashes, so they created communism light . As the economy didn't do very well, they introduced some limited amount of market, allowed the founding of small businesses in the 80ies. In 1989 there was a peaceful power transition, the constitution was reformed (with the approval of the communist party), there was free elections, but in the government burocracy remained the same people (clerks, judges, police, secret service). The The new first freely elected party initiated privatisation, and further market reforms.
Today the former communist leaders are millionares/billionares, and they preach the libertarian ideology.
If you are happy and content with how your government runs your country and see no evil and have never been slighted by your country just move along. It needs to be regulated so they can re-package and sub-divide it for sale. Corporations are understanding they are only making a fraction of what money lies out there on the Internet. They will attempt to privatize the Internet in the same way they privatized access to fresh water sources. They will want licenses, fees and taxes for operating websites get x views. They will want no limit to the volume of/in ads, pop-ups and tracking (not for government, but so they can sell you better). With the wealth of people who show up on slashdots, diggs, redits and such, It always disappoints me that there are not more Terry "Not without my consent because thats a bad idea" Childs. IT (this is you and me) does control the networks, servers and hubs. I think of the cluster I have and I will say "no", but if I'm alone I'll get fired, arrested and possibly beaten. We just need to turn it all off one day and say "No God dammit, I'm sick of being exploited and plundered!", "No God dammit, I don't want to have 4 advertisements shoved up my ass for 5 minutes of video I watch", "No God damnit, The Internet has made your Government moot as I can talk to people over there already and I don't need some rich kid ambassador speaking for me", "No God Damit, You already control the Jobs, The money, The Land, The Air and the Water". Now you brave and noble men who will once more follow me into the breach, when you live to see old age and think of this day, Saint Childs Day, You will tell your storys and show your scars. You will proudly say "These wounds I suffered on Saint Childs Day" and all your neighbors will bake you cookies. Sys admins, Switch Operators, Build teams, Dev guys, Solid state, embedded systems and etc please just stand up and let everyone know, "Not on My Watch!" and more importantly when they go over that line to do everything in our power to stop them, including locking them out of their property.
Check Christian Huitema' post about this: nothing good can come from the UN -- http://huitema.wordpress.com/.
You can leave the country too. Or vote a different party in. You don't vote the C*O of Verizon in. You don't vote the MS board of directors in. You don't vote the direction Oracle takes in business. Unless you own a significant (10%+) of the shares.
In any case, this has NOTHONG (repeat NOT ONE THING) to do with whether you can leave or not. It's whether the free market and capitalism is particular consolidate power in the hands of the few wealthy as per the OP's proclamation.
Too late. The intertubes have already bolted from the stable. Good luck trying to catch them.
I think your sarcasm detector is on the fritz =P Need some calibration?
Sorry, what have you said that counters my point? Really. What?
Nothing.
it can stick too its guns like it did in China
You mean whoring themselves out to the Chinese government for many years before finally doing the right thing?
Regulating the internet means telling people what they can and cannot use.
Regulating ISPs means preventing them from telling people what they can and cannot use.
Finally! A soundbite for the Internet Freedoms that the average person can understand quickly. Frankly, the names and slogans supporting internet freedoms have been very poor. The literal name, "Net Neutrality," for example, is confusing and buys zero support. Look at the ill-considered provisions that quickly made it through Congress, they have emotionally charged meaningful names like "Patriot Act", "No Child Left Behind"
Even Cerf's quote (from the summary) "... we don't believe that governments should be allowed to grant themselves a monopoly on internet governance...," sounds rather weak. To the average less-informed person on the street, this is not compelling. If not the government, who should govern the internet? Why should one care? While it's truthful, it's unconvincing without additional context. Not a good soundbite.
Governments will always be tempted to censor or control the internet directly for their own self interest. (ex. Wikileaks) Having a central authority such as the UN do it would be a horror. The temptation to somehow tweak the traffic "to protect " worldwide would be unbearable. At least now, any national government doing so needs to establish some sort of "Great Firewall" to wall out the free internet.
So the US didn't pay for 20 years. Isn't that rather what the GP poster said?
There's no utopia thing. People don't learn.
Ultimately, guys with better guns. Smugglers, etc. That is, if we don't. If I were in charge, I'd kick the UN out of NYC, turn it into a nice hotel. Diplomats could still meet in the conference room if they wanted; but they'd have to pay regular rates.
