On Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 09:15:18AM -0800, Christian Seberino wrote: > > I heard a good argument (I think) of why US should control > the Internet and wanted to know if the smart & good > people of KPLUG agreed..... > > As much as people bad mouth the US, I think we have the > most protection for freedom and free speech. It is > foolish to assume that a UN body or other countries > would hold same value of freedom as we do. > > e.g. IIRC, > > In France it is illegal to disseminate Nazi info. > > In Canada it is illegal to have a non-PC opinion about homosexuality. > > In Muslim countries it is practically illegal to sneeze while looking at > the Koran the wrong way. > > Can we honestly pretend rest of the world would not ruin the > anarchistic freedom of the Internet? Hell, it is not clear > US won't try to ruin it? (Think MPAA, RIAA, etc.) > > Chris
I've been thinking about this and reading the various proposals, and I haven't come up with an opinion about what I think would be best. I have some conclusions that I think make good first principles for my ruminations: - The internet has become an internationally important resource, and having a nationalistic country control it is probably not a good plan for the long run - Ideally, the controlling body should not be subject to political pressure and political passions. I can't think of a way to insure that now and for the future. Curiously, ICAAN may be the closest thing to that right now. - Politicians the world over hate and fear (with good reason) the uncontrolled flow of information. I'm surprised they've let it happen this long. Expect demands from every corner to build technical controls into internet traffic to "protect" us all from pornography, terrorism, space aliens, evil daemons, and movie/music pirates. But mostly to protect us from learning the truth. What I would like to see is a technical answer to the political pressure ... multichannel routing that can't be throttled (or bugged), distributed name spaces that can be citizen controlled (why can't KPLUG have a name space and name server?), stuff like that. How could they put toll booths and check points on the roads if we could all build our own roads and add road signs? When it comes to information, I trust people over nations, and there aren't any nations I trust more that any others. -- Lan Barnes [EMAIL PROTECTED] Linux Guy, SCM Specialist 858-354-0616 -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
