Let’s get one thing straight: The ITU and friends are outright lying about the intent of their secretive conference in Dubai.
Current situation: The Internet by its nature is mostly unregulated. The participants agree to abide by certain protocols and standards. The more critical the standard is to fundamental operations, the more likely everyone will play by the same rules. The less fundamental it is, the more creative the participants are. The whole issue is passing traffic between devices connected to the network of networks.
This thing was born, more or less, in the US. It arose from an extension of what started as a rather private network between government owned computers, via some military and state-owned academic institutions. Currently, the US government has some control over what the entire world must do to stay connected to this thing. The majority of the controlling DNS servers (“backbone”) are controlled indirectly by the US government through regulation of those who actually own the equipment. What happens here generally forces the hand of everyone else. Most of those who really love the Internet don’t like some of those controls and regulations, because they interfere with optimal use of the networking possibilities. Up to now, though, the government has resisted instituting even worse controls.
Within the US government, there are two types of people involved in the Internet. One: Those who have no clue what it’s all about and firmly believe they do, or that it doesn’t matter. Two: Those who really do understand. The latter have no real interest in setting policy, because their entire game is spying, not governing. The former are those who intend to govern, and the two groups virtually never communicate directly. The spies largely refuse to give honest answers even when asked. However, the true netizens take it as salutary the policy wonks are so stupid, because their crazy ideas simply cannot be implemented regardless of regulatory demands. Meanwhile, the true interface of Net government is the corporations who own the hardware, and thus control access. Bureaucratic for-profit organizations bring their own evil to the table, but they are necessary because someone has to make a stab at providing the infrastructure with some measure of efficiency, and what those ancient government institutions did back when the Net was born were not at all efficient. It was private interest which made the Internet usable at low costs, while government would have kept it terribly expensive and closed.
So now we have the UN and ITU working together proposing removing the US from the driver’s seat. They propose to replace it by even tighter and more intrusive regulation from another driver’s seat. The ITU is all about government control; it’s members are governments, and all humans involved are government officials of one agency or another. Almost no one involved is a good guy.
On the one hand, lots of activists are screaming about the UN and ITU “taking over the Net” with all sorts of foreboding noises, largely inaccurate. On the other hand, we have some truly evil editorial noise made by the likes of The Register. They claim the ITU is doing nothing more than recognizing the standards already voluntarily in place, and take the ITU’s word on their proclaimed intentions. However, The Reg editors are lying and they know it. The deception is this: The ITU will give governments with hostile intent control over the underlying standards.
Think about it. Right now the Net is almost ungoverned. The core of what it is consists of many private entities, and a handful of government ones, plugged into a single system and it really does depend on voluntary cooperation. The ITU control would change all that. The one best way to make really evil changes is to first gain control over whatever exists. So they come out with a bunch of documentation which simply recognizes what is, solely for the purpose of taking control over it. When they ITU says they have no intention of directly governing the Net, what they really mean is they will become the conduit for all the governments involved to do that, instead. No, the ITU itself will not take control, but will hand that control off to some governments whose officials have shown a very rapacious interest in taking away the voluntary nature of the Net.
The ITU represents government interest only. They will most certainly shut out the real technicians and experts who aren’t owned by anybody. The bulk of real experts are independent, and they are the ones most threatened by this, because they are the life and breath of the Internet. On the other hand, I don’t totally trust them, either, because too many of them would demand some of the most impractical and anti-user protocols themselves. There is no significant group of genuine good guys involved, so playing them off against each other is a decent solution. Giving the ITU any say would destroy the delicate balance.
Corporate ownership is impossible to avoid, good or bad. US government control via regulation ranges between harmless and bad. ITU involvement would kill the Internet for almost every ordinary user. The one thing making the Net worth using at all is how easily we can get around most regulation if it matters. Those with sufficient technical knowledge, and the drive to gain that expertise, can get what they really want. Meanwhile, the humans on this planet have at least this one means, if they choose, to bypass government control over information. There will always be more bullshit than truth, but at least the truth is leaking out. Without the Net, the opportunity to sift didn’t exist, because information of any quality was too easily controlled. So while we still have the same lies we’ve always had, and some extra on the side, we have far greater access to information as a whole than any other way possible.
The situation isn’t ideal. It could be better, but I suspect we won’t ever see better. The Internet as we know it may well die, but the ITU will use it for horrific oppression not yet possible.
-
-
Contact me:
-
ehurst@radixfidem.blog
Categories