Trans-Pacific Partnership Talks Begin For Global Internet Censorship Plan

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Trans-Pacific Partnership Talks Begin For Global Internet Censorship Plan
April 24, 2014 Old-Thinker News Reports, Technology - Future Trends No comments
Old-Thinker News | April 24, 2014


By Daniel Taylor

President Obama has begun a week long campaign in Asia to promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The TPP, sold as a “free trade agreement” has been criticized as allowing another wave of outsourcing similar to the 1994 NAFTA agreement. The TPP will also create an international “internet police” that will have the power to censor content and remove whole websites. Mega corporations will gain more power to wage war against competition and censor speech online. To demonstrate the influence these entities have, over 600 corporate advisers have helped create the TPP.

The TPP would require all countries involved to align their laws with the agreements copyright laws. The Electronic Frontier Foundation says of the TPP,

“TPP raises significant concerns about citizens’ freedom of expression, due process, innovation, the future of the Internet’s global infrastructure, and the right of sovereign nations to develop policies and laws that best meet their domestic priorities.”

Food safety will also be impacted by the TPP, as it could allow corporations like Monsanto to force genetically modified crops into TPP countries. In 2010, Obama appointed Islam Siddiqui to be the Chief Agricultural Negotiator for the United States. Siddiqui is the former Vice President for Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife America, a Monsanto front group. He is working with the administration on the TPP.

Senator Ron Wyden strongly opposed the TPP in remarks to Congress in 2012. Wyden pointed out that the U.S. Congress is being kept in the dark on details of the agreement. Wyden stated,

“…the majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations – like Halliburton, Chevron, PHRMA, Comcast, and the Motion Picture Association of America – are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement.”

The TPP is being met with opposition from internet freedom groups. The website stopthesecrecy.net started a petition to block the TPP. The petition now has over 2 million signatures.


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Food safety will also be impacted by the TPP, as it could allow corporations like Monsanto to force genetically modified crops into TPP countries. In 2010, Obama appointed Islam Siddiqui to be the Chief Agricultural Negotiator for the United States. Siddiqui is the former Vice President for Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife America, a Monsanto front group. He is working with the administration on the TPP.

GMO's winning... :wow: and I thought the internet part was scary as is...
 
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How The FCC Plans Neuter The Net, Even As The FCC Insists Everyone's Got It All Wrong | Techdirt

How The FCC Plans Neuter The Net, Even As The FCC Insists Everyone's Got It All Wrong
from the from-net-neutrality-to-a-neutered-net dept
So, we already wrote about why Tom Wheeler's "open internet" proposal is problematic, but Wheeler and the FCC are hitting back on everyone who's arguing that -- telling everyone to calm down, insisting that nothing has changed, and that they're actually trying to preserve the old "open internet" rules from 2010 that a court tossed out earlier this year.

The problem is that this is absolutely misleading -- and either the FCC doesn't realize this or it's not being honest. And, I'm not sure which one is more bizarre. Wheeler is, indeed, correct in saying that under the court ruling from earlier this year, in order to be able to do anything under Section 706 of the Telecom Act, they had to shift from talking about "unreasonable discrimination" (which they can't regulate under 706) to "commercially reasonable" activities (which they can regulate). So, in effect, Wheeler is trying to argue that by basically shifting the basis for the rules and substituting in the "commercially reasonable" standard as opposed to blocking "unreasonable discrimination" (which can be done under common carrier rules, but since the FCC reclassified broadband service as not being a telco service, that's not available), they're now back in proper legal territory under the law.

Perhaps Wheeler and his friends at the FCC think that this subtle shift in phrases to abide by the blueprint the court set out really does leave the existing rules in place. But, it's not that simple. As Stacy Higginbotham points out, even if the FCC doesn't want to destroy net neutrality, this subtle shift will do so anyway. To understand why, the best article to read is the one by Marvin Ammori, who has been fighting this fight for years. He argues that, unlike the CNET article above that says to "calm down," we should actually be even more worried. Because even if the FCC thinks it can stop net neutrality violations, companies are still going to get screwed. Basically, the FCC can only act after the fact, and then it's going to come down to a fight between a big telcos' lawyers... and a tiny startups' lawyers. Guess who wins? The FCC will propose an incredibly vague and complicated multifactor test, one that takes into account the market conditions, technology, alternatives available to each side, competitive dynamics. This is the kind of stuff that requires very expensive expert witnesses in very expensive legal proceedings. There may be up to 16 factors listed, plus a catch-all for "other factors."

