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.

Comments

Sweet irony

[Vainglorious Coward]

deciding in a closed forum how 750 million people should reach the Internet.

Unlike ICANN, who of course, have members of the internet at large on their board. Oh, wait a minute...

Typical...

[cybrchrst]

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.

Re:Typical...

[atari2600]

Would you be pissed?
Or would you be pissed if you were not an American? and if you are not an American, you should have been pissed already in which can being peed upon twice makes no sense.

Before you take arms in the typical slashdot manner, consider the key lines from the article:

The move underscores the wrath of countries that for years have been unhappy with what they perceive as their voicelessness over how the Internet is run and over U.S. ownership of key Internet resources. It also foretells the level of criticism that both the U.S. government and the Internet Corporation, or ICANN, may face at the UN meeting, one of the largest gatherings ever of high-level government officials, business leaders and nonprofit organizations to discuss the Internet's future. .
I understand the concerns of other nations about their having a say in the way the Internet as we know today is going to shape into. I also understand how a lot of the work went into the original ARPANET and DARPA from the US and the universities. I guess we need an UIO (United Internet Organisation!)...something like that. Can't we frag each other in peace? :-)

Re:Typical...

[maleficus]

someone that at least represents the people that they are going to 'govern'?? So send some middle school nerd with acne.

Re:Typical...

[Geek of Tech]

>>> 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'?

Forget people they will govern. At least get input from the people who know how it works. Try and put someone there that has any idea what the internet does. Someone that knows the boundaries of the technology. Not someone that knows the best way to tax people.

Re:Typical...

[Performer Guy]

Are you talking about ICANN or the UN. This is just ICANN getting a taste of what they've been dishing out to the rest of us. Yes it stinks but so does the way ICANN has behaved in the past.

Re:Typical...

[MikeDawg]

UN == US, I fail to see what difference this makes.

I disagree with this whole-heartedly, I don't know what country you come from, or whatver, but I must disagree with you in saying that the UN == US. The UN is made up of hundreds of countries, of which, 5 control the main security of the UN, of which, US is one of the 5. By no means is UN == US.

Re:Typical...

[dark404]

The thought of the UN trying to 'govern' the internet gives me the shivers. The delegates obviously do not understand the internet is not a single 'thing', it isn't something they can control. Can you imagine the UN trying to enforce its 'powers' over U.S. based ISPs? And you know they would try just to justify the UN's slipping significance. Can you imagine a conglomerate of government departments/staff from a multitude of countries, with DMV-style attitudes, sub-par technical skills, and differing political agendas establishing policies over the internet? We'd probably end up having to submit hard copy HTTP requests in triplicate, plus a $15 processing fee, 2-4 weeks in advance, to visit /. *gets out the tinfoil hat*

Re:Typical...

[raju1kabir]

That is unbelievable.

It shouldn't be. There's a 10-ton clue that this kind of crap was going to be the order of the day: I-T-U.

The ITU as an organization exists to promote the interests of state-owned telecommunications monopolies, which today are the province of repressive and dysfunctional governments. It is directly opposed to democracy, to open standards, and to anything that allows the internet to grow organically or in response to interests and technological developments that come from the ground up.

I know of ordinarily-intelligent people with good net cred who are involved in this expense-account-blather-fest, and their crotches are so extravagantly tumescent at being taken seriously by people wearing expensive suits who ride black limos with diplomatic plates that they've totally lost the plot, signing their souls away to the devil. For Pete's sake, how low have we sunk when ICANN stands on the hilltop as our shining paragon of openness?

The ITU has been trying to take over the internet ever since it hit the bigtime around 1994 (up intil then, they just dissed it). Just wait - once they take over, they'll close the standards process, charge huge licensing fees for anyone who talks TCP/IP, and do whatever they have to in order to ensure that "disruptive" technologies like tunneling no longer work.

And then we'll have to start all over again and build a new internet, leaving them behind again, mark my words. What a huge flerkin waste of time.

Re:Typical...

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, so we all have to vote Bush again, just so we can tell the UN to get bent when they try to screw over the Internet?

Re:Typical...

[Aardpig]

I'm sorry, but you are the one who is wrong. At no point did the UN security council give authorization for the use of force against Iraq. Have you actually read the text of resolution 1441, and of those that went before it; or have you instead been obediently suckling at the 'fair and balanced' teat of the neo-con media sow? UN resolutions are very specific when the authorize force; the words 'by all means necessary' are often used. There is no such phrase, or one equivalent to it, anywhere in 1441 or prior resolutions.

And if you think that the strong wording in 1441 was sufficient to authorize invasion, then tell me this: why Israel hasn't been invaded, based on the plethora of resolutions since 1967?

And if you think there was a moral case for invading Iraq, tell me this: why is Bush providing support, both diplomatic and military, for a dictator who likes to boil to death those who oppose him?

Re:Typical...

[Shihar]

It isn't so much that the US is the UN. Clearly the Iraq war shows otherwise. What is true is that the UN is very dependent upon the US to get anything done. If the US throws a cog in the wheels of the UN, nothing is going to get it to budge. The US provides a great deal of the UN's funding and IS the UN's military arm. The UN can pull off humanitarian aid missions without the US's help, but if it wants to pull off any sort of real military action, they simply need the US. Further, the UN is pretty much unable to enforce any major decisions without US approval, though the same can be said about all the permanent members of the security counsel.

This attempt to hand over control of the Internet to the UN is going to be met with the US crushing it. To be perfectly honest, I don't think that is a bad thing. I don't really want Syria or China to have any say in how the Internet is being run. These are not exactly model nations when it comes to the free flow of information. While the US is certainly in no way perfect, I think they do a far better job with allowing the free flow of information then many other countries. If the UN was made up of only free democratic nations, I could understand the desire to go in this direction, but while brutal totalitarian nations have their say, I don't want them anywhere near the Internet. The US isn't perfect, but the UN is certainly a worse choice.

The UN is a wonderful place to have peaceful debate and to work out diplomatic issues. However, the UN is not and should not be a world government, nor should it be where I want my Internet is controlled from. It is composed of too many nations that are violently opposed to my interests.

Stupid White Men

[rmdir -r *]

Yet again, the people who use the technology have no control over the technology... a prime example of the folly of Mr. Moore's 'Stupid White Men'. Everyone at the conference should be tested before entering- they should all be able to figure out how to turn on a computer. Ick.

Re:Stupid White Men

[McAddress]

better test. if they use windows, they fail.

Re:Stupid White Men

[NiceGeek]

In his case that would be brain damage.

You had to know this would happen...

[NWRefund]

Politicians, no matter which country they come from, are only concerned with their adgendas. Why would they want actual technical advice on this sort of topic? Look at it this way: if they come up with good ideas now, how are they supposed to claim success later on when they come up with better ones? But if they screw things up right off the bat, they can all point fingers and blame one another, then propose ways to "fix" things.

