Sadly, I am not going to be happy if _anybody_ but me (or my legal tutors if I was underage, wich isn't the case) tells me what I can or cannot browse in Internet.

I would feel like I was being called inmature and unable to filter and decide about teh contents that are available. Before anybody starts with the "good censoring" thing, I still think that instead of banning racist websites we should be educating people to avoid those by default. No more public, no more websites. Internet contents are based on what people wants from the internet, and no government should be able to force their say on it.

EDIT: And Ray Tomlinson invented email and the current @ to separate username and domainame in emails. Do I get a , Fain?

To take a product on the scale of the Internet away from its owner and forcibly give it to someone else sounds too communist for me. Other people are more than welcome to make a superior net as an alternative to the Internet if they don't like the existing one. And that includes not just foreigners but also Americans who perhaps have issues with the current setup and want to make something better.

There are three dangers in letting international bureaucrats run things. 1) Large centralized bureaucracies are more efficient than extremely large even more centralized bureaucracies, and so you risk losing efficiency. 2) The UN and many foreign powers are much more prone to censoring ideas and unpopular speech than America. Even our neighbour to the north, Canada, is worse than America in that regard. (I've actually found such banned things educational. You cannot combat a disagreeable ideology if you do not understand it, and you sure cannot ever understand it if you are denied the ability to study it.) As my favorite philosophy John Stuart Mill promoted, the intellectual health of society is entirely dependent on the diversity of ideas competing for your support. Thus any bureaucracy that censors any idea on the Internet is bad. It also opens the doors for things like Saudi Arabia lobbying for a world-wide ban of sites critical of their government, or France and China lobbying for a world-wide ban of sites selling books they don't let their people read. 3) Putting it in political hands will make it a political football that will be shaped as "that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation..." (to paraphrase John Stuart Mill). Some believe that putting it the hands of an international body means "no one will control it"; this is as incorrect. GATT is billed to be a free trade agreement, implying no one controls trade. Yet the WTO it created does control trade. So I'd see an international bureaucracy controlling the Internet as on par with how the WTO interacts with trade.

*shivers* NO way in hell...Al Gore made the internet my foot. What a load of crap... I still can believe he said that. unless I misunderstood him he said he created the internet. Just him all by himself. Right?

Seeing as France are my neighbours, where could I grab a list of forbidden books? In Spain we have not "forbidden readings" but there's forbidden distribution lists making it ilegal to sell/share/distribute neo-nazism or racist propaganda, and many books that attempt against human rights are not going to be edited because the editorial and the author would be rightfully sued (for apology of racist/terrorism/sexism, wich is a legal offense)
And damm glad I am of that. I would prefer certain ideas to be removed from society, specially those that are there to hurt other human beings or just extinguish them because they have a different race.

Because international organisations manage things so well

Plus there's always stuff like China's massive censorship system, and Greece's attempted ban on video games. Stuff like that is indicative of how a global organisation in charge of the 'net would end up.

On the subject of objective posting and investigation, I'd like to point you to the about page of the source pointed by Visaeris:
http://www.heritage.org/about/

"Our Mission
Founded in 1973, The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institute - a think tank - whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense."

The article is about how bad is the UN and how good are the USA ignoring them.

Also, since when China and Greece are international orgs?

Ok.. And? They're upfront about their bias, hence the reader needs to weigh it in. Every source is biased, not every source states it up front.

Besides, was just one of the first links that popped up, and I didn't feel like digging for something that everyone would consider "suitably neutral".



They're not. They are, however, other nations. Hence they would be involved. See where I'm going with this or would you like a diagram?

I somehow doubt very much China would be allowed into an international "internet" organization considering they have a large history of ignoring human rights and freedom of almost everything.

Regarding greece:
http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,57305,00.html
Seems europe considers that law anti-constitutional, so even if they were part of a larger organization they wouldn't be able to pull those things against the general will of Europe (and teh USA, and Australia, and who knows who more).

China couldn't very well be denied if it was an "international" organization could it? Given that 25% of the planet is Chinese, I can only imagine the turmoil if an internation organization was created and then major countries were banned.

Hahahaha



http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/mrr2005.pdf <-- A list of the most represive governments on the planet.

"Significantly, six of the eighteen most repressive governments--those of China, Cuba, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe--are members of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), representing nearly 11 percent of the 53-member body."

If 11% of the Comission on Human Rights is marked amongst the most repressive governments in the world.. Why wouldn't those same people be allowed to dictate what occurs on the net?

As easy as saying "Nations who want to join need to adhere to the following rules" and including freedom and defense of freedom on them.
After all, that's what internet was about, freedom to communicate

Probably they would just say they're out of said organization and develop their own ChinaNet.

You probably haven't seen my reply yet, but this merits being said anyways..

We don't do that for other organisations that are specifically about freedom(See: UN, UN Commission on Human Rights, etc~). Why would we do it about the Internet, even if it's about freedom to communicate?

