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U.S. now 'totally unified' in opposition to U.N. Internet governance
- ericcumbee 14y agoNot surprising the Democrats do not want to hand over power from the federal government. While the Republicans (myself included) do not trust the federal government to oversee the internet, but they certainly do not trust the U.N. to do it either.
- bluedanieru 14y agoWow, what a disingenuous, bullshit comment you've made here. From the article: >We need to send a strong message to the world that the Internet has thrived under a decentralized, bottom-up, multi-stakeholder governance model. While that statement was made by a Republican Congresswoman, I see no reason to think that it doesn't accurately represent the thoughts of most of the House - including Democrats - because, as she points out, it is a multi-stakeholder model. Some of the proposals before the ITU, the very ones the House is united against, would put significantly more power in the hands of the federal government - not less. Why do Democrats oppose it anyway? Because they aren't fascists. Sorry to be the one to have to tell you.
- betterunix 14y ago"Why do Democrats oppose it anyway? Because they aren't fascists" Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Democrats are just as quick to throw millions of people in prison as the Republicans are, and it is the Obama administration that has set the record for "most paramilitary raids on medical marijuana dispensaries."
- Goronmon 14y agoand it is the Obama administration that has set the record for "most paramilitary raids on medical marijuana dispensaries." Have many presidents been in a position where raiding medical marijuana dispensaries was an option?
- betterunix 14y agoThree: Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama.
- colanderman 14y agothe Obama administration [...] has set the record for "most paramilitary raids on medical marijuana dispensaries." That's like saying during the Bush Jr. administration that they had set the record for the "most paramilitary raids on cloud computing datacenters". The title is meaningless because the measure didn't exist before that administration.
- betterunix 14y agoFirst of all, the fact that paramilitary raids on marijuana dispensaries even happen with the full approval of the Obama administration is bad enough. That being said, California's medical marijuana program has been in place since 1996, long before Obama even had aspirations to be in the white house.
- alan_cx 14y agoSo, for you, are the words "internet governance" not necessary in the subject?
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- rhizome 14y agoICANN, ITU, etc., on the other hand...
- ericHosick 14y agoWhat kinds of governance are even required on mediums used to communicate information?
- pulledpork 14y agoWhatever they can get away with would be my guess
- noarchy 14y agoI think that this is what most government default to on most things.
- rayiner 14y agoThat's a bit of a disingenuous charaterization. The internet is not just HTML anymore. It's a platform for commerce, education, entertainment, etc. That said, I don't think we particularly need governance on the internet, but more because we have adequate tools to achieve regulatory goals by asserting jurisdiction over meat-space endpoints. E.g. if some phony educational site is scamming people, I think it's adequate to be able to get the operator sitting in Nebraska instead of leveraging regulation on the internet itself.
- moistgorilla 14y agoIf the UN decided to apply new regulations to the internet would they even have the power to do so?
- mtgx 14y agoProbably not, as they are not a "world government", and the decision would have to be ratified by each country. However, if they do decide that they need to do this, that is still very very bad for the Internet, even if say US and EU refuse to adopt the proposals. But that means the majority of the countries out there might still adopt them. It would lead to a balkanized Internet, something we feared since SOPA, except with the current proposals, it would be much worse. Content providers may remain free to distribute their content in EU and US, but they won't be in all the other countries that adopt and ratify ITU's proposals. We could start having the same type of licensing mess we see with books and music all over the world, where some countries have to wait months or years to get that content. Now imagine all of that would happen for just one blog post, or a video, maybe from a smaller service than Youtube. So it's very important that there is unanimous or at least almost unanimous rejection of these proposals at ITU, because even if US and EU reject it, it would still affect us otherwise, and most importantly, the Internet will cease to be a universal thing for everyone - all in the name of giving more money to some ISP's and aiding some governments to monitor and censor their populations. Not to mention that if the proposals pass, it means we're losing a battle with the future. It means this trend of making the Internet less free will keep growing, and who knows if next time US and EU will be against it. Maybe they'll see "how well" it works for the other countries to have censorship and whatnot, and they'll decide that maybe it's time for them to adopt all of that, too. This is why I think it's very important to win this battle, too, just like we won with SOPA and ACTA (although unfortunately, 8 other countries didn't, who already adopted ACTA, and India also passed ACTA in bits and pieces through other legislation).