So, according to the FCC, when Verizon discriminates against a startup, we shouldn't be alarmed, because (while being discriminated against), this startup can hire a lot of expensive lawyers and expert witnesses and meet Verizon (a company worth more than $100 billion) at the FCC and litigate this issue out, with no certainty as to the rule. The startup will almost certainly lose either at the FCC or on appeal to a higher court, after bleeding money on lawyers. He's not basing this on some theoretical crystal ball. It's already happened -- and it's obvious from the Court's ruling earlier this year:
Back in January, the D.C. Circuit struck down the FCC’s last attempt at net neutrality, saying that Section 706 does not permit the commission to stop nondiscrimination. It pointed to another legal decision, concerning data roaming, in which the FCC adopted a 16-factor test like the one I explained above. Based on an earlier case, the FCC can probably ban one or two specific practices, such as blocking certain websites or applications. That’s about it. So here's the issue: the old rules were incredibly weak and nearly pointless in the first place. They didn't apply to wireless (nor, apparently, will the new rules) and they didn't really protect net neutrality. They were crafted, in part by the telcos, through a long-drawn out process, in which the former FCC boss tried to keep everyone happy and ended up pleasing no one. That's why we were a little perplexed at the outrage over those rules being thrown out earlier this year in the first place. Those rules were nothing great.

The problem is that this new proposal isn't just "those same old rules" as the FCC would like you to believe. Instead, they're the same old rules, made weaker at the critical juncture by the necessary legalese change to "commercially reasonable" and by the clear nature of what the court says the FCC is able to do under Section 706. And while some think the answer is to shift broadband back under Title II and put them under common carrier rules, that's almost certainly a political impossibility -- which is why Wheeler is trying to thread this needle.

As we've said for a decade now, the underlying problem is a lack of competition. These kinds of rules, including things like transparency into the crap that the telcos are pulling only matter if you have options. When you don't, then they can be transparent as to how they're screwing you over, and there's really just not much you can do. And that's kind of the situation we're in today. Wheeler claims this is no change and people are overreacting, but what they're realizing is that the existing rules in 2010 were kind of a joke anyway, and what little power they had to keep the internet open and non-discriminatory back then is now pretty much gone with this new wording. So, Wheeler may not want to be killing off the open internet, but the end result may be exactly that.​
 
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In the Silver Lining
U.S. Ready To Hand Over Internet Control On October 1st

U.S. Ready To Hand Over Internet Control On October 1st
August 28, 2016 5:38 PM
Filed Under: ICANN, world Wide Web

WORLD WIDE WEB (CBSMiami/AP) — Flip the switch and the lights go on. Hit the starter button and the engine turns over. Type in an Internet domain name and the Web page pops open.

WORLD WIDE WEB (CBSMiami/AP) — Flip the switch and the lights go on. Hit the starter button and the engine turns over. Type in an Internet domain name and the Web page pops open.

How does it all work? Who even thinks about that — until there’s a reason to wonder. Like when something goes wrong. Or when the administration of Internet domain names is about to undergo a major change.

If you’ve never heard of ICANN — the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers — you may soon enough, as the United States, which has maintained a role in the handling of Internet domain names, is about to hand over the last of its functions to the private, non-profit ICANN.

If all goes as planned, though, you’ll likely not hear much about it.

***Why? Because the change, set to take effect on Oct. 1, will keep things mostly as they’ve been for some time now. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t critics.

One of them, oddly, is Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the onetime presidential candidate who preached the gospel of conservatism out along the campaign trail and the role of a reduced government. Yet he supports the federal government’s role in assigning and overseeing domain names instead of total privatization of the function.

Cruz’s stated objection would be that handing the keys to the kingdom to ICANN might well allow other governments to begin to meddle with the Internet. Specifically, undue and unwelcome influence from China and Russia is feared.

However, ICANN has effectively been running the show since the late-1990s with minimal involvement from the feds. The government, whose role was largely an accident of history, has long been looking for a way to step back.

After two decades of planning, the transition that’s about to take place might still be more popular than the alternative — having the United Nations handle the assigning of Internet domain names, allowing possible influence from China or Russia.

The move has been supported by the last three presidential administrations.

In June, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) released a reportaddressing whether the U.S. should relinquish its authority over ICANN
 
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