This morning, via Twitter:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler ‏@RepHartzler

Why is the United States giving up control of the Internet?! It’s a solution looking for a problem & jeopardizes something that is working. 6:16 AM – 23 Mar 2014

And, a critical reply:

Politicallulz ‏@politicallulz

@RepHartzler I suggest you learn about how the DNS system works then come back and parrot your alarmist bullshit. 8:17 AM – 23 Mar 2014

From The Telegraph:

US government to relinquish control of Internet address system

The US Commerce Department will hand over control of the Internet’s domain name system to a ‘multi-stakeholder’ community

By Sophie Curtis

10:39AM GMT 17 Mar 2014

….Strickling and ICANN’s board chair Dr Stephen Crocker both insist the US government’s role in coordinating the Internet’s domain name system was always temporary, and the intention has always been for the private sector to take over DNS management when the time was right.

“Even though ICANN will continue to perform these vital technical functions, the US has long envisioned the day when stewardship over them would be transitioned to the global community,” said Crocker. “In other words, we have all long known the destination. Now it is up to our global stakeholder community to determine the best route to get us there.”

The announcement has been welcomed by the leaders of the Internet technical organisations responsible for coordination of the Internet infrastructure, who said in a joint statement that the strength and stability of these functions are “critical to the operation of the Internet”….

From Think Progress:

Why The U.S. Is Giving Up Control Of The Internet Domain Name System

By Lauren C. Williams on March 17, 2014 at 5:02 pm

….The announcement from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on Friday marks the final step in a plan proposed in 1997 to shift ICANN to global control….

Run for the hills, the Skynet is falling…

A bill, introduced yesterday:

FIRST REGULAR SESSION

HOUSE BILL NO. 696

97TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

INTRODUCED BY REPRESENTATIVES CORNEJO (Sponsor), PARKINSON, HICKS AND SOMMER (Co-sponsors).

1786L.01I  D. ADAM CRUMBLISS, Chief Clerk

AN ACT

To amend chapter 565, RSMo, by adding thereto one new section relating to the offense of impersonation of an actual person by electronic means, with a penalty provision.

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the state of Missouri, as follows:

           Section A. Chapter 565, RSMo, is amended by adding thereto one new section, to be known as section 565.093, to read as follows:

           565.093. 1. As used in this section, the following terms shall mean:

           (1) “Electronic means”, includes opening an email account, an instant messaging account, or an account or profile on a social networking internet website in another person’s name, or changing or otherwise manipulating the system metadata to identify another person’s name;

           (2) “System metadata”, automatically generated information about the source, or author or authors of an electronically created or stored file or document.

           2. A person commits the offense of impersonation of an actual person by electronic means if such person knowingly and without consent credibly impersonates another actual person through or on an internet website or by other electronic means for purposes of harming, intimidating, threatening, or defrauding another person.

           3. For purposes of this section, an impersonation is credible if another person would reasonably believe or did reasonably believe that the defendant was or is the person who was impersonated.

           4. Any person who commits the offense of impersonation of an actual person by electronic means is guilty of a class A misdemeanor.

           5. Nothing in this section shall be construed as precluding prosecution under any other law.

[emphasis in original]

“…A person commits the offense of impersonation of an actual person by electronic means if such person knowingly and without consent credibly impersonates another actual person through or on an internet website or by other electronic means for purposes of harming, intimidating, threatening, or defrauding another person…”

Sarcasm and satire would still be okay, right?:

Fake Vicky Hartzler ‏@VickiHartzler

New poll shows that people are OK with cutting the military. I’ll still try to cut SS instead. [….] 3:28 PM – Feb 25, 2013

Then again, putting “Fake” before a name probably wouldn’t make it a credible impersonation.

Creating a fake person for the purpose of catfishing…?

Update:

Via Twitter:

Rep. Mark Parkinson ‏@markparkinson

@MBersin despite your wild conspiracy theory, here is the reason behind H.B. 696 [….] 6:11 PM – Feb 26, 2013

“…wild conspiracy theory…”

Project much?

