Governing the Internet Report Released

An anonymous reader writes "After the speculation on earlier this week, the Working Group of Internet Governance (aka the United Nations attempt to govern the Internet) has just released their much anticipated report. News coverage and a helpful summary point to the four options on the table and the likely outcome in the months leading up to a final conference in Tunisia in November."

Comments

Already prepared to take over?

[hkmwbz]

I'm not very informed about this, but have they set up a group to take over, even before the US has agreed to giving up control?

Re:Already prepared to take over?

[Smidge204]

To be perfectly honest, having the internet run by a group where most of the members don't have much of a technology infastructure isn't very comforting either.

Shit, some don't even have running water for most of their population, let alone electricity.
=Smidge=

Re:Already prepared to take over?

[caluml]

even before the US has agreed to giving up control?

Pretty hard to avoid "giving up control" if everyone around the world starts using different root servers. It's like talking about Google refusing to give up controlling the search engine market. Only because people use it do they have control.

Re:Already prepared to take over?

[hcob$]

Ok, how bout a little analogy. The rich man and his wife were riding in a nice cart with 4 well bred horses. They were going along delivering goods, minding the horses, maintaining the wagon. The rest of the town sees this and thinks: "wow, thats nice. I like that." Then as time goes on, the city council likes the way the man and his wife are doing things, espescially since everyone is clammoring for their goods. So the City council says "Hey, why don't you let us drive the cart. Oh, and we'll tax everyone who uses it." The man replies that he wouldn't like that at all. So the City council meets and decideds on a course of action. One day they attack. The turn over the cart, burn it, kill the horses, rape the woman, and drown the man. Now they build a cart with about 25 people conversing on how to build it and it works. However, it takes 10 million to repair and if it fails once.... everyone in the town has to have a meeting to talk babout how to fix it.

Re:Already prepared to take over?

[donscarletti]

Here's a better analogy: a rich country was using a nice network with well bred routers. They were going about, transferring data, maintaining the network. The rest of the world says "wow, thats nice. I like that." Then as time goes on the world attaches their networks to it and it all works very nicely as a single giant network owned by many people but run by the country. Then the rich country lets one of its appointed custodians do stupid things, like redirecting all non-existing .com to a dumb search page. So the UN says "hey, why don't you let us look after your network as well as everyone else's because more people trust us?. The country replies that it wouldn't like that at all. So the UN meets to decide on a course of action, and of cause inevitably they will still be deciding on a course of action because the UN can't really agree on anything properly.

Re:Already prepared to take over?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

One day they attack. The turn over the cart, burn it, kill the horses, rape the woman, and drown the man.

This is a very good analogy indeed! Why, how accurately and wisely does it cover the brutal war the UN has waged on the US, the tank battles near Houston, the nuking of Atlanta, and the poignient ruins of the White House smouldering even now! And the rape analogy! Whoooweee! Brilliant! That probably refers to the mass execution by the Canadian forces, under the command of a Chinese general of the orphans near Minneapolis, no?

How about this analogy:

---

There is a rich man who pays a hermit to experiment with stuff.

One day the hermit discovers the telephone. He sets up the first exchange and people are starting to use the new invention.

Before long the whole town is using it. The discussion turns to ways of assigning phone numbers and emergency services and what not.

But then the rich man waltzes in and says: "You peons have no right to be doing any of this, I own the telephone, the wires, the exchange, and the very idea of people talking to each other, its all mine!".

The town at first, politely, tries to point out that while indeed, the rich man was instrumental in the discovery, as he financed it, the thing is now a part of the knowledge of humanity and he cant simply demand it back.

The rich man, being an arrogant ass, is not convinced in the slightest. He wants all of the phone system to be run from his estate and he will decide all the important things, such as who gets the phone numbers, and who are to be cut off should they be "uppity" and "disrespectful", and whose conversations are to be tapped to make sure that he is not involved in some religions the man does not approve of.

The town organizes a town hall, and after much deliberation decides to move parts of the exchange from the hermit's house to the town hall (even though the hermit has operated it flawlessly) because the hermit's house is on the crazy rich man's estate and they are afraid one day the maniac will just come in with his butler and pull the plug on people he does not like. This fear is compounded by the fact that the man just recently attacked his neighbour and burned down his house "pre-emptively", claiming he had a dream that the neighbour will strangle him in his sleep.

The story would not be complete without the stable boy of the rich man, who enamoured with his master, wrties an alegory, which he nails to the barn door, decrying the "rape" and "murder", "perpetrated" on his master (and which is full of horses and horse manure which the stable boy loves). The alegory starts with:

" Ok, how bout a little analogy. The rich man and his wife were riding in a nice cart with 4 well bred horses ..."

Re:Already prepared to take over?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

The townsfolk are free to build their own exchange.

Which is precisely what is being discussed. Noone is talking about taking over the servers paid-for by the US. UN is about to buy their own and run them if they need to, but even more mundanely, they are merely discussing the process of assigning the IP addresses and names, which is exactly euivalent to the work the ITU has been doing with international phone numbers.