Your speculations have what basis? Can you cite anything to even remotely back that up as that's exactly what China is not doing...

I am just pointing that they have the power, the people and the technical level to set a net for themselves if they were not agreeing with an hipothetical organization that controlled internet. Not to say they'e a big enough market for many bussiness to adapt to their rules (some online games already have done so regarding some controls about daily time played)

It's like the USA and the UN. They belong to the UN, but if they disagree they just do whatever they want because they have the power.

Planning on addressing the whole "Well China couldn't do anything because they violate human rights" thing that I debunked?

It all depends on who starts an organization. There're several countries that aren't on international organizations due to not compliying with the rules of said organizations. Not everybody is in the UN, and some of them are very happy to keep to their own ideas and not submiting to them. I think one of the two Koreas isn't on the UN for example, not sure about that.

Regarding the problems with an international organization for the "control" of internet, let's use a field like adult-oriented websites, because it's a fact they're banned on some major countries, like China.

To get China in that International Internet Organization, you would have to ban that kind of websites worldwide, wich would be against many country freedoms and would destroy a lot of job positions, so that wouldn't be a popular move. Of course, you can not ban them, but then China would keep banning them (and so, going against that organization rule) or just leave said organization. I doubt China would change their banning policies (that theoretically protect their citizens moral and mind) just to be on any organization.

My worry over banning bad ideas is that there is a tendency to ban good ideas when a corrupt entity comes into power. Though perhaps I'm a tad touchy on that since my top four favorite sci-fi books are "1984" (OK, hardly sci-fi, but close), "Anthem", "Farenheit 451", and "Brave New World", where in each book the dominant national or world power extinguished from mankind through censorship the ideas they felt were destructive for humans to cognize and consider. Those worlds are what scare me most in life, and I'd hate to see that come into fruition by means of the Internet. If an idea is truly bad then I have faith it will be rejected by a society that is good and intellectually enlightened. And if a society is not good and intellectually enlightened then it is probably doomed anyway no matter what gets censored.

Actually, I feel like sharing a very personal story, which I normally don't do on the forums. But this was a very thought provoking and moving experience I had recently that this thread reminds me of, and I have not really been able to share it with anyone I know personally.

A friend of mine used to think fondly of a certain white nationalist organization in America and its founder. The group puts on a very polished professional look and makes very well thought out arguments for their cause, trying to avoid things that provoke negative reactions from those who may be on the fence with their ideology. Essentially peddling ideas like "self improvement" and "let's help our own and try not to dictate to other races how they should live their lives". I like to call it racism-light since it does the best job possible hiding its destructive side and putting a happy face on it. It is sort of like a "gateway drug" into full blown extremist racism of the violent sort.

For my own educational enlightenment, I have been trying to research fringe political movements in America, including not just the above white nationalist group but also black nationalists, communists, anarchists, conspiracy kooks, etc. (And by some strange twist of fate, I have had over time friends from all of the above classifications!) So a few months ago I read a book written by the founder of the above group my friend liked, and it is quite possibly the most sick and disturbing thing I have ever read. Anyone with a weak stomach could very easily vomit from just reading it. It was the book that McVeigh tried to mimic a scene in when he blew up the Oklahoma federal building. This book, though, was written for its inner recruits. It laid raw their real agenda and stomach-churning ideology of mass genocide and fascism. By sharing passages of this book, I caused my friend to have somewhat of a change of opinion. I believe that anyone who reads that awful book and finds it agreeable, like McVeigh did, is a lost cause; such people were already racists before they read the book and there is no hope for changing their mind. But when I shared it with someone who was not truly racist but was nonetheless being persuaded by their public facade, it revealed that group's real ideology in its full and I believe caused them to lose a supporter. Yet if I lived a few miles to the north in Canada then I would have been arrested since the book is illegal there, and this friend would likely have only been able to see their polished toned-down racism-light.

I'm not sure what to make of it, but I found it to be a surprising yet powerful personal experience. I have thought about it often.

Fascinating, Roark. That is certainly a unique twist on censorship I had not considered as I've never had such a personal experience.

Roark, your friend would have only seen the nice facade until some friend of him show him the real book (wich illegaly exists in Canada, I am sure) and then he would be sick and probably dennounce them for writing that kind of books wich are ilegal in Canada.

And then, one book less published to hurt people brains. And one less way to distribute it to hurt people.

Of course, in a free nation like america, that guy can probably sell that book in libraries, where any idiot with a vacuum between his ears can read it, and say "OMG THIS IDEA POWNS LET'S EXPLODE SOMETHING". Empty heads tend to be filled with the nearest thing at hand.

Here racism-neonazi-allthatcrap propaganda isn't allowed to be distributed. Less people get near it. In fact, most people wouldn't read it anyway. But it's more difficult for them to grab more adepts to this kind of causes.