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United States Cedes Control of the Internet

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the learning-to-share dept.

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.'"

15 of 508 comments (clear)

  1. Has The Register become The Inquirer? by winkydink · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

    1. Re:Has The Register become The Inquirer? by andrewman327 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

      --
      Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
    2. Re:Has The Register become The Inquirer? by sirinek · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Has The Register become The Inquirer? by Billosaur · · Score: 5, Informative

      Even the original article is contradictory:

      Not really -- it's more like the US's position is contradictory or more realistically, a facade:

      "The historic role that we announced that we were going to preserve is fairly clearly articulated: the technical verification and authorisation of changes to the authoritative root," Kneuer explained following an afternoon of explicit statements from US-friendly organisations and individuals that it was no longer viable for one government to retain such power over the future of a global resource.

      Despite the sentiments, however, it was apparent from the carefully selected panel and audience members that the internet - despite its global reach - remains an English-speaking possession. Not one of the 11 panel members, nor any of the 22 people that spoke during the meeting, had anything but English as their first language.

      So the US is more than happy turn over administrative control of the Internet domains to ICANN, but retains the right to control the root structure. In essence, ICANN becomes a semi-legitimized world front for the Internet. Other countries can't claim they don't have control over the process now, and the United States retains the true power. This will appease a few countries but on the whole nothing will change. In the end, the US hasn't given up a thing but a bloated and malformed beaureaucracy anyway.

      --
      GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
    4. Re:Has The Register become The Inquirer? by dr_dank · · Score: 5, Funny

      and Senator Ted Stevens was quoted as saying "Get away from my tubes, you damn fool kids!".

      --
      Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
  2. Prioritized Citizenship? by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Prioritized Citizenship? by amliebsch · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

      --
      If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
  3. Headline is deceiving by Hulkster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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."

    1. Re:Headline is deceiving by BCW2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
  4. obligatory by sam_paris · · Score: 5, Funny

    ICANN't believe the USA has done this!!!

  5. The Wild by Tom · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  6. Re:Holy Shit by clickclickdrone · · Score: 5, Funny

    >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
  7. Domain suffix migration? by Eleazer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So does this mean we'll see a transition from .com to .co.us for US hosted domains?

  8. The failing of the UN (?) by N3wsByt3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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." ---
  9. Re:Holy Shit by SIGALRM · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.
    --
    Sigs cause cancer.