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US Relaxes Control Over ICANN 230
An anonymous reader tips news that the US Dept. of Commerce has signed an agreement with ICANN to end their current oversight responsibilities and allow more input from the global community. "The move comes after European regulators and other critics have said the US government could wield too much influence over a system used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Those critics have complained, among other things, about the slow rollout of Internet addresses entirely in languages other than English." The US will still be involved; every three years, ICANN's work will be evaluated by a committee, one member of which will be from the Dept. of Commerce.
LOLINTERNET (Score:5, Funny)
ICANN HAZ DOMAIN?
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If you've got the dough, Icann has the domain! Would you like a TLD with that?
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You remind me of a prank call I once heard where the guy rings up an ISP and says, "I want to buy an internet."
other countries too (Score:5, Insightful)
This is only a good thing. ICANN with it's power has been too US based for long time already, while internet is global.
As an EU citizen I'm happy and even surprised to see this happening - US actually caring about other people too and giving some control to people elsewhere.
To begin with Internet was a distributed system that couldn't be taken down at one point.
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So we're giving more control over the internet to total surveillance societies like Great Britain? Not that I'm against sharing control, but I also don't see how it's automatically a good thing.
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So we're giving more control over the internet to total surveillance societies like Great Britain? Not that I'm against sharing control, but I also don't see how it's automatically a good thing.
Ideally, we'd want to set up some sort of committee, and pack it with so many members that they can never agree on anything, so they never get to the stage where they decide to control or censor something for "greater good". UN sounds like a perfect foundation for this kind of thing.
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This isn't just taking control away from the US government, it's putting that control more firmly into the hands of a private organization. "International" doesn't automatically mean "better" (witness the WTO and IMF). All it means is that US citizens will be just as easily ignored as EU, AU, OAS, ASEAN, and ETC citizens are today.
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I don't believe in re-inventing the wheel. The organization that regulates the assigning of telephone numbers has done a competent job since 1865, and I'm sure they could do an equally competent job over IP assignments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITU-T [wikipedia.org]
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Aside from your blatant paternalism (the US has existed a lot longer than the EU has), you're happiness translates to me as "Good - now the EU can have a shot at exerting control."
As a US citizen, I'm completely unsurprised by the EU claiming to care about other people while consolidating power in itself.
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He's right. The European Union (established by the Treaty of Maastricht on November 1, 1993) hasn't existed as long as the United States (July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence).
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Considering the history of Europe in the 20th century, as an EU citizen you should be one of the last people to be "surprised" at the US helping others.
Re:other countries too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:other countries too (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than bicker over who has the "right" to control it, a more important question is what's the practical implications of control. If other countries grow upset at US control, eventually they'll circumvent it. As soon as one country does it and tests the approach, it may create a domino effect where everybody does it, leaving the US on a digital island. Ultimately any given country can control whatever comes in over their wires, and if they don't like the US's approach, they'll usurp it when needed.
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Absolutely 100% correct.
Lets take an example of the sorta tech used in the internet. Fibre Optic Cables.
If you look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber#History [wikipedia.org]
you will see that the work to develop the tech was made from contributions from all over the world.
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I may or may not agree with you about US-made-the-internet or whatever. However: define "most of the internet."
This seems like a very interesting idea. Most of the internet is outside the US? Does that mean most web servers are outside the US? Or most internet users? or what? citation?
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There are more internet users in China than there are people in the US. QED.
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This seems like a very interesting idea. Most of the internet is outside the US? Does that mean most web servers are outside the US? Or most internet users? or what? citation?
I dont think that as so far possibility. If you've ever visited or learned an another language, you'd see how large local internet they have too. USA does count for many sites that people from other countries use, but in total count its probably 10% of the websites.
Of course it's harder to see for people in USA since the websites are in other language. But both China and Russia have more people than US does.
Re:other countries too (Score:4, Interesting)
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I thought the US military still had the largest block op IP addresses though. Who exactly contributed on TCP/IP outside the us? I'll grant you, that the WWW and a whole host of other things were developed outside the US but TCP/IP? I believe that goes back to 1957.
http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_darpa.htm [livinginternet.com]
What we did or did not do, is not the issue, but were sharing, so be happy.
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Who exactly contributed on TCP/IP outside the us?
A quick look on wikipedia confirmed that University College London were involved from fairly early on. Here is the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol_Suite [wikipedia.org]
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I, as an US CITIZEN, has the sole control of the INTERNET. My sole PLEASURE determines if certain protocols or features are available. This way, the US government is no longer in direct control, I can be bribed into and sweet talked into deals by other governments with proper incentives, and US won't feel a sense of loss of control some are feeling right now. If I died for some reason the cont
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there's already so many people using it, and it'd be a ton of work to setup another system.
Well that sounds like a good reason just by itself, and you don't really give any reason for the US to maintain control other than some strange possessive instinct. The internet is a global system now, so it makes sense that ICANN should be accountable to global interests. Even though I'm British, I don't actually have a problem with the way ICANN has been run by the US, but the last thing I want is for everyone to start coming up with their own crazy system because of the kind of pointless, divisive behavi
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It was the Europeans who started robbing the land hundreds of years before the US came into existence. And please let us know what enlightened country you've come from.
So if you're gonna come up with the "US developed it and it shouldn't be used elsewhere", atleast think about wher
Re:other countries too (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I'd rather see UN manage the internet than a single country (US). Then it would actually have opinions of other countries on it too.
Re:other countries too (Score:5, Insightful)
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You forgot to list Spain, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, ... . Why?
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"Moving the control to international platform where also other advanced democratic countries can balance out totalitarian undemocratic countries is a step in the right direction."
Modulo the bloody obvious which is that government doesn't need to be in the loop in the first place. It's not liked they helped build it and knew what they were doing, ney, the DoC in charge of this now are the same bunch that mandated OSI protocols when talking to the government. When the Internet had reached near ubiquity and
Re:other countries too (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, and there's an awful lot of other countries that don't want censorship.
Changes need consensus in international organisations, this is a stupid argument, because you'd never get international consensus on this sort of thing so it wouldn't happen.
Whilst you have one country controlling it however, you get shit like this:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081020/0058002578.shtml [techdirt.com]
http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/02/us-judge-censors-wikileaksorg.html [oreilly.com]
Yes that's right, judges in single US courts being able to unilaterally order the effective take down of overseas sites for which they should have no jurisdiction over whatsoever.
Don't try and pretend the countries you list would magically get their way over Western nations if control was shared, and don't try and pretend the US has never done anything wrong whilst in control of the internet.
When you have opposing views sharing power, stupid ideas get blocked indefinitely so the sort of situation in the above two articles would never happen, neither would censorship. Stuff like security issues that need urgent attention would get passed because everyone would agree they're a problem.
Effectively just as in hung or proportionally represented governments, the only stuff that gets blocked is controversal shit that half the people don't want, the only stuff that gets through is stuff that's agreeable to everyone. That's much better all round than having a single entity unilaterally imposing bad ideas on everyone else.
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Because the UN has done such an upstanding job at managing everything else. Why if it wasn't for the UN we might have seen genocides in Africa wherein millions of innocent people died. We might see countries like Libya sitting on human rights commissions. We might see aggressive states like Iran and North Korea flaunting international law and getting away with it.
Yep, the UN is a fine upstanding institution. We should hand the keys to the internet over to them. What could possibly go wrong?
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Can you please provide any example where the input of other countries was ignored by ICANN, leading to a negative outcome? Just wondering.
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Tell me more about how Obama has granted homosexuals the ability to marry, and how he's a strong supporter of gays and lesbians.
I'll be waiting!
speed? (Score:3, Interesting)
UN slow? (Score:3, Informative)
Is the UN really that slow?
Look at UNHCR which are just about the quickest set of people to react when a disaster strikes
Look at the Climate Change pieces which brought together the whole world and came to an agreement (sans one little country called the US)
Now what you might mean is that it takes the UN a long time to crack down on other countries who do things that your country doesn't like, that is certainly true. These are the people after all who refused to rush into Iraq, the slow-coaches.
The UN is a
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Far more countries than just the US declined to participate in the Climate Change issues. As for healthcare and the US climate policy, perhaps the US' view of these topics is different from your own? Just because their policies are different from what you'd want doesn't mean they don't make sense from a different perspective.
Re:UN slow? (Score:4, Insightful)
Very few countries didn't accept the UN findings on climate change, China and India both did for instance. Now in terms of signing up to doing something then that is a tougher argument, but getting people to agree on the problem was the first step and there the UN did well.
On Healthcare, you are right the US might have a different opinion. Most other countries would think that having the highest per capita spend on healthcare and having lower life expectancy, 700,000 people a year forced into bankruptcy and 1/6th of the population not even covered is a bad thing. I mean some mad people might think that a system where you ended up paying less, covering everyone and increasing average life-expectancy was better... but unfortunately those systems don't deliver 30% profits to insurance companies, which is of course the american way (apparently).
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Isn't this actually the main complaint about the UN? Nobody denies that it's good at getting people to agree on problems. Everyone wants world peace, the eradication of poverty, and so on. The hard part, which the UN has a much more mixed record on, is doing something about it.
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I wish I had some mod points... I would like to point out that the aggregate of all taxes paid by U.S. residents is pretty high, including federal income, state income, local/state property and various sales taxes, not to mention the impact of tariffs, excise taxes, and the taxes that are added to any service utilities (cable, water, power etc). One thing that truly infuriates me is when people suggest that we need to raise taxes in this country for anything. We already pay far too much, and don't see nea
Re:UN slow? (Score:5, Insightful)
Half of that 1/6th make over 50 grand a year and 1/4 of that 1/6th are foreign nationals.
You think an insurance plan purchased on the open market by an individual is affordable? Here's a hint: most small business owners make similar amounts and simply can't afford insurance for themselves, their spouses, or their families, and most definitely not for their employees.
I, along with many Americans, do not believe in forcing insurance on people who can afford it but don't want it.
So who cares? Similar knee-jerk reactions are found by people objecting to property taxes, income taxes, and public schools. If you're so short-sighted as to not understand that pooled efforts (aside from being the epitome of fairness), reduce costs for everyone, then there's no hope for you. Go live somewhere where the public doesn't subsidise much of your day-to-day existence.
I also don't see why we should pay for citizens of other countries.
Yeah, I don't have kids, and my house hasn't caught fire, so why the fuck do I have to pay taxes to pay for the fire deparment and public schools for all those snot nosed kids trampling my lawn?
You seem to blissfully oblivious to the fact that it's not uncommon in foreign countries that foreigners (selfish Americans included) are covered for free. By that standard, your views could be characterised as those of a selfish asshole.
Sounds like we need to expand state and federal aid to include these people rather than turn over the entire apple cart and force socialized medicine down everyones throats.
You use the term "socialised medicine", but obiously have no understanding what that means. Didja know that the Canadian, British, Japanese and French systems, for example, are all dramatically different? To the extent "socialised" is some vague, hand-wavy term that the government is involved, then we already have it. The Veterans Administration and Medicare. People screamed "Socialism!" when Medicare was enacted and Ronald Reagan predicted the demise of the US. Now, those Americans scream just as loudly at those who try and take it away or make changes to it.
Another fun fact is 80% of Americans are happy with the health care they currently have.
Fun and useless. 80% of those declaring bankruptcy due to health care costs have health insurance. You'd think those groups would be aware of each other. Either way, I'm sure that if polled, more than 80% of Microsoft Windows users would state they are similarly satisfied. Tells you absolutely nothing, but does suggest most people simply don't know what they they're talking about.
Like you.
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I also don't see why we should pay for citizens of other countries
Because they are humans no matter what country they come from and should be offered decent health care. I don't care if they are benefit thieves (I don't know what the US version is) and haven't paid a penny of tax in their lives I would still quite happily be poorer to offer such a basic human necessity.
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You know, those foreign nationals who pay taxes in the US may be entitled to receiving a basic service for it. Unless you think there should be first and second class citizens. Most wealthy, civilized countries treat foreigners nicely, and apply most of their rights to every resident. If it's a matter of money, there are ways around it. Spain covers the health care costs of many UK retirees who live on the coast, and right now there is some controversy on why the UK is not paying enough for this service, bu
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People keep mentioning that statistic about spending more for lower life expectancy, but it's kind of bullshit.
http://reason.com/news/show/135458.html [reason.com]
The US's lower life expectancy has nothing to do with its healthcare being poor, and everything to do with our having 2x as many car accidents and 12x as many homicides as most of the western world. You factor that out and the US actually has a higher life expectancy.
We also spend more on elective and cosmetic surgeries, as well as drugs like viagra and prozac
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Very few countries didn't accept the UN findings on climate change, China and India both did for instance.
Do you think that they agreed to readily to it because the associate plan (The Kyoto Protocol) to deal with the problem didn't include them having to do anything?
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Look at the Climate Change pieces which brought together the whole world and came to an agreement (sans one little country called the US)
Yeah, it's a good thing manufacturing giants like China are working so hard to protect the environment. Why can't the US follow its example!
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>>>takes the UN a long time to crack down on other countries who do things that your country doesn't like, that is certainly true.
