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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.
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'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.
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.
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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??!
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.
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.