Who should control the internet?

[nbdy]

It is possible that complete top-down authority may be given to the ITU, International Telecommunications Union, to autonomously decide internet use and governance. The vote was supposed to be Dec 3, but I've not heard anything on outcomes and DuckDuck is still plugging the campaign, so check it out if you care about a corporate-government takeover of another public space.

https://www.accessnow.org/page/s/itu

http://www.internetcoup.org/en/

[DanieMarie]

Re: Who should control the internet?

ugh I don't like the idea of control over the internet. I realize there are copyright and security concerns in most countries, but controlling the internet itself is an infringement of freedom of speech and freedom of publication.

Also, I don't know how they're going to manage this on an international level. When it comes to a control of the internet, different countries have different needs. Even when it comes down to something like enforcing copyrights (and I picked this because I have a feeling this is a big reason this would happen) in a small group of countries (like, say, OECD countries), you get vast differences....like, Canada has a shorter time period before something goes public domain (50 years after the death of the artist or publication, depending on what it is) than the EU and the US. How do you enforce something on a global scale when local laws are so different? You can't....

[AL!CE]

Re: Who should control the internet?

Who should control the internet?

Me or no-one.

[Maria de Luna]

Re: Who should control the internet?

https://www.accessnow.org/page/s/itu

http://www.internetcoup.org/en/

If something like this passed, all the recreational hackers of the world will suddenly be working overtime to destroy them... oh yeah anonymous... well that'll make it fun to watch at least...

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: Who should control the internet?

I suspect that whatever the powers that be try and do to rein in the internet now, it will be too little and too late. Good.

[DanieMarie]

Re: Who should control the internet?

I went to an interesting talk at Social Media Week this year that was about governments, the internet, and rights/freedoms. Apparently YouTube alone gets a ton of requests to remove stuff from various governments. They don't tend to adhere to this in most cases, but the requests are still there. I took some notes that I'll pass on here later (I forget the details because it was a few months ago!)

Edit: Here is the most important thing I learned about from this lecture: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/, specifically, this section: http://www.google.com/transparencyre...ls/government/

Google tells you about this stuff. You'd be surprised who asks to take stuff down.

[AL!CE]

Re: Who should control the internet?

I like the internet being a bit like the Wild West. It'll be sad when/if it goes the same way as the gunslingers.

Or I could have said:

I like the internet being a bit like the glory days of Pirate Radio . It'll be sad when/if it goes the same way as 'the boat that rocked'.

[Ophidia]

Re: Who should control the internet?

I think the internet was a lot more interesting, and dangerous, when it first started becoming a 'thing'. Now, there are tools in place that allow for IP addresses (even ones with numerous hops and proxies) to be traced, financial transactions are easier to trace, people in general are easier to keep track of, and the whole thing is becoming more homogenized on a daily basis. I hate that all of my favorite sites have gone from clunky navigational strips to 'scroll down for more'... but at least I know how to get around on almost any major website - and so does everyone else.

For most of the western world, with relatively easy access to the internet, we don't need any governmental authority to 'police' our internet - we've done it ourselves via capitalism and social nannies.

The ability to turn the hardware on and off, moreso than restrict access to content - that's the worrisome part.

[AL!CE]

Re: Who should control the internet?

The internet was at its best in 2001.

[AzazelEblis]

Re: Who should control the internet?

I'm big on allowing people to host their own spaces. The "Opera Unite" function on the Opera Browser, "Hidden Services" through Tor ("The Onion Router") and similar things in I2P - these things should be the future. DNS systems are either unecessary, or mimicked in these systems. Search engines even exist for some of them!

Varying attacks exist for detecting people within these networks, but that's mostly when people use insecure programs within them, that broadcast the original IP in order to connect to the service. Bittorrent is the main offender here. For another attack, you have to be the very next "hop" from the user. Or, for something like forums or social networks, if the user has logged in through an IP that isn't one of the main "exit nodes" from such an anonymizing service. No matter what you do to cover your tracks, there will always be holes.

