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Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act
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- protomyth 10y agoSaving you the need to scroll to find the text: https://duffy.house.gov/sites/duffy.house.gov/files/wysiwyg_uploaded/16.06.08%20-%20DUFFY_110_xml_0.pdf https://duffy.house.gov/sites/duffy.house.gov/files/wysiwyg_... "To prohibit the National Telecommunications and Information Administration from allowing the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority functions contract to lapse unless specifically authorized to do so by an Act of Congress." A little over 6 pages, so not a tough one to read. Might be close to the same number of words as the press release.
- punkcoder 10y ago"The Protecting Internet Freedom Act would also ensure that the United States maintains sole ownership of the .gov and .mil top-level domains, which are vital to national security." I almost did a spit take...
- iraphael 10y agoYeah I don't understand the reasoning behind this at all.
- balls187 10y agoMy guess, this prevents DNS poisoning attacks. Somewhere, somehow, there is critical infrastructure tied to a .gov or .mil [email/web] address.
- slashcom 10y agoYeah, it's written like if this law doesn't pass, China will be have full access to the NSA.
- mikek 10y agoI agree with this. I like being able to know that a site is trustworthy based on it having a .gov domain name.
- macandcheese 10y agoAgree, I have no problem with this. By not limiting these to government uses and ownership, you are only opening the door for malicious websites to fool users...
- bpodgursky 10y agoI mean... do you really want to have to guess whether congress.gov is run by the government, or some random country which decided to sell of .gov TLDs for extra cash? Or, potentially more deceptively to consumers, "healthcare.gov", etc.
- int_19h 10y agoThe other option is not giving it over to some random country. As I understand it, the other option would be giving the assignment of top-level domains to ITU or some similar agency within UN, which would then delegate .gov and .mil and other things to US.
- wavefunction 10y agoThe same people who would have problems with "some random country" would have even more problems with the UN. I'm generally less critical of the UN, but I would agree that the UN is pretty much the last body that should be invested with any sorts of power.
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- rickycook 10y agois it really so bad to do what everyone not in the US does and add an extra 3 characters? .gov.us; SOLVED
- TallGuyShort 10y agoI had to prove I was a student multiple times by sending / receiving mail at .edu address. It's not unreasonable for people to assume that if you control a .gov domain you're a legitimate US government agency. I think Internet control should become less US-centric, but I agree with them there'll need to be some effort to deal with the .gov TLD issue.
- maxerickson 10y agoMy university has offered courtesy mail forwarding to alumni since ~2000 (probably a good bit earlier).
- jpapon 10y agoYes, and think how unfair it is to students at universities in other countries that they don't get .edu addresses. Why should the US have this monopoly?
- mmastrac 10y agoWhile this seems rational, is this a play for them to gain some 'net credibility to start pushing harder to kill Net Neutrality? Aren't the players coming out in favour of this bill the same ones who have been arguing against NN? [1] I'd be wary of letting any of these folks have a say on the future of the internet. [1] ie: Heritage Action: http://heritageaction.com/agenda/strong-economy/internet-freedom/ http://heritageaction.com/agenda/strong-economy/internet-fre... TechFreedom: http://techfreedom.org/post/134532740524/net-neutrality-court-fight-is-really-about-fcc http://techfreedom.org/post/134532740524/net-neutrality-cour... National Religious Broadcasters: http://www.acton.org/pub/commentary/2015/03/04/no-faith-based-case-fcc%E2%80%99s-net-neutrality-power-gra http://www.acton.org/pub/commentary/2015/03/04/no-faith-base...
- __jal 10y agoAgreed. There are very few people about whom I feel this way, but if Cruz supports something that sounds good to me, I'm hanging on to my wallet until I figure out the scam. (Not that this law necessarily sounds good to me.)
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- trollian 10y agoBrought to you by people who have endorsed Donald Trump for President.
- WizzleKake 10y agoso?
- 1337biz 10y agoI just want to thank you for your service. I have given up arguing with people who start an argument an ad-hominem.
- snaky 10y agoCruz never endorsed Trump.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoHe is apparently hosting him at a rally, though.
- luso_brazilian 10y agoI believe Sen. Ted Cruz not only didn't endorse Donald Trump (up until now) but was also Trump's fiercest opponent and critic in the primaries.
- fluxsauce 10y ago> The Protecting Internet Freedom Act would also ensure that the United States maintains sole ownership of the .gov and .mil top-level domains, which are vital to national security. Why? Because of hard-coded logic around those TLDs? Or is to establish that the US Military is always the top domain so canada.mil doesn't become a thing?
