EU vision: A compliant silenced internet

This is an article I wrote a about a week back but never published, I'll update it with this article from Slashdot: Lawmakers Support U.S. Control Of The Internet, but let us go back to the Guardian article:

"A battle has erupted over who governs the internet, with America demanding to maintain a key role in the network it helped create and other countries demanding more control. The European commission is warning that if a deal cannot be reached at a meeting in Tunisia next month the internet will split apart."

So why try to fix something if it isn't broken ?

The EU is desperate for more and more internet control and that's exactly why the US shouldn't budge an inch. On technical grounds European control is hardly likely to improve anything that already exists with the internet today. Make no mistake at all though, the EU, like Blair are obsessed with information and technological serfdom.

Although there are other nations seeking influence and control in this, ultimately, an internet under EU management could well mean the end of the internet as we know it today. It would mean ultra bureaucracy, attempted EU regulation and taxation of news, blogs, media, massive licencing and red tape over media, content, streaming, music as well as adult themed sites. Enormous member-state funded quangos, think-tanks, special 'task forces' set up to police it into compliance of state prescribed acceptability.

In a short time you would see an enormous curtailing of any aspiration toward free-speech, as the intire internet will be mired in EU 'hate crime' (thoughtcrime) legislation and endless proposals to further it into new areas. The more tools the world blindly gives the EU such as data retention and DNS management all the better from their point of view.

Invention, enterprise (as in enterprising) that has characterized the internet up until this day could certainly be compromised to put it mildly. That is the reality, and we can look toward the "pounds and ounces' debacle, the 'banning' of many health and vitamins supplements as a precedent here.

Even if for some reason you think the EU is not all bad, in the case of the latter, it is well known how well funded vested interest lobby groups can pretty much buy any legislation they want, and that is something Europe is extremely involved in vulnerable to:

Speculation is rife in the natural medicine world about the extent to which pharmaceutical interests are orchestrating legislation. Back in 1987, the Campaign Against Health Fraud (Healthwatch) waged an aggressive public campaign against natural remedies, financed initially by medical insurance and drug companies. Similar campaigns were waged in the US and Canada. And in the 1990s, there was a series of well-publicised attacks on food supplements. Now, there's a persistent rumour that PR agencies working for drug firms are spinning stories to the media, casting doubt on the safety and efficacy of natural alternatives.

Drug companies have a proven track record in trying to legislate the natural health business out of existence. In 1996, for example, the Ecologist magazine revealed that, when the Codex Alimentarius (the World Trade Organisation body that sets international standards for drugs, food, supplements, etc) met, the German delegation put forward a proposal, sponsored by three German pharmaceutical firms, that no herb, vitamin or mineral should be sold for preventive or therapeutic reasons, and that supplements should be reclassified as drugs. The proposal was agreed, but protests halted its implementation.

Clearly some of these threats are global in nature, but as feared, the EU has fully established itself as a dangerous enemy, it is desperate to cover up it's failings, real debate on it's direction and controlling the internet is a key part of the pernicious strategy. Let us not forget, the European Commision is hungry for mandatory snooping and data retention of all 'European citizens'.

"I have no intention to 'regulate the Internet,'" EU Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding told a broadcasting conference in Liverpool, England. However, she said the European Commission(the secret unaccountable executive -jultra) had the duty to protect shared European values. (Whatever they are -jultra) (ABC News)

Plenty of nice doublespeak, 'duty', 'shared values', no surprise then, paradoxically Reding is outspoken on her vision of control:

"I am ... the Commissioner for convergence, and I am prepared to draw the regulatory conclusions from technological convergence.

Regulators in Europe will have to prepare for this new media environment. We have to make sure that a regulatory framework is in place"

I'm hardly one to speak up for members of the Bush administration, and no doubt this guy has his own politics in mind but this:

Michael Gallagher, President Bush's internet adviser and head of the national telecommunications and information administration, believes they are seizing on the only "central" part of the system in an effort to exert control. "They are looking for a handle, thinking that the DNS is the meaning of life. But the meaning of life lies within their own borders and the policies that they create [sic] there."

is about right.