Conspiracy theory? We just posted the bill and asked a few questions, while pointing a little sarcasm in the direction of Representative Vicky Hartzler (r). What’s not to like?

I just read in the St. Louis Beacon that the Missouri Senate has just about “fixed” the sections of Jane Cunningham’s Amy Hestir Davis Student Protection Act that would have restricted or even banned student-teacher contact via the Internet. I am relatively comfortable that there is much in the bill that will assist school districts to deal with teachers who have been proven to be sexual predators, something that most of us can support. However, when it came to the supposed menace posed by evil social networking sites, the framers went totally off the wall. The legislation was so poorly written that lots of people were concerned that they couldn’t figure out what behaviors the bill actually prohibited.  

I was amused but not surprised that the sponsor of the bill, Senator Jane Cunningham, is one of our current Tea Party darlings. Tea Partiers, as you no doubt know, are folks who like to rant about freedom, the primacy of personal responsibility, and, over and over again, the encroachment of the “nanny state.” Yet, when it comes to anything to do with, among other things, sexual behavior, they never fail to come out with a great big stick of the sort usually hefted only by the meanest of nannies – the sort of stick that can do lots of collateral damage.

Of course, the Amy Hestir bill’s Internet prohibitions offered Tea Partiers a threefer.  The bill not only raised the specter of sexual misbehavior – and in a form involving predatory exploitation of children, something that few would defend -but it took on teachers, currently a favorite bête noire, since teachers are, for the most part, happily unionized. The bill certainly suggests that they are all always under suspicion of improper motives and must be monitored in all communications with minors.  Finally, the bill went after social networking with a bazooka.

In my experience the typical middle-aged or elderly Tea Party type is often a little disturbed by the chaotic world of the Internet, whether or not they admit it. The Internet isn’t – yet – easily controlled by centralized authority. Additionally, the concerns that many right-wingers express about the World Wide Web often seem to center on, once again, sex, specifically the somewhat sensationalized belief that the Internet is mainly used to promulgate pornography and lure women and children into unregulated sexual behaviors.

The fact that neither of these possibilities are exclusive to the Internet goes unremarked as conservative religious leaders rant and rave about its dangers. Oddly the same people are often the first to proclaim, when it comes to gun control, that guns don’t kill people, people do. Yet they have real problems with the parallel proposition that Facebook doesn’t lure young girls into illicit activity, … well, you get the idea.

I remember listening to a call-in radio program on NPR when a self-identified Tea partier was asked by the host what she meant by nanny state.  Her examples?  Michelle Obama’s suggestions that folks eat greens, and congressional efforts to set energy standards that could affect one’s choice of a light bulb. And she was ready to go to war about it all. Her comments do, however, suggest to me the difference between the type of social control – which is what conservatives mean when they talk about a nanny state – that liberals might advocate and that proposed by many on the right.

For the most part, the liberal nanny state is motivated by actual knowledge – greens are verifiably good for you after all. Liberals recognize that we have a collective social life and they want to make it better, or at least keep it from degenerating. Energy standards that affect light bulbs help to reduce energy consumption and contribute to a more stable environment, ergo, a better collective life. Encouraging people to eat in a healthier way not only improves the individual’s life, it makes our collective life better by helping cut overall health care costs.

The conservative nanny state, though, seems to be motivated by over-weaning fear. It is true that we need to make sure that we keep teachers who abuse children out of classrooms, but we don’t have to strike out blindly to do so. Often it seems that the real fear behind so many conservative prohibitions borders on the irrational. Many have argued very effectively that behind the general social hysteria about child abusers, is the fear of loss of control. It is even more obvious that behind the hysteria about abortion is the fear of sexually empowered females; behind the frothing about Muslims lies the never-ending fear of the other. These folks are scared silly.

It is important to understand this fact: We all want some kind of control over our social lives and everybody has their ideal “nanny” to achieve that end. Don’t believe conservatives when they tell you they are against government interference in personal life. Most right-wingers are desperate to maintain an orderly and static social environment. But beware – the nanny that the conservatives want to hire to keep under control all the chaotic impulses that so frighten them is a bully who will have no compunction about slapping your hands with a ruler and sending you to bed with no dinner if you so much as make a peep.

