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ITU Meeting May Decide Governance of the Net
NickFitz writes "The Register has an article on the forthcoming World Summit on the Information Society, organised by the International Telecommunications Union. It seems that the United States, Europe and English-speaking partners are happy to let ICANN carry on running the show, while developing nations would prefer control to be handed over to the ITU. As the second stage of the process isn't due until November 2005, it could be some time before we see any changes."
Sounds a whole lot like how the UN works.
Who's kidding who here?
Ultimately, my network will connect to someone elses however we decide to do so.. and the same will happen with large networks.
The Internet is not a governed, closed system... we pay attention to what the IANA and others do only because they make logical decisions that everyone basically agrees to follow. The only way they can govern is by making good decisions.. their power only comes from cooperation.
Just let the Red Cross run the whole thing. They are the protectors of the Geneva Convention, and headquartered in switzerland. That way we have an unbias group running it.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
Maybe if we turn over the internet to an international organization, some of the americo-centricism will drop. Hey, maybe the american government will be forced to .gov.us, to match all the other countries in the world!
(yeah, and maybe pigs will fly)
With Big Governments and Big Companies all fighting over how they control a very big part of our lives I would like to see research on making the internet more resistant to control. The internet was originally designed to be resistant to nuclear attack by being decentralised and able to adapt to interference upon the network. I think we need to develop new protocols to actively protect the internet from being vulnerable to control. ... :-)
I think what we need it a pure peer to peer protocol to replace the heirarchial TCP/IP protocol so that we no longer need anyone to assign numbers and names to us all.
Of course this brings up the question as to how we then find each other. One solution is to do something similar to what NIC's do on a network segment and only allow each host to receive information intended for them. Of course we don't trust host to only read their own packets and not try to spoof other hosts. What we use is umbiquitous encryption. Everything is encrypted and signed and we use various algorythms to make sure that wandering packets do not wander for ever in the network.
With the improvements to the various wireless and other networking technologies the advent of robust, long range, high bandwidth, secure, point to point networking technologies is no longer a pipe dream.
With such technologies a network that spreads from a user to trusted friends, partners to their trusted frends and partners to their
would create a uniquely difficult to manage network.
Let Big Businesses and Big Governments keep their heirarchial network protocols.
We can use friend to friend protocols.(a bit sappy I know
The ITU really isn't much more than a standards setting body. It is, however, an important one because ultimately the Canadian system has to be able to talk to the Irish system, the French to the Australian, the Cambodian to the Mexican, and without an impartial, respected, body in place that represents the technical interests of the industry as a whole, such a thing isn't going to work very well if at all.
Whether this means ICANN should be replaced by the ITU is open to question. Ultimately I know two things: ICANN sucks. But the ITU seems like overkill for the job.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I found it quite enlightening to read the Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action for the summit. The most interesting aspect of this document is the apparent riders that were added to the document later in the draft process [in brackets]. Some selected quotes:
We are resolute in our quest to ensure everyone can benefit from the opportunities ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) can offer...all stakeholders should work together to:...(list of items)...;foster and respect cultural diversity;[recognize the role of the media]...
Governments, as well as the private sector, civil society, and the United Nations and other international organizations have an important role and responsibility in developing the Information Society and, as appropriate, in decision making processes...[The media has a special role in the Information Society]...
[Strengthening the trust framework, including [network and information security] authentication, privacy and consumer protection, is a prerequisite for the development of the Information Society and for building confidence among users of ICTs...
The document seemed like a table tennis match, wherein the countervailing issues had no apparent resolution. In particular, the conflict between the fair use access to free information and the digital rights management and security issues seems irreconcilable. I applauded the emphasis on free and open standards - but again find it hard to reconcile with other issues attached to the document.
This item I found particularly interesting:
Volunteering, [if conducted in harmony with national policies and local cultures,] can be a valuable asset for raising human capacity to make productive use of ICT tools and to build a more inclusive Information Society.
Given the subject of the document, 'Volunteering' in this context would be helping people to learn 'ICT' tools and perhaps building infrastructure. I can not fathom how this would be conducted outside of 'harmony with national policies and local cultures'. This does, however, open the door for suppressing the assistance given to particular groups in a state, if such assitance is not approved by said government. This contradicts the whole idea behind an inclusive Information Society, which this document seems, at first glance, to espouse.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
The ICANN is too new. It's still reeling from the bubble and exploring vast new realms of corruption and mismanagement. The ITU is an old, established organization that has already settled to an acceptable level of mediocrity. The amount of damage it can do is therefore quite limited.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Currently, ICANN has very little control over the Internet - they merely approve top-level domains and IP address allocation ranges, which is just about the minimum amount of central control necessary for the Internet to operate smoothly.
Even if ICANN was replaced by some corrupt UN body, it would still be unable to cause much harm. The Internet is really just a bunch of networks run by various companies and organizations in different countries that have agreed to connect to each other, in hundreds of different legal juristictions. What possible leverage would ICANN or the ITU have over them?
The answer is rather simple. You choose the one that won't sell out to big corporations. Even though ICANN eventually took some form of action against Verisign, it was little more than a slap on the wrist. A meaningful entity would have stripped Verisign of its registrar power outright and made an example of them.
If some organization must "control" the Internet, it must act in accordance with the greater Internet mobocracy. In essence, it should do nothing unless provoked, at which point it snaps like a rabid dog.
Course, I don't trust any government regime to effect such an organization...