International Internet Treaty proposed by Europe

Source: THINQ

Europe has proposed an Internet Treaty to protect the net from political interference which threatens to break it up.

The draft international law has been compared to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which sought to prevent space exploration being pursued for anything less than the benefit of all human kind. The Internet Treaty would similarly seek to preserve the Internet as a global system of free communication that transcends national borders.

An early draft of the Treaty has come into our possession as governments around the world pile pressure on the United Nations to bring the Internet under political control. Their various hare-brained schemes threaten to make communication on the Internet conditional on criteria set by narrow political interests.

Read more: http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/9/20/international-internet-treaty-proposed-europe/

The last thing we want is a net that is biased/influenced by politics.

Also in the article:
"The principle of net neutrality will be established in international law, ensuring that the network will not discriminate against the traffic that passes across it. Any discrimination will be left to the end points, the clients, for people to decide for themselves what they censor, what communications they will or will not countenance."

The treaty also proposes adherence to human rights law, freedom of expression, and freedom of association. It would prevent governments from blocking content, and perhaps most importantly in the long run, prevent the creation of internet UserID's which could be used by security agencies.

The fact that this draft is proposed by the EU is a good sign, but given the various government interests, even to the point of differing definitions of what constitutes unacceptable hate speech, it's too early to be very hopeful.

The control of the Net, the governing of the Net and the responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the Net--including Domain Name Servers--should be an International, non-commercial effort.