- politician 14y agoA UN resolution provides plausible justification for members' internet crackdowns and censorship activities.
- ripperdoc 14y ago
- electic 14y agoWow. I am really happy with Congress. On a side note, I think we should add the phrase "United Nations Internet Governance" to every bill so that both parties come together to solve challenges in the future.
- tvwonline 14y agoIn principal, as a non-US citizen, why would I want the US to control the internet as opposed to the UN? This is not a reflection of what is currently being considered at the UN which from what I have read I don't support. What do other international people think?
- fraserharris 14y agoThe US has stronger protections of freedom of speech than (any?) other countries. "The legal protections of the First Amendment are some of the broadest of any industrialized nation, and remain a critical, and occasionally controversial, component of American jurisprudence." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...
- dhughes 14y agoAs a Canadian I bet I have far more Internet freedom than a US citizen does I don't have to fear being flagged as a downloader of movies by media corp swat teams. I'd say any person in any western nation would think their country is more fair than the others. I'm not distrustful of the UN I'm not a fan because it's a huge bureaucracy but the US isn't any better, I bet people in the US wouldn't accept Canada being in control of ICANN.
- fraserharris 14y agoWe Canadians have fewer protections of freedom speech, specifically hate speech (ie: sections of the Criminal Code of Canada, and the Canadian Human Rights Act). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_Canada
- tsotha 14y agoIt's not just that you have fewer protections. It's that someone can file a complaint with the local HRC for free and you'll end up spending thousands defending yourself. It's the perfect vehicle for legal harassment.
- charonn0 14y agoThe resolution in question is House Concurrent Resolution 127: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2012/roll555.xml http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2012/roll555.xml
- beloch 14y agoICANN is ostensibly supposed to run in a democratic fashion based on input from the international community, but I'd be very surprised if the U.S. government wasn't already abusing their influence over ICANN towards at least two purposes: 1. Spying on everyone out of paranoia over terrorism. 2. Doing whatever the RIAA and MPAA's lobbyists want them to do. That's not so good, but the ITU's express goal seems to be to balkanize the internet into a collection of state-controlled networks. One of the biggest benefits of the internet is that it shrinks the world and grants everyone, regardless of what country they live in, access to the same online community. I probably sound like complete hippie saying this, but I believe the global community created by the internet really is bringing all peoples of the world closer together. Reversing this trend would be far worse than anything ICANN is likely to do in the next decade! Of course, as bad as the ITU's intentions are, the reality would likely be even worse. The internet is so interconnected that the power one state is granted over the internet in its own jurisdiction would likely translate into power they wield over everyone. ICANN is, by far, the lesser of two evils at present. I am very concerned about the decline of respect for privacy in the U.S., but things simply haven't gotten bad enough yet to make the ITU look good by comparison.
- wmf 14y agoICANN's regulations and most of its deliberations are public, and they're not doing 1 or 2. They are totally captured by the "domain industry", but I agree that sounds less bad than what ITU is proposing.
- secalex 14y agoYou clearly have never been to an ICANN meeting. The best part of that organization is that it is way too dysfunctional and inefficient to lead any kind of conspiracy.
- netcan 14y ago"I probably sound like complete hippie saying this, but" I hate it that sentiments like this are so prone to be cliche that thoughtful people completely avoid them. It is absolutely reasonable to say something like this. The internet has shrunk the world, strengthened global solidarity, weakened our illusions of nationalism. I'll see your hippiness and raise you a poem. Cheesiness be damned. We loved the easy and the smart, But now, with keener hand and brain, We rise to play a greater part. The lesser loyalties depart, And neither race nor creed remain From bitter searching of the heart. Not steering by the venal chart That tricked the mass for private gain, We rise to play a greater part. Reshaping narrow law and art Whose symbols are the millions slain, From bitter searching of the heart We rise to play a greater part.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoYa know, I'm all in favor of unity and all but it would have really helped us make the argument that "we" (as in the USA) are doing a good job managing "The Internet" if "we" hadn't been seizing and shutting down domains in foreign countries that someone in the US disagrees with. That particular set of actions is coming back to hurt us. Now if we could get the Congress to pass a law that says the US registrars cannot take down a domain of an offshore company unless there is a judicial order to do so, from the host country that would go a long way to making amends. But that would not really impress the content folks.
