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ICANN Troubles At UN Summit On Internet
Internet Ninja writes "The UN/ITU-organized World Summit on the Information Society currently happening in Geneva, and in attendance is Paul Twomey from ICANN, who has been ejected from a preparatory meeting, along with all other non-governmental observers. Obviously Twomey wasn't happy about that, saying: 'At ICANN, anybody can attend meetings, appeal decisions or go to ombudsmen. And here I am outside a UN meeting room where diplomats, most of whom know little about the technical aspects, are deciding in a closed forum how 750 million people should reach the Internet. I am not amused.'" We've previously reported on this meeting, which may help decide governance of the Internet, albeit in the longer-term.
That is unbelievable. When are these people going to realize that they need to get the input of someone that at least represents the people that they are going to 'govern'?? He's got a right to be pissed, and I would honestly be pissed too.
-=*(CC)*=-
Unfortunately, the UN is about as anti-US as they come. The move to take control of the Internet goes along with the rest of the UN's practices - to break down boundaries of countries and slowly form a single world government. While that sounds like a good idea, the UN is a little too socialist for my likes. They openly state in their charter that all humans have certain rights, like freedom of speech, as long as using that right doesn't interfere with a stated goal of the UN. This will mean censorship of the Internet and probably will cause coutries to isolate themselves from the rest of the world to avoid the negative effects of a UN run Internet.
I don't remember where I read it, but MIT actually has more IP's than the whole of China... If you still don't catch the drift, well, then I don't really know...
Seems futile anyways, weren't they(UN) going to only appoint some group that was going to watch ICANN, and their motives? (:
falxx
Finally there are a few EU countries (France) that really like the idea as well. They want to protect their innocent youngsters from "American Culture which is so pervasive on the Internet". The gentleman from ICANN wasn't a native French speaker, he definitely shouldn't be allowed to participate.
The Internet is a wonderful experiment, but it is almost entirely dominated by the US, and the english language. That rubs many the wrong way. I'd am VERY suspicious of such meetings, the motives behind them dont seem very "egalitarian". They are self serving, and mostly trying to prevent the free exchange of ideas IMHO.
Angry People Rule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
In the articles I've read, I haven't seen mention of how the UN expects to have its claimed governance of the internet acknowledged by current authorities.
If the UN claimed governance of the airwaves, wouldn't the FCC simply laugh? I realize that the FCC is a national body and ICANN is international, but unless the UN plans to set up its own root servers and coerce everyone to use them, how will this be enforced?
Can anyone comment on this?
Then Paul Twomey should send Kofi Annan a 200 foot high message through the Hello World project. Here are webcam pics of the four displays in different parts of the world. One is in Geneva.
66 from Gabon? Sheeesh. No intended offence to the Gabonese (?), but why so many from a country with a population of only 1.3 million? The trip was a good excuse to do some Christmas shopping in Europe?
To the stupid posts above mentioning that "diplomats" are not competent to handle the technical issues: diplomats are there to focus on the process, not the specifics.
ITU (this is a UN-ITU joint summit, isn't it?) is perfectly competent to handle the technical issues linked with numbering and naming. They do it very well already for the phone and for a portion of the OID tree.
Communications in Malaysia
a laysia
Telephones - main lines in use: 4.4 million (1998)
Telephones - mobile cellular: 2.17 million (1998)
Telephone system: international service good domestic: good intercity service provided on Peninsular Malaysia mainly by microwave radio relay; adequate intercity microwave radio relay network between Sabah and Sarawak via Brunei; domestic satellite system with 2 earth stations international: submarine cables to India, Hong Kong, and Singapore; satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat (1 Indian Ocean and 1 Pacific Ocean)
Radio broadcast stations: AM 56, FM 31 (plus 13 repeater stations), shortwave 5 (1999)
Radios: 9.1 million (1997)
Television broadcast stations: 27 (plus 15 high-power repeaters) (1999)
Televisions: 3.6 million (1997)
Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 8
*snickers* Source: http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_in_M
There's a reason the US has a reputation for breaking its treaties, and that would not help matters. Abiding by the decisions of the UN is what we agreed to do when we ratified the UN Charter (which is really just a multilateral treaty).
Don't think we should listen to the UN? Fine. Then we should pull out of the UN, or we're in violation of our treaty obligations. But UN-bashers like Bush, etc, wouldn't dare do that because even though ignoring the UN makes us look like a bunch of treacherous backstabbers to the rest of the world, we get a lot out of being in the UN, particularly out of having a permanent veto on the Security Council.
So put up or shut up is what I'm saying. Either we should pull out of the UN or we should live up to the agreements in the treaty we signed--for a change. Violating treaties left and right made us very popular with the Native Americans, and I suggest it'll do the same wonders for our popularity worldwide. And something makes me think we're not just going to mow down the entire rest of the world as easily as we did the Native Americans.
Sure. You're right. But that didn't stop them from kidnapping Milosovic and putting him on trial.
The UN thinks they are the rightful rulers of the big blue marble. They think that they are right and that everyone else is wrong and that they make the rules that everyone else must abide by. NATO is the enforcement arm of the UN.
They'll do as they please. The NEW WORLD ORDER is what they are about.
I don't really have a problem with the UN (or another international body) handling basic things like overall regulation of the DNS, routing tables, etc. The Internet needs this minimum level of governance just to function and, speaking as a non-US resident, the fact that my elected government has a seat at the UN gives me more of a say than ICANN (a creature of US law and regulation) presently does.
The bad news would be if this were used as a springboard to get into other areas of regulation (e.g. censorship). However it should be remembered that no organ of the UN has a legislative function, not even the General Assembly. International law is changed largely through treaty, and the General Assembly is only relevant for the very weak influence it has on the development of customary international law. Hence, governments will still have to sign up to any proposed regulatory framework.
This is already happening with and without the UN. In some cases it's good, e.g. when the UN drafts model uniform laws for electronic commerce, and in some cases it's bad, e.g. the Council of Europe's cyber-crime treaty. I don't think it can be avoided: trans-national regulation is probably inevitable since people want some guarantee of redress regardless of whether a wrongdoer lives in the US or Uzbekhistan (sp?) in order to conduct their dealings on the Internet with some degree of confidence. We should focus our efforts on getting a decent system in place.
Used to work for a company and new the lead tech for internet connectivity... Everytime we aquired a company she would look down the IANA list and go Damned - no class A.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
When it seems painfully clear to me that almost everything the UN does is done solely to spite America? This is certainly no exception.
That aside, this seems like the most extreme PHB nightmare possible.
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
It's an agreement, it's not a thing.
What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else. - Must read for any person that cares about technology.
If they don't like the DNS system, they don't have to use it. Same for HTTP. Same for TCP. Whatever.
ICANN can continue to define the standards and American companies will continue to implement them. Do you think people in France will be thrilled when France decides to do something different? That they can no longer access all the other sites.
Who needs global standards when you have defacto standards.
A speech...
The UN, in general, is the largest collection of unchecked egos you will find pretty much anywhere. Even in the Us government, you have to produce something for someone in order to stay around. Name me one thing the UN has produced beyond useless and baseless resolutions?
And now, someone wants to turn over the internet to these fools? This is a simple matter of the UN wanting to control how information is spread over the world. Despots do not like information, the UN for sure qualifies as such.
Why can't ICANN just say no? Even better, why can't we just say go right the hell ahead and get on I2?
Let the unwashed have the internet. Let them wallow in bandwidth hell. We need to get to IPv6 and on a new net and let these fools fight over the chaff. If we do not, they will keep fighting to control us. We have our freedom, not due gurentees set forth in any laws, but by the very fact that the geeks have been able to stay one step ahead. We are losing that edge...
War TUX!!!
Interesting. There are only 3 or so countries there that form a appreciable online presence. France, Canada, and Japan. Of those, Japan has the most right to speak on the internet: they do the most out of all three. In raw numbers, the US, Japan, Britain, Germany and perhaps Canada are the people who should run the Internet. Sorry, but thats how democracy works. Definatly Africa and the South Pacific Islands are not large presences online. Why should Iran dictate internet protocol? Their track record for technology alone is excrable, not to mention their extremly democratic society. *hem hem* Anyway, the pols will always win any fight that they are allowed to get a foothold into. Thats the nature of beauracrats; they want power. So the best thing is not to let it get into political hands(slimy things that they are).
/b
|f(x)dx = F(b) - F(a)
Oh the wonderful irony of it all - outside expert views gagged by the UN on Internation Human Rights Day, the anniversary of adoption of the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" back in 1948.
Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
I've finally got around to changing my sig
ICANN is a pain in da butt, and from what I recall is becoming more so with the outing of the "netizen representatives". *sigh* These tie wearing techno-nitwits are going to screw the system up good. ICANN, UN, whatever. If it is not built and run by geeks (read: technologically proficient) I have little faith that anything good will come of it, which brings me to the point.
OpenNIC is a geek run DNS system. Just change your DNS servers to point at theirs and go, or if you are a little more gung ho get your ISP to run a tier3 DNS server. Will resolve OpenNIC and ICANN domains and is transparent to the end user.
It is also a fully democratic system with the OpenNIC members voting on new domain TLD's and membership is open to all not just MegaCorps. Jump over and take a look, I think their success will be a good thing(tm).
Only corporations which successfully order their governments to support the American war on terror will be allowed to do business on tomorrow's Internet. Anything else is a security risk.
However, we must make some concessions to China, so that the workers making 65% of their exports to America who are working directly for American corporations don't get wrong ideas, and subvert Wal-Mart's (which sells 20% of our imports from China) security.
[And the banner says: "Exclusive: Microsoft's new security strategy."]
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
(1) IP6. The solution to whatever IP address shortages there are - no matter if they are perceived or real. Split the space using ISO country codes for the two most significant digits of the 128-bit address space, leaving 112 bits for each country to allocate as it sees fit.
.COM / .ORG and the like should be global. Country codes to be used, eg:
Nobody should give a damn what another country does with their own nameservers, provided root lookups are accessable to the outside world. If you want to buy a domain in another country, deal with that country's registrar.
I've never felt that addresses ending with
slashdot.org - From within the US
slashdot.org.us - Globally
microsoft.com - From within the US
microsoft.com.us - Globally
This is logically the way it already works - if you're inside the XX.YY domain, you can forget the YY part when addressing locally.
(2) Make the routers less dumb. If you do this, spam and DDOS attacks are both solvable problems. Sender address verification when the message is sent should make ISPs responsible for hosting spammers. You could even get routers to listen to real-time black-hole lists, stopping spam right at the edge of the network.
If the routers are allowed to talk to each other with control parameters, it should be easy to get them to "throttle back" their throughput all the way upstream to whoever is attempting a DDOS attack - but to prevent abuse it should only obeyed if data did recently pass through from the given source IP. The warning / throttle level could even be passed back down to the end-user's DSL / cable modem or computer and used to signal an "I'm being bad" light / buzzer to let the user know their computer is being used for evil.
Anyway.. I didn't think that ICANN was doing a good job, I think that the UN will be equally bad. The second that money or political motives enter the picture it all goes to hell anyway.
First, it should be noted we developed the protocols and the resolution methodology. As the current level of success of the internet seems to indicate, we're proficient in the field without forcing it on anyone.
Second, we are the rest of the world. 99.8% of the US population has completely 'foreign' ancestry. Spitting and railing against the US is no more intelligent than spitting and railing against your own family, and vis versa.
If the UN has some legitimate concerns about the current administration of the internet, it can hardly exceed the complaints vetted here. Out of respect for our own populous, we should at least listen to suggestions offered without experiencing immediate cardiac arrest.
After all, we get a yearly infusion of the best and brightest people from everywhere; the very least we can do is listen in bemused silence, and THEN start lobbing hand grenades. If secreat meetings @ the UN actually caused anything to happen, the US would've disappeared in a blazing white vapor decades ago, so having a sense of humor is probably in order.