ICANN Writes US Government Requesting Independence 131
Combat Wombat writes with word that IP address and domain name overseer ICANN has put in a request to the US government, asking to be freed from ties to the United States. A 'lengthy' report was sent to the US Dept. of Commerce, and covers the numerous steps the organization has already completed along the road to independence. The BBC reports that a meeting will be held soon in response to the report, a reaction to the expected end of US control. "The meeting marks the half-way point for the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) under which ICANN was tasked to comply with a series of 'responsibilities' deemed necessary for its release from official oversight. The JPA grew out of the original Memorandum of Understanding that established Icann and signalled the beginning of the end for US control."
From the Office of His Imperial Majesty (Score:3, Funny)
No.
Sincerely,
George W. Bush
Re:From the Office of His Imperial Majesty (Score:5, Insightful)
Ya know, as easy as it is to take potshots at Dubya, I think you've largely missed a legitimate concern.
So ICANN wants to be released from oversight by the United States. Great. I bet that makes a lot of people around here happy. What's it going to be replaced with exactly? Do you really want an ICANN without any oversight?
Say what you will about the United States and the current arrangement, but at least at the end of the day ICANN is responsible to SOMEONE. That 'someone' is in turn responsible to 300,000,000 Americans. While 300,000,000 != the whole population of Earth, it's a hellva lot better then ICANN being responsible to no one in my book.
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Lol : "some international" or "country neutral" (Score:3, Insightful)
Largest body of countries, International.
Now, if you grew wary of the american policies concerning ICAAN, get ready for bitchslapping at a worldwide level.
Re:Lol : "some international" or "country neutral" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sorry. I find some Irony in this. America Started it, and now England is heading up the revolution??
Anyone else find Irony in this??
Personally I'm neutral, but I'll sit in grand stand with my popcorn, hotdog and Beer and just watch..
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Re:Lol : "some international" or "country neutral" (Score:2)
Largest body of countries, International.
Now, if you grew wary of the american policies concerning ICAAN, get ready for bitchslapping at a worldwide level.
A better approach might be to have a board of trustees elected by representatives of the ccTLD authorities.
Re:From the Office of His Imperial Majesty (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, I'll bite. I've been hearing this argument for a while, but nobody mentions what form this oversight really takes. It also begs another question: How useful is this oversight? Can it do anything about the US government and the telcos working hand in hand to wiretap the shit out of the internet? Can it do anything about the telco lobbies who want to bend network neutrality to their own profitable ends?
If losing ICANN oversight is such a big deal, make your case. It seems like the internet's pretty much fucked either way, so how useful are they anyway?
Re:From the Office of His Imperial Majesty (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly what would you have ICANN do about this? It's the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. It's most important role is to manage the dns root and address allocations in such a way that the end users don't conflict with each other.
What exactly is ICANN to do if AT&T decides to let the NSA splice into some fiber? Are you going to blame the ITU for wiretapping of the POTS network? Do you really think the United States is the only country that wiretaps on the internet?
I'm probably making your point here, but the counter-argument is that if ICANN is so useless why are people in such an uproar about it? Somebody has to manage the dns root and ip address allocations. Beyond those two functions, pretty much any country that's connected to the internet can do whatever they want with the portions of it inside of their own borders.
Let's assume the US did try and assert authority over the internet. How would it do that exactly?
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Exactly.
" Are you going to blame the ITU for wiretapping of the POTS network?
Yeah, actually I'd expect Bob Shaw to be right there with a pair of side cutters.
" Let's assume the US did try and assert authority over the internet. How would it do that exactly? "
They'd do things like veto
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They'd do things like veto .XXX because Karl Rove promised this as a poltical favour to the Southern Baptist Convention. You know, stuff like that.
Yeah, cuz there were no other arguments against .xxx, it was all Karl Rove. The .xxx TLD is a dumbass idea for a variety of reasons. Like putting the domain registers in charge of policing content. Many in the adult industry are opposed to it because they feel it will regulate their product to an "online ghetto". Many in the religous community are likewise opposed because they think it will "legitimatize" pornography (what, it's somehow more ligitimate if it ends in .xxx instead of .com?). Who defin
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Difficult to know until the oversight gets removed. If oversight were removed who knows what ICANN would try? And if you say the leadership wouldn't try anything too bad, who knows what people would try to replace that leadership because of the things they could try?
US oversight seems good so far. 300 million Americans don't have much interest in doing weird things with ICANN, they just want their internet to work. That makes some issues easy to solve in a practical wa
Re:From the Office of His Imperial Majesty (Score:4, Insightful)
Ya know, as easy as it is to take potshots at Dubya...
I don't think this is limited to him and I don't think it means the rest of the world hates the US. I do think it says the rest of the world no longer trusts the US. And in some ways that's worse than hatred. It's definitely sad testimony to what we've become in the eyes of the rest of the world. Instead of being trusted to work cooperatively with other sovereign nations we've pretty much declared, by our actions if not by words, that our pursuit of terrorism trumps every other concern, legitimate or not.
And it's not just government actions. AT&T threatening to charge at both ends of the pipe and cooperating in warrant-less monitoring of internet and phone traffic on a massive scale. Several of the core ISP's threatening to block certain kinds of traffic. It could easily be a combination of corporate dickishness and the privacy insults we've foisted on the rest of the world and they're just tired of it.
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It's definitely sad testimony to what we've become in the eyes of the rest of the world
You'll brook no argument from me. It will take us decades to repair the damage that Bush's policies have wrought to our important alliances and friendships across the World. In less then eight years him and his neo-con cronies have managed to destroy 50 years of American foreign policy. 50 years of building cooperative alliances and institutions and now the rest of the World doesn't trust us.
It's not even limited to "Old Europe" either. I find it depressing that a majority of Brits now think that th
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And I stand by my statements -- ICANN turned loose on the World with no accountability or oversight? Not a good idea....
Also, the United States funded the development of the Internet in the first place. We should have the privilege of assigning ourselves more IP addresses per capita than we hand out to the rest of the world. Let them experience the joy of subnetting! ;-)
To the rest of your comment, 'Megadittoez.' I have nothing to add to that; you've already said it.
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The "eyes of the world" doesn't (and shouldn't) mean bupkis. In any social circle, when you try to please everyone else as your main priority, you usually end up getting screwed by the group. Most of the heads that "the eyes of the world" are attached to are merely seeking ways of maximizing their own power and success - often at the cost of some
s/pursuit of terrorism/corruption (Score:2)
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I think the idea is that sooner or later, the ITU or some other group of powermongers is going to claim "jurisdiction" over the Internet on the basis that they are a true "international" organization, and Internet governance will fragment---or worse, people will follow them and Internet protocols will shift from their current (relative) simplicity to something more like OSI or telephony "standards", which are governed more by politics and patent-license-revenue-grabbing than by ease of implementation.
Givi
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They had a constitution that required that the board be publicly elected. They kept postponing the election until they got the US to step in and anoint them official without the need for election. They stonewalled FOI requests. They refused to accept public comment. The performed secretly when their charter required that they be open.
I'm all in favor of an independent ICANN...but only with a totally new board of directors. And open election held the
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If you're going to be a fascist fuckwad, at least have the decency to admit it.
How about if you're going to throw around stuff like 'fascist fuckwad' and 'master race' that you have the balls to do it under your real name and not as an anonymous coward?
n reality, it's not, of course: it's responsible to your government, which you really don't have any say in
Really? Last time I checked I get to vote for two of the three branches of the Federal Government. Guess you are one of the cynical people that think voting doesn't matter.
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For everyone else, on the other hand - more than 95% of the world's population! -, the choice is between "independent" and "controlled by an entity (the US government) which is uncaring at best and openly hostile to our interests at worst".
We're letting you use part of our Internet. We built it, and your option is to be grateful for what IP addresses we allow you to use, and to subnet them wisely, or use your own infrastructure.
