Unless they are going to put FIDOnet back online (or is it still around?) you need a backbone for the internet, which means governments can always control and close it at will.
The mere fact the US is pursuing such an option is a demonstration of bad government that threatens and controls it's people with FUD.
Governments have some control over the 'managing' and 'running' of the Internet, via TLD control, blocking, filtering, surveillance and legislation (e.g. the cookie law in EU), but even with all these in place, they're not really 'running' the Internet. If they did, there'd be no newsgroups, no torrents and no porn. They're seizing more control as time goes on, however: See the death of Net Neutrality in the US.
I'd like to see governments pledge to back off from the Internet. Unfortunately I can't see that ever happening. Forever pushing for more governance means that the non-government-approved portion will get bigger and erect more walls around it. If governments want to govern, they need to be more accepting of the 'net in its natural state and deal with it on those terms, rather than forcing citizens to choose to be on the 'light side' or 'dark side' (choose for yourself which term applies to which).
As long as most of the internet's infrastructure is controlled/maintained by US based companies (Verisign comes to mind), such relinquishing of control is a meaningless gesture, since the government can force any US based company to bend to its will.
Nope, .gov belongs to the US, so they get to hog it.
It's a historical vestige, the Internet started out as a U.S. government-sponsored research network, so they built it for their own needs. There's absolutely no reason to them to give that up.
Why does the government need to do such a thing? You're free to set up your own corner of the Internet, unless the government itself tries to stop you, which does happen to some people in this world.
Ironically, the internet is a US government project that was opened up to external participation. The US government has historically controlled significant parts of core internet infrastructure, and didn't fully hand over control of the internet until October 1, 2016.
the more government oppression applied to the Internet - the sooner a government oppressure resistant alternative would emerge. The current Internet is a great thing, yet it is fundamentally flawed by being that vulnerable to any whimse of concentrated political and economical interest.
While it can't be presicely described how the future free Internet would look, it is possble to imagine some modern implementation of something like the old Fido network with a set of satellites and cables/floats in the international space and waters and the next generation WiFi that will have on the scale of couple orders of magnitude greater range.
The very last thing we need is for the government to put more regulation on the Internet. The only thing that's kept their heavy hands from destroying things so far, is that they're also incompetent with technical issues.
Biggest problem from my point of view is that the US also happens to be the steward of the Internet. This public screwup represents the perfect opportunity for governments of the world to balkanize the Internet, as in further splintering it in geographic and commercial boundaries. Countries like China now have valid arguments in the eyes of the Chinese for blocking foreign websites and services. And more and more national firewalls will happen, firewalls that will crush freedom of speech and that will end the free trade.
I'm not sure if the age of the free Internet we've been enjoying is coming to an end, but you can bet your ass that governments are trying to end it. And the US government doesn't even seem to comprehend how big their screwup is.
The answer is both obvious and depressing: greed. USA basically controls the Internet right now. We need to build the next internet that cannot be co-opted, censored, disabled, or monitored.
ICANN has been a big drag on the world wide web for far too long. Perhaps stupid politics like this will be the straw the breaks the camel's back.
And attempting to censor the internet could well be the straw that breaks the US federal government's back. As if there isn't enough anti-federalist / libertarian sentiment bubbling up lately, they want to start following after China's Great Firewall? Smart move...
We need technological solutions for this problem, not new international laws or, holding nations accountable and so on. Nations, including the US, will always try to exploit weaknesses in computer infrastructure. We need a fundamental rethink of the technical underpinnings of the internet. Such as air-gapped systems, or something that is physically isolated from foreign access.
So for example, in order to access a critical government system you need a dedicated, physical wire running to your computer. This may mean no access from home and that's fine.
The mere fact the US is pursuing such an option is a demonstration of bad government that threatens and controls it's people with FUD.
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