Republican Coleman to US Senate: ""The Internet is likely to face a grave threat" from UN

Republican Senator Coleman woke up the slumbering Senate on an issue I have been railing against for months. The UN and World Body has been attempting to seize control of the internet thereby silencing the blogs and the free flow of news and information. Imagine, our most sinister adversaries want to control the one truly free, truly egalitarian forum the world has ever known.

Senator: Keep U.N. away from the Internet

Rep. Senator Norm Coleman introduces resolution

A new resolution introduced in the U.S. Senate offers political backing to the Bush administration by slamming a United Nations effort to exert more influence over the Internet.

Sen. Norm Coleman, a Republican from Minnesota, said his nonbinding resolution would protect the Internet from a takeover by the United Nations that's scheduled to be discussed at a summit in Tunisia next month.

"The Internet is likely to face a grave threat" at the summit, Coleman said in a statement on Monday. "If we fail to respond appropriately, we risk the freedom and enterprise fostered by this informational marvel and end up sacrificing access to information, privacy and protection of intellectual property we have all depended on."

If ratified, Coleman's resolution would assure the Bush administration and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) of political support on Capitol Hill during the negotiations at the World Summit on the Information Society. Similar support has already come from both senior Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives.

At the heart of this international political spat is the unique influence that the U.S. federal government enjoys over Internet addresses and the master database of top-level domain names--a legacy of the Internet's origins years ago. The Bush administration recently raised objections to the proposed addition of .xxx as a red-light district for pornographers, for instance, a veto power that no other government is able to wield

During a series of meetings organized by the United Nations, ministers from dozens of other countries have raised objections and demanded more influence. Suggestions that have been made include new mandates for "consumer protection," the power to levy taxes on domain names to pay for "universal access," and folding ICANN into the International Telecommunications Union, a U.N. agency. As far back as 1999, U.N. agencies have mulled imposing taxes on Internet e-mail.

Coleman's resolution endorses the principles--effectively maintaining the status quo--that the Bush administration announced in June. But he ventured even further by warning that if governance functions were handed to bureaucrats from oppressive nations, the Internet would become "an instrument of censorship and political suppression." Business groups have raised similar objections, warning of censorship from nations such as China, Iran and Syria.

UPDATE: Hugh, the tax inquistor points out the following;

Senator Coleman's non-binding resolution is nice...but that is all it is...non-binding!  Apparently, China and Brazil are prepared to start implementing their own naming protocols if they don't get their way.   I say, let them.  If they want war, let's give them war.  We will win.

They want access to our markets.  Their efforts to hijack the domain naming protocols will only serve to handicap web access on their side.  If they want to limit their access to websites in the US, who are we to interfere?

UPDATE: This is why America is so retarded.  The media information superhighway talks to us like we are mental patients. Talking everything that's nothing, and nothing that's everything. Here we have the international world body attempting to seize control of the internet and below is typical of what the mainstream media feeds the public. This is a headline and news story from manistream media AOL this morning. I know viruses and spam etc. is a bitch but I mean really;

 

	The first notorious spammer to be sentenced to jail time, Howard Carmack, also known as "The Buffalo Spammer," received a sentence of seven years. See his story	More Villains and Viruses Villains Scott Levine David Smith Alexei Voziianov Viruses (Artist's Renderings) FunLove Sasser Netsky

Comments

[Tyranno]

The world never ceases to become more interesting. Who are "they!" You know the ones they are talking about when people say, "They did it!"
The great faceless "them" . . . who are suppose to; provide debt relief, free AIDS and other medications, immediate EU level social welfare benefits, and unlimited immigration to the country of the illegal immigrants choice, and now, by the way, can you hand over the Internet.

I am not worried though. As a Socialist German friend of mine said, when explaining why the German media is completely unbias, (as opposed to his certainty that the U.S. media is controlled by extreme rightwing Christian fundamentalist???), Our media can never become like yours, we have rules they must follow!!

So there you have it. Don't worry about the UNITED NATIONS controlling the Internet ... they have rules!!!

Too many people profit by pretending to think too deeply about this.

As Nancy Reagan use to say, "Just say NO!"
(and watch them squirm!)

Tyranno

PS: The begged question; What is the gain, the benefit of turning it over to the UN And, Why, Simply because they want it?

Wouldn't giving the internet to the UNITED NATIONS be the same as giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys? (w/apoligies to PJ)

[penxv]

Unless to tax people or suppress undesired activity or speech, why would anyone want control over the internet?

[Kvatch]

The Internet is likely to face a grave threat. If we fail to respond appropriately, we risk the freedom and enterprise fostered by this informational marvel and end up sacrificing access to information, privacy and protection of intellectual property we have all depended on.

This just proves that Norm Coleman is a grandstanding idiot. Duh! The only issue on the table, if I remember correctly, is giving control over TLD (that's (T)op (L)evel (D)omain) creation and administration to a UN committee (rather than ICANN under contract to the Dept. of Commerce). So what? Will this affect the most important issue, the root server system. Not at all. Sure some tin-pot dictator could split off and mandate traffic use a disconnected root-server, but that just punishes that country. So the alleged threats from Brazil and China are just that, threats that will do them more harm than good.

