Google Rallies Opposition to U.N. Internet Treaty

[thesilentman]

The Internet is a work of art (how I look at it) that spans the entire world. Taking that away is going to be a major, major travesty to all of us. I'm with Google on this one; even though we have sites like 4chan and YouTube, there's enough positivity and good things that make the Internet worth its place in the world today and the future.

Where is it? All I ever hear nowadays is people screaming "entitled" and "first world problems" at everything they don't agree with. Everywhere I do someones gotta pick a fight with me over the smallest, minute details.

I find most of the positive stuff while going through the Internet randomizer AKA StumbleUpon. And another guy beat me to the other part of why the Internet is good for us right here:

While there are a bunch of reasons to counter your view, ill just use one. You can learn now, in 5 minutes, more than you could learn 15 years ago, in a day. And thats if you were in a good country with libraries and supported knowledge. A 3rd world country child, would NEVER dream of learning ANYTHING 15 years ago. but now they give out internet in public spaces n shitty laptops. and they can surf away into knowledge. You can learn so fast, so easy, so much now, if you went back in time you would feel despaired. Just imagine for a second 20 years ago, that you couldnt google a particular subject that came to your mind. You couldnt ask a question, then boot up a browser and find the answer immediatly. And as for veritable source material, while the internet material isnt as trustworthy as librarian and encyclopedic support, you have SO many more different sources of information, the sheer ammount more than makes up for the less trustworthy sources.(personally i always found encyclopedic knowledge extremely bias, even with all the scrutinized checking).

Oh and, if you think that no one uses the internet for knowledge.... thats just the lazy people. And lazy people have never seeked knowledge, no matter what era it is.

 

[Twilight_guy]

The irony is that on any other issue if you said 'controlled by large US corporations' people would immediately call it evil and partition to change it but here the Us corporations are apparently the better option. This actually reminds me a lot of Valve, the benevolent tyrant who at any point could turn Steam into a true thing of evil and yet nobody talks about how they hold you like a spider over the fire. Same with these companies.

 

[weirdee]

hm, which devil should i choose? the one in the suit or the one in the suit?

 

[tsaweeos]

Petition for UN Internet Treaty:
http://www.protectinternetfreedom.net/

Petition for Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement:
http://stopthetrap.net/
(The TPP is basically the same if not worse; It will basically make corporations dictators of the internet.. If you live in Canada or the US (I think EU is also involved in this) then sign that as well.

Also for Canadians sign this too:
http://openmedia.ca/StopSpying
(Bill C-30 will force ISP's to log and record everything you do on the net and legalize warrantless spying, thus turning this country into a policed state.)

Lastly there's the Canadian-European Trade Agreement (CETA) & American-European Trade Agreement (AETA) which contains the same provisions as the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA) which will make it illegal for you to even try to protect your right to privacy on the internet. I think the ACTA provisions were taken out of AETA but I'm not too sure on that. I encourage anyone who wants their human-rights and freedoms to be protected on the net to sign these.

 

[VanTesla]

Giving government more power over the internet? Hell the fuck no. All for seperation of tech and state!

Neither one corporation or Gov't should have power over the internet unless say it be of some harm to people or sights that promote vile things like child porn, live executions, and promoting violent campaigns against any group of people. Also no one Corporations should have complete control over locations that they buy out that makes the consumer unable to have choice in who they want as a provider and etc. Also the only other thing the Gov't should protect is security information like social security, credit information, and federal documents with the best tech they have and not some subpar shit a person in their mothers basement can hack...

 

[VanTesla]

hm, which devil should i choose? the one in the suit or the one in the suit?

LOL I agree that neither having complete power is a good idea and honestly with the people in power it seems impossible to strike that right balance to where everyone can be happy since some greedy bastard wants more than any other person...

 

[Evil Smurf]

I helped fight Steven "freedom hating" Conroy's plan to censor Australian Internet. I can't stand anyone who would censor information, because they only want to control us. The worst thing is they all do it under the guise of "stopping child porn" painting those who oppose it pedophiles, the censors do not stop child porn. They stop political freedom and limit the populations education on the world so they will eventually know nothing different to what their government is telling them. The average Chinese person does not know about the Tianamin square massacre and the average Japanese person does not know about Perl Harbor.

Don't support censorship, support freedom of education, politics and communication.

 

[RaikuFA]

The Internet is a work of art (how I look at it) that spans the entire world. Taking that away is going to be a major, major travesty to all of us. I'm with Google on this one; even though we have sites like 4chan and YouTube, there's enough positivity and good things that make the Internet worth its place in the world today and the future.

Where is it? All I ever hear nowadays is people screaming "entitled" and "first world problems" at everything they don't agree with. Everywhere I do someones gotta pick a fight with me over the smallest, minute details.

