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.

Comments

Don tinfoil hats

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear the sound of those virtual black helicopters.

fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

two organizations that get absolutely nothing done, meet. news at 11.

Re:fantastic

[Kid Zero]

two organizations that get absolutely nothing done, meet. news at 11. ...and when they do finally get around to doing something, everyone hates what they do. Just can't win. :)

Grumble

[Mark_MF-WN]

The UN really should either take over the DNS system, or regulate it (regulation is probably better). After all, DNS is a global system that is important the better part of the world. It clearly falls under the purview of global government.

Re:Grumble

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, DNS is a global system that is important the better part of the world. It clearly falls under the purview of global government.

Actually, you can run your own DNS system which is totally independent of everyone else's if you want. The internet is cool like that.

Re:Grumble

[_Sharp'r_]

The other problem is that the UN is by no stretch of the imagination a "global government". It's a club for dictators to grand-stand while the powers from the end of WW II watch with their veto powers.

Re:Grumble

[Xenographic]

The best thing anyone can do (ICANN included) is leave the internet the hell alone.

The last thing we need is an international body trying to make us subject to all the laws in the world, in spite of the contradictions in law everywhere...

For example, I wonder how many sites discussing the history of WW II would be allowed? Germany has some pretty strict laws about anything relating to the Nazis. It's not particularly clear to me that you could even, say, cite Hitler's writings or show pictures of historical artifacts without running afoul of it, even should you (rightfully!) condemn the horrible things that happened during that war.

Besides, we already have countries fencing in their own little bits of the internet (first China, now France as I understand it... probably others, soon) ... the irony is that the internet is already too international for some countries.

That said, DNS probably could be a bit smarter about, say, using unicode instead of ASCII for URLs... Though I have to wonder just how confusing that might make things if there are now who knows how many glyphs that all look too similar (new avenues for typosquatters, no doubt) ...

Re:Grumble

[daksis]

Good point; Does this mean that some day we will pay to subscribe to certain "quality" DNS services? The strength of the internet (in that the infrastructure is easily duplicated and can be run by "anyone") is also a weak point that could lead to fragmentation....

Re:Grumble

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to derail, but please remember that the UN is not an elected body. Here in the West, we hold as self-evident the idea that legitimate government can only arise out of the will of the people. The various ambassadors and ministers that make up the UN General Assembly and Security Council are not elected, either directly or indirectly.

The United Nations is not and cannot be a world government. It's not a government at all. It lacks the legitimate authority to govern anything.

I don't wanna get into a big thing here. I just want to be clear on this.

Re:Grumble

[squarooticus]

It clearly falls under the purview of global government.

Yikes! Thank goodness the UN isn't actually a global government with sovereign power over anyone. The UN is basically a soap box for third-world dictators to scapegoat developed countries for the problems their own corrupt governments are actually responsible for. The UN really needs to be reformed (e.g., France out of the security council, Germany, Japan, and India in would be a better approximation of great powers; and of course countries without consensual governments should have no vote in the general assembly or be eligible to chair any committees), but I don't see this happening anytime soon.

However, even with reforms, the UN should have no power over the structure of the internet: the internet today is essentially just a large NAP of private networks, and has none of its own structure. Even the use of ICANN's private DNS servers by the vast majority of users on the internet is just convention, and any country or organization can run their own root servers and lobby others to use them. Any attempts to centrally control these systems will ultimately result in the system's primary users (those who will no doubt be screwed by the UN's dictator-centric model) routing around the regulations.

Bottom line: thank goodness the internet is peer-to-peer. The users truly have the power, and don't have to take it up the ass from a central authority.

Cheers,
Kyle

Re:Grumble

[Bull999999]

"Are the moderators on crack?"

That would explain a lot of things going on at Slashdot.

Re:Grumble

[morelife]

The UN really should either take over the DNS system

The Domain Name System is a large, multifaceted "thing". The UN is simply not qualified to either own it, or regulate it.

The UN should have a voice in some parts of the process, especially to ensure uniformity among nations, and to ensure that third world countries who spend most of their valuable assets trying to find food, let alone Internet access/presence, don't get shafted as regulations evolve and the Internet grows.

What needs pure reform is ICANN itself.

Re:Grumble

[b17bmbr]

are you out of your fscking mind. have you heard about the oil-for-food fiasco. please. i'd rather have the boys from enron dole out domains. okay, it's a tie.

Re:Grumble

[bigpat]

"DNS is a global system that is important the better part of the world. It clearly falls under the purview of global government."

Ever hear of the story of the eggs and the basket? If you thought ICANN was a poorly managed and undemocratic beaurocracy, try the UN.

Besides DNS isn't a mandated or an official system. I could set up my own naming system at any point and translate yourdomainname into some other real address. AOL has done just exactly that with their AOL keywords. If I wanted I could hack mozilla to only use my name registry and distribute that instead.

If DNS becomes a political basketball, then we should take our game elsewhere.

IP address assignment on the other hand has become so central and standard to international telecommunications that it seems that it should rightly be given over to the ITU

Re:Grumble

[ahillen]

For example, I wonder how many sites discussing the history of WW II would be allowed? Germany has some pretty strict laws about anything relating to the Nazis. It's not particularly clear to me that you could even, say, cite Hitler's writings or show pictures of historical artifacts without running afoul of it, even should you (rightfully!) condemn the horrible things that happened during that war.

Considering the abundance of books, films etc. in Germany about the Nazi era I'm pretty sure that it is legal to use symbols, citations etc. in historical context (that is, as long as you don't use them to glorify national sozialism, make a Hitler fan page or whatever).

I'm not entirely sure what all the tasks of ICANN are, but I guess regulating who can show what content under which domain never was part of them (and should never be).

Re:Grumble

[DAldredge]

Yes, because the UN does such a GOOD job keeping out corruption. (See Iraq Oil for Food program)

Re:Grumble

[hitmark]

as long as it remains open for all it will not fragment. the minute you start trowing restrictions on free speech on it then you will see people either up and make theyre own underground dns system or just hide theyre pages as subsites to pure ips. there are many ways to hide on the net...

Re:Grumble

[ultranova]

I'm not entirely sure what all the tasks of ICANN are, but I guess regulating who can show what content under which domain never was part of them (and should never be).

But it could be. Delete someone's DNS records, and the site will drop off the Internet. Sure, it's still there, but it can't be accessed without knowing the IP address, and how many are going to start changing their DNS settings back and forth for different sites ?

I can just see it - China lobbying for removal of all anti-Chinese-government websites, Germany demanding the removal of every website which mentions the words "Nazi" or "World War II", and everyone else trying to remove anything offensive for anyone. While I'm usually for international cooperation, I don't think taking DNS from a corporation who carries anyone who pays and giving it to a bunch of well-and-not-so-well-meaning politicians is a good idea.

