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from the trying-to-decide-who-represents-the-lesser-evil dept.
Efforts to squeeze the United Nations into the throne of the internet have been comprehensively defeated at a key meeting in South Korea. The result raises the possibility that after more than a decade of fighting, the threat of a UN takeover is a thing of the past.
After more than two weeks of negotiations at the United Nations' ITU Plenipotentiary meeting in South Korea ( http://www.itu.int/en/plenipotentiary/2014/Pages/default.aspx ), revised versions of four key internet resolutions have passed through the working group stage and will be formally approved in the next few hours by the meeting's plenary.
In each case, proposed changes that would have given the ITU (the International Telecommunication Union) greater authority over the internet's evolution, have been pulled out – and some additions had been made that give existing internet organizations a greater say in future discussions.
[...] It is still possible that China and/or Russia and/or parts of the Middle East will regroup and try to push for more global control. However, it seems far more likely after these negotiations that they will simply focus their efforts on their own territories.
Although the battle is not entirely over, the possibility of a de facto corporate takeover still exists if net neutrality is abandoned. What does SN think about this development?
(Score: 3, Funny) by emg on Wednesday November 05 2014, @08:57PM
I really wasn't looking forward to having to replace IP with X.25.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 05 2014, @09:09PM
On the one side, black helicopters and all the insanity of the UN. On the other side, all the insanity of ICANN and AT&T. This is almost as bad as choosing between Democrats and Republicans, in that no matter what you do you won't get it right.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JNCF on Wednesday November 05 2014, @09:50PM
Right? What we really need is a meshnet that nobody runs, something along the lines of CJDNS [wikipedia.org] or OpenLibernet. [openlibernet.org] CJDNS is up and running, but offers no real incentive for people to run nodes. OpenLibernet has a very nice theory for how to incentivise people/institutions to build the infrastructure for a decentralized internet, but so far no actual software. These projects (and whatever follows in their footsteps) are the answer, not passing regulation off from one nefarious bureaucracy to another.
(Score: 1) by jmorris on Wednesday November 05 2014, @11:32PM
Hello... reality calling....
Why do we need a new network when the Internet works perfectly well? There is not any single points of failure in the current design. Even DNS could be routed around should it go evil. The bottleneck is the last mile here in the U.S. and you can't fix that problem. Seriously, you can't even try because it is illegal. Local governments sold monopoly rights... ok dualopoly rights, to the telco and cableco and forbid any new competitors from entering the market. Wireless isn't ever likely to seriously compete either so forget that option. Your new mesh network would have to somehow get right of way to run wires/fiber or run over wireless. You can't get right of way and wireless is pathetic compared to wired so again, how do you propose to compete?
If port blocking, traffic monitoring, DNS poisoning, page modification, etc. gets bad enough I could see VPN overlay becoming a lot more popular but that is still building on the existing Internet and routing around censorship.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JNCF on Thursday November 06 2014, @01:33AM
Ever heard of Standard Operating Procedure 303? It's the DHS plan to kill the internet [rt.com] in case of, you know... "terrorism."
Remember when BART shut down cellphone access [eff.org] because they didn't want protesters organizing using phones?
If America had a revolution today I would be incredibly surprised if it was tweeted. We might talk about it over FireChat, [theguardian.com] but that's because FireChat is a decentralized meshnet that can't be shutdown by government orders. Just the kind of thing I'm saying we should replace the internet with, piece by piece.
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Wednesday November 05 2014, @10:19PM
My usual approach is to stick with the devil I know.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 3, Funny) by melikamp on Wednesday November 05 2014, @10:24PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @02:08AM
What the H.323, H.264, committees full of people with bell-shaped heads