p2pnet - rss feed: UN World Information Society summit
p2p news / p2pnet: ADS is American Derangement Syndrome, a sister disease to BDS, Bush Derangement Syndrome, under which, "sufferers hate George Bush so much that their brains cease to function properly," says Sonia Arrison, director of technology studies at California’s Pacific Research Institute >>>>>>>>>
World Summit Drama Threatens Internet’s Future
By Sonia Arrison - TechNewsWorld
Imagine a world where China argues for guaranteed freedom of speech and Cuba and Iran push for democracy. If that sounds like an episode of "The Twilight Zone," then welcome to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s new show set to air again next week in Tunisia.
Before anyone starts to think that Chinese and Cuban communists have suddenly become enlightened, or that Iranian theocrats have experienced a moral epiphany, readers should know that the reason these countries are spouting ideas so foreign to them has to do with their deep desire to gain control of a system that threatens their authoritarian ways: the Internet Web Hosting and Web Design services from the original domain name registrar, Network Solutions..
Safeguarding Rights
From November 16-18, 2005 governments from around the world will meet for the second phase of the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society. The goal of a coalition of foreign governments is to wrest control of the Internet from the United States, and the goal of the United States should be to gently explain to them why that’s not an option.
"While freedom of speech should be guaranteed and human dignity and rights safeguarded by law and system, social responsibilities and obligations should also be advocated," said Wang Xudong, Minister of Information Industry from the People’s Republic of China at the first phase of the meetings. If Chinese censorship of the Internet weren’t so devastating, Xudong’s comments might be comical in their juxtaposition with reality.
Iran’s Mohammad Khatami also spoke. "Global management of internet should find a democratic and comprehensive mechanism to enable all players, including the developing countries, to play an effective role in this arena," he said.
There is also something vaguely humorous about a theocratic government so thoroughly supportive of the democratic process. And of course, according to Kofi Annan, the point of the meeting next week is to make sure poor countries get the "full benefits" of new information technologies so as to bring about "economic and social development."
Disturbing Turn
Under the guise of attempting to solve the "digital divide," foreign governments argue that Internet governance should be shared. Exactly how Chinese or Iranian control of the Internet is supposed to help the disadvantaged is left to the imagination. One might respond that property rights and political freedom would be a better way to help their most needy access the Internet.
This week, US Senator Norm Coleman expressed his concerns that the UN is trying to politicize the Internet and he initiated a Senate resolution that essentially supports the current structure of Internet governance. Senator Coleman is right to worry that a UN-controlled Internet would "raise a variety of dangers." And this perspective is perhaps doubly valuable when one considers that he is chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that has been investigating fraud and corruption surrounding the UN’s oil-for-food scandal.
It’s clear why authoritarian governments don’t like the Internet and why they seek to control it — open dialogue poses a threat to their power. But that doesn’t explain European reasons for wanting to place the information highway into the precarious hands of the UN. Indeed, when the European Union endorsed UN control of the Net, Carl Bildt, former Swedish prime minister and chairman of Swedish telecom company Teleopti, said it was "a U-turn by the European Union that was as unexpected as it was disturbing." So what gives?
A Catchy Disease
The answer might be called ADS — American Derangement Syndrome, a sister disease to BDS, Bush Derangement Syndrome. Left-leaning cities all across the United States have thousands of people afflicted with BDS, a disease in which sufferers hate George Bush so much that their brains cease to function properly.
The Europeans have simply contracted a variation that may lead them to endorse the erosion of a network that stands for the classical liberal European values of freedom and prosperity.
Next week, there will be a great deal of pressure for American representatives to capitulate to the bureaucratization of the Net. In order to protect one of the world’s greatest inventions from humanity’s worst characteristics, the Bush Administration will need to stand strong. It would also help if they could find a cure for ADS so that those who share liberal values can stand together instead of apart.
==================
Reproduced with permission of TechNewsWorld and ECT News Network. (c) 2005 ECT News Network. All Rights Reserved.
November 11th, 2005 at 11:46 pm
This lady sounds like she’s drinking koolaid with all here retoric about ‘ADS’ and ‘BDS’. Perhaps she’s been reading the daily GOP talking points memos. That type of shit instantly discredits the writer’s opinions.
But since she started it, I think most people with a few brain cells in their head will agree that it’s the ones that are in love with Bush that are having difficulties seeing reality.
For example, the few remaining Bush supporters seem to have trouble coming to grips with the fact that the entire 9/11 explanation given by their loving gov’t is a total lie. It doesn’t take much research to figure out that WTC 1,2 and 7 were destroyed by a controlled demolition process. And it’s really obvious to most people that an administration that will go to the other side of the planet to murder/torture hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in the course of ‘National Security’ (read ‘War Profiteering’) wouldn’t think twice about killing a few thousand peasants right here at home in order to get the ball rolling.
It’s much easier on the brain to keep the rose-coloured glasses firmly in place and call anyone who disagrees ‘crazy’. We don’t want an international body to make decisions regarding the internet not because we rightfully are mistrustful of the United States, no no, it’s because we’re all just plum loco. That must be it. It’s the only possible eplanation.
BTW if anyone want’s to do some research, here’s some a few dozen eyewitness accounts of the destruction of WTC 1, 2, and 7:
http://revereradionetwork.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2336
November 12th, 2005 at 11:08 pm
While I like the use of negative metaphors as much as the next guy, I would be more likely to be persuaded by facts and constuctive arguments.
Hmm, would I be considered a conspiracy theorist if I believed your post was a fake, created for the sole purpose of adding credibility to the author’s article.
November 13th, 2005 at 12:38 pm
Iran is a democracy whether we like it or not. Ahmedinjad was elected by the people, and he happens to be a very religious man. Bush was elected by the people (or so we were led to believe) and he too used his “christian religious values” as a selling pitch so many times. Lets face the fact that we are a bunch of hypocrites.
As for the Internet, it should, no it MUST be under the control of the United Nations, a world body, not under the control of one single country who has shown time and again its ability to misguide, lie and censor, YES CENSOR. And its populace has shown their ignorance and trigger happy mentality oh so often.
As part and parcel of freedom of speech, we should and must be able to hear the other side, even if most of us would call the other side a bunch of terrorists, I would still like to know and hear their side of the story, not hear it from America and its goons. It is a fact that many sites that supposedly “glorify terrorism” have their internet plugs pulled out. THAT is censorship.
November 14th, 2005 at 2:49 am
The Internet should NOT (and can NOT) be ‘controlled’ by any one or group of people, countries, organizations, or entities. The internet was specifcally designed to be a survivable communications network that that if any part of it were rendered inoperative, the unaffected portions would still function (perhaps in a degraded fashion.)
Rather than be ‘controlled’, the internet should be ‘administered’ by an international group that is representative of all of the stakeholders of the internet, but does not owe their allegience to any particular geo-political entity, political persuasion, economic philosophy, or religious dogma. Administration of the internet is entirely a technical matter in terms of ensuring that data gets from it’s origin to it’s destination in an efficient, cost-effective manner, regardless of what that data is. Those engaging in the UN control of the internet debate have a habit of swirling together content issues with connectivity issues, causing further confusion.
How groups and individuals use the internet is a matter of their behavior, and the subsequent judgement of it by others in a political process. The operation of the internet is a highly technical matter which should be governed by engineering processes and not value judgements of the content represented by the data being exchanged over it.
Effective administration of the internet means the furhter development and refinement of engineering standards and common processes, not rules regarding permissible and prohibited content.
This all but rules out the UN playing a role in this activity. One only needs to look at how many things the ITU has botched or over-politicized in the world of RF spectrum communications and wire based analog services to get an idea of what would be in store.
Many different groups and individuals, from despotic Governments to Public School Superintendants attempt censorship of the internet in varying ways. Whatever the restriction imposed, a workaround is always discovered by the motivated.
John Gilmore, one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), once said “The (inter)net treats censorship as damage and routes around it.” Whatever obstacles whomever wishes to inflict on the internet will eventually be circumvented or bypassed. The only absolutely certain way of censoring the internet is to completely shut the entire thing off. However, the internet does not have a ‘main breaker’ to allow one party to do such a thing.
–TurboGeek
November 15th, 2005 at 7:59 am
“Hating Bush or What the USA has done” is not a syndrome, it is a cure.
A cure for a better world. Only when we recognize the problem, and have the will to cure it will we be able to move forward….