US Relaxes Control Over ICANN

An anonymous reader tips news that the US Dept. of Commerce has signed an agreement with ICANN to end their current oversight responsibilities and allow more input from the global community. "The move comes after European regulators and other critics have said the US government could wield too much influence over a system used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Those critics have complained, among other things, about the slow rollout of Internet addresses entirely in languages other than English." The US will still be involved; every three years, ICANN's work will be evaluated by a committee, one member of which will be from the Dept. of Commerce.

Comments

LOLINTERNET

[Anonymous Coward]

ICANN HAZ DOMAIN?

other countries too

[sopssa]

This is only a good thing. ICANN with it's power has been too US based for long time already, while internet is global.

As an EU citizen I'm happy and even surprised to see this happening - US actually caring about other people too and giving some control to people elsewhere.

To begin with Internet was a distributed system that couldn't be taken down at one point.

Re:other countries too

[Anonymous Coward]

So we're giving more control over the internet to total surveillance societies like Great Britain? Not that I'm against sharing control, but I also don't see how it's automatically a good thing.

Re:other countries too

[tverbeek]

This isn't just taking control away from the US government, it's putting that control more firmly into the hands of a private organization. "International" doesn't automatically mean "better" (witness the WTO and IMF). All it means is that US citizens will be just as easily ignored as EU, AU, OAS, ASEAN, and ETC citizens are today.

Re:other countries too

[TheRaven64]

I can't believe this crap gets moderated up every time. The US put the majority of work into establishing what, exactly? Into designing TCP/IP? More or less true, although it was reviewed internationally and a number of the contributors were not from the USA. Building the infrastructure? No. Within the USA this is true, but outside (you know, where most of the Internet is)? Not so much. Hosting the root DNS servers? No, sorry, the majority of them have been hosted outside the USA for quite a few years now. Services that run on top of the Internet? You mean like that protocol designed by a Brit in Switzerland that you're using to troll Slashdot?

Re:other countries too

[Bralkein]

there's already so many people using it, and it'd be a ton of work to setup another system.

Well that sounds like a good reason just by itself, and you don't really give any reason for the US to maintain control other than some strange possessive instinct. The internet is a global system now, so it makes sense that ICANN should be accountable to global interests. Even though I'm British, I don't actually have a problem with the way ICANN has been run by the US, but the last thing I want is for everyone to start coming up with their own crazy system because of the kind of pointless, divisive behaviour which the US is thankfully avoiding with this new decision.

In fact, you mention the telephone system, but I bet it's a pain to have to parse all of the different crazy international phone number formats! Maybe a global system would be better for that too, if we could start from scratch :)

Re:other countries too

[sopssa]

Yes, I'd rather see UN manage the internet than a single country (US). Then it would actually have opinions of other countries on it too.

Re:other countries too

[Tablizer]

Rather than bicker over who has the "right" to control it, a more important question is what's the practical implications of control. If other countries grow upset at US control, eventually they'll circumvent it. As soon as one country does it and tests the approach, it may create a domino effect where everybody does it, leaving the US on a digital island. Ultimately any given country can control whatever comes in over their wires, and if they don't like the US's approach, they'll usurp it when needed.

Re:other countries too

[R2.0]

Aside from your blatant paternalism (the US has existed a lot longer than the EU has), you're happiness translates to me as "Good - now the EU can have a shot at exerting control."

As a US citizen, I'm completely unsurprised by the EU claiming to care about other people while consolidating power in itself.

Re:other countries too

[Anonymous Coward]

There are more internet users in China than there are people in the US. QED.

Re:other countries too

[nomadic]

As an EU citizen I'm happy and even surprised to see this happening - US actually caring about other people too

Considering the history of Europe in the 20th century, as an EU citizen you should be one of the last people to be "surprised" at the US helping others.

Re:other countries too

[ElectricTurtle]

You do know that the opinion of other countries like China, Bahrain, Burma, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North AND South Korea, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, UAE, Yemen, etc. is 'censor it for any reason that might potentially undermine the state or social norms.' Yeah, we really need their input.

