Hi Mitch, excellent video post from Tom - very relevant to the discussion here!

There is some controversy over what, precisely, the Dubai meetings are supposed to cover. Our own Tom Nolle says that the discussions are over network interconnectons, and nothing more, and assertions to the contrary are just FUD, led by Google which doesn't want to pay its fair share for network traffic. Forbes makes similar assertions. 

Heh. I also don't consider that proof.. but I hope you are not correct.

Copyright is meant to encourage the creation of new works, not to punish infringers and extend the rights of copyright owners indefinitely... :P

Forgive me, that I do not consider proof. You made a rather bold statement, I hope you are correct. Yet in all of my research I do not see what you claim. 

Michael --

When it comes to sites hosted in China in particular, the government has been trying to crack down on copyright violations, and many of the top sites for, say, movie downloads, have already been taken down.

It is, obviously, a slow process right now. By comparison, in the US and Europe, when I file a DMCA takedown request (I know, can you believe it? There are folks out there stealing my columns!) the offending page -- or entire site -- is usually down by the next day. 

In China, it can take months of court action -- or longer. But they're working on it. Not just to be good global players (though that's part of it) but also to protect home-grown industries. 

Another example of cross-border action is the recent case against Megaupload, which was a big site hosted on servers around the world that hosted a lot of infringing content. Their trick would be to take stuff down when anyone complained -- but then put it right back up again. Complying with the letter of the law, but not the spirit. Well, according to the prosecutors, they knew and encouraged the posting of infringing content, and supposedly there are internal communicaitons to back this up, so they were in violation of the letter of the law, as well -- you only get "safe harbor" from lawsuits, under the DMCA, if you take down infringing content as soon as you're told about it AND you don't know the content is infringing ahead of time AND your business model isn't based on content infringement.

So the authorities are going after the biggest infringers first. But that doesn't mean that it's always going to be that way. With each new case, the the takedown process gets a bit more organized, a bit more streamlined.

Meanwhile, the number of legitimate sites with legitimate content is increasing -- Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, iTunes, the Amazon store, etc... etc... 

So at the same time as the illegal content is getting harder to find (it's not like they can advertise themselves) the legal content is getting more user-friendly and more inclusive.

Overall, it seems like a pretty good strategy for content creators -- going after the biggest offenders with a big stick, reducing the supply of this stuff, and, at the same time, offering free or low-cost legitimate content, reducing the demand for the illegal stuff. 

You stated: 

"If someone steals your content and distributes it over the Internet, you can sue them. Even if the site is hosted in China or in some other remote part of the world, there are processes in place to get redress."

I'd like some proof is this. 

I didn't include US in there with China and Russia because the US seems to be coming out strongly against increased interference:

http://energycommerce.house.gov/press-release/house-emphatically-affirms-bicameral-bipartisan-commitment-unregulated-internet

http://www.ip-watch.org/2012/11/29/us-ambassador-itu-not-the-problem/

And I mentioned in my article that there are already plenty of laws on the books -- in every country -- regulating the Internet to some degree.

Personally, I think we've found something close to a reasonable balance between regulation and freedom.

If someone steals your content and distributes it over the Internet, you can sue them. Even if the site is hosted in China or in some other remote part of the world, there are processes in place to get redress, and they're improving on a steady basis, pushing pirates, infringers, pedophiles and other lawbreakers farther and farther to the fringes of the Internet.

Meanwhile, the ability to use encryption, anonymous logins, etc... offer people a degree of freedom and security online that really isn't available in most other spheres.

Should we tweak it some? Probably. But I don't think we need any large-scale changes in the way the Internet is organized.

"If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free" - Franklin D. Roosevelt.

We're seeing the erosion of our access to the Internet -- swiftly in some countries, eroding away over time in others -- but we cannot sit by, idly and complacently. If you don't want to wrap yourself in a flag or songs of liberty, just think of the hard financial facts: The Internet economy was worth $700B in 2010, according to Boston Consulting Group. I don't want my government or a bevvy of governments having the right to turn-off that economic spigot.

Hi Maria, why not include EU, USA and several other countries along Russia and China? As mentioned by Michael P. Kassner, control is already there by national/federal laws in many of them.

I read this: 

"Some countries, including China and Russia, are backing proposals that would give individual governments more control over the Internet."

I would submit those countries want to legitimize what they already do.