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Comment by hastur | Hacker News Reader

The article conveniently omits the fact that the Internet is already partially regulated by one side: the US. After all, ICANN et al. are American organizations and many of the most popular top domains (e.g. .com), which for all intents and purposes should be considered international, are within the reach of US law enforcement.

And we know what that means: Among other things, reckless and predatory practices protecting the interests of RIAA, MPAA and other dangerous entities from before the Internet era.

The author of the article (an FCC commissioner) simply defends the interests of one side, while ignorant readers think this is a benevolent editorial in defense of Internet freedom.

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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 and the current USA actions will look quite benign compared to what other countries want. Let me put it this way: things are bad, but they can become orders of magnitude worse.

That's great, except China and Russia can't impose anything. As the article says, the UN body is representative, every of the 190-sth members has a vote, and only some of them are despotic autocracies that will align themselves with China and Russia.

I would much rather have Brazil come up with some other ideas and instead of regulating the Internet, simply deny control to anyone, including the US.

[I recently read an article by Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay fame, and he said that President (now former) Lula of Brazil personally encouraged Peter to move to Brazil, because it has no extradition treaty with Sweden. How can you not love that?)

I am Brazilian and although I believe a international administration of the Internet would be better than what we have now, I would hate if it came in Brazilian hands.

There in too much legalese running in my country and sometimes the judges are not reasonable in their decisions, if this same framework is applied to the internet things for me would be worse than they are now.

No one is suggesting that Brazil should run the Internet.

I'm just saying that Brazil is capable of independent thinking and could be a force for positive change in Internet governance.

And, personally, I would be even more hopeful for EU influence, which would be even more positive in terms of values, but I'm afraid the EU isn't vocal and active enough to be an effective change agent. (Well, maybe at least we'll kill ACTA. :)

I think you give too much credit to the reps.

This is speculation, but I would be unsurprised if China and Russia (the current bogeymen) are able to buy votes from other countries using other tactics. The Great and Glorious Nation of Trashcanistan supports freedoom for her citizens...but she also supports access to cheap oil and rare earths.

As much as everyone might bitch about the missteps in US management of things, we've done a (mostly) excellent job--for example, I don't think that the EU would have anything useful to say about allowing hate speech on the 'net, while we tend to allow that sort of thing.

> As the article says, the UN body is representative, every of the 190-sth members has a vote and only some of them are despotic autocracies

Only some?

> that will align themselves with China and Russia.

That's your argument? That commie bastards aren't a majority?

The vast majority of world govts are bastards, even if they're not commie bastards. They will happily cooperate to screw other people's residents if doing so helps them screw theirs.

And no, I'm not saying that the US is kittens and unicorns, except by comparison.

> is already partially regulated by one side: the US

> while ignorant readers think this is a benevolent editorial in defense of Internet freedom

Who is doing the external regulation is not the issue, the issue is quantity of external regulation. Attempts for the US to expand regulation must be opposed, as well as attempts to centralize regulation internationally at the behest of countries who would also like to expand regulation. There are two directions the internet can take: more external regulation or less external regulation. The goal should be as close to zero external regulation as possible.

> The author of the article (an FCC commissioner) simply defends the interests of one side

The messenger never matters, what matters is the message. Since everyone is guilty of self-interest, if it is made a criteria for wrongness then everyone is wrong.

Perhaps the MPAA/RIAA/China/Iran should set up their own internet and regulate however they want.

China kind of already does. Close off a lot of foreign major competitors, block objectionable sites, have domestic ones replace them which tie into the government.

Exactly. My impression is that the U.N. negotiations are largely noise, since nations will regulate things as they please within their own borders anyway.

That's funny, but I think putting MPAA and RIAA in one line with China and Iran is actually not such a huge stretch.

After all, how much difference is there between a Chinese kid being thrown in jail for a blog post critical of the communist party and a UK kid being extradited like a terrorist to the US for linking to some pirated content?

The security apparatus that was set up to fight terrorism is constantly expanding its scope to protect particular interests.

The .com domain would be within reach of law enforcement no matter what country houses it. It's not a choice of "U.S. or nothing", it's a choice of "which nation do you want to regulate .com". The U.S. is certainly not perfect, but it has accessible and transparent legislative and court systems, and the strongest Constitutional protections for free speech in the world. It has an open and liberal trade policy and it welcomes and protects foreign direct investment. And it is large enough to set its own course on the world stage--no other nation holds much leverage over it. There are a lot of good reasons to leave Internet governance in the U.S.

I largely agree with your statement. In a perfect world, I would prefer to see no state actor with control over the Internet, but alas there must be some regulation on some level. As it is, I would prefer the US over any other state entity, except perhaps for a few European nations. Idealistically speaking we would see internationally distributed regulation, preferably from non-state, non-commercial actors, but I think this is unlikely without monetary incentive or support of some kind.

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