Re:other countries too

[zach_the_lizard]

I think having the Internet controlled by politicians in any organization is not a good thing. I would rather see it in the hands of something like ISO or something along those lines. Probably more like "along those lines."

Re:other countries too

[brainboyz]

He's right. The European Union (established by the Treaty of Maastricht on November 1, 1993) hasn't existed as long as the United States (July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence).

Re:other countries too

[ElectricTurtle]

Your assumption is, at least according to Nationmaster, upside-down: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/int_hos-internet-hosts The US still hosts the majority of websites in the world.

Re:other countries too

[ElectricTurtle]

Australia is introducing filters too as most /.ers know. They just didn't fit my more extreme parameter of 'anything' that undermines the state or social norms. I don't like any level of censorhip, but I wanted to focus on those countries who have policies that are the most irredeemable.

Re:other countries too

[Shakrai]

Because the UN has done such an upstanding job at managing everything else. Why if it wasn't for the UN we might have seen genocides in Africa wherein millions of innocent people died. We might see countries like Libya sitting on human rights commissions. We might see aggressive states like Iran and North Korea flaunting international law and getting away with it.

Yep, the UN is a fine upstanding institution. We should hand the keys to the internet over to them. What could possibly go wrong?

Re:other countries too

[Binary Boy]

Can you please provide any example where the input of other countries was ignored by ICANN, leading to a negative outcome? Just wondering.

Re:other countries too

[rs79]

"Moving the control to international platform where also other advanced democratic countries can balance out totalitarian undemocratic countries is a step in the right direction."

Modulo the bloody obvious which is that government doesn't need to be in the loop in the first place. It's not liked they helped build it and knew what they were doing, ney, the DoC in charge of this now are the same bunch that mandated OSI protocols when talking to the government. When the Internet had reached near ubiquity and OSI still didn't have any networking code they relaxed that rule.

Now these guys are in charge of ICANN and jus handed the keys to an unelected bunnch of clueless government wonks who are already being lobbied hard by the trademark people, one of the most powerful lobbies in America... and the ones that don't leave fingerprints.

Re:other countries too

[Xest]

Yes, and there's an awful lot of other countries that don't want censorship.

Changes need consensus in international organisations, this is a stupid argument, because you'd never get international consensus on this sort of thing so it wouldn't happen.

Whilst you have one country controlling it however, you get shit like this:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081020/0058002578.shtml

http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/02/us-judge-censors-wikileaksorg.html

Yes that's right, judges in single US courts being able to unilaterally order the effective take down of overseas sites for which they should have no jurisdiction over whatsoever.

Don't try and pretend the countries you list would magically get their way over Western nations if control was shared, and don't try and pretend the US has never done anything wrong whilst in control of the internet.

When you have opposing views sharing power, stupid ideas get blocked indefinitely so the sort of situation in the above two articles would never happen, neither would censorship. Stuff like security issues that need urgent attention would get passed because everyone would agree they're a problem.

Effectively just as in hung or proportionally represented governments, the only stuff that gets blocked is controversal shit that half the people don't want, the only stuff that gets through is stuff that's agreeable to everyone. That's much better all round than having a single entity unilaterally imposing bad ideas on everyone else.

speed?

[twotailakitsune]

Have you seen how slow the UN is at things. If it was under the UN we would be talking about roll out in the year 2500 if it is put on speed. not that I don't want ICANN to look at the world, but I just don't want ICANN to slow down just to be under the whole worlds control. If it works great, don't fix it. If it works ok, fix it without braking it, or slowing it down.

Re:Can anyone tell me...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is 4k to apply for a registrars license, then 2500 a year (USD). Then it is .20 cents a domain. Your company must have 70k in working capital and I believe 500k in assets to become a registrar.

No!