We must have a working Freenet before this comes to pass - the Net is too important to leave to politicians to rule.

Re:Grumble

[pershino]

Does this mean that some day we will pay to subscribe to certain "quality" DNS services?

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.

Re:Grumble

[TwistedSquare]

Germany demanding the removal of every website which mentions the words "Nazi" or "World War II"

AFAIK, Germany is only against misrepresenting the facts of the war and holocaust (such as denying the holocaust or misrepresenting the numbers killed), not simply mentioning it. And in fact a history writer in the UK got taken to court for doing the same thing and was found against and denounced by the judge. It's not like Germany are against ever mentioning the war.

Re:Grumble

[eventhorizon5]

"The United Nations is not and cannot be a world government. It's not a government at all. It lacks the legitimate authority to govern anything."

That is correct, but one thing you need to think about is that the UN could create or establish a global government out of the consolidation of power it currently has. So, a governmental political entity could be spawn off at the request of the members of the UN (dictators, etc) and would be a unifying global governance body. This is very possible, and the idea should not be taken lightly. It reminds me of the book Brave New World; and also that immense power is in the hands of a small few.

Is a "global government" forming? Yes. Do I approve of it? Not in your wildest dreams.

-eventhorizon5

Re:Grumble

[saforrest]

And in fact a history writer in the UK got taken to court for doing the same thing and was found against and denounced by the judge.

If it's the case I'm thinking of, the one described in the book The Holocaust on Trial , then it happened a little differently.

In her book Denying the Holocaust , An American historian named Deborah Lipstadt accused prominent Holocaust-denier David Irving of lying about the facts (about the Holocaust having happened).

Irving sued her for libel, saying there wasn't enough proof to show he'd lied, because there wasn't enough proof to show the Holocaust had in fact happened.

Re:Grumble

[Morth]

That said, DNS probably could be a bit smarter about, say, using unicode instead of ASCII for URLs... Though I have to wonder just how confusing that might make things if there are now who knows how many glyphs that all look too similar

Unicode has solutions to that, namely the normal forms. There's four of them (composed normal form, discomposed normal form and their compatibility variants). You only have to choose one of those and convert any other string to it.

That being said, there's already a system for putting any character in an URL. I think it's based on Unicode (not sure), but it uses only 7 bits, since that's what dns can handle.

Re:Grumble

[TwistedSquare]

Ah yep you're right he sued her not vice versa, my mistake. Guardian Story

Re:Grumble

[Anonymous Coward]

That is correct, but one thing you need to think about is that the UN could create or establish a global government out of the consolidation of power it currently has.

Untrue. Such a body would not actually be a government. It would lack legitimacy, which is a necessary condition for sovereignty. An unelected body, or for that matter an unelected autocrat, cannot be considered a sovereign government, because such a government lacks legitimacy.

In other words, and to put it very simply, before somebody can tell you what to do, you have to give them that authority by electing them, directly or indirectly. Until that happens, they're just some asshole bossing you around.

Four hundred years ago, the great governments of Europe were composed of asshole bossing their subjects around. Things changed. I'd be very surprised if they could ever go back. The genie of representative democracy, if you'll pardon the expression, is out of the bottle.

Re:Grumble

[joelgrimes]

Who decides which countries have "consensual governments"?

Good question, but doesn't the UN make it it's business to monitor elections? In doing so, they would certainly be in a position to certify that that the government in question is consensual.

Flawed, perhaps, but as long as they presume to monitor, they ought to stand by their findings.

Re:Grumble

[C10H14N2]

Last I checked, the United Nations never forced German law on anyone. It's just a complete misreading of the UN to view it as imposing one nation's laws on another. It's a negotiating table and all parties must assent. That's the whole reason the Kyoto protocol and the whole UNFCCC has had such difficulties. There's no such thing as the UN foisting anyone's idea of anything on anyone unless they agree to it. Peacekeepers must be invited. Weapons Inspectors must be given permission. All of the enforcement tools the UN has are only as strong as the member states who choose to participate in those actions. The U.N. is not a superstate. That's it's greatest strength and it's greatest weakness.

That said, there is a great similarity between the structure of ICANN and that of, say, the security council. Leadership is rotational on an international scale. ICANN is not just some static cabal hiding away behind LAX machinating on world domination. That common portrayal seems to come from those who wouldn't recognize ICANN if they were standing on the corner of Mindanao and Admiralty facing north and looking upward 50 feet.

Re:Grumble

[Dovregubbens Hall]

It's not particularly clear to me that you could even, say, cite Hitler's writings or show pictures of historical artifacts without running afoul of it, even should you (rightfully!) condemn the horrible things that happened during that war.

The reason why that is not quite clear to you, is that perhaps because you have never been to Germany or spoken to any Germans who grew up in the post-war era...?

Look, I'm not German either, but I know that it was (is?) quite common that kids in Germany would read those speeches in school, undress that rhetoric, so as to make sure they'll never fall into that trap again.

It couldn't occur to you that when Richard Perle is calling for a total war, he's saying the exact same thing as Goebbels did in 1943, the Germans know that, because they've been through that speech countless times, and they know fanatism when they see it?

Re:Grumble

[eventhorizon5]

Yep, and we all know it's impossible to have a global judicial body. ICC anyone?

-eventhorizon

Like the UN would be any faster...

[Maestro4k]

• 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.

Re:Like the UN would be any faster...

[millwall]

"While ICANN's far from perfect, I doubt things would be any faster with the UN taking over, slower maybe, but not faster."

I don't think these issues have any need for a fast paced organisation. I would rather prefer a stable, yet slow organasation to handle these issues.

Re:Like the UN would be any faster...

[Maestro4k]

• I don't think these issues have any need for a fast paced organisation. I would rather prefer a stable, yet slow organasation to handle these issues.

I agree, but if you read the quote from the article I posted you'd see that one of the critics arguments is that ICANN is too slow, so the UN should take over. My point was that the UN is unlikely to be faster, so this particular criticism is unlikely to be resolved.

Re:Like the UN would be any faster...

[S3D]

And UN is suspectible to political pressue considerably more then ICANN. What a can of worms will open if UN will deside wich country should have wich domain name suffixes, and who shouldn't have suffixes at all. And Taiwan is not an UN member at all. What if UN start removing existing suffixes for political reasons ?

Re:Like the UN would be any faster...

[Maestro4k]

• And UN is suspectible to political pressue considerably more then ICANN. What a can of worms will open if UN will deside wich country should have wich domain name suffixes, and who shouldn't have suffixes at all. And Taiwan is not an UN member at all. What if UN start removing existing suffixes for political reasons ?

An incredibly good point, I hope someone mods you up. I'm sure that China would start the pressure to have Taiwan removed immediately and I'm sure Israel would start lobbying for Palenstine (.ps IIRC) to lose its domain. Actually the net would probably come to a screeching halt while the UN fought over who deserved a domain or not.

Despite the concerns expressed in the article by critics, the US has taken a fairly non-political oversight role with the Internet and ICANN. True that might not stay that way, but at least as things stand now, ICANN is probably far less political than any UN governed Internet body would ever be.

Re:Like the UN would be any faster...

[dbone]

Does that sound like a legitimate argument for the UN taking over. It seems like more of a technical problem involving both the DNS software and platform it runs on (don't know how familiar people are with the software here...) And the VeriSign thing, that is the most blatantly absurd quote. An obvious money grab by VeriSign! Does this mean the UN as a vested interest in which search engine my URL typo goes to? -d

Re:Like the UN would be any faster...

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt things would be any faster with the UN taking over, slower maybe, but not faster.

This really isn't a fair criticism, as the UN has often been quick and highly efficienty when it counts. For instance, when the UN administered the Iraqi Oil for Food program, it oversaw a highly successful program for redirecting money intended for starving children and judiciously placed it into the bank accounts of UN officials, international leaders who helped prop up UN policies, critics of US and British administrations and even terrorist institutions. Annon's own son, Kojo Annon, helped implement and oversee the program and made sure no worthless Iraqi children would gobble up funds that would be better spent on new limos, jets, castles and other critically important rewards for the UN officials and their friends.

Likewise, UN weapons inspectors were ruthlessly effective at avoiding the embarassing weapon discoveries in their host nation of Iraq (this is appropriate protocol, mind you) and were exceptionally diligent in advising their hosts with sufficient notice to permit them to relocate the embarrassing items prior to inspection.

Yes, I'm sure Internet domain administration and oversight will be well served. Innovative new registration practices will be enacted, such as domain quotas and scoring (requiring a U.S. firm pay 1000x what a Nigerian firm would to renew the domain, and giving the Nigerian firm a head start to reduce the world's inequities). Imagine the joys of receiving spam from pepsi.com. Wouldn't you like to see a McDonalds-branded spam for penis enlargement? The UN would certainly provide equal opportunity for third world nations to have a try at established US, European and Asian trademarks (oh, expect for the French ones, of course. But that's just a matter of cultural protection, just like how it's not bigotry of the French to prohibit the wearing of religious attire, but try that in Britain or the States and you'd have the ambulance chasers from the world court after you).

Re:Like the UN would be any faster...

[sjb21043]

Um, it's not ICANN that decides which countries get domains. They already abdicated. Their policy is "if ISO says it's a country, that's good enough for us."

Re:Like the UN would be any faster...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure Israel would start lobbying for Palenstine (.ps IIRC) to lose its domain.

If you'd have paid any attention to the UN you'd realize Israel would be more likely to lose its domain than Palestine.

Re:Like the UN would be any faster...

[Welsh Dwarf]

Do you have anything to back this up? And what are the mods smoking today? We've got a AC Troll Hawk, quoting another Hawk, who gets +5 Insightful? Give me a brake... Btw, /. is supposed to be on technical issues, not political rantings, that's what indymedia's for.

Re:Like the UN would be any faster...

[The One and Only]

Mod parent up. No Arab country recognizes Israel, and when Israel's representative speaks, the Syrian representative usually starts shouting in protest of the UN's recognition of the "Zionist entity". Another example of why international politics shouldn't be involved in the running of the Internet: During the Vietnam War, it took a few *years* for peace talks to begin because of stalled negotiations about the shape of the table the delegates would sit at.

Re:Like the UN would be any faster...

[pchown]

Non-political, are you kidding? You think that giving a TLD to Palestine isn't making a major political statement? I think it was the right political statement, but that's another thing.

In fact, the ICANN country codes are based on ISO 3166. It was the maintainers of ISO 3166 that gave Palestine a country code but not, for example, the Basque country or Chechnya.

Re:Like the UN would be any faster...

[Maestro4k]

• If you'd have paid any attention to the UN you'd realize Israel would be more likely to lose its domain than Palestine.

I didn't say Palestine would be likely to lose their domain, just that Israel would start lobbying the UN to have them lose it. Certainly many (if not all) Arab countries would lobby to have Israel lose its domain as well. It was just an example of the kind of madness we'd be inviting if we did turn over DNS oversight to the UN, and there are certainly many more that neither of us has mentioned.

If

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

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.

Re:If

[Maestro4k]

• 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.

Actually the real question would be would the UN have any actual POWER to enforce the rules they set. They don't have much power now, so UN mandates get ignored quite often when it's convenient, so Verisign would probably just do what it wanted and ignore the UN mandates. It could actually end up being much WORSE than it is now.

Re:If

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

The doesn't have any real power for a couple reasons. First, since it's a conglomerate "government" it relies completely on the power of its constituents. And rarely has it wanted to do anything that its powerful constituents didn't want to do already (do to veto power and a few weighty members). So when some powerful countries who would already be taking an action go through the UN, they just do what they originally set out to do with UN uniforms on.

Secondly, the UN doesn't have any real power because, while everyone is willing to participate, no one is willing to really give up power of their nation to another ruling body. I doubt that will ever happen peacefully.

I would like to see more discussion from the UN about what might help developing countries, or what might foster more online growth - and then see that input taken into account by internet regulators. But I think that's about the best the UN could do to help.

Re:If

[caluml]

From your .sig: Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Dirac, Faraday, Planck, Kelvin, Maxwell and Einstein believed in God. So do I.

So what? People thought the earth was flat, and that the sun went round the earth.

Re:If

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

So what?

My point is simple. Believing in God doesn't make you illogical or weak-minded.

Re:If

[C10H14N2]

Thank God someone here "gets it."

The reason people complain about the U.N. is generally that they haven't a clue what to EXPECT it to do. There are things the U.N. does very, very well through EcoSoc and there are things the U.N. isn't equipped for at all (see: waging war, NATO). There are dubious issues behind the IBRD and the IMF, but they _do_ serve a purpose as no other entities can. Then there's the ICC. Without the U.N. we wouldn't have created that venue for trying all of the world's Slobos and Saddams... not that this administration seems to care about that when they have a perfectly good illegal concentration camp.

Re:If

[Brad Mace]

Secondly, the UN doesn't have any real power because, while everyone is willing to participate, no one is willing to really give up power of their nation to another ruling body. I doubt that will ever happen peacefully.

Allow me to introduce the European Union.

Perhaps the UN was too bold a step, since it clearly has little power now. Eventually, I think (hope) we will see more EU type alliances, as countries move toward similar notions of fundamental rights, and less developed nations catch up to the rest of the world. The U.S. will also have to give up its dellusions of grandeur before it can 'lower itself' to join such a union.

Re:If

[necrognome]

How many delusions of grandeur does everyone else have?

Re:If

[Mad Marlin]

My point is simple. Believing in God doesn't make you illogical or weak-minded.

One of the more amusing things is to hear someone attempt to use thir idea of "Occam's Razor" to "prove" that there is no God, apparently completely unaware what Occam's Razor really is, and also completely unaware that (William of) Occam was a Franciscan friar, quite definitely a Christian, although he didn't exactly get along with the Pope that well.

Re:If

[Knacklappen]

US is already union of states. Frankly, this "revolutionary" idea EU is pursuing right now is quite similar to what US adopted 200 years ago.

On the surface, this seems to be true. However, the former colonies in America had not that long a tradition of national goverments than Europe had (has). You can't compare US (young states of quite same culture) with EU (old states, quite different culture). Just my 2 cents (Eurocents that is)...

Re:Funny Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

It has legitamacy to every one other than the United States, who will abide by it only when it is in its best interests.

This is what is wrong with this idea.

[Guysdrinkingbeer]

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.

Re:This is what is wrong with this idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

With all the problems that go on in the UN why are they a better choice then the US.

Because they don't represent a single nation state.

Can you please explain to me why a nation that predominantly speaks English and Spanish aren't putting in any effort to resolving issues for Chinese and Arbic speakers?

Oh wait, there's no need to explain it to me - it's fucking obvious.

Re:This is what is wrong with this idea.

[pubjames]

With all the problems that go on in the UN why are they a better choice then the US.

Because then it wouldn't be a single country forcing its view of how things should be done on everyone else?

The UN has got a lot of criticism recently for being slow. Of course it is quicker and easier to make unilateral decisions. Getting consensus with a large group takes time.

The UN might be in considerably better shape if the USA put it weight behind it and didn't try to put it down all the time. There has been a lot more UN bashing recently since Bush got into power. It's not really suprising when you consider he had hardly been outside of the USA before he became president - an increadible state of affaird for a country that traditionally has been so good at foreign policy.

Re:This is what is wrong with this idea.

[linoleo]

With all the problems that go on in the UN why are they a better choice then the US.

With all due respect, the main problem going on in the UN *is* the US. The UN aren't perfect, but in fact they're doing quite well, and would be doing great if they weren't undercut at every turn by US administrations who use UN-bashing to score cheap popularity points with their voters. (Something similar can be seen in Europe with respect to the EU: the national governments like to take credit for any positive effects while blaming the negatives on Brussels.)

Re:This is what is wrong with this idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which problems are you referring to?

Have you been living in a cave on Mars? Google "oil-for-food" for starters.

The US not paying its UN membership fee?

Have you ever been a dissatisfied customer? The last recourse of a dissatisfied customer is to refuse to pay the bill.

The US blocking security resolutions?

Don't complain about the US. Complain about the UN Charter. It gives arbitrary veto power to all of the permanent members of the Security Council. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, as a whole, is up for debate, but it's how things are.

Or the problem of the US ignoring the majority of the UN and the security council?

That's funny, the way you used "majority" and "UN" in the same sentence there. You do realize that the UN is an unelected, undemocratic body, right?

Re:This is what is wrong with this idea.

[gartogg]

I think the better point is about the "whether", not the how. The system is unfair as long as the control is centralized. Distribute the system, and DISBAND ICANN. It's a useless body, and once governments, or even corporations take control of their online feifdoms, like they do here in meatspace. (Let people buy and sell top level domains, why not... get all possible one out there and let the market take over...)

Re:This is what is wrong with this idea.

[gfxguy]

There's been Americans wanting to pull out of the U.N. for decades.

But how about this: I don't mind "sharing" the internet, but it IS a U.S. creation established by the U.S. government.

Can you elaborate on all the views the U.S. government is forcing on you via the internet?

Re:This is what is wrong with this idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

English.
It's not my native language, yet DNS can't handle anything else. At least my language uses the latin alphabet, it must really suck to be Greek or Russian and having to learn another alphabet just to go to a simple website...

Re:This is what is wrong with this idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the USA has had a terrible foreign policy, installing and supporting dictatorships all over the world. People from the USA are usually ignorant of what goes on in the outside world. It's sad and I hope it changes, the USA has a lot of power and if it were used for good things could change quickly.

hmmm...

[spangineer]

How much could the U.N. actually do that the U.S. isn't doing now? I understand the appearance issue - this way it might have a bit more international legitimacy, but realistically, on a practical level, I don't see much coming out of this. The language compatibility thing is interesting, and that could possibly turn out better when working through the U.N., but I'm skeptical. To me it all sounds like a bunch of dippy diplomats are talking about something they don't understand. But wait - isn't that the U.N.'s new mission?

Re:hmmm...

[Maestro4k]

• The language compatibility thing is interesting, and that could possibly turn out better when working through the U.N., but I'm skeptical.

While I don't know the specifics, given Verisign's past actions with Site Finder alone, I suspect the problems about multi-language Internet getting implemented are more Verisign than ICANN. Verisign is probably wanting to do it in a proprietary way that they can make money off of, and fighting any alternative methods that would be open standards.

Err, "Oil for Domain Names" ?

[Penguinisto]

Not to troll or anything (honest!), but given recent scandals, I'm kind of leery about letting the UN run the Internet root servers.

Otherwise I agree with your premise, and wouldn't mind an independant third-party organization basically running the 'net. Finding one without an agenda or finding one that is relatively corruption-proof is another story entirely.

Re:Funny Quote

[pe1rxq]

Because you don't have to be an asshole just because you can.

Jeroen

Where have we heard this before

[amigoro]

Some countries and activists argue that ICANN is too close to the United States and want the United Nations to take a greater role in regulating the internet.

I sure have heard the term "United Nations to take a greater role" line before.

The gathering grew from December's UN World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva, where the world's leaders failed to reach consensus on governing the Internet and punted the issue to a task force that is supposed to report to Annan in 2005.

When was the last time world leaders manage to reach a consensus?

It ended Saturday with a closed-door meeting of diplomats.

Transparency of internation politics.

Computer industry officials at the meeting were skeptical of a UN role, but they agreed that some kind of international body could be useful in coordinating language issues, security and getting the Internet into developing countries.

Heard that before

Most believed an international body had no right to regulate the content of Web sites, a concern for countries like China and North Korea

And not the US? Oh wait, they have DMCA

"ICANN has to be more international and it has to be more transparent," said Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, vice chairman of the UN Information and Communication Technologies Task Force.

UN Transparency = Closed Door Meetings

ICANN also chooses who controls the country codes -- like ".us" or ".uk" -- that define each country's piece of real estate in cyberspace.

The rightful code for Britain should be GB. But the British snatched UK, which should have gone to Ukraine.

It has yet to decide the future of Iraq's ".iq".

Bush's War Against IQ ;)

Twomey denies any US government influence in ICANN's work.
"I have never once seen the United States' foreign policy have any impact on this process," he said.

deja vu?

Moderate this comment
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Re:Where have we heard this before

[Fastolfe]

The rightful code for Britain should be GB. But the British snatched UK, which should have gone to Ukraine.

To be fair, these codes are defined by ISO at a level that has nothing to do with the Internet. DNS merely exposes those country codes in the DNS for use by those ISO-defined entities.

Re:Where have we heard this before

[mgs1000]

The rightful code for Britain should be GB
And what about Northern Ireland?

But the British snatched UK, which should have gone to Ukraine.
Did Ukraine exist as a seperate country at the time .uk was chosen?

Re:Where have we heard this before

[SuperBanana]

Most believed an international body had no right to regulate the content of Web sites, a concern for countries like China and North Korea

And not the US? Oh wait, they have DMCA [blackboxvoting.com]

There's a minor difference between an overzealous copyright act and a government which wishes to suppress any inkling of free speech or communication to/from its citizens it cannot control and watch for information contrary to its policies(or that it considers subversive, such as "let's have elections").

They're mostly just desperate to keep their peasants in line because they think their peasants don't know what the rest of the world is like. Why we are even listening to North Korea on anything, after they essentially tried to take the world hostage with nuclear weapons, is beyond me.

Re:Where have we heard this before

[amigoro]

As explained here : The ISO symbol for the United Kingdom is GB. Both the Ukraine and the United Kingdom wanted the two-letter code UK, so the ISO solved the problem by giving the Ukraine UA and the United Kingdom GB.

That is probably why the Sterling Pound is written as GBP, and not UKP. And the official reasons given by ISO are:

Dear Mr xxxxx,

Thanks for your query concerning the ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 code.

In the start-up phase of the Internet IANA created a ccTLD .uk. This was done before Jon Postel of IANA wrote RFC 1591 and decided to use our ISO codes.

More on the Internet and ISO 3166-1: http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/inter net.html

The reasons for the ISO 3166-1 code GB for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland are the following:

In 1974 when ISO 3166-1 was first published the code element GB was chosen to represent the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland because it conicides with the "distinguishing sign for road vehicles in international traffic" for the country. These are the oval stickers on cars.

Another reason why the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is coded GB in ISO 3166-1 is that code elements in ISO 3166-1 should not reflect country name components giving information on the political status of a country e. g. "Republic", "Kingdom", "United", "Democratic", "Socialist" etc.

By not using such name components a change of the official name of a country which reflects a change in e. g. constitutional status does not affect the code element and thus allows stability in the code list. A good example for this is Poland. This country renamed itself from "Polish People's Republic" to "Republic of Poland" but no need for a new ISO 3166-1 code element arose since it reflected only the core part of the name i. e. "Poland" resp. "Polish" (PL).

We are well aware that many people would like to use UK rather than GB and the reasons for this choice - one being that one might be promoted to think that Northern Ireland isn't included - are familiar to us. The decision to chose GB was taken in cooperation with the Britisch Standards Institution BSI and, through them, with her Majesty's Government.

If you need more information on this issue please let me know.

Best regards

Cord Wischhofer
for the Secretariat of the
ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency
Tel.: +49 (30) 26 01 28 61
Fax: +49 (30) 26 01 12 31
E-Mail: cord.wischhoefer@din.de
URL: www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/

Great Britain, "snatched" up the disputed UK two letter code before Ukraine could. It wouldn't be at all cool if these two countries go to war over this, though, as Ukraine probably has more nuclear weapons than even Britain.

Re:Where have we heard this before

[mgs1000]

ISO 3166-1 should not reflect country name components giving information on the political status of a country e. g. "Republic", "Kingdom", "United", "Democratic", "Socialist"

So that's why .us isn't used so much. We had to go with .com, .net, .edu, .gov, and .mil.

Re:Where have we heard this before

[Fastolfe]

Thanks for posting that, as I wasn't aware of this history. Either way, this is something the ICANN inherited. It's somewhat difficult to change the name of a country's TLD that's in widespread use, so I don't fault them for perpetuating it.

Re:UN wants to rule the internet..

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

I personally advocate ditching dns and going back to plain ip numbers. If you find a site you like, remember it's ip number, or just bookmark the number. If you have a big coorporate site, make television commercials like "Biggest Sale Ever!!! visit http://36.112.2.14 for details" We'll also cut internet traffic by a third and do away with all the trouble surrounding who controls the names.

Re:The internet was created by the US

[Anonymous Coward]

> The rest of the world can deal with it or make their own internet.

We did - we just didn't tell you about it yet. You're not invited you see ;-)

Re:Funny Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's why we're there. We're willing to be nice, but we're not going to let the rest of the world walk all over us.

Negotiations

[Dark Lord Seth]

Twomey: So, you people want part of our little scheme?
Annan: More or less, yes.
Twomey: What if I tell you to shove your head up your own ass?
Annan: I'm not sure my friend would appreciate that.
Twomey: Really now? I've got Verisign behind me.
Annan: Mario, say hi.
Mario Monti: Hi!
Annan: See that war chest with 500 million euros behind him? The one with the MS logo?
Twomey: You know, this whole scheme involving you sounds interesting all of the sudden. Do tell.

Re:Negotiations

[adamwright]

Whilst funny, Mario Monti is the Competition Commissioner for the EU (European Union), whilst Annan is from the UN (United Nations). They are not, even remotely, the same thing.

Cite Your Sources

[handy_vandal]

Tell me where all the cash from the "food for oil" programme went? It didn't go to food. It went to bribe top UN, French, German and Russian officials (probably as far up as Putin and Chirac) to support Saddam.

The UN under Kofi Annan has become as corrupt as gangland Chicago.

What are your sources?

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'd like to see some details.

-kgj

Re:Cite Your Sources

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not the original poster, but this is a big deal. The Iraqi oil-for-food program was by far the largest amount of money that the UN had ever handled. It dwarfed the rest of the UN's budget.

(That said, I doubt Putin or Chirac were bribed. Like Bush, they had their own strong interests in the matter of Iraq and its government.)

Here are a few references. You can find plenty more on news.google.com :

'Massive scam' in Iraqi oil program

Get to heart of UN role in Iraq Oil-for-Food scandal

Annan Pushes UN Council Members on Iraq Oil Scandal

3,000 UN Staffers Probed

Bulgaria's President Questioned over Iraq Oil Scandal

Re:Cite Your Sources

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

Re:Cite Your Sources

[bkrog]

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."

Re:Cite Your Sources

[handy_vandal]

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."

Thanks.

-kgj

Why bother using the UN?

[gartogg]

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.

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 .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.

Re:UN wants to rule the internet..

[jeffcm]

Yeah, until IPv6 comes around. Then you might have problems... "Hey dude, visit my website!" "What's the address?" "Oh, it's easy. Just go to http://3ffe:0501:0008:0000:0260:97ff:fe40:efab"

What are ye..

[Anonymous Coward]

dissing the UN for?? What can be so wrong with having a multi country organisation controlling the internet??? The only problem i can see is america sticking its head in and declaring war on the UN and the internet or something as stupid.

Re:What are ye..

[two_stripe]

That actually happens in the year 2021 when oil is irrelevant and the limited IPv4 address space becomes the new base of the world economy.

International law...

[Anonymous Coward]

"International law is to law what professional wrestling is to wrestling; no one over the age of nine mistakes it for the real thing."

Time Magazine, opening line in an article about Somalia from 1993.

Seems Like the Wrong Way to Do Things

[fuzzybunny]

ICANN's not perfect, the US govt. is not perfect, but to be perfectly honest, Auerbach's right when he says that the US has never really taken a ham-handed approach to the Internet and to "cutting off" anyone it doesn't like.

Sounds to me like the lesser of two evils--we've all seen the types of politics involved in the UN. Frankly, I'm not entirely sure I _want_ more democracy in how the "Internet" is run. And let's be straight about it--they're not talking about peering arrangements, IP address space, whatnot--they're talking about the DNS.

The current hierarchical system has its problems, but the increasing number of non-US root servers should at least disabuse anyone of the notion that an overly zealous US could, at the drop of a hat, just turn things off.

What I'd like to see from the UN, maybe, is increased sponsorship of things like discussion on proposed standards, dissemination of information, encouragement of the spread of technology and freedom of information to certain restrictive third world countries, whatnot. I'd rather not have it involved in the technical development of our dear, functional, essentially stupid network.

Re:Seems Like the Wrong Way to Do Things

[rm007]

Sounds to me like the lesser of two evils--we've all seen the types of politics involved in the UN

What makes this even worse, is that when some one says "the UN should have a greater role in regulating the Internet" they are being vague in the extreme. Have a look at the UN system, there is an incredible range of how various bodies operate - so what exactly are they thinking about? Surely not a politicized talking shop? Then what, something like the ILO, ITU or World Bank? How would it increase technical efficiency? What are the problems that have to be solved and how would the specific institutional proposal address these. There is nothing on the table aside from "we can't trust the Americans" and there doesn't seem to be any evidence to support this. I am a big fan of the UN and impressed at what has been achieved by bodies such as the WHO, but to argue that such bodies make quicker decisions than ICAAN can or are superior technically than other models of standards bodies such as the WWW Consortium without actually proposing anything is a bit premature.

This can actually be a good thing

[Fastolfe]

I can think of no better way of hastening the demise of DNS than by turning it into a truly political asset. Once technical control and guidance over DNS is turned over to governments already keen to warp it for commercial interests, what remains of its technical usefulness will dwindle.

This gives us the perfect opportunity (and finally incentive) to come up with something better.

Re:Funny Quote

[pe1rxq]

Just where do you think the internet came from?

It came by interconnecting a lot of networks worldwide.

Where did Google come from?

From some smart guys that had nothing to do with the US government

Where did 122,000 online pictures of Britney Spears come from?

Please, take them back!!!!!!!

Jeroen

Re:Funny Quote

[Bull999999]

I guess you've forgotten Bosnia?

Perhaps you haven't heard but...

[WIAKywbfatw]

...the full name of the country is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or the UK for short.

If I have to explain why the UK has the legitimate claim on the .uk TLD then you've got bigger problems than TLD country codes.

Yes, people (including politicians and the media) treat the terms "The United Kingdom" and "Great Britain" as though they are interchangeable, but I think you'll find they do the same thing with "The United States [of America]" and "America" too.

But if you're reasoning held true then the TLD country code for the US should be .am or some such.

Bottom line: the UK's use of the .uk TLD is entirely appropriate. As is the US's use of the .us TLD.

Oh, and by the way, diplomacy is rarely about reaching a concensus; it's about reaching a compromise: it's just a pity that some governments have conveniently chosen to forget that.

Who knew Verisign knew?

[tverbeek]

"The first time anyone tried to do that, there would be such a hue and cry," said Michael Aisenberg, director of government relations for VeriSign, an ICANN contractor that keeps the master list of domain name suffixes like ".com." "You would be such a pariah, you would have your role as a custodian ripped away from you."

Nice to know that someone at Verisign has some understanding of that.

"Annan" ??

[Gothmolly]

Geesh, it's not like he's Linus or Madonna or Jesus. Coffee-cup Annan doesn't have that level of recognition, at least in the US. Oh wait, -1, US-Centric. Oh wait, /. is mostly a US site! 50% will think this is a troll, 50% will think that this is Insightful. What to do, what to do...

Re:UN wants to rule the internet..

[DR SoB]

Actually, that's only 16 bytes, it should be 32.. :)

http://3ffe:0501:0008:0000:0260:97ff:fe40:efab:3ff e:0501:0008:0000:0260:97ff:fe40:efab

Competing DNS system

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

NGO?

[utlemming]

The only way that it would work would be for a NGO to be formed. But honestly, I think that most Americans and Europeans would be more comfortable if the ICANN powers were turned over to NATO than to the UN. We're talking politics, and even though most of us /.ers are ideologs, we still need to recogonize the importance of politics. The US is not going to let the internet out of our hands. Not with out protecting the interests of the US. Most likely the future of the internet is going to be decided not by the UN, but by a consortuim of internet nations in treaty negotiations. Whether or not the UN takes over the internet will not solve the issues surrounding the internet. All the issues, such as a spam, porn, fraud, et al., will have to be resolved via treaties anyway. You might as well form a treaty organization that is devoted solely to the internet with teeth.

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.

Re:Funny Quote

[dbone]

Hmmm... As I recall the internet was started by DARPA (DARPA-NET) as a U.S. military project on computer redundancy in case of Nuclear War.

Later is was expanded by BBN into a more commercial system (e-mail and such)

Both of this endeavors where funded and backed exclusively by the U.S. government. It was most certainly did not "come by interconnecting a lot of networks worldwide. That was an after thought.

Call me a nit-picker if you must

-d

Information Super Highway... TO HELL

[Mulletproof]

I'm sure this will inevitably be interpreted as flamebait, but do we really want them dictating policy on the internet? Maybe some other 3rd party, but the UN???? This organization doesn't have a spine. It's corrupt. It happily changes it's tune when politically expedient. Surely there's somebody better out there...

Re:Information Super Highway... TO HELL

[saforrest]

This organization doesn't have a spine. It's corrupt. It happily changes it's tune when politically expedient.

Because, clearly, the U.S. government is free of all these faults. :)

I think the UN gets an unfair rap. I hear a lot of people speak with the strange idea that the UN is a single cohesive entity, somewhere else, who arbitrarily and unreasonably attempts to impose decisions upon them. Maybe this attitude arises from the habitual American distrust of government.

