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All this year, and culminating in December at the World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai, the nations of the world will be negotiating a treaty to govern international telecommunications services between countries. It is widely believed that some countries, including Russia and China, will take the opportunity to push for U.N. control of Internet governance. Such a turn of events would certainly be troubling.

That’s because the institutions that govern the Internet, and which keep it free and open, are for the most part decentralized, bottom-up, multistakeholder affairs. They are also largely based in the U.S. These include organizations like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), headquartered in California, as well as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Society, which are volunteer groups manned largely by Americans.

(MORE: FTC to ICANN: New Domain Suffixes Will ‘Undermine’ the Internet)

This arrangement grew out of the fact that the Internet was developed in the U.S., with control of its governance eventually handed over to nonprofits by the government during the Clinton Administration.

As the Internet has grown and spread across the globe, however, emerging powers such as Brazil, Russia, India and China have begun to frequently and forcefully question why the U.S. should have outsize influence over how the Internet is run. They suggest, instead, that Internet governance should be handled by the U.N. Last year, for example, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met with the head of the International Telecommunication Union — the U.N. body now hosting treaty negotiations — and made no bones about how Russia saw things.

“One [important issue] is establishing international control over the Internet using the monitoring and supervisory capabilities of the International Telecommunication Union,” Putin said. “If we are going to talk about the democratization of international relations, I think a critical sphere is information exchange and global control over such exchange. This is certainly a priority on the international agenda.”

Along with China, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, Russia later introduced a U.N. General Assembly resolution proposing a “code of conduct” for global information security.

The proposal sought to establish that “policy authority for Internet-related public issues is the sovereign right of States” and not the ICANN, the IETF or the other multistakeholder groups that now run the Internet. At the same time, Brazil, India and South Africa called for creation of “new global body” to control the Internet.

It’s amazing to think about it, but no state governs the Internet today. Decisions about its architecture are made by consensus among engineers and other volunteers. And that, in fact, is what has kept it open and free.

“Upending the fundamentals of the multistakeholder model is likely to balkanize the Internet at best, and suffocate it at worst,” FCC commissioner Robert McDowell said recently in a speech. “A top-down, centralized, international regulatory overlay is antithetical to the architecture of the Net, which is a global network of networks without borders. No government, let alone an intergovernmental body, can make decisions in lightning-fast Internet time.”

While there are some signs that the proregulatory countries may be backing off, the Internet community should remain vigilant. We may be headed for a showdown this December in Dubai that could make recent antipiracy legislation, pending cybersecurity bills in Congress and the E.U.’s new data rules look like a picnic.

MORE: FBI Hacked While Congress Ponders Cybersecurity Legislation

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The Case Against Letting the United Nations Govern the Internet

Reporting from Moscow—

The videos feature some of Russia's most famous actors, writers, directors, musicians and other VIPs, all united by the heartfelt slogan: "Why I am voting for Putin."

Violist Yuri Bashmet compares Russian leader Vladimir Putin to the great violin-maker Antonio Stradivari, saying that his "golden period is yet far ahead."

One of the country's most loved actors, Oleg Tabakov, says Putin has his vote in the March 4 presidential election because he "wants to be good and honest."

As soon as the clips started airing on Russia's heavily controlled major television networks, the Internet empire struck back.

One user posted a picture of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin raising eyebrows over the phrase, "Why I am voting for our Lord Emperor." Pushkin is known to have been exiled and had his poetry personally censored by Emperor Nicholas I.

Another went further, posting a portrait of Putin with a clipped mustache and shock of black hair and the inscription: "Why I am voting for Hitler."

In the course of the swift and getting-dirtier-by-the-day presidential race that Putin is widely expected to win, he has had to suffer unprecedented humiliation. Much like the authoritarian Chinese leadership, the Kremlin has found it difficult to control the rebellious Internet, let alone protect itself from the biting satire that has been the dissident weapon of choice throughout a Russian history rich in suppression.

It is perhaps not coincidental that one of the first television shows that Putin got rid of after coming to power was the sarcastic puppet show "Kukly," which in the early 2000s portrayed him as Klein Zaches, a mean and ambitious dwarf from a 19th century tale by the German author E.T.A. Hoffmann.

