UN Pushes Plan To Assume Internet Governance Role

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.

Comments

No improvement over the current setup

[xeno314]

The idea would be to have *better* regulation of the Internet, which won't happen with the UN/ITU. Adding culture clashes to the present political clashes and putting countries that actively censor content at the table is just asking for trouble.

Re:No improvement over the current setup

[forkfail]

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.

Re:No improvement over the current setup

[Medievalist]

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.

Two bad choices

[vlm]

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)

Re:Two bad choices

[Anonymous Coward]

Pick the one most likely to result in a leadership that is crippled in from disagreement. The less they do, the better.

Re:Two bad choices

[dragonhunter21]

Hey, now there's an idea- the workers at backbone stations take a global week-long break and let the chips fall as they will. See if they figure out the real owners then.

Re:Two bad choices

[jmorris42]

> 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.

Re:Two bad choices

[phantomfive]

The way I see it, there is a choice between having it controlled by the US, who despite SOPA, still has some of the strongest protection of free speech anywhere in the world. We have other problems, but you can say basically anything.

On the other side, you have an agency who is partially controlled by Russia and China, who don't respect free speech, and actively favor censoring the internet. At least in the US, politicians will all say they oppose censorship if you ask them. In China, most of them favor it, and actively use it as an opportunity to destroy their political enemies. Do you want someone with that kind of attitude to have any say in what happens on the internet?

The proper function of the UN is not to tell us what to do, it's not to be a governing body of the world. It's designed to be a place where the powerful (and to a lesser degree, the less powerful) countries of the world can get together and discuss things, and if possible, avoid going to war. Furthermore it is mechanism to take action once all parties are agreed. These reasons are why any member of the security council can veto action.

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.

Re:Two bad choices

[Githaron]

What I fear is that we'll wind up having to chose our poisons.

When was the last time the US government let us choose anything?

Re:Two bad choices

[preaction]

Who run Bartertown?

Re:Two bad choices

[bhagwad]

As an Indian, I hope the US will continue to have stewardship over the Internet for the foreseeable future. My own government is run by assholes who think "blasphemy" should be censored on the net. And since India has 1/3rd of the world's population and China has another 1/3rds, we're essentially screwed if the UN works on a pure "democracy" basis.

There are a lot of things I hate about the US, but free speech is NOT one of them. The first amendment is one of the most amazing pieces of legislation ever and people like me in India can only drool in envy. But I'm not complaining. Even if I don't personally live in a country where free speech is not...you know...free, at least I can be happy that it EXISTS somewhere on this planet. At least I can be grateful that my ideals are upheld SOMEWHERE.

But give the Internet to the UN, and all that goes out of the window. I don't like the net being run by megacorps. But I like it being run by countries like dictatorial countries like China, India and the Middle East even less.

Re:Two bad choices

[SydShamino]

Aaaaand you neglect to point out that it was made that way for a reason. It's purpose wasn't to be the Justice League, populated only with the good and righteous Free Western World. If we wanted that, we would have made NATO and not the UN.

The purpose of the UN was to get everyone together in the same room and talk. Sometimes that talk has been ugly, but by keeping everyone talking we can keep reminding ourselves that they are human, too, and maybe that kept us from destroying the planet in WWIII. And if something happens that's actually able to unite the UN in response? Well then there's a strong worldwide mandate to take action. It doesn't happen every time it should, but when it happens it works well.

So yes, it's extremely important and I'm extremely happy that the UN included all those unfree hellholes, the Soviet Block, "ChiComs", and even Iran and Libya. It wouldn't have worked any other way, and it's possible neither you nor I would have "worked" either.

Re:Two bad choices

[gorzek]

The Internet has simply become too big and too important to remain apolitical forever. Think of how much has changed just in the past few years:

* Groups like Anonymous have done real-world damage to businesses and governments by bringing down servers and stealing private information.
* Wikileaks has embarrassed numerous governments by exposing their dirty laundry and even illegal activities.
* Twitter has been instrumental in organizing and spreading resistance movements, particularly during the Arab Spring.
* Bitcoin has allowed underground economies like Silk Road to flourish.
* The proliferation of strong encryption has presented new challenges for law enforcement and government eavesdropping.
* Onion protocols like Tor make it easier for people to hide their illegal/rebellious activities.
* The ease-of-use of BitTorrent and its clients have made copyright infringement easier than ever.

Taken by themselves, each of these things is a nuisance at best. Taken as part of a larger pattern, governments around the world see the Internet as a platform that's simply out of their control. Under the pretense of stopping criminal activity, they would also gladly lock it down to quash dissent. What originally came to prominence as a new engine for business has evolved as a viable platform for organized dissidence as well as criminal activity. The difficulty is in fighting in the latter without stopping the former. I know around here, the preference would be to maximize freedom even if that means criminal elements remain unthwarted and unpunished. Unfortunately, most people understand too little of these issues and most governments are too singularly focused on serving their own interests to see the Internet as a global public good that should be preserved. Instead, it's considered another vector for terrorism, criminality, and disruption, and therefore it must be sanitized to make it into a more suitable vehicle for commerce and propaganda.

Much of the business community would be happy to see the Internet become a "push" medium. Allowing users to generate content and express themselves opens site owners/operators up to more and more liability. I don't think it will ever come to outright banning of particular technologies, but policies, legal precedents, and broader governmental involvement in Internet affairs will result in a chilling effect, to the point that it won't be a good idea to speak your mind about most things, and the number of venues you'll have in which to do that will be limited anyway.

I think we have a long way to go before that happens, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't fight it every step of the way.

The wrong goal

[wanderfowl]

Right now, in the short game, everybody wants the ability to govern the internet, with the assumption that they'll do it right for their constituents/country/special interests, and with the flawed assumption that they'll be on top forever. The problem is that by attempting to run the internet your way and lock everybody into that _right now_, you're making it easier for somebody else who you disagree with more to take your place, leaving them controlling your internet in a way you may not want. You can't build an elaborate censorship, surveillance and control system on the internet and not expect it to be used against you the next time the torch is passed. In the long game, though, what everybody _should_ be wanting is the hardening of the internet against governance, tracking and regulation, by anybody, and de-centralize it enough that it doesn't matter who thinks they're running things. Only then can you ensure that your use-case is still functional, no matter who's "in charge".

Who are those who think it needs fixing?

[bughunter]

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?

Re:Good luck ruling it without ICANN

[rgbrenner]

People and countries that own US debt can not 'call in' their loans. The best they can do is sell them on the open market.. and if they do that the price will decline.. which means they'll have to take a loss.

And the US can't become Greece because we control our currency. If we had more debt than we could ever repay, we could simply print money to pay out debtors. They wouldn't like it, there would be inflation, and other unfavorable consequences, but we would not default and would not need a bailout. This is the option Greece doesn't have, and why they need a bailout.

Truth is, there is little the UN can threaten the US with. We have a veto on the security council, and provide 22% of the UNs budget -- which gives us a lot of power over the UNs agenda.