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)."
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).
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
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)
I vote NO on rewarding incompetence and nepotism.
:)
Always good to meet another Kerry voter...
People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this.
Have you even heard of the ITU?
They manage the radio spectrum, satellite orbits, and distress/safety stuff. The reason why you can make a phone call to China is that telcos around the world generally abide by ITU standards (technically "recommendations"). They do a bunch of other stuff too (R&D, etc.).
If anyone is to be given control over the Internet, the ITU is probably the most appropriate organization.
I think that ICANN should replace the UN!
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.
CNN
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.
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
>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 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!"
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
It's kinda hard to have UN solve anything when its biggest member:
a) is not paying its dues
b) does not want to respond to genocide w/in a year or two of its happening
c) has veto on all votes of the security council
Get a clue.
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
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...
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!"
By the "biggest member", I assume you mean the most populous: India. Or maybe China. Or maybe you mean the largest: Russia. But I suspect that you mean the country that pays 22% of the UN's budget: the US. As far as I know, our dues are completely up-to-date. What genocide are you referring to? It can't be Rwanada, Kosovo, or the Sudan. After all, according to the UN those weren't genocides. Granted, the Clinton administration's handling of Rwanda was shameful, but no less shameful than the UN (and for that matter, the EU's) handling of all three; and at least they stood up in Kosovo. Yeah, the US has a veto. Let's look at the current genocide in the Sudan, who's blocking action on that? I'll give you a hint: it's not the one power that has actually come out and said that crimes in the Sudan ARE genocide. Try France, Russia, and China. Of course, I'm sure it has nothing to do with their oil intrests - only the US is interested in oil! "Get a clue." People in glass houses... By the way, your earlier "insighful" post makes the claim that spam was "entirely" invented in the US. Maybe. But if the US has that as a strike against it, do we get credit for other inventions? Like for instance, the Internet? Or the UN? Look, the UN has it's good points and it's bad points. Frankly, I don't think it would be a good organization to manage the registry. (The ITU makes more sense.) They do a lot of good in the world, but they have SERIOUS problems. Trying to pass the buck to the US, who is one of 188 member nations, and 1 of 5 veto-weilding security council members, doesn't do anyone any good. In fact, the main problem the UN has is that it's not accountable to anyone.
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' . . .
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
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.
[..] 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.