Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act | Hacker News Reader

Duffy and Cruz Introduce the Protecting Internet Freedom Act

duffy.house.gov

98 pointssnaky90 comments

While this seems rational, is this a play for them to gain some 'net credibility to start pushing harder to kill Net Neutrality? Aren't the players coming out in favour of this bill the same ones who have been arguing against NN? [1]

I'd be wary of letting any of these folks have a say on the future of the internet.

[1] ie:

Heritage Action: http://heritageaction.com/agenda/strong-economy/internet-fre...

TechFreedom: http://techfreedom.org/post/134532740524/net-neutrality-cour...

National Religious Broadcasters: http://www.acton.org/pub/commentary/2015/03/04/no-faith-base...

Agreed. There are very few people about whom I feel this way, but if Cruz supports something that sounds good to me, I'm hanging on to my wallet until I figure out the scam.

(Not that this law necessarily sounds good to me.)

Sorry if I'm missing something, but what's the context for "President Obama wants to hand over the keys to the Internet to countries like China and Russia"? I can't seem to find the right phrases to google.

This is a response to the potential internationalization of ICANN, and most importantly, its IANA department.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Assigned_Numbers_Auth...

Ah, thanks very much! For confused readers like me, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023035462045794396... is a good article linked from the Wikipedia page.

(Google the title "U.S. Plans to Give Up Oversight of Web Domain Manager" and click through from search to avoid the paywall.)

Probably related to ICANN being moved out from under the US State Department.

Saving you the need to scroll to find the text: https://duffy.house.gov/sites/duffy.house.gov/files/wysiwyg_...

"To prohibit the National Telecommunications and Information Administration from allowing the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority functions contract to lapse unless specifically authorized to do so by an Act of Congress."

A little over 6 pages, so not a tough one to read. Might be close to the same number of words as the press release.

"The Protecting Internet Freedom Act would also ensure that the United States maintains sole ownership of the .gov and .mil top-level domains, which are vital to national security."

I almost did a spit take...

I agree with this. I like being able to know that a site is trustworthy based on it having a .gov domain name.

I mean... do you really want to have to guess whether congress.gov is run by the government, or some random country which decided to sell of .gov TLDs for extra cash?

Or, potentially more deceptively to consumers, "healthcare.gov", etc.

is it really so bad to do what everyone not in the US does and add an extra 3 characters? .gov.us; SOLVED

I agree this is a problem worth solving. But shouldn't it be solved for every country, not just the US?

As a non-US citizen, I find it strange that matters of global internet governance are discussed with apparently mostly arguments about US-specific issues.

As a US citizen, I find it strange as well. But our Republican Party seems to believe we're special and should be treated differently. We aren't and we shouldn't be.

The other option is not giving it over to some random country. As I understand it, the other option would be giving the assignment of top-level domains to ITU or some similar agency within UN, which would then delegate .gov and .mil and other things to US.

The same people who would have problems with "some random country" would have even more problems with the UN.

I'm generally less critical of the UN, but I would agree that the UN is pretty much the last body that should be invested with any sorts of power.

Agree, I have no problem with this. By not limiting these to government uses and ownership, you are only opening the door for malicious websites to fool users...

I had to prove I was a student multiple times by sending / receiving mail at .edu address. It's not unreasonable for people to assume that if you control a .gov domain you're a legitimate US government agency. I think Internet control should become less US-centric, but I agree with them there'll need to be some effort to deal with the .gov TLD issue.

Yes, and think how unfair it is to students at universities in other countries that they don't get .edu addresses. Why should the US have this monopoly?

My university has offered courtesy mail forwarding to alumni since ~2000 (probably a good bit earlier).

Yeah, it's written like if this law doesn't pass, China will be have full access to the NSA.

Yeah I don't understand the reasoning behind this at all.

My guess, this prevents DNS poisoning attacks.

Somewhere, somehow, there is critical infrastructure tied to a .gov or .mil [email/web] address.

Also known as the "Let's Straw-Man Obama because we Really Hate Him Act".

As an international user, it is in my opinion fantastic that the White House is attempting to cede control of key internet infrastructure. Why should a single country act as the custodians of a global service?

Well, it's ours. We created it. We've allowed other countries to use it because it benefits us to do so.

I realize this is probably not the popular opinion, but I'm not sure it makes any sense really to give up control over it.

Also, they have a point about the free speech. For a system in which free speech is indispensable (the internet), there is actually only a handful of countries that seem to get the whole "free speech" thing correct, the US among them.

I recently did a lot of research into this as part of a project. As far as actual laws on the books (and not whatever one's political opinion of how they tend to be applied), the U.S. isn't just "one of" - it is literally the only country in the world matching descriptions like "first-world", "liberal", and "democratic", that does not have some variety of broad, nation-level laws against insulting people or groups of people. Aside from the U.S., only a handful of completely random small countries happen to lack such laws.

So, as far as I can tell, the U.S. is practically unique in having the most liberal free speech protections, and actually unique among any countries that could be considered peers.

this is sort of an aside, but even though I wish other countries practiced the same degree of freedom of speech as the US, I think the Germans ban on Naziism might be a valid exception in my book. I only bring it up because I think of it quite a lot.

When that is part of your national history and identity, I think there's a good reason for banning that practice and behavior. Even if it violates free speech. To practice those ideals in the same country where those crimes were committed can do no service to anyone; there is no good outcome, no valid reasoning. It can only harm everyone. That's just about the only "exception" to free speech I can think of that holds up, though I still do question where you CAN have exceptions. Kind of like with encryption, you can't say "it's secure BUT..." you can't say "we have free speech BUT..."

We're so much into free speech, we even have these nifty free speech zones[1] where you can practice it without being subject to immediate detainment!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone

We're not talking about some kind of Aquinas Protocol here, but rather who controls the DNS root zone. How much censorship potential is there, really? Especially when it's likely to end up being managed by committee, which basically means nothing gets done unless everyone agrees?

The DHS seems to have seized non-US domains in the past on disputed legal grounds.[1]

I'm not completely sure, but I'd think a transfer to a non-US entity would make this harder in the future.

[1] http://blog.easydns.org/2012/02/29/verisign-seizes-com-domai...

yeah, it looks like this is just a pointless piece of legislation so that in the next big election they can say "well WE created the Internet Freedom Whatchamacallit! Did Opponent support that? NO! They don't care about the cyber .gov DNS IP security what does all that mean."

"only a handful of countries that seem to get the whole "free speech" thing correct, the US among them"

I have to wonder about that, especially with the fight over net neutrality.

I'm not sure that we're among them as much as we'd like to think. Certainly if your speech is "Whistleblowing", you don't want to be in the US.

Well if you whistleblow in the US, you end up in front of a judge (after a probably very unpleasant stay in a cell for a bit). You end up in prison forever. Really bad time. As for the journalists who published what you leaked? Free speech yo!

Whisleblow in China. You don't end up in front of a judge, you end up at the bottom of the ocean. And the journalists who published what you whistleblew? Likewise. And the people who tweet about it, or talk about it at work, and the websites who previous hosted it are suddenly down for maintenance...

So is the US a free speech utopia? Probably not, but I don't know of any other countries where the Westboro Baptist Church could last for so long...

Actually the government here pretty regularly tries to dick over journalists too. In any case, your false dichotomy is neither accurate, nor compelling.

example?

Just a few http://www.rcfp.org/jailed-journalists

And even then, the government agencies most involved in shutting down sites don't have the greatest track record of transparency and human rights.

> Well, it's ours.

No (t really).

> We created it.

Yes (mostly, originally).

> We've allowed other countries to use it because it benefits us to do so.

It is a distributed network. It is composed of pieces owned by different principals, content created by different people and code and technology contributed by the entire world. If the U.S. were to close its internet today, and block any connection to the outside world, it might crash the web for days or weeks, but after that, the dependencies on U.S. controlled infrastructure would be quickly replaced, and the U.S. would be left with a national intranet, while the rest of the world would have the Internet. Hell, even for DNS, which is the specific system in question here, it is not so much "the U.S. owns DNS" but "a large number of DNS servers, owned by different parties, have pretty much agreed to replicate the U.S.'s version of the DNS registry and trust it as authoritative". They could be set to replicate a root DNS server in Geneva, Brussels or even Beijing within hours. In some ways, other countries allowed the U.S. to dictate how domains are assigned because it benefits them to do so (and because ICANN has been for the most part a trusted arbiter of the DNS system).

I am not even in favor of a U.N. controlled Internet, based on what I know is likely to happen if this move occurs now (the U.S. is, depressingly, among the least Internet-hostile countries in the world right now... and it is hostile enough). I actually like ICANN and how they do things, for the most part. "If it ain't broken don't fix it" and all that. But this whole "we own the entire Internet because it started here" sentiment is as ridiculous as if, say, China were to claim that they own all of the world printed money because they invented paper money originally.

I see that more of a historical artifact. It's not like all the servers in the world are in the US and everyone else gets their internet through big pipes from your shores.

You can see it however you want :). You're also free to set up your own DNS if you prefer; we don't assert any control over the design, just our implementation.

What exactly is yours? The german internet exchange points? The hunderds of chinese internet start-ups?

I'd like to see you try to stop anyone else using it.

They built it. We get to use it because they're nice. And given the ineptitude of supranational governing bodies of late, I'd be perfectly happy for the US to keep running it.

Because we have the world's largest military and the world's reserve currency, and use these to balance global security so that postwar liberal democratic norms are protected. Freedom of speech is one of them. We are therefore the only entity in a position to ensure that the internet remains free.

If this is the case, wouldn't you also have a responsibility to level the playing field for other web search providers or social networks in addition to Google and Facebook, so a free market is ensured and free speech couldn't be harmed by decisions of individuals within those two companies?

As an international user, your country isn't going to get control of it.

If it goes through the UN, some amalgamation of theocracies, dictatorships, and kleptocracies will take control of it. The worst-case scenario is quite bad.

Because it's ours. We were just were kind enough to let you use it.

Tenuously was yours (since the original internet (in the sense of a global network) was a connection of multiple networks and not all of them where in the US, far from it) it certainly isn't anymore.

The UK had JANET in the late-70's/early 80's other countries had similar, the US was important and influential but the internet would have existed anyway, the concept of connecting a bunch of disparate networks together to form a single internetwork is one of those things that would have happened anyway.

There are 5-6 times as many users outside the US as in the US, most of the equipment running it isn't even made in the US anymore.

So far the arguments I've seen on here have been "well we set it up so it's ours forever" which by that logic means we own all the telecoms systems in the world (we been the UK) as well as all the railways.... (which is absurd but then so is "it's ours" in relation to the internet).

The UK does own it's telecom systems. If I want a phone number that works in the UK, it's going to be via a UK telecom.

Nobody is saying you can't setup a router or networks on your own. But if you want addressing from ICANN, a US company, you have to play by US rules.

> The UK does own it's telecom systems.

I know I used to work in telecomms, my point was that having the first system doesn't mean we should control the ITU in perpetum.

In fact the ITU model is a good example of a model that would work here, the UN runs that and I can ring a phone in America or Azerbaijan.

That model doesn't work when we all share the same root name servers. I don't want a majority vote of a bunch of oppressive countries to be able to strip a website of its domain because it has an offensive joke on it.

uh no, it just means the rest of the world can either submit to the US ruling the internet or tell them to get fucked and go do it themselves.

Which honestly, I'm fine with given the MURICA! style arrogance of "we invented it you just get to use it"

The US have been good stewards so there has never been a reason to seriously contemplate moving en masse and without that critical mass you'd end up isolating your national network and having to bridge out anyway.

That said there is essentially zero technical reason why we couldn't just route (pun intended) straight around the US 'control' of the internet if we wanted so yeah it's a case of "we'll let you run it as long as you behave" rather than "you are the only ones who can".

People will use it whatever the US wants. It has no choice in the matter.

The world trusts the United States to correctly manage the foremost reserve currency. Many countries trust our military to protect them in times of need.

I agree that making it more international is ostensibly a good thing, but in reality I haven't seen a good argument that the world, or the internet, would actually be better off.

Specifically, while countries like the US don't have perfect human rights track records, we are much better than countries like China. And if we're going to give them even a bit of control of this infrastructure because "its the right thing to do", well, I can't agree with that.

Yes, there are practically philosophical questions like "who gave us the right do manage this" or "what happens if we screw it up?", but in reality we're doing a pretty great job and until that changes I think internationalizing it would just be trying to fix something that isn't broken.

By that logic you could get rid of the complete UN though.

That would be nice actually

> .@SenTedCruz and I introduced a bill to ensure that President Obama can't terminate U.S. oversight of the Internet

https://twitter.com/RepSeanDuffy/status/740636388186546176

I'm sure some think-tank wrote this bill; thankfully there are Congressmen who can introduce.

Are there any indications that Verisign might be pulling the strings here? It seems like they would be the party getting the most benefit out of this, i.e. protection against having foreign interests take away their registry business. Or am I mistaken about how control of that deal works?

This seems to be less a free speech vs. government censorship issue, and more of an international control vs. one-nation control issue. Whether managed by the ICANN or the NTIA, some government is going to be regulating these standards and domains.

So let's keep it in the hands of the government with the strongest free speech protections in the world.

Finland it is!

https://rsf.org/en/ranking https://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-wo...

Those rankings are unscientific and, especially when it comes to Western countries, very political. Placing Hungary above the US for press freedom, for example, should be a red flag. http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com//2012/01/26/usa-usa-were... . (I strongly disagree even with the criticism of Occupy arrests. The right to protest is not a license to permanently make camp on private property or public property that's supposed to be available for other use.)

Finland has laws that ban "publishing data, an opinion or other statement that threatens or insults a group on basis of race, nationality, ethnicity, religion or conviction, sexual orientation, disability, or any comparable basis. Ethnic agitation is punishable with a fine or up to 2 years in prison, or 4 months to 4 years if aggravated (such as incitement to genocide)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#Finland . And as a member of the EU, Finland has to follow the right-to-be-forgotten ruling.