Re:You had to know this would happen...

[ratamacue]

Politicians, no matter which country they come from, are only concerned with their adgendas.

That's absolutely right, but there's nothing inherently wrong with being motivated by self interest. The danger comes when one individual tries to forcibly impose that self interest on another.

This is why government must be strictly limited in scope, power, and expense (as the founders of the US intended). Individuals in government are motivated by self interest just like every other individual -- the difference is that individuals in government hold the "right" to initiate force as a means to an end, while the common individual does not.

Put another way, government is the most dangerous force that could ever possibly exist. There could be no greater threat to peace than a group of individuals who hold the "right" to initiate force as a means to an end.

not good for the Internet

[pbranes]

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.

Re:not good for the Internet

[TwistedSquare]

It's just a tug-of-war between the US and the UN really. Sometimes the UN is wrong (as you mention), sometimes it's the US (war crimes tribunal etc).

Incidentally what factors are making the UN look at taking over from ICANN?

Re:not good for the Internet

[Snoopy77]

Unfortunately, the US is about as anti-UN as they come. The move to take control of Iraq goes along with the rest of the US's practices - to break down boundaries of countries and slowly form a single worldwide US government. While that sounds like a good idea, the US is a little too imperialist 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 US. This will mean chaos in Iraq and probably will cause countries to isolate themselves from the rest of the world to avoid the negative effects of a US run Iraq.

Re:not good for the Internet

[Jungle guy]

I agree that the UN runnning the Internet is not a good thing, but I don't know how much power they can have on the internet. Most of the infrastructure is on private hands, at the United States, and they can't do anything about it. They can create problems to connect the american networks to those on other countries, but I bet nobody wants to disconnect from the United States and from the rest of the world.

Re:not good for the Internet

[MBCook]

The UN has alot of problems, many of which seem to defy logic. For example, where but in the UN security counsel is 1 person out of 9 a majority that can stop ANYTHING that's going on?

Where but the UN can countries with tons of human rights violations be on and chair commities to end human rights violations? (Iraq was going to be on it or chair it soon before we removed Saddam from power). Maybe the US should follow their leadership and put serial killers incharge of the courts and molesters in charge of counseling sex-abuse victims.

And I won't go into how the members of the UN aren't elected and are appointed and aren't out to better the world but (usually) to their country. This has already been pointed out by other posters.

Really we shouldn't even WORRY about the UN taking over the internet. If how they handeled Iraq is any indication, then we can just ignore whatever rules they invent forever and unless another country decides to enforce things, nothing will every happen to us.

The League of Nations (doesn't that sound like it's from a comic book?) was destroyed becaused it didn't prevent Hitler from taking power and causing things like WWII (which it was supposed to). The UN failed to stop Saddam from all the things he did to his people and others, and with the rest of their oddball rules and complaints of useless things and hipocritical actions, I don't think they'll be around for long either (or at least they will lose what little power they have left). Instead they charge us dues and tons of money to do next to nothing but waste it on burocracy. And then what happenes when their building is old and needs to be replaced or fixed? They demand that the US builds them a new one FOR FREE, because all that money they collect is needed to swim in (or something). Personally, I hope the UN building is declared unfit for occupancy and they are forced to move to some other country (France, Germany, you guys have any openings?).

PS: I'm sure you get it by now, but I'm a bit of a critic of the UN.

PPS: If by some miracle the UN DOES take over the 'net, I would support building a NEW internet that was controlled by someone else (private institutions like Universities or even the US Government) so the UN can't decide to take it over and we can do things like we do now (or better! Ham radio type licenses to use the new 'net or at least to post to it).

PPPS: I'm out of PSes. :)

Re:not good for the Internet

[Draxinusom]

to break down boundaries of countries and slowly form a single world government

Sorry, but your understanding of the U.N. is completely ignorant and wrong, and I say that as a critic of the U.N. First of all, it's ludicrous to speak of the U.N. as having its own goals and agenda; the Secretary-General has no actual authority, and every decision is made at the whim of the permanent members of the Security Council.

The problem with the U.N. is not that it doesn't respect its members' sovereignty but the exact opposite: that it places members' sovereignty above such goals as peace or justice. That's why the U.N. was completely ineffective in stopping the genocide in Rwanda, why the Clinton administration had to go to NATO to intervene in the Balkans, and why the U.N. vigorously opposed the war in Iraq; in each case, it was terrified of stepping on the toes of sovereign states (even when those states were killing their own or another state's citizens) or offending the sensibilities of its members.

Think of it this way: if you were going to set up one world government, would you set it up so that resolutions could be vetoed by any single member of the Security Council? The idea of the U.N. as the coming of one world government is a canard perpetuated by isolationists and politicians who want to make hay out of jingoism. I am constantly amazed at people who resent the U.N. "taking over the world" yet have nothing to say about the WTO or World Bank, which actually do march into and completely reorganize entire countries (and even manage to make U.S. policy, as Bush's reversal on steel tariffs shows).

Re:not good for the Internet

[hobbesmaster]

The UN has alot of problems, many of which seem to defy logic. For example, where but in the UN security counsel is 1 person out of 9 a majority that can stop ANYTHING that's going on?

The UN was formed in 1945. The Soviets were in Berlin, the US was preparing for an invasion of Japan. In this context, a lot of stuff about the organization of the UN should make more sense. The true power is vested in the Security Council where the super powers can keep each other in check.

The security council is the only body the UN has that can make binding resolutions. The GAs may say that Israel is evil and needs to withdraw back to teh 1967 boundaries every year, but it doesn't mean a thing. The architects of the UN knew this, thats why theres a security council.

Where but the UN can countries with tons of human rights violations be on and chair commities to end human rights violations? (Iraq was going to be on it or chair it soon before we removed Saddam from power). Maybe the US should follow their leadership and put serial killers incharge of the courts and molesters in charge of counseling sex-abuse victims.

The chair of a committee doesn't really do anything, its basically an administrative position with the day to day chores of the Speaker of the House in the US without any of the political power. Membership into committees are elected by the GA body as an entirety, of course with every nation having a vote (all 150+ of them) weirdness starts to happen. Especially when you have large voting blocs (e.g. the mid east).

And I won't go into how the members of the UN aren't elected and are appointed and aren't out to better the world but (usually) to their country. This has already been pointed out by other posters.

If by appointed you mean recommended by the Security Council (a vote) and then decided upon by the Generally Assembly (a 2/3 majority vote required) then yes, they are appointed. If you mean individual diplomats, then I might understand you a little bit better, but I fail to see any reason why. No other diplomats are elected, and they routinely sign treaties and other foreign agreements.

The League of Nations (doesn't that sound like it's from a comic book?) was destroyed becaused it didn't prevent Hitler from taking power and causing things like WWII (which it was supposed to). The UN failed to stop Saddam from all the things he did to his people and others, and with the rest of their oddball rules and complaints of useless things and hipocritical actions, I don't think they'll be around for long either (or at least they will lose what little power they have left). Instead they charge us dues and tons of money to do next to nothing but waste it on burocracy. And then what happenes when their building is old and needs to be replaced or fixed? They demand that the US builds them a new one FOR FREE, because all that money they collect is needed to swim in (or something). Personally, I hope the UN building is declared unfit for occupancy and they are forced to move to some other country (France, Germany, you guys have any openings?).

The League of Nations was already irrelevant by the time Hitler arrose to power. The US didn't join and a nay vote by any nation would vote down any resolution before the body. This made the body irrelevant in the twenties, nevermind the thirties or forties.

When they need a new building? Well you have FDR to thank for it in this country for the first place. It was his dream, just like it was Wilson's. Without the US there would literally be no UN, because the UN was the US's idea. Will we keep it in the future? Who knows...

Re:not good for the Internet

[MBCook]

> And the alternative would be that the
> US lost its veto (along with the others
> in the security council). I'm sure that
> would encourage even more cooperation
> from the US in UN.

I'm just saying that the 1 in 9 thing doesn't make sense. You should need a majority to stop things (5 out of 9), or even a decent minority (3 out of 9). But one 1 out of 9 is rediculous. Especially when countries are allowed to vote on things that directly effect them. For example, if the UN were to talk about military action against Germany, it can never happen because Germany can use their 1 vote to veto it and stop anything. It makes no sense.

> Any country that objects to anothers
> ill-doings is free to punish the bad
> guy (if so, you had 9/11 coming), or
> all countries try to resolve the
> issues peacefully?

No, I agree that things should be resolved peacefully. You said that in response to my human rights violations example. I like to resolve things peacefully, but look at the examples I gave. Again, it's just nonsensical to put a country like Iraq in charge of the human rights counsel. I have no problem with there being a human rights counsel, I just think that it should be lead by a country that has a good human rights record (the US (although you'll probably argue that, take that as "the US at least compared to many other places")), or a county that isn't that bad. Instead it was going to be headed by a country whose leader filled mass graves and used biological weapons on his own people.

The idea of the UN is good. The execution currently has MAJOR problems. Today's UN is ineffective and needs to be replaced/overhauled.

Now let me ask you something. By your logic as long as there is a hair of good in something, we should keep it. So if every car on the road had a 50% chance of exploding on any given day, but they got 100 mpg, should every one drive one because they get you where you need to go and are good for the planet? It's hyperboly, but that's what your logic was saying.

> I suppose it's easy to say "ditch the UN"
> when you live in the worlds most powerful
> country, but if you have the ability, put
> yourself in the shoes of someone living
> somewhere else in the world and think
> about that for a while.

Someone like an Iraqi who the UN flat out abandoned for more than a decade or two? The UN was supposed to keep Saddam from getting and using biological weapons and other things, but the UN kept apeasing him or ignoring him or say "Stop doing that or else" over and over without any "or else" ever happening. They let him use the "Oil for Food" program to develop MORE weapons and not feed his people. The result? He got richer, more powerful, and more deadly. The Iraqis got poorer, their lives got worse (if they weren't outright killed), and they lived under a facious dictator. Yeah, the UN served they real well.

MBCook - Arguing with Liberals for over 20 years (although obviously not on /. the whole time).

Re:not good for the Internet

[Snoopy77]

Ahhh the fine lines between +1 funny, +1 insightful and -1 flamebait. I dance on the tightropes of /. moderation.

Re:not good for the Internet

[jcr]

For example, where but in the UN security counsel is 1 person out of 9 a majority that can stop ANYTHING that's going on?

How about letting Libya hold the chairmanship of the human rights commission?

The UN has been a joke for a very long time.

-jcr

Re:not good for the Internet

[hobbesmaster]

I'm just saying that the 1 in 9 thing doesn't make sense. You should need a majority to stop things (5 out of 9), or even a decent minority (3 out of 9). But one 1 out of 9 is rediculous. Especially when countries are allowed to vote on things that directly effect them. For example, if the UN were to talk about military action against Germany, it can never happen because Germany can use their 1 vote to veto it and stop anything. It makes no sense.

Germany doesn't have a veto, only the US, UK, Russia, PRC and France have veto in the UNSEC. These nations were chosen so that they could not be targets of one another's aggression; ie they are/were super powers who when pissed off thouroughly would initiate a war the horrors of WWII could hardly touch on.

BTW, there are 15 members of the UNSEC, 5 permanent, 10 non permanent. For any resolution to pass none of the 5 permanent members can vote nay. (the word veto is never mentioned in the UN Constituation)

Re:not good for the Internet

[Alienation Capitalis]

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.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black; subsitute US for UN and it that sentence still makes perfect sense. At least the UN works (ignoring the security council here) by the concensus of the majority, unlike the nation who has the guy who almost got a concensus of those who can be bothered voting that make up an only just majority of in charge.

Wake up, inspite of the wishes of its people the US is not an enlightened beacon for democracy and civil rights. The way that many Americans believe that they are puts me in mind of the fanatical support the Chinese government gets from its people. Its all a bit boring really.

Re:not good for the Internet

[Strudelkugel]

This will mean chaos in Iraq and probably will cause countries to isolate themselves from the rest of the world to avoid the negative effects of a US run Iraq

Remember the alternative was an Iraq run by Saddam. One can make a strong arguments pro- and con- the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but to suggest that the world would be better off with Saddam running things is a rather extraodinarily presumption.

Many in Europe thought Hilter was doing a good (shudder) job running Germany, too, and would have complained the loudest if France had gone in and stopped the Nazis when they could have. Every Iraqi I ever met hated Saddam and his regime, mainly because family members had been persecuted in one way or another.

Re:not good for the Internet

[bluGill]

The UN was intended to be a League of Nations that worked. The League of Nations didn't act to stop WWII before it was too late, the US isn't going to let the UN not act to prevent WWIII before it is too late, even if it means acting along. (though other countries to agree with the US)

I don't know if the Iraq decision was right or not, but what the UN did was wrong, leading everyone to belive they would do something and then doing nothing. Proves the UN is worthless.

Re:not good for the Internet

[Quelain]

It seems to me that it was GWB + co. leading people to believe that the US must invade Iraq, because the UN was doing nothing to stop Iraq from unleashing its huge stockpiles of WMD on the world.

The 12 years of sanctions were exactly what the UK and USA wanted, no matter how many Iraqi civilians were hurt by them. If the UN was doing nothing, it was because any steps it proposed were voted down by the US and UK.

Here's something I find interesting:

Asked about the sanctions placed on Iraq, which were then under review at the Security Council, Powell said the measures were working. In fact, he added, "(Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors." - Feb. 24, 2001

What did you expect the UN to have done? Authorise an invasion?

