The Politics of ICANN 124
dstates writes "The good news is that the Internet has become a central enough part of global life that politicians are starting to pay attention to the details of Internet management. The bad news is that the politicians are paying attention to the Internet. Politico.com has an interesting note on the politics surrounding the annual meeting of the The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers which is opening its annual meeting in San Francisco today. While some people find it frightening that a US corporation controls name usage on the Internet, the prospect of a UN body assuming control raises its own concerns."
No difference. (Score:3)
at least, we would see what is happening due to what reason, instead of them being hidden behind dubious excuses that 'free market' produces for censorship.
Re:No difference. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, I've seen many comments on Slashdot that letting the UN handle it would be countries like Iran could choose to have things censored, but that's complete and utter bollocks- how would Iran get consensus? The UN isn't based on what every country says goes, it's based on international consensus. There are also often attempts to discredit the UN's ability to handle this sort of thing by pointing to issues with the security council and so forth too.
But the problem is, that's also a load of complete and utter bollocks. The fact is that the UN already runs important international infrastructure just fine, so fine that it doesn't even break the news because it does it so well and so transparently most people aren't even aware. The UN has bodies which handle international telephony, international maritime standards, international airline standards, and international postage standards. It does this so that different countries systems can interoperate just fine, whatever the UNSC does is completely irrelevant as these bodies are run by completely different people in completely different places. It makes sense to add ICANN to this set off bodies which the UN already handles so well because the UN's track record of handling such things is thus far excellent, whilst the US' record with the internet is becoming ever worse- from small town US Judges ordering foreign company's domain names be seized through to government backed seizure of domain names, the US just isn't a trustworthy overseer of the internet anymore.
Re:No difference. (Score:5, Insightful)
The UN put Libya on the Human Rights Council. They only suspended their involvement when Gaddafi started fucking over the people who asked for better government. I don't want the UN involved. At all.
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Because of course the US hasn't performed any bad decisions whatsoever in the history of everything ever.
This is largely unrelated don't you think? How the UN would control domain names is unrelated to whom it puts on the Human Rights Council isn't it? I would trust a mixture of large countries more than leaving it in the hands of the US - who has siezed domain names without trial or legal process based on "National Security" reasons.
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First I didn't affirm US control. I just said the UN is a bad option. In all honesty, I don't want the US to have control. Incidents such as ICE wiping out all those domains a few months back, just reenforced those opinions. With US's own human rights record—although not as bad as many nations—has blots throughout history, such as slavery, genocide and internment of native people, Gitmo, Japanese internment camps, etc.
The UNHRC exists in the same power structure that routinely puts dictatorships
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While you may be correct - you haven't really given us the answer to who exactly should be given control.
The UN takes ages to reach a decision - which means that any 'bad things' which could happen would takes ages - which is great for everyone.
If you're against the US AND the UN, who are you going to give internet control to such that everyone is happy?
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I don't want "everyone happy." I don't want the US happy when ICE wants to seize a few thousand domains. I don't want Gaddafi happy when he wants to cut down political revolutionaries.
I don't know what precisely this system should look like. I just know that a UN commission wouldn't work, just like the current system lets in the US government whenever it pleases.
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who?
whoever is in charge of email.
whoever is in charge of enforcing RFC's.
whoever is in charge of usenet.
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The UN hasn't bombed their own people either.
The argument isn't giving internet control to Libya (for which you could more argue about it disconnecting the internet there), its about giving internet control to the UN.
And 'mistakes' happen due to political tampering. Obama has a Nobel Peace prize, the US got to host the UNESCO thingy for freedom of speech. The issue here isn't whether the UN/US have made the worst decisons, the issue here is which of them deserve to control the internet, which of them are mo
ha ! (Score:2)
u.s. record would go way over the head of libya and what they are doing.
