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UN Takeover of Internet Must Be Stopped, US Warns
benfrog writes "In a rare show of bipartisan agreement, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle warned this morning that a United Nations summit in December will lead to a virtual takeover of the Internet if proposals from China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are adopted. Called the World Conference on International Telecommunications, the summit would consider proposals including '[using] international mandates to charge certain Web destinations on a "per-click" basis to fund the build-out of broadband infrastructure across the globe' and allowing 'governments to monitor and restrict content or impose economic costs upon international data flows.' Concerns regarding the possible proposals were both aired at a congressional hearing this morning and drafted in a congressional resolution (PDF)."
The only thing they are worried about is that the US would not control it.
I am not a robot. I am a unicorn.
Unfortunately, people will mod you "funny" and not insightful.
The US is not great. The US does things like seizing domain names based on minimal cause and then spending years before they give them back. A lot of those seized have been over copyright issues and in some cases they haven't even been clearly infringing. This is similar to how many states in the US have assert forfeiture laws which allow police to confiscate large sums of money or cars under minimal suspicion of involvement with illegal drug dealing, and getting them back is difficult.
But the UN would be worse. The UN contains many countries with little conception of free speech. Even allies of the US like Canada and Britain have substantially less free speech than the US does. In the case of Britain libel although being reformed is still very much a danger. In Canada, speech which specifically targets minorities or criticizes religions can be labeled as hate speech with fines given. And most of the world, is much much worse. Consistently a large fraction of the Islamic countries have tried to push through anti-blasphemy regulations in the UN. So far they've failed. But it is easy to imagine what would happen if they could actually block pictures of Muhammad. Similarly. China would slaver at the thought of not having to do its own censorship but simply have no websites discussing Tiananmen Square at all. Letting even weak internet control get in the hands of the UN is a recipe for disaster. Maybe in 20 or 30 years when the free speech situation has improved. But not right now.
I think the question lies in what you consider worse. Do you fear unlimited, unaccountable, and unbridled surveillance, like the kind that's being proposed in the US, that effectively covers the entire world... or are you more worried about censorship, virtual toll roads that make the doing business more expensive, and totally unrepresented taxation? Not to mention regional fragmentation, which you'll see in some of the proposals. Neither agenda is good, but which is worse? Personally, I don't think either side of this debate understands the internet at all. If the internet is going to be controlled by anyone, it should be the people who work and live in it. It's mine, damn it.
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The internet was designed to be open and free. Leave it be.
The internet was designed to be unregulated. Leave it be.
The internet was designed with open access for everyone in mind. Leave it be.
The internet was designed to be unhindered, unfettered, unfiltered, uncapped. Leave it be.
For those bastards who think they have the right and the need to control it, regulate it, tax it, reroute it, filter it, cap it, limit it, contain it - leave it be.
Information wants to be free, it will find a way. The internet, like nature will evolve until it does so.
It's pretty common to believe that no central source can control the internet - and it's true for the most part - with one major exception: IANA ultimately answers to the US Department of Commerce.
In order for the internet to function, there has to be a central authority who determines who gets what IP addresses and domain names. That authority is under the control of the US. Sure you could create your own internets (yes, plural) with your own name and number rules, however if you can't all agree upon who gets what IP address blocks and domain names, you aren't going to have a very cohesive and universal network like the one we have today.
Honestly, I am perfectly fine with the US having control over that, and in fact would much rather they hold the keys rather than the UN. If the UN had their way, that would mean countries who have heavy influence of the UN (e.g. China) would have their way.
So far, the US has done a great job. Sure, we've had talks about filtering the internet (e.g. SOPA) many times, but unlike 90% of the other countries out there (Australia, UK, Germany, China, Iran, just to name a few,) we haven't acted upon any of them. Granted, we have taken extraordinary and unnecessary if not unethical measures, such as taking down megaupload, we didn't do so by ordering IANA to break the infrastructure.
The best thing about the US having control, is that we've never done anything to dismantle the infrastructure in the name of politics. The UN wants control because they plan on doing exactly that.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Why is it that Americans always use kindergarten proverbs when debating? Just shows how dumb and ignorant you are. .com, .net and .org are supposed to be international, but the USA have given themselves the right to seize domains using these extensions, in effect killing the political neutrality of the web.
The US government has overtaken the Internet when they started seizing domain names without due process.
This is a serious mistakes and the USA deserve to lose their current control of the web over this!
Also, ICANN is corrupt and broken. They're creating new TLDs like it's something amazing, when in fact there's simply no reason not to let anyone name their website whatever they want. And they're charging crazy sums of money for these new TLDs too. .com, .en, .us, .fr, etc. are just part of the name. ICANN just decides each website name has to end in dot-something, and from a technical point of view whether it's .com or .octopus makes absolutely no difference, it doesn't require extra work or extra infrastructure/configuration/whatever. But ICANN just wanted control, they felt it was their job to organize TLDs, and now they want to charge money for giving us the freedom to name our websites.
And I wouldn't worry about China or Russia taking control. If the UN takes control, it means every country will get their say.
And if somehow China manages to pass rules about the web that we don't like, it will be the excuse we've been waiting all these years to nuke these assfucks.
My captcha was "fuck off".
Why can't they just leave us alone?
I mean, why do the governments want to interfere with the Net, a medium whereby people from all corners of the world can share information, and discuss, and plan, and scheme?
Oh, wai ...
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
It's worse than that. It like claiming that Germany invented GPS because they created the V2 rocket.
What I miss in both the summary and the linked articles are two things:
Frankly, all I see right now is the usual anti-UN hit piece written by a lazy American journalist, and a Slashdot audience of complete chumps who fall for it.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
"It is at first denied that any radical new plan exists; it is then conceded that it exists but ministers swear blind that it is not even on the political agenda; it is then noted that it might well be on the agenda but is not a serious proposition; it is later conceded that it is a serious proposition but that it will never be implemented; after that it is acknowledged that it will be implemented but in such a diluted form that it will make no difference to the lives of ordinary people; at some point it is finally recognised that it has made such a difference, but it was always known that it would and voters were told so from the outset."
-- Times editorial, published on August 28, 2002
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
If the UN gets control of the Internet, there is a real risk that you won't get to see what Muslim clerics and conservative Christians deem offensive, because together, they control a large number of powerful governments.
Porn and gambling are highly restricted in most places around the world, including parts of Europe. When you compare free speech rights around the world, the US is still better than almost all other places.
Bad as the DMCA is, it is still better than the legal situation that exists in many European countries. Look at France's HADOPI or the ability of Germany's GEMA to restrict music distribution in Germany.