Amusing that this technology bill on Duffy's site [1] is titled "C:\Users\CBOSBO~1\AppData\Roaming\SoftQuad\XMetaL\7.0\gen\c\DUFFY_~1.XML - 16.06.08 - DUFFY_110_xml_0.pdf".

Is it common for Congresspersons to use Xmetal software [2] (or its ilk) to edit bills?

[1] https://duffy.house.gov/sites/duffy.house.gov/files/wysiwyg_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMetaL

From the second paragraph of your own wiki link:

> Government agencies also use XMetaL for tracking legislation.

Doesn't the president have veto power? Seems kind of silly to make a law that says Obama can't do something when he can just veto said law.

Issuing a veto makes it front page news. I'm not sure the democrats want to be seen as handing over the internet to dictators and theocrats, over the objections of Congress, in an election year. The White House has only gotten so far on this because it hasn't broken into the political consciousness yet.

Congress can override a veto with a 2/3 majority.

Cruz fighting for internet freedom, Obama expanding social welfare after cutting it, Clinton fighting for healthcare and minimum wage.

I'm not trying to make this political but thank you Bernie Sanders. After the success of Bernie's grassroots movement traditional politicians are trying to appeal to the more progressive portion of the population since Trump controls the angry.

Remember that the name of a given legislative act is generally unrelated, or sometimes diametrically opposed, to the actual intent.

This is called Internet Freedom but is not about that. It is about the incredible mess called ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and trying to make sure that the US government can dominate it permanently.

ICANN is the group which made lots of money authorizing the recent innovations in DNS like .xyz and .movie.

Eh, the very first paragraph dispels that notion. It's not fighting for Internet freedom, it's fighting for freedom of the Internet to be controlled by Americans.

While I agree that up to now ICANN and IANA have done their work reasonably well, I wouldn't want them to be under influence of a single geopolitical entity. Then again, I certainly don't want them to be under the influence of all geopolitical entities, and be dragged down to the average of the whole world (like the UN Human Rights Council headed by Saudi Arabia) — we shouldn't aspire to mediocrity if we can set an example by aspiring to greatness.

All governments and bureaucracies suck. Let's keep the internet in the hands of the one that has the strongest legal commitment to free speech and due process. Not even European countries, with their narrower and more nuanced conceptions of free speech, are fit for this purpose.

Cruz and other Republicans have been raising concerns over this matter for over two years now [1]. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Sanders.

[1] http://www.thedomains.com/2014/04/02/35-senators-demand-answ...

> The Protecting Internet Freedom Act would also ensure that the United States maintains sole ownership of the .gov and .mil top-level domains, which are vital to national security.

Why? Because of hard-coded logic around those TLDs? Or is to establish that the US Military is always the top domain so canada.mil doesn't become a thing?

Without advocating either way, right now both are (afaik) fairly synonymous with the US government and its military. I could see how they'd consider it harmful if a foreign actor (or anybody, really) creates, e.g., sssa.gov which steals your information.

So do I trust unelected international organizations or the US government less... That's a tough one.

Given that any such international organization would be controlled by groups of countries, and given that US free speech protections are vastly stronger than anywhere else in the world, I say we don't fix what ain't broken. No need to give Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia a vote. Even huge swaths of Europe would try to control hate speech, or try to impose their privacy laws on the rest of us.

Wondering if the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies to the changes that the Obama administration is proposing?

IOW, what about the way that the internet is currently run is broken or warrants these changes?

Of course, other countries don't need the USA to regulate their own internet infrastructure - they can fork off their own DNS and IANA functions within their countries, with as much or little cooperation with the USA as they desire.

Brought to you by people who have endorsed Donald Trump for President.

I believe Sen. Ted Cruz not only didn't endorse Donald Trump (up until now) but was also Trump's fiercest opponent and critic in the primaries.

Cruz never endorsed Trump.

He is apparently hosting him at a rally, though.

so?

I just want to thank you for your service. I have given up arguing with people who start an argument an ad-hominem.

I don't really know if the IANA should be managed by an international body, but the fact that Ted Cruz and the President of National Religious Broadcasters are in favor of this bill automatically make me think this bill is trying to prohibit speech or invade privacy. And the fact that "President, Americans for Limited Government" is supporting maintaining government control of the Internet makes it sound like standard right-wing hypocrisy. And the fact they frame the bill as an attack on Obama makes it even more suspect.

If ICANN is intentionally lobbying people like this, it automatically makes me think that it should lose the contract, regardless of the quality of their actual stewardship.

Cruz (no matter what you think of him) is from a family that fled an oppressive dictatorship, and he also specialized in constitutional law at Harvard (and argued Heller vs. DC for the 2A), why would he want to "prohibit speech"?

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