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US Offers New Plans 1 Month Before UN Meeting To Regulate Web
Velcroman1 writes "Slashdotters have been reading for months about the upcoming ITU conference next month in Dubai, which will propose new regulations and restrictions for the Internet that critics say could censor free speech, levy tariffs on e-commerce, and even force companies to clean up their 'e-waste' and make gadgets that are better for the environment. Concerns about the closed-door event have sparked a Wikileaks-style info-leaking site, and led the State Department on Wednesday to file a series of new proposals or tranches seeking to ensure 'competition and commercial agreements — and not regulation' as the meeting's main message. Terry Kramer, the chief U.S. envoy to the conference, says the United States is against sanctions. '[Doing nothing] would not be a terrible outcome at all,' Kramer said recently."
is going to be bad for the rest of us.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
More to the point, it currently *works*. It's not like the system is broken now, it's just that some other people want pieces of the pie. And they could have that, if they wanted it, by building and maintaining their own infrastructure.
However, they don't want to do that. They just want to make money off of, and regulate, what other people built and bought for them.
is the fact that countries won't ever agree on how to regulate it.
Just like they can't agree on war and peace at the UN.
And thats a Good Thing (tm)
It is the collective wishes of the world's governments, most of which are run by crooks, corrupt politicians, and dictators. It is about representative of the people of this world as the Supreme Soviet was representative of the will of the people unfortunate enough to live in the USSR.
The UN was never intended to be a representative or democratic government. It is a body of international diplomacy in which even the worst of the worst have a voice, for the purely practical reason that those people also have guns and bombs.
The Internet, since DARPA handed it over to the general public, has been developed by private corporations, not governments, who are the Johnny-come-latelys to this game. If the U.N. gets too uppity about wanting to control/censor/ruin the internet, what's going to stop the core companies from just pulling out and starting an entirely different Internet? Without all the companies that provide the backbone bandwidth all the way down to the last-mile ISP's, there wouldn't BE an internet.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
NREN's, such as JANET, AARNet and many others existed. The Internet could easily have formed without the US portion. Yes much of the tech and standards came from the USA, but it is easily replaceable.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
You're right of course. But instead they've learned to speak English.
Are you entirely sure that's what you want to base your argument on?
So I have a crystal ball that tells me how the rest of this conversation will go. I will introduce many facts detailing exactly how awful US hegemony has been for most of the world. You will bring up the few times this has been positive, but largely rely on nationalistic fervor. The conflation of monologues will end with sentiment to the effect of "Love it or leave it." and other such vaguely ad hominem remarks. We will each leave convinced we have carried the day, and some day far in the future, you or your progeny will be ashamed that, when confronted with evidence of heinous acts, you chose to serve your own tribe and not humanity.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I know this is repeated a lot here on /., but don't confuse incompetence with malice. The sad thing is that many of those law enforcement types actually think they're doing the right thing. When they engage in unconstitutional wiretapping, when they detain people indefinitely, and even when they bust some hapless stoner; more often than not they're acting under the delusion that they're taking the morally correct course of action.
The evil fucks who know what they're doing is wrong and do it anyway: the lobbyists who are paid to get these draconian laws passed and the people who pay them - they're the ones who really write our legislation. Congress and law enforcement - for the most part I just see incompetence.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."