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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 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.
Rich spammers get the packets, developing nations get some food, and UN bureaucrats get a fat payoff.
Yeah, that's the ticket. Time to bone up on my French.
ICANN was also still in a confusing semi-democratic phase at the time (this seems to be steadily decreasing) and also weirdly self-imploding. Ester Dyson also gave the most contentless speech I think I have ever heard - no doubt to ensure minimum offense to anyone in the audience.
As with all these things wheels within wheels... but I do wish the call for some form of ICANN democracy would renew rather than lose it to a not very democratic body (i.e. the ITU) or to the corporations (kinda where it is now).
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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.
Well, if the UN can manage CEB, CTBTO, ECA, ECE, ECLAC, ESCAP, ESCWA, FAO, UNCTAD, HLCM, MA HREF="http://ceb.unsystem.org/hlcp/default.htm">HL CP, IACSD, IANWGE, IAPSO, 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?
Honestly, I think that this is just going to turn into a big OFF-bashing thread.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
The first problem is that they are hardly open. They charge a LOT for any of their documentation, which is split into many, many books. Unless you start off as rich as Bill Gates, you're unlikely to ever get enough of the texts to actually know what the standard even is.
The second is that they operate in a manner that resembles a medieval court. I half expect to see things by them with a royal seal and a coat of arms.
I have a much, much better idea and it's cheap. Let me run it. I would do a lot better job than either ICANN (ICAN'T) or the UN ever could. Given that most DNS servers cache, and therefore the actual throughput to replicate any top-level changes would be relatively low, I wouldn't need much more bandwidth than I already have.
(How much bandwidth do you need, when changes can take days to get anywhere? And how fast does the top-level domain change, anyway? I didn't know they added TLD extensions on a daily basis. Most of the actual domain names registered are registered with registrars lower down the heirarchy.)
If the DNS system switched from tree to grid, which it easily could and partially has, then a central administration system has nothing to do. Which is fine with me, if someone takes me seriously and gives me the job. Hey, I've no problem with world Governments paying me to do nothing, the way they do with Microsoft.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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.
I think that ICANN should replace the UN!
from the gold-medal-in-arrogance dept.
Say what? I don't know what this tagline is supposed to mean. Does it refer to ICANN or the UN? If this was directed at the UN, they are many things, but arrogant is not one of them. I know the average US citizen has been turned against them by the media portrayal, but this is a bit too much.
Anyways, the idea that an international body handle internation communication is not new, as pointed to by the the ITU already in place.
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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
Did you read the summary? They're not suggesting that the General Assembly vote on everything. They specifically mentioned the ITU, which already manages all kinds of technical stuff internationally: satellite orbits, radio spectrum, telecommunications interoperability, etc.
Let's take away control of the Internet from the corrupt, unaccountable, undemocratic, hopelessly bureaucratic organization that controls it today so we can make sure it's controlled by ...
Oh, you said the UN?
Nevermind.
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/
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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.
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Um, Oil-for-Food, forced prostitution rings in the Balkans, rape in the Congo, Ruud Lubbers sexually harrasing his colleagues, thousands of unpaid parking tickets issued to diplomatic vehicles in NYC every year, inaction in Sudan, Syria on the human rights committee... Should I continue?
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 EllenbergerThe Oil for Food program was overseen by the security council. The security council has five permanent members: France, Great Britain, China, Russia, and The United States. The security council bears ultimate responsbility for any scandal connected with Oil for Food; Kofi Annan, and the rest of the U.N, had next to nothing to do with it.
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-- Pablo Picasso
Another 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.
The UN is going the way of the League of Nations, nobody (particularly the USA) listens to them, their bureaucracy has bloated any potential for use they might have had.
Handing anything over to the UN is just asking it to be poorly managed by more people than could ever be needed to manage a particular task, and then to be delegated over repeatedly, until all sides are happy. Which, obviously will never happen and 1 side will just start ignoring them and doing what they like, which is an alarming trend as of late.
As is the case in Iraq and Sudan as of late, the nations that helped found the UN based on the League of Nations lack of authority, don't even listen to the UN, why put anything else under the jurisdiction of a useless entity?
Their only goal seems to be expand its bloat and watch and comment on the atrocities it's supposed to prevent, I for one am sick of international organizations that don't even stand up for themselves when they are trampled over again, and again.
The UN will go the way of the League of Nations, even though we all know it already has. Peacekeepers hiring prostitutes in Congo, people in Sudan starving to death, unchecked war in Iraq, and soon I'm sure war in another country with brown people in it, and hopefully some natural resources, yeehaw!
[cx]
Dear U.N.,
No.
Signed,
- Everyone
Seriously, though, the U.N.? I'm all for internationalization, and I believe working with the global community is a very good idea, especially in the long run, but the U.N.? No. Maybe someone who has their act together. But not the U.N. As much as I get angry with my own government, at least I can rest easy at night knowing we don't pay any attention to the U.N. at all.
United Nations: 9/10 as an idea, 2/10 in implementation.
There's a fine line here. The ITU does some wonderful things by setting standards so that different phone systems can connect to each other. They DO NOT regulate or control the content of the conversations that go over the phone systems because the several sovereign states of the world have not given ITU regulatory or police authority over telephones.
Similarly, under an ITU-like UN structure, the UN Internet task group may do fun things that disturb ARIN, Internic et al, but they will have no influence whatsoever over spam, because that is content, not infrastructure. Trying to de-spam the Internet with a UN body is like trying to do spam filtering at layer 2...
Admittedly, a greater international influence at W3C would make dealing with double-byte languages easier in the future.
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What is the relevance of any of these organizations to the Internet and orginization and management of Domain Names? I think it is a field they should stay away from since they should be more concerned with world politics at this point. Besides, there is no problem with ICANN as of now, its perfectly functional! So why change ownership?
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ICANN is useless - if you get a domain name stolen or some crooked registrar like DomainMonkeys/TotalNIC locks your domain name, then ICANN are no help unless you pay them $7000 to "asses the situation" (i.e. that 7k does not guarantee your domain back).
If ICANN can't remove a crooked registrar's accreditation or get back stolen domains for you, what use are they?
As a charitable organisation, they seem pretty good at taking your money for doing nothing....
#include <sig.h>
You never hear the small, positive stories. The media want to see blood. It sells.
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.
Could we just get rid of the centralized domain name system? Could we get rid of domain names all-together? Perhaps a search function like Google could make these names obsolete, and we can avoid the politics.
My technical knowledge is littile, so I'd appreciate any thoughts you guys have.
"eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" Wendell
He did provide information about those organizations, or are you afraid of hyperlinks? The UN doesn't have much military power because it depends on each country to allocate the resources for each mission. The USA, having such a large military force (that often uses in a para-UN way), shouldn't be complaining about the UN lacking military resources. Not to mention it's sad seeing the US complaining about the UN favouring Saddam, when the US itself helped him so much. Who gave him WMDs to use against Iran?
>How about you start by telling us what the heck any of these organizations actually do
l e_on_4/42 16853.stm
You see, there are these magical things called "links". How about you learn the spell for following them?
> Rwanda
Yeah, and when the UN didn't step in, the US stepped right in and took care of things, right? Oh yeah... we were completely ineffective there too.
> money launderer for Saddam.
As if we've done any better:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/fi
BTW, do you know what body of the UN had the authority to block contracts under OFF? It was the Security Council, and it only took one member to act.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
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.
While I'd like some objective arguments about moving against ICANN you arguments hold up almost as well as a bag of moist sewage.
1st ammendment: Well, its an ammendment, not a supernatural right set in stone, more of an afterthought/clarification. Does it ensure free speech (fire theater argument etc) hell no! It ensures you can say what you want after expecting someone can sueue you (if its personal) or if its against a corporation or the government you're up for a prison sentence if you cannot pay the legal fees to support your supposed freedom of speech. Perhaps some DMCA legislation could lead up to further ammendments of this ammendment. There is a whole load of "freedom of speech" illegal in the USA which is legal in other countries. Choosing which is 'correct' is hard indeed there is no common standard. Would the US would gain if it was given laxer freedoms? - probably. At the moment it has some of _the_ tightest copyright/DMCA-type and free speech restriction legislation in the world. The UN tends to go for the legislation weakest in enforcability rather than the strongest, hence its ineffectiveness at times of hard-judgement but also hence its acceptance amongst almost all world nations (prefer a despot you know or one you don't?).