[geekboybt]

I'm of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" persuasion. I'm also a fan of doing away with committees when a group of people have proven that they can do a job well. If the only complaint is that some things are slow, how on earth is bringing it to a committee going to make things any faster?

Re:No!

[eln]

But it IS broke. ICANN regularly makes decisions based entirely on its ability to make money from them, even though it's supposed to be a non-profit organization. It has little regard for what its decisions mean for the long-term health of the Internet, and it's consistently espoused policies (such as domain tasting and ultra-cheap domain names) that make life easier for spammers and scammers at the expense of regular Internet users. It's also vastly increased the gTLD space for no apparent reason other than to generate more registrations, and therefore more money in its pocket. I don't know if a worldwide consortium could do any better trying to fulfill ICANN's charter, but it certainly couldn't do any worse.

Re:No!

[Trepidity]

If anything, freeing ICANN from US government control, and moving it to nebulous control of some squabbling mess of countries, seems like it'll have the opposite effect: give ICANN carte blanche to do whatever it wants.

Prediction

[R2.0]

The chorus calling for the "end to US control over the Internet" will morph into the "end of ICAAN control, because they are not subject to oversight." Withe the "solution" being the same - UN oversight.

They are not looking for more freedom - they want more control.

Re:Prediction

[5KVGhost]

Exactly. And even as it's now envisioned, the multinational committees will likely be stocked with the same luminaries of free speech that sit on the Security Council. And it'll go far beyond just making new domain names. After all, someone has to enforce who is allowed to which TLDs, right?

Frankly, I don't give a damn what China, Lybia or Iran think when it comes to running the Internet. And, if it comes to that, I don't want things like the German, French, or Canadian "hate speech" laws going international either. That sort of feel-good censorship can be even worse than the jackbooted variety, as the authorities choke off dissent while insisting it's all for our own good.

Honestly, I can't understand how any serious observer of world affairs, whatever you may personally think of the United States, can maintain that UN control is preferable to the current system. Not by any standard.

Re:Prediction

[Xest]

Why do you assume it'll be the security council that'll get involved rather than say the International Telecommunication Union?

What's that? You didn't realise the UN already does pretty much what ICANN does in another area very successfully?

"Frankly, I don't give a damn what China, Lybia or Iran think when it comes to running the Internet. And, if it comes to that, I don't want things like the German, French, or Canadian "hate speech" laws going international either. That sort of feel-good censorship can be even worse than the jackbooted variety, as the authorities choke off dissent while insisting it's all for our own good."

But you think it's okay for a single US state to be able to impose censorship for our own good I suppose?

http://www.freepress.net/node/45158

Eventually the appeals court realised this was stupid and overturned it, but the fact is a single judge in a single state of the US whilst US has full control of ICANN could censor whatever they wanted and did so for a damaging period of time for a web based business, and they did. More than once:

http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/02/us-judge-censors-wikileaksorg.html

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2008/03/us-interferes-with-travel-to-cuba.ars

"Honestly, I can't understand how any serious observer of world affairs, whatever you may personally think of the United States, can maintain that UN control is preferable to the current system. Not by any standard."

Your answer lies above, it is because any "serious observer of world affairs" who is not ignorant to the reality of US control of ICANN realises it's been doing a really, really bad job in recent years with everything from gTLDs to censorship of foreign domain names being.

I guess you weren't aware of what ICANN has done wrong in recent years which is fair enough, but if you're going to defend an organisation and speculate on what an alternative organisation would do wrong, you should at least make sure the organisation you're defending wasn't guilty of doing exactly what you're so concerned about- censorship.

Re:EU politicians suck even more than US ones

[brainboyz]

It doesn't bust it any more than having companies running their own domain DNS does. It puts more load on the root servers, but custom TLDs don't bust DNS any more than domains running custom DNS servers to host subdomains.

Btw, good job on posting that opinion appropriately: as a coward. :D

Re:So who is ICANN accountable to?

[damn_registrars]

ICANN is an organization composed of human beings, sooner or later it will do something that is evil.

