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I agree the U.N. is pitiful

I'm not sure what part of the U.N. is pitiful. The General Assembly might appear quite crippled, but that's the part of the U.N. that's there to provide a forum for countries to argue with each other. Other than the General Assembly, The U.N. does have a very good record for running large international organisations, many of which are run efficiently enough that most people don't hear about them.

I, for one, would like to see more detail about the proposal of how the U.N. plans to do it. Considering the track record of the US Federal Government, it honestly wouldn't surprise me if the UN could do a better job.

The International Telecommuncations Union is an international organization within the United Nations System where governments and the private sector coordinate global telecom networks and services. This is the supra-national organisation which should control and operate the DNS in the same way as it ultimately controls all international electronic communication. The first thing that urgently needs to be cleaned up is what is essentially the identity theft of TLD names from small countries with naive governments. I'm thinking particularly of .tv, .cx, and .to. These stolen domain names have been totally corrupted by a bunch of disengenious American 'entrepreneurs'. While the United Nations may not be exactly lily-white in absolutely all its dealings, the magnetude of the UN's sins pales into insignificance compared when compared with the identity theft of not just one, but three nations' names. The next item on the clean-up agenda is to ensure that the three-letter TLD names disappear as soon as possible. Thus all the .com names become .com.us, or whatever country they are actually situated in. Finally the effective introduction of IPv6 is long overdue. It's my belief that the creation of a totally erroneous perception of scarcity value in the current 32 bit addresses is yet another reason to take the administration of the DNS out of the control of a demonstrably corrupt nation.

Well, if the UN can manage CEB, CTBTO, ECA, ECE, ECLAC, ESCAP, ESCWA, FAO, UNCTAD, HLCM, MA HREF="http://ceb.unsystem.org/hlcp/default.htm">HL CP, IACSD, IANWGE, IAPSO, and about 5 times as many more, I think they can handle one more. :)

UN's record isn't that great IMHO

Oh really? Of the organizations I listed (in alphabetical order), how many are bloated and overbudget? How many have involved scandal of any kind? How many have been largely ineffective? Etc?

Honestly, I think that this is just going to turn into a big OFF-bashing thread.

Well, if the UN can manage CEB, CTBTO, ECA, ECE, ECLAC, ESCAP, ESCWA, FAO, UNCTAD, HLCM, MA HREF="http://ceb.unsystem.org/hlcp/default.htm">HL CP, IACSD, IANWGE, IAPSO, and about 5 times as many more, I think they can handle one more. :)

UN's record isn't that great IMHO

Oh really? Of the organizations I listed (in alphabetical order), how many are bloated and overbudget? How many have involved scandal of any kind? How many have been largely ineffective? Etc?

Honestly, I think that this is just going to turn into a big OFF-bashing thread.

Well, if the UN can manage CEB, CTBTO, ECA, ECE, ECLAC, ESCAP, ESCWA, FAO, UNCTAD, HLCM, MA HREF="http://ceb.unsystem.org/hlcp/default.htm">HL CP, IACSD, IANWGE, IAPSO, and about 5 times as many more, I think they can handle one more. :)

UN's record isn't that great IMHO

Oh really? Of the organizations I listed (in alphabetical order), how many are bloated and overbudget? How many have involved scandal of any kind? How many have been largely ineffective? Etc?

Honestly, I think that this is just going to turn into a big OFF-bashing thread.

Well, if the UN can manage CEB, CTBTO, ECA, ECE, ECLAC, ESCAP, ESCWA, FAO, UNCTAD, HLCM, MA HREF="http://ceb.unsystem.org/hlcp/default.htm">HL CP, IACSD, IANWGE, IAPSO, and about 5 times as many more, I think they can handle one more. :)

UN's record isn't that great IMHO

Oh really? Of the organizations I listed (in alphabetical order), how many are bloated and overbudget? How many have involved scandal of any kind? How many have been largely ineffective? Etc?

Honestly, I think that this is just going to turn into a big OFF-bashing thread.

If this is true, and it's sure hard to find Buck anywhere, then its's rather poorly-executed astroturfing. CTO's of World Banks do tend to have past histories, y'know.

What's even funnier is that anonymous posters can moderate the comments ala slash. Perhaps some judicious moderation of the Buck question might make OSdir think again about pro-Linux FUD?

According to one sharp-eyed poster he apparently existed for this, but that's no proof either.

Check out here. It shows him as the World Bank (IBRD) representative to the UN Information Systems Coordination Committee. So afaict he is what they say he is.

When people talk about moving the ICANN functions to the UN, they're not talking about the general assembly (GA) or the security council (SC). They're talking about the specialized agencies.

The specialized agencies are almost completely autonomous organizations that the GA and SC have no direct control over. Some examples are the world health organization (WHO), the international telecommunications union (ITU), and world meteorological organization (WMO). See UN System of Organizations for details (in particular check out the "UN System Chart").

The specialized agencies have a pretty good (but by no means perfect) record of handling systems that require some international co-operation.

So, to repeat, complaints about the way the security council or the general assembly work really have no relevance to the "should the UN control the internet" argument.

There's a bit of confusion here about the UN. Now I'm not an expert, but my impression is that the UN is a whole bunch of agencies that have only vague connections between each other. In fact, they call them the UN System of Organizations. For example, the Security Council doesn't give orders to UNICEF.

So all the arguments on this thread citing problems with the Security Council or the General Assembly or the Secretariat as reasons not to put internet governance under the UN aren't particularly relevant. For example: "UN shouldn't govern the internet because China has a veto on the Security Council", doesn't make much sense.

What's being suggested is to create a new Special Agency (see the org chart on the site UN System of Organizations I gave above) or to assign internet goverance to an existing Special Agency (the ITU). And the Special Agencies are the most autonomous parts of the UN.