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European Commission proposes a reform to the way the Internet is managed and run

98 points by Hagelin 13y ago

akie 13y ago
That's really awesome, and I hope it succeeds.
mattmanser 13y ago
Wonder what they'll do it the US just says no.
- Implicated 13y ago
  *when
  - waps 13y ago
    Exactly what they have been doing all along : complain about NSA spying. Wasn't that obvious from the press release ? > In the wake of large-scale Internet surveillance and reduced trust in the internet, the European Commission today proposes a key reform to the way the Internet is managed and run. The proposal calls for more transparent, accountable and inclusive governance. This is the justification. What do they want : a) Control over IP address assignment and root DNS zones. In other words the power to force anyone off the internet, and the power to revoke and/or change any domain name. They have long attempted, futile, to force thepiratebay off the internet, they even managed to force on of their hosters to kick them out once. b) A strengthening of the global Internet Governance Forum I read this as that they are aware that ICANN and IANA have no real power. The real power is in the hands of "tier 1" ISPs and they are locked into an open internet because there is no monopoly. In other words : they want to eliminate the historical accident that lead to the current level of internet freedom. c) "A review of conflicts between national laws or jurisdictions that will suggest possible remedies" Now this one is REALLY important. I read this to mean they want to know how they can impose European law globally through technical means. Now of course the EU commission itself does large-scale internet surveillance like the US does. With 3 important differences : 1) the cost is borne by the companies, not the EU. Everything is purely based on legal threats, and everybody is everybody's adversary. Meaning for actual crimes, (e.g. missing child) it's effectiveness is pretty much zero. 2) The US has a minimal level of legal oversight. Yes, we're talking secret courts, and top-secret subpaenas. I don't claim it's ideal, but it's better than the EU. Here's how it works in the EU. Firstly any of the executives of the member nations can decide to get information, plus a set of "blessed" EU agencies, like interpol. Second as opposed to the US where at that point an order is delivered to the intercepting party, where it is evaluated by legal (hopefully, and usually), and then complied with, in the US an ISP is forced to provide interception capabilities on a government VLAN, where they enter the IP(s) they want intercepted and get a live traffic dump. It is actually a crime to check what the government is spying on. 3) Unlike in the US, this data has actually been used for large scale copyright blocking (google "French 3 strikes law" without legal recourse. Yes that's what they used their spying powers for. Their objective is NOT to eliminate American spying on Europeans, but rather to "harmonize the regulations". In other words, they essentially want access to the NSA data about Americans without oversight. They want to make sure Americans can get disconnected when the MPAA claims 3 times they've downloaded an mp3. They want the ability to disconnect sites that violate EU expression laws (e.g. criticism of some royalty, various outlawed political factions like nazism and marxism, European libel law, trademark protection, ...), they want companies to have to ask them (meaning: pay them) for permission before offering something like Uber anywhere in Europe. They want tax income for international purchases. Please keep what the UN and the EU are trying to do in mind next time you hear Europeans complain about NSA spying. The only thing the commission is upset about is that they can't spy on Americans the way (they think) Americans can spy on the EU. I'm saying "They think" because while the NSA does appear to have invasive spying, it seems extremely unlikely to me that it has anywhere near the claimed breath. Please do NOT make the mistake to think this criticism anything but a concerted effort to kill the Internet. It is no different from the UN efforts to do the same [1]. This is the government that didn't so much as voice concern about the protest killings in Turkey. [1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57444629-83/u.n-takeover-of-the-internet-must-be-stopped-u.s-warns/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57444629-83/u.n-takeover-of...
    - bachback 13y ago
      great post. are you working this?
      - waps 13y ago
        Nope. I just worked for this person's department at one point, and this proposal scares the hell out of me.
    - marcosdumay 13y ago
      Ok, you notice that it's about putting numbers and names at the UN, not the EU, right? Also: > In other words the power to force anyone off the internet Yes, they want to take that power away from the US government, and give it to a UN forum. Don't pretend that power does not exist today, or that it isn't used. > I read this as that they are aware that ICANN and IANA have no real power. I read this as a bunch of gliberish that politicians use to make their documents look good. But if it is related to peering agreements, like you said, yep, there is a history of trying to break the current peering agreement, and break the current US monopoly on tier 1 ISPs. > Now this one is REALLY important. I read this to mean they want to know how they can impose European law globally through technical means. I read this to mean they want to make an agreement on a minimum of things that must be allowed on every country, like the one on aviation. Currently there are countries where you don't even need to go there to be sentenced to jail, for example. And there is a huge number of issues with taxation.
- higherpurpose 13y ago
  They'll put more and harsher regulations on American companies until they say yes. So I'm fine with whatever decision US makes, because I wouldn't mind if US companies (and the US government by proxy) wouldn't have a monopoly on EU users's data anymore.
  - davidnu 13y ago
    You want governments to decide market winners and losers?! the fact that US companies are successful in Europe and Europeans are less so is partly due to the fact that they don't suffer from the backwards economic views you're currently displaying.
    - atmosx 13y ago
      > the fact that US companies are successful in Europe and Europeans are less so is partly due to the fact that they don't suffer from the backwards economic views you're currently displaying. That's kinda harsh, there might be other reasons too[1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial_espionage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial_...
      - davidnu2 13y ago
        You're grasping at straws, so is the EU with its recent deluge of grandstanding gestures.
    - mcv 13y ago
      And partly because US companies often get secret assistance from their government. The EU is better at creating a level playing field for open competition than the US.
      - davidnu2 13y ago
        It's European companies that get interfered with by their governments and that is a big part of the problem. There is no such thing as "secret assistance" in the US, and "level playing field" is another bullshit buzzword which means governments get to device about the companies they like best. Your economic woes are all your fault, own up to them and start changing things, ignorantly blaming others won't get you anywhere.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
davidnu 13y ago
No governments please! Internet governance is fine as is. European opportunism and grandstanding is of no use to anyone.
higherpurpose 13y ago
Shame Neelie Kroes will be gone soon. She's been pushing some pretty good digital agendas with her position in the EU Commission. Hopefully her work won't be undone by whoever replaces her after the EU elections.
- waps 13y ago
  Let's hope that at least this part of her work referenced in this article dies the quick death it deserves. She basically wants the global ability to impose EU laws, like worse copyright than the US, outlawing certain political views, and so on. And she wants to do this through technical means. This can not be allowed to happen.
forgotAgain 13y ago
Like the governance in England where the government decides what you should be watching? Perhaps they'll uses the French model and make it illegal to say anything critical about the French government. Or perhaps they'll adopt the Turkish attitude of jail time for those who speak the truth (if Turkey gets into the EU). How are they better than the American model of Uncle Sam lurking in the background of everyone's lives waiting for the wrong words to be written so the entrapment teams can be sent. Government control of the internet, by any government, will inevitably lead to censorship. Edit: to address comments From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Unit... There is an ongoing program to introduce a broad system of default blocking of certain types of content to all Internet users in the UK. New customers have their Internet access filtered at the ISP level so that certain web sites are blocked
- louhike 13y ago
  As a french, I'm quite surprised about what you are saying for France. We have a lot of satirical newspapers, TV shows, etc. Where have you seen that?
  - davidnu 13y ago
    What about that French comedian that has your government exploring ways to ban his act? his material maybe reprehensible but in the US he'd have first amendment protection. Your country also has draconian and stringent liable laws, and I don't want it to have anything to do with Internet governance.
    - mercurial 13y ago
      > What about that French comedian that has your government exploring ways to ban his act? Well, what about him? France is not the US, you have hate laws here. Nobody is trying to ban him because he is criticizing the government. That's not parent is saying anyway: Perhaps they'll uses the French model and make it illegal to say anything critical about the French government. Last time I checked, the Figaro and le Point (conservative newspapers) were alive and well.
oleganza 13y ago
"globalise key decision-making (for example the coordination of domain names and IP addresses) to safeguard the stability, security and resilience of the Internet" Sounds like they want to make the internet a more centrally-controlled thing "to protect you better". Internet does not need any central oversight and regulation. People just need freedom to move their bytes around as cheap as possible. We are capable to figure out how to build secure schemes, encrypted channels etc on our own, completely voluntarily. Everyone is able to choose tools and protocols that suit them best.
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  Sorry to break your bubble, but the Internet has a centralized oversight and regulation already.
  - oleganza 13y ago
    Not so much. China may put up their own firewall, yet people outside communicate just fine. Also, mesh networks are pretty interesting: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/mesh-internet-privacy-nsa-isp http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/mesh-internet-pr...
rikkus 13y ago
Governments have some control over the 'managing' and 'running' of the Internet, via TLD control, blocking, filtering, surveillance and legislation (e.g. the cookie law in EU), but even with all these in place, they're not really 'running' the Internet. If they did, there'd be no newsgroups, no torrents and no porn. They're seizing more control as time goes on, however: See the death of Net Neutrality in the US. I'd like to see governments pledge to back off from the Internet. Unfortunately I can't see that ever happening. Forever pushing for more governance means that the non-government-approved portion will get bigger and erect more walls around it. If governments want to govern, they need to be more accepting of the 'net in its natural state and deal with it on those terms, rather than forcing citizens to choose to be on the 'light side' or 'dark side' (choose for yourself which term applies to which).
- jpadkins 13y ago
  can you give an example of the death of net neutrality in the US? Like it actually happening. Not a court case that rules on a hypothetical. Also, can you cite a time when the internet did not prioritize traffic?
- acheron 13y ago
  "Net neutrality" is the government "seizing more control". And not in some abstract way either, that is literally the goal. If it had actually "died" then that would have been a good thing, for those opposed to government control.
  - crazy1van 13y ago
    > "Net neutrality" is the government "seizing more control" Good point. Telling infrastructure providers they must treat all traffic the same and telling them they must prioritize certain traffic is the same thing from a government power perspective. Being for "net neutrality" is one thing. However, being for net neutrality and being for less government control of the internet makes no sense.
  - rikkus 13y ago
    Ah yes I have this wrong! I was thinking of neutrality as being a natural state of the 'net, but of course that's not necessarily so.
rtpg 13y ago
no matter what the intentions, this sort of notion that we have to formalize the governance of the internet seems like just the sort of thing to bring about a "death by committee" when it comes to internet freedom. Personally, I don't understand how the current governance of the internet is an issue. The only thing that enables stuff like all the NSA spying is that American companies are by and large the major providers of services. No amount of governance will fix that problem. On the other hand, many European countries do have some pretty heavy-handed approaches to information regulation, which I definitely would not want to affect the status quo.
veganarchocap 13y ago
And here marks the end of what the Internet was supposed to be.
- jpadkins 13y ago
  and then a new internet will rise up for the free minds. The old one will become a government controlled 'walled garden' mirroring meatspace.
cLeEOGPw 13y ago
I don't know whether to agree with this or not. On one hand, a control point can easily be exploited by governments to censor and control users. On other, uncontrolled internet tends to form around where money is. And money is again in the governments that have enough to turn internet to their advantage. EC would be better after all, because that way we have to fight not with multibillion dollars of investments from large governments, but with votes while electing commission members.
- polymatter 13y ago
  "while electing commission members". Minor point, but EU Commissioners are not elected. They are appointed by national governments, 1 per state. MEPs are elected, but have significantly less power than EU Commissioners.
sdfjkl 13y ago
"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Declaration_of_the_Independence_of_Cyberspace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Declaration_of_the_Independen...
atmosx 13y ago
I'd like to see a system based on the bitcoin protocol handling the TLD (namecoin?): You can't block it, you have public access to the registration data and with US, China, Russia and the EU involved, it's hard to achieve a 51%-attack.
- yxhuvud 13y ago
  You mean like peercoin?
  - atmosx 13y ago
    http://dot-bit.org/FAQ http://dot-bit.org/FAQ
- esteth 13y ago
  I think a 51% attack would be really scary in this case, and quite realistic. If the US and the rest of the EU all decided they wanted some domain off the internet, combined they'd probably have enough power to fork the blockchain.
alkonaut 13y ago
Let's face it, the internet is centralized (hierarchical), not distributed. ICANN has taken giant steps to being a "global" organization, but in the end it's still a californian non-profit. These reforms seem to just aim to make ICANN a more globally managed organization, and increase transparency in top-level decisionmaking. I can't see anywhere where it says it wants to increase governments' ability to block cat videos.
powertower 13y ago
Isn't the "management" of the internet already kind of off-hands by the US gov and somewhat open (I'm not talking about the spying stuff). Especially with regards to the draconian ways other countries treat it (China, Iran, etc). So what the EU really is saying is that they want to lock things down a bit further. The want more domain-name control, more gov level blocking and filtering, more surveillance, more data retention, and all kinds of new laws. The sad part of all this is the naive crowd here is probably thinking - finally, let them stick it to the US!
- lmm 13y ago
  Or they don't want the domain root in the hands of a private company that keeps selling ever-crappier TLDs to make money, making the net worse for everyone? Just a thought.
morkbot 13y ago
Some here are quick to dismiss it as another attempt at "evil government seizing the control over oh-so-free Internet", whereas if you actually read what's there it's more about taking the governance over Internet out of American hands (basically what ICANN wants anyway) + doing something (not sure what exactly) to ensure the freedom in the Internet. Not bad ideas in themselves, dunno about the execution. Personally I think it wouldn't be that bad to have some governmental control over some of the Internet functions. Prefer this instead of leaving it at hands of corporations that only care about money (even if I agree that it's all a muddy area that can lead to some bad stuff too).
deleted 13y ago
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mcv 13y ago
Neelie Kroes is pretty much the only notable politician I'd trust to get this right. She's generally on the side of openness, transparency, competition, etc. You might have heard of her before in the base of the EU vs. Microsoft at the height of their monopoly.
- Paradigma11 13y ago
  /agree http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neelie_Kroes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neelie_Kroes
gadders 13y ago
Based on the European Commission's current record for incompetence, corruption and inefficiency, I wouldn't trust them to run me a bath.
fidotron 13y ago
These noises are inevitable and will grow. The root problem is the load of nonsense that was peddled about the net being resilient to nuclear war etc. When really it's too centralized. The killer transition that needs to occur is to move DNS from being authoritative to being a matter of opinion. (Rather like having multiple got repos instead of a central SVN server). This would solve a lot of problems, but prevent the US from projecting a lot of soft power around.
- psykovsky 13y ago
  You realize you kind of described Namecoin? The future is now?
  - fidotron 13y ago
    Yeah, I think namecoin is likely to be closer to the future, however, I still think the whole system would be more robust if it acknowledged that, for example, China and the US could run conflicting DNS systems and that this is perfectly OK, largely because this way we'd be forced to accept the reality of the situation instead of living in the silly illusion we have today. The whole PKI setup needs to be rebooted as well, and I really can't believe anyone that understands how that works considers it to be a good idea.
    - marcosdumay 13y ago
      > The whole PKI setup needs to be rebooted as well, and I really can't believe anyone that understands how that works considers it to be a good idea. I still never met a PKI alternative that was a good idea. Of course, I didn't look at all candidates, but one'd expect that if something was ready to replace it, everybody would be talking about it.
cwaniak 13y ago
News Ycombinator regular Marxist folk is very excited to hear about internet regulation!
anuraj 13y ago
The biggest threat to internet is from governments. Time to think of an independent, autonomous internet that is dynamically formed and cannot be controlled or monitored by design
- morkbot 13y ago
  ...and in that new, great Internet you will get the natural monopolies, same as we have them today (Google, Facebook), only this time they won't be under supervision of any democratic government.
walshemj 13y ago
What could possibly go wrong that cookie laws was so successful:-)

98 points by Hagelin 13y ago

akie 13y ago

That's really awesome, and I hope it succeeds.

mattmanser 13y ago

Wonder what they'll do it the US just says no.

Implicated 13y ago
*when
- waps 13y ago
  Exactly what they have been doing all along : complain about NSA spying. Wasn't that obvious from the press release ? > In the wake of large-scale Internet surveillance and reduced trust in the internet, the European Commission today proposes a key reform to the way the Internet is managed and run. The proposal calls for more transparent, accountable and inclusive governance. This is the justification. What do they want : a) Control over IP address assignment and root DNS zones. In other words the power to force anyone off the internet, and the power to revoke and/or change any domain name. They have long attempted, futile, to force thepiratebay off the internet, they even managed to force on of their hosters to kick them out once. b) A strengthening of the global Internet Governance Forum I read this as that they are aware that ICANN and IANA have no real power. The real power is in the hands of "tier 1" ISPs and they are locked into an open internet because there is no monopoly. In other words : they want to eliminate the historical accident that lead to the current level of internet freedom. c) "A review of conflicts between national laws or jurisdictions that will suggest possible remedies" Now this one is REALLY important. I read this to mean they want to know how they can impose European law globally through technical means. Now of course the EU commission itself does large-scale internet surveillance like the US does. With 3 important differences : 1) the cost is borne by the companies, not the EU. Everything is purely based on legal threats, and everybody is everybody's adversary. Meaning for actual crimes, (e.g. missing child) it's effectiveness is pretty much zero. 2) The US has a minimal level of legal oversight. Yes, we're talking secret courts, and top-secret subpaenas. I don't claim it's ideal, but it's better than the EU. Here's how it works in the EU. Firstly any of the executives of the member nations can decide to get information, plus a set of "blessed" EU agencies, like interpol. Second as opposed to the US where at that point an order is delivered to the intercepting party, where it is evaluated by legal (hopefully, and usually), and then complied with, in the US an ISP is forced to provide interception capabilities on a government VLAN, where they enter the IP(s) they want intercepted and get a live traffic dump. It is actually a crime to check what the government is spying on. 3) Unlike in the US, this data has actually been used for large scale copyright blocking (google "French 3 strikes law" without legal recourse. Yes that's what they used their spying powers for. Their objective is NOT to eliminate American spying on Europeans, but rather to "harmonize the regulations". In other words, they essentially want access to the NSA data about Americans without oversight. They want to make sure Americans can get disconnected when the MPAA claims 3 times they've downloaded an mp3. They want the ability to disconnect sites that violate EU expression laws (e.g. criticism of some royalty, various outlawed political factions like nazism and marxism, European libel law, trademark protection, ...), they want companies to have to ask them (meaning: pay them) for permission before offering something like Uber anywhere in Europe. They want tax income for international purchases. Please keep what the UN and the EU are trying to do in mind next time you hear Europeans complain about NSA spying. The only thing the commission is upset about is that they can't spy on Americans the way (they think) Americans can spy on the EU. I'm saying "They think" because while the NSA does appear to have invasive spying, it seems extremely unlikely to me that it has anywhere near the claimed breath. Please do NOT make the mistake to think this criticism anything but a concerted effort to kill the Internet. It is no different from the UN efforts to do the same [1]. This is the government that didn't so much as voice concern about the protest killings in Turkey. [1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57444629-83/u.n-takeover-of-the-internet-must-be-stopped-u.s-warns/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57444629-83/u.n-takeover-of...
  - bachback 13y ago
    great post. are you working this?
    - waps 13y ago
      Nope. I just worked for this person's department at one point, and this proposal scares the hell out of me.
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    Ok, you notice that it's about putting numbers and names at the UN, not the EU, right? Also: > In other words the power to force anyone off the internet Yes, they want to take that power away from the US government, and give it to a UN forum. Don't pretend that power does not exist today, or that it isn't used. > I read this as that they are aware that ICANN and IANA have no real power. I read this as a bunch of gliberish that politicians use to make their documents look good. But if it is related to peering agreements, like you said, yep, there is a history of trying to break the current peering agreement, and break the current US monopoly on tier 1 ISPs. > Now this one is REALLY important. I read this to mean they want to know how they can impose European law globally through technical means. I read this to mean they want to make an agreement on a minimum of things that must be allowed on every country, like the one on aviation. Currently there are countries where you don't even need to go there to be sentenced to jail, for example. And there is a huge number of issues with taxation.
higherpurpose 13y ago
They'll put more and harsher regulations on American companies until they say yes. So I'm fine with whatever decision US makes, because I wouldn't mind if US companies (and the US government by proxy) wouldn't have a monopoly on EU users's data anymore.
- davidnu 13y ago
  You want governments to decide market winners and losers?! the fact that US companies are successful in Europe and Europeans are less so is partly due to the fact that they don't suffer from the backwards economic views you're currently displaying.
  - atmosx 13y ago
    > the fact that US companies are successful in Europe and Europeans are less so is partly due to the fact that they don't suffer from the backwards economic views you're currently displaying. That's kinda harsh, there might be other reasons too[1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial_espionage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial_...
    - davidnu2 13y ago
      You're grasping at straws, so is the EU with its recent deluge of grandstanding gestures.
  - mcv 13y ago
    And partly because US companies often get secret assistance from their government. The EU is better at creating a level playing field for open competition than the US.
    - davidnu2 13y ago
      It's European companies that get interfered with by their governments and that is a big part of the problem. There is no such thing as "secret assistance" in the US, and "level playing field" is another bullshit buzzword which means governments get to device about the companies they like best. Your economic woes are all your fault, own up to them and start changing things, ignorantly blaming others won't get you anywhere.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

davidnu 13y ago

No governments please! Internet governance is fine as is. European opportunism and grandstanding is of no use to anyone.

higherpurpose 13y ago

Shame Neelie Kroes will be gone soon. She's been pushing some pretty good digital agendas with her position in the EU Commission. Hopefully her work won't be undone by whoever replaces her after the EU elections.

waps 13y ago
Let's hope that at least this part of her work referenced in this article dies the quick death it deserves. She basically wants the global ability to impose EU laws, like worse copyright than the US, outlawing certain political views, and so on. And she wants to do this through technical means. This can not be allowed to happen.

forgotAgain 13y ago

Like the governance in England where the government decides what you should be watching? Perhaps they'll uses the French model and make it illegal to say anything critical about the French government. Or perhaps they'll adopt the Turkish attitude of jail time for those who speak the truth (if Turkey gets into the EU). How are they better than the American model of Uncle Sam lurking in the background of everyone's lives waiting for the wrong words to be written so the entrapment teams can be sent. Government control of the internet, by any government, will inevitably lead to censorship. Edit: to address comments From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Unit... There is an ongoing program to introduce a broad system of default blocking of certain types of content to all Internet users in the UK. New customers have their Internet access filtered at the ISP level so that certain web sites are blocked

louhike 13y ago
As a french, I'm quite surprised about what you are saying for France. We have a lot of satirical newspapers, TV shows, etc. Where have you seen that?
- davidnu 13y ago
  What about that French comedian that has your government exploring ways to ban his act? his material maybe reprehensible but in the US he'd have first amendment protection. Your country also has draconian and stringent liable laws, and I don't want it to have anything to do with Internet governance.
  - mercurial 13y ago
    > What about that French comedian that has your government exploring ways to ban his act? Well, what about him? France is not the US, you have hate laws here. Nobody is trying to ban him because he is criticizing the government. That's not parent is saying anyway: Perhaps they'll uses the French model and make it illegal to say anything critical about the French government. Last time I checked, the Figaro and le Point (conservative newspapers) were alive and well.

oleganza 13y ago

"globalise key decision-making (for example the coordination of domain names and IP addresses) to safeguard the stability, security and resilience of the Internet" Sounds like they want to make the internet a more centrally-controlled thing "to protect you better". Internet does not need any central oversight and regulation. People just need freedom to move their bytes around as cheap as possible. We are capable to figure out how to build secure schemes, encrypted channels etc on our own, completely voluntarily. Everyone is able to choose tools and protocols that suit them best.

marcosdumay 13y ago
Sorry to break your bubble, but the Internet has a centralized oversight and regulation already.
- oleganza 13y ago
  Not so much. China may put up their own firewall, yet people outside communicate just fine. Also, mesh networks are pretty interesting: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/mesh-internet-privacy-nsa-isp http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/mesh-internet-pr...

rikkus 13y ago

Governments have some control over the 'managing' and 'running' of the Internet, via TLD control, blocking, filtering, surveillance and legislation (e.g. the cookie law in EU), but even with all these in place, they're not really 'running' the Internet. If they did, there'd be no newsgroups, no torrents and no porn. They're seizing more control as time goes on, however: See the death of Net Neutrality in the US. I'd like to see governments pledge to back off from the Internet. Unfortunately I can't see that ever happening. Forever pushing for more governance means that the non-government-approved portion will get bigger and erect more walls around it. If governments want to govern, they need to be more accepting of the 'net in its natural state and deal with it on those terms, rather than forcing citizens to choose to be on the 'light side' or 'dark side' (choose for yourself which term applies to which).

jpadkins 13y ago
can you give an example of the death of net neutrality in the US? Like it actually happening. Not a court case that rules on a hypothetical. Also, can you cite a time when the internet did not prioritize traffic?
acheron 13y ago
"Net neutrality" is the government "seizing more control". And not in some abstract way either, that is literally the goal. If it had actually "died" then that would have been a good thing, for those opposed to government control.
- crazy1van 13y ago
  > "Net neutrality" is the government "seizing more control" Good point. Telling infrastructure providers they must treat all traffic the same and telling them they must prioritize certain traffic is the same thing from a government power perspective. Being for "net neutrality" is one thing. However, being for net neutrality and being for less government control of the internet makes no sense.
- rikkus 13y ago
  Ah yes I have this wrong! I was thinking of neutrality as being a natural state of the 'net, but of course that's not necessarily so.

rtpg 13y ago

no matter what the intentions, this sort of notion that we have to formalize the governance of the internet seems like just the sort of thing to bring about a "death by committee" when it comes to internet freedom. Personally, I don't understand how the current governance of the internet is an issue. The only thing that enables stuff like all the NSA spying is that American companies are by and large the major providers of services. No amount of governance will fix that problem. On the other hand, many European countries do have some pretty heavy-handed approaches to information regulation, which I definitely would not want to affect the status quo.

veganarchocap 13y ago

And here marks the end of what the Internet was supposed to be.

jpadkins 13y ago
and then a new internet will rise up for the free minds. The old one will become a government controlled 'walled garden' mirroring meatspace.

cLeEOGPw 13y ago

I don't know whether to agree with this or not. On one hand, a control point can easily be exploited by governments to censor and control users. On other, uncontrolled internet tends to form around where money is. And money is again in the governments that have enough to turn internet to their advantage. EC would be better after all, because that way we have to fight not with multibillion dollars of investments from large governments, but with votes while electing commission members.

polymatter 13y ago
"while electing commission members". Minor point, but EU Commissioners are not elected. They are appointed by national governments, 1 per state. MEPs are elected, but have significantly less power than EU Commissioners.

sdfjkl 13y ago

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Declaration_of_the_Independence_of_Cyberspace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Declaration_of_the_Independen...

atmosx 13y ago

I'd like to see a system based on the bitcoin protocol handling the TLD (namecoin?): You can't block it, you have public access to the registration data and with US, China, Russia and the EU involved, it's hard to achieve a 51%-attack.

yxhuvud 13y ago
You mean like peercoin?
- atmosx 13y ago
  http://dot-bit.org/FAQ http://dot-bit.org/FAQ
esteth 13y ago
I think a 51% attack would be really scary in this case, and quite realistic. If the US and the rest of the EU all decided they wanted some domain off the internet, combined they'd probably have enough power to fork the blockchain.

alkonaut 13y ago

Let's face it, the internet is centralized (hierarchical), not distributed. ICANN has taken giant steps to being a "global" organization, but in the end it's still a californian non-profit. These reforms seem to just aim to make ICANN a more globally managed organization, and increase transparency in top-level decisionmaking. I can't see anywhere where it says it wants to increase governments' ability to block cat videos.

powertower 13y ago

Isn't the "management" of the internet already kind of off-hands by the US gov and somewhat open (I'm not talking about the spying stuff). Especially with regards to the draconian ways other countries treat it (China, Iran, etc). So what the EU really is saying is that they want to lock things down a bit further. The want more domain-name control, more gov level blocking and filtering, more surveillance, more data retention, and all kinds of new laws. The sad part of all this is the naive crowd here is probably thinking - finally, let them stick it to the US!

lmm 13y ago
Or they don't want the domain root in the hands of a private company that keeps selling ever-crappier TLDs to make money, making the net worse for everyone? Just a thought.

morkbot 13y ago

Some here are quick to dismiss it as another attempt at "evil government seizing the control over oh-so-free Internet", whereas if you actually read what's there it's more about taking the governance over Internet out of American hands (basically what ICANN wants anyway) + doing something (not sure what exactly) to ensure the freedom in the Internet. Not bad ideas in themselves, dunno about the execution. Personally I think it wouldn't be that bad to have some governmental control over some of the Internet functions. Prefer this instead of leaving it at hands of corporations that only care about money (even if I agree that it's all a muddy area that can lead to some bad stuff too).

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

mcv 13y ago

Neelie Kroes is pretty much the only notable politician I'd trust to get this right. She's generally on the side of openness, transparency, competition, etc. You might have heard of her before in the base of the EU vs. Microsoft at the height of their monopoly.

Paradigma11 13y ago
/agree http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neelie_Kroes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neelie_Kroes

gadders 13y ago

Based on the European Commission's current record for incompetence, corruption and inefficiency, I wouldn't trust them to run me a bath.

fidotron 13y ago

These noises are inevitable and will grow. The root problem is the load of nonsense that was peddled about the net being resilient to nuclear war etc. When really it's too centralized. The killer transition that needs to occur is to move DNS from being authoritative to being a matter of opinion. (Rather like having multiple got repos instead of a central SVN server). This would solve a lot of problems, but prevent the US from projecting a lot of soft power around.

psykovsky 13y ago
You realize you kind of described Namecoin? The future is now?
- fidotron 13y ago
  Yeah, I think namecoin is likely to be closer to the future, however, I still think the whole system would be more robust if it acknowledged that, for example, China and the US could run conflicting DNS systems and that this is perfectly OK, largely because this way we'd be forced to accept the reality of the situation instead of living in the silly illusion we have today. The whole PKI setup needs to be rebooted as well, and I really can't believe anyone that understands how that works considers it to be a good idea.
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    > The whole PKI setup needs to be rebooted as well, and I really can't believe anyone that understands how that works considers it to be a good idea. I still never met a PKI alternative that was a good idea. Of course, I didn't look at all candidates, but one'd expect that if something was ready to replace it, everybody would be talking about it.

cwaniak 13y ago

News Ycombinator regular Marxist folk is very excited to hear about internet regulation!

anuraj 13y ago

The biggest threat to internet is from governments. Time to think of an independent, autonomous internet that is dynamically formed and cannot be controlled or monitored by design

morkbot 13y ago
...and in that new, great Internet you will get the natural monopolies, same as we have them today (Google, Facebook), only this time they won't be under supervision of any democratic government.

walshemj 13y ago

What could possibly go wrong that cookie laws was so successful:-)