Too late. They have already agreed to sell gTLDs. As if the spam enforcement wasn't horrendous enough (it terms of registrar obligations), it is about to get a lot worse since with the gTLDs will go the registrar TOS.

In other words, for some time ICANN hasn't cared about not doing "evil", as long as it makes money.

UN slow?

[MosesJones]

Is the UN really that slow?

Look at UNHCR which are just about the quickest set of people to react when a disaster strikes

Look at the Climate Change pieces which brought together the whole world and came to an agreement (sans one little country called the US)

Now what you might mean is that it takes the UN a long time to crack down on other countries who do things that your country doesn't like, that is certainly true. These are the people after all who refused to rush into Iraq, the slow-coaches.

The UN is an organisation that works by getting people to agree. ICANN should be the same. Having ICANN as an extension of US policy doesn't mean that things happen quicker (look how long its taken for the US to get a decent health service or a policy on climate change that makes sense) but it does mean that they are open to accusations of prejudice.

The UN does a good job, having people like Bolton, Bush and Cheney knocking it alongside people like Qadaffi complaining about it really just underlines what a good job it is doing. If it can piss off Cheney AND Qadaffi it must be doing it right.

Re:UN slow?

[brainboyz]

Far more countries than just the US declined to participate in the Climate Change issues. As for healthcare and the US climate policy, perhaps the US' view of these topics is different from your own? Just because their policies are different from what you'd want doesn't mean they don't make sense from a different perspective.

Re:UN slow?

[CannonballHead]

Look at the Climate Change pieces which brought together the whole world and came to an agreement (sans one little country called the US)

Yeah, it's a good thing manufacturing giants like China are working so hard to protect the environment. Why can't the US follow its example!

Re:UN slow?

[MosesJones]

Very few countries didn't accept the UN findings on climate change, China and India both did for instance. Now in terms of signing up to doing something then that is a tougher argument, but getting people to agree on the problem was the first step and there the UN did well.

On Healthcare, you are right the US might have a different opinion. Most other countries would think that having the highest per capita spend on healthcare and having lower life expectancy, 700,000 people a year forced into bankruptcy and 1/6th of the population not even covered is a bad thing. I mean some mad people might think that a system where you ended up paying less, covering everyone and increasing average life-expectancy was better... but unfortunately those systems don't deliver 30% profits to insurance companies, which is of course the american way (apparently).

Re:UN slow?

[Hadlock]

Google "UN Nuclear inspections stalled again" or "UN sanctions unenforced" or...
 
Don't get me wrong, the UN provides a useful dialogue for nations, but as for it's capacity to deal with and defuse major international crises, it's difficult to point to any situation where they weren't almost completely impotent to the crisis at hand.

Re:UN slow?

[SBrach]

Half of that 1/6th make over 50 grand a year and 1/4 of that 1/6th are foreign nationals. I, along with many Americans, do not believe in forcing insurance on people who can afford it but don't want it. I also don't see why we should pay for citizens of other countries. That leaves around 10 million people who are not covered and make less than 50 thousand a year. Sounds like we need to expand state and federal aid to include these people rather than turn over the entire apple cart and force socialized medicine down everyones throats. Another fun fact is 80% of Americans are happy with the health care they currently have. As far as the paying less....what percentage do you pay in income taxes again?

Re:UN slow?

[value_added]

Half of that 1/6th make over 50 grand a year and 1/4 of that 1/6th are foreign nationals.

You think an insurance plan purchased on the open market by an individual is affordable? Here's a hint: most small business owners make similar amounts and simply can't afford insurance for themselves, their spouses, or their families, and most definitely not for their employees.

I, along with many Americans, do not believe in forcing insurance on people who can afford it but don't want it.

So who cares? Similar knee-jerk reactions are found by people objecting to property taxes, income taxes, and public schools. If you're so short-sighted as to not understand that pooled efforts (aside from being the epitome of fairness), reduce costs for everyone, then there's no hope for you. Go live somewhere where the public doesn't subsidise much of your day-to-day existence.

I also don't see why we should pay for citizens of other countries.

Yeah, I don't have kids, and my house hasn't caught fire, so why the fuck do I have to pay taxes to pay for the fire deparment and public schools for all those snot nosed kids trampling my lawn?

You seem to blissfully oblivious to the fact that it's not uncommon in foreign countries that foreigners (selfish Americans included) are covered for free. By that standard, your views could be characterised as those of a selfish asshole.

Sounds like we need to expand state and federal aid to include these people rather than turn over the entire apple cart and force socialized medicine down everyones throats.

You use the term "socialised medicine", but obiously have no understanding what that means. Didja know that the Canadian, British, Japanese and French systems, for example, are all dramatically different? To the extent "socialised" is some vague, hand-wavy term that the government is involved, then we already have it. The Veterans Administration and Medicare. People screamed "Socialism!" when Medicare was enacted and Ronald Reagan predicted the demise of the US. Now, those Americans scream just as loudly at those who try and take it away or make changes to it.

Another fun fact is 80% of Americans are happy with the health care they currently have.

Fun and useless. 80% of those declaring bankruptcy due to health care costs have health insurance. You'd think those groups would be aware of each other. Either way, I'm sure that if polled, more than 80% of Microsoft Windows users would state they are similarly satisfied. Tells you absolutely nothing, but does suggest most people simply don't know what they they're talking about.

Like you.

ICANN still isn't following its own rules

[ehasbrouck]

ICANN's New Commitment to Transparency Arrives Via Secret Process (more background here)

Re:This is a bad thing

[Yvan256]

Oh yeah, I can already see it...
---

Dear client,

we have been made aware that there might be a problem with your bank account. Please log in and verify your personal informations including credit card numbers and expiration dates.

You can log in into our secure site at the following address: WWW.BANK.C0M

Re:Oh, boo hoo rest of the world

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

If you don't like, go get your own internet.

And to think some people complained that English was overrepresented on the internet...

Re:EU politicians suck even more than US ones

[ElectricTurtle]

You wanting it modded up because you agree with it is no better than modding it down for disagreement. It was modded down because he says Americans are all stupid and raises issues completely unrelated to the topic as "evidence". That's flamebait. Funny how the "terminally stupid" laid the whole foundation for the internet in the first place which is why everybody whines about how the US controls it.

Re:Ya Censorship!

[Tokolosh]

The nub of the issue is how to harden the internet against the vagaries of mob rule, special interests, fads and knees jerking. At the same time to embed freedom in such a way that the usual suspects can't dilute it, even if they try.

Whatever you might think of the USA, there is no other country in the world that could have delivered the internet in its current form, with its openness and freedoms.

However, that does not mean that the USA will remain a good custodian forever, so some insurance against future (current?) loss of liberty is appropriate.

I don't believe national governments or the UN are the answer, but am struggling to propose an alternative.

Re:EU politicians suck even more than US ones

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, actually it can.

Please read -- http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3675.txt

Re:Oh, boo hoo rest of the world

[ElectricTurtle]

If my network is so awesome that my neighbor wants to spend his own money and time to connect to it that does not give him any rights or entitlements over what still remains my network. Why is that Americans seem to be the only ones who can grasp basic ethical constructs like this? Oh, that's right, because we design everything and the rest of the world just whines about how they're entitled to our work.

Re:EU politicians suck even more than US ones

[Nadaka]

I want to run around shooting guns and have working inexpensive health-care!

Re:Can anyone tell me...

[FsG]

This actually isn't quite true. If you become a com/net registrar, most of the money goes to VeriSign (who controls the com/net registry). The registrar has to pay VeriSign roughly $7 per domain per year that they register. The 20 cents per domain you're thinking of is the ICANN fee, which definitely exists, but isn't the biggest cost. org/info is similar, but the money goes to PIR instead of VeriSign.

