Governing the Internet Report Released

An anonymous reader writes "After the speculation on earlier this week, the Working Group of Internet Governance (aka the United Nations attempt to govern the Internet) has just released their much anticipated report. News coverage and a helpful summary point to the four options on the table and the likely outcome in the months leading up to a final conference in Tunisia in November."

The four options...

[Guppy06]

... from TF summary:

1. ICANN stays but the governmental role changes through the creation of a Governmental Internet Council. The GIC replaces the GAC and assumes the role currently held by the U.S. Department of Commerce in ICANN oversight. There are advisory roles envisioned for the private sector and civil society.
2. No need for oversight organization. Stronger GAC and creation of international forum for discussion of Internet issues.
3. Creation of International Internet Council that would assume responsibility for the Internet governance issues that arise on the national level. ICANN's mandate would need to be altered based on the development of the IIC.
4. Start from scratch by creating a World Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers as well as a Global Internet Policy Council.

Personally, I'm wary of the first option's reference to roles for "private sector" and "civil society." I have a hard time not reading "private sector" as "Microsoft" and "civil society" as "political lobbyists."

Free the DNS !

[Arthur B.]

It's not a matter of who gets what hostname. A hostname is juste a convenient way to reach a server, it is definitly NOT the killer feature that will boost marketting for a website. Anyway I see hostnames disappearing in the future. It is already happening, a good rank in Google search results is already way more important than the proper domain name. Another solution implies the distribution of signed IP/hostname pairs by renowned organizations. Such pairs could be copied and distributed by any ISP. If gnu.org, google.com and heywhynot microsoft.com all tell me this hostname relates to that IP I may choose to trust them. I can also be a paranoïd freak and only trust pairs signed by my grandmother, which might limit my browsing experience - the point is I can choose. This is, in my opinion, the right approach to take. Trademark conflicts ? Typos spoofing ? All of this can be resolved by the suggested system. I may choose an authority which privileges hostname on a first-to-claim basis or I may choose an authority privileging a "saner" approach (granting trademarked hostnames to their owners and not to the smartass who registered it first and put pr0n instead).

Re:The four options...

[QuickFox]

I recognize that the rest of the world makes a valuable contribution to the internet, however:
The United States developed the internet, with many large investments (DARPA etc.), and now we are expected to just give it up?

Europe invented and developed the wheel. Clearly your cars and roads belong to Europe.

Stop cooking right now, Africa invented the fire.

Clearly we need an international patent system, so that each country can hoard and control its own inventions.

What happens when China decides that no one should use the word democracy? What happens when France decides that the word Nazi can't be used?

International collaboration through organizations such as the International Telecommunication Union [itu.int] must be brought to an end immediately. What if China decides that no one should use the word democracy on the phone? What happens when France decides that the word Nazi can't be used on the phone?

Note that the names and numbers that would be assigned correspond to the international country codes for telephone. For China to censor your Internet usage they'd have to invade your country, just like they'd have to do for censoring your use of the telephone. It's the same thing.

One question. If the root servers and the assignment of TLDs and numbers were controlled by Europe, would you like it to stay that way? Or would you, maybe, perhaps, want the US to have some part in it?

-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time.
Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
Do your part.

Re:What are we fixing?

[NullProg]

The only thing I see is that the US has the root servers, and Europeans don't want it like that any more. I still find myself asking why.

Your wrong. Only 5 root servers are here in the USA.

See here: Root Server Locations [public-root.com];

Enjoy,

The US can take the internet....

[MosesJones]

recognize that the rest of the world makes a valuable contribution to the internet, however:
The United States developed the internet, with many large investments (DARPA etc.), and now we are expected to just give it up?

So the US keeps the internet but has to give up WWW, because that was European. The internet was created by the US... but made useful by Europe, and made mobile by Japan. The US did the tin, the rest of the world did the vision.

Aside from all the defense networks etc, we need to be able to keep tabs on extremist groups on the web, note that there is a widely circulating how to video about how to cause the most damage with a b#mb on a bus.

So you want to Censor? Who decides what is extremist? I'd vote for those nutters who are terrorising doctors and surgeries that do abortions, I'd also vote for organisations like FOX News being classified as extremist.

we still believe in freedom of speech.

Or not?

Sent any journalists to jail recently? Or listened to FOX News? Or heard a politician REALLY quizzed on their approach and views?

You are grossly misinformed

[mgw1181]

The USA has never restricted the use of encryption within its borders. Restrictions on use were discussed with the Clipper chip crap proposed by the Clinton administration, but that didn't go anywhere. What you remeber was the (pointless) limitation of export that was dropped by the Clinton administration in 1999 (?). Products with greater than 40-bit key support were prohibited from export. Eventually they figured out that this was simply hurting American businesses, since the US had no monopoly on strong encryption.