IP: Damn the Constitution: Europe must take back the Web

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Brett Glass <brett () lariat org>
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 00:27:18 -0600 (MDT)
To: dave () farber net
Subject: For IP: Damn the Constitution: Europe must take back the Web

Damn the Constitution: Europe must take back the Web
By Bill Thompson
Posted: 09/08/2002 at 14:01 GMT
The Register
Guest Opinion

I've had enough of US hegemony. It's time for change -- and a closed
European
network.

Today's Internet is a poor respecter of national boundaries, as many
repressive governments have found to their cost. Unfortunately this freedom
has been so extensively abused by the United States and its politicians,
lawyers and programmers that it has become a serious threat to the continued
survival of the network as a global communications medium. If the price of
being online is to swallow US values, then many may think twice about using
the Net at all, and if the only game online follows US rules, then many may
decide not to play.

We have already seen US law, in the form of Digital Millennium Copyright
Act,
used to persuade hosts in other countries to pull material or limit its
availability. US-promoted 'anti-censor' software is routinely provided to
enable citizens of other countries to break local laws; and US companies
like
Yahoo! disregard the judgements of foreign courts at will.

Congressman Howard Berman's ridiculous proposal to give copyright holders
immunity from prosecution if they hack into P2P networks is the latest
attempt
by the US Congress to pass laws that will directly affect every Internet
user,
because no US court would allow prosecution of a company in another
jurisdiction when immunity is granted by US law.

Unless we can take back the Net from the libertarians, constitutional
lawyers
and rapacious corporations currently recreating the worst excesses of US
political and commercial culture online, we will end up with an Internet
which
serves the imperial ambitions of only one country instead of the legitimate
aspirations of the whole world.

While this would greatly please the US, it would not be in the interests of
the majority of Internet users, who want a network that allows them to
express
their own values, respects their own laws and supports their own cultures
and
interests.

US domination has been going on for so long that many see it as either
inevitable or desirable. 'They may have their problems but at least they
believe in democracy, free speech and the market economy', the argument
goes.
Yet today's United States is a country which respects freedom so much that
if
I, a European citizen, set foot there I can be interned without any notice
or
due process, tried by a military tribunal and executed in secret.

It has a government which respects free speech yet tries to persuade postal
workers to spy on people as they delivered their mail. Its Chief Executive
illegally sold shares when in possession of privileged information about an
impending price crash. ICANN, the body it established to manage DNS, had to
be
ordered by a court to let one of its own directors examine the company
accounts for fear he may discover something untoward. And elected
representatives -like the aforementioned Howard Berman -are paid vast
amounts
by firms lobbying for laws which serve their corporate interests.

These are clearly not the people who should be setting the rules for the
Net's
evolution....

Full text at http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26612.html


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