Should the UN have control over the internet?

Outcast

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Groups debate UN control of Internet

"The United Nations would be a good platform for that, because it has legitimacy. The countries are all represented," said Izzeldin Mohamed Osman, a computer science professor from the Sudan University of Science and Technology.
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"The world has a common interest in ensuring the security and dependability of this new medium," Annan said.
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Computer industry officials at the meeting were skeptical of a UN role, but they agreed that some kind of international body could be useful in coordinating language issues, security and getting the Internet into developing countries.
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I hear the issue is the huge amount of commercial spam and viruses out there.
I just don't open stuff I don't recognize. If I miss some messages, there's always a land line.
 
The liberalised republics with free speech are vastly outnumbered by petty little dictatorships and theocracies... like the U.S.A....

Seriously, I wonder if internet anarchy would be any worse than cooperation through the UN.
 
Contrary to many people's thoughts, the Internet is a tool not unlike telephones, not an end in itself. Maybe someone should suggest that the UN should have control over all the phone lines too?

I suspect the UN has other goals in mind rather than becoming a telco.
 
No one should control the internet - especially not the UN.

The UN is a place where all the corrupt bastard governments of the world can meet to optimize the chances of peace verses war - and they do a pretty good job of that.

But they are STILL a bunch of corrupt bastards.

Of course the corrupt governments of the world would love to control the primary technology of free dissemination of information.

We would be fools to allow that to happen.
 
We created the Internet. We chose to share it with the rest of the world. So far there have been no major problems. If the UN members can’t even run their own countries, how can they expect to run something as global and complex as the Internet? If the UN does get control of the Internet, I suggest America creates an Intranet outside the control of the UN. Our Intranet would still be able to access the UN Internet as long as the UN allowed it

The UN is on a power grab. It would like to have control over more than just the Internet.
 
"We" created the internet? Once the technology was established, everyone owned it.

"We" don't own those switches, routers and web servers overseas. Do "we" own the Australian web services?

Who are "we", really?

If "we" pulled the plug, because of the way the internet works, "we" would be disconnected from the rest of the planet, while their service (except for access to "our" sites) would be un-interrupted.

It is a distributed system, designed to survive and reroute around outages automatically.

The cat is out of the bag. Short of systematically tracking down and destroying telecommunications systems wholesale (and the phone networks are integrated into it), there is no way to turn it "off".
 
Outcast said:
We created the Internet. We chose to share it with the rest of the world. So far there have been no major problems. If the UN members can’t even run their own countries, how can they expect to run something as global and complex as the Internet? If the UN does get control of the Internet, I suggest America creates an Intranet outside the control of the UN. Our Intranet would still be able to access the UN Internet as long as the UN allowed it

The UN is on a power grab. It would like to have control over more than just the Internet.
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You're CERN?
 
evildave said:
"We" created the internet? Once the technology was established, everyone owned it.

"We" don't own those switches, routers and web servers overseas. Do "we" own the Australian web services?

Who are "we", really?

If "we" pulled the plug, because of the way the internet works, "we" would be disconnected from the rest of the planet, while their service (except for access to "our" sites) would be un-interrupted.

It is a distributed system, designed to survive and reroute around outages automatically.

The cat is out of the bag. Short of systematically tracking down and destroying telecommunications systems wholesale (and the phone networks are integrated into it), there is no way to turn it "off".
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Ok so Al Gore created it. Didn't say we owned it. World Wide Web speaks for itself. China does a good job of controlling the internet. Since they are a UN member, I'm sure they would be happy to run it for the UN. I agree that the internet as we know it would be nearly impossible to shut down. However with the UN running it, I am sure all that would change over time. It is not as if anybody would want to shut it down. The key is to control and regulate it. Look at all the politicians we have looking for ways to tax the internet.

If "we" pulled the plug, because of the way the internet works, "we" would be disconnected from the rest of the planet, while their service (except for access to "our" sites) would be un-interrupted.
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I would have thought it would be the other way around, the rest of the planet would be disconnected from us.
 
geni said:
You're CERN?
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That's the WWW, not the Internet.

I get to say "we" on both the Internet and the WWW, because I worked at one of maybe a couple of dozen research institutes that did the research at the time, and we had strong connections to CERN.

I suspect most people don't get to say "we" that way. Yet in another sense, the Internet is the descendent of ARPAnet.
 
epepke said:


That's the WWW, not the Internet.

I get to say "we" on both the Internet and the WWW, because I worked at one of maybe a couple of dozen research institutes that did the research at the time, and we had strong connections to CERN.

I suspect most people don't get to say "we" that way. Yet in another sense, the Internet is the descendent of ARPAnet.
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My mistake, I shouldn't have used the internet and WWW interchangeable. We as in America, as in (DARPA), was what I was thinking of.
 
One problem with giving the UN control over the Internet is that this would legitimise any spam or kook theories disseminated on it. Received a once-in-a-lifetime offer from a Nigerian businessman? Must be OK, or the UN wouldn't let it through. So Kennedy was shot by intergalactic aliens who have subverted the [insert political organisation of your choice] and aim to take over the world? Well, they couldn't write this if there wasn't something in it...

Spam and garbage are annoying, but it's naive to expect the UN to completely stop either, and regulation would do more than throw the baby out with the bathwater.
 
U.N. could never do it. There is a secret army of U.S. teenagers armed with laptaps ready to go,to destroy any form of regulation of the internet.
 
sul157 said:
U.N. could never do it. There is a secret army of U.S. teenagers armed with laptaps ready to go,to destroy any form of regulation of the internet.
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Well they had better not try it. The UN has an elite Bangladesh strike force. That can deploy in heart beat to counter any threat to their dominance
 
Outcast said:
My mistake, I shouldn't have used the internet and WWW interchangeable. We as in America, as in (DARPA), was what I was thinking of.
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Well, in that case, "we" unleashed somthing that is inherently uncontrollable, and good for "us."
 
LFTKBS said:
"Should the UN have control over the internet?"

No.

Thread is closed.
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You mean we agree on something???? Excuse me while I grab my chest and fall to the floor.
 
Control and demolition of the internet can be initiated through radical software changes without introducing any additional issues to the current network or altering its core functionality beyond a few lines of code.
 
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