[AfrICANN-discuss] Internet belongs to us, U.S. argues

[Badru Ntege]

This reminds me of the Music industry vis a vi online music.  The industry tried to resist the change and they paid the price.  

The Internet has evolved beyond borders and the world economy has also shifted beyond the US. I fear this move might work totally against the US being they make up about only 5% of the world population.  Though they currently contribute 55.9% of internet users this number only goes to show the possibilities of growing the Internet in africa and what wealth we have in the numbers. 

Most people really do not care where the data sits as longer as when we click the mouse it comes down.  The way things are going one would not be out of order to predict that in five years time the Chinese Yen Could replace the dollar as the alternative currency on african business reports.   Internet sites will just shift out of the US.  In Africa we should have a master plan of building major hosting locations at each fiber landing point. 


So in short it might be too late to try and be protective.  The US legislators need some out of the box thinkers like the late Steve Jobs.  Else we might be seeing the beginnings of RIP (rest in peace) the us internet industry and a few years from now we will be talking about the glory days of when everything Internet was US.   

Someone needs to tell them that the horse has bolted and guess what, it's too big for us to put back in the box.  

Badru







On 16 Nov 2011, at 16:20, Anne-Rachel Inné <annerachel at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://www.thestar.com/article/1085475--geist-internet-belongs-to-us-u-s-argues
> 
> Geist: Internet belongs to us, U.S. argues
> Published On Sat Nov 12 2011
> 
> By Michael Geist Internet Law Columnist
> 
> The U.S. Congress is currently embroiled in a heated debated over the
> Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), proposed legislation that supporters
> argue is needed to combat online infringement, but critics fear would
> create the “great firewall of the United States.”
> 
> SOPA’s potential impact on the Internet and development of online
> services is enormous as it cuts across the lifeblood of the Internet
> and e-commerce in the effort to target websites that are characterized
> as being “dedicated to the theft of U.S. property.” This represents a
> new standard that many experts believe could capture hundreds of
> legitimate websites and services.
> 
> For those caught by the definition, the law envisions requiring
> Internet providers to block access to the sites, search engines to
> remove links from search results, payment intermediaries such as
> credit card companies and Paypal to cut off financial support, and
> Internet advertising companies to cease placing advertisements.
> 
> While these measures have unsurprisingly raised concern among Internet
> companies and civil society groups, the jurisdictional implications
> demand far more attention. The U.S. approach is breathtakingly broad,
> effectively treating millions of websites and IP addresses as
> “domestic” for U.S. law purposes.
> 
> The long arm of U.S. law manifests itself in at least five ways in the
> proposed legislation.
> 
> First, it defines a “domestic domain name” as a domain name “that is
> registered or assigned by a domain name registrar, domain name
> registry, or other domain name registration authority, that is located
> within a judicial district of the United States.” Since every dot-com,
> dot-net and dot-org domain is managed by a domain name registry in the
> U.S., the law effectively asserts jurisdiction over tens of millions
> of domain names regardless of where the registrant actually resides.
> 
> Second, it defines “domestic Internet protocol addresses” — the
> numeric strings that constitute the actual address of a website or
> Internet connection — as “an Internet Protocol address for which the
> corresponding Internet Protocol allocation entity is located within a
> judicial district of the United States.”
> 
> Yet IP addresses are allocated by regional organizations, not national
> ones. The allocation entity located in the U.S. is called ARIN, the
> Americas Registry for Internet Numbers. Its territory includes the
> U.S., Canada, and 20 Caribbean nations. This bill treats all IP
> addresses in this region as domestic for U.S. law purposes.
> 
> To put this is context, every Canadian Internet provider relies on
> ARIN for its block of IP addresses. In fact, ARIN even allocates the
> block of IP addresses used by federal and provincial governments. The
> U.S. bill would treat them all as domestic for U.S. law purposes.
> 
> Third, the bill grants the U.S. “in rem” jurisdiction over any website
> that does not have a domestic jurisdictional connection. For those
> sites, the U.S. grants jurisdiction over the property of the site and
> opens the door to court orders requiring Internet providers to block
> the site and Internet search engines to stop linking to it.
> 
> Should a website owner wish to challenge the court order, U.S. law
> asserts itself in a fourth way, since in order for an owner to file a
> challenge (described as a “counter notification”), the owner must
> first consent to the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts.
> 
> If these measures were not enough, the fifth measure makes it a matter
> of U.S. law to ensure that intellectual property protection is a
> significant component of U.S. foreign policy and grants more resources
> to U.S. embassies around the world to increase their involvement in
> foreign legal reform.
> 
> U.S. intellectual property lobbying around the world has been well
> documented with new Canadian copyright legislation widely viewed as a
> direct consequence of years of political pressure. The new U.S.
> proposal takes this aggressive approach to another level by simply
> asserting jurisdiction over millions of Canadian registered IP
> addresses and domain names.
> 
> Michael Geist holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and
> E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He can be
> reached at www.michaelgeist.ca.
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