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Eric Schmidt: UN Treaty a 'Disaster' For the Internet
An anonymous reader writes "Internet freedom and innovation are at risk of being stifled by a new United Nations treaty that aims to bring in more regulation, Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt has warned. In a question-and-answer session at Mobile World Congress 2012 on Tuesday, Schmidt said handing over control of things such as naming and DNS to the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU) would divide the internet, allowing it to be further broken into pieces regulated in different ways. 'That would be a disaster... To some, the openness and interoperability is one of the greatest achievements of mankind in our lifetime. Do not give that up easily. You will regret it. You will hate it, because all of a sudden all that freedom, all that flexibility, you'll find it shipped away for one good reason after another,' Schmidt said. 'I cannot be more emphatic. Be very, very careful about moves which seem logical, but have the effect of balkanising the internet,' he added, urging everyone to strongly resist the moves."
Another reason why we have to question why we're in the United Nations in the first place. (Let alone funding the whole Keystone Kops outfit)
I'm sorry but a citizen in my country has read and been offended by your first post. In our culture first posts are the devil and are treated as such. We are contacting your government to arrange extradition into the Holy Court.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Here I thought the day I would ever agree with Eric Schmidt on something was long, long gone!
This is supposed to be an accident?
They are drooling over the ability to control.
Deleted
I do agree with Eric S. "Balkanizing" is a well-chosen expression. The internet as it is has enough self-organization to not be in need of such pseudo-solutions as the proposed UN treaty seems to suggest.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Everyone loves to be free. But everyone is also impacted by the actions of their neighbors. Therefore, everyone has an incentive to prevent their neighbors from taking actions that one dislikes. So, everyone has an incentive to deny freedom to their neighbors.
The Internet is a shining example of great freedom, and hence great resistence.
Should you be free to murder me? Obviously not.
Should you be free to post lies about me, visible to the entire world, which motivate people to act in a way that harms me? Probably not. But that rule is *very* hard to enforce without also infringing on other things you *should* be free to do (whether I like it or not).
At least I can complain to my own government and vote out politicians. Where do I go to complain against the UNs policies?
What has made you think that the US government cares at all about the size of the national debt and to whom it is owed?
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
He is an American running a company based out of America. Of course we want to maintain control. We Americans have run the show pretty well since we invented this medium/protocol/standard.
If it works.... don't break it.
The answer to all your problems
... will be routed around. Regulate DNS and something else will be used. Block IP addresses and new ones will take their place. While governments dictate indefinite ownership of ideas for their corporate owners and prosecute dissent, technology has been pulling society in the other direction. You can outlaw reality, but that doesn't make it go away, anymore than outlawing weeds stops them from growing.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
Like any political entity, the primary goal of the UN is to consolidate and centralize power into the hands of the few, rather than decentralize power into the hands of the many.
Let's put it this way. There is X amount of political power available in the world, and Y amount of individuals holding that political power. The UN's goal is to lessen Y while maintaining the same value of X. If you like the sound of that, then you'll be glad to know that they have already made significant progress.
This is a hard truth, but it must be said. The world at large is simply not evolved enough for the Internet. Most of Asia and almost all of the middle east are less able to appreciate the ideals of freedom and tolerance. I say this as an Indian whose government is very keen on controlling what's said on the Internet.
Despite the US's flaws, the first amendment is the strongest protection of free expression in the world. It's an achievement of mankind which the rest of the world is actually just not good enough to appreciate. The Internet is in truth something better than what we humans in our current state of evolution deserve. If you hand it over to the UN, it will become something we actually deserve at this moment in time...and that's not a pretty thing.
We accidentally stumbled upon the Internet as it is today. If people had seen it coming, it would never have been allowed to become what it is. But now that it's here, we have to protect it and treasure it because we've been blessed with something that's too good for us. The UN will reverse that and make it just average since all over unevolved countries will have a say in it.
Europe wants the WWW and AES encryption back...
...You are over-qualified and under-paid. If we give you a raise, we will break the cosmic balance of the universe.
The DNS system as it is now, in the not too distant future, I suspect will be viewed as little more than a Racket. Domain registration should be effectively free. There is no justification for the current registration fees (let alone the BLATANT racketeering fees for xxx and toplevel domains).
Darknets are the future. Ditch your ISPs DNS server as your primary authority (what timewarner does to unresolvable domains, injecting their advertising makes me want to puke).
Dear United Nations,
The internet is not broken. Please do not fix it.
Thank you.
Proverbs 21:19
Something like Tor, but some steps further, decentralized, untrackable and immune to government control.
I agree in principle. But if the US told ICANN to try and shut down the net, what do you think would happen? I'm not up to date on the operation of the root nameservers, but I suspect there would be trouble.
Ulli
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
If you chase the authority up the line it goes ICANN --> NTIA --> DoC --> US Congress.
Now, how prepared do you think the US congress is going to be to hand their control of the Internet over to China and Russia?
The ITU has been seeking relevance to the Internet since the 90s; in a world where balancing line voltages is no longer important the ITU's role in international telecommunications has been severely dimini$hed.
If you look at any step of the way, Bob Shaw from the ITU has been running around in secret trying to cover his tracks.
When GE Federal Systems used Alternic and posted it was "as good as if not better" than the legacy root servers, who called from the INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS UNION IN GENEVA (t SOUNDS so impressive, in real terms, it's as impressive as being, say, the LAN administrator for the White House. Not much global policymaking happens in THAT cubicle) and asked them to stop as this was dangerous? Bob Shaw of the ITU. Oh, and he asked that his name be kept of it ("I didn't say this, I was never here" - Dune). Pity he didn't get the secretary to swear to the same secrecy, she told me who it was. Get used to it, maggots.