Re:not good for the Internet

[cyril3]

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

No they don't. Are you misunderstanding what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is saying or are you just lying. To make such a broad statement you need to be able to point out which part of the Charter supports you.

Article 19. of the UDHR states that

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.

Where does it say unless it interferes with a stated goal of the UN

In fact the last article of the UDHR states that

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Exactly the opposite of what you say.

Re:not good for the Internet

[ppanon]

I only hope the next lot do a better job than the ICANN.

I agree, but the ITU is unlikely to be it. It's mainly composed of representatives from telecomunnication monopolies, usually state-owned, which are severely bureaucratic and support entrenched Telco interests. The ITU dithered for years over the ISO OSI as foreign telcos fought to maintain the status quo (such as promoting CONS over CLNS because the former was what the Telcos understood and gave them more control at the expense of the end users' flexibility and performance). The Internet basically happened because people got tired of waiting for OSI and decided to use what was available, IP.

Now those same interest see their chance (after much bungling by ICANN) to get their bureaucratic talons back in control. Expect new levies on international bandwidth usage to "spur Third World Internet adoption" from the same people who dragged their heels on providing the service in the first place because there was no perceived need (at the outragous prices they demanded). Frying pan, meet fire.

Who is there?

[Anonymous Coward]

I found this interesting

Top biggest delegates in the World Summit on the Information Society:

1. Malaysia 137
2. Romania 116
3. France 108
4. Canada 101
5. Cuba 88
6. Japan 85
7. Russia 80
8. Iran 79
9. Nigeria 69
10. Gabon 66

They should just make their own internet if they want exclusive control. Ther nothing prohibiting them from doing this.

Re:Who is there?

[Cosmik]

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?

Re:Who is there?

[maleficus]

Communications in Malaysia


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_Ma laysia

Re:Who is there?

[switcha]

8. Iran 79
9. Nigeria 69
10. Gabon 66

You know those Nigerians are only there to find some people to help them move a substantial amount of money out of the country...

Re:Who is there?

[Anonymous Coward]

"They should just make their own internet if they want exclusive control. Ther nothing prohibiting them from doing this."

What in the HELL are you talking about? Who is they? Would you perhaps mean anyone who is not from the USA?

We already have an Internet, it isn't yours. You boys from the USA need to grow up and learn to play with the older, wiser rest of the world.

Sheesh, what an absurd level of arrogance comes out of that country!

Can't blame them...

[falxx]

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? (:

Re:Can't blame them...

[pegr]

I don't remember where I read it, but MIT actually has more IP's than the whole of China...

That's nothing... I own my own class A! Anything in the 10's is mine...

Re:Can't blame them...

[dgatwood]

Routable, Class A (18.x.x.x).

Re:Can't blame them...

[Chunky Kibbles]

OK... You can have 10.0.0.0/8

I claim 127.0.0.0/8. If I ever feel the urge to talk to myself, I'm always listening right there.

Gary (-;

Poor old ICANN...

[rcs1000]

It's funny, I don't often feel sorry for ICANN. Along with the bulk of /.'ers I've found them heavy handed and only occasionally democratic. Mind you, they're better than some... but that's another story altogether.

That said, they don't deserve this. They are an NGO with an expertise. Not being interested in their opinion, or even giving them a glimpse of how and why decisions are made is worrying to the extreme.

On the positive side, this UN conference seems pretty unlikely to do anything. Mugabe (the "elected" President of Zimbabwe) has already used it to rail against such horrible (liberal, Western, bourgeois) things such as a free press. (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=tec hnologyNews&storyID=3972352&src=eDialog/GetContent &section=news)

Let us not forget either; it's probably more important to bring clean drinking water and telephones to developing nations than Google and Slashdot.

Here's how to deal with the United Nations

[Anonymous Coward]

If they make a decision you don't like, you ignore it.

UN Lacks Authority to Regulate UN

[reallocate]

The UN lacks the authority to regulate the Internet. It is a non-democratic organization comprised of unelected diplomatic representatives, a number of whom do the bidding of unfree regimes that want to block and censor the Internet. They claim to do this in the interest of preventing pollution of their culture by outsiders, but, in reaity, they are merely seeking to all possible means of internal dissent. (For examples, Iran and China.)

Re:UN Lacks Authority to Regulate UN

[JeffSh]

one important ommitance is saudi arabia.

they are the same if not worse than iran and china.

Re:UN Lacks Authority to Regulate UN

[pair-a-noyd]

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.

Re:UN Lacks Authority to Regulate UN

[cthugha]

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.

Re:UN Lacks Authority to Regulate UN

[pair-a-noyd]

Actually, I thought my Tin Foil Hat would cloak me from the Black Helicopter dissident scanners..

Re:UN Lacks Authority to Regulate UN

[nyquist_theorem]

I think you're missing a lot of the point here. The UN is non-democratic insofar as your country's delegate was not DIRECTLY elected by you, but how many americans voted for Donald Rumsfeld or Colin Powell? (hint - none, they were appointed). UN delegations are similarly appointed by the governments they represent. In many countries (ie Canada, Australia, the UK) the Prime Ministers are not elected by the people at all - and yet the people of those countries don't seem to consider their leadership undemocratically elected! (insert obligatory dubya joke here)

As for the rest of what you're saying regarding how a number of regimes want to block and censor the internet, I think you've been watching too much fox news. The vast majority of UN members want the internet to be as free and as accessible as possible because it is such a catalyst for economic growth. The views of Iran, China, and Saudi Arabia regarding internet censorship are definitely in the minority.

department...

[herrvinny]

from the kofi-and-elmo-presiding dept.

Personally, I'd prefer it if Elmo was presiding. Elmo makes more sense than all the diplomats put together.

The devil in the details

[Entrope]

Each of the world's five continents would have one elected representative on the committee, elected by the countries from the continent they represent.

Okay, I can understand leaving out Antarctica, but who gets to break the news to Australia that their continent has been demoted and made subservient to Asia?

Re:The devil in the details

[Cosmik]

Oh well. Us Australians will just form our own governing body with Antartica. Then the Australians will light 20 million BBQs in an effort to melt the Antartic ice-caps and flood your silly little internet club away. Or maybe we'll be classified as subservient to the USA (as part of North America), as our Prime Minister seems to want.

Re:The devil in the details

[kelv]

Not to worry. Based on how things are going at the moment we (Australia) will just tack ourselves onto America and New Zealand will declare itself part of Europe.

This seems to be how politics is running down here at the moment.

Re:The devil in the details

[alien_blueprint]

We've actually put the entire continent into stealth mode, hoping that terrorists, US-style IP law lobbyists, RIAA, MPAA, SCO, etc will simply forget about us and just leave us alone!

