Slashdot Mirror
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)."
The UN are becoming Hare Krishnas!
goto http://click click grunt click hiss grunt click snap snap click grunt grunt dot com.
I know the general opinion of the UN is pretty low here, ever since the UN refused to go along with American bullying in Iraq.
But putting that aside for a moment, it is hard to imagine anybody doing worse than ICANN. At least the UN won't get pushed around by corporate interestes.
ICANN doesn't do a bad enough job - so let's hand control over to a group of bickering diplomats dominated by five allies with different interests who each have the power to veto anything that they feel like. How is that a good idea? Anyone who thinks that giving the UN control over ANYTHING, in particular any form of commerce, is a fool at best.
It's not "oops, I forgot" or anything like that- it's willful disobedience to *any* kind of traffic logic. I've been to the northeast only a couple times, but I *always* see a diplomatic plate parked in some ridiculous fashion that screws over someone (a couple times that's been me).
Now, I don't know how it's relevant to the UN running this dealybob, granted...
...should the world replace the UN? It's clearly not working.
When we have a UN that is inept (various massacre/genocide issues) and corrupt (Oil for food) and cannot handle the "mission" that they set out to do. Do we really want to give them more oversight responsibility? 'nough said.
So, it's beter to be able to suppress political dissent and steal inventions?
Got it. I'll just go adjust my newspeak dictionary.
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?
Exactly why should we cede control of the net to an international body?
If the UN had wanted control over the internet, they should have subsidized it's development.
They didn't. The US government did. Now that the rest of the world is deriving a benefit from that investment, the UN thinks they're entitled to tell us how it's going to be run.
Tell them to kiss our ass!
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Meanwhile, Sudan is waging an ethnic war in its Darfur region against christian and animist peoples.
Yes, Sudan is waging war against christians and animist people in the south. But in Darfur, they are going after (non-arab) muslims.
That's not the only reason to reject the UN as the Internet governing body. They are such an overbloated, inaccessible burocracy (inaccessible to technical people, not lobbying supercorps, that is). That one of their committees would be in charge of the highly dynamic internet is a scary thought!
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Why would the US relinquish power over something and simply give it away to the UN?
As it sits, the US has a large say in the to-do of the Internet infrastructural stuff (if it is merely through a board of foot draggers). Why would anyone want to give another nation more power while surrendering its own power?
The US is the most Internet-centric country in the world. It makes business sense for the Internet's core functions to be controlled by us: we made it, we do more on it, and its in our best interest to do so.
Why would we care what Uganda or S. Somoa (or wherever) says on the matter? Let them get clean water first.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers