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Should the UN Replace ICANN?
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo news has a story on how some developing countries want control of the assignment of network names and numbers turned over to an international body, such as the UN's ITU (International Telecommunication Union)."
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You'd just be replacing incompetence with incompetence.
You want control turned over to an international body. OK, that sounds reasonable. But the UN? I mean... how about somebody with a little more tech savvy and a little less politics?
...can you imagine trying to register as domain name with a bureauacracy like the UN in charge?
Jeez....
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
I think anyone seriously considering such a move should attend at least 10 UN sessions throughout their full excruciating length in order to get a sense of the beaurocratic monster this organization has become. If that doesn't immediately relegate this ridiculous proposal into the shredder, then I don't know what will... Winston Churchill is being quoted as having said this about the U.N.: Use it when possible, ignore it when necessary. I believe this is a statement in itself ;-)
The UN can't respond to something as catastrophic as genocide w/ in a year or two of its happening, and normally then it's "ah, ... ". This is nothing but a power grab - their interest is not in humanities welfare. I vote NO on rewarding incompetence and nepotism.
After all, they are made up of communications companies. See their website.
In all fairness, it would make sense to move control to the ITU. Even though there will be a lot of people who will complain about a "political body", ie the UN controlling such things. Sure the UN is a Polititcal Body. So is any government, if you haven't already noticed; but the UN does more than just political work. think UNICEF, UNESCO, FAO, WHO, and the list goes on.
Is there going to be political influences in the ITU if it controls ICANN? Sure, just as there is now.
If I had a say in this, I'll vote yes. They are the body to control worldwide tele/data communications.
OK, let's see. In the last year, we've heard about the UN Oil-for-Palaces program, UN peacekeepers in central Africa running underage prostitutes, UN bureaucrats sexually assaulting junior employees, etc., etc.
Mind you, all is not lost. If the UN does get this role, then the Internet as we know it will become a shambolic mess, and the US will just have to invent something else.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I don't want the UN deciding what is and isn't spam...at least the first amendment is valid in the US, an international body may decide that "hate speech" is illegal and therefore decide to censor certain websites like countries do now. I would prefer as little world government interference with the internet as possible.
http://chrono.posterous.com/
I'm reading The Checkbook and the Cruise Missle, in which Arundhati Roy says injustices increase as decision-makers are geographically separated from those affected by the decision. She cites the World Bank in Geneva, and the IMF, the WTO, as examples.
.com, US sites will have to use .co.us like everyone else? That seems reasonable. If they just set up root DNS servers that don't answer requests for .com (or .org, .gov, etc.), those servers will be more convenient to client hosts in their region. Software will get patched to check both authorities, since it's an easy fix, & US sites will register both types of domains to maximize their availability. Then, over an excruciating number of years, while everyone has to support both naming styles, .com & the other 3-letter domains will die out, & the plaintiffs will have their way.
So Third-World countries want power over names? And they think they can accomplish that by moving the naming committee to UN Headquarters in New York? The UN didn't work for poor people in Iraq, or Palestine. Why will it work in the case of Internet names?
This is the first case I know of where software standards have reached the level of world politics. (It's different from software patents in Europe.) I don't think they ever belong there. Software standards have developed reasonably well under Darwinian conditions: it may take decades, but eventually everyone switches to open standards because there's an advantage to being able to communicate. E.g., everyone uses TCP/IP now, not IPX or any other proprietary network protocol. I know, I know, we're still fighting this battle daily, but you can see the positive trend, & it's happening without any legislation or government enforcement.
What I'm getting at is Third World countries should just set up their own root DNS servers. Whatever it is they want -- get rid of the 3-letter root domains? So instead of
I'm gonna sound like a Wired columnist, but here goes: The Internet is suggesting new kinds of economics, government, maybe religion.... We should stick with what works, instead of imposing traditional kinds of governance onto the Internet.
I'm well aware of the recent UN bashing by the United State's administration, but to be honest, does anyone take it seriously apart from them? I don't get you people.
Probably it's a better idea to trust a huge international body, which already manages a lot of aspects of various fields than the current quasi corporate owned system.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Well, if the UN can manage CEB [unsystem.org], CTBTO [ctbto.org], ECA [uneca.org], ECE [unece.org], ECLAC [eclac.org], ESCAP [unescap.org], ESCWA [escwa.org.lb], FAO [fao.org], UNCTAD [unctad-undp.org], HLCM [unsystem.org], MA HREF="http://ceb.unsystem.org/hlcp/default.htm">HL CP, IACSD [unsystem.org], IANWGE [unsystem.org], IAPSO [iapso.org], and about 5 times as many more, I think they can handle one more. :)
UN's record isn't that great IMHO
Oh really? Of the organizations I listed (in alphabetical order), how many are bloated and overbudget? How many have involved scandal of any kind? How many have been largely ineffective? Etc?
