«Aujourd'hui, l'Internet libre et ouvert que nous connaissons est menacé. Sur 74 pays étudiés par l'Open Net Initiative, 42 filtrent et censurent des contenus sur Internet. Parmi les pays étudiés, ne figurent même pas les multirécidivistes tels que la Corée du Nord et Cuba. Au cours des deux dernières années, divers gouvernements ont promulgué 19 nouvelles lois constituant une menace pour la liberté d'expression en ligne. Certains de ces gouvernements tentent à présent de tirer parti d'une réunion à huis clos de l'Union internationale des télécommunications (UIT), qui se tient cette semaine à Dubaï, pour développer leur approche répressive. Habitués à contrôler les médias, ces gouvernements craignent de ne pas pouvoir maîtriser un Internet ouvert. Ils redoutent la propagation d'idées indésirables et sont opposés à ce que les individus puissent utiliser Internet pour critiquer leur gouvernement.»
[...]
«L'avenir du Web est loin d'être assuré et, au regard de l'histoire, ce ne sont pas les mises en garde qui manquent. En effet, il n'aura fallu aux princes et aux prêtres que quelques décennies après l'invention de Gutenberg pour limiter le droit d'imprimer des livres. L'histoire regorge d'exemples de ces gouvernements qui ont pris les devants pour mettre leurs citoyens "à l'abri du danger" en contrôlant l'accès à l'information et en muselant la liberté d'expression ainsi que d'autres libertés définies dans la Déclaration universelle des droits de l'homme. Nous devons nous assurer ensemble qu'Internet ne subisse pas le même sort.»
Alors que les États discutent officiellement depuis lundi de la révision du RTI, Tim Berners-Lee et Vinton Cerf, deux personnalités considérées comme les pères fondateurs de l'internet, viennent de s'élever contre les aspirations de certains pays.
Depuis lundi, se tient à Dubaï la Conférence mondiale sur les télécommunications internationales. Représentants de gouvernements du monde entier discutent ainsi de la révision du Règlement des télécommunications internationales (RTI), ce traité régissant les principes généraux relatifs à l'établissement et à l'exploitation des télécommunications internationales. En clair, les États planchent sur la future régulation mondiale d’Internet.
Alors qu’en coulisses, les gouvernements oeuvrent depuis plusieurs mois pour échanger les propositions d’amendements, de plus en plus de voix s’élèvent pour s’alarmer de la tournure prise par les négociations. Dernier en date : Tim Berners-Lee, principal inventeur du World Wide Web.
Vint Cerf, the legendary computer scientist who co-created the TCP/IP networking protocols that serve as the Internet’s foundation, is not happy that United Nations wants to apply old telecom regulations to his creation. Cerf, who now serves as Google’s (GOOG) Chief Internet Evangelist, has written a post on Google’s official blog this week urging people to take action to protest the International Telecommunication Union’s plan to amend the International Telecommunications Regulations treaty to regulate the Internet.
The ITU, which is an agency of the UN, will be convening with governments from across the world this week to decide whether to apply the treaty to the Internet for the first time in its history. Cerf says that this meeting has the potential to add several damaging regulations to the Internet, as several authoritarian governments are likely to propose highly restrictive rules that would be damaging to freedom of speech and expression.
«Libertarians make the case: net neutrality is unconstitutional
Argue that forcing ISPs to carry all traffic infringes on freedom of speech.
by Cyrus Farivar - July 24 2012, 7:58pm CEST
GOVERNMENT LAWSUITS
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The 2011 FCC Order established net neutrality as a matter of national policy. Since, companies like Verizon have been trying to fight it.
Taramisu
A group of well-known libertarian organizations has filed an amicus brief (PDF) to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in support of the plaintiff in the Verizon v. Federal Communications Commission case. Verizon filed its own brief earlier this month.
In the brief, TechFreedom, The Competitive Enterprise Institute, The Free State Foundation, and the Cato Institute argue that the last year’s FCC net neutrality order “Preserving the Open Internet” (PDF), which took effect in November 2011, violates the First and Fifth Amendments, and that the FCC lacks jurisdictional authority to implement such a rule.
Specifically, the groups say that compelling private companies to “speak,” by requiring them to carry all traffic across their networks, instead of allowing them to discriminate as they see fit, violates the principle of freedom of speech.
“When you allow the government to say that a private operator has to treat all speech equally and cannot refuse to carry some speech—our view is the First Amendment jurisprudence [stipulates] that the government can’t compel a speaker,” said Randolph May, in a call with Ars on Tuesday morning. May is president of the Free State Foundation; he is also an attorney, law professor, and former associate general counsel at the FCC.
Further, the groups argue, citing case law, the government must show immediate, real harm, rather than theoretical or possible harm.
“There isn’t a record to support suppression of speech here,” added Berin Szoka, also an attorney and president of TechFreedom, who spoke with Ars on Tuesday. “You could imagine a world where net neutrality violations have been frequent. The government would have a much stronger argument that they have a substantial or a compelling interest. That’s not the world that we live in.”
"Father of the Internet" calls this argument "flawed"
The FCC, of course, has previously argued that its actions are aimed at protecting consumers from being able to access whatever service they want over their home Internet connections.
Skeptical Vint Cerf is skeptical.
Joi Ito
Net neutrality advocates, like Vint Cerf, the co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocol (and often dubbed a “father of the Internet”), e-mailed Ars to say that he agreed and that the premise of the amicus brief was “fundamentally flawed.”
“Editing the Internet in the way this brief suggests is a gross violation of the First Amendment rights of the customers, because there is not much competitive choice of Internet access providers—the FCC is to be credited for their effort to preserve the rights of citizens.”
Meanwhile, the groups also argue that the FCC Order is in violation of the Fifth Amendment, which prevents the government from, among other things, taking private property for public use, “without just compensation.” They also say that if the FCC order stands, “content providers will enjoy a nearly unqualified right to occupy the cables and wires that constitute broadband networks.”
This appears to be a fairly broad reading of the Fifth Amendment, given that private data transiting through a private cable isn’t quite the same thing as the government taking private property to use for the public good.
The final argument that the libertarian groups put forward is that the FCC lacks regulatory authority, because Congress had not specifically authorized the agency to claim “ancillary authority,” adding ominously at the end of its brief: “If the FCC can invent authority to regulate the Internet today, there is no limit to what it might do tomorrow.”»