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Really ? What has the US done, to it's own people, that compares to what Libya's doing now (and, frankly, has been doing for some 50 years now, just on a lower level)
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WILLINGLY ?
at least, exploitation in libya is obvious, and even in that case there isnt that bad an income distribution among rich and poor.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html [ucsc.edu]
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Have you ever noticed how Libya is ... not filled with black people. Yet on every painting more than, say 150 years old, you will barely find any arabs, and masses of black people.
Ottoman muslims had vast amounts of black slaves, including in Libya. They not only had to work for nothing, in nazi-camp like conditions, but the muslim state regularly comitted genocide against black slaves. Today ...
none are left.
Shall I repeat that once more that you can absorb the full extent of just how bad Libyans treated t
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150 years ago americans were killing each other.
Which is *still* a lot better than what Libyans ("mohamedans" as they were called then) were doing under the caliphate. Which is my point.
And what you accuse the US of doing (making a number of people work for 10 times the wage one gets in Libya) TODAY is also a lot better than what Libyans are doing to eachother TODAY.
Let's not pretend, for a second, that there is some weird sort of moral equivalence between Obama and qadaffi, because there isn't. Obama is a blithering lying idiot (if you believe ...). He
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...but they haven't bombed their own fucking people!
The miners' unions in West Virginia would beg to differ. See: The Battle of Blair Mountain [wikipedia.org]
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We live in the 21st century now. Unless you wish to compare these union incidents to the (regular) slave genocides that the ottoman empire carried out in northern africa (and elsewhere) ... Incidentally, muslims killed a LOT more than 100 blacks during those incidents.
I mean, you need some seriously twisted reality to even compare these things. Yes, the US behaved better in 1921 than Libyans behave TODAY.
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If you want to complain about poor UN choices, let's start with giving countries Permanent Security Council seats (oh, and have a veto while you're at it!)
I would argue that those five countries have done more damage to UN's credibility than Libya has.
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The Security Council members each have the power to make the UN a joke. So that power may as well be an official part of the UN.
Seriously, all of the other UN countries combined could not force one of the Security Council countries to do anything they didn't want to do so why pretend otherwise?
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While the US and China can still claim that, I'd say France and England haven't had that level of insulation in decades - and Russia is borderline at best.
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The purpose of the permanent veto powers was to prevent WWIII. As in, UN votes to allow US to take over Cuba, US takes over Cuba, USSR nukes US, US nukes USSR, game over.
Gridlock was considered preferable to adding "international legitimacy" to a move that would just cause a lot of pain and turmoil.
Plus, that was really the only way the major powers were going to agree. Why would one of the major powers allow a majority vote to dictate its actions?
Re:No difference. (Score:4, Interesting)
Who exactly would you consider a great paragon of virtue to be democratically chosen (however stupid that may be) to be one of africa's 13 representatives, without serving two consecutive terms? Even the US, the UK, Poland and russia are on there, and frankly, the first 3 are complicit in torture and mass murder from the invasion of iraq and guantanamo and extraordinary rendition, and russia is well, russia. Do we perhaps do away with the 13 african states, because it would be hard to find 13 african states who uphold human rights all that well, and dictate to them from New York and Geneva how to manage their human rights? The UNHCR exists primarily to complain about the Israeli treatment of palestinians, they chose a broader name than that, but frankly libya is as good at complaining about israel as anyone else.
Because they couldn't call it the UN committee to complain about Israel they got caught with their pants down on "human rights", but it's not like anyone on that body gets to be anything other than a hedge against constant criticism of someone, or a constant criticizer.
Just like everywhere else, democracy is bought and paid for. The UN is no different, except that it likes to give lip service to every idea out there. That is both its great strength and great weakness. Everyone gets a say, even the crazy people. It also means that if you can't agree to it, it doesn't happen. Want a XXX TLD, probably not going to happen, want to ban porn on the web, probably not going to happen, want to make sure China gets more IP addresses than a major US university, that probably would happen. Because for all it's faults, the UN is inherently more fair than any one country trying to be fair - but not at the expense of its own interests.
