Web of the Free

2006-02-20T16:36:00.000-05:00

Reference Tool On Web Finds Fans, Censors
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post, 2/20/2006

BEIJING -- When access to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, was disrupted across China last October, a lanky chemical engineer named Shi Zhao called his Internet service provider to complain. A technician confirmed what Shi already suspected: Someone in the government had ordered the site blocked again.

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2006-02-17T16:35:00.000-05:00

China’s virtual cops pinpoint web dissent
By Mure Dickie
Finacial Times, 2/17/2006

With their big blue blinking eyes and their quirky personal websites, there is no denying the cuteness of the cartoon cops at the front line of China’s battle for control of the internet. But the role played by Jingjing and Chacha, the animated online icons recently introduced by police in the southern Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen, is entirely serious.

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2005-12-22T13:25:00.000-05:00

Silberschatz on Internet Governance
Free2Innovate.net, 12/22/2005

The Jewish Ledger publishes a very interesting Q&A with Avi Silberschatz, a professor and chair of the computer science department of Yale University. Here's an excerpt:

Q: You and Mark Shiffrin, former Connecticut State Consumer Protection Commissioner, have recently written several articles about the Internet. What is happening in the world of Internet “ownership and regulation?”

A: Mark and I had recent pieces in the New York Times and in the International Herald Tribune. We have written about the movement afoot in the United States and the European Union to get the U.S. to give up control of the Internet, which is a medium the U.S. created and on which it critically relies.

The Internet has become an integral part of the global economy, in large part because the United States has also provided the genius of its technology to other societies that use it to benefit themselves, including in doing business and competing with the U.S. So it was only a matter of time before foreign powers began asking who should control the electronic superhighway on which they now rely for their national well-being, something that America has built, paid for and maintained.

Internationalizing control of a medium now regulated with a loose hand by a nation committed to maximizing freedom would inevitably create more of an opening for countries like China (a strong proponent of imposing some international supervision of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - the California-based nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Commerce Department in 1998) to exert more pressure on Internet service providers. More broadly, international regulation could enable like-minded governments to work in concert to deem certain thoughts impermissible online.

The Internet is an attractive commercial infrastructure for all societies, even oppressive ones. But the string attached to its creation by America is that it must be used within a context of freedom, both economic and political. This is a democratic value that America should not be shy about exporting. Accepting that commitment to online freedom should be the price that foreign governments must pay for the blessing of the Internet in their national economic lives.

2005-11-16T16:31:00.000-05:00

On the Line: the Internet's future
by Daniel Howden
The Independent, 11/16/2005

Over the next three days a United Nations summit, in the unlikely setting of Tunisa, will attempt to trash out the future of the internet.

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2005-11-15T16:30:00.000-05:00

Be wary of Internet ‘governance'
by Tony Mauro
USA Today, 11/15/2005

In the North African capital city of Tunis, a world summit will convene today to discuss, and perhaps shape, the future of the Internet. Since the Internet has grown fabulously without much shaping in the past, you have every reason to worry about this meeting, formally titled the World Summit on the Information.

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2005-11-13T16:33:00.000-05:00

World wants more say in control of World Wide Web
by Michelle Kessler
USA Today, 11/13/2005

The Bush administration and the U.S. tech industry are teaming to take on the rest of the world in a fight about who controls the technical underpinnings of the Internet.

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2005-10-30T16:34:00.000-05:00

Worldwide but Homegrown
Editorial
New York Times, 10/30/2005

Some foreign governments are uncomfortable with the United States' controlling the nuts and bolts of the Internet. That is understandable. So much of the success of the global economy depends on its smooth functioning and the United States has not been a model of receptiveness to other nations' concerns in recent years. There may be a multilateral solution down the road, but right now it is in everyone's best interest to keep control of the Internet where it was founded, in America.

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2005-10-28T13:29:00.000-04:00

Expanding Internet Access Must Remain World Focus at Summit
by Charlene Porter
USINFO.STATE.GOV, 10/28/2005

The future of the Internet and its role in the lives of people around the world come into international focus November 16-18 as negotiators gather in Tunis, Tunisia, for the final round of discussions in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

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2005-10-28T13:25:00.000-04:00

Will the Internet become the UNTERNET?
by Carroll Andrew Morse
TCS Daily, 10/28/2005

The United Nations wants control of the internet. At its November 2005 meeting in Tunis, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) will deliberate its second phase of creating a bureaucracy to manage internet governance. The WSIS is run by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a specialized agency of the UN. At the WSIS Preparatory Commission meeting held this past September in Geneva, the European Union joined with countries like China and Iran in rejecting the concept of not fixing what is not broken and decided that increased international supervision -- maybe even international control -- of the internet has become necessary. Why the United Nations should have a special right to manage internet governance is unclear. The claim -- like most UN claims -- is based on the idea that, because it has the form of a government, the UN can grant itself whatever government-like powers it desires. In this case, the UN has decided it has an information age power of eminent domain and can take over any communications network of international scope.

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2005-10-23T10:25:00.000-04:00

Web of the Free
by Mark Shiffrin and Avi Silberschatz
New York Times, 10/23/2005

THERE is a move afoot at the United Nations and in the European Union to get the United States to give up control of the Internet - a medium that America created and on which it now critically relies.

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