Putin is quite aware of "the dirty attacks" against him on the Internet but ignores them and doesn't feel in the least taken aback by them, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

"It is all extremely unpleasant, but it is also marginal in its effect, as it aims at people who virtually live in the Internet and their numbers are insignificant compared with the support Putin gets from the rest of the Russian population," Peskov said in a telephone interview. "We are not going to look for those who make up these things, and we are not planning to sue them in court because it is useless as we won't catch them in the end, it being Internet and all."

But if the numbers are so insignificant, how then to explain the 3-million-plus hits for a YouTube spoof that hit the Internet last week?

In a scene that clearly is meant to echo the politicized trials of imprisoned tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a defendant stands alone in a courtroom cage, shy and timid.

"What is your nationality?" the judge asks. "A citizen of the Russian Federation," the frail man, eyes cast downward, answers almost inaudibly in the unmistakable rapid clatter of sounds that Russians know so well from Putin's marathon prime-time TV call-in shows, endless televised reports of motorcycle trips, hunting escapades and diving tours, not to mention daily meetings with workers, intellectuals, scientists and farmers.

The man who has ruled Russia with an iron hand for more than a decade faces a set of sinister charges, including abuse of power, fraud, theft and organizing terrorist acts to intimidate citizens, a monotonous voice-over recounts.

Peskov acknowledged that the quality of this and other spoofs he called "virus clips" was very high.

"It is no secret how many enemies Putin has and how they are ready to spend any amount of money to blacken him," he said.

The Internet was also quick to seize on a recent slip by Putin's chief of campaign staff, filmmaker Stanislav S. Govorukhin. In a newspaper interview, he said that under Putin, the notorious Russian corruption has acquired "civilized" forms.

Govorukhin is famous and respected in the country largely for his 1979 Soviet crime miniseries, in which a tough but good cop pronounced the catchphrase that became the series' slogan: "A thief must sit in prison."

Govorukhin could hardly imagine how the whole thing could haunt the current campaign more than three decades later.

The day after his "civilized corruption" comment, some resourceful Internet user posted on Facebook a photo collage in which Govorukhin and Putin face each other across the table in the foreground. Behind them is a Kremlin tower with these words flying in the dark sky over it: "A thief must sit in the Kremlin."

But the campaign manager surmised in the interview that "this anti-Putin hysteria" actually mobilizes people in the provinces to stand up for Putin and makes his victory easier. Govorukhin said he doesn't use the Internet, something his boss, by his own admission, isn't very fond of, either.

"The Internet is, after all, a big garbage bin," Govorukhin said. "I have no time for it."

sergei.loiko@latimes.com

Originally posted here:
Vladimir Putin is spoofed on the Internet

Egypt's "Facebook Revolution" that toppled Hosni Mubarak last February may have been boosted by Internet social networking, but his downfall was inevitable anyway, a communications expert said on Sunday.

"It was a people's revolution, accelerated, facilitated by the Internet," said Rasha Abdulla, associate professor of journalism and mass communication at the American University in Cairo (AUC).

Without social networks such as Twitter and YouTube, "it would have happened but much later," she said, adding: "Practically it helped people to organise."

Abdulla was speaking at a conference entitled "Tweeting the revolution: how social media helped bring down a dictator."

"This revolution didn't start in 2011, but it accelerated with the introduction of blogs" around 2003 in Egypt, before social media really began making their mark, she said.

She singled out the posting online after 2005 of videos showing sexual harassment or police violence, and the formation of the "Kefaya" ("Enough" in Arabic) movement aimed at the Mubarak regime the same year.

Online appeals also played a great part in mobilising strikes in early April 2008, leading to the creation of the "April 6 Group," a driving force behind last year's revolution.

"The new thing in 2011 is instead of having demos of 20 to 200 people, all of a sudden they had masses of people," Abdulla said.

Gradually social networks created "horizontal communication" between Internet users talking to each other one-on-one, she said, and "gave them that sense of 'I have a voice, I'm entitled to speak and I will speak, this is my country.'"

She also said the Facebook page "We are all Khaled Said" -- dedicated to a young man beaten to death by police in Alexandria -- played a huge role in sparking the revolution.