But then again media networks and money-grubbing corporates would be quick to sponsor and advertise scorn on the idea lest profits be taken away from them and consumers spared anti-competitive businesses. So people are anti-UN. Makes sense really.
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.
After reading their web pages:
CEB: I still have no idea what they do. I am guessing this is where high level coordination occurs.
CTBTO: Looks good. I want to see a comprehensive nuclear test ban too, but I am sure the Bush supporters won't like it.
ECA, ECE, ESCAP, ECLAC, ESCWA: These are regional commissions for economic issues regarding regions.
FAO: Food and Agriculture Organization
UNCTAD, IACSD: Sustainability of human development.
HLCM, HLCP: coordination organizations.
IANWGE: Work on promoting gender equality
IAPSO: Procurement for other UN offices.
Note that many of these are support organizations for those who go out and do the real work. Others work on solving economic and social problems.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Sure, continue on, but next time be more statistically valid. Picking out incidents from an entity is not valid; I could equally point to a hundred major scandals in the US from the past decade. A more fair method is to pick organizations in a deterministic fashion (i.e., no hunt-and-peck), and then look at their records.
But, hey, for the heck of it, lets look at your list (feel free to add more!)
> Oil-for-Food
OFF "leaked" by 2-4 billion$ (the other money was from oil smuggling, which never was under the jurisdiction of OFF). US reconstruction money (largely Iraqi oil profits) leaked by 9B$, when dealing with a smaller total. Net result: UN handled money better.
> forced prostitution rings in the Balkans
Perhaps you're confusing NATO with UN? Italian NATO peacekeepers were accused by the Spanish Secret Service of running a prostitution ring. Also, DynCorp (A private US company) was involved in a prostition-ring there; members even filmed the rape of a young girl.
> rape in the Congo
Yes, of the 11,000 UN troops in the congo, there were 150 allegations of rape against about a dozen troops. This is, percentage-wise, about on par with accusations against US troops by Vietnamese during the Vietnam war. And like we have any right to talk after Abu Ghraib and the recently exposed Guantamo details.
> Ruud Lubbers sexually harrasing his colleagues,
Sexual harassment? That's the worst you can come up with? I think you need to have a talk with Janis Karpinski about that in the US. Or perhaps talk with the >60% of female US soldiers who experienced sexual harassment, and the >30% of female US soldiers who experienced rape or attempted rape by their fellow soldiers, over the course of their military careers. 19% of women at the Air Force Academy were raped during their stay; 81% were too afraid to report the rape, and 42% of those who did experienced retaliation for doing so. I could go on and on, on this front.
> thousands of unpaid parking tickets issued to diplomatic vehicles in NYC every year,
*Unpaid Parking Tickets*? Please tell me that I just hallucinated you writing that...
> inaction in Sudan,
Naturally, the US stepped right up to take their place, right? Oh yeah, that's right, we were the leading cause of UN inaction on this front.
> Syria on the human rights committee...
Yes, everyone gets a chance. Like the US is one to speak with Guantanamo, Baghram, Abu Ghraib, Shebargham, and its policy of extrordinary rendition, especially to the very country you just named.
> Should I continue?
Please do. What's next - jay walking?
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
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
the culture of corruption is so rampant at the UN that no one nation, even the US, can overcome it. The other members of the security council were happy to block any serious investigation of the program when it was in place; top officals in France and Russia were receiving millions, too. The inevitable result of "one nation, one vote" when many of the nations are corrupt oligarchies or dictatorships is still more corruption. It's like working in a committee when a solid majority of the members are out to actively subvert the process.
Mark Steyn has it right:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?x
Oh come on. If you could get off without paying parking tickets, you would, don't lie!
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Rwanda
Yeah, and when the UN didn't step in, the US stepped right in and took care of things, right? Oh yeah... we were completely ineffective there too.
Um, you know, the UN did step in in Rwanda. The complaint against them is that they didn't accomplish anything -- if anything, they made matters worse by attracting people to safe-zones that turned out not to be safe.
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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???
True. If by funny you mean the sort of joke that makes you want to throw up... and let's not forget that the CIA under Reagan was the primary organizing force behind the Afghan mujahedin, including certain terrorists of recent renown.
The denigration of the UN, so mindlessly echoed by many on here, is a neocon tactic designed to set up the New American Century. 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.
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.
As for bureaucracy, I've worked in many US govt labs and the idea that America is somehow less bureaucratic is another of those jokes that makes you want to hurl. People, turn off your TV, it's lying to you...
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.
Darfur Crisis Causes U.S. To Stumble Over Opposition To International Court" U.S. Stubborn On Sudan
The basic problem is that the US doesn't want to back up the ICC (which the Bush administration opposes). Thankfully the administration is now supporting a security force (they weren't when the majority of the crimes were being committed), and this year is leading the effort to help get peacekeepers there. They're still causing rifts by trying to keep the ICC out of it, though.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
FGI yourself next time.
m il itary-rape.html
http://www.uiowa.edu/~ournews/2003/march/031103
This isn't the same study that I encountered before (they got a higher % of sexual harassment in this one), but the results are quite similar.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
Hmmm... as do yours...
Everybody commits attrocities. However there is an increasing trend for UN troops and the corporations that act as support mechanisms for these troops to perform attrocities in hostile situations that are comparable to the situation that encouraged joe public to support such gross action in the first place.
Unfortunately for internation opinion of the US; most of the world associates UN actions with the US... they do afterall provide a large number of the troops to these 'hotspots'. And often there appears to be some tangible conspiracy theory behind such actions.
The moral really should be similar to that of the failed League of Nations... keep out of everybodies business... unless its your business. In which case ask nicely that they stop.
Firstly, I don't want to increase my knowledge of the facts, ignorance is bliss. Secondly... was I supposed to explain something?
Also your double negative reads poorly; I would have written similar to: "Your reply betrays your ignorance of the facts and fails to explain..."
I think my point is that the UN shouldn't be responsible for stopping cyber-crime...
Wow, you might have a point. That's the exact same thing I hear from soldiers that are returning from Iraq. There's actually a lot of positive news, but the netwroks don't care about reporting it.
Just be careful what you wish for. You might get it.
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?
No.
That's the short reply. Long version: the UN, as evidenced by the oil-for-food scandal and their attempts to impose a tax on the U.S., is a corrupt organization of politicos bent on controlling everything - not unlike the American government, really.
The trouble is, the UN wants to make everything a bureaucratic struggle, such as in Darfur, and that bureaucracy would strangle the organization of the Internet.
More often than not, decentralization works better than centralization -- smaller businesses tend not to abuse their customers as much as big businesses do, smaller governments tend not to abuse their people as much as bigger governments do, and so on. It's a matter of accountability - like with the problem of increasing numbers of managers over one's head back at the office, increasing the number of "official" overseers only bogs down efficiency. Let the customers of an organization or individual be the real overseers (as is the case currently w/ ICANN) - this is a decentralizing move.
Hence, in the name of decentralization, in the name of not being tied up in corruption (at least as much of it as the UN clearly is), in the name of efficiency -- I would argue that leaving ICANN in its current position is better than putting it under the wing of the UN.
(Note to knee-jerk UN defenders: the UN has its place as a means of mediating conflicts between nations and smoothing things over; as a forum for foreign relations. But we should all be worried when it starts interfering with the sovereignty of any nation, whether that nation is ours or not.)
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Has ICANN?
-- . . ramblin' . . .
Did ICANN?
This hardly seems a relevent argument in the context of the proposal.
Most of what the UN does is utilitarian stuff, like ITU creating standards or the WHO stomping on disease outbreaks. It all ticks along quietly because it's a long way from the politicians.
On the other hand most of the things the UN gets criticism for are either clearly outside it's power (how could the UN, which has no armed forces, have prevented genocide in Rwanda? Sent in some clerks to threaten everyone with really bad paper cuts?), or political schemes which were never supposed to work (eg oil for food, which was a propoganda tool for the western nations who set up the sanctions on Iraq, and so was immune to any kind of oversight, audit or normal management until it's propoganda use was over, it's supprising it wasn't a lot more corrupt than it was).
Like the EU, one of the main purposes of the UN is to be a front behind which governments can do things they can't be seen to do directly. The upside is that it's existance for that purpose means that some useful stuff gets done too.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
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
I wonder if they would come out with useless new TLD's like .Microsoft
Think how easy that would be to filter out.
May I ask you to reconsider the word "useless" ?
Need Mercedes parts ?
UN staff don't get diplomatic plates (unless Kofi Annan does). Those are ambassadorial staff, direct employees of foreign nations; the UN has no control over them. Same thing happens in every capital city in the world.
You have it backwards. So long as one country is "in control" they actually have essentially no power to globally impose "what is not acceptable in the Internet". There is no way in hell the rest of the world is going to actually submit to any system where the US can keep the EU from hosting "patented" GPL software, no way the US can keep the Netherlands from hosting 16 year old porn, no way the US can keep Ziare from hosting DeCSS.
...well... the US and US and several other countries will cheerfully jump on board. Any country that resists Trusted Computing would be physically incapable of accessing the global network. The Trust system locks out any non-compliant connection. And it would be "the locked-out country's fault" becuase they were non-compliant with the global standard.
The very REASON there is support by powerful elements inside the US to turn "control" of the internet over to the UN IS TO BE ABLE TO GLOBALLY IMPOSE RULES AND RESTRICTIONS. If some attempted change ot rule or restriction came out of the US it would be "imperialism" and fail. If some change or rule or restriction comes out of the UN, well then it is a "Golbal Treaty" and governments are almost obligated to jump on board. It also becomes very possible for a majority of compliant countries to declare that treaty compliance is a condition for some country to receive an international network connection. According to the treaty the US and EU and other compliant countries would cut off any non-compliant country from the global network.
If the US attempts to impose Trusted Computing on the world, that is "imperialism" and no one will stand for it. If the UN decides on Trusted Computing standards for the Global network
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
"In 1947, after the Second World War, ITU held a conference in Atlantic City with the aim of developing and modernizing the organization. Under an agreement with the newly created United Nations, it became a UN specialized agency on 15 October 1947, and the headquarters of the organization were transferred in 1948 from Bern to Geneva."
It's tragic (and deeply dishonest) the way UN-bashing (Kyoto-bashing, ICC-bashing...) is becoming a hackneyed tool of American unilateralists and imperialists seeking to justify their arrogant disregard for the rest of the world. So much is being lost through one nation abusing its unbalanced position of power in the world.
Had control of Europe gave it back. Had control of England or could have gave it back.
:)
By 'Europe', what precisely do you mean? The sum total of the nations of the European continent? To review (it's so important to be clear about these things), those countries are:
Northern Europe: Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, UK
Eastern Europe: Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, and Ukraine
Southern Europe: Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegowina, Croatia, Cyprus, Gibraltar,Greece, Holy See, Italy, Macedonia, Malta, Portugal, San Marino, Serbia and Montenegro (former Yugoslavia), Slovenia, Spain, and Turkey
Western Europe: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Switzerland
Unless you can point to the time when the US was in control of all the above, I guess your definition of Europe just doesn't coincide with geography. Possibly you meant western Europe, but the existence of (neutral) Switzerland rather rules this out. Or possibly you meant 'Old Europe', which translates into 'France and Germany'.
If this is what you meant, I'll just point out that in the final analysis, Germany was only partly under US control. Thus the splitting of the country into two, the Berlin Wall, East Germany, Checkpoint Charlie, Stasi and all the other features of living on the edge of the Iron Curtain that fortunately have now passed into nostalgia. And as for France, you'll notice that at liberation, de Gaulle rather took political control of the situation before anybody got around to establishing an Allied Military Government for Occupied Territories; the World Bank did hold the purse-strings for reconstruction, so I suppose that's control of a kind, but not really what you had in mind.
As for had control of England or could have gave it back, I think you're reaching quite a bit there. Probably better to tone down the claims to had partial control of various European countries, gave it back, or indeed not to rant about control at all, which would certainly improve matters.
And a couple more points: suggesting that Germany is unhappy that the cold war is over... well, you must be thinking of a different Germany. Imagine having to apply for permission papers to visit your relatives, who only live ten miles away. Imagine living on the front line. Germans don't have to imagine either; they know how it feels, thanks. Some Germans miss communism, but I haven't met a single one who misses the cold war.