- ewillbefull 14y agoSo far the U.S. has only been seizing domains on TLDs which are delegated to U.S. companies.
- sirclueless 14y agoYes, that's where they get their legal basis. It's a red herring in this argument though. Many countries would rather the US didn't have carte blanche over the three most critical TLDs. Seizing foreign domains on the basis that their registrar is under US jurisdiction is a sign of bad faith, and probably a diplomatic faux pas.
- pyre 14y agoDo you have examples of ccTLDs being taken down? The .com/.org/.net/etc TLDs are designated to the US. Sure, they are the most common TLDs out there, but they are under US jurisdiction. I'd be more concerned about how the domain seizures have happened basically at the behest of the content industries, with no (appropriate amount of) due diligence done by government officials.
- driax 14y ago.com/.org/.net are not desginated to the US. They are generic top-level domains operated by a US company. Go use .us if you want a ccTLD for the US. Or .edu/.gov/.mil which are sponsored TLDs for use by the US.
- fiberguy 14y agoThis article seems to frame the future-of-the-internet issue in a weird way. The ITU is the body responsible for most sub-sea fiber communications standards and for international radio spectrum allocations. It seems to represent the interests of international telecommunications companies, while the interests of domain registrars are united under the US-based ICANN. The reason to oppose UN control over the internet is not because it is the UN, but because historically telecommunications companies (with their profit motives) have been more hostile to the free flow of information than domain name registrars.
- bad_user 14y agoThe other reason would be that the Internet worked fine until now and is great just as it is. It could be better, but when I think of all the things that we could fix, like decentralized DNS, I'm pretty sure any regulators will take it in the opposite direction.
- bcoates 14y agoThe vast majority of telecommunication companies are either openly, or in practice, arms of their respective governments, so increasing telco power is tantamount to centralizing power towards governments.
- ripperdoc 14y agoHere you can read the draft Recommendation ITU-T Y.2770, Requirements for Deep Packet Inspection in Next Generation Networks: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:hZQFa54QIRsJ:committee.tta.or.kr/include/Download.jsp%3Ffilename%3Dchoan%252F%255B2012-1357%255DY.2770.pdf+&hl=en&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiYqxbjxfzsPMyrJWF3n4UxZ9ue6GFXfIleBijvnyPhGjSFtzJYljtQEtVFkL0-NsyLgBUgL82X4_vEcab7kjQICiLTDDIHxQPafPMvowZIioo-Nyk9K7gF96U_Tm61D0pCYWC3&sig=AHIEtbT_Ocax-fYnglRV8MW4LsDBqoqPhg https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:hZQFa54QIRsJ:...
- gavanwoolery 14y agoWell, I think the US is actually doing an "ok" job of managing the internet. If you have to hand over control, give it to anybody EXCEPT for the UN. The UN is a joke, full of even more corrupt politicians than in the US (and we have many!). As usual, research your own propaganda, but here is one bit to digest: http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/rosett040406.htm http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/rosett040406.htm
- akie 14y agoWell, it's nice if a US citizen would have that opinion... but I'm not a US citizen and I would prefer the Internet to not be under US government control. Imagine if it was the Chinese government that was in control, or (for the sake of argument) the British or French government. Would you be ok with that?
- jQueryIsAwesome 14y agoI (and many people) are in favor of give control to the ones less likely to corrupt/change it; unfourtunaly we dont know who that is so is better to stick with the one already in control to avoid surprises.
- freehunter 14y agoBetter the devil you know.
- gavanwoolery 14y agoLike I said, I don't mind the US giving up control, just so long as that control does not go to the UN.
- quadhome 14y agoIs "Internet governance" a synonym for DNS?
- protomyth 14y agoIt's nice the US House did this, but the US Senate approves treaties so it would be better coming from them.
- Turing_Machine 14y agoThe Senate was also unanimously opposed.
- protomyth 14y agoWhere is the Senate resolution?
- Turing_Machine 14y agohttp://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:SC00050:@@@L&summ2=m& http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:SC00050:@@@L...;