The Internet Isn't Broken; So Why Is The ITU Trying To 'Fix' It?
from the because-it-wants-to-break-it dept
We've been talking about the ITU's upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) for a while now, and it's no longer "upcoming." Earlier today, the week and a half session kicked off in Dubai with plenty of expected controversy. The US, the EU and now Australia have all come out strongly against the ITU's efforts to undermine the existing internet setup to favor authoritarian countries or state-controlled (or formerly state-controlled) telcos who want money for internet things they had nothing to do with. The BBC article above has a pretty good rundown of some of the scarier proposals being pitched behind closed doors at WCIT. Having the US, EU and Australia against these things is good, but the ITU works on a one-vote-per-country system, and plenty of other countries see this as a way to exert more control over the internet, in part to divert funds from elsewhere into their own coffers.Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the ITU, keeps trying to claim that this is all about increasing internet access, but that's difficult to square with reality:
"The brutal truth is that the internet remains largely [the] rich world's privilege, " said Dr Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the UN's International Telecommunications Union, ahead of the meeting.Of course, internet access has already been spreading to the far corners of the planet without any "help" from the ITU. Over two billion people are already online, representing about a third of the planet. And, yes, spreading that access further is a good goal, but the ITU is not the player to do it. The reason that the internet has been so successful and has already spread as far as it has, as fast as it has, is that it hasn't been controlled by a bureaucratic government body in which only other governments could vote. Instead, it was built as an open interoperable system that anyone could help build out. It was built in a bottom up manner, mainly by engineers, not bureaucrats. Changing that now makes very little sense.
"ITU wants to change that."
Besides, does anyone really think that a process that requires the companies who successfully innovated to funnel money to corrupt governments and/or corrupt state-controlled telcos is going to magically lead to greater investment in internet growth? If so, I've got a prince in Nigeria with 53 $ Million US waiting in a bank all for you.
Neelie Kroes, the VP of the EU Commission and in charge of the EU's Digital Agenda tweeted simply:
The internet works, it doesn't need to be regulated by ITR treaty. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.And that's the thing. The internet works just fine. The only reason to "fix" it, is to "break" it in exactly the way the ITU wants, which is to favor a few players who have done nothing innovative to actually deserve it.
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Filed Under: hamadoun toure, itu, wcit
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This isn't about 'fixing' anything or stopping crime or any of the other bullshit we are fed on a daily basis. It is about controlling the flow of information so that we only have access to what a dinosaur elitist group say we should have access to.
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Yeah, that saying kind of goes out the window if you and your cronies make more money by breaking "it"
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"If it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is."
The engineer's motto.
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also if you look at user statistics what this ITU guy is saying is exactly correct, for example North America has 80% internet penetration (being rich) and Africa has 15%, so the statement that online access is mainly for the rich is very correct and an accurate statement.
Is it possible Masnick and TD are attacking the ITU because they are the ITU it seems they have yet again failed to provide any information that is not accurate or correct, but it's never good enough for TD, they have to apply their version of spin to the subject.
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The internet is working perfectly, it is expanding all the time. Quoting arbitrary figures like you have just done does nothing to argue for why the ITU has to take control of the internet.
If you actually look at the facts internet penetration has been increasing ever since 2000. Currently over 1/3rd of the world is connected to the internet, which is a huge achievement in the time the internet has been around.
The ITU couldn't manage that growth rate with normal telecommunications so how do you think they will fare with this?
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Could it be the penetration of the net might be lagging in countries where getting clean water or food might be more important than tweeting?
That these countries lack infrastructure to provide basic services, and promoting net access before survival level needs might be a bad idea?
Maybe the UN can fix that before worrying if they can like the UN on Facebook.
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Money spent on making sure they have a device to use the internet will end up with ballooning costs and lining pockets.
Corruption can not be solved just by adding a net connection that will be managed and controlled by the corrupt.
Giving control to a group that couldn't even get basic telcom access done in these countries is a hugely bad idea.
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I can see it now
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You might as well say a baby is "poor" compared to an adult, so we should level the playing field.
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why did you just say, "comparing blacks and whites"..
the POINT IS "they're are not even in the same state of society"..
so why chould 80% goobers have online access and only 15% of the 'colored' people ? is it a right because you are white ?
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Not sure that your last paragraph/sentence actually parses out to a coherent though. Maybe you forgot some words and/or punctuation?
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It's a bluff!
Seems an unlikely savior has come, the RIAA have decided to pitch their lot in against the evil ITU - to keep the internets secure and free!
Let's give them the power to stop this crazy plan! All they need is for us to transfer the power over out internets to them, and they will be able to block the ITU - once and for all!!
Hooray, no more ITU! Long live the RIAA!
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It's a trap!!!
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Sound teh alarms!
The ITU has repeatedly said that there must be common ground, rather than just a majority view, before changes are introduced to the treaty.
"Voting in our jargon means winners and losers, and we cannot afford that," Dr Toure told the BBC.
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Re: Sound teh alarms!
I don't even know what that actually means. Is the ITU actually saying that there must be a consensus of all parties affected (not just hte parties that are part of the ITU process) before a treaty can be introduced?
That can't be what they mean: too many of the affected parties are diametrically opposed. The end result can only be either no action at all (my preference) or a treaty that effectively means nothing.
In either case, why go to the trouble and expense of the process at all?
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like your math masnick !!! 7 billion people on earth, 2 bil on the net.
So for every 7 people 2 are online and 5 are not.. oh when you put it that way!!!!!!!!
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BOOM!
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seem many 0.3333 sizes people ?
unless you intend to round down and cut out a few European countries !
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Control
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Better the devil you know
This is the view trotted out by all Americans who want the US to retain control of the internet.
I don't support the ITU's attempt to gain more control, but please don't portray the internet as an engineer-led project.
The US Dept of Commerce, DARPA, ICANN and other bureaucracies have consistently thwarted engineers' vision of what the internet could be since it was invented.
Just because the ITU is bad doesn't mean the status quo is good.
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Re: Better the devil you know
Or do you prefer our current setup?
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Re: Better the devil you know
The first web server as we know them was American...it's a NeXT Station that is still running.
The US holds the most DNS to DNS nodes than any other nation.
We invented it.
Google's Fiberoptic project failed because it was carried out in the middle of nowhere instead of on a Fiberoptic line on the East or West Coast of the US.
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Re: Re: Better the devil you know
Have you read the news lately?
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Re: Re: Better the devil you know
Have you been reading any of the articles across the web at all regarding Google Fiber? Because otherwise you wouldn't have written that.
Google Fiber is a roaring success. The fact that it is being conducted where it is is based on people in both cities (as well as the local city governments) asking for Google to conduct the project there. And what is now happening is that due to the cheap price for ridiculously fast fiber in the area, Kansas City (on both sides) is now being labeled the "Silicon Valley" of that entire area. Or better said it's hoped to be called that, as a surprising number of tech start-ups are moving to the area. Real estate has seen a boom due to people moving, projects are opening for entrepreneurs (home for hackers being one... which is a home was purchased with the express purpose of being rented, cheaply, to tech entrepreneurs/start-ups). And so on and so forth.
And that's not counting the fact that due to Google moving into the area and offering better services at cheaper prices the other telco companies/monopolies in the area are now being forced to actually compete and upgrade their services and lower their ridiculous prices. Which is a win for the consumers.
No Wally, that sentence of yours couldn't be more wrong/far from the truth. Me thinks your reality distortion field has you viewing things in an incorrect light.
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But I honestly doubt that's what Wally was referring to when he said the project was a failure.
Nonetheless, the project itself seems to be a success. It's provided a boom to the local real estate market, it's developing a new tech community outside of Silicon Valley/California, and it shows that fiber is something people want and that it can be delivered at a reasonable price (which shows that the other telco providers are really screwing us when they refuse to offer better services but are charging us more nonetheless).
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You still get the same connection speed vs distance issue when using Fiber Optics because of the way data is bounced about inside the cable. Eventually at a distance it gets faint and is quite expensive to rig up a repeater for that. All you have to do with copper wires is keep them charged so data can pass through.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's awesome that Google provides a fiber-optic system at lower costs for a city, but it's still a bit fast for normal web browsing.
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Copper has reached its limit for throughput. It can't do what fiber optics can. That's why ISP have been supplementing DSL with fiber.
"But then you've got latency issues."
Not fiber's fault. That's copper's fault.
"but it's still a bit fast for normal web browsing."
It is for now, but the internet exploded with new capabilities when broadband became available. However, you can do quite a lot of things at the same time with that connection: Stream HD video, download a game from Steam/GOG, shop on iTunes, use VoIP, upload to cloud storage, run bittorrent, etc. all at the same time. That sounds dandy to me.
Your basic argument is that Google fiber is a failure because the rest of the internet is slower. That's just plain stupid reasoning. How is anything going to change if everybody just stands pat? Huh? The internet won't expand if there is no infrastructure to support it. Thus, we need faster connections to enable more demanding services. It seems to me the problem isn't with fiber, but that there's still copper networks holding the fiber back. There's nothing wrong with the fiber networks, the copper networks are the problem, blame them. I do. If the rest of the internet was as fast as the Google fiber, I'd wager my only child that in 10 years, we'd find a way to saturate that and be wanting for more.
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As for building the infrastructure itself, all they had to do was build upon existing lines. According to FCC net neutrality rules, they wouldn't telcos would not be able to stop them from tapping into their networks.
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That would be completely pointless. The goal was to build new infrastructure that's faster than the old one, not piggyback on the old dusty piece of shit we have now. That's like building a new bridge on the foundation of an old crumbling bridge. It's just not a sound strategy.
As for their choice in location, I think it was brilliant. Put it right in one of the most under-served areas in America. It's not exactly Silicon Valley there and that's the point. Silicon Valley doesn't need more high speed internet, they already have it. The pyramid needs to be turned over. Putting it in an area already well served by high speed internet would have been a huge waste and it would have gone largely unnoticed. Put it in an area that generally doesn't have much high bandwidth service and people will notice. It's going to cause upheaval. It has to contrast with the norm. East and west coast doesn't contrast with this enough. In the Midwest, this sticks out like a sore thumb. People take stand up and take notice. Which is the whole point of this entire venture. Google wants to put ISP's on notice. They better upgrade their networks or someone else will take their market away from them.
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I do have one question though...how much does it cost a person to get a fiber optic connection out in the middle of nowhere?
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We've got the DMCA, corporate paywalls, 9 year old girls being scared out of their pajamas from an early morning raid, MPAA, RIAA, US Congress, NSA, ICE, FBI, IFPI, BFI, Russia, and China, just to *cough* name a few, who are breaking it every day.
If the ITU wants to be a regulatory entity, then perhaps they should realize the burden they're about to take when it's the above "internet break community" who is asking for a single-most ruling party.
Well, it was nice knowing you, internet. Soon, you will be nothing short of ads, stores, and any article writing about the truth will be seen as treason, make the writer subject to death.
Tim Berners-Lee, you should have patented the internet, if only to ensure licenses kept these asses from trying to ruin your creation.
But that's just my opinion.
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uh, that's what it's been for a some time now.
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Jobs
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This is the view trotted out by all Americans who want the US to retain control of the internet."
Maybe you should do some research and look up the following acronym.
ARPANET
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
The so called "status quo" argument concerning the internet as you put it, is touted by those in nations that suppress the ideals of the Internet, or they just can't stomach that a group of Americans actually came together in an independant engineering project to create something.
ARPANET was the tested for sending data from one computer to the next over a long distance. Either you're trolling, or clearly don't know the history of the Internet.
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@ "telcos who want money for internet things they had nothing to do with."
Don't let internet pioneer Mike "Streisand Effect" Masnick be forgotten on his own blog!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Think how we'd all be better off if he'd never made his one quip!
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Re: @ "telcos who want money for internet things they had nothing to do with."
The real threat of Megaupload and similar services is that they allow artists to find an audience, and make money without resorting to the use of the MAFIAA.
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Re: @ "telcos who want money for internet things they had nothing to do with."
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Re: Re: @ "telcos who want money for internet things they had nothing to do with."
This is one of Blue's one-way streets.
According to him, the prices set by the market are supposed to include the sunk costs of making his $100,000 movie, but anyone who builds a system to locate or distribute any content, like Google or Megaupload, are just grifters who have their operating and overhead costs paid by mystical magical fairies and all the revenue generated is free gravy.
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Re: @ "telcos who want money for internet things they had nothing to do with."
oh, dang, did i just eviscerate your argument? Im sorry, here, *takes two bloody pieces of argument from the ground and hands them back to OotB*, you can have these back.
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The USA goes after dotcom and others around the world, the world strikes back.
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Fast Internet Growth
The telephone was developed in 1870, and by 1900 had started to take off. The most recent number I have heard is 6 of the world's 7 billion people have access to a phone line (land or cell). Almost 100 years to reach that type of penetration. The internet by contrast was developed in the 1960s and commercialized in the early 90s. It has already reached over 2 billion people. (If anyone could find penetration rates over time to compare that would be awesome)
Now I do believe that governments can have a role in helping the internet grow, but the governments I see pushing for ITU control don't appear (to me) to have the goal in mind.
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"Fix" has multiple meanings
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Re: "Fix" has multiple meanings
Don't forget the slang definitions too: Both of those might be applicable. The ITU could be looking to fix (castrate) the internet in order to make sure that they get their fixes (bribes) from the legacy telcos.
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Re: "Fix" has multiple meanings
The word is "Rig" but they put "Fix" because they couldn't find a word that describes "Changing the game to favor you" Oh I mean "Level the playing field."
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But what does the ITU want to change?
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Re: But what does the ITU want to change?
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Increasing Online Censorship is Inevitable
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Re: Increasing Online Censorship is Inevitable
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The internet's Dad.....
He said that these people at the ITU are serious about doing whatever they could to gain control or revenue streams off the internet. He said it's a pretty serious threat and he's definitely the kind of guy you pay attention to on issues concerning the web.
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Not just governments
Leaving that out is a disservice to your readers.
Internet gets build where there is demand for it.
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jxjxjj
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