- barsonme 10y agoWithout advocating either way, right now both are (afaik) fairly synonymous with the US government and its military. I could see how they'd consider it harmful if a foreign actor (or anybody, really) creates, e.g., sssa.gov which steals your information.
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- snaky 10y ago> .@SenTedCruz and I introduced a bill to ensure that President Obama can't terminate U.S. oversight of the Internet https://twitter.com/RepSeanDuffy/status/740636388186546176 https://twitter.com/RepSeanDuffy/status/740636388186546176
- BooneJS 10y agoI'm sure some think-tank wrote this bill; thankfully there are Congressmen who can introduce.
- random28345 10y agoI don't really know if the IANA should be managed by an international body, but the fact that Ted Cruz and the President of National Religious Broadcasters are in favor of this bill automatically make me think this bill is trying to prohibit speech or invade privacy. And the fact that "President, Americans for Limited Government" is supporting maintaining government control of the Internet makes it sound like standard right-wing hypocrisy. And the fact they frame the bill as an attack on Obama makes it even more suspect. If ICANN is intentionally lobbying people like this, it automatically makes me think that it should lose the contract, regardless of the quality of their actual stewardship.
- dfsegoat 10y agoCruz (no matter what you think of him) is from a family that fled an oppressive dictatorship, and he also specialized in constitutional law at Harvard (and argued Heller vs. DC for the 2A), why would he want to "prohibit speech"?
- fromthemorning 10y ago' "Net Neutrality" is Obamacare for the Internet' -- Ted Cruz https://twitter.com/sentedcruz/status/531834493922189313 https://twitter.com/sentedcruz/status/531834493922189313
- hurricaneSlider 10y agoAs an international user, it is in my opinion fantastic that the White House is attempting to cede control of key internet infrastructure. Why should a single country act as the custodians of a global service?
- gnoway 10y agoWell, it's ours. We created it. We've allowed other countries to use it because it benefits us to do so. I realize this is probably not the popular opinion, but I'm not sure it makes any sense really to give up control over it.
- 2bitencryption 10y agoAlso, they have a point about the free speech. For a system in which free speech is indispensable (the internet), there is actually only a handful of countries that seem to get the whole "free speech" thing correct, the US among them.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoI'm not sure that we're among them as much as we'd like to think. Certainly if your speech is "Whistleblowing", you don't want to be in the US.
- 2bitencryption 10y agoWell if you whistleblow in the US, you end up in front of a judge (after a probably very unpleasant stay in a cell for a bit). You end up in prison forever. Really bad time. As for the journalists who published what you leaked? Free speech yo! Whisleblow in China. You don't end up in front of a judge, you end up at the bottom of the ocean. And the journalists who published what you whistleblew? Likewise. And the people who tweet about it, or talk about it at work, and the websites who previous hosted it are suddenly down for maintenance... So is the US a free speech utopia? Probably not, but I don't know of any other countries where the Westboro Baptist Church could last for so long...
- folz 10y agoSorry if I'm missing something, but what's the context for "President Obama wants to hand over the keys to the Internet to countries like China and Russia"? I can't seem to find the right phrases to google.
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- fraserharris 10y agoProbably related to ICANN being moved out from under the US State Department.
- nickff 10y agoThis is a response to the potential internationalization of ICANN, and most importantly, its IANA department.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Assigned_Numbers_Authority#Oversight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Assigned_Numbers_Auth...
- folz 10y agoAh, thanks very much! For confused readers like me, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303546204579439653103639452 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023035462045794396... is a good article linked from the Wikipedia page. (Google the title "U.S. Plans to Give Up Oversight of Web Domain Manager" and click through from search to avoid the paywall.)
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- sago 10y agoAlso known as the "Let's Straw-Man Obama because we Really Hate Him Act".
- walid 10y agoCruz fighting for internet freedom, Obama expanding social welfare after cutting it, Clinton fighting for healthcare and minimum wage. I'm not trying to make this political but thank you Bernie Sanders. After the success of Bernie's grassroots movement traditional politicians are trying to appeal to the more progressive portion of the population since Trump controls the angry.
- dsr_ 10y agoRemember that the name of a given legislative act is generally unrelated, or sometimes diametrically opposed, to the actual intent. This is called Internet Freedom but is not about that. It is about the incredible mess called ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and trying to make sure that the US government can dominate it permanently. ICANN is the group which made lots of money authorizing the recent innovations in DNS like .xyz and .movie.
