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US House Votes 397-0 To Oppose UN Control of the Internet
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. House of Representatives voted 397-0 today on a resolution to oppose U.N. control of the internet. 'The 397-0 vote is meant to send a signal to countries meeting at a U.N. conference on telecommunications this week. Participants are meeting to update an international telecom treaty, but critics warn that many countries' proposals could allow U.N. regulation of the Internet.' The European Parliament passed a similar resolution a couple weeks ago, and the U.N. telecom chief has gone on record saying that freedom on the internet won't be curbed. However, that wasn't enough for U.S. lawmakers, who were quite proud of themselves for actually getting bipartisan support for the resolution (PDF). Rep Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said, 'We need to send a strong message to the world that the Internet has thrived under a decentralized, bottom-up, multi-stakeholder governance model.'"
If only they would do this for their own attempts to regulate the Internet (think SOPA, PIPA and DMCA), the Internet would be much better off than it is today.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
The Internet has done fine under ICANN.
Look at those who want to take control away from ICANN and look at their histories regarding censorship and ask whether you should by default assume things will get better or worse under the ITU.
We need to send a strong message to the world that the Internet has thrived under a decentralized, bottom-up, multi-stakeholder governance model
Isnt that what the UN is ?
No. The UN is the centralization of power. Decisions made by the UN are enforced on member nations. The UN is top down. It is staffed by elites selected by the excecutive branchs of nations. It is multi-national but it is not multi-stakeholder. It excludes stakeholders that are not goverments.
Yes this is true, however countries such as Iran, China, etc. shut off entire parts of the internet 'without justification'.
Do you really want to have an internet controlled by entities which care more about power than freedom? I understand you could argue the same about the U.S. however history has proven those arguments to be false.
So you are saying that because it's not perfect under the current system, it couldn't get worse? The US at least trys/pretends to respect free speech, human rights, rule of law, etc. Some of these countries don't even bother to do that.
How?
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Bonus: they didn't actually do anything. This is a "resolution", not a law. It has no effect. It doesn't even give any official directions to the US representative to the ITU, who (duh) had absolutely no intention of voting for any such thing anyway.
Whenever you get universal support for anything in Congress, it's because it isn't anything. Bipartisan support for doing nothing is very popular. So is bipartisan support for empty gestures. Eking out even so much as a bare majority along anything other than party lines, for some measure that actually does something, is a herculean task.
Do you really want to have an internet controlled by entities which care more about power than freedom? I understand you could argue the same about the U.S. however history has proven those arguments to be false.
No, it hasn't. Remember Kim Dotcom? And please stop with the freedom bullshit. You could argue some countries defend freedom, but the US is not one of them.
An UN-controlled Internet has the advantage of anything proposed by China being opposed by the US, anything proposed by the US being opposed by China. With any luck nobody will be able to do too much damage.
Ugh. Giving those countries a legitimate pulpit to shout for additional repressive controls that would only exist in addition to existing international law is not going to make things better than they are today. It's the ticket to more government tampering, regulation, and censorship, not less.
In the future, if you find yourself at complete odds with Vint Cerf on subjects of Internet governance, stop and rethink your position for a minute. Well, unless you're in Iran and someone will stone you for it.
Say the UN didn't let Chavez to stand up and and insult the US for a few minutes, would that make him a nice guy? Probably not, more likely he'll just become more isolated, and a bunch of Americans will forget that there's countries like his that really don't like the US. Think of the UN General Assembly as the worlds cafeteria, there's a lot of nonsense going on (like the human rights council), but it gives you a decent overview of how everyone gets along and what they're thinking.
Well no one actually asked the US to be the world's police force, you just sort of... volunteered. BTW, what would you consider an appropriate role? You already have a seat on the security council and an absurd amount of influence.
So here's the deal with the US military. It's really, really, big (about half the world's total budget). It's not really required for UN peacekeeping, other western nations have strong militaries, but the US has such a big military they might as well use it.
Now you'll make the argument that we should all be thankful that the US spends so much to keep the rest of the civilized world safe and let us spend less on our own militaries, and that might have been true at the height of the cold war, but not so much anymore.
You don't spend so much on your military to protect us, you do it so you can exercise your power unilaterally. So you can invade Afghanistan in response to 9/11 and everyone jumps on board. So you can invade Iraq and even though everyone else knows it's a bad idea and we don't want it to happen, we can't really stop it (how many other nations could pull that off?).
We'd actually prefer you cut your military budget a bunch, let us pick up the slack if there was any, and you cab think a little longer before going to war.
I stole this Sig
You mean the ones that were selling physical counterfeit merchandise? How very evil of them.
i_dont_have_a_problem_with_this.jpg
The incident with Kim Dotcom can happen regardless of who ICANN/IANA answer to, UN or otherwise. It mainly happened due to treaty and trade agreements as well as strong arm tactics that preceded the internet, and don't require its existence to work.
Other countries seize domain names as well, not just the US. He had a .com TLD, the US government controls those. The US can seize those just as any other country can seize its own TLD registrations, again regardless of who controls ICANN. Notice how thepiratebay.org moved to .se. The US doesn't have any authority to seize those.
As for his physical equipment and the police raids, those happened through diplomatic arrangements and agreements, not through the authority of ICANN or any domain registration authority.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK