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?

[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.

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...

[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...

[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...

[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.

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.

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: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...

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...