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.'"

Comments

Another dupe

[1u3hr]

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.

Re:How many atom bombs does the UN have?

[Nidi62]

That quote is also attributed to Stalin.

The Pope! How many divisions has he got?

Said sarcastically to Pierre Laval in 1935, in response to being asked whether he could do anything with Russian Catholics to help Laval win favour with the Pope, to counter the increasing threat of Nazism; as quoted in The Second World War (1948) by Winston Churchill vol. 1, ch. 8, p. 105.(wikiquote)

Re:ITU regulations

[betterunixthanunix]

I don't know what sort of things you do with amateur radio, but I am a ham and the regulations annoy the heck out of me. I could have an Internet connection on the 2m or 70cm band, except that I could not do anything with it -- advertisements on websites would make browsing the web illegal, I could not use TLS, etc. Amateur radio used to be something that allowed people to do cool, innovative things; these days, cell phones are more innovative than amateur radio.

In what way are rules forbidding communication with people in countries whose governments object to said communication beneficial to us? How are rules that prevent us from setting up amateur trunked systems beneficial to us? The rules are completely out of date, they hold us back, and they basically guarantee that big businesses that can pay for commercial licenses will dominate wireless communications.

It would be trivial to partition amateur bands into "classic" bands where the old rules apply, and "modern" bands that allow greater freedom. The rules do not have to prohibit all commercial transmissions, they can simply prohibit commercial "services" i.e. radio systems that are run for profit, so that we could set up packet radio systems that are useful and interesting.