Slashdot Mirror
No More IP Addresses For Countries That Shut Down Internet Access (theregister.co.uk)
Governments that cut off internet access to their citizens could find themselves refused new IP addresses under a proposal put forward by one of the five global IP allocation organizations. From a report: The suggested clampdown will be considered at the next meeting of internet registry Afrinic in Botswana in June: Afrinic is in charge of managing and allocating IP address blocks across Africa. Under the proposal, a new section would be added to Afrinic's official rules that would allow the organization to refuse to hand over any new IP address to a country for 12 months if it is found to have ordered an internet shutdown. The ban would cover all government-owned entities and others that have a "direct provable relationship with said government." It would also cover any transfer of address space to those entities from others. That withdrawal of services would escalate if the country continued to pull the plug on internet access. Under the proposal: "In the event of a government performing three or more such shutdowns in a period of 10 years -- all resources to the aforementioned entities shall be revoked and no allocations to said entities shall occur for a period of 5 years."
Those countries that pull the plug don't care about IP addressing. All they care about is staying under the radar so they can continue commuting crimes against humanity.
Obligatory Seinfeld reference.
#DeleteFacebook
Like all such sanctions, this will only end up hurting the general populace, and have no effect on the corrupt government who will simply steal allocation from their citizens if they need it.
Being able to blame Internet disconnection on external forces would just be icing on the cake.
What we really ought to do is declare free communication a human right (though I pity the person trying to figure out language allowing the suppression of dangerous misinformation, harassment, incitement to violence, etc.), then make damn sure the borders stay 'information porous'.
Just like beaming propaganda radio or television, we ought to be forcing free information flow on tyrannical regimes... at home and abroad. A government tries to lock things down, and the rest of the world should be working on whatever is practical for getting packets in and out of the 'no communication' zone.
Most european Countrys are in progress of building Internet Censorship Infrastructures. Does that mean they dont get any more IPs, or is this a case of "its not censorship because we say so"?
So, IPv6 will become a tool of oppression?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
that's not a policy i'm forcing down your throat!!
Those countries that pull the plug don't care about IP addressing. All they care about is staying under the radar so they can continue commuting crimes against humanity.
Often true but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything. I don't know if this proposal will help or hurt but it's an interesting idea.
What about countries with "3 Strikes" laws?
Or FBI-engineered takeovers of US web sites?
Infrastructure is more important than politics.
How, if at all, would moving to IPv6 affect the current situation?
Nonaggression works!
This isn't government regulation of the internet, since the internet registry Afrinic of botswana is a private non-profit organization. which is exactly what myself and other libertarians think should be in control of naming registry. It seems they have the incentives in the right place to guarantee unrestricted and uncensored internet access for all
Dear Cretin, since when is Afrinic - the regional internet registry for AFRICA - a part of Trump's America?
Since Obama is Botswanan, idiot.
captcha = impeach
Ignore him. He's still suffering butthurt from Nov. He still pouts on the street. He cries for free education but only takes home economics classes. America has abandoned him and I think we should too.
Basic Income Now!
How does this help the citizens of that country? Now, not only are they in the dark, the rest of the world is in the dark in regards to their plight as well. The governments that institute these sort of shutoffs are already authoritarian and these organizations think the best response is to be authoritarian as well?
These governments are already going to have better organization that a random selection of the population. Banning the provision to expand IP addresses to a given country will do nothing to curtail their authoritarian efforts. Having that organization already in place allows them to respond to things like this more easily by instituting other wisely used channels, especially now that they know about this new rule. Meanwhile, the citizens are left out in the cold, and have to rely on very skilled local community leaders to lead the way of change. Such change has happened in the past. However the playing field just shifted away from the citizens in a hard way if this passes.
So a dictator shuts down the Internet so citizens can't use it, African Internet leaders think that once Internet has been turned on again it's a good idea to make it harder for people to gain access to It addresses.
This is just another form of censorship, and it hurts the citizen.
This is waaaay overdue --- but I sincerely doubt it will ever be acted upon?
Is this the new plan to get everyone switched over to IPv6?
The argument against handing off ICANN to a multi-country board rather than keeping it controlled by the US commerce department was fear that policies would be imposed by the directors on granting names. examples given were china refusing ICAAN names for falung gong orgs even in other countries.
This seems like the same sort of meddling, only with IP addresses.
It doesn't matter that the policy actually sounds like a good one. Once you start down this road it will suck.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I was under the impression that shutdowns of cellular Internet left wired ISPs unaffected. A protester subscribing to wired Internet service in a particular area could allow other protesters to use his WLAN as an alternative to cellular Internet.
Seems dangerous to me. Some of these countries may just start announcing random blocks on BGP. It would even be somewhat legit, seeing that they were refused when doing it the proper way.
I thought he was Kenyan?
...against China.
> Ideally I'd want to support no form of government censorship at all ... but there are to many possibilities for direct and blatant harm to individuals through harassment, threats
That's largely (not completely) taken care of by having a system in which people who commit libel, threats, etc can be punished after a public trial, rather than a censorship system, in which the government blocks information from ever being t posted at all, making those decisions more or less in secret.
Avoiding censorship and instead having public judicial trials for people accused incitement to violence, libel etc isn't perfect, but it's much better than censorship (prior restraint), in my view.
Sorry but the country can simply issue all the IP addresses they want and fuck the rest of the world if there is ip conflicts. They act like they can control it and in reality they cant control anything and will instead cause huge problems later on.
Dear Internet Registry... I suggest you get people on your board that actually understand how networking and the internet on it's own even works.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It is getting hard to work in the world with no 'net access. The governments want to use it themselves for many reasons, including just entertainment for the party elite. So, cut that off and they are brought down to the level of their citizens, and that they don't like.
Sanctions can work when they can actually effect the powerful. If you can do something that makes their life worse, that has an effect on them, then they care. This is something that has the potential to do that.
No silver bullet, but nothing is.
No soup for you! ONE YEAR.
I can't get over the fact that it's Afrinic doing this. Afrinic??
I like that they feel strongly enough about the situation that they are trying to do something about it. We can argue about the means and mechanisms. However Africa has about the worst human rights record of any place on Earth, with maybe the exception of the Middle East.
So good on Afrinic.
This is a dangerous precedent. Soon you're going to be seeing "no new IP addresses" for countries who don't follow whatever draconian IP laws get choked down in other countries, "no new IP addresses" for anyone who does not follow proper political correctness, "no new IP addresses" for any country that does not support XYZ invasion...
They're trying to cut Internet freedom with a death of a thousand paper cuts. And, at least for now, with things like Windows 10 essentially letting Microsoft own your machine, it's working.
If we hadn't spent the last few decades attacking each other with SJW nonsense, we'd have enough mutual trust to build city block or neighborhood networks and then let it fan out organically. There would be no way of controlling the internet if it were as decentralized as American society itself. P2P is coming and it will topple entire technological and political orders. But one day it will inevitably give us SkyNet. Enjoy these years!
So the response to a country cutting off internet access... is to deny internet access?
IANA and the RIRs have long-standing policies concerning IPv4 allocation, that they've been enforcing more and more strictly as IPv4 space nears total exhaustion. Addresses are allocated and assigned with the understanding and agreement that they will be used efficiently. Entities that fail to make efficient use of their allocations will not receive new allocations, and may even have their current ones revoked.
Intentional, persistent, complete blackouts are very inefficient use of precious IPv4 space , so whoever does that gets no new allocations.