Why Talk About Internet Governance?

andyo wrote to mention an article on the O' Reilly network entitled Why They're Talking About Internet Governance. The piece goes into the history of how things came to be in the first place, as regards the distribution of internet domain space. From the article: "Having established commercial beachheads on the Internet, corporations wanted to own the whole terrain. Through the World Intellectual Property Organization ... they were designing a new regime for handling domain names. It was nicely suited to large corporations ... Within weeks of the successful conclusion of the Global Incorporation Alliance Workshop, a lash-up of Internet leaders, Network Solutions, and other back room forces popped a proposal of their own on a surprised and unprepared Internet community. The proposal ... ultimately led to ICANN. Most stakeholders were left out of the decision--even many large corporations were angry--but the Commerce Department approved the proposal, happy to wash its hands of the issue. "

Comments

Nothing Offtopic

[glenrm]

I would say when a topic is repeated this often that nothing be modded Flambait or Offtopic, just to liven things up a bit...

Re:Nothing Offtopic

[ianmassey]

I think it's a pretty interesting topic, and this article supplies the back story for folks who didn't know it already. Ultimately, the hows and the whys don't matter to anyone who has any real say in this issue, though. This will by and large be decided by diplomats and beaurocrats whose experience with the internet consists of their assistant/secretary spending an hour a day trying to help them use it completely in vain.

What it really boils down to is we either trust the completely untrustworthy, unstable and unorganized UN to handle this very serious responsibility (which we've been handling just fine all by ourselves for years now), or we further degrade our world image by telling the UN where to stick it and keeping the root servers under the perfectly competent management they have right now and have always had.

America is experiencing sort of a golden age of being loathed globally at the moment, which historically has happened to every major world power, especially when they decided to exercise some of their power to improve their position, as we have been doing for the past few years. It is to be expected, and eventually we can expect one of two solutions to occur naturally: A. America reaches a place where it is comfortable enough to slow its expansion/influence, and the rest of the world's grumbling gradually decreases, or B. the shit hits the fan for one of a billion reasons and America's term as world power comes to a halt. It is my opinion that I will live to see "A" happen more than once in my lifetime, and that I'll be dead long before "B" occurs. This root server issue will be solved like every other diplomatic row, in that things will stay exactly the same but a "resolution" will be drafted that strokes the little countries' egos enough that they forget about it for now.

Re:Nothing Offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

America is experiencing sort of a golden age of being loathed globally at the moment, which historically has happened to every major world power, especially when they decided to exercise some of their power to improve their position, as we have been doing for the past few years.

I think this sentence makes the point clearly enough. The rest of the world is jealous and embarrassed. When the Soviet Union was breathing down everyone's necks, all ready to "free" the world from the horrible yoke of free speech and prosperity, only the United States had the guts and the guns to stand in their way. I'm certain it was rather humiliating to have to rely on the USA to send forces whenever the USSR attacked. But that was the way it was. Only the USA was rich enough to keep their technology and prepardness toe to toe with the enemy. I'd like to think that most countries were grateful for the protection that the US provided, many even seeing the US's accomplishments as the accomplishments of the world as a whole.

But now the Cold War is over. Suddenly, that friendship has turned to resentment. Without any threat from the USSR or a military goverment that succeeded it, the world is struggling with a newfound freedom. No longer do they live in fear of a global war. No longer do they have to worry about someone knocking on their door and saying, "You no longer have the right to speak freely or have a life as you please."

But instead of being thankful for the freedom that the US has bought and paid for, they became resentful of the help they received. Turned on the hand that fed them, as it were, and demanded that the US conform to their ideas of how the world should be run.

I'll say this, and I'll say this only once. The US will remain a super power indefinitely. We will not back off our position, we will not disarm. For we know from our own history that The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigelence. And if we need to, we will protect ourselves and the rest of the world from tyrants and dictators who presume to hurt people for their own selfish goals. And no matter what the rest of the world thinks, we will stand tall and proud, and ensure that the world is never again threatened by oppression.

