Internet - Uno Wants To Regulate It

[Craig Read]

The internet is a series of inter-networks and layers that have evoled through 'open standards' and user group communities building interoperable layers and protocols.

It is without doubt one of the greatest inventions ever.

Imagine a snot faced pimply bureaucrat in Ottawa 'planning' and then 'controlling' the Internet.

Innovation would plumment, applications would not be made and information would wither.

Dec 10-12 the UNO is meeting in Geneva to discuss how the UNO can control the Internet so that all people [ie. 3rd world fascist and socialist states] can use the medium. [World Summit on Information Society

from 10 to 12 December 2003]

They will discuss ways of regulating the Internet.

This conference is paid by northern taxpayers of course.

Is anyone else as sick as I am when hearing of this ?

[Cameron]

This is one of the last free mediums of information sharing. If you attempt to control the internet, it would be the downfall of the modern world.

So, here we go again with yesterdays politicians trying to mould the future.

[Michael Hardner]

I think the internet should only be as regulated as free speech is, ie. people have to be held responsible for libel and slander. Above that, it's mind control by the state.

But I doubt they'll be able to do anything substantial. They don't understand the medium - there are too many sources of information for it to be regulated. I'm sure there will always be ways to circumvent regulation.

[Moderate Centrist]

Well I would oppose any such move as a waste of time. There is no way to regulate the internet expect by the user him/herself.

If I may be so bold I think the story of the internet is hardly all positive. Much like Television before it the internet is a medium without substance.

On the positive side it has made communication easier and access to information faster.

On the negative side (and my own personal experience) the information floating around on the net is largely fluff, of little substance and in many cases innaccurate.

In my opinion I'd much rather do research at the local library than on the net. The information is of higher quality and verifiable.

Also, the internet has given every screwball with an ax to grind a forum to promote the wildest ideas imaginable.

Hate propaganda is rampant and a case can be made that the internet is a key factor in the mainstreaming of pornography which if I'm not mistaken is the most abundant and profitable material on the net.

[Craig Read]

Well a lot depends on a couple of things:

1. Tax policy - the EUnuchs are already taxing internet commerce [this is insane, you pay local/state taxes for public goods consumed, how does a website consume goods ??]. If the US follows and taxes Internet access [this is being discussed] and perhaps levels a national tax on internet commerce, then this will be the first step in gov't regulation over the Internet space. After this more regulations would follow on not only access, but setting up internet businesses and so on.

2. Standards bodies. If the Telco's can get control of the standards processes that drive forward the internet than they and the gov't can dictate what and how things are built. Telco's are gov't proxies since they exist in a gov't monopoly or oligopoly setting. If these guys and their gov't friends start managing the standards and technology processes we are in big trouble.

The UNO is such a blathering bunch of incompetents that they will only aid in the restriction of innovation and enterprise - both of which are vital for living standards and incomes.

Can't someone tell these boneheads to go away ?

[Morgan]

I agree, Craig, if the UN and its accompanying NGO groupies succeed in having their corrupt socialist paws control the Internet, we know this will spell trouble for the West.

Apparently, the countries leading the charge on this issue are China and Saudi Arabia and Cuba, along with some of their Third World pals from Africa. Ouch. A double whammy of giving dictators censorship powers as well as hand-outs for their Swiss bank accounts.

Honestly, from what I've read, the UN plans are pretty nasty. The African delegates want the rich countries to pay so each starving AIDS ridden African can have Internet access, and China, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia want the government to control the Internet content of the universal net access.

No doubt the Liberals will have Canada onboard in 2 seconds.

I fear that the US will have no support in the discussions except from the UK, Australia, Japan, and when it comes to dealing with the UN, I've not been impressed with Powell - he's kind of a milquetoast.

Here's an opinion piece from the Christian Science Monitor. The editors of the CSM are worried, so you know it's bad because they usually love all things UN.

Defend the Internet, Christian Science Monitor, Oct.31/03

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) will bring 185 countries to Geneva in December to talk about issues ranging from control of the Internet to providing Web access to the poor.But like past UN conferences on global issues, there's a risk that countries such as China and Cuba may co-opt the final document if the US and its friends aren't careful. Some 60 percent of countries participating in the WSIS don't have freedom of the press but do have equal votes at the meeting. Undemocratic leaders hope to gain UN legitimacy for blocking any Internet content that might help their political opponents... Already, Cuba has tried to include language that would approve government filtering and censorship of private media.

[KrustyKidd]

I predicted this a few years back. I called it "errosion of personal freedoms and rights." At the time it was in response to C 68 and used it as an example of how the government does the old "divide and conquer" thing.

