Quote: "Governments don't understand the internet"
The way i see it the government dont understand the internet because there isnt a clear definition of how the internet works on the international level. and as long as that remains the case governments cant really take control of the internet.
Now i read this article yesterday that has to do with the international internet control thing thats going on. Russia proposed to establish clear definitions of basic concepts of the internet on the international level, Once the mechanism of the internet and its definition has been defined, they would integrate the function of ICNN into the international law under the jurisdiction of the UN. This would establish international framework of laws that would be able to control the internet or at least it would make it a little easier to establish some sort of control on the international level. China, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Algir, Bahrain all supported Russia's plan.
Another issue is Will this work and if it will then how long will it last. Because with the quickly evolving networking and IT technology, this international framework of laws will need to keep up with the evolving technologies constantly updating laws. I doubt such system will last long enough to remain relevant.
Another point i want to bring up is that to me it seemes too sudden that governments all over the world so suddenley started talking about internet control when they simply didnt care before. If i am not wrong, the US government started pushing a lot more activley with their Sopas and Pipas sometime after the wiki leaks scandals and hacker groups exposed the skeletons in the closets of the government. These events were followed by the governments ideas of killswitches and blocking traffic into the US from other countries etc. I dont know how the internet was the Arab countries before but the Arab spring gave those governments reasons to tighten the control over the internet. Russia is a good example because i live here and i know that Russian internet is like the wild west of the world wide web. The laws were tightened up in the early 2000s so the internet providers would have some legal protection from swarms of hackers who would constantly steal massive amounts of free traffic, Combined with some half-assed attempts to combat piracy the Ru-Net was still Anarchy.
Then last december during the elections the anti government activists did their thing with the web and dug up some dirt on how government youth orgonisations launder and pocket budget money (not that such things are uncommon but in this case it was too close for comfort for the govenment) Then there was a massive opposition propoganda campaign that cost the ruling party some 60 (out of 300) seats in the parlament. Again, this was too close for comfort for the russian government not to mention that around that time they were speaking out against the measures the States wanted to take for the control of traffic and defended the idea of free uncensored internet. Now Russia would look like an ass if they suddenley changed their stance on the issue. So first they launched their own huge counter-propoganda campaign on the internet which was a sucess (they made such cool looking political propoganda clips, i was hooked
) Threw around a bunch of big words like extremism and drugs which paved ground for reasons to censor the internet and went along making an epic blacklist of websites most of which are political.
but anyway, my point is that before the recent few years i think the only country that really took internet control seriously was China. I think this really started when the internet was used as informational weapon against governments, before most of the countries couldn't care less.
And from what i am hearing, China these days is starting to struggle containing their internet so much that they are more oftern forced to turn a blind eye toward most violations.
dont hate people who rip you off,cheat and get away with it, learn from them
