Allow me to add something I said somewhere last week causing some laughter, ".. starting with demilitarizing the Internet."

On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 5:58 PM, Alex Gakuru <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Eloquently put! The real problem is not nor has been the Internet per se but its unprecedented societal order transforming success – instantaneousness, equally placing everyone on the same platform. Then the publics/participants responding by transferring their most varied motives online resulting in ages old societal conflicts and humans interaction tensions replaying online.

Given your illustrated cultural, traditional, religious, human nature, infrastructural instruments, among other, interactions challenges, how/can these tensions be eradicated such that when everyone connected is all-smiles online? Or yet another illuminating case for global attitudes overhaul ;-)

On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Marc Perkel <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

My problem is that no matter how benign a treaty might sound in the beginning it would lead to the creation of an infrastructure to allow enforcement. Once you have an international infrastructure of control who is to say the rules might change? So something might start out as the society for the protection of cute kittens organizing to stop child porn and end up with the thought police installing chips in your brain.

And you can imagine where this would go when it comes to "religiously offensive" materials sent across the internet. There are many countries where not believing in God caries the death penalty, as well as believing in God the wrong way. I can imagine what would happen between Christians and Muslims on an Internet with a central control infrastructure. There was a story recently where a man who was a non-believer determined that a crying statue of the Virgin Mary was caused by a leaky sewer pipe and he's being prosecuted for it. Imagine what a threat it would be to realists if those views could be enforced across international borders.

And what about uprisings? The Arab Spring was organized online. Would we be obligated to censor the cries of the oppressed and tortured because of treaty obligations of the oppressing country?

The bottom line for me is that some criminality is the price we pay for freedom and it's worth it. Once you put in an infrastructure to stop the bad guys then that infrastructure can, and most certainly will, be used against the rest of us. So I support our resistance to any treaty or domestic law to centrally control the internet.