Gun owners are a small minority, nobody will really miss them as nobody will miss smokers as nobody will miss those who go to strip bars as nobody will miss a political forum.

To a guy on the net who does not hunt C 68 means nothing, and will not defend his right. So gun owners are a minority.

Most hunters are not on the net so wil likely not bother to defend this new wave of attack on freedom as they are too busy dealing with their own swamp full of crodadilles.

A smoker may or may not hunt but is unlikely t be defended by other groups as they are deemed unworthy of defense of their freedoms.

A political forum? Very small minority. Watch, the nature of a government is to continue to errode rights, to bring the flock into the safety of the pen. One by one they will all fall separately.

[SirRiff]

if you leave the internet open to every single person, 10% of the morons will ruin it for the other 90%. its the same reason we need police in cities. its not infringing on your rihgts to pee in public, its the most basic way to make sure the whole damns structure isnt worn down from within.

just once i would like to see the person who rails against 'control' actually indicate they realize that nothing around them would work without forcing people to act normal.

sirriff

[Craig Read]

That is such garbage. You obviously don't work in the real world, or hold a real job. According to your thesis the Soviets were right, Cuba is a paradise, and the Democratic message of tax, spend and re-regulate [which would destroy the US economy] is moral.

Piffle.

Innovation cannot be regulated.

Productivity cannot be regulated.

Living standards cannot be regulated.

Open standard Communications should never be regulated [this is why you pay 5x more for your phone than you need to, due to your lovely gov't oligopoly].

Regulating the Internet and managing it would destroy hundreds of companies and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs as application providers, software firms, e-tailers and big software integrators exited the business. Taxing the internet is nothing more than an illegal tax grab - you pay taxes for services consumed in YOUR area. Some website selling product from Canada should NOT pay taxes in 50 states on each and every sale to a person in that state, since the Cdn firm has never consumed any of the states' services. Never mind the idiotic bureacracy needed to keep track of sales by person by state by tax area and submitting such tax accounts.

Soviet/Socialist/Fascist control of innovation and the internet would set back technology and jobs by a generation and would presage the disruption of the internet and wireless world we are now building which is creating wealth and jobs.

[KrustyKidd]

just once i would like to see the person who rails against 'control' actually indicate they realize that nothing around them would work without forcing people to act normal.

Yes Mien Furher. We are all animals with no brains. Can you save us from having to make decisions as well please?

We are not talking about cat by-laws here, basic freedom of speech, freedom to assemble and move. Laws already are in place that prohibit theft, murder and interfering with other's freedoms. If the governments do not like what we, the free people of the planet invent to pass information then they can always just use tin cans and string to communicate, but leave us alone.

[SirRiff]

We are not talking about cat by-laws here, basic freedom of speech, freedom to assemble and move. Laws already are in place that prohibit theft, murder and interfering with other's freedoms. If the governments do not like what we, the free people of the planet invent to pass information then they can always just use tin cans and string to communicate, but leave us alone.

who do you think exactly are pushing for these laws? aliens intent on dominating us? if they made it illegal to say teh world anarchy, the people would react with anger. this isnt about having a giant robot in your house to censor your thoughts. some protesters in miami last week thought free speech means the right to destoy meetings you dont like. free speech means first that the medium is available to all, leave the internet like the wild west and a small group will abuse it limiting its use for all.

send a women to walk down the streets of a bit city alone one night and then reconsider whether strict laws are needed whenever huge populations interact.

also, humans are animals

sirriff

[KrustyKidd]

Riff, read my damm post before you quote it. It says that laws are already in place to take care of the problems you speak of.

A suggestion, before you and the "New World Order Gestapo" come in to clean up the internet, try using those laws already in place to clean up the existing REAL problems, ie: murder, theft, idiots like Saddam, starvation, your hypothetical naked woman and such, not who is saying what in cyberspace.

[Craig Read]

According to Riff and Raff, modern progress is evil. Lifting mankind out of the stone age was a curse. The Enlightenment a bother. The Industrial revolution immoral. The advances of science unneeded. Technology and innovation - beneath contempt.

Riff and Raff would have us believe that snot nosed pimply faced bureaucrats would actually have created something as dynamic, open and innovative as the internet. Read the history of the internet, there is no way you could have replicated the breathtaking advances in communications technology in a government managed setup. When Arpanet [uS DoD] filtered into the private sector - the Inter-networking concept blossomed and became relevant. Apps appeared, browsers, protocols and business solutions. Innovation comes from opportunity, necessity and filling a need, not from Gestapo mandates and regulatory hooey emanating from central command.