So in other words the UN does a lousy job of performing its primary objective - to bring a ceasefire to warring nations via the "war on one member is a war against all members" philosophy. So instead they get into internet regulation. Hmmm - I don't recall reading that in the original charter. (shrug). I always find it amusing how organizations start as ONE thing, fa
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Google "UN Nuclear inspections stalled again" or "UN sanctions unenforced" or...
Don't get me wrong, the UN provides a useful dialogue for nations, but as for it's capacity to deal with and defuse major international crises, it's difficult to point to any situation where they weren't almost completely impotent to the crisis at hand.
Can anyone tell me... (Score:2)
Can anyone tell me why it costs nearly $10 to register a domain for a year? What is the profit margin on this? Who keeps the profit?
Re:Can anyone tell me... (Score:5, Informative)
It is 4k to apply for a registrars license, then 2500 a year (USD). Then it is .20 cents a domain. Your company must have 70k in working capital and I believe 500k in assets to become a registrar.
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The registrars' profit margin is quite thin.
Source: http://www.verisign.com/domain-name-services/beco [verisign.com]
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Well frankly, I profit from not having any domain name I want snapped up as part of a bulk script that buys a thousand names for a penny. Zero cost didn't work out so well for usenet, email and blog comments. What the hell makes you think that the magic of the market is going to find a better solution to the one we have now.
$10 a year is bargain.
So who is ICANN accountable to? (Score:2)
ICANN is an organization composed of human beings, sooner or later it will do something that is evil.
Re:So who is ICANN accountable to? (Score:4, Informative)
ICANN is an organization composed of human beings, sooner or later it will do something that is evil.
Too late. They have already agreed to sell gTLDs. As if the spam enforcement wasn't horrendous enough (it terms of registrar obligations), it is about to get a lot worse since with the gTLDs will go the registrar TOS.
In other words, for some time ICANN hasn't cared about not doing "evil", as long as it makes money.
No! (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:No! (Score:4, Insightful)
If anything, freeing ICANN from US government control, and moving it to nebulous control of some squabbling mess of countries, seems like it'll have the opposite effect: give ICANN carte blanche to do whatever it wants.
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This is a bad thing (Score:2)
Expect to ahve about 100,000 TLD within the next 5 years.
Plus, who need accountability~
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Oh yeah, I can already see it...
---
Dear client,
we have been made aware that there might be a problem with your bank account. Please log in and verify your personal informations including credit card numbers and expiration dates.
You can log in into our secure site at the following address: WWW.BANK.C0M
Internet Addresses in Other Languages? (Score:2)
I can only assume the submitter means domain names in other languages. Internet addresses are either decimal (v4) or hexadecimal (v6) numbers.
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Why would you think that?
Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
The chorus calling for the "end to US control over the Internet" will morph into the "end of ICAAN control, because they are not subject to oversight." Withe the "solution" being the same - UN oversight.
They are not looking for more freedom - they want more control.
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The chorus calling for the "end to US control over the Internet" will morph into the "end of ICAAN control, because they are not subject to oversight." Withe the "solution" being the same - UN oversight.
They are not looking for more freedom - they want more control.
+1 Insightful. Alas, I have no mod points now. =/
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I think you are absolutely right. And as a wise AC says somewhere down below:
"So we're giving more control over the internet to total surveillance societies like Great Britain? Not that I'm against sharing control, but I also don't see how it's automatically a good thing."
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. And even as it's now envisioned, the multinational committees will likely be stocked with the same luminaries of free speech that sit on the Security Council. And it'll go far beyond just making new domain names. After all, someone has to enforce who is allowed to which TLDs, right?
Frankly, I don't give a damn what China, Lybia or Iran think when it comes to running the Internet. And, if it comes to that, I don't want things like the German, French, or Canadian "hate speech" laws going international either. That sort of feel-good censorship can be even worse than the jackbooted variety, as the authorities choke off dissent while insisting it's all for our own good.
Honestly, I can't understand how any serious observer of world affairs, whatever you may personally think of the United States, can maintain that UN control is preferable to the current system. Not by any standard.
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You mean like how the ITU act as censors of the telephone network?
Except they don't.
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The basic administrative functions controlled by ICANN are quite comparable to the role that the ITU takes for the telephone network.
The basic technical structure of the internet hasn't changed too much either. We still use IP and DNS, which are the main things that ICANN deal with and are analogous to telephone numbers and standards.
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Why do you assume it'll be the security council that'll get involved rather than say the International Telecommunication Union?
What's that? You didn't realise the UN already does pretty much what ICANN does in another area very successfully?
