Slashdot Mirror
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.
Reding claims that it is indefensible that one country control the internet as if it were prima facie true that this were the case.
However she prefaced that statement with the best defense:
"Reding believes "The US, so far, has done this in a reasonable manner", referring to the oversight that the US government has given ICANN."
So the US is providing oversight in a reasonable manner according to the people who wish to strip that oversight from the US. Then they claim that such "reasonable oversight" is indefensible.
I think Ms. Reding would be surprised how a great many things she doesn't believe in have reasonable and sometimes convincing defenses. I also think she'd be surprised to see how many of the things she holds so dear are actually undefended biases.
Oh no. Here comes the sternly worded letter if we don't comply.
On a serious note, they have a point.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
We can see how well the UN has worked out, so no thanks.
You're kidding, right? They un-nazied the world! For ever!
I understand the unease that the rest of the world has with a single nation controlling ICANN. However, much as I often ask with engineering requests that seem spurious; what is the ROI to justify the change?
What is going wrong, which could reasonably be expected to go better, if we make the change? I'm not saying our stewardship of ICANN has necessarily been perfect, nor that we have a divine right just because we built the Internet. I do believe that the Internet is now a global resource, and that everyone has a very strong vested interest in it. And I am, generally speaking, a globalist -- I'd like to see us all spending more time on bettering all of us.
However, if there are not specific complaints, with a clear and significant path to improvement, it seems difficult to justify transferring control. Making the rest of the world feel good about Internet stewardship is not a good enough reason to risk the gridlock, posturing, saber rattling, and horse trading that could result from U.N. control.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I'm not an American, but I'm glad that ICANN is run by Americans. For the most part, the United States has a great deal of respect for different view points and allows for free thought. I can certainly imagine Europeans banning Internet websites for fear that they will anger Muslims, gays, atheists, Christians, animal rights activists, etc.. You can imagine European bureaucrats coming up with a handbook of acceptable thought and using that as a guide for website banning.
We made it, it's our toy, and we'll do with it what we please.
Not really. ARPANet was your toy. The original core protocols were developed with ARPA funding, but the current generation of the Internet Protocol (version 4, with version 6 being slowly deployed) was created as an international effort. The physical bits of the Internet in the US and some outside were created by US corporations, some with funding from the US government, but most of the current infrastructure is not US-owned.
In reality, ICANN does not control very much. They control the root DNS servers (most of which are outside the USA, by the way). If the UN set up a competing ICANN and mandated that ISPs in their member regions use the new DNS root servers - which could potentially include all of the existing ones outside the USA, since they are not actually run by ICANN, they just carry ICANN's configuration) then there isn't much ICANN could do. US ISPs would have the choice of either switching to the new roots or having their customers potentially have links incorrectly handled in the future, if the two organisations didn't keep their configurations in sync.
Seriously, multi-nation governance over the Internet is a terrible idea. Excellent decisions are never made by committee (let alone one with multi-national components), and when you cloud the waters even further with political motivation it makes for an excellent tasting recipe for disaster.
I can make a telephone call to almost any country in the world from here. The UN doesn't seem to have done a bad job ensuring that this works correctly, in spite of the committee that controls the international telephone system having multi-national components.
Unless you can make a better argument than "we use it too so we get some say as well", I see no reason for this to happen.
I seem to recall reading that a variant of this phrase was the rallying call for the American Revolution.
Don't like it? Invent your own interweb.
I assume you know that the web was invented by an Englishman in Switzerland.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That's nothing, the head of the Department of Justice in the USA approved of illegal wiretaps, and the President of the country personally approved of torture, for the love of Jebus.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Why don't you take your snide 'try reading a history book or two' remark and shove it up your ass? The Soviets and Chinese accounted for 88% (yes, eight-eight percent) of all Allied military casualties. It doesn't matter how important you think the US intervention was. The fact remains that many more Americans and Britons would have died fighting that war if it wasn't for the Soviets and Chinese bleeding the Axis powers.
To discount the importance of the Soviet and Chinese contribution to the war is to suggest to me that you are the idiot who needs to 'try reading a history book or two'
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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."
No it isn't divine right but the right of doing it first. The US did build the Internet and most of the tech that it runs on. "Thanks CERN for that http thing BTW".
So now the EU wants the US give up control. Okay what are you going to give us in return? Respect? I doubt that. Less scorn? Sure....
I have to say that I see no good reason for the US to give up control of ICANN any more than I see a good reason for France to give up control of the FAI.
I doubt that it will improve any service on the internet, increase cost, and potently aid censor ship. There are a lot of countries in the UN that do not value free speech at all.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The UN is not just the Security Council. It is also the WHO, UNESCO, UNICEF, FAO and many other entities which are part of the UN and *generally* work well enough that they blend into the background.
A lot of brave French men and women died fighting for their homelands while the Yanks made excuses and sat around eating ice cream in Times Square or whatever they were up to and didn't get involved til 1941. Show a bit of respect.
Ok jokes aside and in Europe we're truly grateful for the Americans finally getting involved in 1941 and for less open but valuable support beforehand, but I think you do the French a disservice, take a look at how many were fighting in different theatres of war and in home resistance. I think over here in Europe we're much more aware about how many nations fought together and suffered terribly. Check how many nationalities fought on the Allies side in the Battle of Britain, something like a sixth of the RAF pilots were from countries other than Britain.
I am not sure where American naivety comes from regarding WW2 (though for sure it's not limited to your country)- perhaps because the war was mostly something that happened far away and didn't happen on your home soil except with rare exceptions? I guess the folk-memory of the war is life going on as normal and waving off the brave boys to distant lands. Maybe this is something to do with how that war is perceived differently in the USA from Europe?
I am not sure where American naivety comes from regarding WW2
Hollywood. Take a look at any US-made WWII film, and you see the French being rescued, the British being helpful to the main American force, and the Russians conspicuously absent (especially on anything made during the cold war).
Then take a look at what history is taught in school in the USA. All (most?) nations are guilty of focussing too heavily on their own history when it comes to education, and for the USA the two world wars were not nearly as major events as they were for most of Europe, and in WWII a lot more focus is given to the Pacific theatre. I'm guessing you have an interest in history, and so have read quite widely on the subject, but try to think back and see if you can remember how much you were taught in school about the Pacific theatre in WWII. Here (in the UK) I don't remember being taught much more than 'oh, and the Japanese, Chinese and Americans were having a bit of a fight over there too'.
Some of the early war films and books in the USA were written based on accounts of US servicemen, but these had a very skewed view of the war; they missed out on all of the early actions in Europe, weren't aware of how much intelligence for the invasion came from various resistance groups, and very few of them came into contact with the Russian war machine that trampled over the Eastern Front. From their perspective, the Americans arrived, landed in Britain, dropped in to France, marked to Berlin, and then went home.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The Soviets were being taken over by Nazi Germany. Just like Europe was. The Chinese were being taken over by the Japanese. The Soviet Union, Europe, and Asia would all look and sound a lot different if Japan hadn't dragged the US into the war. I'm thinking things like, no Jews, with lots of German and Japanese speakers.
Try reading a history book or two.
Weren't the Soviets the first ones into Berlin?
Also, Battle of Kursk.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
ICANN HAS ICANN??!
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
Many of Soviet's casualties could've been prevented, though, if every soldier had been given a rifle. More often than not Soviet forces sent out 100 men with half a rifle each (every other carried a rifle; the rest carried the ammo). So much of those losses are more due to commander incompetence and lack of weaponry than anything else. But you're right that everyone contributed to a victory. :)
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
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.
Germany suffered around 3.6 million KIAs on the Eastern Front. She suffered around 5.5 million KIAs in the entire war. The Eastern Front contributed to well over half of Germany's military losses.
The fact that the Soviets and Chinese died in far greater numbers doesn't mean their contribution was greater.
You wouldn't see it that way if you were a Russian ;) There are a number of different battles (Stalingrad) and sieges (Leningrad) where the Russians absorbed more deaths than the British and Americans did during the entire war. I really don't think you can make the claim that their contribution wasn't important and I find it questionable that the Allies could have won without them. The US might have been able to defeat Germany but do you really think we would have walked away with a "mere" 418,000 KIAs if we had faced them alone?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
What should they have done differently? Given up because they lacked the resources and training to effectively fight their opponents when the war started? We had the luxury of two oceans between us and time to build up and train our forces. We had the luxury of choosing when we would fight.
