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EU, UN to Wrestle Internet Control From US
Anonymous Coward writes "The Guardian is reporting that the EU, obviously unimpressed with the US's refusal to relinguish control of the Internet, will be forming several comittees and forums with a mind to forcibly remove control of the Internet from the United States." From the article: "Old allies in world politics, representatives from the UK and US sat just feet away from each other, but all looked straight ahead as Hendon explained the EU had decided to end the US government's unilateral control of the internet and put in place a new body that would now run this revolutionary communications medium. The issue of who should control the net had proved an extremely divisive issue, and for 11 days the world's governments traded blows. For the vast majority of people who use the internet, the only real concern is getting on it. But with the internet now essential to countries' basic infrastructure - Brazil relies on it for 90% of its tax collection - the question of who has control has become critical."
Which is, of course, exactly why the US wants to maintain control of it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I think it would be very interesting to see a divided internet. Once in a while things need to shaken up in order for progress to be made. IPV6 is too long in coming and ultimately since it's easier not to change, things are at most moving very slowly. But really, "the internet" is a global entity with global interest and should be managed globally. And if it takes segmentation prior to reunification, then so be it -- I'm ready to wait out the storm... but then again, such a separation will harm the US far less than any other part of the world. It would be REALLY interesting, though, to see what happens to the SPAM industry if such segmentation were to happen.
I posted these same words last week and I'll post them again.
I am anti-US on many things, but let back them by saying this.
The USA created the Internet as we know it today, it is their creation, from their tax payers money. As much as I dislike many things that the USA is doing and has done in the past. I'm going to have to say that I'm behind them on keeping control of what is theirs, which happens to be the foundation of the Internet as we know it.
Just due to the fact that it is now a globally used system that effects everyone in the modern world does not give any body/group the right to demand rights of control over that system. Just as new protocols are created over time and are layered ontop of the old to keep the system running regardless of 'obsolete' hardware/software that might be in some remote corner of the web, so to should the U.N create a system that runs along side the current one if it so desperatly wants control. That is the most logical solution to the problem at hand. Countries and corporations can create 'internal' networks that overide the current systems of the Internet.
The fact that the developing world does not see that as the most logical first step attempt at a solution at hand is evidence that they are not ready to have control over a system such as complex as the Internet.
I whole heartly back the US on their choice to not hand it over.
Well, I guess it is time to kill DNS alltogether. DNS is centralized by design. Tim Berners-Lee doesn't like centralized designs, and has referred to DNS as the achilles heel of the internet, and I think he has been thinking about replacements. What we need to remove control from any monolithic, centralized body. Make it webly. Then, they can argue over themselves, but control, they won't get.
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> Let's see how long the US holds together without the monetary support of the
> rest of the world.
Just a point; if anyone tried to destroy the US monetarily, the effect on the rest of the workl would be easily as bad. The dependency works both ways. Yes, the US is dependent of foreign trade, but most of the nations we trade with are dependent on it as well. Some few nations would just suffer loss of income and products, but many would suffer pains equal to some of the worst natural disasters.
> And people with your attitude wonder why there is so much rampant
> anti-Americanism around the world today. You're too arrogant and conceited
> to see it.
Just a point. There are a few hundred million people in the US. All of them are not arrogant and conceited, any more than all the French are rude and smelly, all Muslims are terrorists, or all the Chinese are great at math.
Yes, there are legitimate grievances against the US. But much or what is perceived as US arrogance is merely the US attempting to retain it's own constitutional structure. A large portion of the world wants the US to tear up our constitution and remake ourselves in the image of the EU. And we aren't interested, now or ever.
> Thank goodness 99% of the Americans I know are fantastic people and
> don't live up to this stereotype.
Good to hear it. But stereotypes are like that. Most of the what the world knows about the US is garbage, heavily influenced by Hollywood. Just as most of what most Americans know about the Middle East is from Hollywood bull and news reports showing scenes of war and terror.
Thanks for your observations.
France (and other security councle members) said before voting on the last UN resolution that it was not allowing it to be used as an excuse for military action. The resolution was made to force Saddam to allow weapon inspectors. If military action would be necessary a new UN resolution would be have to be made with a new vote. The US went anyway without such a resolution, and has got the ass kicked in Iraq with a war done under false pretenses. Now the US administration is using the UN resolution as an excuse for invading a sovereign nation!!! Of course, it is the same administration that is trying to undermind UN on every turn. Make up your mind, either you follow what UN says and you don't invade, or you invade and take responsibility for your own action without blaming the UN. Show some balls.
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Merely saying this doesn't make it true. It currently serves international interests on abstractly and retains prerogative to ignore the input of various countries as it sees fit.
.EU) and shown good judgement in handing over domain control such as the recent hand over of the .Iq domain.
Please name how the ICANN has failed to perform its duties. I can name how it *has* performed its duties:
1. It has successfully kept the root servers highly available to all countries.
2. It has spent significant time with foreign interests looking to meet the needs of these people.
3. It has shown forethought in decisions, not jumping on new concepts that could be harmful in the long term.
4. Yet it has managed to approve a variety of top level domains (including the new
Doing an excellent job to date is debatable and, regardless, offers no guarantee that it will continue to do so as political situations change.
Show me a guarantee that the UN will do as good or better job. If you cannot, then why place more trust in an entity that has no track record on management of these servers over an entity that DOES have a track record?
[Forcing private companies] is not really relevant. This is an international issue as the Internet is an international resources with countless billions invested by numerous nations all of which rely upon the system to function properly.
No, it is relevant. US laws protect against illegal seizure, and seizure without compensation. Show a REAL ARGUMENT as to why ICANN's holdings should be seized, THEN the US government can consider seizure and compensation.
You've mischaracterized even that basic argument entirely: the UN, or rather, the international community, wants to move control from ICANN to a truly international organization that can operate transparently and that is required to acknowledge and assimilate the input from those governments represented in the UN. Again, the alternative is just to trust ICANN to play fair.
Considering the lack of evidence that ICANN is not "playing fair", I fail to see how this argument is any stronger. I'll say it again, find a reasonable argument and I'll switch positions. Simply, "we don't trust an entity that has shown overall good judgement and has worked well for the past decade" is not a reasonable argument.
[UN has a far poorer track record] is true, but is not sufficient to override the objections to your prior points.
It is however, sufficient to point out the problem with simply turning over control to the UN. No one has yet shown what is wrong with ICANN control. No strong arguments exist. In absense of such arguments, the relative histories of the two entities must be compared. ICANN has done a satisfactory job at its task and has shown no signs that it has been doing any poorer in recent history. If anything, the ICANN has been slowly improving. You have agreed, OTOH, that the UN has had a poor track record in other joint ventures. Why change something that obviously works the way it is?
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