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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."
I don't care if it's ICANN or ITU so long as it doesn't interfere with availability of the
Trolling is a art,
The Great Emporer ICANN.
The real question is who would do a better job. ICANN has made some questionable decisions in the past regarding delegation of authority *cough* Netsol *Cough* Considering that whoever we get is going to be a largely bureaucratic body, what can the ITU give us that will make them a better solution? Bear in mind as well that handing control to the ITU could cost us in that ICANN has traditionally been a bit more... Anglo-centric in terms of policy.
The ICANN vs. ITU battle is a stage in the ongoing wars (fought with instruments other than bullets and knives for my fellow slashdottians who take everything uberliterally) between the rich states and the stateless masses.
The ICANN (or should this be called the "UCANT") represents the rich west controlling the Internet, the ITU represents what is laughingly called the "United Nations".
There is about much chance of the ITU taking over the nexus of the Internet as there is of the UN relocating to the Pentagon.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
That's that, then.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Before you start building network infrastructure in developing countries, lets get the countries to feed their starving first.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
ICANN = Unilateralist, pre-emptive "improvements" to the Internet, whether you like them or not.
ITU = Lots of diplomatic talk barely concealing greedy power grabbers, in the end accomplishing little.
On a side note: What does Switzerland do for Internet access?
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Let's just all switch our root hints files to the ORSC root servers! Then we'll show them ALL who's boss!
Mwahahahahahaha...
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
I always get confused. Are we supposed to like ICANN this time?
Can someone explain to me exactly what ICANN controls besides the policys on domain naming?
Everyone posting keeps talking about how they are doing a horrible job of controlling the internet, but I thought they only controlled DNS stuff and nothing else?
Whereas developing nations, China, India,...
Whaaa? How long is it going to take these nations to develop, anyway? I mean, they've only been civilizations for, um, how many millenium was it last time I checked.
My brothers, it's time to get off your backsides and get cracking! You snooze, you lose!
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
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.
Nobody asked me, but in my opinion and experience, non-technically oriented people have no business running the Internet and determining it's course.
The Internet is supposed to be free. Free as in freedom free.
The model in microcosm is this: I have a cable modem and a wireless access point. You have a DSL and a wireless network, too. We agree to share the wireless network to route data on each other's landline. If one of our landlines is down, the other takes the load. If you get impolite with your usage of my network, I block your access, and vice versa. Each of us polices the Internet at our own router.
The power-hungry politicians and small-minded bean counters think my Internet needs "governance". They worry, "Someone will make a profit!" or "Someone will send spam!" or "Someone will have access to {information|music|software} without paying for it!" Someone will charge too much, or not enough, or not let people with green hair use their ftp site, or whatever. Or someone will go untaxed.
Hands off.
sigs, as if you care.
You make a good point. We should definitely be aware of the underlying politics involved here, because it will have a big effect on how the internet is played out. One important thing to keep in mind is that when capitalist western countries like the USA are in charge of the internet (or have the biggest influence or what-have-you) the policy changes are most likely to be ones that are good decisions for business application, or will make someone some money somewhere. If the internet is controlled by third-world countries the decisions will lean toward crippling the bigger powers to boost their own 'net presence (of course they wouldn't word it that way, but it amounts to the same thing even if you use the words "fairness"). If the internet is controlled by a world organization such as the UN the internet will start to be shaped to answer the objections of the nations involved such as China who wants to guarantee censorship to it's citizens. Change needs to happen, and ICANN has defiantly made some bad decisions but my point is, let's not rush into a change just because we don't like what they have done. Another group could do FAR worse if we are not careful.
SCO.com uses Linux
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
Its like complaining about politics, but never voting. Every time you give the third a voice in how things are run, you end up with chaos- take just about any UN action as an example.
IMO, the third world should focus all their attention on the WTO, and forget the stupid shit like the UN and ICANN; the latter two are not really helping them any.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
First of all, most of the internet's equipment is in america and europe, with an exception being made for china, japan, tiawan, and korea which also have substancial investment in the internet. So, letting some small country in africa dictate how the internet is run isn't a good idea, to start with. It can be looked at in a viewpoint of economic warfare; if Britan can get wal-mart.uk and register it to a britan based company instead of to wal-mart the international corperation, they could potentially make a lot of money importing.
After that, you've got problems with international corperations greasing the wheeles all over. The UN is even more corrupt than the US goverment. All the UN does is make "deals" (some of which involve bullying) between nations for resources as well as making it possible for GE to dump toxic waste in korea and if korea doesn't like that they can kiss the UN's sweet behind. This is why, as Jello Biafra says, the kidnapping rich people and corrupt goverment officials in mexico is what corperations like to call a growth industry.
So, if we move all the internets services to an even more corrupt govermental system with absolutely no responsability to a people but rather to goverments who want to supress people, what do you think will happen?
If china wants xyz banned internationally they can probably pull the strings to do that. If some "terrorist" group in the US puts leaked files on a website prooving conspiracy such as Diebold, what do you think the probability of them pulling the DNS registry would be? As long as the DNS stays under control of and protection by the biggest bully on the block it'll serve the needs of the biggest bully and so long as you don't fsck with it, the bully will leave you alone. It's a lot better than throwing it into the middle of a room with people ranging from weak babies to 500 pound strongmen and watching the freeforall.
Or better yet, what if they wanted to implement internet 2 so that stupid dinosaur people run the internet and not the smart people who do now (to put it in a blunt manner)? Hey, we don't like rantradio because it's a free, uncensored medium that's taking buisness away from RIAA affiliated companies so we're just going to take you off of DNS and fsck your internet connection.
I, as everyone else, would love to see the services ICANN trys to implement given real form and direction and be ruled by wise, progressive people instead of large international corperations and a goverment run amok as it does now.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Now, I'd like to know exactly what characteristics that make a good computer scientist are incompatible with being a good decision-maker. Is the point here that governance is inherently the domain of the clueless?
The choice seems to be between computer scientists (ICANN) & telecommunications suits (ITU). Isn't ironic that the U.S. government is on the side of ICANN?
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
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...
In many cases they don't need access to the outside world, just the local market prices can be useful. Also, privatisation is great but unless people have a real idea of the value of the bits of the paper they receive, they are ready to be tricked out of them as happened in most of the former soviet union.
As users don't these nations also have a right to be part of the regulatory process?
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