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India's Proposal For Government Control of Internet To Be Discussed In Geneva
First time accepted submitter cvenky writes "The Indian Government is proposing to create an intergovernmental body 'to develop internet policies, oversee all internet standards bodies and policy organizations, negotiate internet-related treaties and sit in judgment when internet-related disputes come up.' This committee will be funded and staffed by the UN and will report to the UN General Assembly which effectively means the control of the internet passes on to World Governments directly."
That should work out well for a free and open internet, eh?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The problem with things like this is who "develops policies, oversees standards bodies and policies, and sits in judgment" of the UN General Assembly?
Its due to the intellectual and economic superiority and might of the United States of America that the Internet was invented by us.
Why the hell would we relinquish control? Who are these people to demand it?
No. Just no.
Sounds a bit like Orwell's.....
Those guys are assholes!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
seeing the fact that its not so much a easy thing to get standards and such made then one might argue that things ONLY will get done if really pushed by the home nations and the people that sit at the top....thus not much will get done until the mpaa and riaa of europe aka ifpi just bribe those people to do what they want.
If it's to be funded by the UN, which tax paying factory worker foots the bill for this abortion of bureaucracy?
When all is said and done, much will be said, and nothing will be done. The US will never give up control of the Internet. Isn't gonna happen. We allow the rabble to hold diplomatic conferences every year or two to "discuss" the issue. They'll complain and demand change. We'll politely listen to their pissing and moaning, and then do nothing.
India: "Hey, has anybody thought we should try controlling the 'net more?"
Korea: "Nah, that's a terrible idea. Maybe a law keeping ISPs from blocking stuff they don't like would be better."
Germany: "Yeah, that sounds good."
Sweden: "Add a clause telling the movie and music companies to stop suing people for more money than some of *us* have, and you'll get my vote!"
Eritrea: "Hear, hear!"
And then the law gets passed and nobody messed with the internet again and we all live happily ever after, the end. ...
Hey, if *they* get to talk about *their* crazy future scenarios, I get to talk about mine.
Amazing that the least free (democratically - yes, I know India is democratic - I mean other nations...keep reading) - the least free, the most authoritarian and the ones that allow the least economic mobility...are the ones that want to "rule the Internet." To all of them I say, "Fuk OFF!!!"
the color of the bag the single color the better bag had better not exceed 3 kinds, otherwise plus the color of the clothes, the whole people is spent, visual nicer on uncomfortable. Had better choose a single color and then have a little bright color of the ornament, if the bright color also with your body of accessories or clothes on a place in the same color, the perfect. cheap louis vuitton handbags
There are a lot of Indians in very high places in many global technology companies. No matter what passport they are carrying, all of them are VERY VERY LOYAL to their homeland, India.
The influential Indian diaspora might just be the key for India to push its _Gag-the-Net_ agenda across the proposed global meeting in Geneva.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
For now things are in the hand of ICANN (that is, USA), and it is illegitimate enough that it cannot make crazy moves, otherwise some states will start creating their alternative DNS roots. I wonder if a UN based organization would be more capable of wrecking the Internet without partionning it.
Note that whatever the governing body is, we have no chance of having democratic oversight no it, anyway.
Why not discuss it in India with as much input from the public as possible and base the direction on public opinion?
We don't need more "cooperation."
What keeps the Internet free is the ability to pick up and move across jurisdictions.
UN management is a synonym for nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
The Internet is among the best inventions in human history because it empowers people to communicate with people. We don't need moralizers, tyrants, bureaucrats, and corporate lobbyists screwing it all up.
There would be limited upside to this and unlimited downside. A global Internet police could theoretically snuff out things like free speech hosting and even Tor.
Internet routes around standard damage originating somewhere in Asia. News at 11
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
Me.
The US has done far, far worse than expected, ICANN has shown that they really can't and the FCC has utterly destroyed any possibility of it doing anything by treating the Internet as not a communication system. The major ISPs are acting like gangsters, using extortion and running protection rackets via the death of network neutrality.
Leaving it where it is WILL kill the Internet as we know it. You WILL lose what freedoms you still have, if power doesn't shift soon.
I don't know if the UN will do any better, but they sure as hell can't do worse and there are no other international organizations capable of the task.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Setup a different set of root servers. Start out by mirroring the ICANN root file to your root authority, and then passing that to your servers. Then maybe talk to ICANN about splitting authority over the root zone so your country/countries run the root for that part, ICANN for the rest.
Oh what's that? It is expensive and you'd rather just tell the US how to run it shit? Screw you then.
See the thing is right now the Internet doesn't have any global law over it, not even the US. It is all just a set of conventions. ICANN has the power because almost all DNS servers trust the root-servers.net roots, and they trust ICANN. However not only can you set up other roots, people have. Look at OpenNIC for one example. So while the US does have nominal de facto control, they have no de jure control and people can start ignoring them and building their own infrastructure any time they wish. It can even be an individual. You can run your very own root service, if you wish.
However, you start making it international law, then it is the kind of thing countries have to enforce, the sort of thing you can't just go your own way on. The people with guns will be saying what goes on.
So how about no, let's not have the UN in on it. Particularly since for all its faults, the US doesn't want to censor speech like China, Iran, and so on do and they all sit on the UN.
There aren't any problems or disputes that require the meddling of the government fxxks, independently of where they come from.
And the UN, they're the worst. Defund the fuckers!
The spin on this story is engineered to make you stop questionning the way that the Internet is run currently. And despite what you may have heard, it is not still run by Slashdot-friendly geeks. Sure, some of the underlying nuts and bolts are, and things are working at that level. But at the public policy level, geeks have no say. That level of Internet governance is controlled by big corporations and rich governments. The hardest thing is, they like to pretend that they are on our side. But they are not. These are the powers that brought forth SOPA/PIPA and ACTA. To put it simply, US and EU policies bought by big business now are the way that the Internet is controlled. This proposal aims for nothing more but to change that.
Don't believe the FUD about the United Nations. Most of the things that Slashdotters hate about the US, are things on which the UN agrees with you about. ACTA could never have happened within the UN intellectual body, WIPO - why do you think that it was deliberately negotiated elsewhere? It is because at WIPO, civil society and developing countries actually have a reasonably good voice. We will speak out against unjust laws and enforcement practices (not always successfully - the WIPO Copyright Treaties still passed - but their US implementation is far worse than the much more reasonable WIPO baseline.) The UN is more reasonable precisely because rich governments and multinationals can't push through their agendas, as they can at the closed-door US trade meetings. They have to reach a compromise with developing country governments and civil society groups.
Make no mistake. To move this level of Internet policy making outside of US control and into a multilateral forum in which the door is open to civil society (which, remember, means you and me) would not make things any worse, it could only make things much better, because it would have to become more transparent, more globally democratic and more inclusive of other viewpoints besides those paid for by big business. That's not to say that there aren't things that could be improved in India's proposal. There are, absolutely. But that's why we should welcome the opportunity to engage with them on it, rather than closing the door on future improvements to the unfair way in which Internet public poilcy is now made. For more reading...
Most nations take International Treaties as something that has the highest force of law. In the US, that is specified in the Constitution and many other nations have similar provisions. So, if the nations get together and hammer out a treaty that says "Such and such UN body shall have ultimate authority over the 'net and we agree to do what they say," that is pretty binding. Other countries can go after them to enforce it.
So right now if you make an anti-Iran website in the US, there is little Iran can do about it. They can whine but the US says "Sorry, that is free speech here," and that is that. However if there is UN authority and the UN group says "That's mean it has to go down," the US will need to listen to them and make you take it down.
Likewise right now you have companies like Slysoft selling programs (AnyDVD HD) that the US media cartels and by extension the US government really don't like, but there's not much they can do about it because it is legal in Antigua and Barbuda which is where Slysoft is. However with international treaties covering it, the US could ask the UN body to take Slysoft offline.
Remember that right now all the US can do in terms of shit outside their borders is take away domain names registered with US registrars. So if you register a .com domain, they can nab that because Verisign is the authority for .com and they are a US company. They can't take away your IP or server, unless the country they are in cooperates, they can't even take away domain names run by other countries unless that country cooperates, or they were willing to go scorched earth and have ICANN remove the whole TLD from the roots, and even then some of the roots might decide not to listen to ICANN (they aren't all US based).
Sure it is more power than any other country, but it is pretty piddly shit overall. Someone could host something in China on a .cn name that the US didn't like and there is fuck all they could do so long as China was happy with it.
However a UN body that had authority by international treaty? They could do, well, whatever the treaty gave them authority to do.
which effectively means the control of the internet passes on to World Governments directly.
No it doesn't. Only if the US gives up control of assigned IP addresses and DNS tlds that it controls. Already each country controls their own two letter tld.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Who needs the UN in everybody's shorts?
I am an Indian and believe me, the government here has no good feelings for the Internet. If you want control of the internet to go out of US hands start supporting alternative DNS systems like opennic, etc.
Just WTF do they think they are going to when all Internet standards bodies unanimously refuse to be overseen? Shut down their mailing lists and brand all members terrorists?
Such arrogance!
Mercedes Benz produced the first car in 1886, when you Yanks were dragging carts with horses, and with your economy as it is right now, you will be begging to the world to be allowed to exist. If the Chineses stop buying US government bonds, your trembling economy will go to dust!
