Stop the UN from regulating the Internet,

[beretta304]

A U.N. conference that kicked off today in Dubai has sparked fear of Internet censorship in the U.S. -- something U.S. Ambassador Terry Kramer said he is doing everything in his power to prevent.


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[waltky]

Granny says dey gonna have to pry her internet outta her cold dead hands...

US and UK refuse to sign UN's communications treaty
14 December 2012 - The UN's telecommunications treaty will not be ratified by the US, UK or Canada

The US, Canada, Australia and UK have refused to sign an international communications treaty at an conference in Dubai. The countries had objected to calls for all states to have equal rights to the governance of the internet. But the breaking point was the addition of text relating to "human rights". It marks a setback for the UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) which had said it was sure it could deliver consensus. "It's with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities that the US must communicate that it's not able to sign the agreement in the current form," said Terry Kramer the US ambassador to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (Wcit). "The internet has given the world unimaginable economic and social benefit during these past 24 years."

Negotiators from Denmark, Italy, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Greece, Portugal, Finland, Chile, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Costa Rica and Kenya have said they would need to consult with their national governments about how to proceed and would also not be able to sign the treaty as planned on Friday. In total 89 countries have signed the treaty and 55 have either reserved the right to do so later or ruled out ratifying it altogether.

Censorship claims

The ITU had organised the 12-day conference in order to revise a communications treaty last overhauled 24 years ago. It said the document would help nations co-ordinate efforts against spam and widen access to the web. However, much of the discussions ended up focusing on whether or not countries should have equal rights to the development of the internet's technical foundations. In particular many attendees believed it was an anachronism that the US government got to decide which body should regulate the net's address system as a legacy of its funding for Arpanet - a precursor to the internet which helped form its technical core.

However, the US said this allowed it to ensure that technical experts could make "agile, rapid-fire decisions" about the net's development as part of multi-stakeholder organisations. It added that other references to net might also be used to legitimise censorship and other interference in the operation of internet service providers (ISPs) and cloud-based operations, such as Google and Facebook. Its view was supported by the internet and web pioneers Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee who warned any changes posed a "disruptive threat to the stability of the system".

Russian proposals

See also:

Learn English online: How the internet is changing language
13 December 2012 - Online, English has become a common language for users from around the world. In the process, the language itself is changing.

When America emerged from the ashes of a bruising war with Britain in 1814, the nation was far from united. Noah Webster thought that a common language would bring people together and help create a new identity that would make the country truly independent of the British. Webster's dictionary, now in its 11th edition, adopted the Americanised spellings familiar today - er instead of re in theatre, dropping the u from colour, and losing the double l from words such as traveller. It also documented new words that were uniquely American such as skunk, opossum, hickory, squash and chowder.

An American Dictionary of the English Language took 18 years to complete and Webster learned 26 other languages in order to research the etymology of its 70,000 entries. The internet is creating a similar language evolution, but at a much faster pace. There are now thought to be some 4.5 billion web pages worldwide. And with half the population of China now on line, many of them are written in Chinese. Still, some linguists predict that within 10 years English will dominate the internet - but in forms very different to what we accept and recognise as English today.

That's because people who speak English as a second language already outnumber native speakers. And increasingly they use it to communicate with other non-native speakers, particularly on the internet where less attention is paid to grammar and spelling and users don't have to worry about their accent. "The internet enfranchises people who are not native speakers to use English in significant and meaningful ways," says Naomi Baron, professor of linguistics at American University in Washington DC.

Users of Facebook already socialise in a number of different "Englishes" including Indian English, or Hinglish, Spanglish (Spanish English) and Konglish (Korean English). While these variations have long existed within individual cultures, they're now expanding and comingling online. "On the internet, all that matters is that people can communicate - nobody has a right to tell them what the language should be," says Baron. "If you can talk Facebook into putting up pages, you have a language that has political and social standing even if it doesn't have much in the way of linguistic uniqueness."

More BBC News - Learn English online: How the internet is changing language

 

[TNHarley]

I was going to say they was not gonna let that happen here. Really is surprising though!