How seriously do the Missouri Democrats take internet outreach? Here’s a screenshot of the highest ranking state Democrat’s personal website:

Nice enough website for the 2008 campaign. The only problem with it is that I took the screenshot just a few minutes ago. And Nixon pays a campaign consulting firm tens of thousands of dollars. You think that they could muster a few updates to the website in two freaking years.

…Adding that while I’m not a big fan of Nixon or McCaskill obviously, I really want them to do what I view as the right thing. That’s why I continue to needle them.  

We are not worthy. Jamil Smith, via Twitter, sums up the eight years of dubya’s reign in only six words:

Try not to ruin them, too. • RT @George_WBush: I’m now on Twitter & Facebook.    about 4 hours ago  via Twitter for iPhone  

[emphasis added]

You’ve got to believe that right wingnuttia just detests the wide dissemination of public speech made possible by this Internets thing. You know, that technological entity that Al Gore took the initiative to promote as a legislator.  

Last Sunday, St. Louis Post-Dispatch business columnist David Nicklaus devoted his column to an attack on internet regulation:

Some beats, like banking, need tougher cops, but others, like the Internet, are doing fine with no cop at all.

So when the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission weighs in on an important Internet issue by vowing to become “a smart cop on the beat,” we should worry that the Web’s best years, characterized by rapid growth with little regulation, may be behind it.

Nicklaus was responding to comments by FCC chair Julius Genachowski who is releasing new rules governing  broadband Internet service providers (ISPs). Genachowski declared that an open internet environment is essential to our continued economic and social well-being. He noted, however, that:

Notwithstanding its unparalleled record of success, today the free and open Internet faces emerging and substantial challenges. We’ve already seen some clear examples of deviations from the Internet’s historic openness. We have witnessed certain broadband providers unilaterally block access to VoIP applications (phone calls delivered over data networks) and implement technical measures that degrade the performance of peer-to-peer software distributing lawful content. We have even seen at least one service provider deny users access to political content.

Grenachowski indicated that the new rules will be based on the principles that underlie what we popularly speak of as “net neutrality,” which can be loosely summarized as follows:

• Free access:  Users should be able to access their choice of legal internet content, including applications and services.

• Non-Discrimination:  Broadband providers cannot favor or prohibit traffic over their networks based on content, even if  that content competes with services sold by the provider.

• Transparency:  Providers must be open about their network management practices and technologies since they can affect the ability of users to access desired content and applications.

Nicklaus’ comments were, as befits a reasonably responsible journalist, the most restrained among those Missourians who immediately leaped to defend the ISP’s longtime desire to be able to apply differential pricing based on content. He even conceded that one of the favorite objections lobbed by ISP representatives, that net neutrality would hamper network security by preventing providers from rooting out viruses and malware, is overstated since:

Any reasonable FCC regulation would surely allow the broadband companies to police their networks for harmful files.

Such moderation, however, has not been apparent  in the public utterances of the Missouri Republican politicians who have jumped onto the issue wearing their best ideological boots, and wielding the cudgels provided by the ISPs whose interests they really, really want to protect.

In the letters to the editor section of the Post Dispatch, State Rep. Joe Smith (R-St. Charles), got all fired up about the impending disaster represented by new government regulation:

The Internet’s mind-boggling growth is not a product of government regulation. Private investment in infrastructure and innovation are responsible for today’s robust network. Now is no time to muck up progress by injecting the government into the mechanics of how the Internet is managed.

One can only assume that he is also overjoyed by the chaos that resulted from financial deregulation championed by his Republican colleagues in Washington. Good one, Joe — glad to see that the ideological blinders are still in working order.

