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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."
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.
Speaking as an Indian, I can safely say that we as a country don't deserve to have ANY control over the Internet. The US might not smell of roses, but compared to an authoritarian style government like India, they're pretty damn good.
Actually scratch that. The Indian government is not authoritarian. It's just...stupid and uninformed and clueless. Ditto for most of the population.
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.
Ideally, the Internet would be run by a meritocratic UN group, ...
No. Ideally it wouldn't be 'run' at all.
Well, no, the US didn't control the Internet when it was any good, the NSF did. (No, the DARPA days weren't better, DARPA's screwball decisions are why the Internet protocols are as messed up as they are.) The NSF isn't run by Congress or Corporations. One option would be for the NSF to claim eminent domain, seize all fibre (lit and dark) in the US or owned by US organizations, and run the lot on rational principles.
However, that would only cover the US. The Internet is very global. Even CERN is primarily European. We need a UN body for the global reach, but it would need to meet the following criteria to actually work:
* It needs to be quasi-independent
* Members should be elected purely on merit, not on grounds of money or territory covered
* Officials should be 75% from the academic community and 25% from the InfoSec community, NOTHING from the political or corporate communities
* The organization should be primarily concerned with research, collaborative projects and the information demands of science
* The Internet should be a means to achieve the desired end results, not an end in itself
* Since this limits direct law-enforcement options, it would need to have significant muscle (eg: veto powers in the IMF and WTO) to ensure nations complied
However, let's assume the GA wants to take over and not create a meaningful NSF-like body. Actual gangsters and dictators hold onto power because they know what they can take and when not to push too hard. The KKK was well-known for charity work, not because they gave a crap but because it's by far the easiest way to manipulate the hearts and minds of those peons and fools they needed to be compliant. Corporations hold onto power through smoke, mirrors and legislation. They take it all and don't give a crap about pushing too hard because customers are expendable. I have zero faith in the mob, but that's still far more faith than I'll ever have in a megacorp.
I'd also point to Japan where actual mobsters and criminal gangs ARE in charge of many areas of law enforcement -- the nation has better Internet than the US (eg: gigabit to the home), better medical care, lower levels of (unlicensed) crime, lower levels of overt violence and far better sushi. It's an actual real-life embodiment of Terry Pratchett's Thieves' Guild. (I would not be surprised if Terry Pratchett got the idea from them, since many of his books are sourced in real-world ideas.)
That's far from ideal, and I repeat I have zero faith in it, but my faith in the current system is so far in the negative that zero is a definite improvement.
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)
Now now, we are getting a bit ahead of the line, aren't we ? "Guard cows", "Dalits", and most importantly your entire last line. I don't know where you get your ideas from, but you see India is an extremely diverse country. Yes, there are some places where cows are considered sacred and some people considered as untouchables, heck, people even kill their daughters for loving a boy of a "lower caste" But that's not the whole picture. Its just a common stereotype that the world has made of us. The rest of India is as "civilized" and modern with any other place. Now if we come to the topic at hand, there are talks going on to block some sites. In fact some service providers have already started blocking torrentz, piratebay, torrenthound etc. But again, a weak attempt. You can get the IP by pinging the site and the IP works ! Just a simple DNS block won't stop people from accessing websites. I only hope that the people trying to set the policies regain their senses, otherwise its the dark age all over again for us.
South Korea? You mean the former military dictatorship that dabbles in democracy but is practically run by industry giants?
Inventing something does not grant a right to control it later - otherwise, you would not need the FCC to allocate radio spectrum but leave that to Italy; and if Ford wanted to make changes to a car model they should ask Germany. And so on.
That won't work, the cows will eat the spinach, and then the Americans will eat the cows.