The fight for internet freedom

Dear Reader,

Very often in the past, when I defended Wikileaks or Anonymous and spoke out against censorship and filtering, Glynsky disagreed. Maybe the following will make it a bit clearer for him.

When the internet became popular, in the early to mid 90s, a common phrase was:

The internet is the well of the global village.

This statement is true on many levels.
People go online to get information. Which many call the "oil of the 21st century". Information is almost as important today, as water was in medieval times.
And like then, people also go to "the well" to socialize. To gossip, have fun, communicate, debate, get to know people. In this regard, the internet functions exactly like the medieval village well. Just on a much bigger scale.
And, maybe even more importantly, the village well was part of the commons.
No single person or group of people owned the well and its water.
It was built together and owned together. It was a public space, open to everyone.
For a few decades now, we see a shrinking of public, common space. I pointed that out here already. And a similar trend can be seen online.

The latest attempt to get the internet under control comes from an obscure organization called ITU, the International Telecommunication Union. That UN body dates back to the times of telegraphs. And they are a bit stuck in those days.

But there is an interesting twist in this ITU thing.

In the recent past, whenever governments tried to regulate, control, censor the internet, main stream media was silent. And politicians were all in favor of it.
You know, to protect our children, and copyright businesses, fight cyber terrorists, (insert other bullshit here), etc.

Remember, the fight against SOPA, PIPA, and all the other acronym monsters was lead by the internet community. Main stream media were not interested at first. They only got aboard, when the shitstorms were too big to ignore anymore.

Yet this time, main stream media are all over the place. And all of a sudden, western politicians are defending internet freedoms. Sounds crazy? It sure does.

The reason they are yelling now is, the ITU includes members like Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and a bunch of other states, that want to reduce US influence over the internet. And censor the internet more. Let's not forget, ICANN is an American corporation under regulation of the US government.

And now all of a sudden, US and EU politicians discover freedom of the internet.
You can read it here (quote):

Neelie Kroes, the VP of the EU Commission and in charge of the EU's Digital Agenda tweeted simply:

The internet works, it doesn't need to be regulated by ITR treaty. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Consider me completely stunned. The internet isn't broke? It does not need fixing?
But what about the children? And all those cyber terrorists? Where did they go?

Our politicians are as bigot as a child molesting priest.
Whenever it suits them, the internet needs more regulation.
And whenever it does not, well, then everything is fine.

Make sure to memorize those statements from your politicians.
We will need them, when they are introducing the next legislation to control and/or censor the internet. Which I guess we will see within the next six months.

Now I need a drink to get over the bigotry.

Stay sane,
Engine Room