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The U.N.'s Push for Power Over the Internet
Omnifarious writes "China (along with other member nations) is trying to push a proposal through a little known UN agency called the International Telecommunications Union (aka ITU). This proposal contains a wide variety of problematic provisions that represent a huge power grab on the part of the UN, and a severe threat to a continued global and open Internet. From the article: 'Several proposals would give the U.N. power to regulate online content for the first time, under the guise of protecting against computer malware or spam. Russia and some Arab countries want to be able to inspect private communications such as email. Russia and Iran propose new rules to measure Internet traffic along national borders and bill the originator of the traffic, as with international phone calls. That would result in new fees to local governments and less access to traffic from U.S. "originating" companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple. A similar idea has the support of European telecommunications companies, even though the Internet's global packet switching makes national tolls an anachronistic idea.'"
I was hoping that "Power Over the Internet" was analogous to "Power Over Ethernet". That would've been cool, especially if the protocol was compatible with wireless.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
So why not let these others have their fun?
This is a historical reference. Napolian asked 'How many armies does the pope have?
What are they going to do if we ignore their invoices? Hold their breath?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
A lot of big talk with absolutely no way in hell to enforce any of it.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Yeah, that's what I thought too. Comcast is known for providing a "triple play" of pay TV, Internet access, and home phone service, and it recently added home security. Now the United Nations wants it to be your electric company too for a quintuple play. How would that even work?
Then I realized it meant power in the sense of authority and I tagged the article !power.
After all these years these guys are still trying to force X.25 down our throats. Unbelievable. How many times do we have to scream at them that.. NO WE ARE NOT GOING TO PUT STAMPS ON OUR PACKETS!!
Iran: Say, there Mr. Google, you owe us beellions and beelions of dollars.
Google: Who are you?
Iran: The Islamic Republic of Iran, that's who, now pay up.
Google: How about we pay you in Iranian rials.
Iran: Errr....no, no, we want dollars as our currency isn't worth very much right now.
Google: Okay, we'll get back to you on that.
Iran: Hey, you Mothers just removed Iran from Google Maps.
Google: Ooops, now who are you folks again?
The UN can kiss both sides of my rear - what have they actually done in the past 10-20 years that has actually been beneficial? I can understand the need to coordinate nations in order to maintain as much peace as possible, but having something like this with non-elected representatives makes no sense, especially since they try to govern things in all UN nations unilaterally.
The US should just cut off all connections from outside of the USA. Then what.......
Surely they can that now: just tap and bill the upstream partner of each layer 1 connection. If no payment is made then they're disconnected.
This may be idiot but if it's in the process of being done and theres no way to stop it, how about let them "create" their own Internet and let them rot there. This make me think of a small story of a company and a hacker. Some company create some kind of "easy" enough access as they know they will hack their system but they open a small breach so the hack can use that specific access. In the end, the hack is monitored and the company is "spying" and learning from the hacker. I think it's possible we could employ this method with this article.
China trying to *prevent* malware.
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
Palm trees and 8
The malcontent within me actually looks forward to having the Internet governed by a coalition of China and a bunch of mufties. There are a lot of fools stumbling around the West that desperately need that experience.
The US government is not the one that decided on the rules that govern amateur radio in the US; those rules were set out by the ITU, and we just went along with it. What makes you think that the Internet would be any different?
Palm trees and 8
The cognitive dissonance this is going to create from the US-hating /tards is going to be hilarious.
No censorship either. Who the hell does the UN think it is? It doesn't represent the People of this planet. We don't even have a voice in the UN Assembly to make our objections be heard. And where's the UN Bill of Rights that forbids censorship of speech, the press, and expression?
The UN politicians are as honest as other men, not more so, and all the more dangerous since their power is not subject to the Elective control of the people, or the Shackles of a Constitution with enumerated rights. Time has shown that their power grows steadily and more expansive in reach. The UN politicians are setting-up a World Oligarchy without boundaries in its power.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
What rock have you been living under?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
UN Takeover of Internet Must Be Stopped, US Warns
Posted by samzenpus on Fri Jun 01, '12 12:30 PM
samzenpus dupes himself with another run at this xenophobic scare piece.
economic break down. Did you ever heard of international market. Lots of cash are made out of the US country.
Back in the 30's the US pretty much did that with the Smoot-Hawley Tarriff Act - it dramatically cut our foreign trade - kinda like economic isolation.
That was just a tariff.
Just imagine what it would be like if we cut everything off.
How about we get rid of the UN instead? It is filled with corrupt power hungry ghouls and does nothing good for us.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
I'm a bit confused. Can the ITU in some technical manner remotely change how the Internet works inside the USA and Europe without our cooperation?
That would result in new fees to local governments and less access to traffic from U.S. "originating" companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple.
Ah, the truth wins out. They don't want to control the internet... they just want to tax the hell out of it.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
When the U.N. and other countries have ruined the Internet, there will be a comeback of BBS's and other services like Delphi.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
The UN is a worthless org. over 14,000 dead in Syria and the UN does nothing. Check out this movie: U.N. Me http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIzDt5NPYfI It is a documentary of the dangers of the U.N.
...overly powerful national governments often think the UN is a good idea.
What is the sum of many corruptions?
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
This isn't about giving control to the UN. This is not a UN vs US issue. It is a few countries that want further control of their part of the internet, and they see the current US ownership of mechanisms and institutions as an obstacle. They cannot directly and publicly confront the US to try to wrest control for themselves without international backlash. By using the UN as a pivot, their action can potentially gain legitimacy and bring about a dilution of power (thereby giving local actors more control). So by dressing it up as an issue of wanting to transfer more power from the US to the UN, they seek to accomplish two things: 1. launder their intentions with the name of the UN, and 2. embark on the first step in altering the status quo so as to ultimately remove existing checks to their power (mainly the US) to act unilaterally on their local nodes.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Over the Internet. The United States will always exercise its veto power. Not to mention that unless the other countries want to start an alternative DNS service, aren't most of the Root DNS servers located in the United States?
Not to mention that if control of the Internet were handed over to the Untied Nations, the vilest and most despicable regimes imaginable would use that forum to press their agenda and keep their people oppressed AND without one of the most effective means of getting the word out about what is really happening to them. I don't think my country, the United States, always does a fantastic job but one of the fundamentals that is still fought for is the freedom of speech and the want for democracy for those countries currently under oppressive rule.
The UN take over authority for the Internet? Pardon my language but - Fuck That!
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
Presumably, samzenpus also thinks that everyone has to obey FCC regulations, too. Silly USians. Learn some geography.
Like the Trans-pacific Partnership for instance?
Daily read for tech news: Freezenet.ca
It's pretty obvious that the point behind this is for member countries to make "free" services have an actual cost to the provider, thus driving traffic from Google, Facebook, etc. to local version of the same services in each country.
what a silly comment....what is that supposed to mean?
Don't use a comparator ('==') when you mean an assignment; you're not testing to see if "little known" == "samzenpus hasn't heard of it", you're sarcastically suggesting that samzenpus assigns the value "samzenpus hasn't heard of it" to the variable "little known". Know your operators!
"new rules to measure Internet traffic along national borders and bill the originator of the traffic, as with international phone calls."
Wow, what a great idea for continuing to oppress people. This way I won't share my wonderful ideas with people in their countries. I'll just setup a filter so they can't access my content. They lose and will stay back in the dark ages. How about we also build a brick wall around them?
Am I the only one who would actually trust the UN more than the US to have authority over the Internet? At the very least, the UN has a history of being less effective and more enmeshed in bureaucracy ... which should mean they won't do much. Sounds good to me.
And, unlike China and Iran, has veto powers.
Maybe the USA are worried that they'll be powerless if there is any other voice they cannot silence.
PS isn't it rather rich worrying about "a threat to a continued global and open Internet" when the USA were the first to pass a DMCA type law which is a threat to a global and open internet? Isn't arresting people for running a service on a system in a different country that is legal in that country a threat to that too?
I mean, I'm really trying here. I can't see what form of "threat" they mean that doesn't cover the actions the USA have taken.
PS dupe.
When I think of the ITU, I think of the regulations on another global communication system that can be used with equipment available to consumers: shortwave radio and amateur satellites. Consider the regulations ITU imposes on hams:
Now, can you give the reasons why similar regulations couldn't be imposed on the Internet? What reason does the ITU have in supporting the Internet as it is today? The ITU would almost certainly partition computers on the Internet into different classes (say, "clients" and "servers," where "servers" require special registration and must have some special identification), and would almost certainly create rules that force countries to respect the censorship systems of other countries. Hushmail-style backdoors are practically a given if the ITU has its way (which is not the say that the US would never impose such a thing within its borders; the difference is that the ITU would attempt to impose it globally).
Please, keep regulatory bodies out of the Internet. We should be working to return control of the Internet to its users, not to increase regulations on the Internet. I do not want the Chinese government deciding how the Internet is governed, or having any say in the rules of the Internet.
Palm trees and 8
I think its time for a new Internet, the bureaucrats have ruined this one.
At least by creating a new Internet it will take 10 - 20 years before the politicians clue up that it exists and start legislation against its usage.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
The ITU (formerly CCITT, I think) is about as well known as an industry group can possibly be. They've been around since the 1800s, establishing standards for everything from iron-wire telegraphs to ASN.1.
All together now...One World Government!
This sounds like a John Birch Society member spouting off a conspiracy theory while frothing at the mouth about the UN/Illuminati trying to deprive people of their human rights.
Oh, it is the UN trying to violate 'freedom of speech' for totalitarian regimes.
Well, 'magine that.
I will not waive any of my Rights. The UN has no authority over the Internet and any attempt to seize it will generate a response.
Russia and Iran propose new rules to measure Internet traffic along national borders and bill the originator of the traffic, as with international phone calls.
Like click fraud, I can just see some schemes developed where the packets from People You Don't Like are bounced back and forth across a few revenue borders before being delivered. Just to extract some more funds from deep pockets.
Have gnu, will travel.
Why are they even in exsistence anymore? Oh thats right, so the US can be their sole source of funding in order to have someone on their side to give them the illusion of power.
The UN is a outdated idea that is a complete perversion of what it was originally intended as. Now its just a money sucking sore on the world that has absolutely no power at all over anyone or can actually do anything. If countries just ignored them they would go away.
Russia and Iran propose new rules to measure Internet traffic along national borders and bill the originator of the traffic, as with international phone calls.
http://bash.org/?142934
Remember when we used to joke about these things?
"Intelligence has nothing to do with politics!"
-Londo Mollari
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
--Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
(from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, 1999).
All this sounds like to me is a way to:
1) Enshrine censorship forever, including "agreements" that allow Country A to enforce censorship of "sensitive content" in Countries B, C, etc. For example, no more worries about information hostile to the Iranian government or supportive of resistance movements being hosted in a country that doesn't respect their propaganda needs.
2) Enable local monopolies on content and services by blocking large multinational content providers unless they pay some local tax. Either way, the local strongman's family gets either a check from Zuckerberg or his son-in-law gets to start the local version of Facebook, which will be the only game in town and have no competition. Fill in the blank for Facebook, YouTube, movie services, etc, etc.
What's so astounding is how crude and simple minded these power grabs are and how threatened these dictatorships are from a propaganda/information perspective. Putin, the Iranians and the Chinese Central Committee must lay awake at night just fuming about how their propaganda reality is deconstructed just outside their grasp.
The economic element of this is also not insignificant. Most tin pot dictatorships have shitty economies because the strongman's family gets a cut of everything or a local monopoly. This works with Coke because you bottle it there, but it doesn't work with Facebook or Google and it must make the local batshit knowing that all kinds of money is being made they can't extort.
The US has been acting poorly WRT internet freedom, but the UN is going to be much worse. The entire point is a power grab. Europe and other places are unhappy that the top internet sites - google, wikipedia, facebook, and so on are all US based. They want that power for themselves, and this is a means to push to that end.
The end result will be more censorship, more political control, less anonymity, forbidding encryption and onion routing technologies, and more.
That's not to say the US is good. Just that it's the lesser of the evils.
As far as I can tell, the 'power grabs' the article alleges are mostly things nations can already do.
"Russia and some Arab countries want to be able to inspect private communications such as email." Check, they can do that already
China wants "authority over 'the information and communication infrastructure within their state.'" Check, they have that already
"new rules to measure Internet traffic along national borders and bill the originator of the traffic..." Nope, don't have that yet, but if that lets me bill Russia for the Viagra spam I get every 30 seconds like clockwork, sign me up.
Has anyone read the actual proposal this is based on? So far, nothing here but black helicopters.
This isn't news and it isn't new. Repressive regimes are constantly looking for new ways to try and control and/or monetize the internet within their borders. The problem as they see it is that the internet does not provide mechanisms for customs enforcement and/or border-crossing tariffs. It's very difficult (if not impossible) to control what content and/or what traffic crosses your national borders and many governments find that distressing. Heck, even some US federal agencies have a hard time wrapping their head around it.
Nonetheless, this proposal, like those before it is unlikely to actually move forward. There are too many members in the ITU that recognize that this would seriously damage, if not destroy the internet.
The article above is ill-informed and sensationalistic. It's designed to stir up all the conspiracy theorists and anti-UN crowd into a frenzy, but in reality is much ado about nothing. The ITU is well known and all of the RIRs are actually ITU members and do a pretty good job of representing the interests of the internet in the ITU and at ITU gatherings. The ITU was talking about similar measures prior to the last plentipot meeting, yet the output of the plentipot was that the ITU would seek ways to work with the existing mechanisms and assist those mechanisms and organizations in meeting the needs of ITU members. While that's not the ideal outcome (the ideal outcome would have been if the ITU recognized they didn't need to have a role here), it's about as good as could be expected and far far better than if the ITU had decided to "take over regulation and administration of the internet".
For those that don't know what the ITU does, they are the organization that provides telephone country code registrations and radio call sign prefixes to nations. They coordinate international telecommunications tarrifs, geosynchronous orbital slots and other aspects of telecommunications requiring international coordination. They are definitely not a little-known organization as they are the branch of the UN that has direct impact on more people on a daily basis than virtually any other. (Every time you dial an international call, the ITU has impacted you.) Much of what they do is actually for the overall good, though they do it poorly and in a way consistent with the involvement of multiple governments. Their process is glacial compared to the internet and focuses on governments representing their people rather than considering direct individual input. As such, they are ill-suited for the internet in a number of ways. The good news is that many at the ITU understand this and recognize the issues.
Yes, the ITU's desire to poke their fingers in the internet pie is an issue that needs to be monitored and addressed. However, sensationalist articles like this one really don't help and miss many key elements of the situation.
If you take away peoples right to free speech the only outlet left is outright rebellion and war. look at Egypt and Syria. And I swear if they keep screwing with our rights we will REBEL.
I see that we have a lot of work to do on the education front. I advise any citizens of the USA to live in one of these countries for a few months or longer and then come back to this discussion. The Department of Commerce is doing a good job of paying the bills and the AD-Hoc nature is working well for everything else. Vint Cerf even when out of his way to mention this recently. Always remember that the Internet started as a DARPA project to keep communication up when actions happen to prevent it.
The Internet is here. Its for looking at lolcats.
The GPL, for those that truely understand.
No, I was testing to see if it was true, and judging by the speed at which the post was admin-modded down it appears to be true.
Does this have anything to do with POE (Power over Ethernet)? Can I power my whole house through my cable modem now?
Honestly, this article is just yet another US sourced scare mongering story.
This. The people asking what the ITU has ever done for them are clearly ignorant of the vital role it plays in the area of communications and technology standards, especially through its ITU-T arm (formerly CCITT). Basically, global standards of the letter-dot-number format are from the ITU. Like T.80, which we know as JPEG. V.34 modems with V.42 error correction. The whole series of G.99x standards, which we know as DSL. H.264 video. H.323 VoIP.
Only recently have things gotten to the point where traveling to a different country no longer requires renting a local mobile phone for the duration of your trip. Without the ITU, we'd still be in those old days - and it might not just be mobile phones that failed to interoperate between countries, but also VoIP, video, images, modems, you name it.
As far as the FUD goes, I'm one of the apparently few Slashdotters who's gotten to see the UN from the inside (I say apparently few because the vast majority of comments make it clear that posters have absolutely no clue what they're talking about, when it comes to the UN). I haven't been to the ITU, but I've seen all kinds of other stuff get negotiated, and the general rule of thumb is this:
No member state (i.e. country) will allow any wording to be agreed that requires it to do anything that it does not want to do, or otherwise jeopardizes its sovereignty.
Remember, the UN tries to work on a consensus basis. Voting is an absolute last resort. So whatever actually gets agreed to is something that almost 200 countries all looked over and said "hmm, let's see, doesn't obligate us to do anything we don't want to do, and probably lets us just keep doing whatever we're doing." This means agreements usually end up being vaguely and weakly worded - and I'm as cynical as anyone about that. On the other hand, vaguely and weakly agreeing to at least be on the same page, so that my phone and my passport can both be useful in the same day, sure beats the alternative.
It's highly ironic, though, that the same people who always spread FUD saying the UN is out to steal American sovereignty (can't happen, for the reasons I just described above) at the same time want control of the Internet to stay in American hands - thus depriving all the other countries of their sovereignty when it comes to how they choose to run the portions of the Internet that lie within their boundaries.
If anything, upcoming discussions at the ITU might lead to more countries exercising their national sovereignty when it comes to the Internet - which I definitely favor, and which I'd expect "pro-sovereignty" Americans to also favor, if I didn't already know them to be hypocrites.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
The typical US paranoia that anything not run by them is bad.
Sure, some countries want to do some things. As if there weren't tons of people, special interest groups and even political parties who want to spy, censor, become Big Brother, outlaw homosexuality and declare pi to be equal to 3.
Just because there are some crazies who want to do crazy things doesn't mean it'll happen. Writing your articles with such a focus is dishonest fearmongering. It would be trivial to write an identical article opposing US control of crucial Internet parts by pointing out some crazy demands by some dimwit backwater politician, of which there is no shortage.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
As I recall the original mandate of the UN to stop wars between countries, and to provide a platform for dialogue. (Wikipedia) It has evolved since it's inception but I hardly think the UN should be the governing body of the internet. There's too much politics as it is and it's a wonder how anything actually gets done over there. Yeah...not a good situation.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
Too many governments are too concerned about their citizens having too much freedom so they'll do whatever they cab to squelch that. The us uses a different tactic. They borrowed from the Romans and keep everyone distracted with bread and circuses to have any concerns over their loss of freedoms. The few who are not distracted by such are labelled as crackpots and derided in the public media.
Watch.
Have gnu, will travel.
They tried this with electricity generation in California. It was called Deregulation, and it was going to be great.
You might have heard the story of how that experiment went. If not, look up Enron.
The USA did not "build the internet". Various companies and governments all over the world built various parts of it.
The USA did fund the development of stuff like TCP/IP and then acted in a civilised manner and opened it up to everyone.
What most "users" call the internet was actually invented at CERN by Tim Berners-Lee. He also acted in a civilised manner and opened it up to everyone,
The USA has continually re-proved that it is not fit to run the internet. Mega Upload is just the latest example. Pushing your horrendous copyright and patent messes onto all of us is even worse.
Anyone who considers the ITU "little known" is not well enough informed to make any useful statements or judgements on this matter. Please sit down and read up on politics, world affairs and technology first.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Well, the bucketloads of communication, imaging and video standards ought to account for some fame right?
Those who cannot compete regulate.
By the using the UN they know they can inflict their will on most Western nations all the while casually ignoring any complaints about their own activities.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
This happens often enough that there's a name for it: policy laundering.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Just because California politicians are stupid and actually REGULATED the market (companies had to go through the government to trade power) instead of deregulating (no government), doesn't mean it can't work. In the two states I have lived, the electric lines and natural gas pipes are owned by the century-old utility. The customer then decides between ~50 different companies to buy his power. The result is pricing that is ~10% cheaper than it used to be.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
ITU? A little known UN agency? I stopped reading after that.
They are available at the utility's office, but I doubt they will show you.
Consider that if you follow the telco model, THE FIRST PACKET DEFINES THE FLOW AND THEREFORE THE CHARGE! So let the world access the servers sitting on US soil, for almost ever protocol (other them email), it's a PULL (i.e., the initiator is the client somewhere out in the world and the responding server is located in the US). Unless they try to define it differently than traditional telco (where the CALLER bears the entire cost, not the CALLEE), we win, and win BIG!
It really doesn't matter who is in "control", they will create policy that some people like and other hate, regulations that can be enforced and some that can't, and ultimately it will all get superseded by new technology and methods of operation.
Consider the number of successful anti-piracy protections on CD's, DVD's. None. But they still make new ones, and they survive varies short periods of time.
The number of successful censorship technologies. None. But short of turning the internet off, they continue to try.
The Ham radio has been thrown around a bit, not allowed to comm with someone in a country with the government doesn't permit it...Hello.... Ham radios don't decide who it will communicate with, they don't decide if it will use a unique identifier. The operator does, at both ends. And they can choose to ignore the regulations.
Governments and government organisations have always ruled with the illusion of power. The people can decide what to do and what not to do within the framework setup by those organisations. Where policy and regulation is seen as beneficial, its followed by the majority, where it's not, its ignored.
I mean seriously, register a server on the internet. Do you really think that's going to work? That it's enforceable? Are they then going to remove programming languages from the world and lock us into a "no programming allowed" internet, with software that never progresses. Because that is what they would need to do. It's not practical. It's not enforceable.
Sure, big companies like apple, google, facebook, microsoft may not survive in there current form, they only do so now because they are American companies, and America controls the rules. But if my Mom can use a vpn to bypass ebook distribution limitations imposed by Amazon and buy the books she wants to read, in a format she wants it in, check facebook and download torrents from within china and generally just get on with doing what she wants to on the internet, do we really think having the ITU as the new "master of the internet" is going to change anything?
This is really an argument about globalisation and unity. Do we want to start thinking of ourselves as Humans, living on Planet Earth, reaching out to the stars or as British, American, Iranian, Russian,..Christian, Muslim, Jewish...African, European, Asian... As a planet divided by borders we agreed to draw, fighting each other for resources we have plenty of, arguing over rules and regulations we choose to impose on ourselves. Unity; just takes being okay with the people next door believing the earth is flat, even though you know its not.
And as always; The new boss, same as the old boss.
Many parties are trying to grab Internet for their own selfish gains
Some wants to carve out the Net, into walled-gardens, so that they can make their visitors "captivated audience" and then profit from it
Others wants total control over Internet because they are scared of free exchanges of idea that may weaken their own ideology
And then there are those who want to restrict the flow of contents on the Net - with ridiculous claims of how "piracy has greatly damaged the economy"
I've been on the Net for decades. In fact, I've been online way before there was "Internet"
John Perry Barlow of the Grateful Dead once penned "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace"
It was a very nicely worded manifesto, but unfortunately it did not have teeth in it
Looking at what is happening to the Net as we speak, is there a way to keep the Net truly independent?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Well, when the experiment involves letting the people who write the laws being the ones who can profit from the laws they write...wrongly, they can certainly get what they want.
It was a mess, because they let Enron have power over them, and instead of telling the California State Police to go arrest the people running the local power plants and shutting them down at Enron's orders if they didn't turn them back on, and then getting a warrant for the arrest of Ken Lay, they let themselves get screwed.
Well, actually, they let the people of the state got screwed, the people running the whole affair went along with it because they got money.
You have it completely wrong if you think California was any sort of example of "proper" deregulation. Power companies were required to sell their power at the same cost they always had, but were "free" to purchase power at market prices. Unfortunately for them, Enron's traders simply traded power back and forth across the California border with neighboring states until they'd soaked up capacity and created an "emergency", allowing an explosion in power prices. When I say explosion I mean up to 10x prior costs. PG & E was not allowed to pass that cost onto consumers. I'm not actually a defender of regulation but it's clear what happens when you let the interested parties write the rules. They write in loopholes and profit, too.
That should read defender of *deregulation*, by the way. I'm ok with it if the striations are prevented from ownership or co-ownership by cooperative parties. I'm all for it if each layer is forced to compete and the market is efficient. I'm all against if it the competitors are simply allowed to by each other and integrate until choice is back to two or three bad choices instead of several good ones.
Nobody tell Telstra that they might be able to charge for "long distance" internet. All Australia needs is for our internet connections to get MORE expensive.
The truth is that the Internet has made people smarter, more aware and responsive.
The powers that be don't wan't people that are awake or well informed. They want obedient slaves who don't criticize their actions.
The Internet is responsible for many movements; the Occupy movement, Anonymous, etc. The only way they can keep this up, is by taking total control of what we see and read. Adolf has returned.
Seriously, anyone who describes the ITU as a "little known agency" has clearly disqualified himself from talking about it.
The internet is dead, folks. It's only a matter of time until these kinds of controls are first, established, and second, exercised.Without (possibly repeated) violent revolution against oppressive governments and corporations, all freedom will be destroyed or forced underground, and that includes the 'net. While new technology may be able to occasionally open new frontiers for free speech and action, those will eventually be usurped and suppressed as well. The oppressor must be destroyed before freedom can openly exist.
Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, it was the far right that saw a threat in US membership in the United Nations.
Today, that threat ought to be apparent to everyone, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.
The United Nations is the greatest criminal organization in the history of the world. Already it collects tens of billions of dollars annually from taxpayers in the more-productive countries; but it has plans that would allow it to steal hundreds of billions, mainly through carbon trading and taxes on financial transactions.
Letting the UN do its thing while we ignore it and go our own way, is not a positive longterm strategy. Right now the Senate is debating the Law of the Sea Treaty, which should have been killed off once and for all back in the 1980s. But instead we ignored it and now it's back; if ratified, then the UN would collect royalties on undersea mining, etc., and the bureaucrats would keep 50% or 90% before redistributing the remainder to the corrupt governments of "underdeveloped" countries.
That is why there is ipv6.
It includes things like built in QoS. (Prioritizing VoIP traffic) and so on.