The UN serves as a convenient political mask for Western leaders who want to distance themselves from distasteful happenings elsewhere in the world. "Sure, it's a problem," they say, "but it's a global problem, so it's the UN's responsibility."

A recent memorable example is the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which was starting up exactly 10 years ago, and could have easily been stopped with a capable intervention force, according to the UN general in Rwanda. His pleas for help in Rwanda were mostly met with indifference by the governments of the entire Western world, which was then preoccupied with the situation in Yugoslavia.

The UN administration also bears some guilt, for not trying harder to convince people, but most of the fault should still lie with the Western countries (specifically the U.S., France, and Belgium) who had troops in the area they could have mobilized and intelligence they could have shared, but chose not to. Yet it was only Kofi Annan who chose to apologize, and I consistently see American columnists describe 1994 as "the UN's failure to act", something which really incenses me.

Re:Information Super Highway... TO HELL

[Mulletproof]

"Because, clearly, the U.S. government is free of all these faults"
_______________________________

Wow, that was amazingly predictable. I didn't specify the US government or a US company. I didn't specify a a Uguandaranian company for that matter. I just said there's got to be a better organization than the UN to handle this. It could be a company in Genevafor all I care. You think they've gotten a bad rap, but nobody respects them because they have a demonstrated repeated inability to not follow through. Oh-- :)

Re:Information Super Highway... TO HELL

[saforrest]

Wow, that was amazingly predictable.

Well, if you'd read the rest of my post, you'd see I'm arguing that the UN is used as a scapegoat. Whenever a country does something respectable, it takes the credit. Whenever no one does anything, it's because "the UN did not follow through". For these reasons I feel that the charge that the UN is a toothless organization is overblown.

I mentioned the U.S. because that is the status quo. I did this not to argue that you were being a reactionary by favouring the status quo (I realize you were suggesting alternatives), but to argue that if we can mostly live with the faults of the current faulty U.S.-ICANN administration, it's possible we could mostly live with a UN-run administration, even with its faults.

I agree that the UN itself is far too political a body to administer things directly, and there are huge potential political consequences in letting. "non-free" countries exercise some measure of control over the DNS system. Preferable to me would be some third-party organization which has a UN mandate, but has a fair degree of independence from UN policy decisions.

Re:UN wants to rule the internet..

[Rich Klein]

I could live with that.

Re:UN wants to rule the internet..

[Darth RadaR]

Actually, that's only 16 bytes, it should be 32.. :)

http://3ffe:0501:0008:0000:0260:97ff:fe40:efab:3 ff e:0501:0008:0000:0260:97ff:fe40:efab

In that case, I'd better hurry up and get an easier to read IP that will translate into...

http://dead:beef:dead:beef:dead:beef:dead:beef:d ea d:beef:dead:beef:dead:beef:dead:beef:

:)

The U.N. is too corrupt to be given this

[XavierItzmann]

The New York Times
Never has there been a financial rip-off of the magnitude of the U.N. oil-for-food scandal
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/29/opinion/29SAFI.h tml

The Wall Street Journal
The company in charge of inspecting goods destined for Iraq under the program was Cotecna, which employed Mr. Annan's son Kojo
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110004834

In the UN's hands, what could possibly go wrong?

[Sabu mark]

I'm sure the UN will handle domain names as skillfully and impartially as they handled the Iraqi oil-for-food program.

Re:In the UN's hands, what could possibly go wrong

[azaris]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/29/opinion/29SAFI.h tml?th

Wow, an op-ed piece by Nixon's speechwriter. In the New York Times. Exposing the "truth" about the UN and France. Suddenly makes Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz seem like beacons of truth and honesty.

Joy

[petrus4]

We need this about as much as a bullet in the head.
Unlike for the offline world, perhaps, the "last, best hope" for the Internet is to leave administering it in the hands of those who actually know what they're doing. The planet isn't *quite* universally dead broke yet, Kofi...You've still got some work to do there before you move on to screwing up the Net.

Re:Funny Quote

[pe1rxq]

Maybe because I responded to the argument that the guy with the biggest military budget got to do whatever he wanted and you were just bashing a country?

Jeroen

This is true

[petrus4]

From what I've seen there have been a number of times when Kofi has said something where he's pretty much the only one who cares. Apart from the charity work they do, from everything I've been able to detect, giving extreme left-wing groups like Greenpeace and Amnesty International (and similarly minded extreme left-wing *individuals*, no doubt) the warm fuzzies is pretty much the only reason why the UN exists. Oh, and to provide far-right crackpot militant groups with grist for their world domination conspiracy theory mill, of course. ;-)

Re:Funny Quote

[pe1rxq]

http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/

The internet has been international since 1973.
During the seventies and eighties a whole bunch of non military networks was interconnected that were not sponsored by the US.

The internet we came to know has very little to do with the original ARPA project besides its start and name.

Jeroen

UN Reformes

[Welsh Dwarf]

The UN really needs to be reformed (e.g., France out of the security council, Germany, Japan, and India in would be a better approximation of great powers; and of course countries without consensual governments should have no vote in the general assembly or be eligible to chair any committees)

Better still, no defense counsel and give the general assembly some real powers.
And as far as all this going on about the French is concerned, I think some people need to remember that the most Security Counsel vetoes are actually the Americains defending their personnal interests (notably Israel).

And no, I'm not French, but I do live there

mod me as a troll if you will, I don't care

Not just ISO names

[pommiekiwifruit]

It used to take ages for airline codes to change too - Air New Zealand had the code TE instead of NZ for decades after the British Empire split up (it used to be Tasman Empire Air Lines).

Who deserves a domain?

[MourningBlade]

We need to remove the idea of "deserving" a domain name. We need to remove the idea of "leasing" a domain name. In other words, we need property rights for DNS entries.

I believe that we should auction off the entire DNS spectrum permanently. Then, you have a property transfer fee, and let people split up their property as they like.

So, for example, you could buy .bax through .baz, and anything in that range would go to your DNS servers. If someone wanted to buy and you wanted to sell, you could sell off .bax-.baxe (so .baxalicious and .baxbeat would be in that range), while retaining .baxf-.baz (.baxforth, .bayarea, etc).

Since the queries for those ranges would be directed to your DNS servers, you could make arrangements to sublet, just like now (so someone could lease iliveinthe.bayarea, just like now, if they either felt your TLD was worth it, or didn't want to buy their own).

When Unicode became viable, you could auction off the new addresses, hence creating a profit motive for them to get it going.

All these new TLDs would reduce the worth of any one TLD, and it would make domain squatting very unprofitable.

It would also remove the concentration of power around ICANN. TLDs would become valuable based on the community, not based on edicts of "appropriateness."

And we would still be able to do things like .email: the group that wants to do it could just buy .email from whomever owned it. Or use another TLD.

And it wouldn't eliminate .org, themed TLDs, or even the possibility of co-op TLDs. As you can do whatever you want with your TLD, you could say "I will only sublet/subsell to Linux-oriented sites," or the same for non-profit. You enforce it, not ICANN.

As for co-op TLDs, you could establish a co-op with a charter, and use the pooled money to buy a TLD (or TLD range). You could do this in order to establish free-for-everyone domains, free-for-a-particular-theme, etc, etc, etc. In that way, this would establish something that does not currently exist: the ability to create a completely free area under a TLD.

No US interference, no UN bickering, no ICANN edicts.

Yes, there are a few unresolved issues, like international trademark (possible solution: lawsuits have to take place in the owner of the TLD's country). But I really think this would be the best way.

Horrible

[zushiba]

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.

Re:That's a good one, but

[DR SoB]

I think "Lez boobs" would have been funnier. Or for a truely disgusting take on an IP:
dead:b00b:le55:beef:dead:b00b:le55:beef:dead: b00b: le55:beef:dead:b00b:le55:beef

Re:Can you tell a hutu from a tutsie on site?

[saforrest]

Especially with feudal cultures organized around familial alliances, that going to be a lot of dead bodies. And for what? We owe them NOTHING. They're not worth the bullets let alone American lives.

Well, one might well argue that 'we', meaning Europeans (and this includes North Americans) are responsible for their political situation, particularly since Hutu-Tutsi racism was explicitly encouraged and manipulated by Belgian colonialists. This event isn't because Rwandans are uncivilized primitives.

I can perhaps understand why you don't think Americans should be responsible for Belgian misdeeds, though the U.S. is also guilty of fostering ethnic hatred between Africans.

Putting aside the blame game, there is then the question of the value of the Rwandans' lives. For that I can't argue with you, because we obviously have different value systems. I have to say I find any value system that places such a marginal value on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people repulsive, though.

Next time a Christian nation wants to start excecuting Muslim populations wholesale, expect a more muted action from the US. I wouldn't hold it against an administration if they didn't want to get involved.

If you're concerned about terrorist attacks and stopping terrorism, I would hope you would blame the U.S. government if it chose not to get involved. The Israel/Palestine situation is a short step away from all-out civil war, which could include the sorts of mass executions you describe. Palestinians are already angry at the U.S. for no condemning the Yassin assassination. If the U.S. sat silently by while Israel conducted mass executions, don't you think the possibility of terrorist actions against the U.S. would increase?

You can only build so many walls and metal detectors. Eventually, you'll have to rely on goodwill, and sitting silently by while executions go on will create precious little of that.

Re:Prioritizing?

[rossz]

Naw, ever since his personal cash cow was shut down (UN Food for Oil program), he's got lots of free time and is looking for a new source of illicit income.

Re:No so funny.

[thomasdelbert]

Other nations are justified to be warry not only beucase the US may decide to cut off a nation's access to the 'net but in some cases should cut of access.

Actually - the funny thing is that that the more corrupt the government of <country> is, the more it is in the best interests the United States to encourage <country>'s people to connect to the internet because the more exposure you give their people to on-line freedom the more likely they will be to demand off-line freedom.

If you look at the statistics for internet service providers in dictatorships versus in free countries - in dictatorships, usually you can count the providers without taking your shoes off. Moreover, the few that exist are heavily regulated and only priviledged people are allowed to access. The only exception is China, but they have the manpower to maintain a great red firewall to block access to anyone that is critical of the Chinese government. On the other hand, in free countries, ISP number in the tens of thousands, anybody is allowed on, and there are very few regulations.

Only a dictator would be afraid of giving the common person internet access, while the USA always will see benefit in keeping commoners connected everywhere in the world. As much as I distrust the American goverment, I would be surprised if they cut off a rogue nation for political reasons, because the worse the politics are, the more important of a tool the internet it. Remember, the internet is largely dominated by American media and American culture and American ideals so it is a great tool for spreading those ideals around the world.

- Thomas;

Re:No so funny.

[RLW]

I was not thinking of simply repressive governments but rather in the case where lots of hacking activity may be directed at important internet infrastructure. Or when the US is at war with a country maybe it would be best to cut off their internet capabilities.

A healthy distrust of government is in everybody's best interest. Indeed it is the foundation of the United States of America.

Re:Must not surrender cyberspace to foreign rule

[heybo]

Yes DARPA did start it (I worked on the project when I was in the Navy in the early 70's) Then no one but the goverment and schools or goverment contractors were allowed on it. DARPA found that in order to make it work they had to free it to get others to pay for it. Think of the cost if only the US paid for ALL the computers, severs, fiber, and all the other parts of the infastructure. You see they just didn't "allow" non-citzens to "use" it. I think you need to find out "how" it all works. The whole thing works off of private networks and WHOLE lot of private networks that "allow" the public to use their private network. Right now my privately own network will talk to the privately owned network owned by /. when I hit the submit button. If you go to my website you can go their only because "I" allow you to.

No matter what anyone says the Internet is not free. I think open is a better word. Everyone pays to use it so it ain't free. If you are using it for free you have to be stealing it from someone. (want to pay my data line bill?) That's the beauty of the system. It is owned my any one person or group.

This free shit is what spammers and other assholes use to protect their spreading of their garbage and misuse of the network

Don't get me wrong I AM NOT taking up for ICANN. I just see a buch of self promoting fools that just want the status of being on the board. They do nothing to help control the misuse of the network and they are the only people that can do something to stop things like spam. Want to stop spam? Take them out of root! Very simple. Take away their IP blocks. If they have no IP numbers they can't get on.

ANY goverment or the UN is the WRONG people to put in charge

Just what we need

[olivercromwell]

I, for one, find the prospect frightening. The UN is a large, neigh, obese beauraucracy that will only make domain management a nightmare. There will be endless committee meetings, squabbling between delegates from different countries on whose views are more important or relevant, etc. Oh, wait a minute, thanks to Bill Clinton we already have that with ICANN. I guess there may not be that much of a change afterall.

Re:In the UN's hands, what could possibly go wrong

[Cackmobile]

Shall we leave it in the hands of the Americans. They are certainly doing a great job with Iraq.

UN

[Cackmobile]

Why do Americans hate the UN so much. Have you all swallowed the gov propaganda especially since it didn't go along with the (illegal) war in Iraq.

Sure the UN may have corruption but nowhere is perfect. Can anyone here tell me that WHO or UNESCO do not do good work. How about wiping out smallpox. That used to kill millions; now it no longer exists. How about the UN election monitors. Since WWII the UN has helped stopped so many wars. Think about what would have happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis if there was no UN where the US could make its case.