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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/
This is a historical reference.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?
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.
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.
ICANN has made it pretty clear that they're in charge, and it's going to fucking stay that way. Iran and Russia are, of course, free to start their own internets if they don't like it.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
cash is not the issue, censorship is. They just want to control the Internet for their own purpose, you name it, you got it. Control - propaganda, political agenda, any reason is good. Organisation are starting to learn that if you got control over the communication, you control the people.
What rock have you been living under?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Because they want regress the internet into a locally governed and very much controlled and filtered service. Remember that it's politicians that push for this, old and wrinkeled people that do not use internet for much themselves other than perhaps a archaic email client at work, they will never wish your well, they just want to stroke their ego by gaining more power, because in their minds, their _opinion_ equals divine truth.
The same is true in the US, but for once, the giant corporate lobby is against such intervention.
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.
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
"Senator, this will give Russia, China, Iran, and anyone at the UN access to your browsing history.
"They will know everything about you, your family, and your staff."
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
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?
I believe it's time to apply the Sherman Antitrust act. Time to break-up Comcast, Cox, and other monopolies, turn-over control of the fiber optic bundles to the Member State government's roads authority, and then LEASE the lines to whatever company each customer chooses (Comcast, Apple, Honda, GM, Microsoft, Walmart, etc). We need to return to the days of Dialup where ISPs merely *used* the lines but did not own them.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
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
Like the Trans-pacific Partnership for instance?
Daily read for tech news: Freezenet.ca
I think we should remind the UN that its our Internet, we designed the infrastructure and WE not THEY will control it. If they have a problem with it they can build their own Internet and disconnect it from ours.
Their choices are be shut of US commerce or deal with us managing the Internet as we see fit. There is NO reason to negotiate here, we hold all the cards. Hopefully someone form our Government will have the courage to say "STFU".
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I doubt that the regulations will apply to privileged people in the government. The regulations will be applied to "commoners," people who are deemed to not "need" security or whose security is deemed less important than national or law enforcement interests. Government do all sorts of things with shortwave radio that are illegal for amateur radio stations -- encrypted, unidentified transmissions, broadcasts, etc. It would probably be the same on the Internet -- people in privileged positions would get to use things like encryption without backdoors, anonymous browsing, etc., but people like you and me would not.
Palm trees and 8
The UN has always done a better job of this sort of thing than the US alone, you only have to look at the history of WIPO and the WTO to see how bad the US is at playing fair.
WIPO was historically democratic, but America disliked this because in being democratic it let the poorer nations of the world vote for weaker intellectual property laws so that they too could benefit from medical and technological advancements much earlier than the US mandated IP laws allow. Because America didn't like this it decided to create the WTO which the US created strict rules for entry on, whilst trying to turn it into the defacto organisation for international trade using it's own economic clout to initially offer preferable trade deals to build up initial membership, then the threat of exclusion from an international trade body ever since. The problem is, that whenever the WTO rules against the US (Brazilian cotton, European steel, Canadian lumber/water, Antiguan gambling etc. etc.) the US ignores the ruling, whilst simultaneously insisting everyone else adheres to rulings against them.
Honestly, this article is just yet another US sourced scare mongering story. The fact is the world is getting pissed off at US internet censorship like the ICE domain seizures which have destroyed legitimate foreign businesses as well as the likes of SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and so forth. Self interested Americans are thus stirring up typical paranoid xenophobic sentiment with repeated stories like this, which you'll note have those words that always make Americans shit bricks in, yes those words, "China", "Iran", "Russia". They're just FUD peices plain and simple, and whilst America continues with these desperate attempts at propaganda the rest of the world will continue to say "Meh" and eventually the US will be left with little choice in the matter anyway. It's a declining superpower that can no longer unilaterally decide what should happen in the world, it just seems to be the only one at the party that doesn't know it yet.
Really it's tiresome, and rather than recognise that America could get out of this downward spiral by simply being a bit nicer again, by focussing on being a bit smarter again, and focussing on working hard, it just seems determined on pursuing this tea-party sponsored downward spiral into oblivion where anyone non-religious is a heretic to be ignored, strict IP enforcement is going to somehow save the economy whilst everyone continues to ignore it, and where adding universal healthcare to the list of public services people should be able to receive alongside things like police protection, fire protection, and military protection regardless of their wealth like just about every other country in the world is a danger that could bring the country to it's knees.
The UN is a club for tired Marxist dictators who still dream of world domination.
It's well past time Americans threw it out of New York and sent it to a more appropriate location, like Zimbabwe.
Ah, back when there was consumer choice... but apparently free markets where people have choice and thus can effect company behavior by taking their business elsewhere are now considered communism.
Given the state of my nation's roads, I'm not sure I'd trust them with fiber-optic lines when they can barely keep asphalt maintained.
Everyone wants to use infrastructure but nobody wants to pay for it.
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
We don't even have a voice in the UN Assembly to make our objections be heard.
The UN Assembly can maybe decide what condiments are allowed on the Secretary-General's sandwich without the approval of the Security Council. The Security Council can't lift a finger unless the US (which, based on your subject I'm assuming you're based in) government allows it to happen. So yes, your country's objections will be heard.
If you don't think your interests are represented by the US government, then that's a different sort of problem. But the US government can pretty much tell the UN to go to hell any time it wants to.
I am officially gone from
I don't recall the internet ever being controlled by its users.
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.
Or just force them to divest the infrastructure into a separate company, and make said company a common carrier.
Comcast can split into Comcast that owns the pipes, and Xfinity for all their media bullshit. They can then make Comcast a common carrier, and bar them from favoring Xfinity in any way.
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).
and then in 12 years (or two governmental adminsitrations from now), comcast renames themselves and then repurchases their xfinity division... either that, or AT&T (bellsouth much?) does.
Stop right there. Many, perhaps most, of the "poorer nations of the world" aren't democratic. Letting each nation vote is not being democratic if the nations aren't ruled by their own people.
I don't recall the internet ever being controlled by its users.
Then you must be new here.
Think back to how things were in the 70's and 80's (if you are actually not new here - otherwise, ask someone who has been around a while). It was effectively a healthy and vibrant anarchy. There were no politicians involved, no lawyers. Anyone could run any service they wanted on machines they controlled. It was much more a playing field of equal peers, not what we see today with "huge services like Facebook controlling a bigger and bigger chunk of all communication". It was based in OPEN protocols, not increasingly locked-down golden cages like we see today. It was far, far less centralized. The only control involved was that of admins over their own machines, coupled with the voluntary cooperation between hosts.
If you don't remember the arpanet days, ask someone who has been around longer than you what they have seen happen over the whole time span.
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
Yeah and for every positive comment you make about some random old person, you can make it about me, a young person who's as smart as they come. You think intelligence is restricted to your generation, old timer? We all build on the generations that come before. The baby boomer generation in particular, however, "do not use internet for much themselves other than perhaps a archaic email client at work." Therefore it's reasonable to say that this generation by and large is out of touch with this whole intertubes things, especially considering that older people in general tend to be fixed in their ways and inflexible.
Then just bar them from being allowed to do so. They're corporations, not human beings. Restricting them to divert a power grab is never a bad thing.
Sherman antitrust has been almost entirely a tool to prevent the most efficient producers from offering better goods and services to society in order to protect mediocre producers with better political pull. Comcast, cox and the rest would not be targeted in any meaningful way by such laws because they themselves are extremely connected to the state given how protected from competition they are.
Citations:
US telecommunications protectionism - http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/RAE9_2_3.pdf
Sherman trust targeting the productive companies - http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/RAE6_2_3.pdf
List of dozens of high profile cases of how the sherman act laws are really used - http://library.mises.org/books/Dominick%20Armentano/Antitrust%20The%20Case%20for%20Repeal.pdf
To sum those articles up, what were labeled as trusts were expanding output and dropping prices 4 times faster than the rest of US businesses on average. Those businesses that gained dominance as a result of this legal action(and were found later to have had significant involvement in starting the legal action against the more efficient producers) were on average less able to reduce prices and expand productivity than the rest of businesses(let alone the 'trusts'). Trusts were not monopolistic. Government protected corporations were.
So expecting comcast and the like to be meaningfully allowed to be subject to competition from the rest of society is going to leave you disappointed so long as you turn to the legal system to do it.
Sorry, Mr. Shill of the Chinese Regime, you can't have it both ways. You can't blather on about how the US is opposing democracy in the WTO, then suddenly decide that democracy isn't all that important when talking about th member countries. If it's "ethnocentric" to insist on democracy at a national level, it's just as "ethnocentric" to insist on "one country, one vote" at the international level.
No, a rent-free right of way across MY REAL ESTATE is what financed the pipes.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I remember those days. And what's changed other than far better access and a much larger base. For about $20 / mo over my cable bill I've got the equivalent of dual T1s at worst and often as much as 20 T1s worth of bandwidth which I can use pretty much however I like offering services. If I want a static IP and space on a shared server I can get that for about $100 for 3 years to offer pretty much what I like.
I'm sorry but I fail to see how I'm not far freer today than I was a quarter century ago with regard to the internet.
There's nothing to break up. Those cable companies have local monopolies because the local governments gave it to them. The monopoly problems in the cable industry were caused by government interference with the free market. They granted monopolies in exchange for certain guarantees (like 99.8% of the population had to be covered, or payments made to the city). Take away the government-granted monopolies and the problem fixes itself, no need to break up companies.
The Boston suburb I lived in during grad school was one of those which granted a cable monopoly. The year before I moved, they reconsidered and allowed a second cable company to offer service. My cable bill immediately dropped $10/mo without me even having to switch.
Well, turning over privately-owned hardware to the State is Communism. But your intentions are in the right place, if poorly expressed. Basically, the companies which own the lines should be prohibited from selling what's carried over the lines. That's an obvious conflict of interest. I've felt the same is true of the mobile phone industry. The phone manufacturers should sell you a phone, the carriers should sell you a service plan, and the carriers should "build" a network by leasing towers from other companies which own the towers. Having one company own the towers, provide the plan, and sell you the phone is too stifling for the free market.
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.
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"
No, I checked it, it works. Must be a problem on your end.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
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.