"Frankly, I don't give a damn what China, Lybia or Iran think when it comes to running the Internet. And, if it comes to that, I don't want things like the German, French, or Canadian "hate speech" laws going international either. That sort of feel-good censorship can be
Oh noes! (Score:2, Funny)
This all sounds like Socialism to me!
ICANN relaxes control? (Score:2)
ICANN still isn't following its own rules (Score:3, Informative)
Bring Back At-Large Representatives! (Score:2)
For a very brief period of time, ICANN had an amazing group of folks on the board of directors/board of trustees called "at-large" representatives. If they had continued this practice and eliminated the other special interest groups running this incredibly insular board... I might support and even encourage direct U.S. government oversight of this organization.
As it is, it is a sham of an organization that really doesn't deserve to exist... and got handed the reins of a critical global resource with which
Other languages (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Other languages (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe the UN would do a better job (Score:5, Informative)
The UN already has the Universal Postal Union [upu.int] and the International Telecommunications Union [itu.int], which do for post offices, telephony, and radio roughly what ICANN does for the Internet. The ITU does a decent job, assigning country codes, negotiating the rules which interconnect phone systems across borders, and keeping radio broadcasters from conflicting. Nobody thinks about the Universal Postal Union much, but the fact that you can mail a letter to almost any country on earth didn't happen by accident.
Much of what the UN really does is to act as an umbrella organization for the dull and boring mechanics of infrastructure coordination. The diplomatic level gets all the attention, but there's necessary grunt work going on in the background.
Mod Parent UP, please (Score:2)
Interesting comment!
Re:EU politicians suck even more than US ones (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't bust it any more than having companies running their own domain DNS does. It puts more load on the root servers, but custom TLDs don't bust DNS any more than domains running custom DNS servers to host subdomains.
Btw, good job on posting that opinion appropriately: as a coward. :D
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Yes, actually it can.
Please read -- http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3675.txt
Re:EU politicians suck even more than US ones (Score:5, Funny)
I want to run around shooting guns and have working inexpensive health-care!
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Re:EU politicians suck even more than US ones (Score:5, Insightful)
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While he went a big aggressive with the saying, he does have a good point. I still dont undersant why ICANN is fully-usa company and has control over all of the internet, while it spawns over all of the countries.
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Do you also feel that other countries should take over parts of Walmart? McDonalds? Any other US companies you feel your country deserves to steal for... whatever reason you pulled out your ass?
ICANN barely works now...gonna be worse (Score:3, Insightful)
ICANN is barely functional with a heavy government hand on oversight. Do you imagine that group of idiots is going to do ANYTHING but line their own pockets without that oversight. The Golden Age of Domain squatting is just about to begin. ICANN will be re-allocating domains based on donations to their pockets within 6 months of them being un-regulated. Any chance the average joe had of winning a dispute against a corporate entity is going out the window as we speak...
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... because it seems a better option than to have China, Iran, ... have an over 50% say in how it's run. Obviously.
Re:EU politicians suck even more than US ones (Score:4, Insightful)
An adult top-level domain could have negative legal repercussions by endangering free expression... ...Privacy could be harmed by such a proposal. It would become easier for repressive governments and other institutions to track visits to sites in a domain labeled as adult and record personally-identifiable information about the visitor. Repressive governments would instantly have more power to monitor naive users and prosecute them for their activities.
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And to think some people complained that English was overrepresented on the internet...
Re:Oh, boo hoo rest of the world (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well said. Just quoting and posting at +2 so more people can see it before we both get modded down to
Re:Oh, boo hoo rest of the world (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, if you follow the "this is MY network and you do with it as I please" line of thought, the logical conclusion would be for the EU, China, India etc. all running their own DNS roots, complete with their own registrars etc. So unless you register your website with ten different registrars (or pay ten times the fee to your registrar), only people within your country and maybe a few bordering them can see it. Hilarity ensues when yourcompany.com is registered to two different organizations on various DNS roots. Or when they deicde they don't really need a compatible IP address space. While not being able to talk to China doesn't seem dramatic now, China is rapidly rising in importance.
In short, if you had wanted to make the internet your network, you should've worked harder to keep the rest of the world out. Apparently that wasn't what was intended.
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The nub of the issue is how to harden the internet against the vagaries of mob rule, special interests, fads and knees jerking. At the same time to embed freedom in such a way that the usual suspects can't dilute it, even if they try.
Whatever you might think of the USA, there is no other country in the world that could have delivered the internet in its current form, with its openness and freedoms.
However, that does not mean that the USA will remain a good custodian forever, so some insurance against futur
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Re:Yes We CANN! (Score:4, Insightful)