Um, no. Actually is was Brittan,( and I am an American thank you) They invented the first Steam powered cars and buses in the 1840's-50's. Benz made the first vehicle power by gas in 1886. And what many of my lesser educated countrymen get confused on is the Ford Modle A. It was not the first car but the fist MASS produced car. Ford invented the assembly line. Not the car.
The Internet is an international medium that needs international agreements in order to operate. Just because there are international agreements in place doesn't mean that it will be reduced to the lowest common denominator either. Radio and telephone systems are prime examples of this. (The governance isn't perfect, but it works.)
The UN is the most corrupt organization in the woprld with no checks and balances!!!
The Internet was designed to be a network where it can grow and *shrink* as needed. If they want to "control" the Internet, let them be like Iran or China and control their own little sandbox. If people want to "join" them, let it be a opt-in decision. If not, leave the rest of us alone. Personally, I think there is a lot of benefit to Internet fragmentation. Yes, it creates bottlenecks (we already have that). But it also strengthens the members within those networks by allowing them to focus resources.
boom goes the dynamite....
DNS is the smallest part of what this is about. It is about privacy, intellectual property, consumer protection online, spam, security, freedom of expression, multilingualism, ecommerce, and half a dozen other issues just off the top of my head. The misconception that this is just about what ICANN and the IETF do is probably the biggest reason why people react badly to the idea of the UN stepping in. Granted, the UN would suck at stuff like that. Its value add would be in providing a more open and inclusive forum (than what we have now) for other Internet policy issues to be worked out.
Also, the fact that India was first to put this proposal forward is not that relevant. Brazil and South Africa are amongst the other countries that have been talking along the same lines.
People are acting like the US isn't doing this exact thing already.
They couldn't even get a basis protocol for an Internet running. How will the same folks be able to manage an Internet?
First agenda item, due 2037: "Defining the method and process for the selection of committee oversight executive members, for the selection of sub-committee oversight members, for the definition of a framework of work the work defining co-interdependent entities of interested parties for the formations governing orthogonal autonomous regulating non-spatial, non temporal beings."
Not valid on Tuesdays.
Public: "Um, so how does this new UN-governed Internet work . . . ?"
UN: "We are currently implementing plans to size the effort."
If the UN tries to regulate the Internet, it will be either,
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
"TRY"
Nothing in your posting addresses the fact that these countries want to move "control of the internet" to the UN so that content can be restricted. People can complain all they want about corporate influence but it's countries that demand wide scale filtering of search results. The "great firewall of china" wasn't created at corporate behest. It was created because governments fear a loss of power and control.
Um, no. Actually is was Brittan,( and I am an American thank you) They invented the first Steam powered cars and buses in the 1840's-50's. Benz made the first vehicle power by gas in 1886. And what many of my lesser educated countrymen get confused on is the Ford Modle A. It was not the first car but the fist MASS produced car. Ford invented the assembly line. Not the car.
Ford really didn't invent the assembly line, but rather was the first person to apply that to automotive assembly. Ford got the idea for the assembly line from the Chicago meat packing plants which had cows come in one side and cuts of meat coming out the other with semi-skilled laborers running the plant in between where they would only have to perform a limited number of actions that were each easily taught rather than having skilled butchers being required to completely dress and butcher a cow. Ford's reasoning was that putting together an automobile was even easier to do than dressing a cow, which turned out in practice to be the case as well.
I can't think of any "meritocratic" groups in existence that don't have the US and sometimes Russia or Canada with a veto over the decisions of the body, ala the UN. We don't know if a meritocratic group could or would function, because we've never had one. The US and others have always insisted on having a "final say" through a veto, as if their form of "democracy" is inherently better than others despite the wide spread and blatant corruption caused by lobbying and well-heeled lobbyists.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I liked it better when the ITU was in charge, or a mix of ITU and ICANN +a few other national registrars. India is getting a bit 'grabby' when it wants to control all of the internet, something it didn't fund, doesn't own and didn't conceive or create. In reality, my little piece of the internet (my local lan+routers) is mine, and India can't have it. There are others who have bigger pieces than mine, and I'm sure they feel the same way about what they own.
"What they don't realize..."
What you don't realize is how quickly governments can destroy the Internet and replace it with a pitiful shadow of its former glory.
I think only a tiny fraction of the people here would be willing to become outlaws in order to maintain the Internet.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
"...and sit in judgment when internet-related disputes come up."
So does this mean they're going to solve disputes and flame wars on message boards? :P
That India is going to be the judge of the internet? Or the UN? Either way, it's the internet, it's the peoples' "country". Not a government ruled one. And the UN has better things to worry about...
This Government has completely lost its mind. They know fairly well they're going out in the next elections but at the speed they're ruining everything 2013 looks so far.