So the next time China says, "We want access to the root servers to oppress our people," the US will be there to say "No!". The next time the EU says, "We want to tax the speech of our people, so that everyone is only as equal as their money," the US will be there to say "NO!"
And most importantly, the next time some poor soul needs to cry out to the world for help, the US will be there to say, "YES! We've protected your freedom to speak by protecting the freedom of the Internet. Help is on the way."

I'm proud to be an American. No matter how much you bash my country, no matter how hard you try to force us, you CANNOT take that away from me.

Re:Nothing Offtopic

[Ryan Amos]

You forgot option C: China gradually overtakes the US as the dominant global military and economic power over the next 50 years and the US becomes a relic, much like the EU (sorry guys.) It takes a long time to mobilize 1.2 billion people, but the economic policy makers in China finally seem to "get it" (unlike Russia wrt Stalin, China learned from the disasters Mao caused.)

But the UN is largely irrelevant. The prime objective of the UN is to give people a forum for diplomacy so something like WWII never happens again. But if they can't stop unilateral aggression (they didn't stop us invading Iraq, we lied and made up a pretty good cover story) then they have failed. Iraq can still turn into a world war; all it would take is an Iraqi militant assassinating the Shah of Iran and the entire powderkeg in the middle east would explode into a global conflict with nuclear weapons.

Fun.

Kudos to the comment on the article itself..

[jkind]

Echoes my sentiments exactly
"The whole domain name problem could have been solved in a way that would have eliminated strife over domain allocation." Maybe your next entry should explain how.

I'm in favor of .....

[AlltheCoolNamesGone]

None of the of the above.

If anything all goverments should be barred from having anything to do with internet. Lord know's that one of them will find a way to fuck this up too.

Re:I'm in favor of .....

[grimJester]

The quote from the article on this: Certainly, it is controlled by the United States government--which renegs on its duties by letting ICANN blunder about so much--but the solution is not to bring it under U.N. control. The solution is to hand all its powers over to leaner, more technically focused groups that operate with less fuss and more consensus.

I don't think this is really possible. If governments are interested in an issue, you can't really shut them out of it. Deciding what TLDs there are and what authority controls which TLD has become a global political issue, like it or not.

Re:I'm in favor of .....

[16K Ram Pack]

It seems to me that someone has to run the root domains. Right now, I'm of the opinion that given the choices of the UN or the USA, I'll take the USA. And I'm British.

Some change will happen

[Ma3oxuct]

I think that change in Domain governance will occur inevitably. As far as I remember, the world is running out of IPs, and eventually everyone will have to start using IPV6. This change may or may not become a significant oppurtunity for governments or corporations for make tremendous changes (In my view there is an oppurtunity for change). In my utopia, domain name registration (governance, as the article stated) would be managed by a world wide governing body which would commit to free (as it $$$) and fair distribution of domain names (so that no one can profit off of taking a range of names and forcing others to pay for them). The UN is however is not such an organization; never has not never will be.

I have already completed this entire thread

[lbrandy]

I have finished this thread for you:

>It's not broke don't fix it. (+5, Insightful)
>>Yea but America controls it and I don't like America. (+4, Interesting)
>The UN IS CORRUPT (+4, Interesting)
>> We can just have some countries control it, then (+5, Insightful)
>>> Most of those countries already censor the internet! (+5, Interesting
>>>> At least they don't bomb people! (+4, Funny)
>>>>>We saved your ass in WWII. STFU (-1 Troll)
>>>>>>Arrogant Americans. Just like all Americans. All Americans are ignorant and generalize. (1, Redundant)
>I hate microsoft (+5, Off-Topic)

Re:I have already completed this entire thread

[8127972]

You forgot one. CowboyNeal (+5 Funny)

Re:I have already completed this entire thread

[joranbelar]

You forgot another one:

>I know exactly what everyone's going to say, no need to post. (+5 Funny)

Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

I am concerned if the EU or UN is able to take over control that we will suffer due to censorship. Free speech and interchange of ideas is part of who we are. It is the reason we now have an Internet. I would support forking instead of capitulating.

Regulation will destroy the internet

[hsmith]

Just as regualation destroys free trade, it will make the internet crawl to a halt. It is only a matter of time before more governments get their hands on it and destroy the free nature of the net. It is only a matter of time. The UN and the EU want to get control of it, you can ensure that it will become highly hampered, even taxed to use to give it to those that can afford it in good socialist fashion.

Re:Regulation will destroy the internet

[klaun]

Just as regualation destroys free trade, it will make the internet crawl to a halt.

I believe the first part of this statement is a tautology and perhaps inappropriate as the basis for further assertion.

I'd say it was more or less equivalent to "Just as wet destroys dry, it will make your automobile crawl."

In any case, there is already a ton of regulation that no one wants to go away. Dow chemical doesn't want regulation to go away, particularly regulation that protects patents and trade secrets... they just want some regulations to go away... like the ones that say they can't dump Dioxin anywhere they please.

The whole free market versus regulated market debate is a white elephant... the debate is about set A of regulations versus set B of regulations. It is a debate about who benefits from each set. Same thing here, which is what the original artcle was pointing out.

Re:Give it to the UN

[Anonymous Coward]

I am confused about one thing in this whole fiasco. I have yet to hear a single example of what exactly "the world" needs a say in. Or are they just looking to cash in on domain registration fees by tacking on some form of tax?

ICANN and the UN

[canuck57]

You can visit the ICANN site and listen to the meeting, informative to say the least. Many sound like they have poor memories, some you can almost hear then snore over the mics and likely many had too much to drink before the meeting.

Someone didn't want ICANN making much decisions so they stacked it with people who would paralyze any further development. This is clear.

The UN is not much different for the most part.

The internet naming is already fragmented and less standard. China for example is using DNS to filter content. We can expect this fragmention to continue.

Ultimately the Internet belongs to the people. And it will be run by the people if necessary. If something becomes popular, ICANN nor the UN could stop it. The Chinese are already creative, using proxies outside their country to bypass the government.

Pressing Questions

[SQL Error]

From TFA:

Should bloggers, for instance, meet the same standards for accuracy as professional journalists?

You're proposing a law requiring bloggers to misquote people, get key facts wrong, present nonsense in the name of "balance" and generally make stuff up? Well, sure, if you're going to pay them for it.

Damage, censorship and governance

[nharmon]

Have you ever heard the saying, "The Internet views censorship as damage and routes around it"? I'm not sure who said it, but he/she was right on. To expand on this, we need to look at governance in the same way we look at censorship.

If you have never read World of Ends, I recommend you do so now.

The solution to "governance" over the internet is to remain true to the foundations it was developed under. The internet as an agreement cannot be governed. It can only exist while there is compromise and consensus. So, here is what I believe is the best solution to this problem:

1. For the time being, maintain the status quo of having ICANN responsible for the assignment of IPv4 addresses.

2. Transition into IPv6 by assigning blocks of IP addresses to all countries. Perhaps leaving some addresses for space stations, the moon, mars, etc. Do this though multi-national treaties. This is where the United Nations can help out, but the UN should only be a facilitator. Remember, the Internet is an agreement among nations.

3. Have each country be responsible for assigning its block of IP addresses, and for the management of their TLDs.

4. Transfer .com, .org, and .edu management to some sort of NGO (ICANN for example), with the purpose being for multi-national corporations, organizations, and institutions of higher education who do not associate with any particular nation (for example would be icrc.org)

The important thing is that the internet remain decentralized. This seems to be the point that everybody is missing. It doesn't matter who governs the internet, because nobody should govern the entire internet. Its works best as an agreement, and that is how we should proceed.

Committee != 'Democracy'

[dada21]

Here's my #1 problem with governments: the committee. These mini-groups tend to debate over what is best for them, not their constituents.

Example of typical bad true Democracy: 51 out of 100 people love large bananas. They vote to regulate bananas, and now only large bananas are available.

Example of typical bad representative democracy: 5 representatives of 100 people form a banana size committee. 2 of them have friends or family who grow medium sized bananas. 51 of 100 citizens prefer large bananas. The 2 reps convince the other 3 to set the definition of 'large' as equal to the medium sized bananas, in exchange for adding pork to the law that helps the other 3 reps.

