The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom

http://on.wsj.com/wVYBr2

by ottot • 14 years ago

115 67 14 years ago

on.wsj.com

Top-down, international regulation is antithetical to the Net, which has flourished under its current governance model.

TeMPOraL2• 14 years ago

I get the feeling that governments really, really want to see mass protests and rebellions worldwide over the access to Youtube and Facebook. Why they can't see that touching the Internet will not end well for anyone?

EDIT

It was a bit of a hyperbole on my part, and I wasn't thinking about Arab Spring - more about recent anti-ACTA protests in Europe. And while it is true that revolutions in Egypt, etc. were not about the Internet access, we (aka. the so caled 'first world') noticed them only after those governments started blocking the Internet in their countries.

Countries with oppresive regimes have lots of reasons for people to protest about; I'm more worried about our 'democratic part' of US and Europe, where tensions are building up on topics of freedom, and especially freedom of the Internet. Just a small example - recent takedown of Megaupload has annoyed lots of normal (non-IT) people in my country, as Megavideo was really, really popular way to watch TV series here. General sentiments are not looking good. I wouldn't be surprised to see more Internet-freedom-related protests in the future; especially that anti-ACTA protests in Poland seem to have been quite influential in the EU politics on the topic. And as people get more daring, there's a short way from protests to riots.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I got the impression that the Americans are worried that the US is turning into a fascist state. I don't see how governments poking around the Internet is going to help to alleviate those worries.

nl• 14 years ago

I get the feeling that governments really, really want to see mass protests and rebellions worldwide over the access to Youtube and Facebook.

Wait - are you saying that things like the "Arab Spring" were actually protests over access to Youtube and Facebook.

That's... umm.... a bold, unconventional view.

(While many credit Facebook & Twitter with a role in helping to co-ordinate protests I am unaware of any claims that the protests were over access)

fredley3• 14 years ago

Governments want control over Youtube, Facebook etc. in order to prevent these kinds of uprisings.

People weren't rioting over access to Youtube and Facebook, but access to them did fuel the riots and help coordinate them (hence they were shut down).

draggnar• 14 years ago

From my perspective here in the US the Arab Spring was more about rising food prices and a lack of opportunity. Will that trend extrapolate here to America? I think it is very possible since we are starting to see gas prices creeping up.

AS far as fascism goes - the US was set up to be a representative democracy. You do not have direct control over policies but you elect people who do. On a state level the government can react much more quickly to popular opinion and is held responsible. On the federal level, there is a risk of power being out of touch with the need for Progress.

jbarham• 14 years ago

It's telling that the conference is being held in Dubai, UAE, which blocks Skype because it competes with the incumbent monopoly telecommunications company, Etisalat, which is majority owned by the government of the UAE which is an absolute hereditary monarchy.

Remind me again why people like this should have any say in how the internet is run?

GigabyteCoin• 14 years ago

And what do you propose us David's do to defeat this Goliath?

bwarp• 14 years ago

Quietly ignore them and provide workarounds and carry on being naughty citizens until they are an insignificant legend.

Fighting them makes only them stronger.

nyellin• 14 years ago

Because it's the UN, theater of the absurd, where Gaddafi was invited to speak about democracy, where every dictator has their day.

Jach• 14 years ago

At least we can take comfort that the UN is basically toothless and the good old USA more or less controls it... With the occasional rise from China/Russia... As long as the Americans keep their government in check everything will be fine, right?

kiloaper2• 14 years ago

And where the Vatican unites with fundamentalist Muslim countries to attack gay rights [1], womens rights, freedom of speech and secularism.

[1] http://www.albionmonitor.com/0305a/copyright/ungayrightsvote...

k-mcgrady• 14 years ago

Wow, I can't believe this is the first I've heard about this. Any discussions over internet control that give China a say will not end well. I don't see how any regulation can improve the internet. All the government influence we have seen this far has only tried to hurt it.

mjwalshe2• 14 years ago

Its not the first time the ITU have been sniffing around this for decades.

fredley3• 14 years ago

Is charging for each 'international' click even possible? What if I'm using Tor?

CWIZO4• 14 years ago

Then you will preferably* be sitting in jail ...

* by your local friendly government and/or copyright enforcement authority

slavak• 14 years ago

'Allow foreign phone companies to charge fees for "international" Internet traffic'

Your honour, I present exhibit #1 as evidence that the accused has no grasp of the way the intrawebs works.

fredley3• 14 years ago

Works currently. This could change that. There's little difference these days between the phone and internet networks, and yet they have no trouble charging more for international calls.

mjwalshe2• 14 years ago

The way that "the intrawebs works" NOW you mean looks like this is a power grab from the ITU - who still seam to be smarting over the fact the TCP/IP won over OSI.

And historically inter country charging was a major source of revenue for smaller countries which is why the Postmaster General was such a plumb job loads of opertunities to siphon off cash to your swiss bank acounts

alexro• 14 years ago

Governments get sick when they hear 'freedom' in any form, especially if they cannot shut it up at will. So be prepared to more fighting over the years, as the stake - the amount of free Internet users - grows every year.

caf2• 14 years ago

This shows no understanding of how the Internet operates.

There is no technical reason why organisations like ICANN and IETF have the say that they do - at the end of the day it is nothing but consensus that empowers them. We choose to listen to what the IETF says about protocols, and choose to use the DNS root servers blessed by ICANN. If those organisations become corrupted, we can choose to use others.

gioele2• 14 years ago

In the post-Singularity world depicted in the novel Singularity Sky [1] the IETF has taken over the UN because the concept of nation or money or army is now meaningless.

It would be a nice thought experiment to think for a second of a UN organisation that is consensus-based, not vote based and whose resolutions are not binding in case the market expects a different outcome. Oh, wait, it is exactly how it is run now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_Sky

wmf2• 14 years ago

Until it becomes illegal (in some countries) to use IETF/IANA/ICANN stuff instead of the "official" ITU alternatives. Just to give one example, a national firewall could block all the ICANN/IANA DNS root servers so that you have to use new ITU root servers.

marshray• 14 years ago

Good luck with that. DNS lookups are only a few bytes long and thus are probably the easiest protocol in common use to smuggle. So technically it won't work.

However, a country could abuse its own population in order to force it to work most of the time. There's probably not a technical solution to that problem, people need to use the freedoms they have to oppose techno-authoritarianism before it can take over.

caf2• 14 years ago

So the Internet effectively partitions. Which side do you think will be the vibrant one, and which the stagnant one?

finnw• 14 years ago

There's also NameCoin (http://dot-bit.org/)

I don't think it has any chance of being widely adopted in its current incarnation because of two major flaws:

1. The early adopter advantage is too high (the designers took steps to limit this, but not enough.)

2. Renewal is free (encourages squatting.)

And there are other missed opportunities. A built-in auction system would be nice, as would a mechanism for registering a "tld" and inviting public registration of subdomains.

Still, I reckon they got the basic idea right - decentralised registry of domains, using well-tested (thanks to bitcoin) cryptographic algorithms.

CWIZO4• 14 years ago

I'm starting to get the feeling that this shit is never going to stop coming. Something HUGE will have to happen if we want the government (& people/organizations that are pushing this bills forward) to realize that this does not lead anywhere good. But what? A full blown anarchy, massive revolutions? It seems to me that there is no reasoning with this people and that riots (or something such) are the only was to go here (if it comes that far). I'm not advocating riots/anarchy/... mind you, but I fear that is the only way. But ... seeing how my fellow citizens are (completely apathetic), that seems unlikely to happen even if they take the internet away completely.

iwwr• 14 years ago

The word "anarchy" is thrown around when a politician does not understand how something exists without their approval. Maybe we should embrace this idea once more. Anarchy is not the same as disorder or lack of rules. Opposing chaos is a no brainer, what the political system is opposing is precisely the ordered anarchy that the internet has become.

CWIZO4• 14 years ago

>> Maybe we should embrace this idea once more.

What idea?

I was suggesting anarchy/revolution/whatever to demonstrate to our leaders that we do not agree with what they are doing, and that they cannot shove us around however they wish.

slowpoke• 14 years ago

>Anarchy is not the same as disorder or lack of rules.

Well said. Anarchy is not a world without rules - it's a world without rulers.

I always like to refer to something that Alan Moore (the author of V for Vendetta) said: he regards the current state of society as anarchy gone horribly wrong. As he remarks, people often like to claim that in a state of anarchy, the strongest would eventually rule, and use this to dismiss the philosophy as a whole.

Now he asks (and so do I), how is this different from our current society? The strong (corporations and governments backed by monetary and military power) control the weak (the general populace), and will do everything to keep the current state of affairs and to prevent the loss of their power, including threats, lies and atrocities against life.

Anarchy is the most natural and best state of human society. It is actually unavoidable, since entropy dictates that any society will eventually disintegrate. Instead of counteracting this with increasingly strict control, which always leads to some sort of authoritarian dictatorship (which will also eventually destroy itself), we should embrace chaos, and try to work with it, instead of pretending it doesn't exist or - worse - that it is tamable.

jakeonthemove2• 14 years ago

It'll most likely be a second coming of the Internet, more decentralized than ever using mesh networking... People already use gigabit LAN networks in apartment blocks - combine that with high speed Wifi and other wireless/optics communications and new protocols and it's problem solved - then governments and regulating organizations will have to lower their demands or people would just stop using them - solves the trans-oceanic Internet problem, as well...

snowwrestler3• 14 years ago

Of course it is never going to stop coming. That does not mean that all is lost though.

The Internet as we know it today did not grow up in unregulated anarchy, it was purposefully structured this way by government action (as the article points out). That is proof that governments, given the right inputs, can get things right when it comes to the Internet. If you're fearful of what the government might do next, the thing to do is engage and influence the government to get it right again--not despair and dream of revolution.

hastur4• 14 years ago

The article conveniently omits the fact that the Internet is already partially regulated by one side: the US. After all, ICANN et al. are American organizations and many of the most popular top domains (e.g. .com), which for all intents and purposes should be considered international, are within the reach of US law enforcement.

And we know what that means: Among other things, reckless and predatory practices protecting the interests of RIAA, MPAA and other dangerous entities from before the Internet era.

The author of the article (an FCC commissioner) simply defends the interests of one side, while ignorant readers think this is a benevolent editorial in defense of Internet freedom.

Haplo• 14 years ago

Protecting the interests of RIAA and MPAA is one thing. China, Russia and a lot of other countries want a complete different level of censorship and the current USA actions will look quite benign compared to what other countries want. Let me put it this way: things are bad, but they can become orders of magnitude worse.

hastur4• 14 years ago

That's great, except China and Russia can't impose anything. As the article says, the UN body is representative, every of the 190-sth members has a vote, and only some of them are despotic autocracies that will align themselves with China and Russia.

I would much rather have Brazil come up with some other ideas and instead of regulating the Internet, simply deny control to anyone, including the US.

[I recently read an article by Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay fame, and he said that President (now former) Lula of Brazil personally encouraged Peter to move to Brazil, because it has no extradition treaty with Sweden. How can you not love that?)

tosseraccount• 14 years ago

Perhaps the MPAA/RIAA/China/Iran should set up their own internet and regulate however they want.

ohashi• 14 years ago

China kind of already does. Close off a lot of foreign major competitors, block objectionable sites, have domestic ones replace them which tie into the government.

hastur4• 14 years ago

That's funny, but I think putting MPAA and RIAA in one line with China and Iran is actually not such a huge stretch.

After all, how much difference is there between a Chinese kid being thrown in jail for a blog post critical of the communist party and a UK kid being extradited like a terrorist to the US for linking to some pirated content?

The security apparatus that was set up to fight terrorism is constantly expanding its scope to protect particular interests.

snowwrestler3• 14 years ago

The .com domain would be within reach of law enforcement no matter what country houses it. It's not a choice of "U.S. or nothing", it's a choice of "which nation do you want to regulate .com". The U.S. is certainly not perfect, but it has accessible and transparent legislative and court systems, and the strongest Constitutional protections for free speech in the world. It has an open and liberal trade policy and it welcomes and protects foreign direct investment. And it is large enough to set its own course on the world stage--no other nation holds much leverage over it. There are a lot of good reasons to leave Internet governance in the U.S.

knowaveragejoe• 14 years ago

I largely agree with your statement. In a perfect world, I would prefer to see no state actor with control over the Internet, but alas there must be some regulation on some level. As it is, I would prefer the US over any other state entity, except perhaps for a few European nations. Idealistically speaking we would see internationally distributed regulation, preferably from non-state, non-commercial actors, but I think this is unlikely without monetary incentive or support of some kind.

davidhollander• 14 years ago

> is already partially regulated by one side: the US

> while ignorant readers think this is a benevolent editorial in defense of Internet freedom

Who is doing the external regulation is not the issue, the issue is quantity of external regulation. Attempts for the US to expand regulation must be opposed, as well as attempts to centralize regulation internationally at the behest of countries who would also like to expand regulation. There are two directions the internet can take: more external regulation or less external regulation. The goal should be as close to zero external regulation as possible.

> The author of the article (an FCC commissioner) simply defends the interests of one side

The messenger never matters, what matters is the message. Since everyone is guilty of self-interest, if it is made a criteria for wrongness then everyone is wrong.

quangv2• 14 years ago

Would something like a United States Constitutional Amendment do anything to stop all these talks about making the Internet less free?

corford3• 14 years ago

Hmm actually I think something along those lines would be a great idea. Some sort of Geneva Convention style treaty (but with more binding teeth) that lays out a list of fundamental principles and rights for the internet that all countries agree to adhere i.e. go over the head of the ITU.

wmf2• 14 years ago

But most countries don't want that and thus they just wouldn't sign it.

tomelders• 14 years ago

Why is it that governments are all for deregulating the financial, health and environmental sectors, but are chomping at the bit to impose more regulation on the greatest success story in the history of human civilisation?

If I were a cynic, I'd say it's because they're corrupt.

CWuestefeld• 14 years ago

Why is it that governments are all for deregulating the financial, health and environmental sectors

Where do you see any deregulation (especially in the USA) of finance and health? These must be the two most regulated industries in the nation, and only becoming more so. Consider SarbOx and then Dodd-Frank, and ObamaCare; while I don't see anything that's loosening the reins in those areas.

EDIT: spelling

sek• 14 years ago

Because it shift's power to the people. They don't have to be corrupt for that, is serves their own interest as politicians.

sbierwagen• 14 years ago

  • Allow foreign phone companies to charge fees for 
  "international" Internet traffic

Intuitively, this seems like a terrible idea, but I'm having trouble coming up with actual reasons why. Why don't ISPs charge more money for traffic with a lower TTL number? If you're sending a packet to London, rather than next door; it touches more routers, and takes up more fiber capacity, so it costs more, but the customer isn't charged more. Which seems weird.

Also, this isn't terribly new. The ITU has been trying to take control of the internet since 2003: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Group_on_Internet_Gove...

sgift• 14 years ago

> If you're sending a packet to London, rather than next door; it touches more routers, and takes up more fiber capacity, (...)

There's the bug in your logic: A packet to London may touch less routers than one next door due various reasons that disallow routers near you to handle the traffic (maybe the "direct line" between you and your neighbor is damaged. Then it has to go to London and back - and this is only the most simple example). In general, you cannot say which routers are touched by a packet before you've send it.

gioele2• 14 years ago

> There's the bug in your logic: A packet to London may touch less routers

Regardless of the number of routes, the ISP knows before relaying your packet that certain destinations require the use of paid traffic while other can be accessed with peered traffic. I agree with the grand-parent: it seems strange that ISP are not charging more for access to IPs that are outside their peering agreements. I am not suggesting it; I just find it strange that they are not trying to push it on us like the mobile operators are trying to do giving you free access to Facebook [1] and their own music stores while charging for access to other sites.

[1] 0.facebook.com

gbsi• 14 years ago

Just speaking from Mexico... Telmex soon announcing - "Banda Ancha Internacional". Mr Slim already charges insane fees for any form of communication through his company, having an opportunity like this, he'd seize it immediately.

henrikschroder• 14 years ago

> it touches more routers, and takes up more fiber capacity, so it costs more, but the customer isn't charged more.

From a consumer protection standpoint, how would you communicate this to the end user?

When you're dialing a phone number, you can look at it and know if it's local, long-distance or international, and you can make the informed decision to make the call or not given your phone company's price list.

But when you're on the internet, how would that work? A popup before each TCP connection is established? What about "local" webpages that use "international" resources, like embedding jQuery from Google?

No, the business model is already taken care of, the various providers are organized in tiers with peering agreements, and everyone pays to their upstream link.

kijin• 14 years ago

There are already countries where international traffic costs more than domestic traffic. Ever rent a server in South Korea? International traffic is often limited to 1-3% of your monthly quota, depending on who your backbone provider is. Overage fees on international traffic usually run an order of magnitude higher than usual.

A policy like that has more than merely economic impact. It discourages people from interacting freely with foreign web services, contributing to a relatively isolated online culture. Korea might be doing this for economic and technical reasons only, but you can be sure that China has cultural and political agendas.

Bringing the same policy to consumers, on the other hand, would be insane. Even in Korea, consumers only pay a flat rate and the ISP absorbs any cost difference.

kiloaper2• 14 years ago

While technologically there is a valid case we all know that in reality the system will be abused once implemented, named by oppressive regimes like Iran and China. It's no surprise that China and Russia are pushing schemes like this. Both Iran and China have already stated they want 'their' own version of the internet and China is already succeeding. Theoretically any country could claim to have an 'open' internet but in practice charge insane fees for international traffic, effectively censoring their citizens. Let's hope that doesn't happen.

jakeonthemove2• 14 years ago

Paying more for international traffic... FFS, this stuff is never going to end until the Internet is comprised of a giant decentralized mesh of millions of wireless routers in people's homes. And that will definitely happen once regulation gets past a certain point...

uberkraftwerk• 14 years ago

“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” I think this qoute has some relevance here. What we have now might not be perfect, but it works.

The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom

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