Moving Net Control From ICANN to Governments? 468
a whoabot writes "The BBC has a piece by Bill Thompson suggesting that "control" of the internet should move away from corporate groups(ICANN and the Web Consortium) and to governments. We previously had an article on ICANN and the UN World Summit on the Information Society. One quote: "We allow images of consensual sex in our cinemas, but not images of bestiality or child abuse. Why should the net be any different?" My personal answer: because the internet should not be another TV or cinema, it should be a free, user-as-peer and user-controllable media; a "reversible" media, as Baudrillard would put it; not user-as-consumer."
No, because... (Score:2, Insightful)
What a load of crap. (Score:5, Insightful)
government control (Score:5, Insightful)
One person's vice is another persons virtue (Score:5, Insightful)
If a government wants to impose restrictions on servers in their own countries, fine, but not outside.
VERY presumptious... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, he goes on to give an example of a woman who was killed by "someone whose fantasies of killing were nurtured, if not engendered, by the pornographic images he found so easily on the web". I find it difficult to believe that someone went from being a perfectly normal person to a killer sjust he viewed some internet porn. (If that were true, half of Slashdot readership could turn into killers!
Then, his solution to all this is to let the government control the internet, and to "change" it to support that control. There are two problems with that:
1) The government is not some giant parental figure who's supposed to protect us from harm, no matter how much liberalism would like us to believe that.
2) Since he suggests "changing" the internet, but provides no plan on doing that, I have to question whether he has any idea of what would be involved. Market-driven forces are the only thing that really make significant changes now, and giving control the the government would completely undermine that. It would have to be in the interest of the market to have changes made to the internet, and until that happens, change won't.
I love these lame justifications for regulation (Score:2, Insightful)
There is no aspect of anybodies life that the government does not seek to control. They will attempt to control the net. There will always be some whining class of people victimized by something they see as evil. Government now switches between liberal/conservative politicians each with their own sets of victim classes expecting special treatment. I don't expect the future to be bright for an unregulated internet.
Bill Thompson is a moron (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides which, he'll need to do a lot more to convince me that the internet is better in the hands of governments than bodies like ICANN than just say "because I say so". He glosses over issues like repressive regimes with little more than "well if the people don't like their government they can always kick them out".
If this was a one-off piece I'd be prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt but you can read for yourselves his previous pieces on the BBC website - they're almost without exception inane, badly-researched drivel.
Stupid Stupid Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Impossible (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only should the internet "...not be another TV or cinema, it should be a free, user-as-peer and user-controllable media an essential (perhaps the most) tenet of "hacker metaphysics" is that "whatever one mind can achieve, another can duplicate and surpass". Control the content of the Internet? Impossible. Just ask the Chinese [slashdot.org].
Governments are worse, not better! (Score:5, Insightful)
Government control is worse, not better!
On the whole, government control of these resources is a bad thing. The best thing is to engineer it so that is no need for a single governing body at all. That way there is no lock-in to any governing body.
Aren't there already several alternate roots for DNS we could all be supprting? That's the way to keep DNS free--have many competing providers. Some can be corporate, some volunteer.
As for ridding the system of assigned numbers (IANA), that's tougher.
Re:adam smith (Score:5, Insightful)
And why do you think the UN body would do better?
Its a bad opinion to say that a Gov. of any type or description should control the web. Look at china, where the Gov. tries to control what is read and seen on the net. What has it done? Its only created the need to bypass what prevents them from doing so.
If you give the control to a Gov. body, weather it be from any of the offical 192 countries (192? i think its about that many...) in the world, you destroy the point of the web, which is what it is now, its avaiable to all those who can find it.
Its not restricted, confied, censored, or banned to the masses of users (unless you happen to be under control of a admin or netnanny style software). And it should stay that way.
NeoThermic
Re:No, because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:adam smith (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should anyone... (Score:2, Insightful)
There can also be standards bodies, who are a community of users who recommend standards for the rest of the community to follow, but they should not have control either.
Disagree? Reply, don't mod down.
Government should be controlled (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:VERY presumptious... (Score:2, Insightful)
You misspelt "conservative."
Well, conservative as in these "neoconservatives" these days - they seem to want more government control and interference with our personal lives than any liberal I've ever come across.
