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

[Evan Leibovitch]

I broadly agree with Olivier's response to Milton's blog entry on the issue.

http://www.internetgovernance.org/2012/12/13/what-really-happened-in-dubai/#comment-3757

 The linkage of the resolution to the less-publicized side work on creating
international standards for Deep Packet Inspection is important, arguably
critical.

Perhaps the most damning part of the treaty process was the concept of
asserting state "rights" as equivalent or superior to human rights. Sure,
every country is sovereign, but countries -- like corporations -- (IMO) are
not entitled to treaty-defined rights as people are. Indeed, assertions of
human rights are usually done to counter imposition of state "rights" over
its citizenry.

ICANN has dodged a bullet here, but the outcome must not be seen as an
approval (or non-rejection) of "business as usual". The ALAC "R3" paper,
started almost a year ago, seeks to make ICANN more responsive and better
able to address the challenges made to it in Dubai. I welcome NCSG
participation in it, as indicated by Mary's mention in another email thread
here. I was delighted with the beginning of the NPOC engagement with it in
Toronto<https://community.icann.org/display/gnsocouncilmeetings/Multi-stakeholder+process+from+the+NGO+perspective+Toronto+2012-10-17>and
look forward to NCUC's participation as well.

- Evan



On 15 December 2012 10:05, Alex Gakuru <gakuru at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>>>
>>
>>
>


-- 
Evan Leibovitch
Toronto Canada

Em: evan at telly dot org
Sk: evanleibovitch
Tw: el56
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