Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Here's what the LA Times has to say, which is quite different from the "day in history of the Internet" crap:
U.S. Unlikely to Yield Web Oversight Yet
Federal officials seem inclined to extend a deadline for privatizing control of the Internet's address system.
By Jim Puzzanghera, Times Staff Writer
July 27, 2006
WASHINGTON -- The federal government appeared unlikely to relinquish oversight of the system for assigning and managing website domain names after a Commerce Department hearing Wednesday raised broad concerns about giving an obscure Marina del Rey nonprofit unsupervised control.
read the rest
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
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.
My work here is dung.
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."
ICANN't believe the USA has done this!!!
Tried and tested method: First, remove teeth from animal. Second, set it free...
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I've often said that the only way you can solve most of the issues revolving around the internet today is to make it a sovereign nation. That way one set of laws, one set of taxes, one set of decency can apply to all thus avoiding lawsuits in a million different countries due to your content.
Hopefully though, an international body can agree to some basic tenets so that we can establish so we can limit trivial laws and lawsuits due to localized laws.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
i fear that internet regulation will devolve into internet bureaucracy and politicization, a la the united nations. simply having a diverse or shared governing board does not ensure that the product will remain diverse or shared. the u.s. has a significant interest in maintaining the network and its development, and i think the continued managment by the u.s. would leave the internet in safe hands.
>We actually did something in the spirit of cooperation with other countries.
Don't worry, I'm sure it was a mistake and will be fixed in USA V2.1
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I suppose we will be at the mercy of the Film Actors Guild now.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
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.
So does this mean we'll see a transition from .com to .co.us for US hosted domains?
But france has those 2.5 Gb/s conections now, remember? They could send us their surrender faster than we could even dream
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.
So when do we get the press release from Microsoft saying there goes the "Network Neighborhood"?
As in spine. I understand our "do it our way or die" mentality isn't very popular overseas right now but, no matter what anyone says to the contrary, this cannot be a good thing. We invented it, we've run it just fine so far,. Was it hurting anyone maintaining control of something as democratic as the internet by a the most staunchly democratic and freedom loving country in the world? We should just leave well enough alone.
Terrible karma and aiming lower, which in this environment of one-sided reason, is higher.
"Unless you pay us 10 million billion dollars"
you went throught all that just to get what we already owe you?
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
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).
No Sigs!
"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.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Sigs cause cancer.
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.
Do you not think it's a little silly to declare you allegance to a collection of inert minerals? The Earth cares not at all for what we do, it will keep orbiting regardless.
Or perhaps you are for the "People of Earth". How touching! Except how can you declare an allegance with every single person on earth, some of which may not want you to exist.
Perhaps you are just for "Life on Earth". If so, would not your best chance to help out all life include dedicating yourself to the role of fertilizer? Otherwise, even if you are a vegetarian, you life on the death of many other organisms.
Such global statements of purpose simply seem to indicate you have put no real thought into what you mean to accoplish by your declaration.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
when somenoe on slashdot doesn't know the difference between the internet, and WWW.
The internet was created in the US, once called ARPANET.
When a government committee, headed by Al Gore, decided to let the public access ARPANET they renamed it 'Internet'.
Hence the reference to the often misquoted Al Gore quote.
Tim berners-Lee created the WWW.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ars Technica put an article out circa 17:11 GMT today claiming that The Register is misleading. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060727-7366 .html
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.
;-)
I can't argue with that. You guys even elect them!