How about you start by telling us what the heck any of these organizations actually do and what real and meaningful good they actually have accomplished? It is up to the UN and its defenders to prove they are doing some good, not the other way around.
What I do know is that none of those 13+ organizations you rattled off has been able to stop genocide in Yugoslavia or Rwanda nor have they been able to prevent the UN from being a money launderer for Saddam.
Brian EllenbergerAnother US v/s Rest of the World flamebait thread.
Mmmm.. Donuts
The UN sucks. Period. They can't even keep track of their own scams (hint hint- Oil for Food, Kofi Annan not being able to keep track of his son, etc.), let alone internet. What would they know about internet and cyber crimes? Some of them must be n00bs to internet computing and the like.
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
You never hear the small, positive stories. The media want to see blood. It sells.
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.
I agree that the UN is the wrong body for this, because the UN is an international political body, and control over any essential element of the Internet on a global scale should be as far removed from political control as possible.
Nobody is suggesting giving the UN control over what communication is permissable. The idea is that we have an internal forum manage internet standards in such a way that we can create our own technical solutions to spam.
The UN faithfully delivered all suggested contracts to a commitee manned by 5 standard members of the council, several was marked as financially suspicious but none of these were investigated. The US did however block hundreds of other contracts for what they said was security reasons, the other 4 countries blocked none. This was [b]not[/b] a fault of the UN administration
Furthermore, the money involved in these contracts are dwarfed by both the amount of money mysteriously disappearing from Iraqui oilwells nowadays, and the amount of good old-fashioned smuggling out of Iraq pre-war.
The "genocide" in Yugoslavia is a fairly good example actually, because before NATO/US moved in, people on all sides were killing eachother pretty equally. It was war. However western media somehow(for what reasons? by whose decision?) misrepresented statistics and the whole situation blew up when NATO went in. To add insult to this, they never went in with ground fources to break things up. Europe(Germany? my memory fails me) premature approval of Kosovo didn't help much either. The UN tactic of waiting it out, and not arbitrerarily choosing one side to side with was prudent; and it's only our acute sense of stupidity that keeps us from seeing it.
Lastly, the world is a big place; listing the disasters of the world is not proof the UN is not working. They are not, and never were intended to be world police. They are not perfect, and they don't have a magic wand to remove problems. Problems often seem quite different depending on the perspective, and while I'm sure you're sure your perspective is right, I'm equally sure mine is right.
Oh, and sorry for not providing links, but I don't have them handy; and you're probably just as good at searching as I am :)
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
So what you're saying, you'd rather have ONE country and its ideals control what is and what is not acceptable in the Internet?
Okay.
May I remind you that while spam is an entirely American invention, it still is a worldwide problem. As such it would probably make sense to fight it globally rather than individually in national levels, which is exactly what is happening and not working right now.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
I would add that up until the invasion of Kuwait, the former Bush Administration was selling arms to Saddam. Additionally, most of the WMD raw materials including bioweapons cultures came from Saddam's good buddies in the US. So it is really funny to watch all this criticism of the UN when it was the Regan Administration (and later the first Bush administration) who gave active support to Saddam's WMD ambitions.
The UN could not do anything because the member countries of the Security Council who were generally much closer geographically to Iraq were (rightly as it turned out) afraid of what would happen when Saddam was ousted.
In other news, we can look at the nepotism that goes on wrt Iraq contracts under the Bush Administration (Haliburton anyone?) and see strong parallels to the OFF issues. Therefore the US government must be bad and we should get rid of it? I don't know anyone who reacts this way to the US Gov't except strangely those who are responsible for supporting this type of morally bankrupt government.
The UN has been coming of age in recent years, and this is likely to be the source of a lot of the hard feelings. The WTO which used to be a sounding board for US corporate interests is now becoming more egalitarian with the third world countries standing up to their interests much better than in the past. Similarly, the US cannot just assume that other countries (particularly those in the EU) will simply bow to US economic, trade, and even foreign policy. The UN has become a strong force for Europe, Africa, and Latin America, and this is a direct threat to the global supremacy of the US. This is why there is so much bitterness against it from here.
Sure there is some corruption, but there is corruption in every other burocracy in the world. What is news is that for the first time since WWII, the US is opposed by a community of nations in a variety of ways from trade policy to its international agenda. There is a lot of cooperation too but nobody mentions this.
The UN would do well to take over the duties of the IANA and the ICANN. And again this is because it would give poorer nations more just representation in these policies.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
All this about who is better, US or UN is not relevant to the article. The question is who would be better handling domain names and IP address for the world. ICAAN or ITU? I believe ICAAN is doing a fine job. Why fix something that is not broke? ICAAN is not a department of the US Government, but ITU is a department of the UN Government. ICAAN is an internationally incorporated non-profit. If the UN takes over the role of ICAAN you can bet we would be removing domains and domain names from the private business world and putting it in the hands of governments around the world. I do not see how small dictatorships or China running all the domains for there assigned nation could possibly help progress free thought exchange now being used on the Internet. Example: All China IP's will start with 86.10 (Beijing) (using phone codes). Then the China government can stop any domain from its government run/regulated ISP's from allowing any non- China approved country code. What we will have is huge communication blockades. Why is this good ????? Please explain???
The arrogance really shows in your post, whether it is unconscious or not.
You say that you "believe working with the global community is a very good idea"
That implies that you see thinking globally as some sort of seperate concept to the normal state of affairs. That sort of thinking is counterproductive and outdated.
The internet and the "global community" are now one and the same.
And they have recently decided that what is happening in sudan is not genocide [cnn.com].
The problem with the term "genocide," until international law, is that it has an extremely strict definition under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (a treaty from 1951). While the UN committee found that they couldn't strictly, under the treaty, call it genocide under international law, they did point out that serious crimes against humanity were being perpetrated in Darfur. Crimes against humanity are just as prosecutable, and in many cases easier to prove in international courts and tribunals than genocide, with quite similar punishments. The problem is in assuming that the term "genocide" has the same meaning in both international politics and law. It doesn't. International law often makes much more strict determinations of terms, because of how treaties and customary law works. It's not like Sudan is getting off easy in this matter. The Security Council is soon likely to pass (based on the report) a resolution most likely creating a tribunal to prosecute these serious crimes occurring in Darfur. You'll also note that the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was established less than a year after the crimes there started taking place, and has since delivered convictions in cases.
With the tsunami aid effort, they were mostly concerned with holding meetings in 5 star hotels while other people did the real work.
Generally, I prefer to get my information from better sources than a blog that repeatedly uses such stellar examples of journalistic writing as the use of the terms "UNocrat," "lefties," "deranged pimply-faced trolls" (a term applied to people who disagree with them!) and "The Queen of the High Priest Vulture Elite" (referencing the UNICEF director). See for yourself! Their only source for their accusation that the UN is not providing sufficient support is an ill-defined "fact sheet" that they don't even corroborate with additional sources, nor tell where this "fact sheet" even came from. I would hope people would do much more research than just assuming that such a vitriolic blog posting is true.
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Basically, the UN wants control so that it can levy taxes on the Internet, and the developing nations are for it because the UN says that it's willing to send the money to help them get online faster.
There would likely be all sorts of messy consequences, starting with censorship in DNS:
France - Nazi memorabilia banned.
China - You can't use the word "Taiwan" in any domain name.
U.S.A. - All web sites of "known terrorist sympathizers" banned.
U.K. - IRA banned.
Russia - Russian dissidents (those words go together like Peanut Butter and Jelly) and Chechen rebel groups banned.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
You didn't ask me, but I'll throw out some suggestions.
How about recognizing a moral difference between legitimate, sovereign states and pseudo-states run by dictators and tyrants? The whole premise of the UN is that it puts the world's liberal democracies on exactly the same plane as oppressive police states, and that's just bogus.
Second, how about embracing the basic tenets of democracy? Right now, the UN is a completely unaccountable body. Its "legislative branch," for lack of a better term, is made up of unelected ministers and ambassadors. Its "executive branch" is comprised of career bureaucrats whose sole qualification for their position is that they were able to get themselves appointed to it. In the US, we elect our legislators directly, and all executive-branch appointments have to be approved by the Senate. There's a clear chain of accountability every step of the way. What happens if I get pissed off at the guy who's in charge of (for example) the ITU? How do I express my opinion? I can't write my Congressman. Well, I mean, I could, but there's no way he'd be able to do anything about it. Neither could my Senators. Technically the Secretary of State should be involved, but in practice, she's really not. So the UN comprises this vast, unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy. And now you're telling me that we want to give them more responsibility over things that affect our day-to-day lives? I don't think so.
The UN's purpose, above all others, is to be a sort of diplomatic sewing circle. It exists to give the diplomats of the world a place to sit around and talk things over. The minute we started giving the UN actual authority -- or, more accurately, the minute the UN started taking authority and we didn't object to it -- the body became little more than a benevolent, impotent tyranny.
...by ignoring the genocide in the Sudan whilst condemning the US's wholly legal enforcement of the UN's OWN RESOLUTIONS in Iraq.
Given the current level of scandal which plagues the UN, I think maybe-just maybe-it's time to stop trusting them.
