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

[Alex Gakuru]

Allow me to add something I said somewhere last week causing some laughter,
".. starting with demilitarizing the Internet."

On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 5:58 PM, Alex Gakuru <gakuru at gmail.com> wrote:

> Eloquently put! The real problem is not nor has been the Internet per se
> but its unprecedented societal order transforming success –
> instantaneousness, equally placing everyone on the same platform. Then the
> publics/participants responding by transferring their most varied motives
> online resulting in ages old societal conflicts and humans interaction
> tensions replaying online.
>
>  Given your illustrated cultural, traditional, religious, human nature,
> infrastructural instruments, among other, interactions challenges, how/can
> these tensions be eradicated such that when everyone connected is
> all-smiles online? Or yet another illuminating case for global attitudes
> overhaul ;-)
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Marc Perkel <marc at churchofreality.org>wrote:
>
>> 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.
>>
>
>
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