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ICANN Meets Annan
CypherOz writes "The Australian reports a meeting between ICANN chief Twomey and Kofi Annan and the role the UN may play in the naming game. " We've talked about this before as well.
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Other critics say ICANN is too slow in making decisions and adopting new technology, like ways to transmit Chinese and Arabic characters. VeriSign has sued the organisation, saying it is standing in the way of lucrative new services.
I wonder if these same critics have paid any attention to just how quickly the UN moves on things. Yes it's an international body, but it also brings even more petty arguments to the table because of that. While ICANN's far from perfect, I doubt things would be any faster with the UN taking over, slower maybe, but not faster.I just hope that if the UN gets involved, they come in against Verisign and any other large businesses who wish to screw with things. I'm not all for the UN controlling things, mind you. But if they do have some say, I hope its on the side of reason and open standards and fair, reasonable practices.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
From the article
"... whether the internet should be governed and, if so, how."
With all the problems that go on in the UN why are they a better choice then the US. The article has some valid points, but the current system is pretty fair.
Great people don't need people to complete them, great people complete other people. -- Matthew Pawlikowski.
The question that I would have about the regulatory system in place is that if the government were to attempt to "force the disruption of internet traffic to entire countries by deleting them from central computers," would the commercial hosters and systems continue to accept dns information that would be bad for their customers? It seems that the internet is commercial enough that in leiu of government oversight, it might be better to allow a evolved commercial alliance govern the systems.
.com, .net, .gov, .org, let them. Sell off all remaining 2 and 3 letter combination top level domains using whatever system you want, and then dissolve ICANN. It just makes sense,if the internet is supposed to belong to the users.
It is a bit silly to allow a small thing like DNS to create such a problem in the first place. When we go to IPv6, it might make more sense to use URL forwarding to IP's, and bypass most of the regulatory system in the first place... Allow other countries to maintain permanent fixed DNS servers for their own IP ranges, and have the assignations know, so that all other central controls are unneeded. If the US wants to control
I'm a concientious
If the UN is the great end-all be-all that most of the slashdotters seem to think it is; then why don't they just offer up their own competing DNS system. If they truly can provide the best service, then everyone would naturally want to use them instead of the current system.
It's a matter of, (gasp!) choice.
The next question: how many people actually understand the term legitimacy? (In the poli sci realm it is defined as the "Legitimation refers to the process by which power is not only institutionalized but more importantly is given moral grounding. Legitimacy (or authority) is what is accorded to such a stable distribution of power when it is considered valid." (From Oxfords Reference Online). The fact is just because the US citizenry may not consider the UN legitimate and the rest of the world considers it legit, does not mean that it is any more legit for the United States. To claim that the UN is legit because the rest of the world claims it is, would be like arguing that Isreal's rule of Palestine is legit just because most of Ireal says it is. The point is that legitimacy changes from demographic to demographic. What one nation may consider legit does not lend itself to force a legitimacy stand on another. And just because the US considers ICANN a legit insitution does not may it any more legit in the world.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
A few news stories are here.
The UN is also culpable in the deaths of the 18 US soldiers killed in Somalia:
(The story orginally ran in Debkafile, an Israeli based news service. Make up you own mind about their credibility. 60 Minutes previewed them a year ago and didn't say they were bad.)
And William Safire's column today in the New York Times, entitled "Follow-Up to Kofigate', whose first line is: "Never has there been a financial rip-off of the magnitude of the U.N. oil-for-food scandal."
If you register a domain name under a TLD under the ICAAN scheme (com,net.org,name,biz,etc), then you are aleady paying for a "quality" DNS service. The truth is that ICAAN run a cartel for companies like verisign to make money in an artificial economy. If ICAAN was truely about providing a service to all Internet users, rather than a few greedy corporations, then it would include alternative TLDs, such as those operated independently through opennic. But of course those alternatives won't pay the ICAAN extortion fees.
The UN has no business with the Internet they just want to control everything. Their biggest backers are the CFR who already control every bit of major media in America. If you look at the list of CFR members you will see them holding very powerful positions in every broadcast station, magazine and newspaper. Now if they control the internet than we have no recourse but to listen to their propaganda. The UN makes its actions clear that it is indeed trying to establish a world government it's written up in their own documentation. Just recently the UN asked countries to make their armies available for action with the only authority being the UN. They want the governments that own these armies to basically "sign them over" to the UN. The only reason this stuff happens is because we as a people roll over for every thing the government does. Back in the 60's they would have been picketing every day of the last 4 years.