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The UN put Libya on the Human Rights Council. They only suspended their involvement when Gaddafi started fucking over the people who asked for better government. I don't want the UN involved. At all.
Pointing at one unrelated mistake an institution has made and saying "so they shouldn't handle it" is flawed, since all institutions have made mistakes. As far as arguments go, it's weak because two can play at that game. For example: "corporations screwed over the economy. I don't want corporations involved. At all."
I can also be less lazy and point out specific mistakes ICANN has made and say the same thing.
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Funny how you seem to think that the only way to deal with someone you disagree with is silencing them. Having Libya on the Human Rights Council only means they get to cast a vote and lose properly rather than being completely ignored. I means they have someone there to coordinate operations shall the UN decide to enforce changes. It means they have a negotiator shall the UN sanction them.
It DOES NOT mean that Libya gets to dictate humans rights internationally.
Ironic how you claim to speak for human rights
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Then form yet another anti-muslim bloc, don't just unilaterally decide they don get a vote. Non muslim countries outnumber muslim ones.
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But then since at least Gitmo we knew the US does not support human rights one way ore the other.
I support the idea of handing ICANN over to the United Nations, as divided as they are we will by design be assured of a neutral net.
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That's because sometimes the best way to encourage such countries into behaving better is to try and bring them into the fold.
It didn't work, they removed them, with other countries it's worked fine. The world isn't simple. What's the problem? What's the UN human rights council got to do with running international infrastructure?
someone with mod points. (Score:2)
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"Perhaps you don't think China carries any weight at the UN? Pardon me while I laugh in your face."
You have a very warped few of the world if you think China represents and controls the views of every country in the world.
I agree that world governmental views towards censorship are a concern as even the US has engaged in censorship by removing domain names of sites it does not agree with (seized gambling sites, file sharing sites and so forth), but this is inherently a problem that exists in the US as well.
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If they can get consensus for a minutes silence for the 9/11 victims, they can get consensus to censor the internet, probably under a similar set of circumstances.
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No it's not, consensus requires a shared viewpoint that is identical or at least very very similar.
What every country says goes would be a cluster fuck of competing ideologies with no agreement between countries as to whether the things each country puts forward are acceptable or not but implementation of them regardless.
The point is Iran couldn't force Iranian ideals on, say, the US's internet because Europe would side with the US as would many other anti-Iranian states.
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The Internet was never designed to be decentralized or unkillable. You are an ignorant shit.
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When your country can invent and deploy an internet, you get to make the rules. Until then, nobody's forcing you to use it.
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who invented www protocol ? SWISS. who invented tcp/ip ? who made the first computer ?
these all make up what you call the internet.
though one thing you americans have in abundance - ignorance. you dont know shit, yet you brag about it.
harsh ? no. your talk was the one which prompted it.
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Um, yes actually, the USA developed Darpanet (the first internet) in response to the USSR in order to build a robust communications network.
Oh, and there's this new-fangled thing called "Google" you can use to look up the origins like this: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_some_information_about_the_invention_of_the_internet [answers.com]
and this: http://www.velocityguide.com/internet-history/origin-of-the-internet.html [velocityguide.com]
or perhaps a little slideshow might be simpler for you:
http://www.slideshare.net/macloo/invention-of-t [slideshare.net]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web [wikipedia.org]
here is your swiss - sorry - he was british, but invented www in switzerland.
A fair way of doing things (Score:3)
If we were going to truly make things an internationalized standard, we'd be doing something like: .com, .org, etc would get phased out in favor of .us addresses.
1. Each country gets a 2-letter code in the UTF-8 character set, to be assigned by ISO standards.
2. Each country is solely responsible for what goes on within that 2-letter code.
3. Each country is responsible for maintaining root nameservers that resolve domains within their country code. If they want to put their country code on some other country's root nameservers, that's between those two countries, but one way or another that's the way it would need to work.
4. All tlds like
As far as I can tell, nobody's trying to do that, though.
