UN Pushes Plan To Assume Internet Governance Role

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

UN Pushes Plan To Assume Internet Governance Role

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @05:15AM from the the-un-is-always-right dept.

no0b writes with an Op-Ed by the FCC Commissioner on a UN plan to gain more control over Internet regulation. From the article: "On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year's end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish 'international control over the Internet' through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices. " BoingBoing offers a slightly different perspective; The Register offers a quite different perspective.

12 of 287 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Two bad choices by vlm · 2012-02-22 05:20 · Score: 5, Interesting

Two bad choices:
1) Led by the US = megacorps have purchased both political parties so its basically megacorp-net. Expect lots of censorship and control focused around maximizing profits.
2) Led by the UN = most of the UN members are crooks, dictators, religious extremists, military leaders who killed the civilian leaders to gain control, basically the scum of the non-business society so its basically dictator-net. Expect lots of censorship and control around killing all dissenters and forcing one lunatic religions beliefs upon people of other lunatic religious beliefs (or non-beliefs)

--
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
1. Re:Two bad choices by jmorris42 · 2012-02-22 05:34 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  > Led by the UN = most of the UN members are crooks, dictators, religious extremists, military leaders...
  What is really horrible is that this state of affairs isn't an accident. It was designed that way, to be a Parliment of Tyrants. When the UN was proposed and designed most nation states were unfree hellholes and with the Soviet Block and ChiComs on the rise at the time the trend was not our friend. Yet the design called for one nation state one vote in the General Assembly and with both China and the Soviet Union getting a veto in the Security Council there was zero chance of anything positive ever happening and every chance of great harm. And it was designed that way. Think about it.
  So lets turn over control of the Internet to the same bunch of misfits who thought seating Iran to an organization to pontificate on human rights was a good idea. And lets not forget Libya having to get booted out of the Human Rights Council when Kadaffy's body count got so high even the other tyrants were getting embarrased. So oh heck yea, lets turn the Internet over to these thugs, what could possibly go wrong when the Axis of Evil starts writing the RFCs for the Evil Bit and it ain't April Fools.
  
  --
  Democrat delenda est
2. Re:Two bad choices by zero.kalvin · 2012-02-22 06:26 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  My name is I believe I should leave you the fuck alone.
3. Re:Two bad choices by NeutronCowboy · 2012-02-22 07:07 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  It was designed for that purpose, and it does it well. If you want to make the UN an international leading body, a true world government, then you'll need to change its structure.
  Precisely. The UN, as much good as it does through its mere existence, would be a disaster as the official controlling body of the Internet. It is set up as a talking shop, and designed to allow for compromise along the lowest common denominator. Unfortunately, in the area of free speech, that means almost nothing.
  Screw SOPA and ACTA - UN control of the Internet might very well be what kicks off the Darknet explosion.
  
  --
  Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Drama queens... by wulva · 2012-02-22 05:24 · Score: 4, Interesting

The register seems to have it quite spot on, somebody is being a drama queen and AT&T+friends probably paid for the drama because they want to increase roaming charges.
Re:No improvement over the current setup by forkfail · 2012-02-22 05:29 · Score: 5, Interesting

The most appropriate regulation for the 'net would be of two parts:
1. There shall be common standards that may be utilized by anyone without cost.
2. If you get a packet, you send it on, no matter who it is from or to whom it is going.
2a. You can charge for a connection and by bandwidth, but not for transference of data.
3. There shall not be any more regulation imposed on the 'net.
But... we'll never get this. Why? Because the powers that be can go full time on their efforts to control; the politicians who are bought and the folks doing the buying don't need to take time to go to work - that is their work. Just as the mega-corporations who are fighting for their own control don't have to spend their evenings taking care of the kids.

--
Check your premises.
You cannot stop criminal use of the internet by jamonterrell · 2012-02-22 05:29 · Score: 4, Interesting

I think the whole thing is a misnomer. Neither the US nor the UN *can* control the internet. The more any entity tries to squeeze the internet, the more virtual darknets will appear on it, outside the reach of those entities. That being said, they cannot achieve any of the goals that prevent bad behavior on the internet... The argument is parallel to the one regarding making guns or drugs or other substances illegal. You cannot stop criminals from getting access to these things, you can only stop honest people from getting access to them. You cannot stop criminal use of the internet, only honest use of it.

--
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
Who are those who think it needs fixing? by bughunter · 2012-02-22 05:32 · Score: 5, Interesting

The answer to the question "Who believes UN governance will result in improvement?" will give a lot of insight into the motives behind transferring control to a UN agency. My immediate suspicions include: the copyright cartels, repressive governments, and telecoms/tier 1's seeking to create international monopolies.
Sure there are technical improvements that arguably can be made at various layers, but does anyone think that the UN can or will do any better at managing them than the current system?

--
I can see the fnords!
Re:One world order by timeOday · 2012-02-22 05:56 · Score: 4, Interesting

I suppose we are inching towards it, unavoidably. As the world "shrinks" due to better communications and transportation, the scope of business and government grows. In the time of the Roman Empire it was almost impossible to maintain an empire that encompassed just the greater Mediterranean region. Just within the recent past - the lifespan of the US - look at how the primary unit of government has transitioned from the city/county, to the state, to the nation. Governance is always lagging commerce. Nowadays, commerce is global, whereas global governance is weak, resulting (predictably) in people jurisdiction-shopping to sue people one place, pay taxes in another, and have their manufacturing done in a third. It's a huge free-rider problem that is crying for legislation. I say none of this to advocate it, only that global government isn't some closed ring of conspirators, it's mainly economics.
Re:Holy crap ... by piggydoggy · 2012-02-22 05:57 · Score: 3, Interesting

I literally can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. For what it's worth, Russia's internet is likely even free-er than America's for the time being.
Re:No improvement over the current setup by Medievalist · 2012-02-22 06:09 · Score: 5, Interesting

Oh, c'mon, that's covered in RFC1918, isn't it? I didn't even have to look the number up. Step One was observe the standards.
The real problem is 800 lb gorillas who ignore and subvert Internet standards for competitive advantage, and the ITU is not exactly set up to chastise that sort of actor. These are the people who gave us X.500, for chrissakes! If there's anybody less trustworthy than the US government it would be a consortium of telecommunications giants.
Re:No improvement over the current setup by MobyDisk · 2012-02-22 07:23 · Score: 3, Interesting

2. If you get a packet, you send it on, no matter who it is from or to whom it is going.
2a. You can charge for a connection and by bandwidth, but not for transference of data.
I see that you are trying to write network neutrality in here, but it won't work with these rules. I suspect you are trying to make sure that an ISP doesn't charge the user some kind of special premium for a packet that goes to a particular web site or competing ISP. That is a good rule. But it isn't that they can't charge for data: they simply must charge equally for all data. So I propose a revision:
Rule 2: All packets are charged equally, regardless of source, destination, or content.
Otherwise, your rule 2 violates routing rules (some packets must be discarded). Internet backbones wouldn't work with rule 2A since their entire business model is charging per packet. Peering agreements would also be in a gray area of rule 2A since the count the transference of data but don't explicitly charge for it. Those are good things we would not want to interfere with.