- pilsetnieks 10y agoEh, the very first paragraph dispels that notion. It's not fighting for Internet freedom, it's fighting for freedom of the Internet to be controlled by Americans. While I agree that up to now ICANN and IANA have done their work reasonably well, I wouldn't want them to be under influence of a single geopolitical entity. Then again, I certainly don't want them to be under the influence of all geopolitical entities, and be dragged down to the average of the whole world (like the UN Human Rights Council headed by Saudi Arabia) — we shouldn't aspire to mediocrity if we can set an example by aspiring to greatness.
- marcoperaza 10y agoAll governments and bureaucracies suck. Let's keep the internet in the hands of the one that has the strongest legal commitment to free speech and due process. Not even European countries, with their narrower and more nuanced conceptions of free speech, are fit for this purpose.
- briandh 10y agoCruz and other Republicans have been raising concerns over this matter for over two years now [1]. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Sanders. [1] http://www.thedomains.com/2014/04/02/35-senators-demand-answers-on-ntia-plan-of-giving-up-oversight-of-icann/ http://www.thedomains.com/2014/04/02/35-senators-demand-answ...
- andrewclunn 10y agoSo do I trust unelected international organizations or the US government less... That's a tough one.
- marcoperaza 10y agoGiven that any such international organization would be controlled by groups of countries, and given that US free speech protections are vastly stronger than anywhere else in the world, I say we don't fix what ain't broken. No need to give Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia a vote. Even huge swaths of Europe would try to control hate speech, or try to impose their privacy laws on the rest of us.
- Apocryphon 10y agoThis seems to be less a free speech vs. government censorship issue, and more of an international control vs. one-nation control issue. Whether managed by the ICANN or the NTIA, some government is going to be regulating these standards and domains.
- marcoperaza 10y agoSo let's keep it in the hands of the government with the strongest free speech protections in the world.
- Apocryphon 10y agoFinland it is! https://rsf.org/en/ranking https://rsf.org/en/ranking https://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2016 https://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-wo...
- marcoperaza 10y agoThose rankings are unscientific and, especially when it comes to Western countries, very political. Placing Hungary above the US for press freedom, for example, should be a red flag. http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com//2012/01/26/usa-usa-were-no-47/ http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com//2012/01/26/usa-usa-were... . (I strongly disagree even with the criticism of Occupy arrests. The right to protest is not a license to permanently make camp on private property or public property that's supposed to be available for other use.) Finland has laws that ban "publishing data, an opinion or other statement that threatens or insults a group on basis of race, nationality, ethnicity, religion or conviction, sexual orientation, disability, or any comparable basis. Ethnic agitation is punishable with a fine or up to 2 years in prison, or 4 months to 4 years if aggravated (such as incitement to genocide)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#Finland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#Finland . And as a member of the EU, Finland has to follow the right-to-be-forgotten ruling.
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoAmusing that this technology bill on Duffy's site [1] is titled "C:\Users\CBOSBO~1\AppData\Roaming\SoftQuad\XMetaL\7.0\gen\c\DUFFY_~1.XML - 16.06.08 - DUFFY_110_xml_0.pdf". Is it common for Congresspersons to use Xmetal software [2] (or its ilk) to edit bills? [1] https://duffy.house.gov/sites/duffy.house.gov/files/wysiwyg_uploaded/16.06.08%20-%20DUFFY_110_xml_0.pdf https://duffy.house.gov/sites/duffy.house.gov/files/wysiwyg_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMetaL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMetaL
- jhardcastle 10y agoFrom the second paragraph of your own wiki link: > Government agencies also use XMetaL for tracking legislation.
- bcheung 10y agoDoesn't the president have veto power? Seems kind of silly to make a law that says Obama can't do something when he can just veto said law.
- BHSPitMonkey 10y agoCongress can override a veto with a 2/3 majority.
- marcoperaza 10y agoIssuing a veto makes it front page news. I'm not sure the democrats want to be seen as handing over the internet to dictators and theocrats, over the objections of Congress, in an election year. The White House has only gotten so far on this because it hasn't broken into the political consciousness yet.
- 0xcde4c3db 10y agoAre there any indications that Verisign might be pulling the strings here? It seems like they would be the party getting the most benefit out of this, i.e. protection against having foreign interests take away their registry business. Or am I mistaken about how control of that deal works?
- Johnny555 10y agoOf course, other countries don't need the USA to regulate their own internet infrastructure - they can fork off their own DNS and IANA functions within their countries, with as much or little cooperation with the USA as they desire.
- tradesmanhelix 10y agoWondering if the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies to the changes that the Obama administration is proposing? IOW, what about the way that the internet is currently run is broken or warrants these changes?