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Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

duffy.house.gov

41–50 of 101 posts

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#41
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's ours. We created it. We've allowed other countries to use it because it benefits us to do so. I realize this is probably not the popular opinion, but I'm not sure it makes any sense really to give up control over it.

Also, they have a point about the free speech. For a system in which free speech is indispensable (the internet), there is actually only a handful of countries that seem to get the whole "free speech" thing correct, the US among them.

And even then, the government agencies most involved in shutting down sites don't have the greatest track record of transparency and human rights.

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#42
post #5

While this seems rational, is this a play for them to gain some 'net credibility to start pushing harder to kill Net Neutrality? Aren't the players coming out in favour of this bill the same ones who have been arguing against NN? [1] I'd be wary of letting any of these folks have a say on the future of the internet. [1] ie: Heritage Action: http://heritageaction.com/agenda/strong-economy/internet-fre... TechFreedom:…

Agreed. There are very few people about whom I feel this way, but if Cruz supports something that sounds good to me, I'm hanging on to my wallet until I figure out the scam.

(Not that this law necessarily sounds good to me.)

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#44
Cruz fighting for internet freedom, Obama expanding social welfare after cutting it, Clinton fighting for healthcare and minimum wage.

I'm not trying to make this political but thank you Bernie Sanders. After the success of Bernie's grassroots movement traditional politicians are trying to appeal to the more progressive portion of the population since Trump controls the angry.

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#45

As an international user, it is in my opinion fantastic that the White House is attempting to cede control of key internet infrastructure. Why should a single country act as the custodians of a global service?

Because it's ours. We were just were kind enough to let you use it.

Tenuously was yours (since the original internet (in the sense of a global network) was a connection of multiple networks and not all of them where in the US, far from it) it certainly isn't anymore.

The UK had JANET in the late-70's/early 80's other countries had similar, the US was important and influential but the internet would have existed anyway, the concept of connecting a bunch of disparate networks together to form a single internetwork is one of those things that would have happened anyway.

There are 5-6 times as many users outside the US as in the US, most of the equipment running it isn't even made in the US anymore.

So far the arguments I've seen on here have been "well we set it up so it's ours forever" which by that logic means we own all the telecoms systems in the world (we been the UK) as well as all the railways.... (which is absurd but then so is "it's ours" in relation to the internet).

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, they have a point about the free speech. For a system in which free speech is indispensable (the internet), there is actually only a handful of countries that seem to get the whole "free speech" thing correct, the US among them.

I'm not sure that we're among them as much as we'd like to think. Certainly if your speech is "Whistleblowing", you don't want to be in the US.

Well if you whistleblow in the US, you end up in front of a judge (after a probably very unpleasant stay in a cell for a bit). You end up in prison forever. Really bad time. As for the journalists who published what you leaked? Free speech yo!

Whisleblow in China. You don't end up in front of a judge, you end up at the bottom of the ocean. And the journalists who published what you whistleblew? Likewise. And the people who tweet about it, or talk about it at work, and the websites who previous hosted it are suddenly down for maintenance...

So is the US a free speech utopia? Probably not, but I don't know of any other countries where the Westboro Baptist Church could last for so long...

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#47
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this. I like being able to know that a site is trustworthy based on it having a .gov domain name.

I mean... do you really want to have to guess whether congress.gov is run by the government, or some random country which decided to sell of .gov TLDs for extra cash? Or, potentially more deceptively to consumers, "healthcare.gov", etc.

The other option is not giving it over to some random country. As I understand it, the other option would be giving the assignment of top-level domains to ITU or some similar agency within UN, which would then delegate .gov and .mil and other things to US.

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#48
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this. I like being able to know that a site is trustworthy based on it having a .gov domain name.

I mean... do you really want to have to guess whether congress.gov is run by the government, or some random country which decided to sell of .gov TLDs for extra cash? Or, potentially more deceptively to consumers, "healthcare.gov", etc.

[deleted]

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#49

As an international user, it is in my opinion fantastic that the White House is attempting to cede control of key internet infrastructure. Why should a single country act as the custodians of a global service?

As an international user, your country isn't going to get control of it.

If it goes through the UN, some amalgamation of theocracies, dictatorships, and kleptocracies will take control of it. The worst-case scenario is quite bad.

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#50
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's ours. We created it. We've allowed other countries to use it because it benefits us to do so. I realize this is probably not the popular opinion, but I'm not sure it makes any sense really to give up control over it.

Also, they have a point about the free speech. For a system in which free speech is indispensable (the internet), there is actually only a handful of countries that seem to get the whole "free speech" thing correct, the US among them.

We're not talking about some kind of Aquinas Protocol here, but rather who controls the DNS root zone. How much censorship potential is there, really? Especially when it's likely to end up being managed by committee, which basically means nothing gets done unless everyone agrees?
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