How The U.S. Government Undermined the Internet

sakshale writes "The Register has an article about U.S. Government backed policy changes that have led ICANN to redelegate top level domains in such a way as to provide 'greater state-controlled censorship on the internet, reduce people's ability to use the internet to communicate freely, and leave expansion of the internet in the hands of the people least capable of doing the job'" More from the article: "At that meeting, consciously and for the first time, ICANN used a US government-provided reason to turn over Kazakhstan's internet ownership to a government owned and run association without requiring consent from the existing owners. The previous owners, KazNIC, had been created from the country's Internet community. ICANN then immediately used that 'precedent' to hand ownership of Iraq's internet over to another government-run body, without accounting for any objections that the existing owners might have."

Comments

Re:It's a consensus... we change change it

[DaveV1.0]

Your first question seems to be the contention in the article. The domains in question are Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs). Country Code domains are considered to represent the country it is assigned to, and it is considered the "property" of the country and the government of said country.

In the past and for various reasons, some countries allowed their domains to be run by others, including individuals and organizations.

The article takes issue with countries taking back the control of the domain.

Near as I can tell, the writer of the article believes that the currently holder of a ccTLD is the "rightful owner". The U.S. and ICANN believe the current government of the country is the "rightful owner".

When it comes to ccTLDs I believe that the government of the country is the rightful owner. The current holders, or perhaps controllers is a better word, do so at the pleasure of the country.