United States Cedes Control of the Internet

greenechidna writes "The Register is reporting that the U.S. is relinquishing control of ICANN. The story states: 'In a meeting that will go down in internet history, the United States government last night conceded that it can no longer expect to maintain its position as the ultimate authority over the internet. Having been the internet's instigator and, since 1998, its voluntary taskmaster, the US government finally agreed to transition its control over not-for-profit internet overseeing organization ICANN, making the organization a more international body.'"

Comments

Prioritized Citizenship?

[eldavojohn]

For years man has divided earth into political boundaries. Many of these boundaries have sub boundaries. And even more divisions among them and more beyond them and so forth based on belonging to a gregarious portion of the human race.

Disclaimer: I am an American. One thing I find myself asking not only myself but other Americans is what is their primary citizenship. What I mean by that term is which political boundary (if any) supercedes all?

Are you a citizen of the United States first? A citizen of Texas? A citizen of Chicago? A citizen of the Bronx? A citizen of North America? A citizen of yourself? At what point do you consider yourself a member of a community that will look out for other members?

Occasionally, we catch ourselves engaging in activities that would indicate we are world citizens first and citizens of the United States second. I know it's a tough concept to comprehend but we do send aid to foreign countries, we do attempt to help other countries no matter how much we fsck it up or act in our best interest. So there's some amount of talk about the United States actually being a part of the world. This act of ceding internet control to an international organization is a step in that direction.

Is it a good step or bad step remains to be seen and can be easily debated. One thing is clear, it sends a message to the rest of the world that the United States government is conscious of the rights of other governments. And this isn't a case of we need to help their economy because if it tanks, so will ours. On the surface this actually appears to be a gift of some little amount of power. This is not a historically common occurrence for a country such as the United States. Are we becoming more aware of the world political climate? I certainly hope so.

Re:Prioritized Citizenship?

[amliebsch]

One thing is clear, it sends a message to the rest of the world that the United States government is conscious of the rights of other governments.

If so, that would be the exact wrong message to send. We are conscious of the rights of people. Governments are simply organizations created by those people for the purpose of protecting and enhancing those rights, and to they extent they do that, we should respect them, and to the extent that they do not, we should not.

Headline is deceiving

[Hulkster]

If you RTFA, it's not clear what actually changed ... and in the text, it says "However, assistant commerce secretary John Kneuer, the US official in charge of such matters, also made clear that the US was still determined to keep control of the net's root zone file - at least in the medium-term."

Re:Headline is deceiving

[BCW2]

They have to do something to make sure that the UN doesn't get control. The UN is so corrupt, incompetent, and inept that it make the U. S. Govt look brilliant! Think about Rwanda, Darfur and others where the UN might as well not have showed up for all the good that wasn't done. NATO had to deal with Yugoslavia because nobody in Europe trusted the UN not to screw it up worse.

The Wild

[Tom]

Tried and tested method: First, remove teeth from animal. Second, set it free...

Re:Has The Register become The Inquirer?

[andrewman327]

Again it seems that the writeup got some things wrong. The United States has been doing an overall good job of running things. I do not mind the US being in control and I do not see major advantages to handing over control. I also disagree with some of the things that ICANN has proposed in the past.

In the status quo Internet traffic is not very censored or controlled by the US and things just plain work. I think this is a very good arrangement.

Re:Has The Register become The Inquirer?

[sirinek]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The Register is the Enquirer of the IT world. It posts all sorts of vague and misleading titles of stories. Try reading the articles and you'll see what I mean.

Let me be the first American to ...

[hal9000(jr)]

give a loud fuck off to Kieren McCarthy for this little tid bit of editorializing, "That the US government recognises it has to transition its role if it wants to keep the internet in one piece (and it then has to sell that decision to a mindlessly patriotic electorate)"

It (he/she?) knows very little about American culture and hasn't seen recent polls about the dissatisfaction of the electorate with the present administration.

Control of the Internet

[El Cabri]

The US doesn't have "control of the internet", so it cannot be relinquishing what it doesn't have. The ICANN being US-based doesn't give much real control over IP packets travelling on some fiber halfway around the world from DC. Even if ICANN was a government agency it wouldn't. It just allows to vaguely arbitrate over domain names and IP number disputes that have relatively faint commercial implications. And even then the US feds would have to use indirect influence on ICANN.

Re:...net neutrality?

[ChrisGilliard]

This actually has nothing to do with net neutrality. ICANN is only responsible for internet names. Net neutrality is a matter of US law (other countries realize that the net should remain neutral so it's not an issue elsewhere).

The failing of the UN (?)

[N3wsByt3]

"The UN is so corrupt, incompetent, and inept that it make the U. S. Govt look brilliant!"

Maybe that was the plan of the USA all along? ;-)

Seriously though, many problems of the UN stem from problems its members make (e.g. sovereign nations). It's only as strong (or inept) as those countries that make up the UN and have to decide when to act and when not. Some countries actively undermine the UN, and thus, obviously, this has its repercusions on the UN as a whole.

The USA shouldn't shout to loud in this regard, since it's often *they* that contribute in a major way to make the UN inept and incompetent, using its veto arbitrarily and destroying a united policy.

Re:Holy Shit

[SIGALRM]

USA, Why can't Islamic people worship together?

Excuse me if I missed the big story, but the USA hasn't banned Islam or corporate worship. I can't think of another country that is more tolerant of religious freedom than the US, wackos included.

Gore and the Internet

[???]

You know, I'm sick of this crap.

[A]s the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.

        Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective

You know who wrote that? Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn. If anybody's qualified to talk about Gore's contribution to the early days of the 'Net, it's those two.

Original Document
Look, in the early '90s, 6 years before Slashdot, when there were less than a 1/4 million hosts on the 'Net, Gore introduced the Act that would ultimately fund the development of Mosaic. In the '70s, Gore was pushing support for networks, when nobody was talking network. Through the '80s, he pushed for consolidation of disparate government networks.

In the '90s, he drove the Clinton administration's focus on the 'Net. Was that administration perfect on technical issues? Far from it. But Gore was generally a positive force. He pushed against the CDA (which was getting rammed down the admin's throat riding on the Telecommunications Act). He was wrong on key escrow, but he pushed back on Clipper.

The Internet was not built exclusively on protocols and software. It required funding and political support. Gore has been a net positive force for us. Nobody is going to take us seriously and stand up for the issues that are important to us if we eventually go after everybody who does just that.

Re:Has The Register become The Inquirer?

[andrewman327]

"the rest of world is generally worse"

That should be the motto of all patriotic people. So simply stated yet so true. I have yet to read a convincing account of what problems exist solely because of US control over some aspects of the Internet.