For us, it's an easy choice, too: an independent ICANN is better than one controlled by just one nation, representing less than 5 percent of the world's population who somehow think they're the Chosen Ones, the Master Race who shall reign over everyone else.
Wow.
If you really were genuinely worried about an independent, unaccountable ICANN, you'd argue for it become a UN organisation, like UNESCO, UNICEF, the UNHCR and so on. But you're not going to do that, of course - noone on Slashdot is -, and the reason is that it's really just about keeping control for yourself.
I want ICANN to be more accountable to the United States than to any other country, because the United States built the Internet. In other words, "the reason is that it's really just about keeping control for my country [yourself]." That's exactly right. Nobody wanted to "share control" wh
ICANN LOL ISP (Score:2)
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Won't happen. (Score:4, Insightful)
They only have control (Score:2)
OTOH I'm not sure freing ICANN from any nationality is as good an idea as scrapping it and creating a true multinational organisation from the ground up.
Re:They only have control (Score:4, Insightful)
On top of that, the US government has little or not actual control over ICANN's daily oerations. The cat is out of the bag, sort of speak, and there is no way the US government can effectively control the internet as a whole even if it wanted to, since the rest of the world is sufficiently set up to operate without it - with the exception of content services based in the US, which are privately controlled anyway.
So other than the generic "USA sux" metality, what's the motivation for total globalization of ICANN's functions? What will this accomplish other than create another incompetent, ineffectual and political circle-jerk like the United Nations?
=Smidge=
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another incompetent, ineffectual and political circle-jerk like the United Nations?
Or, maybe like... your government?
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Read that a few times until it sinks in, then try answering my question.
=Smidge=
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Oh yeah right, fucking nowhere.
I don't give a crap about boards of directors. What I care about is good policy agreed upon by the full international community, not some guys ina californian non profit.
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Is a committee of government representatives from all over the world good enough? They have that too.
Is a committee of private sector and industry representatives from all over the world good enough? They have that too.
At what point does it become a multinational organization? Also, answer my original question instead of throwing around profanitie
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And you still haven't answered my question. If anything, you reinforced my point because ICANN is just as multinational as the ITU.
=Smidge=
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Furthermore, the ITU---and telecomms in general---aren't exactly known for good, simple (cheap to implement from scratch) protocol design. They tend to produce overcomplicated beasts like OSI [wikipedia.org], GSM [3gpp.org], and ASN.1 [imc.org].
Why anyone in-the-know would want to leave Internet protocols in the hands of the telecomms is a mystery to me.
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Yeah, here in Europe we all know how unsuccessful GSM is. Oh, the horror...
Get a clue.
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Yeah, here in Europe we all know how unsuccessful GSM is. Oh, the horror...
"Yeah, here in Europe we all know how unsuccessful Windows is. Oh, the horror..."
Have you actually worked with any of the GSM protocols? No?
GSM is insanely complex to implement and test, and the equipment and software to do so costs a fortune. This slows innovation, because small start-up companies can't afford to
Merely having a cell phone doesn't qualify you to talk about the technical quality---and by extension, the monetary and social cost---of GSM as specified and implemented.
ASN.1 is popul
missing text from my previous comment (Score:2)
... build a novel GSM stack, for example.
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"Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers" - all they do is manage the DNS system and IP spaces. Morality/privacy/trademark issues only come up regarding domain names, and then it falls on the domain registrars anyway. ICANN just handles the technical stuff behind the scenes.
=Smidge=
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For example, should they prevent the proposal of a hypothetical ".f*ck" TLD?
Why? What does FUCK mean in Danish, Norwegian, French, Italian, Thai, Loatian, Greek, Peruvian or whatever? Oh, I see! Its protecting your language against abuse. So the internet isn't really 'inter' in your view. Its yours and it must be in your language. Ah, that makes your position clear.
The reason that ICANN does not want to be under US supervision is that the US is no longer upholding common beliefs or other nation's views. As has been noted in other posts, the US is no longer respected by man
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Some generals were getting a tour of the Internet (Score:3, Funny)
Before the guide could answer, another general replied:
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The control of one is used to keep control of the other. ICANN equivalents wouldn't have eit
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Who controls the ICANN is really of very minor importance today. But if US government thinks it controls it, it is a huge mistake. It would be easy for ISPs to roll their own DNS registries decorrelated from ICANN's. They simply don't do it for the benefit of interoperability. But as soon as the ICANN will to control becomes more inconvenient than marginal interoperability problems, ICANN will become instantly irrelevant.
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ICANN is not much of an asset because the USA have to cooperate with everyone anyway, lest they want the internet to fragment.
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The strategic value of ICANN is right up there with the strategic value of a melting snowflake. If ever the US tried to leverage this value it would instantly disappear.
However, as long as there is a perceived strategic value, we shall all dance this merry dance.
The solution is to deal with the perception not the reality.
I don't see this happening... (Score:1)
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Need some more tinfoil for that hat? Exactly what does ICANN do that would be useful in "gathering info" on people? Finding out which domains they own and which IP addressing space they have?
You might have had a better point if you had said 'AT&T is a way to gather info on people'. ICANN itself is kind of useless in this regard.
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You mean.. like the United Nations? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, like that's going to happen. The United Nations is supposedly meant to be independent from the US, but in reality is just a puppet organization held up by the US. Even organizations that aren't based in the US are inevitably tied to the goings-ons of the US from economic, trade, or cultural points of view, such as, say, the Bank of England. Given the US owns the largest swathes of IP address space, I can't see any official or semi-official ties (whether legal or cultural) with the US being cut any time soon.
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the US should demand its money back.
Maybe they should do that if they were actually paying their bills in the first place. The USA owes well over a billion dollars to the UN.
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The United Nations is supposedly meant to be independent from the US
Blame this [wikipedia.org] guy. Little known fact: The original idea behind the UN did not grant veto power to the "big five". The Allies agreed to allow it in order to convince the Soviet Union to join.
but in reality is just a puppet organization held up by the US
Really? Is that why the General Assembly applauded Hugo Chavez after his little tirade? Is that why we can't even stop resolutions like Zionism == racism? Hell, native New Yorker complaint time: Is that why the bastards think they are above local laws that apply to every other American citizen?
Even organizations that aren't based in the US are inevitably tied to the goings-ons of the US from economic, trade, or cultural points of view, such as, say, the Bank of England
And it's our fa
Re:You mean.. like the United Nations? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, if you won't, then please allow ME to personally apologize to the world for Britney Spears.
--K
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Hey, I'm not a fan of her music either, but for some strange reason that completely escapes me lots of people (not just Americans) listen to that crap. For better or worse she is an undeniable part of American culture. I can't help but recall how when Bill Clinton went to Vietnam to re-establish relations he saw Vietnamese teenagers listening to Britney Spears and wearing blue jeans. Ten years of bombing the crap out of them and they still embraced our culture. I don't understand it but it's hardly a un
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* It's arguable, but I won't bother; I've considered the handful of arguments that I've heard dozens of times each, and that's my opinion
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I think it's a bit of a feedback loop: Some celebrities have a hard time staying relevant (for example, Spears hasn't released anything in quite a while), thus they try to stay up by keeping themselves in the news. Paparazzi who gladly make stories out of every single misdemeanor reinforce this - if you screw up you appear in the news and thus are relevant. Every story is a good story. Unfortunately, forcing yourself into the s
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To quote a certain YouTube celebrity: Leave Britney alone. I can't stand to hear things about her provate life I never wanted to hear.
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Even worse, the only free TV station in Germany that actually caters to the SciFi crowd (RTL2)
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Not that many in the US even like the UN. Most of us would be glad to wash our hands of it and use the extra tax money on something worth while like as hookers and blow, instead of pouring money into the pockets of leaches from every butt-crack country on the planet who in turn piss it all away on hookers and blow.
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Yeah, like that's going to happen. The United Nations is supposedly meant to be independent from the US, but in reality is just a puppet organization held up by the US.
The United States wields power and influence in the UN through sheer economic power. Without US support, the UN usually has no teeth. The same could apply to ICANN. Just look at the department currently in charge of overseeing ICANN. The US is clearly not the only country that has this kind of power though, so their total control of ICANN in its current incarnation is suspect. Given the diplomatic pressure of late, I don't believe the US has a choice in the matter. If the US wants their internet presence t
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ICANN is already an aloof organization, I don't see spinning it off to be independent is going to help.
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Wrong question (Score:2)
If it wasn't a puppet, the US would pay its dues, fearing some sanction.
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It's not going to (Score:3, Insightful)
ICANN becoming their own international organization with no country has to be one of those things.
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f it's going to be a WORLD WIDE WEB for much longer and not the US tubes, EURAsia tubes, Russia tubes, and China Tubes something has to give now.
And what exactly is the problem with each country asserting control over the internet within it's own borders? That's how the POTS network works. ICANN's role in this scenario is limited to delegating IP addresses and the DNS root in order to avoid conflicts. But what actually happens to the network itself within national borders should be the call of the country involved. Ya know, sovereignty and all that.
ICANN becoming their own international organization with no country has to be one of those things.
And responsible to whom? Themselves? That's a great idea....
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The internet is too goddamn important to allow each country to assert such stringent control to create an isolated DNS/IP/access control within its own borders. This is a worldwide phenomenon, isolationi leads to disagreement without conciliatory resolution leads to war.
Note: I also think ICANN is a raging pile of crap, its corporate control instead of government, at least with a government agency
So who gets oversite? (Score:1, Insightful)
The U.N? The U.N. is a joke that has proven itself to be just as corrupt as any government on th
Dear USG (Score:1)
To what end? (Score:4, Insightful)
The UN probably isn't the best shepherd for ICANN. The ISO seems to be a decent possibility.
I hope you're all happy (Score:5, Funny)
Shame on you all!
All your ICANN are belong to US (Score:2, Funny)
Maybe they can set up shop in (Score:1)
MLK Jr. (Score:1)
ICANN: Everybody has an agenda (Score:1)
Bottom line is I don't trust any of these people to put the interests of the actual users of the Internet first. Of course, I don't really trust ICANN either. Maybe it's me...
Verisign (Score:2)
Independence??? (Score:1)
Re:And it's time to CANN .mil and .gov (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, because in the grand scheme of things with everything that's going on in the World, ranging from the War in Iraq to the Genocide in Darfur, the fact that the United States has global TLDs not ending in .us is really a priority that the World community needs to address.
You've got it all wrong (Score:3, Funny)
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The rest of us have a sense of perspective
And your sense of perspective is leading you to whine about the fact that the United States has a few TLDs for itself? Who the hell cares? That's just a fluke of history. If the UK had gotten the internet going then maybe it would be navy.mil.us instead of navy.mil and royal-navy.mod instead of royal-navy.mod.uk.
You don't see too many Americans whining about the fact that UTC is based on Greenwich Mean Time. The nerve of those Brits to define the Prime Meridian as going through their country. We sh
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This may explain the lack of outrage more than an enhanced sense of perspective on how pointless it would be to complain about UTC/GMT.
Eh, your probably right (about Americans not being able to find it on a map), but it's still a damn good analogy if I do say so myself.
The Brits got to define the prime meridian because they were the economic/naval power of the period. The United States got some American-only TLDs (.edu, .mil and .gov) because we got the internet going. I really don't see what the fuss is about, other then maybe it annoys a few people that they don't have to type '.us' on the end of these sites. Is it really somethin
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Believe it or not, we do know what UTC and GMT are. We learn that in, oh, 3rd or 4th grade. Now, whether or not we remember it, well, remember that our knowledge of our own presidents gets real hazy after Washington.
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