In the United States, a joint effort of 200 leading research institutions and 60 corporations called Internet2 is attempting to build out a higher-performance network through fast deployment of advanced protocols such as multicasting and IPv6 that have already been approved by standards bodies such as the Internet Engineering Task Force. But rather than ultimately diverging from the public Internet’s development road map, Internet2 is simply trying to be an advance scout, according to Doug Van Houweling, Internet2’s CEO. “Sticking with a shared platform that works for everyone is going to provide us all a lot more opportunity than if we start balkanizing,” he says.

Keep the Riff Raff and socialists out of the innovation and technology area.

I don't feel like going back to the Stone Age thank you.

[Morgan]

More news trickling in about the UN's plan to heist control of the Internet. This is nasty, regardless of whether your political leanings are left or right.

If you have a brain and like to use it and you value intellectual freedom, then UN control of the internet is bad for all of the aforementioned. Puzzling, isn't it, that the Canadian news media hasn't covered this rather important issue much...ho hum, no worries...

UN Summit to focus on the Internet, Washington Post, Dec.04/03

Leaders from almost 200 countries will convene next week in Geneva to discuss whether an international body such as the United Nations should be in charge of running the Internet, which would be a dramatic departure from the current system, managed largely by U.S. interests.

Many developing nations complain that the world's most visible Internet governance body -- the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) -- does not adequately represent their interests and should be scrapped in favor of a group allied with the United Nations.

"Because this is taking place in a U.N. summit, the commercial sector is not yet fully aware of the implications this has for the Internet," said Marilyn S. Cade, director of Internet and e-commerce, law and government affairs at AT&T Corp.

The ITU won't made its final policy decisions until the second half of the summit meeting, set to take place in Tunis, Tunisia, in 2005.

Here's the tentative guest list of "movers and shakers" who are attending the Geneva conference. You can search by last name or download the whole PDF list. I am somewhat concerned to see "the cast of thousands" of warm bodies who are listed to represent little hole in the wall countries like Bangladesh and various NGO's versus the numbers of people representing First World countries like Canada and the USA, which stand to suffer very negative repercussions if the UN manages to take control of the Internet. Wakey, wakey...USA...

Canada's reps. appear to hail, in the main, from the East...no surprises there. Maybe Harper should figure out a way to get some folks from the West and with a conservative business mindset signed up for the Tunisia meeting scheduled for 2005?

Fyi, due to my own curiosity, I confirmed that Maurice Strong, mentor of the Prince of Wales of the LPOC, is in attendence in Geneva. Guess he and the wife are all done moving into their newly purchased Ottawa condo so they could fly to Switzerland. Just do a search by Maurice's last name. I suspect Maurice Babe's role at this conference is not to defend intellectual freedom rights...bets?

Draft list of participants of the Geneva phase of the UN Internet Conference

[KrustyKidd]

Looks like Liberalism is comming home to roost huh?

[Craig Read]

The Useless Group has to have these jamborees, paid by northern taxpayers, so they can tell us:

-White men are stupid

-Rich countries are evil

-The fact that the preconditions and institutional settings are abundant in the richer world economies, and allow us to innovate and expand technology's reach is narcissistic. Don't you understand you stupid rich people that the poorer, corrupt, mis-managed and backwards societies of the world have as their human rights, the right to access the Internet and other communications media ?

These 10.000 UNO dolts and their insufferable pontificating allies will come up with a plan to close the digital divide between north and south.

No doubt they will build up a Kyoto Plan for transfering wealth and technology to the poorer nations.

Is it any wonder that sensible people view the Useless group as nothing more than a jamboree session for the anti-reality crowd ?

If you want poorer countries to develop, then increasing trade, helping them build domestic institutions and helping them to stop killing each other, would be good first steps. Most importantly they themselves have to get organised. All the foreign aid poured into these corroupt regimes has not helped any of these countries one whit.

[Morgan]

This is rather disconcerting and it's happening in France, on an EU directive.

French gov't set to pass Internet Filter Bill, Computerworld, Jan.12/04

A Bill to Promote Confidence in the Digital Economy, which entered its final reading in the French national assembly Thursday.

Among other things, it will oblige service providers to filter net traffic for illegal content, with criminal sanctions for companies that fail to block pedophile images, material excusing crimes against humanity and incitement to racial hatred.

Internet access providers are unwilling to take on responsibility for policing French net users. Service providers are not the only ones against the proposed legislation: users are also up in arms.

The bill's proposal to oblige access providers to filter internet content entering the country is like a "digital Maginot Line", according to an association of broadband internet users, Odebi (pronounced like the French words for broadband). The wide-ranging bill is the translation into French law of the European Union directive on electronic commerce.