I find most of the positive stuff while going through the Internet randomizer AKA StumbleUpon. And another guy beat me to the other part of why the Internet is good for us right here:

While there are a bunch of reasons to counter your view, ill just use one. You can learn now, in 5 minutes, more than you could learn 15 years ago, in a day. And thats if you were in a good country with libraries and supported knowledge. A 3rd world country child, would NEVER dream of learning ANYTHING 15 years ago. but now they give out internet in public spaces n shitty laptops. and they can surf away into knowledge. You can learn so fast, so easy, so much now, if you went back in time you would feel despaired. Just imagine for a second 20 years ago, that you couldnt google a particular subject that came to your mind. You couldnt ask a question, then boot up a browser and find the answer immediatly. And as for veritable source material, while the internet material isnt as trustworthy as librarian and encyclopedic support, you have SO many more different sources of information, the sheer ammount more than makes up for the less trustworthy sources.(personally i always found encyclopedic knowledge extremely bias, even with all the scrutinized checking).

Oh and, if you think that no one uses the internet for knowledge.... thats just the lazy people. And lazy people have never seeked knowledge, no matter what era it is.

The knowledge stuff is awesome, but outside of that it's just disturbing and depressing. Ask a question and get chewed out for it.

 

[JohnReaper]

I'm so tired of fighting....so tired....

 

[aattss]

http://www.whatistheitu.org/

This was brought to you by Fight For The Future and Access Now aka not google. Also, in case you didn't watch the video, this is SOPA on an international scale, but worse, not to mention that the UN will give countries the power to tax the internet.

Oh, and yes, this will harm developing countries and encourage governments to take away the freedom of speech.

 

[jetriot]

The U.S. hasn't done shit to censor the internet. Yet. If it does, then I am all for moving it, and the beauty of the internet and the free market is that it is easily switched. However, creating precedence for an unelected body to have control over the most important tool of free expression in the world is madness.

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

as much as I don't like google...I still think that having russia/china/etc. even partly in control is a greater evil than the company that just tries to spam us to death.

I suppose fear is the most rational answer I can find.

well, fear (mostly of losing control) is one of the biggest factors when it comes to grand-scale political decisions : D

This. I find Google's constant campaigning in this regard nothing less than suspicious, and I have to examine every claim they make carefully considering their obvious bias and self-interest(is my free and open access to the net -really- being threatened this time, or is someone just trying to make it harder for Google to spy on everything I do even if I've never visited one of their websites or used their services?); but this case does seem to merit concern. Give their track record, involving even many developed Western national governments more control over the 'net is a worry, never bloody mind Russia and China.

Anyone with half a brain knows Google is secretly evil, but if they're opposing the more outright and stereotypical villains, which the governments of the world seem to think is the hip thing these days, then the enemy of our enemies becomes our friend, at least for now.

Seriously, giving countries like China and the middle east any fucking say whatsoever in how the internet as a whole is mandated makes things worse for everyone, and the United States government is trying harder every year to become a Despotism in the guise of a democracy, using increasingly clever wording to trick us into signing away our every last right, so yeah, every bill like this needs to be opposed, whether it benefits Google's mustache twirling ways or not.

 

[Darks63]

I'm not too worried really i think the us and us companies like the control they have over the internet and as a result this bill will likely get the us ambassador's veto and some palms will prolly be greased to assure that fact. the un is a sad joke anyway with countries only following rulings that they like for the most part

 

[conmag9]

Oh, for the love of...

Governments, listen for a moment.

To those who are merely misguided and sincere in your attempts to improve your countries: Listen to the actual experts, the people who built the Internet, and stop trying to screw with it. The damage you could do is incredible, both now and to future innovation.

To those who are blinded by bribes "campaign contributions": Please find the nearest active volcano and hurl yourselves into it. There's LOTS of money in there, down at the bottom. Pinky swear.

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

Now, I'm posting this from Russia and to be honest government is yet to block anything remotely relevant or interesting. Our prime minister spend far too much time using the internet himself. Which is not always a good thing, especially every time he tweets something... questionable. Twitter is now pretty much the modern Russian hot news channel.
I do agree that China went too far too long ago. That said I don't want US in control either. At least our government is ok with WikiLeaks and such. As for US, anyone who think there's no censorship there is delusional. If the only options are US dominating in control of the internet or letting China in... I'd rather let China mess with it a bit. At least they don't try to hide what they want. Although most likely China will only care about China itself when it comes to censorship and they have it covered.
Surly Google is all up in arms. They don't wanna yandex, mail.ru and others eventually expanding and stealing part of their market share.

Freedom heh. I can go out and say aloud anything I think of gay people, black people or whatever race. As long as I don't insist on killing anyone it's ok. I wouldn't try anything like this in US. Hence I should probably use this forum really carefully. In case I get censored. Because it's US based, is it not?