[wxjames]

Speeches we want to hear:
Dear UN, the City of New York hereby condemns your building. Bye-bye. Oh, and the USA will no longer be a member, and any country that still wants to use the internet will have to rent time from now on. A rates schedule will be forthcoming.

[Tyranno]

In that great UNITED NATIONs wants to control... (fill in the blank) vein, have you seen:

CULTURE SHOCK FOR HOLLYWOOD !!!

"Most of the 191 members of Unesco, the United Nations’ cultural agency, are expected to vote for a “convention on cultural diversity”, which enshrines on a global level France’s longstanding policy of subsidising its arts and imposing quotas on American films and music."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1834119,00.html

What an exellent example on how dishonest and Orwellian the framing of an argument can be. Just like Kyoto . . . If everybody else is for it, how can it be bad? Though just like Kyoto, none of them will adhere to this protocol either. So let me see if I have this , they demand we give them the internet, though none of their citizens have voiced a complaint or problem . . . but demand that we stop giving them (or give them less) music and films that their citizens are choosing of their own free will ? ? ? (Back to begging that question of some blogs ago . . . does Europe at its roots really have a democratic tradition?)

I believe the ubiquitousness of "American culture" is more a result of our culture being an amalgamation of all the others, than some insidious government plot being foisted on the world that the French must, by necessity, believe it to be.
I think people around the world identify with "American culture" because consciously or sub-consciously they genuinely see a bit of themselves in it that they can relate to. How can Francis Coppala's Italian roots not shine through in his movies? Or Orson Well's Anglo - midwestern American roots? Just like Francois Truffaut Frenchness shines through in his films. Granted, a lot fewer people seem to identify enough to be willing to pay to see a Truffaut film. But not to worry, the French government, and now the UNITED NATIONS, will legislate that for every horrible American film you are being forced to watch by Bushitler and Ashcroft . . . you will be able to pay to see a French film!!!
And just in the nick of time. Don't distract us with genocide in Darfur, what about the "cultural genocide" perpetrated by the Americans on those unheralded but obviously "superior" French/Euro films??? An organization as serious as the UNITED NATIONS must have its priorities!!! N'est Pas?

The French apparatchiks deserve a hand for once again making it's own peoples wants and desires, chosen in a worldwide cultural freemarket, seem provincial and oppressive. Don't the little French proles know, or haven't they asked their betters, what they should be watching, and listening to, and thinking about?
For me, I see the obvious parallel in the American University's modern progressive liberal desire to have "Womyn's Studies" or "African-American Studies" or "Gay studies," or "Oppression Studies!" It is good old fashioned insecurity and pathologies wrapped in the progressive mantel of "diversity." Since they don't feel their thinking (or films) can stand on it's own merit, or perhaps more truthfully, that the concepts they wish to push can't stand on their own merit in comparison with others, they demand a separate studies, a separate set of rules and standards, (that they will decide on,) to be judged by. Essentially they are demanding a free pass in the old fashioned free market of comparative liberal thinking and empirical evidence.

What they demand, or really need, is to single out a small safe place where they can spout their pieties unchallenged, demand their uniqueness, highlight their separateness, and undermine a culture that doesn't make them, swaddled in their various personal pathologies, feel comfortable. .
What they demand, or really, need, is a small safe, competition free, place where you have to pay to see their movies, you have to recognize and applaude their artistic uniqueness, you have to revel with them in their separateness, and like good little Party drougies, you have to say nothing as they, along with the state, undermine the people's free will of not wanting to pay to see them parade their personal pathologies.
What they want is a statist (European?) culture that strokes and coddles their infantile demands and throws money at their uninteresting films and music. (...as well as six weeks vacation and a Mercedes Benz)
As my friend El always says, "Europeans dread competition! It has pretty much been bred out of them."

It seems to me that all of this, if it withstands scrutiny, should be woven into the whole cloth of human experience, education and culture. But no, like all good progressive liberals, they demand that they shouldn't have to redouble their efforts to make quality movies that more people would want to or would pay to see; No they shouldn't have to accept the realitiy that their fashionable boutique cinema efforts are doomed to their own tragically fashionable, and miniscule ($$) cafe society circle! Nope, they know better and demand that the government leverage people to do what they obviously won't do of their own free will. Which is pay to see artsy (re: crappy) movies so that artsy Truffaut-types can become as rich as people who provide a product or service that people really want. You know the ones, those making music and fims that people really want to see and who the artsy types denounce as the, cultureless bourgeoisie.
Like all good progressive liberal efforts that intend to use government coercion to force people to do things they won't do of their own free will, they have a warm and fuzzy name for it, "The Convention on Cultural Diversity!" How could anybody be against that !?!?! (Uncle Joe would be so justifiably proud of their efforts here!)

And lastly,
1) These are the kinds of things that make me smile when my European friends tell me about how much more free they, their lives, and their thinking, are. Perhaps this is just another one of those decisions that are too important to be left to the great unwashed masses?

2) Isn't it funny how those smug Europeans who smirk under their breath about the complete "lack of American culture" (just ask 'em!) are deathly afraid of being overwhelmed by it!

Why, oh why doesn't everyone recognize their superiority and demand to pay them for it ???

Tyranno

PS: tangent again eh? Sorry.