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Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

duffy.house.gov

81–90 of 101 posts

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#81
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.

I agree this is a problem worth solving. But shouldn't it be solved for every country, not just the US?

As a non-US citizen, I find it strange that matters of global internet governance are discussed with apparently mostly arguments about US-specific issues.

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#82
post #25

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?

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.

What exactly is yours? The german internet exchange points? The hunderds of chinese internet start-ups?

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#83

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?

The world trusts the United States to correctly manage the foremost reserve currency. Many countries trust our military to protect them in times of need.

I agree that making it more international is ostensibly a good thing, but in reality I haven't seen a good argument that the world, or the internet, would actually be better off.

Specifically, while countries like the US don't have perfect human rights track records, we are much better than countries like China. And if we're going to give them even a bit of control of this infrastructure because "its the right thing to do", well, I can't agree with that.

Yes, there are practically philosophical questions like "who gave us the right do manage this" or "what happens if we screw it up?", but in reality we're doing a pretty great job and until that changes I think internationalizing it would just be trying to fix something that isn't broken.

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#84
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.

I recently did a lot of research into this as part of a project. As far as actual laws on the books (and not whatever one's political opinion of how they tend to be applied), the U.S. isn't just "one of" - it is literally the only country in the world matching descriptions like "first-world", "liberal", and "democratic", that does not have some variety of broad, nation-level laws against insulting people or groups of people. Aside from the U.S., only a handful of completely random small countries happen to lack such laws.

So, as far as I can tell, the U.S. is practically unique in having the most liberal free speech protections, and actually unique among any countries that could be considered peers.

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#85
post #50

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.

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?

The DHS seems to have seized non-US domains in the past on disputed legal grounds.[1]

I'm not completely sure, but I'd think a transfer to a non-US entity would make this harder in the future.

[1] http://blog.easydns.org/2012/02/29/verisign-seizes-com-domai...

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#86
post #83

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?

The world trusts the United States to correctly manage the foremost reserve currency. Many countries trust our military to protect them in times of need. I agree that making it more international is ostensibly a good thing, but in reality I haven't seen a good argument that the world, or the internet, would actually be better off. Specifically, while countries like the US don't have perfect human rights track records…

By that logic you could get rid of the complete UN though.

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#87
post #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.

Cruz and other Republicans have been raising concerns over this matter for over two years now [1]. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Sanders.

[1] http://www.thedomains.com/2014/04/02/35-senators-demand-answ...

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#88
post #39

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 we have the world's largest military and the world's reserve currency, and use these to balance global security so that postwar liberal democratic norms are protected. Freedom of speech is one of them. We are therefore the only entity in a position to ensure that the internet remains free.

If this is the case, wouldn't you also have a responsibility to level the playing field for other web search providers or social networks in addition to Google and Facebook, so a free market is ensured and free speech couldn't be harmed by decisions of individuals within those two companies?

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#89
post #25

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?

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.

> Well, it's ours.

No (t really).

> We created it.

Yes (mostly, originally).

> We've allowed other countries to use it because it benefits us to do so.

It is a distributed network. It is composed of pieces owned by different principals, content created by different people and code and technology contributed by the entire world. If the U.S. were to close its internet today, and block any connection to the outside world, it might crash the web for days or weeks, but after that, the dependencies on U.S. controlled infrastructure would be quickly replaced, and the U.S. would be left with a national intranet, while the rest of the world would have the Internet. Hell, even for DNS, which is the specific system in question here, it is not so much "the U.S. owns DNS" but "a large number of DNS servers, owned by different parties, have pretty much agreed to replicate the U.S.'s version of the DNS registry and trust it as authoritative". They could be set to replicate a root DNS server in Geneva, Brussels or even Beijing within hours. In some ways, other countries allowed the U.S. to dictate how domains are assigned because it benefits them to do so (and because ICANN has been for the most part a trusted arbiter of the DNS system).

I am not even in favor of a U.N. controlled Internet, based on what I know is likely to happen if this move occurs now (the U.S. is, depressingly, among the least Internet-hostile countries in the world right now... and it is hostile enough). I actually like ICANN and how they do things, for the most part. "If it ain't broken don't fix it" and all that. But this whole "we own the entire Internet because it started here" sentiment is as ridiculous as if, say, China were to claim that they own all of the world printed money because they invented paper money originally.

Re: Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

#90
post #86
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world trusts the United States to correctly manage the foremost reserve currency. Many countries trust our military to protect them in times of need. I agree that making it more international is ostensibly a good thing, but in reality I haven't seen a good argument that the world, or the internet, would actually be better off. Specifically, while countries like the US don't have perfect human rights track records…

By that logic you could get rid of the complete UN though.

That would be nice actually
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