Please *stop* talking about us, you're breaking our cover!!

Re:The devil in the details

[zem_11]

Pff! As if Australia could ever be part of Asia. We're gunning to be the 52nd state of the US - that means domestic flights to Hawaii!! Woohoo Continents? Why not countries? Ok, so do you think an Israeli representative will ever get elected to the committee? Its all about power and censorship. Bye-bye free speech...

Hello ICANN!

[illumin8]

Pot... Kettle.... "Black!"

Re:Hello ICANN!

[kgutwin]

ahem. we use OOP.

Pot.insult.Kettle("Black")

Clearly a limited understanding of OOP.

Pot.insults.callBlack(Kettle)

Where callBlack() looks like this:

def callBlack(self, target):
return callName(self, target, "Black")

Much better.

We've said screw you before...

[jdhutchins]

We need to pull another Iraq on the UN.
UN: "Hand over control of the internet to us (the un), and take it away from icann."
Bush (or whoever's president at the time) needs to say "Screw you. No."

We've done it before, no reason why we can't do it again. I'll bet that almost every ./er know more about how the internet is run and works than all the dipomats combined.

Re:We've said screw you before...

[MochaMan]

And Americans wonder why they have such a rotten reputation worldwide...

Goodbye karma!

Re:We've said screw you before...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:We've said screw you before...

[DAldredge]

And why should we hand over what control we have on the internet to others? Nothing is stoping them from building their own TCP/IP internetwork.

Re:We've said screw you before...

[donutello]

And Americans wonder why they have such a rotten reputation worldwide...

The internet was created by the US, in the US. The UN now wants to take control of something they did nothing to create. Now you understand why the UN (and Europe) has such a rotten reputation in the US.

Goodbye karma!

It's very interesting to see how mods go based on the time of day. Right now, about 5pm PST, most of Europe is asleep and the mods on this thread are distinctly anti-UN. Were this story posted a few hours later - when most of the US is asleep and Europeans have just woken up, the moderation would be decidedly anti-American.

Re:We've said screw you before...

[GimmeZeroZero]

"The internet was created by the US, in the US. The UN now wants to take control of something they did nothing to create." As opposed to, say, the US wanting control over Galileo... Good one.

Re:We've said screw you before...

[superman53142]

The internet was created by the US, in the US.

Yeah! I always knew Al Gore was good for something!

Re:We've said screw you before...

[shitdrummer]

The internet was created by the US, in the US. The UN now wants to take control of something they did nothing to create

So let me guess, you're going to take your routers and servers and go home if things don't go your way? Childish stuff.

Give it up. The Internet is now global. Any claim the US once had to sole Internet ownership and control was lost long ago. US interests should not override the interests of other nations.

Shitdrummer :-)

Great Description

[Eberlin]

"diplomats, most of whom know little about the technical aspects, are deciding in a closed forum how 750 million people should reach the Internet."

Doesn't this pretty much describe just about every IT department known to man? PHBs and suits making uneducated decisions on how things will run based on buzzwords, corporate kickbacks, and their own job security while those who DO know what they're doing get ignored or brushed aside.

Welcome to IT, dude.

Could be a good thing

[DougJohnson]

It's highly unlikely that these delegates will be discussing which technologies to support and whatnot. It seems much more likely that they'll be considering means of legislating abuse of the system , how technology impacts national/international laws, and what to do when these laws are breached.

I think that's an admirable thing, and it's time for some international co-operation regarding persuing SPAMers, Hackers, and other individuals that would use the lack of international legislation to perpetrate their nastiness.

I hope you've all read yesterdays post about security breaches. The author found linkages between no less than 4 countries hosting servers in order to send out SPAM.

Behind the scenes

[cluge]

One of the top countries pushing for UN control over the Internet is China. You know the country that has it's own firewall to help them government sniff out subversives. I guess actually having someone in a prepatory meeting that believes in free speech and open elections was a problem.

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

Re:Behind the scenes

[stwrtpj]

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.

Didn't France try to sue Ebay in the US courts because they refused to block Nazi paraphrenalia from being sold? Ebay had already, I believe, pulled the items from ebay.fr, but France insisted Ebay find a way to block them from French citizens on ebay.com as well. The US courts, if I recall correctly, threw the case out because Ebay was based in the US and protected by the first amendment.

Let the UN do whatever the fuck they want. You'll just see more of this happening. Oh, China wants us to censor some American-based websites peddling these obscene ideas of democracy or Taiwanese independence? Tough shit. First amendment rules, baby.

UN/US

[glpierce]

"the UN is about as anti-US as they come"

A few major players in the UN may be anti-US, but the effects are negligible; the US doesn't obey the UN/international treaties on issues the gov't feels would have a major negative (or prevent a major positive) impact on the country/economy (e.g. the Kyoto Protocol, Operation Iraqi Freedom, bioweapons).

It's about time!

[Anonymous Coward]

Verisign has a monopoly on root servers. Where does that come from?

MIT has more public IP addresses than China. Where does that come from?

ICANN is chartered as a non-profit California-based corporation. Why should it be so? Why California, why not Peru or Japan or Spain? Is there something fundamentally Californian about today's Internet?

It's about time that the public resource constituted by Internet addresses and DNS servers be handled by a truly international standards body, just like it's the case for telephone numbering.

Thanks to the US for creating many of the technologies that make the Internet possible. But as is the case with the phone numbering plan, it's time for the Public International Internet to be managed more openly and cooperatively.

Re:It's about time!

[El]

The US government spent US citizens tax dollars to develop the internet (TCP/IP was a DARPA research project.) Why then should they turn control of the internet over to a bunch of stuffed shirts you did nothing to help create it?

enforceability?

[Hollins]

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?

Re:enforceability?

[Zeinfeld]

If the UN claimed governance of the airwaves, wouldn't the FCC simply laugh?

No, the US has ceeded the cross-border allocation of frequencies to the ITU before the UN was established and the ITU has since been incorporated into the UN.

I spoke to Esther Dyson about the conference at lunch today, her version was nothing happened and that the best result that was going to happen...

Send the UN a message

[Radical Rad]

Paul Twomey from ICANN, who has been ejected from a preparatory meeting, along with all other non-governmental observers.

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.

F.E.T.E.

[dfenstrate]

The UN can hold all the meetings it wants about taking control of the internet, but in the end, this will probably occur:

UN: The communities of the world have decided that it's best we run the internet. We demand control.

USA: Demand? How bout this, you go fuck yourself, and maybe we'll allow the UN to exist for a few more years.

What are they gonna do, take it by force?

I'm no fan of ICANN, but ICANN is better than the UN. Last thing we need is the chinese fire wall on a global scale.

Fuck 'em. The End.

Re:F.E.T.E.

[Paul Jakma]

What are they gonna do, take it by force?

