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European Union Asks US To Free ICANN
An anonymous reader writes "Viviane Reding, Information Society Commissioner of the European Union, is calling for the United States to hand over control of ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers). She said that the organization running ICANN needs be free of control by a single nation, and rather controlled by a private entity and governed by multiple nations. ICANN, headquartered in Marina Del Rey, California, was created in 1998 to oversee a number of Internet related tasks. Reding said, 'In the long run, it is not defendable that the government department of only one country has oversight of an internet function which is used by hundreds of millions of people in countries all over the world.'"
full bit:
"She said that the organization running ICANN needs be one free of control by one single nation but controlled by a private entity and governed by multiple nations."
That's quite a different story than implied by the summary's "hand over control [implied: to the EU]".
I still think it's a bad idea to let 'multiple nations' govern the thing - there's too many nations that would seriously curb what can and cannot be done. I don't think the U.S. having sole control is all that great either, but out of the various options - I'd sooner 'trust' the U.S. with it (given existing records, although I disagree with the whole .xxx domain getting nixed - especially since ICANN has/had plans to offer .anythingyouwant anyway) than, say, the U.N. or a grouping of e.g. U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China to pick a semi-random grouping there.
Great links. For those who have censorship concerns, as can be seen on her Policies and Activities page, she supports the Safer Internet Programme. Their mission "aims at empowering and protecting children and young people online by awareness raising initiatives and by fighting illegal and harmful online content and conduct."
You mean like the time when they kicked North Korea's ass out of South Korea? Yeah that was an UN action (Resolution 84). Or how it served as a forum for the US and USSR to work out the Cuban Missile Crisis instead of fighting it out? How about the first Persian Gulf war, the one that's approved by the UN and not based on bullshit? Don't we wish we listened to the UN instead of Bush and Fox News the second time around?
The UN is huge and has many organs. Most of them are successful enough that you never hear about them and the work that they do. Of course there are failures but a world without the UN would be a far worse place.
Stop sucking on Fox News' teats.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Lets consider a better analogy.
We build at OUR EXPENSE an entire series of roads, spanning both countries and continents, and we tie the traffic system into YOUR control system.
We REIMBURSE you for your troubles, paying you a small fee for each traffic light you operate (DNS Registration), resulting in cheaper operational costs for everyone.
We however have grown concerned over your ability to operate our traffic as a neutral controller, as some of your states believe they can hijack and disable our traffic lights, if it bothers their locals. They have not been entirely successful yet, but they have caused disruptions that should never of been possible in the first place.
http://blog.cdt.org/2009/01/24/kentucky-court-rules-that-domain-names-arent-craps-tables/
The options we have available to us to minimize US laws/regulations on both our local and international traffic, we have the following options:
1. We leave the system in your hands (and whim), and hope for the best.
2. You hand over the control to an multinational committee
3. We sever our dependence on your system, and create our own. This however will more then likely cause international traffic crashes.
Anyone who thinks that its America's right to retain control over the entire INTERNATIONAL internet will suffer when countries develop their own control system in disgust.
Anyone who thinks America is more reliable then a committee might have a point, but 'because were better then you', is never going to be an accepted reason.
To avoid criticism; Say nothing, Do nothing, Be nothing.
Yep. The US created the internet. If you want to be the ultimate authority, or let a group of countries have a consensus over a network--go create your own damn Internet.
I know I'll get modded troll, but here goes.
An interesting idea (that will never happen in practice) would be to mirror all the DNS data that's only stored in the US, and probably the RFCs too, then (from the non-US side) drop all packets crossing the US/non-US border.
There we go, now we have our own Internet. What's that, US? You want on it?
I hope it doesn't happen (all my cool shit is in the US). But in case US really becomes too much a problem for everyone else, there's the solution.
Imagine the nightmares when both sides allocate IP addresses previously used by the other side, and the networks have to be merged again...
Speculation: oh the fun! :)