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U.S. Calls For Public Meeting on ICANN Replacement
Glyn writes "The Register is reporting that the US government is holding a public meeting at the end of July over what should happen to ICANN when its contract is renewed in September. In the meantime, it has opened a public comment board where you are able to email comments for the US government and the rest of the world to see. The board is open now but comments need to be sent by this Friday, 7 July. The email postal address is DNSTransition@ntia.doc.gov."
"the email postal address is..." Must be going to Ted Stevens' office.
The last time ICANN was discussed in detail here, it was with regards to the .xxx TLD. Inevitably, the discussion descended into a bit of a flame-war regarding the neutrality of the entire process, given ICANN being a 'US-influenced' governing body.
So, if no-one country controls the internet, do my American friends agree that the time has come to create a new body to oversee the decision making process. A truly global body for a truly global infrastructure.
Personally, I do think it is right that all groups get an equal say in the future of the internet. We've got to work together otherwise we run the risk of fragmentation, which is the last thing anyone (apart from China I guess) wants. What say you guys?
(I'm not trying to start a flame war, but this question was always going to be asked...
About the rest of the world on this one. ICANN affects all of them and I dont think that the rest of the world will like the US going: "Well ICANN just isnt doing what we want. So guess what, were thinking of getting rid of them! IANA will be on the chopping block also. HEY AMERICA! Any thoughts?"
Is there another orgainzation out there that is doing this or is it time to move to IPv6 and an international organization for the Domains and IPs out there.
Procrastinating life a way at a rapid rate of speed.
There are several different viewpoints that can be taken here:
US Federal Government view point (as expressed by the US State Department):
- The internet was developed with US Government money (and therefore US Government property)
- We allow foriegn interests access but as long as they play by our rules (eg: stay in your own domain)
- We will allow anything that furthers our country's interest (eg: promotes trade with the US, preferable in US favour)
Now has the previous incumbent (ICANN) abided and/or promoted the above?
Much as people loathe ICANN it has probably has stayed true to the above statements.
Other countries will probably want to dispute the first item (the rest will crumble) however you are going to have to butt heads with the a group of extremely stubborn (in their view patriotic) bureaucrats.
Even if ICANN was to be replaced / restructured / whatever, I have some serious doubts if its actions will change.
Zombie Engineer
World Encompassing Corporation....
The problem with ICANN is that it seems to cater to the needs, whims, fancies, monpoloies, viewpoints of a ver few entities based in the US.. whereas the internet, in reality, is World Encompassing. Every nation should have representation based on the number of servers hosted in it's soil, amount of bandwidth generated, etc.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
This is the sort of news that I wish dominated slashdot, instead of the more inane microsoft vs linux vs everything else. The overwhelming number of trival Apple did this today articles could be toned down too.
Did you have any idea that this meeting was happening before you read it here? I sure didn't. We (as a community) are probably one of the most qualified to offer a public comment to the board. Kudos to the editors for posting it.
Also, please don't whine about how the US is trying to control the internet until you've at least sent a public comment to the people who need to here it most.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
With all due respect , the status quo is fine . It's all good . Yes , there are interests and money flying around and some small issues , but frankly the current situations is much better than having a multi-headed International even more interest-torn organization .
My Starcraft 2 Blog
Because I don't want a group that rules by fiat. ICANN's power comes purely form the fact that peopel choose to listen to them. They've no real enforcement power. What happens is the roots trust ICANN. That is to say that ICANN gives out a root rone file that the root-servers.net roots use. Those roots are then what most DNS servers trust, meaning if they need info they don't have, they ask the roots where to look.
But that's all just a de facto agreement. The roots could, at any time, stop accepting ICANN updates, or start listinging to someone else as well. Likewise you already can have your DNS servers pointed at additonal or alternate roots. There's a number of them out there, OpenNIC being one.
So it's a situation similar to search engines, just with ICANN being even larger than Google. There can be, and are, alternative lookup systems. The ICANN roots are just the de facto standard.
Ok well the problem is if you create a new body with legslative power, suddenly this all goes away. The UN, or whoever runs it, mandidates that this is the ONLY DNS roots and you all play ball with them. They do what they please with it, including caving to the demands of the many undemocratic members, and there's fuck-all you can do about it.
What really needs to happen is that if other orginizations like the EU want their own DNS they need to stop bitching and put their money where their mouth is. Make a set of root servers, good ones, well ocnnected and stable like the root-servers.net roots. Don't make them take the ICANN zone file directly, however. Have them talk to your own org, EUCANN or whatever. Initally, just have it copy the ICANN zone file, subject to approval. Then, once you've got yourself established as a good credible system, talk to ICANN about splitting the zone duties. EUCANN gets all the domains in its' area, ICANN keeps the rest, they both mirror each other's zones.
I don't want to see the existing infastructure, which works quite well, handed over to the UN.
Does ICANN need to be replaced or reformed into something almost entirely new? You Betcha!
.com to Verisign. But when I decided to look at how ICANN spends its money, they decided to unlawfully block me, forcing me to sue 'em (I won) - ICANN reacted by erasing public seats on the board of directors.
.com customers into Verisign's bank account (this is based on an estimate of the cost of about $0.03 to deliver the service that ICANN allows Verisign to charge $7.00 for.)
A few years back I was elected to the ICANN board - and I voted against all the junk that is today being recognized as a disaster, such as the perpetual grant of
Today, ICANN has erased virtually all forms of public participation - to the degree that you and I can't even observe how ICANN makes its decisions. Yet, at the same time the dns registries (Verisign et al), all the big telcos, and the intellectual property get the red carpet treatment - to the degree that ICANN is now gifting some on the order $300,000,000 per yer out of the pockets of captive
ICANN, with the help of NTIA, is really nothing more than a mideavel guild - it sets product descriptions, terms of sale, and choses who can be a member of the guild. In modern terms it is a combination in restraint of trade. Those are often illegal in the US and elsewhere, but few are willing to play hardball and ask that question in court because of the hand of the US government agency, NTIA, that rests on ICANN's shoulder. Yet NTIA, like many of the actions of todays US gov't are based on rather fancyful readings of the constitution or statutes and may, when reviewed, be found to be excessive claims.
So it is quite appropriate that people remember that tomorrow is the 4th of July - and should remember that just as the Declaration of Independence cited grievances against King George III, you should send your concerns and complaints to NTIA by the 7th.
Yes you (the US) created the networking protocols but guess what, The world wide web was created by CERN which is comprised of European countries. Without Europe websites WOULD NOT EXIST. The government is acting in an extremely stupid manner. Supposing they get rid of ICANN and put in place a system controlled by the US government. Will Europe and most of the rest of the world like that? Not a chance. Supposing that net neutrality bill comes through and European ISPs suddenly have to pay to send their traffic to the US, I'll imagine they'll like that even less. With the net suddenly controlled by a single government and business from that country, I'd give it... 3 months before the US net becomes isolated and the rest of the world has it's own net. Remember the great depression? One of the leading reasons for it was isolationism. Considering how much the net it worth to businesses, having the US net seperate from the rest of the world would hit overseas business hugely. These companies stop making money, share prices go down, investment funds start to devalue, smaller banks start getting uneasy and calling in loans and selling assets.... Oh lookie, a stock market crash!