(oops cedes)

Pertinent to business, particularly etailers;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...n-agreement-us

GG capitalism.
Expect to see the internet shaped by 'government consensus', where countries like China have a say in how things are done. We will see systematic, web-wide filters and censorship in the next 10-15 years, probably under some sort of pretext related to "child pornography" or "preventing terrorism" or "stopping trademark infringement". Also, enjoy the days of tax-free net shopping while you still have them. Enjoy the days of your development costs being limited to development and hosting. Enjoy it now...

Sad sad news. Atlas Shrugged is ever so slowly taking place in the real world.

Isn't this a good thing? I trust the ICANN more if it works together with several countries than a single one, imo. It's not like the US has it's questionable governments every few years.

I disagree. In Atlas Shrugged, producers from all over the entire world went on strike, and I just don't think that's the case here.

The internet you see today is a result of three things.
The United States consumer, capitalism in general and porn. Two- possibly all three- of those things will likely endure grave impacts in the years to come, as far as how they relate to the internet.

We ain't talking about the Netherlands here. Places like Communist China, Iran, Saudi Arabia- assorted, shtty little irrelevant Crapistans all around the globe now have an effective "say" in how the internet is run.

There is much to be said for benevolent dictatorship when the dictator in question is the most qualified guy for the job... I wouldn't have minded if it went to Australia, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands- who cares. Making it an "international body" will change things, big. We now have to halt progress in order to make sure that Tuvalu is heard... We may have to integrate functions into the entire web in order to appease one or two oppressive countries. It's bad. We just traded the kindly devil we knew for one we don't know.

Sure it would be bad if they would go to country X and ask what changes they want to be implemented. But I really doubt that's going to happen. It sounds to me they just went on their own and are open for suggestions from other governments.

I agree with you that's it bad if they would affiliate with one random country, like China, and would change the internet to it's liking.

Uh yeah this isn't net censorship, but if it were it's probably going to cumulate in 2012 where the US censors everyone and ends the world somehow

You can't ignore the realities of power indefinitely. Better to give up some control voluntarily than look like a feeble old man clutching the trophies of his glory years.

Can anyone explain how a centralized entity can "change the internet"? Are we pretty much talking about censorship only? Is there any reason to think ICANN is interested in censoring anything?

I don't think the US "had control of the internet" nor if they did that they would give it up. But if they did why wouldn't that be good?

Hopefully watchmaker can explain it, but my understanding is that ICANN could control where domain traffic goes. In the US it seems like they don't interfere. If some anti-gambling country gets involved they might try to influence ICANN to prevent people from accessing a poker site or twoplustwo for example, claiming that gambling money funds terrorism or something. Countries like China have already demonstrated that they will take extreme censorship measures (like block all of youtube) and it might be dangerous to allow them to influence things outside their area of control.

I believe there would also be technical implications involving registrars and maybe this will lead to people only being able to use globally approved web-hosts. I don't know enough about this, hopefully someone else can explain it.

It doesn't seem right that the US controls it, but if they alternative is having countries with insane censorship laws control it then I will go with the US 100%

The internet was designed to survive 90% destruction in case of nuclear war. Every government in the world in trying to extend control in EVERY phase of life... with varying results. The internet may become less convenient for you... but for hardcore uses like emergency communications it will survive. It functioned reasonably well in the recent Iranian uprising... with the Iranian government using ALL available resources to shut it down.

The REAL PROBLEM is the other way around. Law enforcement has methodically used the internet and SCARE TACTICS to dispose of virtually ALL of your rights.

It would be a reasonable guess that 50% of 2+2 posters here surf free porn on a regular basis. Since very questionable material is mixed in with the legal stuff... and one is often redirected to sleazy malware sites... I would guess that 100% of free porn surfers would FAIL a forensic examination for child porn. They will ALWAYS find something... even one grainy, questionable pic. Or they will plant some. Once you are being investigated for the big CP or "terrorist activity"... your rights are gone... everything you own can be seized... you are guilty until proven innocent. You will plea bargain it down to 12 months in a cell with Bubba.

But that's not the point.

The point is that because of the Net...
And porn and "terrorist activity", etc, etc...
The police have you totally by the balls...
In a way that was only possible...
In a Totalitarian State one generation ago.

Better start learning how to use that encryption software...
But that just proves you are guilty of something anyway.

Welcome to Animal Farm.

i would love to see a cite for this. anything really

I have no idea about the rest... but I am sure more than 50% of 2+2 readers surf/download free porn online.

The sky is not falling.

how do you REALLY feel about this, watchmaker?

Maybe it was designed to do so, but in today's world, this is not even close to reality.

A few years ago, there was a fire in the Baltimore tunnel, and all of internet went down for 100s of miles in the whole DC region. This sort of stuff occurs fairly regularly, because as much as we say Internet is decentralized, it is not. Technically, traffic is carried by millions of small pipelines, but realistically, 99% of the data is carried by a handful of huge pipelines. You could essentially kill Internet access to a whole continent by severing a handful underwater traffic lines, for example.

Not yet, but it is starting to visibly buckle and make weird groaning noises...