I'd like to see it where police have hackers that take down Child Porn rings by taking over the computer to obtain the IP address - which'll show their service provider, (who can then provide who it is, with a subpoena) and then cripple it. Anonymous did this within the TOR network; the FBI had said that such was a practical impossibility.

Aside from that? Leave it all be. Studies show that internet pirates actually buy more of that content than non-pirates.

[nbdy]

Re: Who should control the internet?

May all the best hackers be the good guys -- that's all I have to say.

[Maria de Luna]

Re: Who should control the internet?

May all the best hackers be the good guys -- that's all I have to say.

The very best hackers like to play with "controls" most regular people wont get so much blowback, unless they clamp down as a response.. that won't work eigther, but I imagine this has not passed... I think it would be a hard vote getting it in...

[nbdy]

Re: Who should control the internet?

The very best hackers like to play with "controls" most regular people wont get so much blowback, unless they clamp down as a response.. that won't work eigther, but I imagine this has not passed... I think it would be a hard vote getting it in...

I imagine you are correct. Nothing associated with the UN is getting through Congress, except maybe a new way to bomb people.

[anunitu]

Re: Who should control the internet?

I have been online from before the internet became commercial,when it was originally started for communicating for Government and collage research. Very early on you could go on "The Well" to get online,but it was a pay by time online system,and it was mostly go online and grab whatever you were interested in,and read it offline. Back then it really was the wild west,and you found things(without a search engine) through Archie,veronica(these were programs) I knew a few people back in the bay area(SF,Oakland,Berkley) that were some of the people that helped build this system that we have come to feel we can not live without. Control of the internet is really in the hands of the money that it generates now that it is mostly commercial,and there is a market for selling most everything online. Company's have a lot of input when it comes to online regulations by the government to protect their investments online. Flat answer is money always makes the rules. You know "The Golden rule" he who has the gold makes the rules.

Here is something about searching in the early years.

http://www.netlingo.com/more/gopher.php

And remember this was using DOS not the simple Windows system we use now.

[DanieMarie]

Re: Who should control the internet?

*lesigh*

Apparently German publishers now want search engines to pay for displaying headlines.....I got this from a friend's facebook wall (http://martinweigert.com/something-r...on-in-germany/) but after some digging, sadly it may be actually true (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8AR0UI20121128). I can't even begin to start describing how backwards this proposed law is, but I can tell you that it's more or less biting the hand that feeds them. A good portion of internet traffic for ANY give site comes from search engines. A good chunk of the news I read online comes from googling news stories I heard about and reading stuff shared on facebook and twitter.
I doubt it will pass, to be honest. It's just so backwards. But sometimes things get talked about in parliament that makes me think our country is run by people stuck in the dark ages.

- - - Updated - - -

PS the comments on the Reuters article are brilliant and spot on. That's exactly where this will go.

I'm disturbed as well by how many Germans think it's a good idea. Do they know how the internet works? Do they know how internet traffic works? Do they even know what search engines do? Yes, search engines (mainly google, because it's huge) make a profit. Large parts of that is -not- through displaying search results themselves though, but through other services they provide, such as AdWords. They also have search ads, which are profitable because Google search is OF SUCH HIGH VALUE TO CONTENT PROVIDERS. I used to work in SEO for a major company, and our entire department was dedicated to trying to come up higher in a Google search. Most companies are trying to do the same thing. It just baffles me that some companies that provide advertiser (ie. traffic) funded content -don't- want that. It's absurd.
Also, if they don't want their results displayed in google, they can block that. Most facebook content wont come up on a google search, because it's blocked by users themselves. You can block content by making it only visible to registered users. Or, if you don't want it accessed by search engines, you can use robots.txt. If you don't know how to use the internet, don't get involved in laws controlling it. Oh well...if it passes, they'll be the losers.