I wish there were a way to check a box that says "I want to donate to the UN" on my tax form, like there is with the campaign fund. I'd never check it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Once the routers and cabling run over neighbors houses and not through companies and governments, we'll have a public internet.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
I think this is the first piece of good news I've heard on any number of subjects recently. Amidst a sea of clueless politicians in any number of countries that would destroy the internet for everyone, there are still a few voices of reason from out of the wilderness. It may come to nothing, but it's good to hear that not everyone wants to censor and regulate the internet as we know it out of existence, turning the clock backwards to before the 1990's.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
A wide adoption of a mesh over a large area would become an interesting case study. I think Open mesh works with wired connections too. In any case, re-thinking the architecture so it's owned by people is a great initiative, obviously there's much that can be improved. But once you measure Mbps with Tor, where you can actually publish whatever you want, suddenly limited-bandwidth Open-Mesh roofnet becomes useful. Security and privacy of course becomes a real challenge, but it already is pretty bad with the government-and-corporate-managed Internet.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
when in the same sentence. The man represents Google and I could care less about his hands off attitude. Google wanted to multi-tier the Internet so his opinion is garbage.
I'm confused. You actually want me to feel like a dirty hypocrite for not giving a bunch of tin horn dictators who often terrorize their people a seat at the table? What's your next move? Accuse me of ageism for supporting the signs at amusement parks that say "you must be this tall to ride the ride?"
There's no utopia thing. People don't learn.
Good point... and you can't legislate chaos into order. The world is a chaotic place. People desire order, so they allow their governing bodies to regulate it until the point the people don't like it. The problem is that every person is willing to accept a differing amount of compromise, and no one will ever agree when enough is enough.
Stupid, sexy Flanders.
The only businesses that would profit from internet regulation are the huge government businesses, AT&T, Verizon, and all the other incumbent ("government") telcos.
EVERYONE else would lose. Trust me, I've seen lots of regulations in lots of countries and all regulation, from "prevent child porn" right up till "kill anyone who criticizes stoning women" internet regulation (the last one translates to tracking dissidents if you're wondering) and they ALL benefit big telcos, and destroy small and normal business' internet presence.
Those are of course the "unintended" victims (except, of course, to the politicians part of the incumbent telcos), but they're the biggest victims by far.
Okay look at it from another angle. Electricians, Mechanics, DOCTORS, even Real Estate agents have regulation behind them. The internet? nothing...
You'll find these larger providers you speak of are already heavily regulated. To actually own IP classes and fiber is a little different than having a bunch of servers on the internet.
I'm a web developer / application developer by profession. I make a solid income from it and have been working in this arena for well over 7 years. Now, a perspective company is looking for a new website and companies like us provide quotes.
Solid businesses like us get told all the time that what we do isn't "worth" anything and their 16yr old son can make them a website with Frontpage. It's fine, we know its a bit of hogwash to get the sale price down.
People know that if they are expecting anything professional they need to pay for it but the stigma behind what we do is still demeans the industry. People who write websites went to university they worked hard to hold the qualifications they have.
Why are we the only ones out there that do no have a formal set of regulations to fall back on? Everyone else does.
Govt regulation wont kill the internet. It will just help them suss out the Wikileaks of the world when time demands it. Just like Paul Hogan and Wesly Snipes, they were big enough fish to bring down so the Tax office went after them.
The freedom of what the internet is about wont be affected at all. No sir.
You'll find these larger providers you speak of are already heavily regulated. To actually own IP classes and fiber is a little different than having a bunch of servers on the internet.
The problem is that one regulates "the industry", not the incumbent telcos. Every regulation thus amplifies the position of the incumbent, instead of opposing it.
Why are we the only ones out there that do no have a formal set of regulations to fall back on? Everyone else does.
Boo-hoo. I can't understand why you think regulations will actually help you. Ask a few electricians or mechanics how their business has evolved under all those "helpful" regulations.
Say, the regulation comes that you need approval for publishing a website ? The same politicians in control of Verizon-AT&T will, of course, run the approval department. What do you think will happen ?
No, not approval to publish sites. They couldn't do that. It would be self regulated like taxation is. Audits etc weed out the problem sites.
See you couldn't run the internet like Apple runs its app store for instance, thats ridiculas i could see your point there.
Self regulated is very flexible, people complain if the site breaks regulation. Heck we already have something like that in Google. Websites setup with black hat SEO techniques and within a few days after a complaint is issued that site gets removed from Googles index.
What the advantages are is problematic publishers would get removed. How many bullshit websites are there out there, domain placeholders stealing domains and running adsense on them. Javascript inserts which steal customer information. How about even fair use on domains? ICANN are terrible, other countries have legitimate use policies on their domains which .com should also have.
Google doesn't want regulation because they actually make money from the underground activities with adsense. Perhaps a lot of money.
Having a govt body which takes the responsibility off Google from them should be a good thing. Alas, their ties to bad websites is a financial benefit for them, not evil I ask?
See you couldn't run the internet like Apple runs its app store for instance, thats ridiculas i could see your point there.
Okay ... have you ever been to the middle east ? That's exactly what Saudi Arabia wants, and a whole host of other such states.
