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Showdown Set On Bid To Give UN Control of Internet
wiredmikey writes "When delegates gather in Dubai in December for an obscure UN agency meeting, the mother of all cyber diplomatic battles is expected, with an intense debate over proposals to rewrite global telecom rules to effectively give the United Nations control over the Internet. Russia, China and other countries back a move to place the Internet under the authority of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a UN agency that sets technical standards for global phone calls. While US officials have said placing the Internet under UN control would undermine the freewheeling nature of cyberspace, some have said there is a perception that the US owns and manages the Internet. The head of the ITU, Hamadoun Toure, claims his agency has 'the depth of experience that comes from being the world's longest established intergovernmental organization.' But Harold Feld of the US-based non-government group Public Knowledge said any new rules could have devastating consequences. Some are concerned over a proposal by European telecom operators seeking to shift the cost of communication from the receiving party to the sender. This could mean huge costs for US Internet giants like Facebook and Google."
On the one hand, we have the US and the insanity over copyright who randomly takes a small number of domains off line with no due process.
and...
On the other hand we have the rest of the world, who, to a greater or lesser extent take a large number of domains off line with no due process because of various censorship requirements.
I'm not American, but keeping the internet under the control of the US is far better than the alternative.
If you disagree, tell me one country which would do a better job. And then tell me how much influence they'd have over the ITU.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Didn't these guys check the pricing models of all the cloud hosts?
Korma: Good
So, this is the same UN who keeps batting around the idea of making blasphemy universally illegal. Great! Can't wait to have them handling my internet traffic!
The TECHNICAL details of any cross-border communications method would be manged by either private actors or an international governing body or all affected governments working together, not by any one country's governing body or a private actor beholden to any one government.
The cross-border ECONOMIC details are best left to private industry. If governments have to become involved (e.g. to keep industry from running roughshod over customers, to prevent red-lining, to ensure universal access, to address taxation issues, etc.), then, as above, it should be a multi-national or international body making the decision, not one government imposing its will on everyone else.
Within a single country other than my own, regulation of the Internet isn't my business.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So what, we get to choose between control by Big Content or Big Brother? At the moment Big Content appears to be the more benign choice.
The idea of someone "owning" the internet is pretty ridiculous. Between the IANA and maybe a revisit of the ol' DNS infrastructure guidelines, I don't think anyone globally would need to have the final say.
You need not look any further than X.25 to see what sort of provisions the ITU would try to work into future Internet protocols.
Palm trees and 8
Some are concerned over a proposal by European telecom operators seeking to shift the cost of communication from the receiving party to the sender. This could mean huge costs for US Internet giants like Facebook and Google.
And ad networks. Imagine what would happen to those scumbags if they had to pay for us to see their crap over and over again. Annoying the shit out of us would no longer be profitable...
The internet works because everyone forwards everyone else's packets, costs are low and regulation is low.
Please don't mess with that formula or you'll make the internet become a lot like the older forms of media it is replacing.
People seem to think that increased regulation is the solution. I'm not so sure. I think big companies tend to find ways to manipulate regulation more than small ones do.
Roll it back to 1993 and keep the open, free and wild west internet.
The Internet thrives because it's free of the bullshit that the UN and the ITU would impose on it. If they had a hand in it, it wouldn't be what it is today.
FUCK THE UN. Let the ITU continue to manage international phone calls. They tariff'd those to expensive death.
The United States invented the Internet. The United States BUILT the Internet. The UN can go take a flying leap.
Please don't mod me down for language. English is my second language and perhaps I don't express myself as well as I might if I could speak my native tongue. When I say FUCK THE UN what I'm trying to say is "FUCK THE UN!!!"
Ehud
They want to control it, let them build their own;
For various reasons they ALL agreed to our control when they signed up, got their country codes, IP address allocations, etc.
We've gone well out of our way to give them everything thy could ever want. In fact now the complaint isn't about any single tangible thing; they will get 'nothing' out of this, other than control.
Well.. build your own.
You did it for GPS (galileo, glonass, a few more even); do it again.
What, you can't because the US has most of the technology you want to use? So what good is this 'control' you seek if even AFTER that we still have 'control'?
"...Some are concerned over a proposal by European telecom operators seeking to shift the cost of communication from the receiving party to the sender. This could mean huge costs for US Internet giants like Facebook and Google."" The real reason.
