FCC commissioner fears international Internet takeover

[Mousey]

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There is an effort within the United Nations — led by Russia, China and a coalition of developing nations with authoritarian regimes — to control the Internet, and 2012 may be a crucial year for opposition to such a shift, a key U.S. overseer warned Thursday.

Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell, a Republican, told the Federal Communications Bar Association that “scores of countries, including China, Russia and India, are pushing hard for international regulation of Internet governance.”

In December 2012, the International Telecommunications Union, a U.N. agency, will host a meeting in Dubai to renegotiate a treaty signed in 1988. That treaty was responsible for what McDowell calls a “dramatic liberalization of international telecommunications,” which ...

 

[vinylweatherman]

As if the US government don't try to impose THEIR domestic laws on internet companies it doesn't like. The US government tried to shut down sites that merely distributed information about gambling over the internet, even though there is no law prohibiting it in most states. China wanted to shut down news sites offering information about world news that had not been approved by the Chinese governments, as well as asking search engines to "rig" searches in order to put propaganda near the top, and not show information that criticised the regime.

I hope someone brings this up when the FCC is pleading their case.

The FCC could even end up shooting the US government in the foot, as once ratified, such an agreement will be added to the WTO rulings against US actions in freezing out other countries from offering regulated online gambling services within the US. I am surprised China haven't picked up on this when they are called to account over their censorship of the internet, as in "well, YOU do it to protect your national interests, so why shouldn't WE do the same".

 

[jetset]

Let's face it - politicians and by association their governments are not that happy when their screwups and personal peccadillos are exposed, so whilst they may all postiure about freedom of expression and the role of the press in a democracy, most of them would probably impose restrictions if they thought they could get away with it.

But this particular case is interesting, and I doubt that the US will garner much sympathy in the industry after the way its politicians have attempted to seize domains and generally bugger up the internet. Maybe it is time for an truly international body to control such an important and appreciated resource.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Let's face it - politicians and by association their governments are not that happy when their screwups and personal peccadillos are exposed, so whilst they may all postiure about freedom of expression and the role of the press in a democracy, most of them would probably impose restrictions if they thought they could get away with it.

But this particular case is interesting, and I doubt that the US will garner much sympathy in the industry after the way its politicians have attempted to seize domains and generally bugger up the internet. Maybe it is time for an truly international body to control such an important and appreciated resource.

The problem seems to be that the US can impose domestic rule on .com and .net domains. They don't need censorship as they can simply seize the domains, even if what they are doing is only illegal in the US, but a service provided to the world as a whole. China have no power to seize .com domains, so have to set up filters to block them at the electronic border. It is two different ways to achieve the same thing.

The question is whether the online gambling industry is now big enough to have it's voice heard over this. It seems to be the ONLY legitimate (in most part) industry to have been subjected to a coordinated effort by the US to kill it off.

Would the US, let alone China, be happy to have ALL powers to police the internet, and decide which domains should be shut down, vested in an international body to whom they would have to make a case every time they felt a particular domain needed taking offline.

 

[maxd]

Maybe it is time for an truly international body to control such an important and appreciated resource.

Or maybe it's time for no one to "control" it and let it evolve on it's own as it has for over 30 years. And yes, the early days of the internet do date back that far (and then some) in spite of the fact that the world at large didn't climb on board until the '90s.

Actually I suspect the internet as we know it today is more or less doomed: those government interests are not going to be easily persuaded to bugger off given the massive gains they can see in being able to pull the levers of the web as they see fit. The guys with the gold (and the muscle) will make the rules. I strongly suspect the only real hope for (relatively) free internet-style communications will be the emergence of a new alternate internet -- NOT Internet2! -- whatever that might turn out to be.