"The page that had the biggest effect. This page was instrumental, the first page in Egypt to have such a big number" of members, Abdulla said.

"It was a political page by nature. All the conversations on the page were political. When the call for the 25th of January came, almost half a million clicked on the 'I'm attending' button. That encouraged the people."

"There was momentum in the air," she said of Tunisia's uprising against president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Conditions were ripe for a mass mobilisation in Egypt.

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Internet boosted the inevitable in Egypt: expert

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranians faced a second and more extensive disruption of Internet access Monday, just a week after email and social networking sites were blocked, raising concerns about state censorship ahead of parliamentary elections.

The latest Internet blockade affected the most common form of secure connections, including all encrypted international websites outside of Iran that depend on the Secure Sockets Layer protocol, which display addresses beginning with "https."

"Email, proxies and all the secure channels that start with 'https' are not available," said a Tehran-based technology expert who declined to be identified.

"The situation regarding accessing these websites is even worse than last week because the VPNs are not working."

Many Iranians use virtual private network, or VPN, software to get around the extensive government Internet filter which aims to prevent access to a wide range of websites including many foreign news sites and social networks like Facebook.

Last week, millions of Iranians suffered serious disruption in accessing email and social networking sites amid concerns the government is extending its surveillance on ordinary citizens.

Iranians have grappled with increased obstacles to using the Internet since opposition supporters used social networking to organize protests after the disputed 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The government denied any fraud in the vote which ignited large-scale street protests that were crushed by security services after eight months.

Iran is preparing to hold parliamentary elections on March 2, the first national election since 2009.

(Reporting by Zahra Hosseinian and Ramin Mostafavi; Writing by Amran Abocar; Editing by Sami Aboudi)

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Internet again disrupted in Iran ahead of election

3D TVs were the buzz last year, and the year before. But lately, it's all about the Internet connection — or so it seems. Every major TV-maker — LG, Panasonic, Samsung and others — offers sets with Wi-Fi and apps to access video services like Netflix, music sites like Pandora and social networks like Twitter.

But that doesn’t mean people are doing it.

"People are buying connected TVs, but they are not all using them," said Norm Bogen, vice president for digital entertainment at research firm NPD In-Stat. In fact, according to a survey that In-Stat shared exclusively with TechNewsDaily, only half of all people who own Internet-capable TVs have actually gotten them online.

Instead, they continue to use the set-top box from their cable or satellite company to access live TV or video on demand, said Bogen.

And among people who are connecting their TVs, many features go unused. "I think that people like some aspects of smart TVs," said Paul Gagnon, the director of North America TV research In-Stat's sister company, DisplaySearch. People use TV for vegging out, he said — mainly by streaming video. They don't often use features that require them to be active. "Social networking and games — those are pretty lightly used," he said. "People type on laptops and mobile devices."

People like the idea of connected TVs, but retailers do a lousy job of explaining the benefits.

- Gary Merson, editor of TV News site HD Guru

Why the lack of enthusiasm? Some people may not even know or care that they have a connected set. Online capability is simply becoming a standard feature, especially on larger TVs.

Gary Merson, editor of TV News site HD Guru, believes that people like the idea of connected TVs, but that retailers do a lousy job of explaining the benefits of the sets — or even how to use them.

And retailers don't, as a standard practice, offer to connect TVs to the Internet when they deliver them. With Best Buy, for example, hookup requires opting into the company's Seamless Home Theater Setup service, which costs an additional $150. For Target, setup packages start at $99.

What about the desire to "cord cut" by getting rid of cable or satellite TV to save money and customize what people want to watch? It seems to appeal more in theory than in practice. In a study from this month, Nielsen found that just 5 percent of households watch only Internet and free antenna-based TV. And Nielsen isn't sure how many of those people never had cable in the first place — making them cord-no-getters instead of cord-cutters. A January study by Centris Marketing Science indicates that, while 18 percent of TV subscribers are changing their plans or switching providers, just 3 percent say they even plan to cancel pay-TV service in the next three months.

The interface on connected TVs could also explain the lack of enthusiasm. "They're very, very complex and unintuitive user interfaces," said Gagnon.

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Who Wants an Internet TV?