Who introduced the Government Advisory Comittee ("GAC") into ICANN as a fait d'accompli, drawn up in secret, who meet in secret but only have an advisory role - except where they insist on policy? DING DING DING - Bob Shaw of the ITU again. I held a quick straw poll on the floor of the first ICANN meeting in Berlin (the neo nazi demostration outside was a nice touch) and 13 out of 1000 people thought the GAC was a good idea - this for an organization that is supposed to "measure and implement community consensus" as its charter. The footage is still around on the Berkman Center servers at Harvard, and I have copies.
Who knew the fix was in an the US goverment had already picked an ICANN an ignored the worlds work via IFWP and bragged about it drunk in DC ? Bob Shaw of the ITU. He still owes me money from smoking all my wifes Virgina Slims from that night too.I don't trust him or the ITU with $10, let along the internet. He doesn't get this openness thing and is instead a remnant of old world secrecy.
At any rate, ICANN only has any authority at all at our leisure. If we type different numbers into special places in our computers they pretty much cease to exist in any operational capacity as the net is edge controlled, not centrally controlled. Everybody with a root password controls a little piece of it, and it grows at the edges.
This UN governance thing has been repeating like an onion sandwich for over a decade now. When the ITU couldn't get the IANA contract it upped the ante to use the UN moniker to try to get everyone in the world to rally behind it. Waste of time, they can be safely ignored. Nobody takes them seriously.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Regulation an issue? How about shifting technology in a direction that is harder to regulate? Get ubiquidous encryption going, and someone needs to work on a shift towards a content-addressible network for dissemination. It shouldn't even be difficult.
/SHA1HASHCAN as a special pseudo-directory and query their cache, then every open cache on their network before they tried to HTTP it.
You could encode CDA addresses as 'HTTP://fallback-http-server/SHA1HASHCAN/hash/mime/mime/filename' - that way you'd have backwards compatibility, as any browsers not programmed to first ask their local CDA cache node if it has that data would fall back to HTTP. Those that are programmed for it would recognise
CAN is the solution to so many problems. It'd be substantially harder to censor, substantially harder to trace either source or destination of data, eliminate a lot of congestion-causing demand on the internet infrastructure, be more resilient against faults and dramatically reduce the cost of distributing content ensuring that the individuals and small groups on the internet would be just as able to publish large media files as the big boys who can afford global CDNs.
Yes, I'm rather taken with the idea of a distributed, hash-addressible global public cache right now. Storage is dirt cheap, network capacity isn't.
In theory? Also to your government. It's their job to try and keep the UN from issuing bad policies.
In another theory, if you're not a citizen of the US? Well, your government has less weight now than it would if the net were under the UN...
In practice? As another poster said, nowhere - working as intended.
Ulli
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
Greeks invented democracy...Sorry USA, you can't take it over without paying off some of the national debt your members hold.
I don't think they're even trying.
Governments hate and always have hated the loss of control over their people. A major means of control is control over communication between the masses of people. When the printing press was invented, governments immediately instituted controls. That was not too hard, because printing presses were and still are expensive, as are broadcast stations. Controlling those media outlets is relatively easy because there are so few in comparison to the people on the Internet. Now anyone with a computer and a reasonable Internet connection can make their ideas available to anyone else with an Internet connected gadget. All governments without exception hate this because it lessens their control over their populations.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Where do I go to complain against the UNs policies?
Arms dealers.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
As someone who has watched as youtube, controlled by google last I heard, has slowly whittled away at these supposed freedoms (this birdsong is copyright douchebag corp, your video offends a muslim in malaysia and has been taken offline, your video offends the catholic clergy and has been removed, etc), I find this deliciously ironic.
Clean up your own house first, Schmidt.
The fact is, We the People of the United States of America were first to fund DNS that makes the Internet what it is today. Sorry UN, you can't take it over without paying off some of the national debt your members hold.
That doesn't even make sense. DNS is only a small part of the internet and it's not owned in the sense of property in any case.
Besides DNS as implemented is wrong and easily abused by governments ( like the US and UK do ) and anyone who can fake a signature ( like that whole sex.com thing ). Something distributed like namecoin's .bit top level domain would be far better than the current get rich quick scheme.
... is that Google might lose its current degree of influence over governance if that governance isn't in the United States. Google would have far less sway with the ITU than with ICANN and the other U.S.-based agencies. Once again it's the 'selfish voice' masquerading as a 'voice of the people'.
...this is true: "UN Treaty a Disaster"
Power elitists win, everyone else loses.
Unfortunately, we here in the US often aren't good enough to appreciate the first amendment either.
The question people should be asking themselves is if they want someone like Bashar Assad or Mugabe or China or the next Pol Pot regime to have a say in what you can and can't do on the internet. Because as soon as you bring it to the UN you give equal footing to regimes that shouldn't have any say. Just like when Kadaffi's Libya was in charge of the UN commission on Human Rights.
To repeat what you said in other words:
We Americans are better than the rest of the world, which isn't good enough to be in charge of as great a responsibility as the Internet.
What a horribly naive and ignorant statement. European research funding and a Brit invented the web, does that mean they should control the web?
What's debt got to do with anything anyway? It's the US and nations most closely aligned to it that hold far and away the majority of the world's debt whilst those nations in the UN whom the US sees as enemies such as China that hold far and away the largest surpluses. Bringing debt into it makes no sense as the US has far more than anyone else. Sorry if these facts upset your ignorant nationalist world view though.
The fact is, We the People of the United States of America were first to fund DNS that makes the Internet what it is today. Sorry UN, you can't take it over without paying off some of the national debt your members hold.
Well thank you for inventing the web, but nothing stops other regions from having their own ICANN and cross-syncing DNS root servers. The standard is what people use, right?
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
The ultimate threat to the Internet is not governments, it's corporations. If a government tries to twist or shape or censor the Internet, there will always be ways around it and in the end, citizens and even other countries and their citizens will bring down the plans of such regimes.
But when corporations take something over, it's gone for good. There will be no Tor, no darknet.
Even with their armies and weapons, governments are much weaker than corporations. Because ultimately, those armies are made up of people, and the ones holding those weapons are people. But there are no tools for people to fight off or take down corporations once they have reached a certain level of power. Finally, the decisions in a corporation are made not by the people who work for the corporation, or even the owners, but by the legal virtual entity that is required to only seek greater shareholder value. Even if the shareholders, or board of directors, or C-level officers decide they want to assign some social good a slightly greater weight in the corporate decision-making process, the corporation is designed to ignore them and only to seek greater shareholder value. No "free market" mechanisms exist that allow for the power of corporations to be reigned in. And now we have shares of corporations owned by other corporations, so there are layers and layers of decision gates that only respond to greater share value. We have corporations that are worth more than all but about 10% of world governments. What possible defense does a country, even a democracy, have against such a single-minded golem that only knows how to feed endlessly.
Greater regulation may well be the last line of defense against a corporate takeover of the Internet. Really, of the world. But it's a small window that's closing. And the wealth of those corporations is being used to obfuscate, confuse, disarm and distract.
It's a shame the United Nations is so weak. So corrupt. The solution is not to regulate the Internet, but to regulate the corporations.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I've said this before and I'll say it again, because people really need to wake up, smell the coffee, and internalize this:
The UN doesn't represent YOU, or any other PERSON. It represents GOVERNMENTS. Governments are their constituents, not humaity.
Let me repeat that: The UN's constituents are GOVERNMENTS, not humanity. If you understand that, you will understand UN policy and why they do things that otherwise seem bizarr or incompetent.
And from the point of view of virtually every government, no matter how "benign" it may appear, the Internet is most certainly broken. Why? Because they cannot easily control it, control the content on it, or control what the people using it see and say. This impacts their ability to govern the way they would like to (and the way they used to) by feeding an official line to the media and have it echoed into every home and automobile, often without much question.
What humanity sees as a working, functioning internet that has democratized information and allowed an unprecedented level of collaboration, cooperation, and exchange of ideas, our governments one and all see as their biggest threat. What better way to reign in that threat than to turn control over to the UN, then agree by treaty how it is to be "governend". What they tried with SOPA and ACTA they'll be able to easily achieve through a simple UN governance mandate.
Sianara Internet, sianara freedom of communication. Welcome your new overlords, same as the olds ones, but with less compunction about smacking you down into place. With perfect political cover to the ostensibly liberal western democracies: to the public: "we regret the UN's decision to implement X, but are bound by treaty to abide their decision. This minor erosion of internet expression won't impact our fundamental freedoms any, and we'll learn to cope", to the Koch brothers (or Soros if you're on the other side of the aisle): "Problem solved. Can I count on your campaign contribution to my superpac next season?" Multiply across every politician, in every political system, in every government, and diversify by whatever means is appropriate to the local political climate, wether it's campaign contributions, secret tribunals, or shells raining down on opposition cities.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
At least I can complain to my own government and vote out politicians. Where do I go to complain against the UNs policies?
To your politicians. Who do you think makes up the UN? It is states such as the US. In fact, the influence of the US is vastly larger than its share of humans in the world.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
At least I can complain to my own government and vote out politicians. Where do I go to complain against the UNs policies?
So the U.N. is unresponsive but that the US Federal Government is not? Maybe you'd like your state or city government to administer DNS, since they'll be more responsive to your complaints?
The FBI & ICE taking down websites might be OK with Americans, but it's not with the United Nations. Don't be so sure that what you'd get with the U.N. would be worse.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
Am I the only one who senses that China/Russia are pushing for UN control of the internet because the US overstepped its bounds by enforcing its shitty copyright laws beyond its borders with domain seizures? We need to stop this, and before that happens we may need to force the US government to guarantee that it won't mess with internet infrastructure any more...
It's not, an organisation requiring international consensus is not going to be able to pull off controversal decisions because you'd never get that consensus.
Many years ago, when WIPO was created it swayed towards much more relaxed IP laws than we have currently, this is because African nations wanted things like medicine and technology to come down in price faster so that their countries could experience benefits of western society sooner. The US didn't like the fact it got outvoted so side-stepped WIPO and created the WTO which is less democratic so that it could try and force international IP policies to go it's way. This is evidenced in the fact the US uses a lot of weight to try and force nations into the WTO, to force them to accept WTO rulings against them, yet has largely ignored WTO rulings against it on issues such as lumber, steel, cotton, gambling and so forth.
If the internet was in international hands you'd never get the domain seizures authorised that the US currently allows as you'd never get the political support for what is a US agenda. Similarly though you'd never get Chinese style censorship as there are too many nations that would be against it.
Technical issues would still be resolved just as well, because when technical issues arise there's really little political need or desire to hijack the issue and prevent a resolution passing - things like that are purely technical.
So all in all it'd be a much better situation than the current status quo where the US unilaterally imposes censorship on the internet based on it's ethnocentric vision of gambling and IP law.
Really, for the most part the only people who want it to stay in the US are American nationalists, xenophobes, and those with a vested interest in retaining the power it affords. There's a few folk in between who are ignorant about the UN and don't realise that it's far more than just the security council and that it already handles other international tasks like international mailing, maritime rules, air transport rules, telecomms and so forth perfectly well without any such drama that Schmidt is peddling.
Google has deep pockets, and has been known to do good things for their own sake (no, I don't buy the whole "don't be evil" thing, but there's a decent track record there) Setup or fund existing mesh networking systems to allow a grassroots network (with a new name) that is decentralized completely. I know research is going on in this area for a variety of reasons, put more brains and money on it and make it happen. "Work toward saying to the UN: You can have the Internet, we're done with it now."
The USA does not represent you or your nation and for the informed they know the USA does not represent its own citizens either.
SOPA and ACTA will eventually happen somehow as soon as the public drops the ball long enough on the issue for them to sneak it bye; with or without the UN. At least with the UN it will have even more BS to navigate and given how weak the UN is it will probably not have the impact the USA is today messing with people's domains, pushing around foreign officials like puppets etc.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
By that line of reason you have to pay the UK when you use a computer, as they were invented by Charles Babbage.
I'm pretty sure the U.S. is currently seizing domain names on a regular basis, shutting down web sites and free speech, with absolutely no due process, and was recently well on its way to codifying this practice in law with SOPA/PIPA. They were killed but the DHS is still seizing domains like they were law.
The U.S. is also aggressively push ACTA on governments around the globe, often using blackmail, which can also be used to suppress free speech.
Especially since 9/11 the U.S. simply hasn't been the bastion of free speech you are trying to make it sound like.
Turning the Internet over to the UN would probably be bad for a host of reasons, but its quite obvious that the U.S. isn't even remotely trust worthy any more thanks to America's two pronged obsessions stopping piracy at all costs, including basic civil liberties, and to a lesser extent obsessing over Islamic extremism and terrorism.
All things considered I would prefer Internet control were passed to a country like Switzerland with a strong history of neutrality, resonable though not perfect free speech laws and a track record of supporting international agencies. It would be a better choice than either the U.S. or the U.N.
@de_machina
I say this as an Indian
To repeat what you said in other words:
We Americans
You stereotypes are actually blinding you to what's being said. You may want to adjust them, a bit.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
> Despite the US's flaws, the first amendment is the strongest protection of free expression in the world.
Is it? I mean it's fairly decent and all, and maybe it is even the best in theory (although I didn't compare US law to any of the other ~200 countries that exist) but given the fact that the US are hardly even near the top of lists such as the Press Freedom Index, perhaps it doesn't really work all that well in practice.
Remove the 'we' then. The rest still stands.
And where do I go to complain about US policies?
Some of us out here aren't terribly thrilled with the way America handles things that directly affect us.
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
So - because there are valid issues with how Google manages it's business, we should completely ignore the valid points Schmidt makes, and let the UN have the internet?
Check your premises.
A global organisation controlling the Internet would seem like a good thing, at least better than the current direction of every nation doing its own censorship fracturing the once global net to pieces. The problem is, the UN is the worst organisation for this job. First, it wouldn't solve the fracturing problem, the oppressive regimes are freely ignoring UN concerns about everything else already. And second, the UN is mainly a collective of corrupt first-world politicians and barbaric thirld-world tyrants. It's not a democratic organisation, and not one I would trust with anything. While the US control over the net is also threatening, they at least seem to listen to their people/corporations once in a while.
As someone who has watched as youtube, controlled by google last I heard, has slowly whittled away at these supposed freedoms (this birdsong is copyright douchebag corp, your video offends a muslim in malaysia and has been taken offline, your video offends the catholic clergy and has been removed, etc), I find this deliciously ironic.
Clean up your own house first, Schmidt.
I agree with your point, but I think you have it backwards.
Google is a global private company. The simple fact that Google is "forced" to obey the laws of China if it wishes to operate there is actually a perfect example of Schmidt's point. Currently China has power over Google, but little power over the global internet itself.
He's basically trying to prevent the internet from following in Toutube's footsteps.
And the rest is somewhat true, it only sounds dickish when an American says it. No one else has the track record on free speech. Laws restricting "hate speech" (i.e., any speech the government hates) and establishing secret DNS blacklists are springing up all over the place. (Not that I'm sure we'll hold up for long, but at the moment it is so).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Or perhaps it's quite fashionable to bash the US right now, especially among self-identified intellectuals.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
We already did, by erasing the debt the UK owed the US after WW2 from the lend lease program.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
I think the US Federal Government was pretty responsive to the protests around PIPA and SOPA... Do you think the UN would care?
The fact is, We the People of the United States of America were first to fund DNS that makes the Internet what it is today. Sorry UN, you can't take it over without paying off some of the national debt your members hold.
Maybe the US should donate control of the DNS system to the UN to pay off some of the debt it owes to the UN as part of its treaty obligations. You brought up debt first. Although, I still don't agree with the idea of the UN being in charge of anything.
Are you suggesting all reports that indicate the USA is not in fact the #1 most awesome free country are the product of "self-identified intellectuals" with an ax to grind? Yeah, compared to "perhaps the USA is not #1 in all it's endeavours" your grand conspiracy sounds much more reasonable.
I know this will shock you, so please sit before reading the rest of this post.
There is NOTHING stopping you from setting up a DNS root and running your own DNS system. Go ahead and do it. I don't care. No one else here cares. In fact, not a single person in the World cares. The US won't stop you. They won't even try. Hell, they won't even notice!
This doesn't even make sense. What is the "Internet" that should be in UN hands? IP allocations? DNS roots? RFC process? Well-known port allocations? It seems, from most posts, that DNS is the target. If so, let the UN go ahead and create its own hierarchy and administer it. No one will stop them! Or are you also suggesting that the World be forced to use UN DNS servers over the existing collection?
All you have to do it look at the makeup of the UN's Human Rights Council to realize it would be worse.
Plus China and Russia are pushing for this. As bad is ICE is, they're rank amateurs at blocking the net compared to the Chinese.
Eric is right the idea of the UN governing the Internet is a very very bad idea.
Who needs guns when you've got the genome? I know most /.ers have never had their genome hacked, but believe me it's not a subtle distinction.
Absent government enforcement of civil conduct, corporations would become scary as fast as you can throw money at the dark economy. Let me guess, in your special world, the dark economy doesn't have guns. We agree on one thing though. Most of the worst things in society result from behind the scenes influence of business on government.
What's debt got to do with anything anyway?
I suppose the argument is that the US taxpayers will still be paying for the amortized cost of developing DNS, while the UN gets the control. If they want the control, they need to pay for the costs.
The flaw, then, would be that the FTC is still paying to admin DNS. But giving it away to an NGO isn't a great solution either.
Decentralized DNSSEC seems inevitable at this point.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
So if the UN were just a meeting place for diplomacy, that'd be great. An organization where nations can get together and talk shit out. Fine.
However all this world government shit? Ya that is where I have problems. Not only because I don't agree with the idea but because they are so toothless when it comes to shit that actually matters. They want money, troops, etc, and to play at being a government, but then really do a lot of nothing useful (and do shit like Sierra Leon head the human rights council).
So we don't need to get rid of it, but it should be scaled back to just an international forum for diplomacy.
"the net is edge controlled, not centrally controlled"
That is very true. People seem to have this view of DNS as some sort of evil tyranny where ICANN rules everything at the behest of secret US interest and everyone else is fucked.
No, actually, DNS is 100% a system of trusts and it can change at any time on the end user level. The reason ICANN has power is because all the root-servers.net roots trust them. They get their root zone from ICANN. They don't have to, they could get it from somewhere else if they wanted, ICANN is just who they trust.
The reason they matter is they are who nearly all DNS servers trust by default. The DNS in Windows server, BIND, etc they all use the root-server.net roots by default. The admin can change that any time they like. Hell they can be a root. It is just how things are by default.
Then of course on your system, it trusts whatever DNS servers you tell it to. By default that is whatever DHCP advertises. However you can change it to anything your want, run your own if you like.
So ICANN's power is entirely de facto, not de jure. Not only can there be alternate systems, there are. OpenDNS is one. Different roots, the whole 9 yards. They mirror the ICANN root file, but should ICANN do something they don't like, they can choose to ignore the change.
Any other country or organization can have their own DNS. Hell they might even be able to play nice with ICANN. Say the EU decides to start up their own organization, EUCANN. They get their own root servers and all that jazz. They start off just mirroring the ICANN zone as they get everything set up and running well. They they convince DNS servers to start using their roots. Maybe when you are in the EU, DNS uses their first and ICANN's as backup since they are more geographically concentrated there (though many of the roots are anycast, they are still US heavy). Perhaps I and K switch over from ICANN to EUCANN since they are controlled by EU based groups. Then maybe they contact ICANN and talk about splitting the root zone. EUCANN becomes responsible for the content of EU nation domains, ICANN retains all the rest. They mirror each other.
Life is good.
The problem seems to be that nobody wants to spend the money. They just want the existing systems and infrastructure to be under their control. They want to give the orders, they don't want to build infrastructure.
I don't think the UN would consider PIPA or SOPA. See: U.N. Report Declares Internet Access a Human Right
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
There is a suggestion box in the detention facility.
10: PRINT "Everything old is new again."
20: GOTO 10
All you have to do it look at the makeup of the UN's Human Rights Council to realize it would be worse.
Worse then Guantanamo Bay Cuba? America is justified in claiming moral leadership on free speech, but that doesn't mean the UN would be bad. The UN certainly wouldn't be blinded by Hollywood. Also (I linked this above too): U.N. Report Declares Internet Access a Human Right
Plus China and Russia are pushing for this. As bad is ICE is, they're rank amateurs at blocking the net compared to the Chinese.
They already block the Internet in their own countries, with no international discussion or mediation. We shouldn't only worry about free countries becoming more restrictive, but also about getting restrictive countries to open up. China and the US should do more then just business.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
While ultimately it is Google's choice to take down videos, it is simply because they would prefer to obey the law. Which they did not write. You're well within your rights of free speech to offend anyone you like. You cannot however break the law, nor would any respectful business allow and facilitate that through equipment they maintain, and offer to you to use for free.
None of us know everything. Therefore we're all naïve.
What he said is that Americans are better than the rest of the world when it comes to respecting freedom of speech. Which is entirely true, and I say so as another non-American.
"because all of a sudden all that freedom, all that flexibility, you'll find it shipped away for one good reason after another,"
Eric Schmidt said that? Even if he's right, it's hard to take any wisdom/preaching from him about "freedom" when he has said the following, with a straight look on his face: "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place..."
Based on that, he sounds like he only cares about freedom when it doesn't benefit him or his interests. I have to wonder what his real "Google" motive or angle is...
There is NOTHING stopping you from setting up a DNS root and running your own DNS system. Go ahead and do it. I don't care. No one else here cares. In fact, not a single person in the World cares. The US won't stop you. They won't even try. Hell, they won't even notice!
Yeah, I was going to post something sorta like that, but you did it first, so thanks! We should be pointing this out whenever DNS's problems come up.
I've worked on a number of projects for which we created our own "root" servers, and added them to the appropriate file in all our systems. It worked fine, and nobody outside our project even noticed.
It's also common for organizations with an internal network (10.*.*.* or 192.168.*.* or whatever) to set up a bunch of internal "root" servers the same way. The DNS system was designed to work this way, and it works fine. I have a couple of DNS servers in my home network, which works fine, and doesn't interfere with anyone's Internet access in the outside world.
Of course, you probably want to define top-level domain names that are different from what the "public" DNS system uses. Most organizations use their own name for this, and that works without problems, too. You can also intercept internal references to the public root domains, if you like, so for instance you can prevent your people from referencing any hosts in the .it top-level domain if you don't want them referencing any Italian sites. You might want to think about this a bit before doing, but again, it won't interfere with (or be noticed by) anyone outside your local network.
We really should be posting explanations of this, whenever we read discussions of the problems with "the DNS system". Just bitching about, say, the US government's random (and unwarranted) takedowns of various organizatios' domain names won't do much to fix the problem. Expanding the DNS system beyond the US so that the US government can't do things like that is a lot more effective. And it's easy enough to do, without permission from anyone.
So we should continue to harp on this at every opportunity.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Forgive my ignorance in thinking that the US invented the Internet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet) but perhaps you can explain to me the bits about the Brit who actually invented it and the European funding behind it?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
You'd have to be terribly misinformed to believe that.
Show me any other country that has the equivalent of the First Amendment, with no broad clauses making it conditional on this and that.
Is fashion a "grand conspiracy"? I had never thought of it that way before. But aren't 2 of the 10 richest people in the world fashion mogels? Maybe you're on to somehting here.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Actually, yes. Robert Mugabe makes Gitmo look like a Church Summer Camp. All sorts of peculiar fascist types are well represented at the UN.
Law is irrelevant. What matters is how it gets applied in practice.
Consider also how the US choose to not follow their own laws at international borders or at US facilities outside of the US.
Internet != WWW
We already did, by erasing the debt the UK owed the US after WW2 from the lend lease program.
No, the UK paid off each and every cent of that debt, the final payment being made in 2007.
Fine; so what country can you point at that has more freedom of speech in practice? Most other Western nations have some form of hate speech laws on the books, and do apply them. Some also have blasphemy laws, and also apply those.
None in particular, but the fact that multiple countries will co-operate the system will provide similar benefits to multiple companies sharing a market.
The US having a monopoly on DNS registration just means that only the US view of things will be pushed. ICANN often takes actions against the enemies of the United States. Wikileaks, "copyright infringement" websites (i.e. torrent trackers), etc. have all been blocked at the ICANN level by US demand, even when their authors were not convicted of anything.
That makes me think copyright infringement is the new weapon against the first amendment, and is way worse than hate speech.
Google don't want to censor videos. Everything they take down is a potential loss in advertising money.
They do it because of the laws.
None in particular, but the fact that multiple countries will co-operate the system will provide similar benefits to multiple companies sharing a market.
That's a different angle. I was not pitching that unilateral US control over the Net is a good thing - if anything, I think that UN will actually do better by the simple reason that they'll never be able to agree on what to censor.
I was only affirming the statement originally made in this thread by someone else that US is the country in which freedom of speech is most developed. It's still not perfect, and it gets worse as time goes by, but it is objectively better than pretty much anywhere else.
Where do I go to complain against the UNs policies?
Well, for starts, there are lots of online forums. Like this one.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The US having a monopoly on DNS registration ...
As at least one other poster has commented, this is bogus. It's quite easy to set up new "root" DNS servers, and ICANN won't stop you. Of course, people have to learn about them and put their IP addresses in the appropriate file on their system, but that's a simple edit.
And yes, I've done this. I've been involved with a number of projects that set up their own small set of root servers, which implemented new top-level domain names (typically the name of the project or organization), and where to find the nameservers for those domains (typically the same machines as the root DNS servers). It's easy, nobody outside our clique of users ever cared (or even noticed), and it worked fine.
Just for the experience, I also set up a DNS root server on our home system, to define the ".home" domain. It was also pretty easy, and works fine. Except that I haven't figured out how to tie it into our wifi gadget, which has DHCP running but doesn't seem to have a way to tell the DNS servers what its hosts call themselves. That's something that seems to be a rather murky part of how the Internet works. But maybe it would work, if I could guess the right keywords to google the right docs ...
Anyway, the only reason the US's ICANN has any sort of monopoly on the Domain Name System is that other people are too lazy (or ignorant) to set up their own DNS servers. And tell their users how to add them to the common OSs' root-server files. It's not all that difficult; people should google the docs and Just Do It.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Incidentally, the birdsong video is back online. The thing to keep in mind here is that this system was fully automated. An AI algorithm made a seemingly dumb mistake (I'll bet you it won't be nearly as stupid if you look at how the algorithm works, instead of just feeling superior), and the program ran it's course.
It's a stupid mistake of an automated algorithm. You can blame google for this, but essentially it's a more complex version of the old "sudo nohup rm -Rf /" paste. Apparently google seems to think that the uploaded videos can't be watched by actual people, that'd be too pricey. So if you want to have a free youtube, mistakes like this will be part of the experience. Imho, they're doing pretty fucking well at this.
As for the religious intolerance double standard on google's youtube, essentially allowing muslims to post videos inciting genocide and having a "don't offend" standard for everyone else. Now that is a problem. It is not a problem limited to youtube though, and the source of the problem is that muslims just don't seem to be offended at videos calling for massacres and genocide, resulting in a lot of these videos never getting reported. This is exactly the attitude you find in muslim countries press and it's an attitude that's spreading. The other side of the problem boils down to muslims using violence to suppress any criticism, in their own countries and everywhere else. Often there's organised campaigns on messageboards getting masses of people to "report" videos "they find offensive" resulting in those videos getting taken offline.
Everyone claims that since the enlightenment that attitude "doesn't work", but in my humble opinion, mobs using dumb violence against "enlightened" people, whether atheists or "competing" religions (or even against things like socialism) ... seems to work pretty fucking well to erode our so-called "rights".
Hmm no... what about (paraphrasing) "the copyright holders have reviewed the content in question and have confirmed it's really theirs"? *That* is where google fucked up, by arrogantly assuming their algorithm is right, the complaint is wrong. And if, as you said, having people look at videos costs too much, then the least they could do is change that message to "our automated system blah blah". If you make a robot and set it loose, you're responsible for what it does, because you set it loose. If you drink so much you don't know what you're doing anymore, you are responsible for what you do (even though you don't know what it is), because you drank so much.
I didn't SEE any valid points from Schmidt, only fear-mongering of the idea that anything but US control would be a disaster.
What a shock -- an American seeing loss of US control as a disaster.
You're the bozos who tried to push crap like SOPA on the world and who've been taking down websites without going through proper channels whenever your corporate lobbyists demand it.
The US had their chance to run a free and open internet.
They sold out to the media companies.
At least the ITU doesn't have a history of selling out to media companies who don't know shit about technology.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
It's a stupid mistake of an automated algorithm. You can blame google for this, but essentially it's a more complex version of the old "sudo nohup rm -Rf /" paste. Apparently google seems to think that the uploaded videos can't be watched by actual people, that'd be too pricey. So if you want to have a free youtube, mistakes like this will be part of the experience. Imho, they're doing pretty fucking well at this.
The problem with the birdsong issue was not that the automated system picked it up, it was that the video poster protested the take down, Rumblefish reviewed the claim and still declared themselves to be the holder of the birdsong copyright:
http://boingboing.net/2012/02/27/rumblefish-claims-to-own-copyr.html
You're right that Google isn't the party to really get mad at here, the problem is that there is no penalty for this kind of fraudulent claim by a copyright holder. A fine, at the least, would be appropriate.
A fine, at the least, would be appropriate.
Actually, let me correct myself here - a fine is not enough. Under the DMCA an individual who misrepresents themselves the way that Rumblefish has in this case would be guilty of perjury. No less should be true for a company doing the same.
Have gnu, will travel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index
Well, let's say there are many countries where people *think* they are more free (to report as they see it). That's the only hard fact that can be gleamed from this, but still. I don't think it's completely random and utterly unrelated to reality either, you know?
And hey, not being able to print swastika stickers or calling for the extermination of people etc. in Germany may be technically a restriction of free speech, but seriously... get a grip. What matters is how free (and able!) people are to speak truth to power, and how brainwashed they are (because freedom ain't worth shit when you're blind), not if they're allowed to call group X or Y subhuman. It's also real hard to use these laws against people who point out corruption, unless they have aspergers or something. So wtf are you on about? Do you even know? A piece of paper, or the reality in a specific nation?
Any why not? It's not like the US isn't bashing the World. Like making nilly-willy wars, then calling people irrelevant because they're not complete idiots (yet).
You dish, you take it - you dumb whiny bitch.
Well, let's say there are many countries where people *think* they are more free (to report as they see it).
The study in question deals with the freedom of a specific group - namely, journalists - to publish freely. It does not deal with the freedom of speech in general, e.g. freedom of writing books, or speaking out in public.
And hey, not being able to print swastika stickers or calling for the extermination of people etc. in Germany may be technically a restriction of free speech, but seriously... get a grip.
That's a different matter. If you want to claim that limiting freedom of speech in some circumstances is advantageous, and that such limits are not detrimental to the society, feel free to go ahead. This doesn't change the simple fact that freedom of speech is less limited in USA then elsewhere, for better or worse - regardless of whether it "matters".
"I've worked on a number of projects for which we created our own "root" servers, and added them to the appropriate file in all our systems. It worked fine, and nobody outside our project even noticed."
Yup.
"So we should continue to harp on this at every opportunity."
Yup
Need Mercedes parts ?
Neither of them are trustworthy of course.
We need to cut them out of the loop. Sharpen your pencils. Break out the Jolt.
Need Mercedes parts ?
(What we're talking about here are intetnet names and numbers. DNS and IP adresses)
" Really, for the most part the only people who want it to stay in the US are American nationalists, xenophobes, and those with a vested interest in retaining the power it affords
The first amendment. Due process.
The US government knows damn well it does this stuff it *our* leisure. All it took is a handful of people looking at NSI's alternative root and TLD servers for them to get that pretty quick. So we have some leverage and they won't do anything TOO stupid - we're doing ok at fighting back the tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars of intellectual property lobbying dollars with just a large number of net.users bitching about it. Try doing that in China or the UN. Or Geneva. You'll be told "decisions have been made, you can all go home, thanks for playing". Where do you think icann got this from?
No the US isn't the ideal place to lodge this kind of power. Nor is any government and eventually they'll all be cut out of the loop, it's just evolution and what the net does.
So, rather than spend the energy to move a bad system to another bad system, we should move it from a bad system to a good one we run. It's not rocket science.
Need Mercedes parts ?
The World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee who is British, at CERN, a Franco-Swiss European research institute.
The internet is a different thing altogether.
More like The Guild of Calamitous Intent, actually. This is why we don't see David Bowie much these days.
Which is typically one of the first groups to target when you try to limit free speech. If your journalists only report what you want, the masses will know what you want them to know, think how you want them to think and will express nothing you don't want them to express. Noone will speak out in public if they don't know what's happening and the oddball that does manage to find out what happens is very easily contained. The fact that you so easily dismiss this is quite troublesome. You have been so brainwashed by the idea that the USA if the protector of freedom of speech that you cannot even see the obvious fact that if the US of A was anything like a bastion of free speech it claims to be it would be on the #1 spot in that list.
I'm sorry, but are you completely insane. We may be the country that introduced SOPA, but we are also the country that, through massive public outcry shot it down. Care to mention how the UN would be in any way, shape, or form MORE beholden to the public than the US goverment?
Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of problems with the US government, but the rise and swift demise of SOPA is one of the great success stories of public vs private good.
Neither PIPA nor SOPA had anything to do with accessing the internet. They had the goal of blocking access to content deemed illegal and didn't even have a 3 strikes portion or anything like that. And regardless this argument has nothing to do with the ability to organize and protest against your own government is going to be easier than trying to protest to ALL the governments of the world. Which is essentially the united nations. Do you think China cares one bit about your access or ability to browse the web? How about Russia? Iran? These are the countries supporting this move. They want more control over the global internet instead of just the part in their own back yards.
Google is a global private company. The simple fact that Google is "forced" to obey the laws of China if it wishes to operate there is actually a perfect example of Schmidt's point. Currently China has power over Google
Google ceased complying with Chinese demands that Google censor searches for China in 2010.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Are you suggesting that a private company should only obey the laws IT decides are legitimate? I thought your US rule of law was by your government by, for, and of the people?
Instead of simply choosing the laws it obeys company executives with values I agree with should instead lobby for change in a clear and transparent manner. Much like he is doing in this case.
The clear and transparent manner is in contrast to giving millions of dollars to some shadowy SuperPac. Unless of course it is American for for a better tomorrow, tomorrow.
What's that game where you knock down a peg with a wooden mallet, and two more pop up before you have a chance to knock them all down..Is this how it's going to be with endless attempts to control the internet too? Perhaps what we need is an internationally agreed internet "bill of rights and freedoms" with the force of law..although since it's the very same people trying to curb the net that would have to draft and enact this bill, I think it's unlikely we'll ever see it.
It's not just the Internet. Read title 21 which reads like a complete shift to socialism with the elimination of private property, the effect on the Internet, Usurping our Constitution. Go to Wiki and look up UN title 21. It makes for some scary reading. As far as I can see the US has absolutely nothing to gain and a lot to lose with the UN treaty. We already pay 60% of the bill, provide 60% of the materials, and 60% of the manpower. I think it's time to tell the UN and Clinton to take the treaty and stick it where the sun don't shine.
Now it makes more sense for the UN to controll all the worlds DMV's; thank you.
I guess that if we are not happy with the internet, then a second internet system could be setup. If you then want the controls, join the first one. If you want freedom and innovation, join the second
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
New Zealand has freedom of speech and ranks higher in press freedom and lower in corruption than the US. Does that mean we should run everything?
According to Wikipedia:
"New Zealand prohibits hate speech under the Human Rights Act 1993. Section 61 (Racial Disharmony) makes it unlawful to publish or distribute "threatening, abusive, or insulting...matter or words likely to excite hostility against or bring into contempt any group of persons...on the ground of the colour, race, or ethnic or national or ethnic origins of that group of persons." Section 131 (Inciting Racial Disharmony) lists offences for which "racial disharmony" creates liability."
The article is notably missing any kind of actual source for these supposed 'proposals'. It also doesn't actually quote the question that Schmidt was asked, or make it at all clear whether Schmidt actually raised the topic or whether he was simply blindsided with a question like 'would it be a good idea to transfer control of the internet to the ITU'.
The only actual citation in the original article is to the speech by the FCC commissioner, which similarly didn't provide any actual proof of the claims made, and was vigorously disputed by the ITU itself.
So really - we still don't actually have any clear indication there is any proposal to 'transfer control of the internet to the UN' in the first place. Just the FCC commissioner's assertion, directly rejected by the ITU, that there is such a proposal.
So? Unless you have additional data on those missing aspects if you will, additional data from the country with "free speech zones" that is, that's one what we have as indicator. And It doesn't seem likely that the USA would be doing much better with additional factors taken into consideration, what makes you think otherwise? Wishful thinking?
Make a bumper sticker (no wait, don't, don't do this at home :P), with "We should kill Obama" written on it. See how far you get. Now have someone in, say, Saudi Arabia make the same sticker, and see how far they get (not knowing if they'd get much further with that in Saudi Arabia, but I bet you that there is at least one country in the world where nobody would give a fuck, since Obama isn't their president AND they're not as psyched as the USA is). "But that's different", you might say, "that doesn't count, because in other countries that cannot ever be a credible threat, you would have to use the name of the local president elsewhere for it to be a fair comparison". Well no, you brought up hate speech laws in Germany. And the very same applies, you cannot simply compare to what is allowed elsewhere, except for the purpose of coming off as desperate.
The freedom to march up and down town square in the USA and shout Sieg Heil, or talk about "leadership" 24/7 and elect presidents based on stuff like "hope & change", who then proceed to simply kill people all over the world without any trial --- you can stick it in your pipe and smoke it.
Make a bumper sticker (no wait, don't, don't do this at home :P), with "We should kill Obama" written on it. See how far you get.
For one thing, I would like to remind you that I'm not in American. Doing so in my home country would most certainly be safe, they don't like US much there.
Regardless of that, it would actually be legal in US in almost all circumstances (though it might result in a visit from USSS to check on you). I suggest that you familiarize yourself with the concept of "imminent lawless action" which limits freedom of potentially harmful speech in US law. As it stands, it's one of the most stringent legal limits on the power of government to censor speech in the world - most other countries are much more vague and general on it; for example, in Canada, all freedoms, including freedom of speech, are "subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
The freedom to march up and down town square in the USA and shout Sieg Heil, or talk about "leadership" 24/7 and elect presidents based on stuff like "hope & change", who then proceed to simply kill people all over the world without any trial --- you can stick it in your pipe and smoke it.
Cool. I'm not trying to convince you that freedom of speech is always better. If you like some of its manifestations less than others, that's alright. It's why there are many different countries around. Still, admit that freedom to shout "sieg heil" on the town square is freedom of speech - quite literally so - and US does limit it less than other countries.
Besides, you're building strawmen here. Germany (and other countries) doesn't only legally restrict incitement to genocide. It also makes it illegal to e.g. publish a book that is critical of whether Holocaust happened, even if said book does not try to directly "incite hate", or, indeed, draw any other conclusions. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Holocaust denier, but I don't see why people who do deny it should be legally restricted from voicing their opinion - it is clear-cut censorship of opinion (rather than a call to action) to me.