Of course, they don't want to allow half what apple allows. You can *hope* they won't agree on what to show or what not, but let's not forget that 2/3rds of the planet is of the opinion that gays should be shot on sight (or stoned, or beheaded, or ... I forget what islam "religiously" demands, and even without islam, china's not a fan of homosexuality either, as to why (ex-)communists hate homosexuality, dunno, but they do. Same goes for Hindus). I mean, you're not going to like the regulations that "government" (especially the UN) is going to want.
Google doesn't want regulation because they actually make money from the underground activities with adsense. Perhaps a lot of money.
That government department will be worse in this regard. Internet crime is the reason for their existence, the reason for their (without a doubt less-than-modest) salaries. They won't lower internet crime, they'll raise it.
Google, at least, doesn't depend on people behaving badly.
Yeah yeah, what some nations want vs what other nations want. Lets not talk about this for second lets talk about whats best for everyone and then ask ourselves as people how do we get there?
The internet is an absolute mess. Can we agree on this? Its full of busted leaky pipes and over crowded suburbs. I.E the infrastructure of the internet is letting us down in the ways of progressing technology with many nations still relying on copper wires. IPv4 is being stretched sooo thin now, resulting in private networks being run within business to handle the shortage. And last but not least, companies act like vigilantes controlling their own slice of the internet any which way they want.
I'll tell you something, I stayed in remote Brazil for 3 months last year. I spent 1 of those months in a Favela (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favela) some of the people i was assoicated with were from UNICEF which recently visited Syria.
Do you know what the general consensus was about these sorts of places? which we all agreed on after simply tasting the lives of what these people endure? Lack of money leads to lack of infrastructure leads to lack of resources leads to lots of hardship and death. Infrastructure is only improved through Regulating it. You don't build roads without tolls just as you shouldn't run telecommunications with out them either. The internet is the 20th century equivalent to a world international Favela.
My question to you is, how do we turn it into Beverly Hills without any form of regulation? Companies which profit from it wont certainly do it unless they are forced too.
My question to you is, how do we turn it into Beverly Hills without any form of regulation? Companies which profit from it wont certainly do it unless they are forced too.
Needless to say, we wait until they find a good way to do it themselves. And we "teach them to fish". That's it.
Because regulation will only make those favelas into bland, tasteless and horribly poor highrises.
Besides, regulation in Brazil might be tolerable (though govt. corruption isn't), but in Saudi arabia you will find a *LOT* more favelas than in Brazil. They just shoot anyone who talks about it.
And don't worry, these are lots of government regulations : they beat up any woman not covered (yes the police, and they're lucky to get away with a beating), they go in, search houses for signs of homosexuality and execute anyone even mildly suspected, ... And if they feel that the US needs to be placated once more they do the same to bomb makers (though most bomb makers don't need the police for this, they execute themselves -and generally at least part of their family- by being idiots with bombs)
Let's not forget that the discussion is about whether we put this government ("partly") in charge of the internet. Seems like a good idea ? I think NOT.
I'll end saying that I have a little more faith in people than that. The US maybe run by tyrants and greed but countries like mine (Australia) its run by public servants mostly. Of course we have outside influences like unions, etc. but i stand by my initial assessment whereby not everyone is evil and greedy, people by nature I've found are pretty good at heart.
If we can clean up the internet so its something thats actually worth something, preserve it and treat it with a bit of respect instead of it being a tool to wastes lives, helps us get fat, enables us look at porn all day, encourages us to play idiot video games (Yes I'm talking about WOW), and helps build socially inept people then maybe anything you had to say to me held some weight.
Personally, and this is coming from the bottom of my heart here. If the internet suddenly stopped being this massive time wasting black hole of useless shit and was just used for commerce a tool, a means to provide a result then I'd be a happy person.
We let our kids get raised by this shit, we let our kids abuse this shit. We even condone disgusting behavior and sick self serving fantasies because of this shit. The shit I'm referring to is the box sitting on your desk.
We complain that we are getting to fat we complain that we are becoming lazy. Yet the people who do so are usually posting blog articles about it. Sitting at cafes with smartphones not talking to people and "if" they go out somewhere they have 3g and a laptop. The internet is a savage thing that needs to cleaned up and the "parasites" or "addicts" (both interchangeable IMHO) need to go to rehab.
The human race is becoming like Surrogates the movie or like Wall-E the movie. We see into those movies and laugh, the reality is its not sci-fi and its not in the future. Its now.
I suggest one thing to a guy like you. Go Out. Have a drink with some friends. And Get Laid. Then think that if you stick your kid on this international network of garbage for long enough he/she may never build the basic skills to even perform life actions.
When it comes to me, tearing it down and starting over is something that as a "free" and "happy" human being would APPROVE of. No political agenda here buddy!