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."
Won't happen. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
It's not going to (Score:3, Insightful)
ICANN becoming their own international organization with no country has to be one of those things.
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.
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 the planet.
Re:Won't happen. (Score:3, Insightful)
To what end? (Score:4, Insightful)
The UN probably isn't the best shepherd for ICANN. The ISO seems to be a decent possibility.
Re:And it's time to CANN .mil and .gov (Score:3, Insightful)
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 should change this ASAP.
Re:Won't happen. (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:You mean.. like the United Nations? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You mean.. like the United Nations? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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?
And it's our fault that our economy and culture are that successful? Would you have had the same complaints about Great Britain a few decades ago or is it only fashionable to whine about American dominance?
Nobody put a gun to the head of the teenagers of the World and made them listen to Britney Spears, wear blue jeans and drink Starbucks coffee. For whatever reason American culture seems to be popular in parts of the World. I fail to see why we should apologize for that.
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=
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.
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)
Re:You mean.. like the United Nations? (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:It's not going to (Score:3, Insightful)
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 we can require full disclosure without the ability for the corporation to hide behind constitutional rights to privacy, etc.
Cheers.