Slashdot Mirror
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.
Unlike ICANN, who of course, have members of the internet at large on their board. Oh, wait a minute...
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
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.
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.
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
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.
c hnologyNews&storyID=3972352&src=eDialog/GetContent §ion=news)
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=te
Let us not forget either; it's probably more important to bring clean drinking water and telephones to developing nations than Google and Slashdot.
--- My dad's political betting
If they make a decision you don't like, you ignore it.
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.)
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
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.
Pot... Kettle.... "Black!"
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
We need to pull another Iraq on the UN.
./er know more about how the internet is run and works than all the dipomats combined.
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
"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.
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.
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.
someone that at least represents the people that they are going to 'govern'?? So send some middle school nerd with acne.
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.
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
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.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
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...
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
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. :)
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
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.
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).
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!
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.
"Oh dear, she's stuck in an infinite loop and he's an idiot" -Prof. Farnsworth (Futurama)
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...
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.
I've finally got around to changing my sig
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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*
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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)
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.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Well, the UN has just ruled that "hateful words" are the equivilent of genocide.8 17-3449r.htm
Read it here:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20031203-113
The men who spoke the "hateful words" will spend the rest of thier lives in prison for speaking "hateful words"..
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!
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
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".
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.
The world has changed and we all have become metal men.