Re:A fair way of doing things (Score:5, Informative)
1, 2 and 3 describe the state of the DNS exactly as it is today.
As for #4, why phase out anything?
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As for #4, why phase out anything?
I'd rather phase them out and make all 3+ letter domains TLDs in their own right. 99% of the time any serious corporation or organization will buy up all the TLDs to avoid the others being spam or virus or troll or hate pages, there's few enough it's a marginal cost and nothing but a money grab for new TLDs. Make it some kind of arbitration/auction who gets the TLD-less name. So slashdot would just be slashdot, google just google, yahoo just yahoo...
Practically the .com TLD is so big, it could easily be sca
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http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/03/14/1329210/Happy-Pi-Day#comments [slashdot.org]
So we won't get smartass comments about 14/3 instead of 3/14.
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Even though the FAQ says Slashdot is U.S.-centric. [slashdot.org]
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* The sound a car alarm blaring outside your bedroom window at 4am makes when it finally stops.
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As far as I can tell, nobody's trying to do that, though.
Because it's really not needed. Why are you mapping countries onto an international entity?
Instead, have ICANN declare itself a completely international body, independent of the UN but protected by them, and build fail-safes into the system so no one country or group can influence them. Do something extreme, like require groups from several conflicting countries to agree on major policy changes.
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Each country is responsible for maintaining root nameservers that resolve domains within their country code. If they want to put their country code on some other country's root nameservers, that's between those two countries, but one way or another that's the way it would need to work.
Making it even easier for folks like Iran and Egypt and Saudi Arabia to control information and (lack of) freedom...
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Making it even easier for folks like Iran and Egypt and Saudi Arabia to control information and (lack of) freedom...
Um, you did notice that the US not only blocks domains in their own country, but prevents other countries from seeing it as well [cnet.com]?
Hate to break it to you, but the US has lost the moral high ground when it comes to internet freedom.
Re:A fair way of doing things (Score:4, Insightful)
Hate to break it to you, but the US has lost the moral high ground when it comes to internet freedom.
When was the last time the US Gov blocked / turned off the Internet to deprive the people freedom of speech? Did they block WikiLeaks? No they did not. Your ideological rant is not supported by, you know, actual facts.
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Hate to break it to you, but the US has lost the moral high ground when it comes to internet freedom.
When was the last time the US Gov blocked / turned off the Internet to deprive the people freedom of speech? Did they block WikiLeaks? No they did not. Your ideological rant is not supported by, you know, actual facts.
I wouldn't use WikiLeaks as an example, since US politicians are calling it treason [thehill.com] (protip: you can only be a traitor to your *own* country)
But you should check your news - while other countries turn off the internet within their own borders (which, while abhorrent to us techies, is within their legal rights), the US seized over 80,000 domain names [domainregi...ion.com.au] recently - and those sites are blocked not only in the US, but everywhere in the world. Let me repeat that - the United States blocked over 80,000 web sites fro
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I wouldn't use WikiLeaks as an example, since US politicians are calling it treason [thehill.com] (protip: you can only be a traitor to your *own* country)
What US *POLITICIANS* call ANYTHING is almost certainly hyperbole and irrelevant. What has the Justice Department called it? Not treason, because it isn't.
And seizing "80,000" domains that may very well be involved in pirated software and other illegalities *IS NOT* even within 20,000 miles of what Egypt and China do.
You're an idealistic college kid, I know, so I'll cut you slack on thinking taking down p2p and other illegal sites is on the same level with freedom of political thought.
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What US *POLITICIANS* call ANYTHING is almost certainly hyperbole and irrelevant. What has the Justice Department called it? Not treason, because it isn't.
Ah. Good things politicians don't have any say over government
And seizing "80,000" domains that may very well be involved in pirated software and other illegalities *IS NOT* even within 20,000 miles of what Egypt and China do.
Ah, so glad you Americans finally stopped worrying about "rule of law" and "innocent until proven guilty" - Those Naughty People might be doing something we don't like, so they must be stopped!
Question for you - are you comfortable with the reciprocal? As in, other countries taking American sites offline? Or do you believe that American law supersedes all?
You're an idealistic college kid, I know, so I'll cut you slack on thinking taking down p2p and other illegal sites is on the same level with freedom of political thought.
Nice try, but that's a swing and a miss, on three counts. I'm a lot older than that, I ha
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Ah. Good things politicians don't have any say over government
What politicians here is the US say or don't say have VERY LITTLE to do with criminal law at the federal level, especially when is has to do with constitutional issues.
I take it you are not an American, so perhaps that explains why you haven't the slightest clue how law and politics work here. Your comments are ignorant in the context of American politics and legal issues.
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Then the question becomes, if there are no ISPs in Tuvalu, and no users (as they're struggling to remain above sea level), then why is it a concern? There shouldn't be any hosts registered, since there are no users.
The CIA World Factbook for Tuvalu [cia.gov] says differently.
They report there are 1,700 landlines, and 2,000 cell phones in use, and 4,200 Internet users. Not bad for a population of 10,500. It doesn't explain the need for about 110,000 hostnames registered
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That's just a bit US-centric, isn't it?
The two letter TLDs already exist, and for many countries have been around for an awful long time.
As for management of those TLDs, there could be something left to desire. I owned a .us domain when the structure was [name].[category].[state].us . It worked fine as it was. I had it pointed towards my work DNS servers for 8 years. ... then my employer laid me off.
I contacted the [state].us NIC, and asked poli
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Better the int'l community, than strictly US. (Score:5, Insightful)
Putting all of the Internet naming eggs in the US basket is dangerous. With the strange goings on in US politics of late, and with the abuse by DHS/ICE, I can only see bad things coming in the future if the international community doesn't step up to the plate and offer something better.
I really don't have too much of an issue with a UN controlled ICANN clone. It's not like they can screw it up more than a Republican controlled ICANN. THAT is the scariest part.
Re:Better the int'l community, than strictly US. (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet needs to be decentralized to be protected. Distributed DNS solutions need to be pursued. Barring that, root servers should be controlled by each sovereign nation for each national TLD. This at least will give people choices.
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But you're just changing the basket from the US to the UN. There will still be only one authority, just controlled by a different group. If you truly believe that adage is appropriate here, you'd have to propose multiple baskets...such as each country does whatever it wants.
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It's a little different when the other group is "almost every State in the world."
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The problem is that your "almost every State in the world", most of the time, looks like the bar scene from Star Wars. The US may be going through some political turmoil, as Americans struggle to push back the Big Govt types that have gained a foothold over the last century. That doesn't change the fact that the Internet's structure, whether you like it or not, reflects the culture that gave it life.
I, for one, long for the days when the Internet had a strong hand on the wheel. A dictator at times, pe
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Who said I was acting like a lot of the work (though not all) was done in the US? I'm concerned with what's better for the internet now.
LOLstats (Score:1, Offtopic)
ICANN haz DNSnumber?
domain names are overrated (Score:1)
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Really it shouldn't be doing that at all, and it would help keep idiots off the internet (unfortunately people still type full URLs into the search bar, too)
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Yes, but then Chrome properly interprets it as a URL and navigates there directly, I'm talking about IE and Firefox (usually IE users, probably..) users that type stuff like facebook.com directly into the search bar instead of the address bar.
OH MY GOD, it's American!@#!@#! Lulzzz (Score:2, Interesting)
You know, honestly, I have nothing to say about this story, other than ICANN is a bunch of sonofabitches who should enjoy CO2 gas leaks while sleeping in their 5-star hotel rooms. So I'll just comment on the non-story story.
First of all, ICANN as a group is a bunch of people who should have CO2 let into their 5-star hotel rooms while they sleep. I will leave the explanation and justification of this to others who have had first-hand experiences at the hands of ICANN.