Roy Blunt also chimed in, winning the prize for the number of pre-digested, partisan talking points he was able to shoehorn into his statement:

Today’s announcement was a solution in search of a problem.  In creating new rules, the unelected Federal Communications Commission is bowing to liberal special interest groups – exactly the kind of behavior Barack Obama promised to end when he was elected president.  The fact that the Chairman never indicated his plans during an oversight hearing held just last Thursday at the House Energy & Commerce Committee even though the broad topic of Internet regulation was addressed tells me that the Administration intended to avoid congressional oversight in its new rules.  That fits a troubling pattern of unelected administrative czars and other officials who have been given unprecedented power without appropriate oversight from Congress

What do you bet that every Republican politician gets five RNC points each time he or she manages to say “unelected,” “czar,” and “liberal special interest group” in a public forum?

It goes without saying that this Republican sound and fury (and the echo provided by our newspaper business opiner, Nicklaus) doesn’t have much to do with reality.  These gentlemen are simply functioning as megaphones to amplify the dishonest arguments developed by service providers.  

As  Free Press notes in their report on the top 10 net neutrality myths, Blunt’s catchy little mantra that the proposed regulations are a “solution in search of a problem” is stolen verbatim from the claims of ISPs:

… This is a constant refrain from Internet service providers (ISPs). Yet, quixotically, the same ISPs also repeatedly have stated their intention to violate the principles of the open Internet to reap profits from discrimination. Which is it? Either there is no problem, and they will never discriminate, or they have to discriminate to be profitable. This blatant contradiction illustrates the reality that the “solution in search of a problem” argument is nothing but misdirection.

The real threat is that the technology that enables discrimination is finally available to ISPs. Comcast’s secret blocking of BitTorrent is a concrete example of an anti-competitive use of this technology – which is being sold to ISPs as a method for profiting from discrimination. The examples of marketplace abuses that have occurred thus far are simply cautionary tales about the widespread, systemic change that would occur if ISPs were given a formal green light to control Internet content and applications.

Contrary to the claims of those ardent anti-regulation crusaders, Smith and Blunt, one of the reasons that we have a viable free internet is that its development was protected by appropriate regulation:

The open Internet as we know it would not exist if not for regulation. More than 40 years ago, the FCC helped create an environment where the Internet could flourish by preventing phone companies from interfering with traffic flowing over their networks. These rules were safeguards that turned the monopoly telephone system into an open platform for competition and innovation.

But in 2005, just as the Internet was becoming an essential technology for the average American, the FCC removed nearly all of the important protections. This decision is what sparked the current debate over Net Neutrality, and it is why the FCC’s pending move to protect the open Internet will be a partial restoration of rules – not “new” regulation

A third argument made by the service providers, hinted at by Smith and Blunt, and presented in its full glory by Nicklaus, is that reliable, golden oldie that has been so successful for
the pharmacological industries, namely  that regulation would stifle the investment essential to further development and innovation.   Free Press, however, points out that:

The rhetoric about Net Neutrality discouraging investment is just a general outgrowth of the reflexive but misguided belief that any and all regulation discourages investment. The evidence does not support this theory. During the years following the Telecommunications Act of 1996, ISP investment rose dramatically as new regulations were being implemented. Investment declined, however, in the period following the FCC’s dismantling of this regulatory regime

Nor, according to Free Press, is there any real reason to believe the ISP claim, repeated in the Nicklaus article, that net neutrality regulation, by hampering investment and development would lead to massive congestion on the net. As Free Press notes:

No one – neither the content and applications companies nor Net Neutrality advocates – is asking the FCC to foreclose ISPs’ ability to manage their networks. Both the Network Neutrality legislation in Congress and the rules outlined by Chairman Genachowski leave ISPs completely free to address congestion via reasonable network management practices

The ginned-up outrage of Smith and Blunt offer a preview what we will be hearing from their colleagues as this issue heats up during the review period for the new rules, though congressional Republicans have apparently dropped an effort to fight the regulations by denying the FCC funding. Of course, this reponse is only what one would expect from these white knights of big business.  The real test will be the willingness of our Democratic leaders to speak out in defense of the new rules, and it may, once again, be up to us to keep them informed and honest.