What is anybody going to do? The internet is not controlled by a single entity, the internet is merely the largest collection of individual networks which inter-connect with each other, by means of consensus based standards. Not even the USA federal authorities control the internet, least no more than the power they can hold over the companies which operate internet connected networks in the USA itself.

There's plenty of internet outside of the USA, and new DNS roots could be setup reasonably quickly if ever there were some odd reason to do so.

Re:F.E.T.E.

[martin-boundary]

Easy. Set up a few official UN DNS root servers, and get the local ISPs to use them (that's easy too. Just enact a law in each country that the providers have to use them - since the politicians want this UN control, they'll be happy to enact a few laws).

Suddenly if you don't use the UN DNS, you'll be cutting yourself off of half the world's customers.

Re:F.E.T.E.

[shitdrummer]

UN: The communities of the world have decided that it's best we run the internet. We demand control.

USA: Demand? How bout this, you go fuck yourself, and maybe we'll allow the UN to exist for a few more years.

What are they gonna do, take it by force?

I thought that here on /. we disliked huge evil monopolies throwing their weight around to ensure everything goes their way, and when things don't go their way, tell all to Fuck Off?

I thought we all agreed that this type of behavior is no good for anyone except the huge evil monopoly?

I guess it's different when you're part of that huge evil monopoly.

Shitdrummer :-)

ITU is very technically competent

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:ITU is very technically competent

[michael_cain]

At least partially true. Rather than describing the ITU themselves as being technically competent, I might be inclined to say that many of the large companies where the technical work is actually done are quite competent. The official US representative to the ITU is from the State Department. Much (most?) of the technical work that they take to the ITU is done by large corporations -- in the telephony field, companies like Lucent and AT&T.

OTOH, the ITU took their best shot at establishing a data communications network standard: X.25. They lost. IP won. Now they want to be put in charge? I've watched both the ITU and the IETF process for technical standards, and will take the IETF hands-down. Almost anyone can propose something, which is damned hard to get done in the ITU. And the IETF requires that two independent implementations successfully interoperate before a protocol reaches the "standard" level -- I've seen ITU stuff become a blessed standard even though no one has ever done an actual implementation.

I assure you that the first victim of this

[pair-a-noyd]

will be free speech. You mark my words in stone.

The rest of the world is P.I.S.S.E.D. at the level of free speech exercised on US based servers and they seek to stop it at all costs.

The US has the most liberal speech laws in the world and the rest of the world can not allow that.

You watch and see, they'll institute international tribunals to arrest speech violaters (thought criminals) and whisk them away to The Hague for a trial by tribunal and internatinal justice for thought crimes...

Re:I assure you that the first victim of this

[Tester]

The US has the most liberal speech laws in the world and the rest of the world can not allow that.
This is not ture at all.. you should travel a little.. What if you try to show something as dangerous as a picture of a woman's chest in the US.. or even worst.. an actually woman's chest!! You might get thrown in jail... Hey kids might be hurt by female anatomy! The US has just different rules than the others... Some are afraid of Coca-Cola&friends taking over the world, other are afraid of being hurt by seing breasts, frankly it just a matter of finding who is more ridiculous!

Re:I assure you that the first victim of this

[pair-a-noyd]

Well, the UN has just ruled that "hateful words" are the equivilent of genocide.
Read it here:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20031203-1138 17-3449r.htm

The men who spoke the "hateful words" will spend the rest of thier lives in prison for speaking "hateful words"..

Can't control something that doesn't exist...

[Rude Turnip]

Here is a cut and paste of what I said in the other Slashdot discussion about the UN trying to control the Internet:

The reason no one can control the Internet is because there is no "Internet," lest we forget the early 1990's when newbies would ask us about the "Internet Company" and you would explain that there is no one company, just a bunch of network providers that are interconnected.

The only reality is that there are lots of computer networks variously located in many sovereign nations that happen to be cooperating at this time (the networks, not necessarily the nations). Just like everything else in the world, it all comes down to where the wires and the servers sit. If I say "fark the UN" on my website hosted out of Texas, I am protected by the US Constitution...which is the law of my land.

Frankly...

[Anonymous Coward]

The UN is always having some sort of summit about something. It's essentially an international meeting of a bunch of bureaucrats who whine and moan and plan and argue and then really don't get anything done at all. I don't exactly think we have much to fear from a UN-controlled anything, much less something as pervasive in everyday life as the Internet.

That said, it's probably safe to say that no one in the meeting knew a switch from a hub, or even if it would be feasible for the UN to dictate the shape of the Internet. Somebody from ICANN would probably be the best bet if you'd want to know how the Internet "should" operate. And the fact that Twomey wasn't invited as a delegate, or even a visitor, underlined their obvious ignorance.

Think ICANN's bad?

[WCMI92]

The UN is worse. They are a bunch of mindless bureaucrats who are a waste of oxygen. They are less trustworthy with regulating the Internet than Michael Jackson is with your kids.

Obviously they wouldn't let the ICANN guy in because this meeting is about REPLACING them. While I think ICANN NEEDS replacing, the UN is ever LESS DEMOCRATIC than ICANN, even LESS accountable, and even more corrupt.

Re:Can't blame them - Don't forget H.P.

[MerlynEmrys67]

H.P. has twice as many IP addresses as MIT does (or for that matter any other organization that I am aware of)

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.

Be careful, United Nations...

[sirReal.83.]

... lest you become the very thing you despise.

This Just in

[eadint]

Darl Mcbride Sayes that He owns the UN and now plans to charge for the internet.

Re:Forget Them...

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a break, the US runs the UN and has since it was established.

You and the person that you replied to are severely brain damaged. To answer both:

- France, Germany, et al are no less motivated by special interests than the US. France was making money off Iraq under Hussein, and it's France that is controlling most of the EU's latest moves (just the way they want it). That's the truth and although I don't like it I don't blame them one bit.

- The US doesn't control the UN: it doesn't need to. It operates outside of it when convenient and has the political and financial muscle (leverage) to walk away without any problems. It's a bully, I like it and I don't, and again big whoop.

The UN is a foreign body (no pun intended) when it comes to technology. It moves slowly, blows money senselessly, and feels it can dictate policy to growing countries just because it helps the screwed up ones. The UN is the last governing body which should regulate information because it's BUILT on special interests. Keep the UN out of regulating information....be it Internet, newswire, or television. Let them distribute food aid and boo hoo about wall building.

