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The Politics of ICANN
dstates writes "The good news is that the Internet has become a central enough part of global life that politicians are starting to pay attention to the details of Internet management. The bad news is that the politicians are paying attention to the Internet. Politico.com has an interesting note on the politics surrounding the annual meeting of the The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers which is opening its annual meeting in San Francisco today. While some people find it frightening that a US corporation controls name usage on the Internet, the prospect of a UN body assuming control raises its own concerns."
You know, honestly, I have nothing to say about this story, other than ICANN is a bunch of sonofabitches who should enjoy CO2 gas leaks while sleeping in their 5-star hotel rooms. So I'll just comment on the non-story story.
First of all, ICANN as a group is a bunch of people who should have CO2 let into their 5-star hotel rooms while they sleep. I will leave the explanation and justification of this to others who have had first-hand experiences at the hands of ICANN.
Secondly, after reading Wikipedia for so long, the words [citation needed] automatically appear in my head after a phrase like "While some people finding it frightening that a US corporation controls names usage on the Internet". Some people? Who are they, exactly? Can we get a quote from one of them? OMG IT'S AMERIKKKAN CORPRATION DROPPING DEMOCRACY BOMBS OMG RUN FOR THE HILLS MABEL. Come on, this isn't the New York Times here, we need fact-checking by objective observers.
"the prospect of a UN body assuming control raises its own concerns."
Damn straight it does. As much as I despise ICANN, it has never, to my knowledge, been accused of child abuse the way the United Nations has been (warning, the previous website may be blocked based on the human rights attitude of your country or your employer).
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
So, the United States is the best of a sorry lot of options? You just described American history since A.D. 1776.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Who exactly would you consider a great paragon of virtue to be democratically chosen (however stupid that may be) to be one of africa's 13 representatives, without serving two consecutive terms? Even the US, the UK, Poland and russia are on there, and frankly, the first 3 are complicit in torture and mass murder from the invasion of iraq and guantanamo and extraordinary rendition, and russia is well, russia. Do we perhaps do away with the 13 african states, because it would be hard to find 13 african states who uphold human rights all that well, and dictate to them from New York and Geneva how to manage their human rights? The UNHCR exists primarily to complain about the Israeli treatment of palestinians, they chose a broader name than that, but frankly libya is as good at complaining about israel as anyone else.
Because they couldn't call it the UN committee to complain about Israel they got caught with their pants down on "human rights", but it's not like anyone on that body gets to be anything other than a hedge against constant criticism of someone, or a constant criticizer.
Just like everywhere else, democracy is bought and paid for. The UN is no different, except that it likes to give lip service to every idea out there. That is both its great strength and great weakness. Everyone gets a say, even the crazy people. It also means that if you can't agree to it, it doesn't happen. Want a XXX TLD, probably not going to happen, want to ban porn on the web, probably not going to happen, want to make sure China gets more IP addresses than a major US university, that probably would happen. Because for all it's faults, the UN is inherently more fair than any one country trying to be fair - but not at the expense of its own interests.