Example of free market democracy: 51 out of 100 people like large bananas. 30 like medium, and 19 like tiny. Banana growers grow all 3 sizes, selling them at a price set by the supply of certain sizes and the demand for those sizes.

The first two forms of democracy are, well, bananas. Nuts! This is how we live today in the US. The UN is even worse,with almost zero input by the constituents.

Internet governance is best delegated to corporations and individuals. Profit is merely a reflection of a company's ability to meet the demands (price, quality, performance) of their customers. Profit can not be demanded. Profit can not be stolen. Profit can not be fraudulent for long. Except when a company is given monopoly power by government mandate (schools, roads, etc).

The Internet is a group of individuals who pick an ISP. The groups of ISPs choose a backbone provider. The backbones choose to interconnect.

Why is governance needed? If a backbone decides to break away, customers and ISPs will choose another backbone. If an ISP decides to censor or charge too much, users can select another ISP (except when government forces zero choice).

There is zero need for government involvement, except to tax, regulate, censor and control.

Re:Committee != 'Democracy'

[spun]

The problem with "free market democracy" is that one dollar equals one vote. So people with more dollars get more votes. Forget the tyranny of the majority, we have the tyranny of the minority. A small number of people with a lot of dollars can force the rest of us to do whatever they want. Not only that, but the more money you have, the easier it is to get even more at the expense of others. So if I have $1,000,000 dollars, not only do I have 1,000,000 votes, it's much easier for me to use the power of my $1,000,000 to take away some of your $50,000. Where are the checks and balances? In our form of democracy we have checks and balances that keep the branches of our government from using their power to accumulate more power. In a "free market democracy" there are no checks and balances, only the positive feedback loop of money creating power creating money.

This is NOT a perfect form of democracy.

Unconvincing

[redelm]

The essential arguement for governing the Internet is missing: Why does it need to be governed at all? Who, other than potential governors, is clamoring loudly for more regulation? What actual governance failures urgently need rapair?

I'm sorry, but this looks like a power grab by control freaks. Taking advantage of anti-US sentiment (Iraq/Kyoto) to feather their own nests. Worse, I suspect they intend to provide a great deal more regulation than the minimal needed.

UN doesn't want it that way.

[Morinaga]

Unfortunately, the UN doesn't see it that way. They want WAY more than just IP addresses. They really want to govern the Internet. The UN body proposing this is actually called the Working Group on Internet Governance . http://www.wgig.org/index.html

In general they rationalize this decentralized governance by claiming the woes of spam, porn and of all things hardware costs. None of those things have anything to do with some administrative technical controls. Have no doubts representatives of the UN who are clamoring for some sort of control, want that control for only one reason and that reason is power.

Re:Give it to the UN

[foandd]

The word Nazi would be stricken from the record if Germany got their way. We'd never know about what really happened in World War II because their so ashamed of their history.

Has Germany changed that much since I lived there? I keep seeing comments like this, and I can't figure out if they're the typical spew the small-minded large-mouthed ignoramuses all too common on /. are so fond of, or if Germany really has changed their policy on this.

When I lived there, there were restrictions (you couldn't display the swastika, for instance) but the attitude towards the holocaust could be best described as "never forget, never repeat." Finding information on what happened was far easier than it is in the U.S. Has that really changed, or are people here just feeding their prejudices without bothering to gather any actual knowledge of the situation?

If Bush Administration Lied About WMD,

[Anonymous Coward]

(they didn't stop us invading Iraq, we lied and made up a pretty good cover story)

If The Bush Administration Lied About WMD, So Did These People

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." -- From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998

"This December will mark three years since United Nations inspectors last visited Iraq. There is no doubt that since that time, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to refine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer- range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." -- From a December 6, 2001 letter signed by Bob Graham, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford, & Tom Lantos among others

"Whereas Iraq has consistently breached its cease-fire agreement between Iraq and the United States, entered into on March 3, 1991, by failing to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program, and refusing to permit monitoring and verification by United Nations inspections; Whereas Iraq has developed weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological capabilities, and has made positive progress toward developing nuclear weapons capabilities" -- From a joint resolution submitted by Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter on July 18, 2002

"Saddam's goal ... is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed." -- Madeline Albright, 1998

"(Saddam) will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983" -- National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998

"Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement." -- Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." -- Robert Byrd, October 2002

"There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat... Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time. But the United States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we were before September 11th of 2001... He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn't have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we." -- Wesley Clark on September 26, 2002

"What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs." -- Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002

"The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will b

Re:If Bush Administration Lied About WMD,

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! We've got a live one here!

From the United States Senate Records, we can find exactly who voted for or against Resolution 114 to invade Iraq:

Joe Lieberman - Yea
Dianne Feinstein - Yea
Tom Daschle - Yea
John Kerry - Yea
Bob Graham - Yea
Tom Harkin - Yea
Arlen Specter - Yea
Barbara Boxer - Nay
Robert Byrd - Nay
Hillary Clinton - Yea
John Edwards - Yea
Bob Graham - Nay
Jim Jeffords - Nay
Ted Kennedy - Nay
Carl Levin - Nay
Patty Murray - Nay
John Rockefeller - Yea

Fact is, none of these people were idiotic enough to invade Iraq over this.

I count 10 'Yeas' and only 7 'Nays' from that list. It takes a two thirds majority to go to war, and the Senate gave it with a 77 to 23 in favor. I hope those words of yours are tasty?

Then again, it would never do to let a little thing like the facts cloud a good argument, now would it?

Re:If Bush Administration Lied About WMD,

[RevAaron]

All the bourgeois parties are pro-war. If your post is supposed to convince us that the Democrats are as bad as the Republicans- congradulations, we knew that already.

TLDs

[Bezben]

Just out of curiousity, do we really need TLDs? If you think about it, most companies just register multiple ones anyway, slashdot.org AND slashdot.com for example. To be honest, I think it just adds confusion for the most part, if somewebsite.com is registered to a well know site, doesn't that make somewebsite.org pretty useless to all but squatters?

The only useful thing I can think of really is to group country specific services, .gov, .gov.uk or whatever. But then they could just register the .uk. or .us. domain and sub-domain...

Re:Give it to the UN

[Yonder Way]

We disowned California a long time ago.

I think there are a lot of Americans collectively wishing for either Mexico to take it back, or to have it fall into the sea. Best case scenario, both would happen, and in that order.

Better not just more TLDs

[logicnazi]

I agree with most things that Oram says in this article. I have one quibble and one major disagreement I will put in another post.

The quibble is that freeing up more tlds won't necessarily solve the scarcity of good domain names. If done incorrectly it could even make the problem worse.

The point of domain names is to provide a quick and easy way to remember and communicate internet locations. So long as tlds categorize sites into content relevant categories they do work to relieve the demand for domain names. For instance if you want to go to fuckedchicks (made up) your favorite porn cite remembering that it is in .xxx (assuming it gets popular) is of no difficulty since it is easily connected with important facts you already remember about the site. On the other hand when tlds don't have much to do with content adding more of them can have a negative effect. If you know your favorite blog is computationaltruth.???/blog/ knowing the content or other facts about the site hardly helps you distingush between net, org and com. Since most people and all corporations want to achieve easy memorability when there is no obvious content (or other already known information) based discrimination more tlds can either just increase the confusion encouraging corporations to buy CORPNAME.* for all possible options. Worse too many tlds means some may fade into obscurity and fads keep the 'good' names just as scarce.

Or to put it another way too many non-content related tlds make all domains harder to remember and hence don't solve the problem but just spread out the pain by making every name slightly worse.

So far it seems that the country codes (and perhaps some even smaller geographic codes) are good (in the sense above) tlds as are the .xxx, .edu and .gov. Org and Com and Net are necessery general purpose names but that model shouldn't be followed with things like .biz which just sow confusion (is that a .com or a .biz)? The important question is whether there are enough good new content related tlds and that is something I don't know.

Fear the UN:Censorship is on the Table

[logicnazi]

As I mentioned in an earlier post I agree with most of what Oram said in his article. I had one quibble about the solution for tlds but aside from that everything he said was correct. However, what he didn't say is even more important.