20 Years from now...

[prozac79]

we'll all be talking about this old network called "The Internet". We'll talk about how cool it was before the UN and an bunch of delegates came in and screwed it up. Historians will look back and trace why exactly the Internet fell. It will look something like this:
2005: Having survived the bad press, the RIAA and the MPAA split off into their own countries, gained admission to the UN, and outlawed the use of any digital music or video across a network.
2007: The world, angry at the U.S.A. for their 3rd war with Iraq, put sanctions on the U.S.'s use of the world wide web.
2008: After a year of web sanctions, the U.S. launches a military campaign on Malaysia since they had the most votes for the U.S. sanctions. This brings the number of current U.S. military campaigns to 10.
2010: The countries of RIA and MPA (remember, they dropped that last "A" back in 2005) successfully defeat the U.S. whose military was spread really thin due to their most recent war with England.
2012: The RIA, now the most powerful member of the U.N., indefinitely bans all world-wide Internet use since they are still complaining that artists are not getting paid for their work.
2014: The Open Source community, fresh off a victory against SCO, start building their own network called "Linet". It goes live with 30 million users connecting to it within the first 24 hours.
2015: "Linet" achieves self-awareness and launches an attack against the humans... the end.

Don't forget what the Internet is...

[km790816]

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.

They can listen, they just don't

[rm007]

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'??

Oh they realize it all right, they even have a model for it - the International Labor Organization. It was formed as part of a burst of post WWI Wilsonian idealism and has a unique structure for an official internationla organization (and now forms part of the UN system). In addition to the government representatives, each country sends representatives from their business and union organizations - and these folks have full voting rights in the meetings and so can't be thrown out as "observers" can. Of course having set up one organization with a structure like this, the governments of this world have made sure never to do it again - why should the people who are actually involved in an issue area have any say when there is government to government horse trading to do. Much more convenient to have "observers" that they can lock out - which, of course is par for the course considering the track records on free speech and openness of most of the governments doing the talking.

Re:screw foreigners

[Arcturax]

Well, it's already been shown that one can do TCP/IP over bongo drums.

What's your point?

[Mistlefoot]

Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 7 (2000)
Internet users: 5.7 million (2002)
Population: 23,092,940 (July 2003 est.)
Area - comparative: slightly larger than New Mexico

(source - CIA World Fact Book)

With 25% of the population connected the small number of ISP's likely isn't an issue.

Egos unchecked...

[BubbaTheBarbarian]

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!!!

So what?

[jcr]

So, the UN guys decide whatever they want to decide, and we still use BIND and connect to whatever root servers we want to use.

All the bureacrats in the world can't change what we actually run on our machines.

-jcr

facinating

[Vlion]

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).

My solution!

[TheDarkener]

Just give Microsoft control. They'll know what to do!

...And Al Gore.

The irony of it all

[rm007]

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.

The future I can see...

[mishehu]

Gee, if the UN controls the internet, I can just see all the Arab countries voting Israel to be disconnected because .il is not a "recognized" TLD... just like the Magen David Adom (Red Jewish Star, the ambulance service in Israel) was forbidden entry into the Red Cross association by the Arabs because the Jewish Star is not an "officially recognized symbol"... Is this the type of Internet you want? This type of nonsense is not limited to the Arab-Israeli situation but can be transposed to any similar situation... perhaps Russia v. Chechenya for example?

Ummmmm no

[Sycraft-fu]

You see the Internet isn't really ruled by the US. There is nothing stopping any nation or any person from doing things there own way. Don't like ICANN and the roots? Setup your own DNS root servers. It not only can be done, it HAS been done. OpenNIC is a great example (www.opennic.unrated.net). They run their own roots and offer TLDs that ICANN does not. You, your country or block of countries is free to do the same.

Same thing for the network at large. No one says your IP based network has to connect to the internet, or obey the same rules. An example of one that doesn't would be Internet 2. It's a network in the US that allows only research instutions (schools, research labs, etc) to connect to it. Normal Internet traffic never passes over it. Run by Indiana University primarly.

You aren't required to play by ICANN's rules on the Internet, nor are you required to be a part of the Internet to have a large IP based network.

Screw em all. Use OpenNIC

[Lord Prox]

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).

I think the real problem is

[Sycraft-fu]

That, as you correctly pointed out, the UN is NOT a world government. They have no real authority to do anything. Basically it's a forum for nations to try to come to an agreement, but with little that can be done if a minority says no and does their own thing.

The problem from this is then that so many people, including many of the UN diplomats, feel that they ARE a world government, and should be allowed to impose their will. Like claims that the US and crew went against the UN on the war with Iraq. Well that implies that:

1) The UN told the US et al not to go to war. (They didn't, the US would have vetoed anyhow)
2) That they had the authority to do so. (They don't)
3) That they could do anything about it if the US disobeyed. (They can't)

Well that's not the case. What happened was the US failed to convince the other nations to commit to a war with Iraq (via the UN) and so went ahead with a war without their support. Since the UN isn't an international government, there's nothing they could do.

Lets just get some balance here

[trystanu]

The meeting will address four topics: Internet governance, the use of excess bandwidth to help development, connecting more people to communications networks and finding the appropriate technologies. At the heart of each of the four discussions will be the question of what role government and intragovernmental agencies should play.

So they're trying to facilitate all these aspects. I now everyone is a bit worried about issue 1, governance. Fair enough. But every other issue they are discussing is good. And if they can address them in a global manner they may well improve the digital world.

Back to issue 1, just forget for a minute any preconceptions you have about how crap you think the UN is, or how lame dipomats are and read and think about what the meeting is for:

1) The fact that ICANN runs the Internet's address system is not necessarily good. They are a private company, why should they be in charge of all the addresses? Should MIT *really* have more IP addresses than China?

2) If you're talking about human rights violations, why isn't having the UN excerting some pressure on nations where connections are firewalled to *not* monitor Internet connections good? (they may not be out to impose chinese firewalls on the rest of the world, perhaps they don't want china to run the firewall they do)

3) Of all the people who are supposedly at the meeting (including Tim B-L, Nicholas Negroponte, Esther Dyson) don't you think it's a bit weird that there's such a fuss because they kicked out the ICANN guy. I don't think this is a major conspiracy, it's just a conflict of interest having them there.

The UN might be spineless, and this whole meeting will probably amount to nothing, but I don't think everyone should be rubbishing it so much. The UN isn't out to make life tough for everyone, and they do have some admirable goals.

Ah, the holy Rwanda criminals, I say, journalists

[Pac]

Are you out of your mind? These people used their newspapers and TVs to incite ethinic cleansing - to coordinate a genocide in detail, even broadcasting instructions to the troops doing the actual killings. How long do you think a radio or TV station would last in the United States after it started inviting people to kill their black or Jewish neighbours? Are this the people you are defending?

The Internet, our last, best hope

[wytcld]

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."]

What if the rest of the world doesn't care?

[Pac]

The rest of the world couldn't care less if this or that DoD Cold War project, where millions upon millions of US tax dollars were dumped, turned out to be a good idea after all.

Can the US afford, at this point, to be left taliking with itself? Really? How would all the American companies exproting jobs, plants and projects talk to their slavas, I mean, contractors across the world? By phone? No, that is regulated by the same body discussing the Internet now...Are the US interested in an American only network? I don't think so - there is too much money to be made keeping the communication lines open.

So, get over it. The rest of the world does not give a flying fuck that American citizens paid for the American network (because they haven't paid for the infrastructure elsewhere). If a global network exists, there is nothing wrong that a global body controls it and not some company taken out of the White House's hat...

But NRA is religious and race neutral...

[Pac]

In principle they support the killing of anyone, anywhere, by anyone else.

Cool. But get your own postal system.

[Nailer]

The postal system was created by the UK, in the UK. The rest of the world wants to take control of something they did nothing to create.

Re:Cool. But get your own postal system.

[mykdavies]

Uhm, we already have copied your internet (you don't think we borrowed all the equipment from you, do you?). We then connected all our internets together and called the joint creation the Internet.

You (U.S.A) don't run the Internet, you don't decide the rules, and you don't own it. You share all those responsibilities with all the other users.

This isn't about everyone else in the world ganging up to steal something from the U.S., it's about governments trying to define common rules and approaches for the Internet.

Much better article about this by Andy Oram

[crush]

is available at his blog on O'Reilly. It points out that there is supposed to be no organization with power over the internet and that ICANN has always claimed just to be a sort of "technical facilitator". It mentions the Open Root Server Coalition and although it doesn't mention the OpenNIC guys, it's worth having a look at their more serious project.

I notice a lot of fighting in the comments about whether the UN sucks or not and whether they're worse than ICANN. Simple fact of the matter is that neither of these bodies (or any body that isn't truly democratic) should have any control over OUR internet. Fighting over which master we bow to is a bit ridiculous.

Nobody "governs" the Internet

[Huusker]

As a practical matter nobody "governs" the Internet. Historically there was a time back in the late 1980s when it was possible that AOL or CompuServe or some other gigantic service provider might have bought out everyone else and become the de-facto monopolist on internetworking. But thankfully it never happened.

The only other genuine threat to the Internet also occured in the late 1980s, when the Europe and the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) tried to replace the Internet TCP/IP communicaton protocol standards with something called OSI/TP4/X25. Basically it was an attempt by the world PTT (Postal, Telegraph, and Telephone) monopolies to wrest control of the Internet out of the hands of the US government. The PTT monopolies are especially strong in the 3rd world countries and they dominate the ITU, which sets world telephone standards.

The ITU is a big reason why phone calls to 3rd world countries are so ridiculously expensive. The bureaucracy of the ITU is Kafka-esque: The OSI documents for TP4/X25 are written in uncomprehensible legalese and you must pay through the nose just to peek at them. (This was one reason why OSI failed - TCP/IP was evangelized through the wide distribution of the source code of BSD Unix; OSI had no equivalent.)

If the EU/ITU/UN had taken over the Internet 15-20 years ago with OSI/TP4/X25, today instead of paying $29.95/month for your megabit DSL you would be paying ten times that amount for your X25/ISDN connection at 64kps.

But this is all on the dustbin of history. The war is over and decentralization has won. The modern Internet is a concatenation of millions of independent networks that all agree to talk to each other voluntarily (the word "Internet" comes from the term "inter-network"). World connectivity happens through an untold number of independent bi-lateral contractual agreements between peering ISPs.

The only centralization on the Internet is at the root DNS nameservers. These suffer ICANN only by the grace of their respective independent owners. (The largest owner of root nameservers being the US Department of Commerce.) There is nothing to prevent them from bolting and setting up their a new root DNS, or from anyone else using an alternet root DNS.

The transnational progressives and lefty social engineers can chit-chat all they want at their UN workshops about how they want to govern the Internet. But as a practical matter it is a waste of hot air. Kind of like meeting to create World Peace or end World Hunger. The real world just doesn't work that way.

Re:UN Lacks Authority to Regulate the Internet

[Chibi Merrow]

The problem here is that ICANN has no real authority either. People only listen to them because it's more convenient to listen to them and agree on a standard than it is to go with some other system. IANA still controls IP addresses, and they only did that at the whim of the RIRs, so your argument is invalid.

Abiding by decisions made by ICANN (Or IETF or IEEE for that matter) is completely voluntary. But then again, so is being connected to the Internet in the first place. The Internet has always worked on the system of "We'll all get together and agree on a standard. If you don't like the standard, convince others that your idea is better. If you don't agree, we don't have to route your packets." And it should remain that way. Does that mean people in the nations that worked on making the Internet what it is today get more say than nations being hooked up currently do? Of course! But then again, with nigh on forty years of experience in making this thing work, they should!

Never send a politician to do an Engineer's job.

[Anonymous Coward]

(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.

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 .COM / .ORG and the like should be global. Country codes to be used, eg:

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.

Flawed Reasoning

[Alphanos]

Let me make an analogy. The first airports and scheduled routes for air transit were in the US (I think, not absolutely sure). Now airlines run all around the world. Now, say that the UN said that it wanted to set up some standards for air traffic. What parent posters are suggesting is that the US should say "No way! We made airplanes, if you don't like our rules go make your own aerial transit network!" This clearly lacks sense. (It should be noted that I have no idea how air traffic regulations are set up or governed, this is merely an example)

The rest of the world ALREADY has its "own" internet. For mutual benefit it is connected to that of the US. Despite the fervent sweep of nationalism in the US, it had better realize pretty soon that it actually can't survive on its own, and pissing off everyone else is not so great of a plan. International commerce drives the economy everywhere, including the US. You don't really _want_ the rest of the world to disconnect from "your" internet, because you'd be screwed.

The UN or not the UN...

[fsmunoz]

Ok, here goes my short rant; before all I should warn you that I'm what people tend to call "communist".

So, about the War in Iraq, the US and the UN, and the existance of a resolution allowing intervention. Who cares? Why should it be important? I find it amusing that people say it would be OK for the USA to invade Iraq under a UN mandate, but if they go solo it's "not democratic". Laughable. The Security Council *is* the UN as far as this matters are concern. Saying that having the blessing of 9 countries in the world, all there because they either won WW2 and/or have mass destruction weapons, constitutes a wordly mandate that bestows dignity on the receiver is absurd. The members of the Security Council are there because of military power. The US as that, and plenty of it. Ergo, the US does what the US wants, period. At this point I don't even care if it was right or wrong: if it was in the interest of the USA, well, why the hell not? Having a UN resolution means *nothing*. The UN itself, based as it is on a dictatorship of countries, means very, very little. All countries act on their self-interest first, the exception is that the USA actually takes actions.

In the end, the power remains in the hand of who has the means to use the weapons they have (be it warheads or multinationals). It hasn't change a bit from the same rules we had 1000 years ago, and sometimes I think that the UN only exists as a mean to make this fact less visible by hiding it with words like "rights", "law" and "democracy".

US vs Them stupidity...

[im a fucking coward]

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.