Conservative, mod down for violating
You mean the body that, by flexing its muscle and getting everyone to agree when all hope was lost, has prevented countless wars and solved dozens of conflicts for 70 years?
Yes, a thousand times yes!
I can't say whether it would be better or worse for the ITU to "control the internet", especially since the article doesn't even explain what control it is about (DNS? BGP routes? IANA? ...). But the article does contain a whole lot rosy-coloured-glasses stuff:
As others have already mentioned, the US everything but shies away from doing those things. It isn't carrying out drone strikes yet, but getting sites removed from Google because they offer travel to Cuba (from Spain!) to taking down various sites (often hosted outside the US) for infringing on US copyright law are fairly common.
Yes, because the US would never do that. *cough* Echelon *cough* warrantless wiretapping *cough* Thomas Drake *cough* *cough* *cough*
Yes, because US telecom operators are completely united in favour of network neutrality and would never dare to make Google pay for the massive bandwidth use triggered by youtube and the like.
Not being able to express discontent about your president is very different to not being able to "pirate" some films.
No, not on a technical level... and that's what it comes down to.
While it could easily be said for the US government as well, the UN is not really well known for doing anything well, or effeciently. While ICANN does have to come under the laws of the US, it would have to come under the laws of someone else, depending on what country it was based in, but at least it's got a track record for having some control over how things work.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
The US has not been the best of stewards, but has nevertheless proven itself a much better henhouse guard than the foxes would be.
I don't know about all of the stuff being proposed, but I kind of like the idea of shifting the costs back to mega corporations like Google and Facebook. Maybe then, they would few the users as customers instead of the product to be sold to others.
Lol, if you are going to point out the RFCs as a reason the US shouldn't have control of the .com domain, you should read the original RFCs first.
I propose that the Internet be declared a sovereign entity or a federation of sovereign entities (one per nationwide network, perhaps) similar to the way the Holy See is a sovereign entity (headed by the Pope) with whom nations can maintain diplomatic relations. I nominate Vint Cerf for the title of chairman of the Internet Federation (in part due to his RFC 3271.) The Internet Foundation would be responsible for global guidelines that nationwide networks must follow to be considered part of the Internet; nationwide networks would be allowed to come up with other guidelines as long as they don't violate the global guidelines.
I notice this happens a lot, unnervingly frequently. Not just with technologies, but also with brands.
There's a local sandwich shop here that eventually got popular enough to be sold. The new owners must've known some MBAs, because portions shrunk, quality of ingredients declined, but service, speed and uniformity improved. It's now much more convenient (like 1500%, if you don't mind a semi-facetious hyperbolic estimate) to get the sandwiches, even if they're $1 more.
What they didn't grok was that the audience who kept this business going was very specific. It was composed of people who liked the sandwiches because they were high quality, at a decent price, and reasonably convenient. By raising the price and lowering quality, the shop squeezed out this audience, and transitioned to the same people buying other types of fast food. In doing so, they've lowered the quality of their brand as perceived by the general public, and set themselves on a course for being unexceptional and thus not particularly sought, where before they had a die-hard constituency.
This seems to happen a lot. Why, I wonder.
I see no evidence of any country of note who would be better for the Internet than the US. Look at Australia and the UK, with governments falling over themselves to try to censor it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
In the meantime, the internet (formerly a DARPA project, and funded by the USA's taxpayers) can stay under USA's control, thank you very much. If the UN feels the need to steal something they didn't create, try Argentinian beef. Isn't that a world resource, after all?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
ICANN is an epic failure. The UN couldn't be more incompetent if they set out with that as a goal.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Why not create a fund to protect the internet specifically against legislation!? There's not enough people having free time to read new laws or care what UN thinks. But there's enough caring about it and there are some willing to act. Unite and fund those willing. Crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding has proven to work. It's in your hands. For small instance a fund could present a worldwide poll to UN proving that regulations would be against will of general public, not mentioning long-term attention to situation. Do something for f*s sake! Kick-start it! It's a chance to live green and do the right thing at the same time. Or should it be me? I would donate, I'm sure many would. Even by penny, together we have more money than any company.
So, the question becomes: How do we protect ourselves from these people to make sure nobody gets control, including our service providers, who can at ant moment cut us off completely?
Give it to the UN, they'll never agree on anything, nothing will change and the internet remains free :)
The only fair option is to give control of the internet to the country that invented it. Yay.
let me explain you then. For such a "censure the internet" vote to pass you would need the greater majority (or unanimity) and you would need that the guy at the security council sleep it through (guess who is at the security council ? the US). All those fear of "iran could censor my internet" are stupid. Iran could do nothing without the 1) help of the majority of the world and 2) the US on the security council not having a nod at it. Fat chance in hell.
Bottom line it would be in better hand in the ITU with the US and other being able to censor than in the hand of the US *ALONE*.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
The UN, will control what you say, what you can view on the net. Look at all the countries that block google, youtube, hotmail, and other things on the web. Is that what you want world wide? Not to mention, you know the UN will move to put a tax on EVERYTHING you do on the net. Leave the d*&^% internet alone!
Observers say a number of authoritarian states will back the move, and that the major Western nations will oppose it, meaning the developing world could make a difference.
the US is an authoritarian state, hence its reluctance to submit to shared governance of an open system they exploit for propaganda and surveillance at the expense of other nations.
Terry Kramer, the special US envoy for the talks, has expressed Washington's position opposing proposals by Russia, China and others to expand the ITU's authority to regulate the Internet.
yes, terry is right to hold this position because hes seen european attempts to charge service providers to send content to customers. The internet without several plugins is mostly just an ad-mill that funds itself at the expense of its users. changing this model, to empower users further, is unacceptable for american capitalism.
Kramer also said that the US strongly opposed proposals from some "non-democratic nations" for the tracking and monitoring of data routing, which he cautioned "makes it very easy for nations to monitor traffic," including content and customer information.
it can be argued the US is no longer a democratic nation and has used and abused monitoring tactics in the past. Terry's basically hoarding what he sees as a tactical advantage.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Name one country that would be better than the USA that has Free Speech enshrined in law. Possible candidates are UK, Germany, Australia, Canada, New Zealand etc but as a New Zealander I would say we're not a good candidate, our politicians are too easily bullied by US big media and we have no Free Speech protection in law (it is only customary), and probably most of the other countries I named are just as bad. The US has a lot of flaws, but at least they have Free Speech as a primary law.
The US has a lot of influence over the internet because it started here and a lot of the people that grew it and are highly influential are still around, but operation is international and no country "controls" it. The whole idea of "passing control" is bogus, since there's no control to start with.
The American part of the Internet was funded by the U.S. taxpayer, the rest of the world paid for their own thank you very much. It's not like Italy gets to dictate world radio frequencies because of Marconi either...
Suck it up you big wuss.
And I have no problem with Italy controlling Italy's part of the internet. Or China for that matter. I simply have no interest in the internet as a whole being dictated to by the governments of Tunisia, Brussels or Uzbekistan. You want local control? Feel free. You want global control for something you didn't invent or implement? Piss off! Go roll your own, and quit bothering everyone else.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Why should place of invention matter? It does not matter for any other technologies. And the countries that established their infrastructure certainly implemented it. Also, there is not really a "whole", just a collection of subnets.
That's the beauty of giving it to UN and letting them bicker over it. Sure, all those countries want to censor stuff, but they can never agree on what to censor. Saudis will want porn off their intertubes, Germans will want to banish all swastikas but keep the porn etc. End result - no censorship whatsoever above national level, which is as it should be.
Wow, just wow - put words in peoples mouths much?
US have a track record of benign management of the aspects under discussion, so I admittedly don't see what's "broken" that needs "fixing".
I'm not sure you understand the point though. The Internet is a collection of, and I repeat myself, mostly privately built networks. If I string network cable around my house, that is also just another privately built network ... can you tell me why any government should in any meaningful way be allowed to use force to assert and maintain significant and meaningful measures of control over the network in my house? And if not that, why any other private network? Same principle, just a matter of scale.
The only role governments may morally play, is voluntary services to help manage those networks, not control.
The UN has a long history of implementing bullshit the US invented, like prohibition of Drugs. Sometimes, if you're lucky, it does really take a stand against some bollocks the US or other states are trying to pull off.
So I don't think giving over the ICANN to the UN would not be a huge step. It _might_ be better than the status quo.
However, having the ITU in charge WILL lead to all kinds of shenanigans. The ITU has a long history of being a huge unaccountable body of TecCos, trying to keep their monopolies. Not a good idea.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse