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."
adam smith (Score:4, Interesting)
If it were up to me, i'd give it to a UN body. The last people i'd want to give it to is the US government, not because i'm anti US, but because i don't think one country should have control of such a multi-national object. The arguement that "we made it" doesn't hold any water.
Re:Give control to Switzerland (Score:4, Interesting)
perfect... (Score:1, Interesting)
Governments cannot be trusted because their is too much corruption (aka lobbyism).
If we had a United Digital Nations, then maybe it wouldnt be as bad, however it would still give the U.S. power to bully other nations because the U.S. "is always right", you know, just like the war with Iraq was 100% right...
The Net should be controlled purely by the people that use it. That means everyone, every slashdot user, every joe blow internet user, not by corps (like it is now), or worse even government. This medium has the ability to continue to change the world for the better (hopefully). Atleast it would have the ability to unite us closer, and IMHO that is what its going to take to solve a lot of these problems in the world we have today, not by being repressed by some corporation or lobbied government...
Gah, I'm disgusted (Score:2, Interesting)
Insane (Score:3, Interesting)
btw, Baudrillard's audience is rapidly shrinking to lit-crit departments, and those who find the Matrix to be philosophical. His chief use to scholarship is to provide the muddle-headed with clever sounding catchphrases that can be bandied about with abandon.
This is not surprising... (Score:1, Interesting)
Get rid of that so called "geek" and bring back the bastions of independance of the BBC - namely Greg Dyke and Gavyn Davies before Britian slides into a New Labour totalitarian tate, with the BBC as its lapdog.
Re:adam smith (Score:3, Interesting)
To suggest that we'd hand over control of the internet to a body that allowed Libya to head a commission on human rights violations or lets China prevent Taiwan to gain representation...it's sheer lunacy.
Again, Europe and S. America and others may worship the UN. Americans do not. If you want the UN to control something, then you invent it and hand it over to them. We would have no problem with that.
Silence the critics! (Score:5, Interesting)
For months they were running one of his articles every week or so, and most times the feedback section would fill up with comments from people disagreeing with him, pointing out the flaws in his arguments, explaining how/what he had misunderstood, detailing factual errors, etc. In my mind, and I'm sure in the minds of others, his articles were becoming a joke and must have been causing some embarrassment at the BBC.
So how did the BBC react?
Did they insist on him doing better research and presenting more sensible arguments? Did they cut back on the number of ill-conceived, subjective crusades he was allowed to go on? Did they decide to drop him entirely?
No.
They dropped the comments section.
Re:Insane (Score:5, Interesting)
"Idiotic" is a bit strong. The Constitution of the United States says that there is no 'criminal content'. Images of child abuse would be evidence of criminal behavior. Let's not confuse the issue by muddying the waters with emotion. I believe child molesters should be shot; send 'em back, they're defective. But let's examine another 'crime', any crime... like, say, defacement of public property. Does the fact that it's illegal to deface public property mean we should remove all pictures of graffiti from the internet as 'criminal content'?
I have no objection to an investigation into the handles used on graffiti websites; but banning the content is the wrong way to go about it. That's why our constitution opposes censorship.
And I don't care what Baudrillard says; the Internet was the first taste of true expression available to everyone who can get into a public Library.
In the end, that last sentence is what will doom the Internet. Big Business and the Government cannot condone a situation where some geek with a webserver is equal in venue to say, Ford, or Wal-Mart, or CNN... They cannot tolerate a truly free forum, and will do their best to convince you that you cannot, either. In your case, it appears that they have been successful.
Open Letter to Bill Thompson (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:adam smith (Score:1, Interesting)
Gov't control? I saw it, I hated it. (Score:4, Interesting)
So, normal folks do not have the option to get a
So you see, this system is much more biased against the citizen and in favor of corporations.
So, what I did was, I found a cheap registrar in the US (godaddy.com seems to be rock bottom cheapest) and registered my own
Yeah, my money went to the US, because the fscking government wants to keep control of
Re:One person's vice is another persons virtue (Score:4, Interesting)
IANANE (network engineer) but from what I can see the internet is already partially decentralized. The important gateways are scattered around the world. What I don't understand is how they decede who gets the ip adresses. Class A B C. And how they force all the gateways and routers to point a the right networks.
Is it just a general agreement between the owners of the gateway that they will follow a certain rules set by a group??
What if an owner of a lot of important high level gateways decided it wanted to redirect traffic to the wrong adresses. That is give some adresses to a group that was not agreed to by everyone. Would your connection depend on the fact that you go through these gateways or not? Would there be like a conflicting internet were there would be two adresses for one computer??? And since packets can take different routes, would some packets go to one machine and some to the other? Is the internet vulnerable to such an attack by owners of high level gateways? Or does the internet protocol contain something that prevent that kind of chaos by one organization? Is there something in the protocol itself that makes sure that 1 ip asdress = 1 computer??
Just wondering how robust the internet is to an organisation that would try to take it over.
There are no links in this post. (Score:3, Interesting)
We must fight this before the internet becomes as regulated as television. We need to form a group of people who can be trusted to host the root name servers. I know it won't be easy, but if we don't do it, we will end up with an internet where many controvertial web sites go the way of goatse.
Remember, the root name servers can only be abused if we choose to use them. There is no reason we can't set the rules ourselves, and if the domain registrars disagree, we just use our own servers and pretend they don't exist.
P.S. The Slashdot editors should be embarrased for not covering the goatse.cx domain removal in the Your Rights Online section! This is such a huge story, with censorship of a site so central to slashdot culture (troll culture admittedly, but the importance can't be ignored).
First they came for goatse.cx, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a slashdot troll. (Google "Martin Niemoller")
The Microsoft Department of Motor Vehicles...? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:adam smith (Score:3, Interesting)
Being anti-US may not be your primary reason but it would automaticly blind you to the flaws in your argument.
The United Nations is there to resolve disputes and prevent wars. Obveously the current anti-US sentament is due in large part to the recent tendency to go to war instead of resolving disputes.
However a more realistic argument against having the United States NOT control the Internet would be the "CDA".. But for me that makes the UN option even less compelling as many nations have made efforts at creating there own CDAs.
(CDA=Computer Decentcy Act. A United States law to ban "Objectionable" content on the Internet. That could include anti and pro Gulf War II arguments.
It was striken down in the US suppream cort for being too extream.)
I wouldn't want to hand the Internet over to France who'd willingly sell out it's own policy for cheap oil from a known ruthles dictator anymore than I'd want to hand over the Internet to the United States who'd use BS intelegence as provocation for war. Nore China who'd kill off it's own people just to end a peaceful protest.
Actually there aren't that many nations in the UN who I'd feel safe handing the Internet over to.
And I certanly wouldn't had it over to them ALL.
Then the Internet language would be French.. no accent permitted. No objectionable content. Breaking the AUP would carry a manditory death sentence and MAYBE a trial... in that order.
The way the UN is structured any given nation could pimp it's agenda into the Internet.
Suddenly all graphic image files are banned becouse they are unfair to develuping nations who can't afford computers that support graphics.
Encryption is banned and mantory backdoors to check for (evedence of)human rights violations and (plans for)wepons of mass distruction.
An International commity is a good idea just not one deigned to resolve political diffrences.
Amnisty International comes to mind but I suggest a new organisation would do the job better.
The arguement that "we made it" doesn't hold any water.
Yes it dose and I shouldn't even need to say why becouse you've done nothing but declair it dose not.
As the nation that created the Internet the United States is the nation that has invested the most into it and did so for reasons that are purely of benifit to the United States. Other nations instead of develuping there own networks just tacked onto the Internet with minimal (or in some cases no) investment.
The United States has never once hid the fact that the Internet was created for the intrests of the United States millitary as such was created as a wepon not unlike any other. It should be of no supprise if the Internet policy were central to the United States method.
But I can think of very good reasons why the United States should not control the Internet.
The United States let go of control over the Internet a long time ago and... The Computer Decentcy Act.. our first and hopefully last glimps into what a US controlled Internet would look like.
Re:adam smith (Score:1, Interesting)
My comment is that though I agree with the concerns of UN control, I do not believe that a free-market, which we do not have, always support democratic ends, especially supporting democratic deliberation online.
The corp. sphere has largely annexed the web with much of the online action geared towards consumerism. Lincoln Dahlberg's short article "Democratic Visions, Commercial Realities?" http://www.vuw.ac.nz/atp/articles/Dahlberg_0204.h
develops a good position against the neo-liberalism speak (please look at the article if interested. I cannot overview the position here). Do I think there is an easy answer - no. Control corp., gov. or otherwise is problematic. I think the difference will come in what individuals build, the culture of opensource, and the public spaces, like Slashdot, that exist. But problem do exist with Corp. influence, same providers for content and service, and order of search results. Bowker's ethics of databases is of interest here.
Which is why we need a constitution. (Score:3, Interesting)
The question then becomes: who will write this constitution? There's no easy answer, but at least the rules and limitations will be out in the open and up for criticism up front. Much better than just putting someone in charge, who might then feel within his rights to, say, point all unresolved DNS lookups at their own registrar service page.
MODERATE UP (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:One person's vice is another persons virtue (Score:3, Interesting)
GIve it not to ICANN nor any government (Score:5, Interesting)
No government would have the power to change its policies, other than by passing laws on its own citizens.
Re:What a load of crap. (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh yeah, he's a prize idiot. His position is, basically, "governments should keep their hands off everything I do, and regulate everything that I'm not interested in anyway" and also "all corporations are evil, except the ones that make toys I like". I remember he also wrote an article calling on programmers to more more "professional", with his picture in the article, long unbrushed hair, unshaved, in a stained t-shirt with a stupid leer on his face. Bill Thompson, unrelated I'm sure to our Ken Thompson [bell-labs.com], is nonetheless an embarassment to the name. Still, he's typical of the quality of recent BBC "journalism".
Bill has been an ass before (Score:2, Interesting)
The above article, on Linux not having controls to ensure that contributed code is not protected by copyright was the most ignorant piece of junk written. It's interesting to note that when IBM took over a software company, they found numerous open source code contributions inserted into their closed product, and reduced the sale cost of the company by approximately 12 million dollars to allow for the cost of remedying this fact. Linux version control is probably not perfect, but it is transparent and public, and where copyright/ patent transgressions have been found, code has been removed or rejected.
The latest article proposes a totally repugnant idea, the total control of online media. As he mentioned, not all of us live in China, but unfortunately about 25% of the population do, and total government control would be anathema to those people brave enough to oppose the regime.
The internet arose from secure military communications, and later a need for scientists and engineers to diseminate papers and information worldwide. Hundreds of thousands of people have contributed to its development and the results are enjoyed by hundreds of millions. While we may not approve of the child we've created, in general it gives us what we as individuals want, not what Nanny thinks is good for us. There is no denying the internet is exploited by some people, but that is universally true of all theatres of life. Even if the government ran it, can you guarentee that noone would exploit the system? The most classic exploitation has often had the connivance of members of the government.
In addition, anonymity is precious on the net. It should be hard for people to be traced if they do not want to be. This fact alone allows freedom of expression. If Bill wants a different net, he's free to go and develop it.
Re:There are no links in this post. (Score:1, Interesting)
I lost the last bit of respect I had for this site when I realised they weren't going to cover that.
consumers (Score:3, Interesting)
Which is exactly why don't want it in the hands of corporations or corporate bodies such as ICANN. By their very nature, they view everyone as one of
* competitor
* supplier
* customer
(sometimes more than one at a time)
who gets to vote (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a lot of ways you can set each of them up, but the only fundamental difference is who those bodies are accountable to. Corporations are accountable to their shareholders. Governments are accountable to their citizens. The latter is based on the principle of one person, one vote; the former is based on the principle of one dollar*, one vote.
I don't trust either kind of body, but I distrust governments less.
*or equivalent in local currency
Re:Sealand is weak (Score:2, Interesting)
Obviously a top-tier military such as the US could easily blow up the island, but it's close proximity to England and the fact that England currently recognizes the sovereignty of the island might mean that England itself might react to some other nation attacking the island as a threat in their "backyard", much as the US considered the Soviet involvement with Cuba to be a threat.
So I think the main potential threats to Sealand are England and, as long as England remains our bitch, the US. If enough rich people in England and the US come to depend on Sealand in the same way they depend on Switzerland, it would make a military attack there unpopular. It would be very interesting to see what would happen if the US claimed (rightly or wrongly) that "terrorists" were using Sealand...
Also, the value of Sealand is not in it's physical incarnation (how much to a bunch of servers really cost?) but its legal status. Even if it were blown up, they could just build it up again (especially if they had distributed, encrypted backups, with a set of at least three people holding the keys with the usual provisions about never having all members present at the same time, etc...)
Although from this photo [demon.co.uk] the whole thing looks a little low-rent...
No. Just no. (Score:4, Interesting)
This takes a clue, and a willingness to cooperate.
Look at how usenet is managed. Without the central point of capture DNS suffers from (the root zone) usenet cannot be controlled and it's administration is a boring technical fact, not an object of a power grab by bored Swiss political wonks.
Re:What a load of crap. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm talking about a completely decentralized network with no central body allocating addresses, with strong encryption at the link level and end-to-end, guaranteeing privacy and freedom of speech to anyone who can connect to it.
Freenet [freenetproject.org] and the Freehaven project's second-generation onion router [freehaven.net] have laid a lot of the groundwork, but they're designed to be internet overlays. What we need is a truly decentralized packet-switching network, independent of the internet, capable of operating over an ad hoc collection of wireless, leased line, modem and (for the moment) internet connections. The internet can function as scaffolding but nothing in the new network's design should be internet-specific.
It's already possible to build small networks of this kind - see Mute [sourceforge.net], for example. Each machine's address is derived from its public key, and you find routes by broadcasting. But broadcasting every query isn't scalable, so in my PhD research I'm looking for scalable ways to route packets across a large, untrusted network with no address aggregation. If you have any ideas, please reply and I'll send you my email address. :-)