As for steamrolling Russia, hah, you seem to have forgotten about the nuclear deterrent, or the scale of the Soviet Union, or both. Even without the nukes problem, plenty of nutcases have tried and failed in the task of invading Russia.
So in summary: history (and geography) is more complicated than you make it sound. It's also more complicated than 'the US caused all the evil in the world', so I can see your point about being sick of lets take a stab at the US to some how validate their argument tactics. But there's little point in 'taking a stab at Europe to some how validate' your defensiveness, either
Ahh, the powers of self-delusion. If the US tried to do the whole "global domination" thing, back in '45, what we'd have is an Iron Curtain significantly more to the West. The Red Army, marching forward ever since Hitler's botch in taking Moscow, was all but unstoppable -- if the US had shown any kind of imperialistic ambitions, Stalin would have just plowed on until he reached Normandy... Unlike the Nazis, the Reds were fully stocked, and they numbered in the millions.
Stalin himself was an evil man. No one disputes this. However, his successors as chairmen were significantly more reasonable than him -- Gorbachev was, at any rate, a much more reasonable character than his actor counterpart, who sold weapons to the Iraqi, to the counterrevolutionaries in Iran and Nicaragua, etc. Comparing the "Final Solution" Nazis favorably to them is insulting the troops who fought and died to storm the concentration camps (most of which were Russian!)
The Russians still had most of their operating capacity. If the US hadn't poured money to rebuild Western Europe, the Soviets would have... and then Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Norway would be the last bastions of Capitalism in Europe. Same thing with China. The US simply wasn't quick enough with the dough to save Chiang Kai-shek's government from the Communists, but was able to avoid that fate for Japan. Don't believe for a moment the Marshall Plan was carried out due to charity on Truman's part...
Please share some of that weed you're having. Wake up and smell the coffee -- the Internet is an INTERNATIONAL venture; even if you don't venture beyond the English-language part of it, there's still plenty of it outside of the US (.uk and .au, for example, are linked frequently here in Slashdot). It makes sense that the IANA an the ICANN, which provide a service to THE WHOLE WORLD, not be under the aegis of US law. It's undue (yes, undue) privilege to the US.
Putting ICANN under the UN is a VERY bad idea, as they would have no ability to resolve disputes with any legal validity. A unilaterally authority is better than none.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
[..] none of those 13+ organizations you rattled off has been able to stop genocide in [..]
You never hear the small, positive stories. The media want to see blood. It sells.
Nothing happens unless there is a UN member or a coalition of UN members that has the means and the willingness to interfere. Other countries than the US do take on missions if they feel they have the means to pull it off.
What about France on the Ivory Coast? A quote:
"Without France, we would find ourselves in a second Rwanda," claimed Ibrahim Coulibaly, one of the rebels who took control of the north in September 2002, in an interview with Courrier International (Nov 17).
Or the UNMEE force in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where the Netherlands and Canada initially volunteered, but only after explicit assurances by the US through the media that they could call in US air support from bases in Saudi Arabia if needed. The force now mostly consists of troops from India, Jordania, and Kenya.
65,000 UN soldiers (excluding forces like the French one on the Ivory Coast) are currently serving in 16 UN operations worldwide, and most of those are succesful.
Srebrenica is a good example of what happens if you are willing but do not really have the means to pull it off yourself (and your 'ally' the US is secretly arming the side you are supposed to disarm according to your UN mandate). The Netherlands' force mistakenly assumed it could rely on air support by allies if needed, and the small force didn't have the means to take out Serbian tanks. The Serbs blocked munitions and arms supplies over the road for months before they attacked the enclave.
The US is the only country with a network of air force bases all over the world, and even the US would probably have had problems providing sufficient air lift and air support quickly in Rwanda. For smaller countries involvement in Rwanda could only have ended in embarassment.
All of this has hardly any bearing on the functioning of the UN bureaucracy. It is about cynical international diplomacy.
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
I don't even know where to begin... it is precisely this hathotic attitude that justifies the US not getting invovled with the ICC. Instead of going after North Korea, Somalia, and Sudan, the ICC is going to go after the United States and then when it's done it will disband.
hatotic: Feelings of pleasure derived from hating someone or something. Also my new word of the day.
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.