You don't have those luxuries when your country is invaded. You fight back as effectively as possible and do what needs to be done to drive the invaders from your homeland. Do you really think we would have done it any differently if someone was invading our soil?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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! :)
While I agree the GP needs to be a bit more respectful, you go to far yourself.
"...while the Yanks made excuses and sat around eating ice cream in Times Square..."
I believe the excuse is "nobody declared war on us", which is a damn good one. The more I read about history, the more I believe that a major issue we have in the US is taking sides in wars that do not involve us. We should let other people fight the wars and have the bravery it takes to sit them out. If that means more disengagement from the world to prevent being dragged-in, so much the better.
Yes, that means we sit idly by while the Germans put up concentration camps. Yes, that means watching the slaughter occur in various places in Africa. Yes, that means...you get the picture.
The only wars we should get involved in are defense of our borders, or defense of allied borders, and we should be very, very picky about who we call "ally".
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
Why is this marked as a troll? It's well documented that the Soviet army was, especially at the start of the war, terribly equipped and horribly trained (thanks mainly to Stalin decapitating the army in his many purges prior to the outbreak of WW2, leaving no effective chain of command or indeed any combat experience) - witness how poorly the Russians fared against the Finns in the opening stages of the war.
And during Barbarossa, Russia literally threw men at the germans whilst they were still gearing up their war machine. Where they could they retreated eastwards, where they couldn't they fought with whatever they could find. Even when supplies did start becoming available, supplies to "hot spots" like Stalingrad were kept to a trickle as part of the military strategy that culminated at Kursk, resulting in the annihilation of the german 6th and the beginning of the end for Hitler.
Statistically, the russians lost ~13% (23 million) of their population during WW2, second behind Poland with 16% (about 5.5 million dead) - remember lots of Poles who had been lucky enough to escape were first on the beaches of Normandy too - in fact most places in eastern europe suffered much higher rates of civilian death due to internment in labour camps (as the slavic races were considered "subhuman" by the believers in Hitler's regime); Russia's death toll was 50% civilian - much of in labour camps, much of it due to Russia's lack of regard for individuals safety and a callous attitude towards the individual that was, some say, inherent under Stalin's communism. Witness his choice to not evacuate Stalingrad once it became evident that it was going to be a cataclysmic battle - "they will fight harder for a live city than an empty one" - using the lives of the inhabitants as incentive for the soldiers. Similarly, Germans were told that the Soviet's lack of regard for their own was symptomatic of their animal nature. That's the sort of thing that happens when two of the world's greatest fascists go head-to-head in a battle that was more about their personal pride than anything else. Stalin could just afford to lose alot more men than Hitler.
Comparatively, both the US and the UK lost less than 1% of their population. Not saying that the Russian contribution wasn't anything other than catastrophic for Hitler's regime, but alot of the deaths *could* have been prevented had Russia been better prepared (which, in turn, would have relied on Stalin not having shot all of his best men), and neither Hitler nor Stalin were too worried about the lives of their troops by the time of Stalingrad. Parent is spot on about soldier deaths though; Russian weaponry and military expertise were in colossally short supply up until the closing stages of the war in europe.
Mods - if you can't tell the difference between a troll and WW2 military history, please use your points on something else. Even better, use your time to educate yourself on one of the bloodiest and most epoch-defining events of the last thousand years which *still* serves as a reminder why letting fascist bastards get into a position of power over others frequently causes those others to die quite horribly.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
Nobody declared war on Britain or France either- they both declared war in support of the Polish.
And there's a reason for this: far and aside from humanitarian arguments, Britain & France both reached the conclusion that Nazi Germany probably wasn't going to stop at Eastern Europe. The realisation that you were probably in the firing line anyway will do a lot to make you stick together with your fellow targeted neighbours.
What do we think would have happened to the United States once all of Europe, Asia and Africa were under fascist regimes? And how well would they have fared, with no allies and the industrial might of a whole world poised against them?
We actually don't really need to ask this. Hitler demonstrated quite amply with his treatment of the Soviets. At the beginning of the war Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact. As soon as the Nazi regime decided that they were able to take them, they turned their attentions on the Soviets. And of course, the US was attacked by the Japanese as soon as they thought they could win, too, despite not having declared war.
All the US could have achieved by staying out of the war longer would have been to deepen the hole they would have needed to get out of. It is good for us and good for history that it didn't turn out this way, and that both the USA and USSR were dragged into the war before it was too late.