It isn't just commercial interests that make domain names such a hot topic. DNS is the only possibility for control and management of the internet and that makes governments all excited, especially totalitarian regimes and other countries who aren't big fans of free expression. Sure the internet itself may make complete censorship very difficult but control over the domain name system can make certain types of information practically impossible to access.

For instance imagine a body running the DNS system which decides to crack down on hate speech. They could deny a domain name to every site hosting hate speech (or if they wanted to go really hard core every site linking to hate speech by IP). Search enginge domain names are very valuable and a great deal of pressure could be exerted on google by threatening to take away google.com and give it to someone who promised not to link to offensive material.

While I'm not a big fan of hate speech I do think it is a great mistake to ban it. I think the suppression of racist speech in germany has only given neo-nazis an air of danger and mystery and spread the movement. Since many countries other than the US have laws against hate speech it is quite plausible a UN body might enforce such a scheme if they got control over the internet. Even more disturbingly is that a large number of countries would likely push to expand the definition of hate speech to anything which is sufficently critical of islam.

On the corporate front giving control of DNS to some UN body removes the first ammendment protections for parody and commentary from play. Right now there is some (minimal) legal protection for things like McDonalds-sucks. If it was run by a UN body it would not only remove the legal hurdles preventing the administration in the US (and other countries) from giving in to the corps but also make it so distant from voters that politicians could avoid any serious political harm from giving in (it wasn't me it was the global community).

Most ditrubingly is the fact that many of the biggest pushers for UN control over the internet are also countries with large censorship agenda's like china, iran and others (brazil is an exception). While a full on censorship scheme like I describe above is unlikely to be used against talk about democracy it could be against pornography. More likely, however, is that these countries will push to create a mechanism for per country censorship of domain names, e.g., DNS records will be required to include information about the type of content to allow easier censorship of their populations.

You can find analysis on my part and more facts/links .

Don't get me wrong ICANN is far from perfect but it is mostly incompetant and a bit corporate influenced which is a lot better than some of the possible alternatives. US record on free speech is also spotted, but then again so are most countries records, and the US has some of the best protections for speech the majority finds disagreeable. Moreover, I think DNS administration is safer in any western democracy than in some intergovernmental body where everyone can deny responsibility. I would rather just give the DNS system to england or germany than share it.

Not just domain names

[Erixxxxx]

Its pretty clear this isnt about just domain names. From http://www.wgig.org/index.html:

12. It should be made clear, however, that Internet governance includes more than Internet names and addresses, issues dealt with by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN): it also includes other significant public policy issues, such as critical Internet resources, the security and safety of the Internet, and developmental aspects and issues pertaining to the use of the Internet.

The really rediculous quote from the paper though is:

Internet governance is the development and application by Governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.

Whats this in their respective roles crap? Who is it thats going to define what ones 'respective role' is? Why should we accept some UN idiots labeling of different groups? What the hell is the difference between the private sector and civil society? If govt supposedly reflects the values of a society, what is the difference between governments and civil society? What moron wrote this rag?

Geocode IP addresses

[jeanicinq]

If they implement the IP protocal with geocoded addresses instead of the IPv4 or IPv6, they wouldn't have such an argument to fight about in who controls the Internet.

Re:Give it to the UN

[GLOACAI]

Purpose: Propose a valid reason for giving control of internet regulation the UN

Note: This is my first time posting but i've had nagging ideas that mesh well with this topic. I'll be writing some intro stuff and tie it to the topic as i write.

Most peoples arguement to letting the UN handle anything, as far as i've noticed, is that it is bumbling and ineffective to a greater degree than any national government. I believe this state is caused by nations prefering to not have a "super-nation" above them and therefore will not give powers to the UN. If the UN has no powers to enforce any of its decisions of course it will be ineffective and ignored(anyone remember Wilson's the League of Nations). So in order to remove the ineffectiveness of the UN we must give it more power to make a force that countries must deal with. The bumbling will still be there, but in order to remove that it would have to be streamlined which raises a whole mess of political questions. My thoughts as to path of fixing this problem is to slowly give the UN the small inconsequential powers, like internet regulation, till it has built up a good powerbase. With a powerbase it forces nations to see increased benefit by working with the UN which in turn gives the UN more credance and power, thus creating a cycle.

Many people on the internet will disagree with my statement that internet regulation is a small inconsequential power, but think about this. Our lives are shaped around the internet and therefore skewed while the vast majority of the population on Earth has little to do with the internet and would think nothing of the UN taking it over.

While yes opening up governance of the internet to foreign countries could possibly increase censorship on the internet; I believe increasing the UN powerbase outweighs that concern. It must also be noted while their are strong nations as proponents to censorship of the internet, the opponents to it may be weaker in the majority but they far outnumber them.

The internet is a global community which noone can reasonably argue with now; and it would be better, in terms of representation, if it was controlled by a global organization than a small one in a single nation. So I believe we as the internet community should take the chance of the internet regulation being messed up, because the unintended benefits will outweigh any problem that may arise.

Re:Mod This Guy Up

[hesiod]

> Taking away your domain name does NOTHING

Except stops all your incoming traffic from people who bookmarked your URL with the domain name and them assume your site went down when it no longer works. Saying Domain Names are nothing is utter bullshit, an extremely miniscule number of people use IP addresses to get to ANY website.

Why do we need to follow their lead anyway?

[Sir.Cracked]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but assuming that name resolution is handled so poorly, regardless of what institution is responsible for it, there is nothing stopping us from forking DNS. If Slash users don't like ICANN or the UN, why not start an alternative DNS? If I remember correctly, something to this effect was done when people wanted some TLD's early that hadn't been passed through. Why not split off from the whole thing?
Slash certainly has the usership and technical knowledge and resources to setup alternative Centeral DNS machines, this time with the name hierarchy done properly, and if a good amount of the tech sites go over, really what else would you need? If the businesses don't follow, good riddance, you can always go back to the polluted namespace with a simple config change, and if they do decide to migrate as popularity increases, they will have to play within the new rules.

Am I missing something here? Why NOT do this?

Re:WE Should keep it!!!!

[kevinbr]

I find it amusing that the UN - with the ITU, has controlled the telephone system and standards associated with telephony for a long tome now, with no complaints or issues. Amusing that no one here seems to understand how the UN actually works. It is doubly amusing that by demanding the Status Quo with ICANN they fail to see how unaccountable ICANN is.

Amazing that so many posters here decry the corporate pressures to control any and all domain names, yet are silent on the ties betwen WIPRO desires and ICANN actions.

Stupendous that no one seems aware of how the IANA function passed from Postel to ICANN with no stops and with no real consultation and little input from any stakeholder. Bizarre that for so many years the entries into the TLD space and delegations of Country Code TLD's were in the hands on one man (Postel).

Sad that no one here seems to recall the hundreds of pending TLD applications that were sent into "space" once ICANN gave birth to itself (my application was one pending : http://www.gtld-mou.org/gtld-discuss/mail-archive/ 00990.html).

Accountability? None whatsoever with ICANN.

The ITU has done an acceptable job in ensuring that the international phone system and it's required standards tick over nicely.

The ITU should have received the IANA function when Postel agreed it should move. However everyone in government at the time was too ignorent to absorb the implications of ICANN power.

I am also stunned that people actually believe that censorship requires any control of DNS - I am based from time to time in Dubai and remember when they fired up their firewalls and proxy servers running filtering lists.......those that want to control the internet have all the help they need from Cisco and white list vendors in the US to have any need to play games with TLD issues.

I cannot imagine that an ITU type function under the UN is going to block the issuance of .fuck as a TLD. However I would see major US outcy of a UN body allowed .fuck to be intered into the TLD files.

The internet seems to have no history. Certainly 1998 when all the action when down and the debates were lost seems to be too long ago for most posters to remember.

Long and short - ICANN sucks and will continue to suck.

Re:There's a reason squatting trademarks isn't leg

[jusdisgi]

Nope, sorry; your argument, while grounded in correct facts, is based on an unlike analogy and doesn't correctly treat the issue of squatters.

Your hypothetical, the ford.com site about river crossings, would indeed be acceptable under normal trademark policy. However, that's not what a squatter does. We are not talking about people who bought domain names that happened to be trademarks and used them for unrelated purposes. We are talking about people who bought domain names for no reason other than to sell them to the trademark owners. In that instance, when you are talking about someone buying ford.com and trying to sell it to Ford Motor Company, obviously the commercial interest of the domain squatter is "in the same market" as Ford Motor Company. They are selling the domain to deal with the business of selling cars.

If someone buys a domain that happens to be a registered trademark, and uses it for unrelated purposes, this is acceptable. If someone buys a domain name that's a registered trademark for the sole purpose of selling it to the trademark holder, then by definition they are interacting in the same market and it qualifies as trademark infringement.

Thanks for bringing this up, because it does allow me to clarify this part of the issue, which I didn't mention in the first post. But do note that not only do you disagree with me, but you also disagree with the very well-documented views of court systems in many, many nations. Everyone who matters (a group that doesn't include either of us) has already decided that I'm right about this.

The problem with alternative roots

[Sloppy]

If Slash users don't like ICANN or the UN, why not start an alternative DNS?

Groups like OpenNIC have already shown how to do this, but for some reason, the UN and EU are whining anyway. Instead of educating their constituents to use UN nameservers (or better yet, use OpenNIC itself, since it's already more democratic than any UN operation could ever hope to be) they're making all this noise in the legal system.

And I think I know why.

In spite of its virtues -- in spite of the fact that it seems to embody the very ideals that most individuals seem to hold -- OpenNIC isn't very popular.

The reason OpenNIC isn't popular, is that most peoples' nearests resolvers don't use it. Most people don't want to set up BIND (or its competitors). So they're going to use someone else's resolver, which will almost always be their ISP's machine. Thus, they defer the decision to someone else. ("If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." -- Rush)

The UN doesn't want to repeat this unpopularity. They're probably willing to leave it to the market or democracy, but only if they are guaranteed to receive the default vote. They don't want to be an "alternative root", they want to be "the" root, and let ICANN, OpenNIC, etc be "alternatives." And the only way to do that is to sieze control of the hosts that are already entered into everyone's BIND config files. There are a handful of specific addresses that they want to take over.

What I haven't figured out, is why ISPs still use ICANN's root. The big ones (e.g. Comcast), I understand: they have an interest in teaching people to just leave everything important to the megacorps. Being a Comcast customer is all about sucking the corporate teat. But as for the small ones, the universities, etc, I don't get it. I expect that the admins of these networks are educated enough about DNS that they understand the issue, so why do they still choose ICANN?

Anarchy != Democracy

[aricusmaximus]

1. Your example may work for bananas, but what about electricity or medicine? I buy out the supply and then sell it back to you at double the cost. Uh oh...

2. I don't know what universe you live in, but my universe is finite - finite resources, finite capital, finite time, finite knowledge - this certainly limits the forms and types of investment. Your 70/30 figures are totally unsubstantiated. Futhermore if being in the bottom 30% doesn't concern you, then I will happily take any extra monies that you have that cause you to exceed the bottom 30% of income -- of the entire world population, by the way, not just for the U.S.

3. You naively assume that the consumer has time and resources to correctly find and procure the items that most benefits them. Unfortunatley, that is not the case. Nor can everybody make the initial investments to enter a particular market - telecommunications or electricity for example. This world of unlimited competition, easy entrance into the market and omniscient consumers exists only in your head.

In the end,

"Anarcho-capitalists are against the State simply because they are capitalists first and foremost. Their critique of the State ultimately rests on a liberal interpretation of liberty as the inviolable rights to and of private property. They are not concerned with the social consequences of capitalism for the weak, powerless and ignorant. Their claim that all would benefit from a free exchange in the market is by no means certain; any unfettered market system would most likely sponsor a reversion to an unequal society with defence associations perpetuating exploitation and privilege. If anything, anarcho-capitalism is merely a free-for-all in which only the rich and cunning would benefit. It is tailor-made for 'rugged individualists' who do not care about the damage to others or to the environment which they leave in their wake. The forces of the market cannot provide genuine conditions for freedom any more than the powers of the State. The victims of both are equally enslaved, alienated and oppressed."

source: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/dward/newrightanarchoca p.html