Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Showdown Set On Bid To Give UN Control of Internet

Posted by samzenpus on from the taking-the-wheel dept.

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."

13 of 316 comments (clear)

  1. On the one hand... by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:On the one hand... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...tell me one country which would do a better job...

      That right there is your problem. The truth is that NO ONE WANTS ANY COUNTRY TO CONTROL THE INTERNET. PERIOD.

      What people want for the internet is a persistent stateless anarchy, with no oversight or governence.

      I disagree with you because I don't want either in control, to be honest.

      In true internet fashion, I refute BOTH of your options, and write in my own.

    2. Re:On the one hand... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      If you disagree, tell me one country which would do a better job.

      Iran. Then we could stop allowing blasphemy against the great prophet and Allah.

    3. Re:On the one hand... by Xest · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't think you understand the way the ITU works, despite the fact it's been covered here many times now. Part the problem is as in the summary here a muddying of waters on the issue. For example, the threat of European telecomms operators has nothing to do with the UN taking over the internet as said law relates to the underlying telephony equipment and how charges are handled at that level. This is already something in the remit of the ITU, so has little relevance to an ITU takeover of say, ICANN's responsibilities.

      As has been pointed out here before many times, the ITU works on consensus and as such the only way the European proposal could pass anyway is if the US supports it.

      The reason I believe ITU control would be better than the status quo is quite simple - I believe that 193 vetoes (including the US') are a better safeguard against the passing of controversal changes to the internet, than simply relying on the US only to forever do the right thing.

      It's a simple question as to whether it's better to have a single dictator determining some policy, or having unanimous support for a policy from near 200 people - I know which I'd rather put more faith in in ensuring the fairest option to all is chosen, and it's not the single point of failure option, but hands down the option that requires all 193 points of failure to fail, something that's unlikely to happen nad is inherently better anyway, when you consider that one of the 193 points of failure that has to fail is the single point of failure in the other option itself.

    4. Re:On the one hand... by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The US is the devil we know. It isn't perfect but by and large it leaves the Internet alone. The UN has this predilection for, quite frankly, giving very repugnant regimes equal say with democracies.

      Leave it where it is.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    5. Re:On the one hand... by fustakrakich · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    6. Re:On the one hand... by elloGov · · Score: 5, Insightful

      NO ONE WANTS ANY COUNTRY TO CONTROL THE INTERNET. PERIOD. What people want for the internet is a persistent stateless anarchy, with no oversight or governence.

      For the most part I agree agree with you in sentiment. However, there are those who want to control the internet, specifically governments and multi-national corporations whose sole business is built on IP and corporations who want even greater control over the physical infrastructure they currently maintain. With the dawn of something precious comes the vultures who want all of it under their control. This is mankind's nature. Through fear, propaganda, lobbying and sometimes force these vultures will eventually get their way. Cyber-attacks, piracy, SOPA, lack of bandwith, child pornography, ... It's all power grab.

      Cyber-attacks - The door of company/gov't entity A was open and thieves stole X amount of value, therefore, everyone should send in their keys so we can protect you all, or better yet, we'll build one big door out front and decide who gets to come in and who does not. FUCK YOU, fix your security holes

      Piracy - We push digital formats of IP that we own into the public domain with insufficient security and oversight. We are neither going to acknowledge our short-comings in protecting our IP nor are we going to adapt to the changing times and seek out new creative outlets for our products (i.e. rock band), instead we are going to lobby hard for the uber-privilege of regulating all content on the world wide web. FUCK YOU either evolve or don't publish your IP if you can't protect it.

      In both of these instances, their fault is spun into request for greater control through fear (economical and national security). I draw a clear distinction between regulation of content and infrastructure. I too wish the internet to remain a "persistent stateless anarchy", however, there needs to be regulation and oversight of infrastructure, NOT content, when appropriate; i.e. detect/protect against DOS attacks, DNS spoofing, etc... But don't tell me what content I can consume and what content I can't.

      Like you, I refuse the choose the lesser of the two evils.

    7. Re:On the one hand... by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That index is complete and utter bullocks. UK better than US? Hardly. The UK can and does prohibit all sorts of "news" from being published, especially about the Royals, yet it ranks significantly higher than the US. This is an OPINION survey, not actual reality survey.

      Sorry, but people who hate the US will always rate it lower than other more oppressive regimes simply because of hate.

      On the other hand, our government arrested the maker of the video at the heart of the controversy with Bengazi. So, perhaps we are going down the road of Soviet Russia.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    8. Re:On the one hand... by Artraze · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And that veto is cast by who, exactly? No one we elected, and no one that we really know. Are you so politically naive to think that those vetos and passes aren't going to be traded for others within the UN machine? And that the people that could be held accountable (elected representatives) can't so thoroughly distance themselves from the UN proceedings to make it a literal non-issue come election time?

      It's not so much as 193 point of failure so much as 193 palms to grease. The UN has way more politicking than accountability and that's never a good thing. Do you really think that this would somehow prevent the Berne Convention (165 parties) won't be used as club to beat the ITU into line? Or that free speech isn't going to be a huge issue? And that we could see concessions made on that front in exchange for some other favor within the UN?

      The long and the sort of is it that moving to to the UN spreads the accountability so thin as to be non-existent. At least with the US there is enough accountability (see the defeat of SOPA) and principal (see as one of the freest speech countries around) to keep the internet what it is.

    9. Re:On the one hand... by Synerg1y · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hacking probably isn't even the biggest threat on the internet, it's fraud, probably followed by something crazy like human trafficking : why CL requires you to have an account now. The problem is that governments want control over the internet in entirety, every last packet. While this may work for China & Iran because they control such things as the media & speech, the internet is right along those lines, but the problem is the rest of us, there's not a camera on every street corner (sorry UK), there's not a phone tap on every citizen, so why should the internet be controlled in such a manner? Most plans for the internet tend to incorporate something along the lines of such control. Having said that, in my opinion, we should let the internet control itself and treat crimes on it on a per case basis just like we do with everything else.

    10. Re:On the one hand... by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem with giving control of the Internet to a world body like the UN is that only a minority of the world (either by number of countries or population) lives in democracies or flawed democracies. The majority of the world is completely or partially authoritarian. If you put the Internet under the democratic control of the world as a whole, the authoritarians win.

      People like to badmouth the U.S. because it's a prominent target. But compare it to the rest of the world as a whole, and the U.S. comes out smelling like roses. Bashing the U.S. in this context is literally throwing out the baby with the bathwater. If you don't want the U.S. in sole control, OECD control is almost certainly preferable to UN control. The free and democratic nations of the Earth built up with a wonderful global tool. Just because it's "global" does not mean they're obligated to hand over control of it to the (mostly authoritarian) world as a whole. Do Open Source software projects give equal voice in decision-making to non-contributors and closed-source proponents?

    11. Re:On the one hand... by joshio · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is nothing stopping other countries from running their own DNS servers and forcing providers to direct DNS queries to them...

  2. Putting anything under UN control is scary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!