The Wrong Approach (Score:5, Insightful)
And if we give it to 'a' country - like the US government, who already seems to think they own it - we'll all be more subject to their insanities.
In addition, the whole concept of 'excluding content' is simply the wrong way to go about it. Censorship never accomplishes its goals, nor does it elevate content. Any step in that direction is a 'foot in the door', and excluding things because we find them objectionable is poor practice; I can probably find someone (or even a 'category' of someones) who dislikes what any given post on /. says.
The way to deal with child pornography is not "banning" it; it's prosecuting people who create and purchase it. It's working to fix the economic problems that create situations where parents will submit their children to such indignities; it's finding the sick bastards that molest and photograph children in the more affluent parts of the world. It's not giving some entity a mandate to protect us from viewing something we find offensive - because it's only a short step to protecting us from viewing something they find offensive. Like, say, open source software that doesn't honor DRM legislation.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
Damn Government (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing to see here--this article is a troll (Score:5, Insightful)
Note the excessively arrogant language, and the prevailing assumption that the author is already right, and the implication all that remains is to hammer out the implementation details of his perfectly reasonable proposal. This is pure flamebait. Thompson might as well have called this "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Internet from being a Burden to the Children and Despotic Governments of the World, and for making it Beneficial to Media Conglomorates." [art-bin.com]
I'm tempted to guess that he wrote it with the intention of raising the ire of slashdot readers, and getting the expected bazillion comments that every idiotic net-reform proposal gets.
Of course, there's always the chance that he really did think the proposal reasonable, and didn't intend to be trolling. If you believe that, check out his closing paragraphs:
Lumping the United States with China on a list of countries that "[deny] human rights"? News flash, Thompson! Can you guess what would have happened to Dan Ellsberg [wikipedia.org] if he'd stolen the Pentagon Papers from the British government and published them in the NY Times? He'd STILL be in jail under the Offical Secrets Act [hmso.gov.uk]! (Of course, the real irony is that Thompson is complaing about the U.S.-controlled internet because it's too free.) Your flamebait counter should be redlined about now.
It's a troll. Nothing to see here, move along.
Re:Gah, I'm disgusted (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:adam smith (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody should "control" it. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think these people have quite the right idea of what exactly the Internet is. It isn't just another distributor/consumer medium, like radio or television. The Internet is an interactive environment in which information is distributed on an on-demand basis; that is, the user chooses what content is delivered to him. Because the medium is "ask and ye shall receive," rather than "we're stuffing this junk down your throat whether you like it or not," such stringent control of content as that found on radio or television is really unnecessary. On the Internet, any user who knows what he's doing will be quite capable of protecting himself.
Unless, of course, your goal is to stifle the free exchange of information...
controlling the net (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that this piece conflates two issues:
- Should the net be controlled by large corporations?
- Should the content of the net be regulated?
and that it gets the priorities backwards. It only briefly addresses the problem of having a network controlled by large corporations and focusses on regulation. In my view, corporate control is dangerous, as is regulation.The primary problem with corporate control is that the corporations will act in their own business interests rather than in the interests of users and people in general. So far things haven't been too bad, but it is easy to see what could happen. We could get lockin to particular proprietary technologies, e.g. MS Windows and IE, including things like DRM and spyware. Furthermore, precisely because corporations are not governments, they are exempt from constraints on censorship such as the First Amendment in the United States. They could censor content in their own interests. So I would like to see control of the net taken away from the big corporations.
However, transferring control to governments is also a bad idea, precisely because that will facilitate regulation. The fact is, most countries in the world are not open and democratic. Many, probably most governments engage in censorship and would do what they could to censor the net. There is a long-standing movement in the United Nations for a "New International Communication Order". Some of the arguments for this reflect the legitiamte desire of less developed countries not to be dominated by rich, developed countries, but the actual proposals that have been made periodically in the UN, particularly by UNESCO, have clearly had censorship as their primary objective. The current political movement to transfer control of the net to governments is just the latest incarnation of this movement.
The argument for regulation made in the BBC piece is weak. It merely repeats tired old arguments that violent publications (whether on the net or on paper) foster violence and that there is too much porn. The evidence for this is incredibly weak. And in view of the very limited harm that certain kinds of content can be argued to do, as opposed to the very great harm that censorship would do, it seems clear to me that facilitating censorship is a bad idea.
Re:Governments are worse, not better! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Governments are worse, not better! (Score:3, Insightful)
Apartheid was overturned in South Africa by a consumer boycott.
If a company makes terrible decisions, we can set up an alternative system. Companies can try to make your life harder, but governments can actually use force in outlawing another system.
If your government is using force to stay in power, having ICANN control the internet isn't going to help you very much.
Re:government control (Score:3, Insightful)
My internet is not [mozilla.org].
cheers,
pol
Re:Fallacy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Leda Lights Up [zhurnal.ru]
The internet is publishing. It is no different from any other kind of publishing, other than the difficulty of effectively censoring it.
KFG
Re:VERY presumptious... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a splendid definition of liberalism.
KFG
Who's Network? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No, because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well as suggested (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, at present the biggest part of the internet is outside the US so control by the US government would be ridiculous.
Another bad property of the US is that it has too much political power in the world, and is thus hated passionately by some, and is untrustworthy at best to many other countries. This should be enough of an argument in itself to keep the US government from controlling the global internet.
Individual governments? They just all create their own great firewall around them, eliminating the current free exchange of information. There are always a few bad apples. There was kiddie and beastie porn before the web, and it'll probably be there if the web goes away.
The internet is the first medium that allows users to publish information themselves outside the control of the government, and without the need for enormous capital investment. This is threatening for many governments an corps, but will in the long term only benefit the world as a whole. Keep the internet free!
Who is the UN truly accountable too? (Score:5, Insightful)
The UN is the last place you want with any control over the internet. Why you ask? Simple, outside of the Security Council the UN is proof of what is wrong with a pure democracy. Piss-ant countries have votes of equal strength of large countries. This allows them to band together to punish countries which adopt ideals they don't like, have flourishing economies, complain about the piss-ant countries human rights violations, and etc.
Look at the crap that goes on in the GA concerning Israel. No one takes the GA seriously anymore. Armnament comittees and Human Rights committees are routinely stacked with the worst abusers if not directly chaired by them. The Iraq Oil for Food program was a cash cow for the UN. The admin fees were exhorbinant and when some countries complained they got bought off.
If anything the net should be controlled by a publically controlled body. Something that people can get a hand on. Governments and world governments make businesses look like saints.
Re:government control (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet for the most part is a *world* resource.
Eventually I expect each culture will end up cowering behind its firewalls.
*sigh*
Re:Well as suggested (Score:3, Insightful)
Why don't you, and everyone reading this who doesn't understand this simple point, just repeat to themselves 30 times every night before they go to bed:
A republic and a democracy are not two mutually exclusive things.
A republic and a democracy are not two mutually exclusive things.
A republic and a democracy are not two mutually exclusive things.
A republic and a democracy are not two mutually exclusive things.
A republic and a democracy are not two mutually exclusive things.
Re:No, because... (Score:3, Insightful)
If porn corrupts your mind and soul, then why don't you just not watch it?
Re:What a load of crap. (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when did 'debate' become a bad thing? What is Slashdot, after all?
It's worth pointing out the line from the top of the article (I've not seen anyone quote it yet:
This whole story seems to have sparked a "I don't trust the US government, the Chinese government or any other government" reaction from most people. But how many Internet users trust an American corporation? At least with politics, and debate, we have the opportunity to get involved.
Bah: -1, Angry!
We don't? Maybe not the Brits. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Freddy Got Fingered" contained images of bestiality. I know there are tons of movies with images of child abuse.
As for real-life bestiality or child abuse, there are already laws for that.
My feedback to the BBC (Score:5, Insightful)
------------------
A poor article with several serious flaws.
Firstly, it accepts without discussion the proposition that people are simply influenced by what they see on the Internet. This is far from obvious.
Secondly, it pretends that the Internet is simple to change. This is hubris. The Internet has grown, not been built. There is a fundamental difference.
Thirdly, it pretends that the Internet is a channel like cinema. It is not. It is fundamentally about individuals choosing protocols and applications with which to exchange ideas. The sheer force behind individual's desire to choose and control their personal communications with other individuals means that censoring the Internet is not just a bad idea, it is impossible.
Responsible authors should not pretend that this is a simple matter of social and technical engineering. If the 20th century taught us one thing, it is that such projects fail, miserably, and often at great cost.
Evils and evil people are a product of human nature and its many faces, not of the Internet. It would be more constructive to analyse how violent and dangerous individuals can be identified and isolated from the general population than to pretend that a simple tweaking of our communications infrastructure can eliminate this kind of tragedy.
Democracy and the Internet (Score:2, Insightful)
So what's more democratic than a system that allows anyone to create content that anyone else on Earth can read?
The places where that doesn't hold true -- China, frex -- just happen to be the same places where the government controls the Internet. I don't think that's a coincidence.
Pointless anyway. (Score:2, Insightful)
It -can't- be regulated. That's what makes it wonderful
Re:Well as suggested (Score:2, Insightful)
The idea that computing resources, especially the internet, should be under the control of government entities is really laughable. Furthermore, it simply can't be done, no matter the intentions or abilities of said government. For examples, look to China and the Great Red Firewall. Then there is the U.S.'s attempt to restrict exports of 128 bit encryption technologies - we all know how well that worked.
Re:Nobody should "control" it. (Score:2, Insightful)
As I like to say, there is no such thing as The Internet. It simply DOES NOT EXIST as an entity you can point to. What is called The Internet is nothing more than the voluntary interconnection of private (and some public) networks throughout the world, using a standardized methodology to facilitate that interconnection.
When people state that they want to control the Internet, and then mention ICANN as some entity that they must take over, they simply show their ignorance. Especially if they don't mention ARIN, IETF, W3C, and numerous other entities which have just as much, if not more, influence on the nature of the Internet.
Larry
Re:adam smith (Score:1, Insightful)
> to destroy, then you are right. The unwashed anarchists of the world will have it destroyed
> within months, no matter what the other 95% of the world wishes!
I see, the Internet only lasted months (and just a hint, the US government controls the internet only within the USA, 95% of the peopel live outside the USA)
> Consider it a stewardship instead of ownership if it makes it easier to swallow - A stewardship
> that is going rather well so far.
First of all, by action, the USA tries to claim ownership, not stewardship, change attitude and we mmmay start seeing that differently, second, if that has been going well is quite a matter of opinion. Seeing how almost all spam is related to attempts at doing business in the USA, seeing how spam is making email unusable.. I dono, it seems that the USA did a good job with its 'stewardship' a decade ago, but has not beind doing a good job at all in recent times, rather the opposite in fact.
> You are cooperating with the 800kg Gorilla by following his lead. If you want to lead, become a 801kg gorilla!
THe problem with this is that the USA says that it respects things like international treaties, fair treatment of people etc etc.
If your statement is true then the average American government is a bunch of liars. Well, seems that in fact your statement is true, and the conclusion is no surprise for anyone who has been trying to follow what the US government is saying.
Are you proud of what you are? In all the American enthousiasm about the 'morally right thing', do you feel good now?
I dono, I'd feel terrible in your place really, terrible and ashamed.
Re:No, because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Gotta love simplistic views, but murder has a 3rd person as victim involved. This may be the case with porn (enough known cases where porn is produced in a not so friendly way regarding the 'actors', but the majority of porn is produced in legitimate ways without creating more victoms)
Also, murder being bad is something you will not find disputed in many places, porn being bad is something you will find being disputed by many.
So, your reasoning fails.
> I think I just read in Time magazine that something like 80% of divorce lawyers these days cite internet porn as a major factor in the divorce cases they handle.
It never occured to you that anything that adds to the case will be used when justifying a divorce and tryign to create the impression that its purely someone elses fault? (you also don't realize that if you dont take that approach that you will pay the rest of your life?)
This seems to be no proof or even a suggestion of it, the simple fact that it exists is enough to get it mentioned.
Re:No, because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if porn were as harmful as you propose, I am not a child and you are not my father.
"I think I just read in Time magazine that something like 80% of divorce lawyers these days cite internet porn as a major factor in the divorce cases they handle."
They're divorce lawyers. They'll cite whatever they think will work for them to win their case.
And if internet porn is such a big factor in breaking up the marriage, the couple had problems long before the offending person discovered pornography. Couples with such a weak and fickle relationship shouldn't be married to begin with.
"Society is composed of families."
Then I guess I, being unmarried and not a father, don't count. And since I'm not part of your precious society I can do whatever I damn well please without any detriment to anybody else.
Society is made of individuals. Families are simply where individuals are made.
"Break down in families like this means break down in society."
Define "break down in society." Society happens when people interact with one another, whether there's family or porn involved or none of the above. Society may change in some fashion, but it certainly doesn't go away short of everybody dying off.
"There IS such a thing as the common good,"
But no two people agree totally on what that common good is. That's why government in this country was designed to do only what is absolutely necessary and no more.
"belive it or not, one persons actions have a huge rippling effect on the rest of society's members."
Butterfly beating its wings, blah blah blah. I don't care if my actions have the "rippling effect" you describe, that still does not give you the right to dictate what I do with my own free time unless and until my actions directly infringe on the liberty of another. The individual must come before the majority.
Internet Corp for _Assigned Names and Numbers_ (Score:3, Insightful)
ICANN has _nothing_ to do with what particular machines are able to serve. It's jurisdiction ends at what IP addresses a machine has, and the DNS.
Seems we're once again dealing with political forces who simply don't understand that by design, that level of control over the internet simply does not exist.
Re:Glorification of UN (Score:1, Insightful)
It is a trend among neo conservatives to put a bad light on everything the UN does, disregardign the huge responsibility the US government has in that all.
Example?
Regardless of content, any resolution that has critical comments on Israel will get vetoed by the USA, yet the USA whines about the UN not beign able to decide on things. Do they really not realize that their own behavior, and identical behavior by 4 outher countires is why that is the case? Oh, and just lookign at history, the USA used its veto more often then all other permanent members together.
Yet, according to many Americans, this problem is caused by the UN, and the USA si trying to solve it or get around it.....
No, the UN is not perfect, but you should really try to get a few things into your mind if you have one:
1. The USA government is far from perfect as well
2. The UN is not evil
Re:What a load of crap. (Score:4, Insightful)
No offense to slashdotters out there, but I would not want the slashdot consensus to decide anything that would remotely affect me in any real way. For the things that matter (like who runs DNS, who runs the phone network, who verifies my credit card charges), I want either a unix longbeard who knows what's best, or a greedy corporation with everything to lose. The longbeard will do the smart thing by default, and a greedy corporation will do the right thing because they won't have a business model without a working product.
Re:No, because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:adam smith (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually yes, Americans (myself included) do think that. Read some of the writings of our founding fathers. They were terrified of the idea of the Centralized Government. Central Governments combine power at the expense of the individual. They created a Republican system of Government that kept the Federal Government as weak as possible -- yet still strong and effective enough to accomplish it's main goals (insuring the security and survival of the individual states being number one on the list).
that is like saying "I will not sign away the rights of my state to the federal government"
Americans also say that all that time. Read the 10th Amendment to our Constitution. If you fail to understand where we are coming from then you fail to understand a basic fact about Americans. It'll be a cold day in hell before we surrender our sovereignty to the UN, World Court or any other institution that allows the likes of Libya and Syria to chair Human Rights commissions.
And for all of Europe's support of the EU and the UN I question how long the EU will survive. How long do you think before the union becomes oppressive and little states like Belgium or Denmark (or states that aren't economic powerhouses like Poland or Norway) start to feel oppressed by the Germans and the French? You've already got the Brits refusing to adopt your currency. At least the British still have some amount of self-pride and the backbone not to surrender to the bureaucrats in Brussels.
You'd probably be much better off with some sort of Republican system of Government as opposed to your bureaucratic mandates from Brussels, rotating presidencies and page after page of dictations from Paris and Berlin about "How things are going to be". Not that any of you will listen to that suggestion.
Ever hear of the oppression of the majority? I say the EU is dead in 15-20 years tops.
Re:What a load of crap. (Score:4, Insightful)
Good point. And we might note that there is an unstated presupposition at work here: The idea that the Internet should be controlled by some organization.
We should be pointing out an alternative: Freedom of the Internet's users from control of their speech (with the qualification that we need ways of preventing people like marketers and politiciant from imposing their "free speech" on unwilling listeners).
If we must have a single organization controlling the Internet, in much of the world that organization probably should be the government. In some parts of the world (the US, Canada, most of Europe, etc.), there are laws in place that protect people from the government. These laws include the right to speak and publish, the right to due process if charged with a crime, etc. Such laws aren't always recognized by the current ruling gang, true, but the courts generally do recognize and enforce them, when they can.
At present, such protections don't apply in areas controlled by corporations. If you say something that offends a manager, you're out. You have no right to call home during work hours. You have no right to keep personal items in your desk. If charged with an offense, you have no right to a fair trial. You have no rights at all, except maybe the right to walk out.
A year or so back, we saw reported here the case of an ISP in Arizona that was bought out by msn.com, and one of the things they did was to cut off email to anyone not running Microsoft software. And if you read Microsoft EULAs, you often find a clause stating that you can't publish anything critical of them or their software. These are the sorts of things that corporations have the legal right to do. Many governments don't have such rights, and you can challenge them in court if they try to force you to kowtow to a chosen corporation.
I suppose we all understand that most governments can't be trusted very far, either. Even the best are not exactly known to be supportive of citizens who publicly criticise the government. But if we're on government property, at least we have some rights, and we can fight their attempts to control us. On corporate property, we have no rights whatsoever.
Still, the best situation would be to prevent total control by any organization, government or corporate.
Re:Silence the critics! (Score:2, Insightful)
He's obviously bringing in more readers. Isn't that what their goal is?
well well, well.. (Score:2, Insightful)
the whole principle of the net is freedom, freedom of information, the internet is just the pipe. it's up to the individual LANs of the internet to control content.
people want to make the internet just like TV, which if you havent noticed, it incredibly shitty, and people are flocking to the net for entertainment, so now big companies behind the government or governments who control the media want to turn the net into another television..
last I checked, the net was for development and the trade of ideas and information, if a few weirdos want to express their horrid obsessions, and it's legal where it is.. fine, it's up to where it isnt legal to block that content.
thing is, the US government would get in trouble for blocking sites as of the current situation, but if th net is a controlled medium by large governments, they cant get yelled at.
in most other countries, it'll be taken just like that, here in the states, it'll be taken away, with the horribll ie of "It's to protect you from yourselves and terrorism, because we care about your safety!"
ah, this is the problem, see, the US government can be changed the way it currently stands, though it's getting harder every day. they keep wanting to do things that will make it harder for us to run our own lives independently.
before you know it, we'll have to call the local police to ask if we can go play in the kiddy pool because those big deep pools are dangerous for people who are even in their 20's.(note: sarcasm)
keep the internet open, it isnt television, and I think this is why developers of various universities are repeating what was made in the 60's and 70's with the internet2, because intener 1 will be a pile of ash within the next ten years at this rate with ads everywhere and TV commercials popping up on your monitor every 5 minutes, or propaganda ads reminding you that the government is your all knowing source of protection, etc, along with those required safety cameras in your monitors to ensure that you're safe all the time.
we're living the last days of internet freedom here, enjoy them while you can.
and I wouldnt be surprised if independent companies start their own networks again like back in the early 90's with aol and compuserve and link together to provide a friendlier internet if at all possible.
Re:No, because... (Score:1, Insightful)
Can you explain to me how gay, male porn treats women as onjects? What about porn that is made by lesbians, for lesbians?
Re:What a load of crap. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, but the Internet is not under the control of any one private corporation. There are many corporations, which do things such as running parts of the backbone, name registration, ISP services to businesses and individuals, search engines, etc. If any particular corporation was slack in its duty to provide a service, customers would move elsewhere. Sure there are instances where you might have a beef with your local cable company or name registrar, but basically, the Internet works, which is quite a miracle in and of itself. If control is placed in the Government's hands, then consumers would have no choice but to move to a different country if the service wasn't adequate, or free speech rights weren't sufficiently observed. This is why it is in general dangerous to allow government too much power. They are the ultimate monopoly!
Re:No, because... (Score:3, Insightful)
You should be careful with your quotes. Amongst your whitebread, Rush Limbaugh-loving types these things are fine. Anywhere else though, you're going to get laughed at.
Unless, of course, there has been an 80% increase in divorces since the popularization of the internet that I wasn't aware of.
Re:No, because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Consenting adults are very different from children. This is why we have statutory rape laws on the books, as well as minimum ages for driving, smoking, voting, drinking, etc.
"Further, you couldn't say that the government could make things like drug use illegal"
Which I don't. Other than validating the customer's adulthood or parental consent the only drugs I think should be controlled are antibiotics, where misuse of them (allowing bacteria to mutate instead of killing them all off) can do very real harm to other people.
"Like, YES you really DO need to educate your kids."
However the government seems to have very flawed ideas about how those children should be educated, with the lessons being biased towards whichever direction the political winds at the time are blowing. And society has the pesky habit of thinking that the government knows what is good for the child more than the parents.
"Illegal drugs ARE bad for you,"
That doesn't explain why I shouldn't be able to use them anyway. Freedom means having the ability to make poor choices. Having the majority (i. e. government) decide what is right or wrong for a person sets a very dangerous precedent that is all too easy to abuse, far more harmful to the individual than the availability of heroin might be.
"Hence, weak families make for a weak society."
What's wrong with a weak society? I doubt I'm the only person on Slashdot that, given the choice, would rather spend my time alone than with members of my extended family. Ever notice how Christmas and Thanksgiving are often more stressful and even violent than New Year's?
Another aspect of freedom is not having interpersonal ties forced upon you.
"Oh, you know, rampant drug and alchohol abuse,"
Freedom isn't meant to be pretty.
"millions in jails,"
Only if things like drug abuse continue to be crimes.
"I think porn, by its nature views women as object."
How much of it have you watched before making this judgment? And how was your sample chosen? Any sort of statistical precision in your viewing pool?
"Then women begin to think all they ARE are objects."
How many women have you talked to before coming to this judgment and how were they chosen?
"Hence you have 8 year girls dressing like Britney Spears."
This is more a problem that comes from bad parenting than anything else. And these bad parents can often be taced back to poor access to contraception and a personal belief that being married automatically makes one a good parent*. These can be traced back to the family/society you seem to hold in such high esteem.
*(While it is true that happy childhoods can be associated with parents that remain married to each other, it's folly to assume a cause-and-effect relationship. Good parents are married because they love each other, not the other way around.)
Re:No, because... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not at all. Children are not adults, as has already been discussed.
Furthermore, I think it's entirely appropriate for an individual (not a government) to try and convince another adult that a particular behaviour should be undertaken or avoided. If a friend of mine wanted to commit suicide, I might try to talk him or her out of it. That doesn't mean I have the right to kidnap him to stop it from happening, and it certainly doesn't mean the government has the right to intervene.
Illegal drugs ARE bad for you, etc.
Name me some activity that doesn't have a measure of risk. At least some illegal drugs are less dangerous than many societally sanctioned behaviours. And regardless of how dangerous a given drug may be, I see no compelling reason to prevent a free adult from taking it (excepting antimicrobials). We don't outlaw bungee jumping, hang gliding, or scuba diving; why should we outlaw cannabis, for example?
My bad, I should say that society is a macrocosm of the family, and that all its members are formed within a family. Hence, weak families make for a weak society.
I'm sorry, but that's not convincing. I don't accept that society is a macrocosm of "the" family (whose family?). Nor do I think it would follow that, even if society is a macrocosm of the family, the rules for families apply to society. Things change when you change scale; ask any quantum physicist.
Oh, you know, rampant drug and alchohol abuse
which occur regardless of the presence of laws (although I can't imagine how being an addict is worse than being an addict and in jail)
millions in jails
who wouldn't be there without vice laws. Even if society should intervene, rehab is a lot cheaper.
etc. etc.
Two examples and "etc". Nice handwaving. "Society" is very large, very complex, and full of subcultures with wildly different values and beliefs. Where you see "breakdown" I see the inevitable consequences of growth and complexity, compounded many times over by vice laws that shouldn't exist.
I think porn, by its nature views women as object.
I'll remember that the next time I'm looking at gay porn. Or female-dominant BDSM porn. Or lesbian porn intended for women. Or straight porn that emphasizes eroticism over exploitation (mind you, exploitation is in the mind of the exploited). Maybe you need to broaden your sample size.
Oh, and is it any worse (or better) to be treated as a sexual object than any other kind? At least two women I know who worked in the adult industry found those jobs far less demeaning than some minimum wage service jobs (and not because of sexual harassment).
Hence you have 8 year girls dressing like Britney Spears.
No, you have 8 year old girls dressing like Britney Spears because we have a consumer culture with a pathological fetishization of youth, and we have parents who yield responsibility for parenting to the teevee and then buy their kids whatever they want. I know plenty of families whose children do not currently, nor are ever likely to, dress like Britney Spears. I know others whose kids did dress like Britney, and grew out of it, no worse for the experience than a closet full of tacky clothes.
Re:What a load of crap. (Score:5, Insightful)
"The system works", as you put it, only in the short term. The problem is that power brings more power: over time, unregulated capitalism tends to concentrate more and more power in the hands of fewer and fewer people, because those with money are able to buy political influence and change the rules in their favour, thus attracting more money and more influence. Unless you are the single richest individual, you will sooner or later be in a position where the people above you are rigging the rules against you and forcing you down. This is the simple fact that free market libertarians fail to grasp: unregulated capitalism is not in anybody's long-term self-interest, except the single richest individual in the world. Everyone else eventually loses what they've won so far. In order to prevent a spiral towards tyranny, money and political power must be separated. That means not relying on the market as a mechanism to distribute social justice.
The only system that benefits more than one human being in the long run is a system based on universal suffrage and equality before the law. The market is not such a system. People who oppose unregulated capitalism are not necessarily whining parasites or tree-hugging utopian idiots. They just realise that a game of five billion players in which the winner gets to change the rules is not a game you want to play. The free market is a useful mechanism, but to treat it as a substitute for democratic government is a recipe for disaster.
Internet is not a world resource (Score:3, Insightful)
It is absolutely not.
What it is is a network of networks. We all agree, implicitly by our use of a specific protocol suite, to interchage packets. But each piece is privatly owned. I own mine, you own yours, and every bit in the middle is owned by somebody else.
None of it is publically owned or a public resource. It is a network of private networks.
There is no central control, no government licenses. ICANN/UN/ITU only has control for as much as you're willing to let them have it.
You'll notice that routing is and under the aegis of ICANN or any government. That's because there was a very sensible decision made when breaking up the AUP defined arpanet to pass this off to the community. Sadly, registration of names and number was neglected, and this left a critical choke point for power hungry lawyers to rush in to fill the vacuum that a lack of control leads to in situations like this.
So here we end up talking about which is worse, ICANN, the UN or the ITU while usenet, routing and a host of other coordinated activities hum merrily along freely (as in software and beer) with no need for "coordination" from governments of any kind.
Question everything, then follow the money.
Re:What a load of crap. (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps you should amend "governments" to "representative governments".
The problem is that power brings more power: over time, unregulated capitalism tends to concentrate more and more power in the hands of fewer and fewer people, because those with money are able to buy political influence and change the rules in their favour
I'm afraid you misunderstand the nature of a libertarian socio-economic organization.
If it's truly unregulated free market capitalism, then there are no rules to be changed, and no political favour to win; the rules are set in stone: property rights and contract law. In regards to your accumulation of power argument, you assume a static market; in reality, markets are dynamic and even tiny innovations can produce large variations in results. An entire market (and thus an entire corporate empire which depends on said market) can be destroyed practically overnight by an innovation from a small competitor.
Furthermore, the existence of strong property rights completely negates your fear of concentrated power. It doesn't matter how much money a person/corporation has: if you don't want them to utilize your resources, they can do nothing about it. The single richest individual in the world (or even a cartel of them) could never possibly hope to purchase all the world's land, or natural resources and thus monopolize them.
In order to prevent a spiral towards tyranny, money and political power must be separated.
And they are in free market capitalism (as explained above).
That means not relying on the market as a mechanism to distribute social justice.
Which is a separate issue. Unless you are referring to anarcho-capitalists. Libertarianism is a very broad term which groups many diverse sets of opinion. Perhaps you should be more specific as to which set of principles you are disputing?
The only system that benefits more than one human being in the long run is a system based on universal suffrage and equality before the law.
I find it amusing that "universal suffrage" and "equality before law" are both integral components of free market capitalism: money does not recognize prejudice, and contract law + property rights similarly hold no bias against any race or creed.
In fact, free market economics are really a superset of democratic voting, since you can cast more than one "vote" on an issue which is really important to you, and withhold "votes" in areas which you don't care about.