The head of the UN human rights commission in the near past was Sudan. Meanwhile, Sudan is waging an ethnic war in its Darfur region against christian and animist peoples.
Basically, the US voted against Sudan to be nominated. Europe abstained and the 3rd world voted for Sudan.
Meanwhile, Syria can occupy Lebanon for years and nobody has a protest or complains about it. Yep, Lebanon was a christian country up-to the 1940s when it basically got immigration cleansed.
You know its all about control. And third world dictators need not be in control of DNS. They want it bad but sorry.
Then there is Rwanda and Congo but I wont get into to that...
What I do know is that none of those 13+ organizations you rattled off has been able to stop genocide in Yugoslavia or Rwanda nor have they been able to prevent the UN from being a money launderer for Saddam.
And they didn't stop the tsunami disaster - that should have been preemtively prevented like America preemted Iraq using WMDs. And of course they should have moved in right away when GWB got reelected.
But tell me, wtf does that have to do with the bloody governmence of the internet?
Has ICANN?
-- . . ramblin' . . .
Many factions of the UN are not considered allied in any place I've worked (government 3 letter agencies) - which did seem odd at first. (Not anymore though)
They are considered as just another valid target on the list, no matter how many acronyms they stick their fingers into. Parts of the beast are most definitely corrupt and frequently violent. Don't take my word for it though - google 'corruption within the united nations'
Their record is neither clean, or pleasent. I give it the same level of respect I have for amnesty international (None at all). Fabrication and lies.
No seriously - I think you should have a little chat with inmates in cuba or those quarantined in 'free speech zones'. I think there's something to be said for wresting control as something as important as the internet from a government who has so callously trodden on such ideals. Certainly they can't police themselves.
"Sanity is not statistical", George Orwell, "1984"
Everybody commits attrocities.
Jesus fuck, if that's how you lead off, I'd like a bit of assurance that you don't live within two hundred miles of me. Fuck, what's your attrocity---making cockpuppets from the neighbors' dogs?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The denigration of the UN, so mindlessly echoed by many on here, is a neocon tactic designed to set up the New American Century [newamericancentury.org]. Just look at the smearing of the IAEA (and subsequent total failure of the US to do any better). It's sad when people are so ignorant of history that they forget why the UN was created in the first place, or how Germany and Japan undermined the League of Nations as a critical part of their imperial manouevres in the 30's.
I would add to this that the neocons are neither conservative by any classic sense nor are they new. I consider myself both a progressive in mission and a conservative in methodology. The more I study however, the more I fear that my country is sliding towards a fascist style of government based on authoritarianism in both the family and the government.
People need to take a minute to think about the agenda behind this constant rubbishing of the UN. Is Empire really what Americans want? Possibly not, but there's no way of knowing: see e.g. Mike Scheuer, former head of CIA's bin Laden unit, who points out that the underlying reasons for Arab terrorism or the implications of America's continued imperial expansion are simply not part of the political dialogue in America right now.
The UN is largely a confederation of world states, which come together to negotiate treaties and develop international legal traditions (such as the Geneva Convention) and approach common problems. Nobody here has suggested, for example, that we should do away with the WHO, so it seems that everyone here agrees that the UN has a purpose and a mission.
Regarding the issue of the underlying reasons for Arab Terrorism.... Ok, I am relatively nonpartisan.... Anyway, this is a failure of the US government of which both our political parties are equally at fault. Additionally I think we need to look too at the question of the formation of an international terrorist network, how they derive their support, and what we can do about it now. People think of state sponsored terrorism because that was a standard tactic of both the US and USSR during the cold war. However a new problem has arisen which requires no sponsor. Indeed, the monster of terrorism requires only a lawless space. It thrives on injustice because this is the source of its support.
So the only solution to the problem of international terrorism is social justice and the rule of law throughout the world. I am sorry to say that Iraq has made things worse on at least one of these fronts. I think that the objecting members of the UNSC (China, France, Germany, etc.) have been largely vindicated in their judgement.
This is on-topic because people are afraid of being restrained by the UN so they want to undermine it even on this discussion board regarding something seemingly unrelated.
The UN does an excellent job at many things including common infrastructure for vaccinations, radio spectrum, etc. The functions of the IANA and ICANN would be things that they would do well with regardless of their other failures. Even the neocons^W neofascists don't argue against these functions.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Err, there can be a lot of debate regarding "what if's of WWII", but the US created the Internet. The US is responsible for the WWW. Why should anyone take away our control when it was our R&D, our money that spnosored the internet in the first place?
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Why should anyone take away our control when it was our R&D, our money that spnosored the internet in the first place?
Because you can't own ideas that you've shared with others.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.