US, UK and Canada refuse to sign UN's internet treaty

[Marc Perkel]

My problem is that no matter how benign a treaty might sound in the
beginning it would lead to the creation of an infrastructure to allow
enforcement. Once you have an international infrastructure of control
who is to say the rules might change? So something might start out as
the society for the protection of cute kittens organizing to stop child
porn and end up with the thought police installing chips in your brain.

And you can imagine where this would go when it comes to "religiously
offensive" materials sent across the internet. There are many countries
where not believing in God caries the death penalty, as well as
believing in God the wrong way. I can imagine what would happen between
Christians and Muslims on an Internet with a central control
infrastructure. There was a story recently where a man who was a
non-believer determined that a crying statue of the Virgin Mary was
caused by a leaky sewer pipe and he's being prosecuted for it. Imagine
what a threat it would be to realists if those views could be enforced
across international borders.

And what about uprisings? The Arab Spring was organized online. Would we
be obligated to censor the cries of the oppressed and tortured because
of treaty obligations of the oppressing country?

The bottom line for me is that some criminality is the price we pay for
freedom and it's worth it. Once you put in an infrastructure to stop the
bad guys then that infrastructure can, and most certainly will, be used
against the rest of us. So I support our resistance to any treaty or
domestic law to centrally control the internet.