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ICANN Writes US Government Requesting Independence
Combat Wombat writes with word that IP address and domain name overseer ICANN has put in a request to the US government, asking to be freed from ties to the United States. A 'lengthy' report was sent to the US Dept. of Commerce, and covers the numerous steps the organization has already completed along the road to independence. The BBC reports that a meeting will be held soon in response to the report, a reaction to the expected end of US control. "The meeting marks the half-way point for the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) under which ICANN was tasked to comply with a series of 'responsibilities' deemed necessary for its release from official oversight. The JPA grew out of the original Memorandum of Understanding that established Icann and signalled the beginning of the end for US control."
No.
Sincerely,
George W. Bush
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
As much as it might be good for the Internet, it will never happen. ICANN is considered a strategic U.S. asset. Everyone seems to be forgetting that the Internet started out as a project of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The government is not going to give up control that easily.
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ICANN has put in a request to the US government, asking to be freed from ties to the United States.
Yeah, like that's going to happen. The United Nations is supposedly meant to be independent from the US, but in reality is just a puppet organization held up by the US. Even organizations that aren't based in the US are inevitably tied to the goings-ons of the US from economic, trade, or cultural points of view, such as, say, the Bank of England. Given the US owns the largest swathes of IP address space, I can't see any official or semi-official ties (whether legal or cultural) with the US being cut any time soon.
But with China and Russia making their own ICANN of sorts it seems to make sense for ICANN to become a free and neutral international department. If it's going to be a WORLD WIDE WEB for much longer and not the US tubes, EURAsia tubes, Russia tubes, and China Tubes something has to give now.
ICANN becoming their own international organization with no country has to be one of those things.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Yes, because in the grand scheme of things with everything that's going on in the World, ranging from the War in Iraq to the Genocide in Darfur, the fact that the United States has global TLDs not ending in .us is really a priority that the World community needs to address.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Before the guide could answer, another general replied:
Request your free CD of my piano music.
If ICANN succeeds and gains "independence" from the US Dept. of Commerce, what would change? Has the US government imposed any restrictions on the activities of ICANN while under its wings? Most of the issues dealt with by the government involving the Internet are independent of ICANN's charter. Net neutrality and "protecting the children"/censorship, two of the hot Internet issues in Congress, don't really have much to do with ICANN's workings. Indeed, each nation sets their own policies right now about how their populace uses the global Internet (see: Great Firewall of China).
The UN probably isn't the best shepherd for ICANN. The ISO seems to be a decent possibility.
And your sense of perspective is leading you to whine about the fact that the United States has a few TLDs for itself? Who the hell cares? That's just a fluke of history. If the UK had gotten the internet going then maybe it would be navy.mil.us instead of navy.mil and royal-navy.mod instead of royal-navy.mod.uk.
You don't see too many Americans whining about the fact that UTC is based on Greenwich Mean Time. The nerve of those Brits to define the Prime Meridian as going through their country. We should change this ASAP.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
With all this time spent arguing about who should control the Internet and how everybody hates the US and how everybody loves the US and how the UN is corrupt and how the UN is not corrupt and how everyone except you is a communist and nobody's a communist and China is a big country and Europeans eat French food and Kim Jong Il wants to use the Internet to enslave all of mankind with sharks and laser beams; not once, not even one single time did anyone stop and ask ICANN what they wanted.
Shame on you all!
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Haha, for once the saying actually applies...literally. All your ICANN are belong to US.
"Know but never fear the consequences of your actions."
I don't suppose you can elaborate on exactly WHY and HOW a multinational organization would be an improvement? ICANN is already run by a board of directors composed of people from all over the globe who represent their own international interests. It also takes advice both from a committee which represents even more governments from around the world and another committee that represents organizations and industries across the globe.
On top of that, the US government has little or not actual control over ICANN's daily oerations. The cat is out of the bag, sort of speak, and there is no way the US government can effectively control the internet as a whole even if it wanted to, since the rest of the world is sufficiently set up to operate without it - with the exception of content services based in the US, which are privately controlled anyway.
So other than the generic "USA sux" metality, what's the motivation for total globalization of ICANN's functions? What will this accomplish other than create another incompetent, ineffectual and political circle-jerk like the United Nations?
=Smidge=
U.N.
Largest body of countries, International.
Now, if you grew wary of the american policies concerning ICAAN, get ready for bitchslapping at a worldwide level.
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker