Today Fox News reported that the UN will be meeting in mid December to discuss a bill that will take the Internet out of the private sector and put the control of in to the hands of the United Nations.

I want to know what you guys thing about this especially people not native to the United States.

Here is the link to the article.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,104413,00.html

-AG

ouch... big brother's watching you....

I find the idea of a centralised control organ
for the net outrageous ... can't understand why
the U.S. should oppose, Echelon and all, though ;)



Cheers,
Tink

That article is from dummies (or people that misinform on purpose) for dummies.Actually ICANN is not the 'free non-profit organisation' but pretty much controlled by the US government.That is not any kind of secret.The US opposes this plan because it wants to hold as thight a control as possible over the internet but I also don't see why the UN should have their claws in there.
Get rid of both the US and the UN is the way to go.

What does the UN think it is going to do to make the net better? It hasn't been much use for anything else, except for passing out food and such.

Later

moved to general.

I voted yes, as of yet the only person
So who should control the Net?
Verison? right..
No company is good for this, and we do need something people trust and has money. What better then the UN. Do you want to have a US controlled organization doing this?
I don't. I used to trust the US, I don't anymore, no offence to anyone.
How would the UN harm this?

teval,

If you red the articol on Fox News the US wants to keep it privatly controled. They don't want any one orginazation to control it. As it stands now it is not under the control of any one. I don't understand why some people have this desire for governmnet to control them. Yould you like Microsoft to control all software? that is whay Linux is great, because no one can say what you can and can't do with it. That is why the net is great.

I'm the second person to vote "Yes"... not that I think that the US is not doing a good job at it. However, the US (and not only the US unfortunately), has some pretty dumb laws regarding IT and IP (Intellectual Property, not Internet Protocol ).

I believe that the 'net should be as free as possible from any "political", national and especially corporate influences. The UN may not be the best authority on it, but it can sure as hell keep it that way for a very long time.

Why do I say this? Every deliberation brought to the UN will be debated day in and day out, but eventually there will be some self-serving and thick-headed diplomats that will veto this and that... and eventually nothing gets changed. If the same thing is done with the internet, then it's in good hands

UN is not a gov't. Linux is not a gov't and it's not a company.
But I love your analogy. Would you like MS to control the net? No you wouldn't. As it stands MS like coorporations control it.
As it stands companies cotnrol the net mostly, and as we saw with Verison, if they want to they can do almost anything. Thankfully the people who make BIND decided to not stand for it, but will we be so fortunate next time?

Personally. I don't want the net controlled by souless cash whores (excuse that, but I think it's the best way to describe them) for whom the bottom line is God. That isn't right in my opinion. People are starting to dislike the US very much, especially here in Canada. All time trust of the US is at an alltime low. I don't want to start a is the US good thread so let's not go there . Most people don't want the US to have control over something as important as the net, it should be controlled by a not-for-profit multinational organization. (sounds like the UN doesn't it?)
What advantage is there to having companies control it? And no I'm not referring to controlling some of the infrastructure. I'm referring to the decisions like the wildcards in DNS. Or who gets what access. What domains we use and so on.

Instead of voting now, I'd like to see an actual rough draft of how this would be accomplished, and what exactly "control" means. Does it mean they simply control the DNS backbones? Does it mean they 'own' the main line backbones? The net isn't just like 1 big server in my basement, but instead my mini server in my basement, as well as Fin's 57 servers floating around his place and so forth. So how will they control those portions of the net?

Curious....

Cool

quote:
No company is good for this, and we do need something people trust and has money. What better then the UN. Do you want to have a US controlled organization doing this?

Who trusts the UN? And where do you think most of the money comes from to run the UN? Yep, thats right the U.S. And where does the U.S. get its money? The U.S. tax payers. Do you not believe the U.S. has a good amount of control on the UN?

quote:
All time trust of the US is at an alltime low. I don't want to start a is the US good thread so let's not go there

Yes lets not.

I don't really trust the UN.

I really don't trust the US government in this regard.

I absolutely don't trust ICANN, these are the jokers that came up with the udrp for goodness sakes?!?

I absolutely do trust NSI to screw over everyone that isn't them.

That makes the least of all evils the UN? whew...

Cheers,

Finegan

The US has influence in the UN, but no I don't beleive the US controls it. No the US doesn't contribute all the money to the UN, and yes the world would go on happy without the US contributing as much.

Who trusts the UN?
Every country which sends peacekeepers, every country which ratifies its resolutions. And by that.. it's almost every country in the world. Sure some don't really trust it, but I'm sure the entire world would sleep better having it non US controlled. It's basically down to that, a lot of countries not enjoying this entire US control thing.

I think its meant as runnig some of the root DNS servers, and taking over what ICANN is doing. Not sure though.

quote:
No the US doesn't contribute all the money to the UN, and yes the world would go on happy without the US contributing as much.

Never said they contribute all the money. Read my post again. There are alot of people in the US that would like to get out of the UN. Now, at one time the UN was good and did good things. Not any more. They are just like big government.

quote:
Sure some don't really trust it, but I'm sure the entire world would sleep better having it non US controlled.

Never said the US controlled it, we do have a big say in alot of it though. And you are so sure the entire world would sleep better without US participation?

quote:
It's basically down to that, a lot of countries not enjoying this entire US control thing.

Well then, let them host the UN in their own country and come up with the money for it.