This does not stop however the "UN is World Government is the Coming of the Beast!" types from running around screeching about "rape" and "murder" with arms flailing.

The four options...

[Guppy06]

... from TF summary:

1. ICANN stays but the governmental role changes through the creation of a Governmental Internet Council. The GIC replaces the GAC and assumes the role currently held by the U.S. Department of Commerce in ICANN oversight. There are advisory roles envisioned for the private sector and civil society.
2. No need for oversight organization. Stronger GAC and creation of international forum for discussion of Internet issues.
3. Creation of International Internet Council that would assume responsibility for the Internet governance issues that arise on the national level. ICANN's mandate would need to be altered based on the development of the IIC.
4. Start from scratch by creating a World Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers as well as a Global Internet Policy Council.

Personally, I'm wary of the first option's reference to roles for "private sector" and "civil society." I have a hard time not reading "private sector" as "Microsoft" and "civil society" as "political lobbyists."

Re:The four options...

[saider]

This is NOT about the UN looking out for the best interests of the world population. This is NOT about liberating the internet from the evil Americans. This will NOT impact censorship or any freedoms that we enjoy on the internet.

This is about the UN trying to get control and power where they currently have none. They want this power so that they can be more like a government. The problem is, they are a treaty organization, not a government. They are not elected. They are not accountable to the people they want to govern.

Please stop trying to make the UN into a world government. It is nothing more than a forum for countries to discuss their issues and posture on the international stage. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re:The four options...

[lovebyte]

The United States developed the internet, with many large investments (DARPA etc.), and now we are expected to just give it up?
Well, the scots created the TV, give up your cable network now!
The United States has perhaps the most to lose, economically, if the internet were to "go down(whatever that means)"
Every country has something to lose.
The universal access tax scares me. You don't need a tinfoil hat to see why a worldwide tax is a bad idea and an awful precedent.
Don't you pay now to get an internet address? What's the difference with a tax?
The internet has become a security issue- Aside from all the defense networks etc, we need to be able to keep tabs on extremist groups on the web, note that there is a widely circulating how to video about how to cause the most damage with a b#mb on a bus.
Somehow I expected the terrorist issue to be raised! It's irrelevent to the subject of ICANN
As popular as "America is an Imperialist" sentiment has become, we still believe in freedom of speech. What happens when China decides that no one should use the word democracy? What happens when France decides that the word Nazi can't be used
What has this got to do with domain names?
Just some thoughts.
You managed to mention terrorists AND nazis. Congratulations.

Re:The four options...

[SatanicPuppy]

A lot of countries invested a lot in the internet, and, at this point, the Master Domain Servers could be replicated by any country with a moderate amount of knowhow. That's a simple fact.

A lot of countries have a lot to lose. Putting control of something in the hands of the people who have the most to lose is a bad idea.

There is already a universal tax. It's called a "Registration Fee".

There is nothing stopping us from keeping the same tabs on extremists. It's like you think the internet is in a building somewhere. All we control are ten or so big domain servers. And, if you want to google "How to build a Nuclear Bomb" you'll find plenty of video on that. Not like Terrorists need the internet to figure out how to bomb a bus. They do have a bit of experience.

China != the UN. We may "believe" in free speech, but the surest way to make sure it stays free is to make sure that no one entity has complete control over it.

Just my opinion.

Re:The four options...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The United States developed the internet, with many large investments (DARPA etc.), and now we are expected to just give it up?

You may not even realise it, but the thinking exemplified by the above quote is exactly the reason the international community is so wary of leaving the US with any controlling interest in the Internet at all.

The US did not create the Internet. It may have played a larger part in some aspects than other countries, but it is neither responsible for all of the technological innovation, nor for even the majority of the investment, nor for keeping it running as it stands today. The fact that ICANN and its overlords are effectively US-government-controlled is an anomaly, not the norm.

The current US administration has demonstrated a great willingness to interfere in the affairs of foreign nations economically, legislatively and even militarily, essentially to further its own economic interests. This doesn't exactly engender trust on the part of those nationss' governments, and you can't really be surprised that they don't trust the US to "do the right thing" any more.

Re:The four options...

[QuickFox]

I recognize that the rest of the world makes a valuable contribution to the internet, however:
The United States developed the internet, with many large investments (DARPA etc.), and now we are expected to just give it up?

Europe invented and developed the wheel. Clearly your cars and roads belong to Europe.

Stop cooking right now, Africa invented the fire.

Clearly we need an international patent system, so that each country can hoard and control its own inventions.

What happens when China decides that no one should use the word democracy? What happens when France decides that the word Nazi can't be used?

International collaboration through organizations such as the International Telecommunication Union must be brought to an end immediately. What if China decides that no one should use the word democracy on the phone? What happens when France decides that the word Nazi can't be used on the phone?

Note that the names and numbers that would be assigned correspond to the international country codes for telephone. For China to censor your Internet usage they'd have to invade your country, just like they'd have to do for censoring your use of the telephone. It's the same thing.

One question. If the root servers and the assignment of TLDs and numbers were controlled by Europe, would you like it to stay that way? Or would you, maybe, perhaps, want the US to have some part in it?

-- The price of eternal vigilance is a dollar a day and half an hour of your time.
Carefully choose a responsible newspaper. Support it, read it, write to it.
Do your part.

Re:The four options...

[Guppy06]

" we still believe in freedom of speech."Unless

• The FCC is involved,
• a public library is involved,
• The Supreme Court of the United States has decided that what you're saying doesn't count as speech, or
• a moneyed interest (Mattel, Church of Scientology) declares your speech to be libelous.

Re:The four options...

[Gorath99]

I recognize that the colonists make a valuable contribution to the new world, however:
The British developed North America, with many large investments (buying New York from the Dutch etc.), and now we are expected to just give it up?
The British empire has perhaps the most to lose, economically, if the new world were to "go down(whatever that means)"
No taxation without representation scares me. You don't need a tinfoil hat to see why no taxation without representation is a bad idea and an awful precedent.
The new world has become a security issue- Aside from all the defense networks etc, we need to be able to keep tabs on extremist groups in the new world, note that there is a widely circulating how to pamphlet about how to cause the most damage with a b#mb on a coach.
As popular as "Britain is an Imperialist" sentiment has become, we still believe in freedom of speech. What happens when New York decides that no one should use the word teatime? What happens when Boston decides that the words Your Majesty can't be used?
Just some thoughts.

Re:The four options...

[tkrotchko]

"Don't you pay now to get an internet address? What's the difference with a tax?"

Lots of little things, but a few big things:

1) Nobody "taxes" me now to get on the internet. I think you're being to generous to the U.N. I think they're talking about taxing everybody on the internet.

2) That would be a huge precedent in the U.S. to allow an access tax for internet service. Its a bad precedent since I would have no way to advice my representative about the best use of the money.

For example, I can easily call my senators and representative on matters that I care about (and I have sent letters and called them). How do I go about complaining to my U.N. rep about an internet tax? In fact, how do I get to vote on them?

You do remember the Boston Tea Party and why those guys dumped the tea overboard right?

Re:The four options...

[badasscat]

Considering that the present United States is itself a colony of people from all over the world, your point is a bit moot. The internet transcends geographic boundaries and the control must be international.

The United States is not a "colony of people from all over the world". The vast majority of Americans were born here.

I realize what you were trying to say, but does it really have any bearing whatsoever on the discussion to know, for example, that one of the inventors of the internet has ancestors that came over on the Mayflower hundreds of years ago? Talk about moot.

The UN could make a fresh beginning and make the internet really secure.

And on what record do you base this assumption? The UN has not done a whole hell of a lot lately to keep the world secure.

The US hasn't either, but the difference is in 3 years George Bush will be gone, but the UN will still be around bickering amongst itself and just generally doing nothing. I'd put my bets on the US any day, for the long term.

Besides, it's worth remembering that the internet was created as a US defense department program to guard against a nuclear attack. Asking the US to give it up is really no different than asking us to hand over the plans to the B-2 bomber to the UN - it just ain't gonna happen. It is a national security issue.

If the rest of the world wants its own internet under the auspices of the UN, let them develop it. In the meantime, the US has never done anything to restrict the growth of the current US-controlled system, so why complain? I see no reason why we should have to give something up simply because other people want it - has the rest of the world just become the equivalent of a spoiled child?

Re:The four options...

[mckyj57]

The US did not create the Internet.

Presuming you have enough language skill to know that "create" is not equal to
"develop, nurture, and improve", which country did create it?

The US created the the Internet, and there is no question about
that. It has been at the core of it from the very beginning.

That being said, it doesn't mean it owns it. But considering the US's
20-year stewardship of the net which has provided an incredibly fertile
ground for growth, with plenty of opportunities for all countries, I think
they are a better choice than the UN for this.

The UN is a case of the inmates running the asylum. Any organization which can
put a Syrian delegate as the chair of its human rights commission has shown
what it is made of.

Option #4

[lord_paladine]

Option #4 - Start from scratch by creating a World Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers as well as a Global Internet Policy Council.

W.I.C.A.N.N?

I always knew it tooks a certain amount of magic to make the internet run smoothly.

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't bother to read the report as I know it will never fly. After all, who's going to accept Tunisia as the center of the internet. LOL

In any case, IF the europeans where to branch off with their "own internet" it would only last until it became inconvenient for the USA. At that point the US would declare that the internet should be free and it would "liberate" it from the europeans.

Give control to the ISPs

[91degrees]

They have effective control anyway. If they all decided to point their DNS servers to a certain place, then that would be adefacto domain name registry. I'm sure the same applies to IP addresses.

Sort out some fair means of representation, and get them to select a root administrator. They all have the same ultimate goal - a stable internet - and they al understand the internet. The same cannot be said of the US government or the UN.

Re:Hmmmm

[Official Bastard]

I think the creators of the internet should have final say, since it was not governments or business that created it. I am not just saying it belongs to the geeks, but also the universities and other students of computing had their fair share.

Nationalized, Fractured Internet?

[Jerle0]

3. Creation of International Internet Council that would assume responsibility for the Internet governance issues that arise on the national level. ICANN's mandate would need to be altered based on the development of the IIC.

All of the negatives aside, one thing I like about ICAAN is there is one point that everything leads back to. If control over the internet is split among various nations, it seems it would be too easy for the pieces of the internet to become segmented if the nations involved ever had a dispute over something. That might give countries like China, who already do strange thigns with the internet, the possibility of completely cutting themselves off from the rest of the world.

Option 5.

[CosmeticLobotamy]

Option 5: Realize this entire discussion is about as pointful as the UN discussing how to run Steak and Shake, should they ever acquire it.

Free the DNS !

[Arthur B.]

It's not a matter of who gets what hostname. A hostname is juste a convenient way to reach a server, it is definitly NOT the killer feature that will boost marketting for a website. Anyway I see hostnames disappearing in the future. It is already happening, a good rank in Google search results is already way more important than the proper domain name. Another solution implies the distribution of signed IP/hostname pairs by renowned organizations. Such pairs could be copied and distributed by any ISP. If gnu.org, google.com and heywhynot microsoft.com all tell me this hostname relates to that IP I may choose to trust them. I can also be a paranoïd freak and only trust pairs signed by my grandmother, which might limit my browsing experience - the point is I can choose. This is, in my opinion, the right approach to take. Trademark conflicts ? Typos spoofing ? All of this can be resolved by the suggested system. I may choose an authority which privileges hostname on a first-to-claim basis or I may choose an authority privileging a "saner" approach (granting trademarked hostnames to their owners and not to the smartass who registered it first and put pr0n instead).

Re:Free the DNS !

[Cerv]

(granting trademarked hostnames to their owners and not to the smartass who registered it first and put pr0n instead).

What do you do when two or more different organisations share the trademark on the same word? E.g. Apple computers and the Apple music label; Frosties the breakfast cereal and Frosties the sugar coated sweets.

Re:Free the DNS !

[Arthur B.]

What do I do ? I give apple to the computers and frosties to the cereals because that's the one I know. Now you are free not to use my dns associations. You can use one from organization XYZ that has a specific policy for resolving this kind of issues, including - for example - redirecting you to disambiguation pages ala wikipedia on their servers OR, selecting the statistically most seeked site, OR preferring the apple candies because their policy is not to show anything related to cereals. (replace cereals by porn and you get the idea... you can choose to accept dns signed by the safe-for-kids-dns-association, you can also be a huge perv and use SeXdns to be redirected to porn whenever it is possible) The possibilities are endless. Best thing, it is backward compatible with classic DNS... one could lanch a local DNS server on their machine as a tunnel to access this signed DNS protocol.

Re:Hmmmm

[fuzzybunny]

Define "control".

It's not so simple as "US vs. rest of world"--it's a balance between "how much do you trust the US to be a fair custodian" vs. "how much do you trust an organization giving weight to what Libya and South Africa and Papua New Guinea want to be a fair custodian".

As far as I'm concerned, having an organization in the US, with some involvement by the US government, "running" things is not a great solution but a lot less worse than, say, whatever the ITU would come up with.

That said, remember that the Internet works on the principle of routing around failure. Neither the UN nor ICANN nor the US government are known as organizations which always work quickly, logically, unbureaucratically and in the best interests of both their constituents and the greater community at large.

The "US", aside from a few fun Internic fuckups in the 1990s, didn't ever "turn off the Internet" or come up with idiotic international requirements. Carnivore? Try enforcing that in France. Nobody's stopping me from using encryption between Ghana and Mongolia. I wouldn't, however, put it past some atechnical third world level 50 career bureaucrat to come up with something stupid wthich might try to do just that.

Not that it'll ever work, but it'll just create more work for everyone. Another thing I'd like to see pro-UN-control folks to ask themselves honestly would be "is this just a pure control question"? I hate to say it, but like Magellan, anyone can always build their own...

It's a luxury

[therealking]

16. Interconnection costs Uneven distribution of cost. Internet service providers (ISPs) based in countries remote from Internet backbones, particularly in the developing countries, must pay the full cost of the international circuits.
05.41622 -6-
Absence of an appropriate and effective global Internet governance mechanism to resolve the issue.

When did the internet become a NESSESITY of life???
Why must thier be a "even" distribution of costs?? If it costs more to get connectivity to your isp then it costs more for that isp to do buisness.

internet next generation

[tines]

They are basically saying that their proposal should be usefull since

• there is an unneven distribution of cost in developing countries -- why not offer development grants and support the infrastructure
• they fix internet stabilty, spam -- each country should make their own laws
• intelectual property protection -- figures.
• they will help developing countries with a "forum" -- no way to do this now, is it ?

