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.
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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"
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.
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!
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.
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*
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