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<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/antipiracy-laws-congress-sopa-269625?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+thr/news+%28The+Hollywood+Reporter+-+Top+Stories%29">http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/antipiracy-laws-congress-sopa-269625?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+thr/news+%28The+Hollywood+Reporter+-+Top+Stories%29</a><br>
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</font><font face="sans-serif">Hi All<br>
<br>
</font><font face="sans-serif">See the story at the above link about
how whether SOPA is enacted or not (or enacted in a slightly diluted
form) the US establishment </font><font face="sans-serif">is already</font><font
face="sans-serif"> using the kind of devices SOPA puts at its services
for very strict SOPA-like IP enforcement over the Internet. And such
control and enforcement also gets done in both extra-territorial and
extra legal manners (for instance, in the case of wikileaks).<br>
<br>
With the major Internet nodes of power all in the US - ICANN (DNS and
IANA), major registries, </font><font face="sans-serif">online payment
services, online advertisement companies, </font><font
face="sans-serif">major international ISPs, biggest web hosting
services, monopoly search engines and social media companies, etc, -
it was always obvious that such hugely dis-proportionate US control of
the Internet system will be a problem for the global nature of the
Internet. However, most people in the IG civil society still like to
turn a blind eye to this problem - hoping it will somehow go away. No,
it certainly wont go away. It will keep becoming more and more vicious
till there is just no other way than to take the right steps toward
developing global principles and institution for global Internet
governance that are genuinely democratic and participatory. And by
then, considerable damage will already have been done to the
techno-social architecture of the global Internet. <br>
<br>
BTW, the use of these multiple nodes and devices of power, as mentioned
earlier -</font><font face="sans-serif">- ICANN (DNS and IANA), major
registries, </font><font face="sans-serif">online payment services,
online advertisement companies, </font><font face="sans-serif">major
international ISPs, biggest web hosting services, monopoly search
engines and social media companies, etc, - </font><font
face="sans-serif"> in various combinations, to do legal, extra legal
and extra territorial enforcement of rule and power is a fine example
of private networked governance. This model typically awards power with
more power, and that is the problem with it; something which will fit
very well with Castellsians theories of power distribution in and
through an automated and politically unchecked network . <br>
<br>
We need countervailing systems of political and democratic power for
the global Internet.<br>
<br>
Parminder <br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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