Basically their proposal is ok as long as there won't be a single country in charge. But I do fear the expansion of this "governance" into other areas.

Thoughts on the synopsis...

[taneem]

From the summary of the report 4 options were generated as a way of moving forward.

However looking at all the options it essentially boils down to three things:

1. The U.S. cedes real control to the international community

2. The U.S. cedes token control to the international community (option #2 proposes creating an international forum to "discuss" internet issues - read: eventually inconsequential)

3. Start from scratch


While it's tempting to hate on the Americans for refusing to give up control of the Internet's foundations, any kind of sharing would lead to power sharing with nations including China and Russia.

Slashdot has posted numerous articles about the Chinese iron fist when it comes to dealing with anything on the internet. I find it frightening to even think about the prospect of having my internet access dictated in some part by the blatantly power hungry government of this nation. Yes, the Americans are no white knights either, but I'd rather have their faulty system of checks and balances than the outright corruption and byzantine system of governance that still controls much of the world today.

Think about the recent stories of "adopting a Chinese blog" to protect the bloggers from chinese government reprisals. What do you think the Chinese would demand first if they were given real control of our internet access? Control of any content that originates from China - which means these bloggers who almost got away, would be tracked down again. :(

Eventually the answer is going to come from somewhere in between. There isn't going to be a peaceful transition of the entire system from the americans to the international community. But rather different parts of the world will begin to develop their own networks with differing levels of compatibility, and software and hardware vendors are going to make a killing in providing systems that can handle these multiple formats and networks.

This diversity will arise not only from politics, but from new technology too and I can totally see the European Union developing a "new internet" that provides alternative control to what the americans have -- and then subsidizing the cost of this network so that it is taken up by major subsets such as India and the Pacific, until it eventually supercedes the now "legacy" american systems...

Re:Thoughts on the synopsis...

[Talonius]

I agree with the above poster, and wish I had moderation points.

I think he does underestimate the requests of the foreign powers. The foreign governments want the Internet to become a single entity ruled under single law - Germany wants no mention of the word Nazi, France wants no mention of white flags, China wants no mention of freedom or pornography, etc.

This is the truly scary part of what turning control over would entail. Sure, there's a difference between technical and political control - but political control eventually corrupts the technical. How long would it be before incredibly stupid mandates begin to filter down?

As for those who are decrying the United States as corrupt and no longer free - you may very well be right. I won't argue that we as a nation have some very serious issues to answer for, and that our current governmental body is severely lacking in many areas, including integrity and honesty. However, do not confuse the American people with the American government. Outright acts of hostility and control will still be met with outrage and political action - most of the problems with our government have been created through subterfuge on our government's part, leaving nothing for the people to focus on.

Honestly, I'd like to know if any United Nations governance body was prepared to handle the issues like spam, virii, identity theft, etc., and how so? What benefit does this transfer of "power" garner the world? Listing things like "connectivity is expensive and the cost should be borne by the rest of the world rather than the third world countries" -- no, I'm sorry, we paid for our connectivity when we needed it. If you want help paying for said connectivity, ask the United Nations for grants, or other companies or organizations for aid. Do not build it into the governing body of the Internet to be abused by all.

I especially like the claim that Internet virii and spam are problems created by the Internet's current governing bodies and the third world countries have to purchase "at great expense" methods of dealing with these issues.

There's an off switch, folks.

The remainder of their problems are similar, in my opinion. Someone thinks that having control will magically solve their problems because they can issue mandates about how people are supposed to behave. Whatever.

Re:Screw the UN

[einar2]

How comes that the UN has a rather good reputation in Europe and such a bad one in the US?

How comes that the same people speaking about democracy and freedom have so much problems to give other nations the right to vote where they are concerned?

BTW, there are no small meaningless countries.
BTW 2, funny that you speak about "random leaders".

why bother with the US ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt the US will ever cede control over the internet, and frankly it makes me very uncomfortable that Bush is ultimately in charge. Personally, I think the UN should set up it's own DNS servers which every other country in the world can use, and if the US wants to sit in the corner and scream about how it should be in charge because God has given the US the right to impose it's view on the rest of the world, then let's just ignore them, and get on with it.

Merely step 1..

[Tominva1045]

This is merely Step 1 in a long-term approach to txing internet usage.

1. Form a global council.
2. Make claims of global intellectual inequality
3. The UN, ACLU, and (insert names of politicians trying to buy votes here) decide to "level the playing field" by taxing those who have "won life's lottery" (have a domain name) and redistributing funds to under achieving locations.

Some time in the future.. U.N. Ambassador from Nauru (pop. 10,000) "Mr. Chairman, the people of Nauru beg this body to level the intellectual playing field by providing every man, woman, and child of Nauru a computer and high speed internet access..."

Four years after that..

EBay reports a 0.000002% bump in sales due largely to the army of Nauruvians selling brick-a-brack via their shiny 386 PC's.

I shiver at the thought of the "level playing field." Or, possibly, I've run off in the weeds on this one.

Happy Friday!

Will the U.N. do better than U.S.A?

[glyn.phillips]

Given the honesty and competence demonstrated by the U.N. in its management of the Iraq "Oil for Food" program, what kind of job can we expect them to do with the Internet?

The U.N. needs to show the world that it can consistently manage its programs in a competent, honest and equitable manner before we trust it with such an important piece of world-wide infrastructure.

At least the U.S.A. has a vested self-interest in the internet continuing to work well.

Obligatory Neuman quote

[Stormwatch]

"The U.N. is a place where governments opposed to free speech demand to be heard!" - Alfred E. Neuman

Re:Screw the UN

[Anonymous Coward]

To understand that, you have to get into the mind set of your average US citizen. Here's my simple three step plan for doing this:

1) Think of all the time you spent learning about the rest of the world outside your country of origin: geography lessons, watching or reading news coverage, research or even actually visiting the countries involved. Add all that time together.
2) Now imagine that instead of doing all those things, you spent that time in McDonald's stuffing your face with supersize portions of fat and sugar.
3) Success. You can now think like an American.

Re:Make your own

[TheRaven64]

Seriously, what does this even mean? Make your own TCP/IP implementation? The on in Linux was written at my own university in Swansea (hint: Not in the US). Make your own protocols for exchanging information? How about HTTP, developed at Europe's very own CERN research facility. Lay your own cable? Guess what, the US isn't responsible for any of the cable laid by my ISP. Make your own root DNS servers? Why bother, all they do is hand-off to the first level servers - and these results are cached by DNS servers all around the world.

Far more Internet infrastructure is outside the US than inside it already. The rest of the world has `created their own', and joined it to yours. If you want to unplug from the rest of the world, then have fun watching your economy collapse.

What Happened to Separation of Church and State?

[Anonymous Coward]

Start from scratch by creating a World Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers as well as a Global Internet Policy Council.

WICANN? It's a conspiracy. The witches are always trying to push their sway into the international realm, and now the Internet! This must be stopped!!

Re:Make your own

[knewter]

Yeah, but that implies that capitalism is a good idea, and loads of people will disagree with that claim (I like to call those people 'the people that don't understand the U.S.' dominance')

Re:What are we fixing?

[NullProg]

The only thing I see is that the US has the root servers, and Europeans don't want it like that any more. I still find myself asking why.

Your wrong. Only 5 root servers are here in the USA.

See here: Root Server Locations;

Enjoy,

UN reforms

[dfjghsk]

1. US tells UN there need to be reforms
2. UN still expects US to hand over control of the internet
3. US refuses (duh)
4. UN has a hissy fit.

If the US thinks the UN is corrupt.. why would we turn over control of a critical piece of infrastructure to them?!

This is progress?

[caudron]

We went from one dude:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Postel

To a committee:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Corporation_ for_Assigned_Names_and_Numbers

And now we need the whole fscking world collaborating on this?

Seriously. It's a fscking database of IP>Hostname mappings. This is NOT rocket science. Jon Postel, why did you have to leave us to these asshats? We miss you.

Re:This is progress?

[rs79]

"Jon Postel, why did you have to leave us to these asshats? "

First, he died. Second, he's the guy that handed power to these asshats, through Darth Cerf.

I liked Jon, he was great, but all this DNS mess happened on his watch.

The origin of this problem dated back to when Steve Wolff privatized the NSF backbone thus creating the non-governemnt controlled internet.

The problem is he forgot to privatize the name and address spaces (and in retrospect says this was a big mistake - duh). So, administration of these remained under US contract, where it exists today. This is a natural choke point and acts like a magnet for power seekers.

But, once you understand the net is not centrally controlled, it's edge cotnrolled, and you can decide where you point your DNS then you really don't care what any government does.

So the US and ICANN have screwed up the root servers? Big deal, I havn't used them in a decade, nor have millions of others.

Primary the root for yourself; become your own root server, then what ICANN or the UN does is utterly irrelevant to you.

The US can take the internet....

[MosesJones]

recognize that the rest of the world makes a valuable contribution to the internet, however:
The United States developed the internet, with many large investments (DARPA etc.), and now we are expected to just give it up?

So the US keeps the internet but has to give up WWW, because that was European. The internet was created by the US... but made useful by Europe, and made mobile by Japan. The US did the tin, the rest of the world did the vision.

Aside from all the defense networks etc, we need to be able to keep tabs on extremist groups on the web, note that there is a widely circulating how to video about how to cause the most damage with a b#mb on a bus.

So you want to Censor? Who decides what is extremist? I'd vote for those nutters who are terrorising doctors and surgeries that do abortions, I'd also vote for organisations like FOX News being classified as extremist.

we still believe in freedom of speech.

Or not?

