February 21, 2012, 1:19 PM —
World governments in 1988 decided to let the Internet develop freely. Now they want to clamp down.
History's greatest deregulatory success story, the Internet, is the target of world leaders such as Russia's Vladimir Putin with a goal to gain "international control over the Internet." The showdown is set for the World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai this December. Other countries now question why engineers and volunteers run the Internet, with oversight, such as it is, controlled by the US.
Time Magazine warns this move will make SOPA and PIPA "look like a picnic." The Wall Street Journal lists nightmare proposals like allowing telecom companies to charge long distance fees on Internet traffic, regulate peering to set new rates and taxes for traffic-swapping agreements, and take over the functions of the Internet Engineering Task Force and other groups currently setting policy. As we've seen in the US with SOPA and PIPA, governments and corporations prefer a calm status quo, and the Internet is exactly the opposite of calm.
No no no
The internet is rife with the ferment of human activity. It is a place of evolution and revolution. Governments aren't naturally fond of that
GeorgeB Purdell on wsj.com
They are a bunch of crooks with Swiss bank accounts and yet the media never questions them - They are AGAINST FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND THOUGHT AND HAVE NEVER BEEN AGAINST CORRUPTION!
erikcore77 on time.com
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
Haplo on news.ycombinator.com
this isn't terribly new. The ITU has been trying to take control of the internet since 2003
sbierwagen on news.ycombinator.com
Political advice
Here should be the US response to the UN. Go pound sand.
Mike Donovan on wsj.com
keep hacking folks and for sure we'll end up with some kind of international Cybercontrol regulator...
sny5ive on time.com
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?
CWIZO on news.ycombinator.com
The Internet next year
We need to act forcefully to (redacted) and rise up and (redacted). Slavery comes in many forms. One such form is (redacted). Please visit www (redacted).com to learn more.
spencer rowe on wsj.com
oh god no, if the US government is bad, think about having china and russia have a say in these things, hell no!!
malkavian1 on time.com
Would the Arab Spring uprisings have succeeded without the Internet? Maybe that's the problem.