The registrars' profit margin is quite thin.

Source: http://www.verisign.com/domain-name-services/become-registrar/com-net-registrar/index.html

Re:EU politicians suck even more than US ones

[Grimbleton]

Do you also feel that other countries should take over parts of Walmart? McDonalds? Any other US companies you feel your country deserves to steal for... whatever reason you pulled out your ass?

Other languages

[bluefoxlucid]

Support for other languages (RUSSIAN!) in DNS would be excellent, because there'd be about 10000 ways I could represent paypal.com in a visually identical manner (with cyrillic and other such glyph sets), thus making hacking way easier through cheap phishing tricks. I could even get an SSL certificate registered for the fake domain!

Re:Other languages

[Late Adopter]

It takes intentional browser support to display such a thing, so wouldn't it also be imaginable that alongside adding that feature browsers would also add a malware warning like a coloration to the address bar? It could even be intelligent to only do that when there's Unicode characters for outside your $LOCALE. I could see Firefox doing that...

Re:Other languages

[Jesus_666]

Er, you do know that international domain names already exist? Look up the Wikipedia articles on IDNs and Punycode. It's bound to be enlightening.

Re:NOT GOOD ENOUGH

[bluefoxlucid]

We'll just give 100% regulatory control to North Korea then... better than the US.

ICANN barely works now...gonna be worse

[Archfeld]

ICANN is barely functional with a heavy government hand on oversight. Do you imagine that group of idiots is going to do ANYTHING but line their own pockets without that oversight. The Golden Age of Domain squatting is just about to begin. ICANN will be re-allocating domains based on donations to their pockets within 6 months of them being un-regulated. Any chance the average joe had of winning a dispute against a corporate entity is going out the window as we speak...

Re:EU politicians suck even more than US ones

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

... because it seems a better option than to have China, Iran, ... have an over 50% say in how it's run. Obviously.

Maybe the UN would do a better job

[Animats]

The UN already has the Universal Postal Union and the International Telecommunications Union, which do for post offices, telephony, and radio roughly what ICANN does for the Internet. The ITU does a decent job, assigning country codes, negotiating the rules which interconnect phone systems across borders, and keeping radio broadcasters from conflicting. Nobody thinks about the Universal Postal Union much, but the fact that you can mail a letter to almost any country on earth didn't happen by accident.

Much of what the UN really does is to act as an umbrella organization for the dull and boring mechanics of infrastructure coordination. The diplomatic level gets all the attention, but there's necessary grunt work going on in the background.

Re:Oh, boo hoo rest of the world

[Jesus_666]

So I take it HTML doesn't exist, then, as that wasn't really designed in America.

Besides, if you follow the "this is MY network and you do with it as I please" line of thought, the logical conclusion would be for the EU, China, India etc. all running their own DNS roots, complete with their own registrars etc. So unless you register your website with ten different registrars (or pay ten times the fee to your registrar), only people within your country and maybe a few bordering them can see it. Hilarity ensues when yourcompany.com is registered to two different organizations on various DNS roots. Or when they deicde they don't really need a compatible IP address space. While not being able to talk to China doesn't seem dramatic now, China is rapidly rising in importance.

In short, if you had wanted to make the internet your network, you should've worked harder to keep the rest of the world out. Apparently that wasn't what was intended.

Re:Yes We CANN!

[ElectricTurtle]

Funny how nobody complains about those bases or the force projection of aircraft carriers when they're the first line of emergency assistance in major disasters like the 2004 tsunami.

Re:EU politicians suck even more than US ones

[infolation]

In case people don't read that entire text, a salient point it makes is:

An adult top-level domain could have negative legal repercussions by endangering free expression... ...Privacy could be harmed by such a proposal. It would become easier for repressive governments and other institutions to track visits to sites in a domain labeled as adult and record personally-identifiable information about the visitor. Repressive governments would instantly have more power to monitor naive users and prosecute them for their activities.