Sent any journalists to jail recently? Or listened to FOX News? Or heard a politician REALLY quizzed on their approach and views?

What about the Internet Society?

[satch89450]

I read the entire 24 page report, with I hope some thought and consideration. What I found very, very interesting is this "fact-finding" body did nothing to examine the current structure of "Internet Control" and the role of the Internet Society and its divisions. They mention the IETF *once*, and neglect to mention that IETF RFCs are now accepted in the Standards community as Standards. International standards -- the ITU says so. Instead, the report concentrates exclusively on the role of the United States Department of Commerce and *one* US corporation, ICANN.

What about the role of the technical committees that have kept the Tier One routers running all these years without too many hiccups? How would they fit into a UN-based "oversight"? Either the routers work, or they don't. Does Grand Fenwick have anything to contribute to that process? Oh, let's not forget that NANOG is not a US-centric organization now...

A previous contributor showed the country breakdown of the participants. For my part, I looked through all the names of the people on this commission and didn't recognize a single name as part of the original Internet Construction Crew (ICC).

The report, if I were grading it on completeness, would get a D+. The report concentrates on those few things that bring certain peoples to a slow boil. I'm sure that one of the most important questions will be how to handle right-to-left writing systems in the current structure. It completely neglects those portions of oversight and control that mean the life and death of the Internet, either as we know it or as people have envisioned it in the future.

My great fear? "Regulation." As in putting together a list of conflicting requirements on users of the Internet that will spawn a whole new industry that generates not one cent of revenue. Oh, and someone has to pay for all this work and effort to make my life as an admin miserable. Can you say "Internet Tax"? I knew you could!

As a system administrator, I will continue to run my network. my routers, and my servers as I see fit. If the UN wants to play power games and screw it all up, then I as an operator and administrator will do everything technically possible to be sure that UN screwups don't affect my customers.

My network, my rules.

Re:What are we fixing?

[cagle_.25]

RTFA. Section III of the document lists the issues that the new entity is supposed to take on:

• Administration of root zones
• Interconnection costs (can you say "tax"?)
• Internet stability and cybercrime
• Spam
• "Meaningful participation in global development"
• Capacity building
• Allocation of domain names
• IP addressing (not to deliberately quote Bill G., but shouldn't IPv6 be enough for us all?)
• Intellectual Property Rights
• Freedom of Expression
• Data Protection and Privacy Rights
• Consumer Rights
• Multilingualism

There! That oughta keep us busy for a while!

Seriously, it's not anti-American sentiment. It's a somewhat back-door attempt for the UN to have a real governing ability over issues that they've never been able to address through resolutions. Some country isn't playing nice with regard to intellectual property? Hit 'em in the Internet. At least, that's my theory...

The UN Would Be An Atrocious Government!

[FreeUser]

This is NOT about the UN looking out for the best interests of the world population. This is NOT about liberating the internet from the evil Americans. This will NOT impact censorship or any freedoms that we enjoy on the internet.

This is about the UN trying to get control and power where they currently have none. They want this power so that they can be more like a government. The problem is, they are a treaty organization, not a government. They are not elected. They are not accountable to the people they want to govern.

Exactly right. I'm all for the world setting up an alternative set of more egalitarian root servers, but ICANN is hardly a democratically run organization, and has, quite frankly, demonstrated even more corruption than Verisign in this context (and that's saying a lot).

People forget that the UN's constituents aren't the people of the world, their constituents are the governments, most of whom are actively oppressing the people. Expecting liberation from a body that, by and large, represents oppressors, and certainly represents rulers, is a fool's bet.

Completely off the wall suggestion

[dwarfking]

Ok, so here's a 'tin foil hat' suggestion to the whole problem: declare CyberSpace as represented by the Internet as a sovereign nation.

Root servers will now be considered diplomatic territory, no matter what country they exist in.

Allow peoples around the world the opportunity to be considered dual citizens (their home country an the CyperSpace) and allow them to vote for representation to manage the space and then provide a representative to the UN.

This would take some doing as some nations (i.e. the United States) do not recognize dual citizenship, but that would be the 'price' to have diplomatic relationships with CyberSpace.

Ok, so it's totaly crazy, but it is a Friday of a very long week.

You are grossly misinformed

[mgw1181]

The USA has never restricted the use of encryption within its borders. Restrictions on use were discussed with the Clipper chip crap proposed by the Clinton administration, but that didn't go anywhere. What you remeber was the (pointless) limitation of export that was dropped by the Clinton administration in 1999 (?). Products with greater than 40-bit key support were prohibited from export. Eventually they figured out that this was simply hurting American businesses, since the US had no monopoly on strong encryption.

Its not control of the Internet...

[jonwil]

Its control of the key parts of it.

Basicly, the internet consists of the following core elements:
1.The core Protocols that underly it (that are drawn up as RFCs and put out by the IETF). The IETF seems to be doing a good job of this (although its slow to get a RFC out, there is no reason you cant go and use without one plusd RFCs need to be very well thought out in order to work)

2.IP address allocation.
Right now various agencies (I know the IANA used to do this but they dont do it anymore, someone else does) hand out IP address blocks. That function seems to be running right (other than the physical lack of usable addresses that is)
If IPV6 was more widely deployed, you wouldnt have any address problems since IPV6 provides so many addersses that even a home user could have an IPV6 block where the upper 120 bits were fixed and then they would get 8 bits of address to allocate to devices (IANA IPV6 guru so 8 bits for a normal home user might be too much but even 6 bits would give them 64 or so addresses to use)
You could give different countries a block of IP addresses which could then give ISPs and hosts etc parts of that block and so on down to the users.

Also IPV6 adoption would mean a greater adoption of encryption (via IPSecV6 or something similar) and multicasting.

3.DNS. Right now, this is controled by those who run the root servers. And by ICANN and DOC who ultimatly control the root zone file (which points to the ccTLD and gTLD nameservers run by verisign and others). Then, verisign and others control the ccTLDs and gTLDs. What is needed here is for control of the root zone file as well as control over the key gTLDs (like .com, .net, .org etc) be given to one organization who is specifically set up as a non-profit (i.e. is not allowed to make any money or charge more for addresses in the TLDs than it costs them to run things). This organization would be prohibited from doing anything not connected with running the DNS (e.g. setting up sitefinder type ads) and would be controled and managed in a way that looks after the interests of ALL the stakeholders in the global Internet (i.e. governments, ISPs, big net companies like google etc). No one government, country or organization would have control over DNS and the root zone file (which would go back to the central idea of the Internet being a network of networks with those who run the individual networks having collective power over those parts of the internet where their networks link up).
Special gTLDs like .edu, .mil or .gov would be run by the relavent organization (e.g. .mil would be run by the US militay).
ccTLDs would be run by whatever agency the governments of those countries decides should run them (e.g. .uk, .co.uk etc would be run by whoever the UK government decides should run it)

and 4.the cables, routers and systems that actually make the core of the Internet work. The problem right now (IMO) is that too much of this infrastructure is held by too few companies (a lot of it is held by phone companies/large ISPs)
There is not enough redundancy (and this isnt just to do with a lack of physical cables, its also to do with the fact that the large ISPs and phone cos that own the backbone wont allow/dont want/charge to much for their systems to talk to each other and route data over the other guys links when theirs is down.
In addition to this, the consolodation of data links (including the fact that there are not as many possible ways for data to get from A to B as their should be) makes it easier for governments, police forces, spy agencies (friendly and otherwise), corperations (MPAA/RIAA/etc for one) and others to "Spy on" and "Monitor" and "Censor/control/block" internet traffic.

So, the question is, exactly which of the 4 key parts that make up the Internet as we know it is the part that people seem to think could be run better by an agency other than ICANN or the US Goverment?

It was never about a single country

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Presuming you have enough language skill to know that "create" is not equal to "develop, nurture, and improve", which country did create it?

No one country did. That's exactly the point. For a start, the Internet is almost by definition a network of networks, many of which are not in the US. Moreover, there is no clear "creation date"; different aspects of what we know today as "the Internet" appeared at very different times in history.

What became today's Internet was mostly driven by academic research. While I'll certainly concede that much of the initial research during the '60s and early '70s happened in the US, it's still clear that from a very early stage, the research effort was international. For example, ISoc's brief history of the Internet mentions researchers in the UK working in parallel with the US research as early as 1967, until the groups discovered each other and started collaborating.

The infrastructure is obviously international, and for the most part quite capable of surviving without any one country. Networks that now form major parts of the Internet have existed in other countries for over 20 years. (The same history notes the existence of the JANET in the UK in 1984, while another mentions satellite links to Hawaii and the UK as early as 1975 and the creation of EUnet, connecting the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and UK, in 1982.)

The software side, in particular the established communications protocols for things like e-mail, WWW, Usenet or FTP communication, has come from diverse sources. What was effectively the first TCP/IP standard was presented to an international working group at Sussex University in the UK in 1973.

Bodies like the IETF and W3C have geographically diverse memberships. While the US has by far the largest single category of W3C membership today, it still represents less than 40% of the total, which isn't much more than Europe, for example. There are a total of 28 countries with member organisations.

For any one country, including the US, to claim that this whole picture developed because of it, or wouldn't have happened in a similar way without it, is simply a delusion of grandeur. It might not have happened as fast, or in exactly the same way, but it would still have happened, probably working off the research done in Europe.

I find it deeply ironic that one of the other replies to my GP post was an AC who claimed I was trolling, and challenged me to provide information about other countries that contributed to the Internet's creation, while another accuses me of rewriting history. Fortunately, while a lot of mostly US-based Internet history pages choose to ignore the contributions from outside and focus on the US academic network during the early stages, the kind of information above (all of which is written by the people and organisations at the heart of the Internet) is freely available, even to those in the US.