Secondly, after reading Wikipedia for
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As much as I despise ICANN, it has never, to my knowledge, been accused of child abuse the way the United Nations has been
Um, are you aware that your link is to an article about The Vatican being accused of child abuse at the UN Human Rights Council? Are you aware that no one is suggesting The Vatican take over ICANN's role?
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It utterly and completely destroys any point I might have made.
Well, yes, actually. You made a bold claim, and provided a citation that fails to even hint at supporting your claim. Your sarcasm does nothing to bolster your point.
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That article is about the UN accusing the Vatican of covering up child abuse, not the UN being accused of child abuse.
CO2 (Score:2)
Dude, You exhail CO2. [wikipedia.org]
Perhaps you are thinking of something else.
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Dude, You exhail CO2. [wikipedia.org] Perhaps you are thinking of something else.
However, if there was a giant CO2 leak that displaced all other gases in a well sealed hotel room it could certainly kill someone.
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So you want to leave it with the guys that practice water boarding...
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Interesting? Damn the moderators are stupid today!
So you want to leave it with the guys that practice water boarding...
Better than leaving it to the guys that practice stoning or decapitation of journalists, don't you think. The UN, if it had ever been useful, has long since been co-opted by the 7th Century Set and financial/political opportunists.
The UN is directly in the business of not allowing conflicts to be resolved. How is that beneficial for the Internet?
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A little consistency? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, let me get this straight. We're perfectly happy to have the ITU (which is a UN agency) in charge of international telephone calls, and we freak out when the US or any corporation tries to take control. But we're also perfectly happy to have ICANN (an unaccountable private corporation based in the US) in charge of domain names, and we freak out when the UN tries to take control.
Huh? Is it just a matter of knee-jerk response and "all change is bad," or is there something more to it than that?
For what it's worth, I think ICANN has been a disaster and something like ITU, or a new UN-sponsored agency, would be much better. We need a negotiated Internet equivalent of the ITRs, rather than the ad-hoc mess we have now.
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The UN is its member nations.
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No it's not a case of "all change is bad" It's plain old Americanitis.
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ICANN... (Score:4, Funny)
domains should follow jurisdictions... (Score:1)
No (Score:1)
Wrong and Right (Score:2)
The referenced article is somewhat incorrect - word is that the governments aren't asking for the power for one country to veto ICANN. But it may prove that the governments are doing what they do well - using euphemisms to cover harsh intent.
ICANN pulls about a $1,000,000,000 (one billion) USD every year out of the pockets of net users in the form of fiat "registry" feels, i.e. about $7 per name per year to Verisign. Given that we are paying this much to get so little, we do have a right to dig deeper int
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ICANN made about $60 Million in 2009, which is the last year I could find numbers available for.
ICANN makes 18 cents off of each domain name, not "about $7". The "about $7" goes to the registry, which is Verisign for .com and .net.
Have domain names outlived their usefulness? (Score:1)
no problems so far (Score:1)
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Stop screaming the sky is falling. All that is national does not stink, all that is international does not shine. No one has been able to point out any realexamples of how the system isn't working. It only started in the US because thats where the internet went widespread. Let me know when it stops working
While I completely agree with the bulk of this and the main point, I have to call BS on part of it. It isn't "where the internet went widespread". It is where the Internet was conceived, birthed and raised. This is not a trivial distinction.
P2P DNS (Score:2)
The only real answer is a completely distributed, decentralised, no-SPoF DNS system. Always remember how to tell when a politician is lying - and, yes, both the US DoC oversight and the UN whatever-mythical-regulatory-body-might-be-invented are/would be ultimately controlled by political animals.
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Of course you can. It's just slightly impractical. In other words, no-one ever does it.
But nothing forces you to run websites on port 80. ...
Nothing forces you from disregarding global address assignments on networks (in fact, I frequently do this for technical reasons)
Nothing forces you from using the "normal" DNS, and there are alternatives (this is the easiest part to avoid imho).
So yes, you can perfectly well go around ICANN. Of course, it means not being connected to the "normal" internet. A bit like b