Slashdot Mirror
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."
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. It's an old adage that never seems to either go out of style or cease to be applicable.
Putting all of the Internet naming eggs in the US basket is dangerous. With the strange goings on in US politics of late, and with the abuse by DHS/ICE, I can only see bad things coming in the future if the international community doesn't step up to the plate and offer something better.
I really don't have too much of an issue with a UN controlled ICANN clone. It's not like they can screw it up more than a Republican controlled ICANN. THAT is the scariest part.
1, 2 and 3 describe the state of the DNS exactly as it is today.
As for #4, why phase out anything?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Yes, I've seen many comments on Slashdot that letting the UN handle it would be countries like Iran could choose to have things censored, but that's complete and utter bollocks- how would Iran get consensus? The UN isn't based on what every country says goes, it's based on international consensus. There are also often attempts to discredit the UN's ability to handle this sort of thing by pointing to issues with the security council and so forth too.
But the problem is, that's also a load of complete and utter bollocks. The fact is that the UN already runs important international infrastructure just fine, so fine that it doesn't even break the news because it does it so well and so transparently most people aren't even aware. The UN has bodies which handle international telephony, international maritime standards, international airline standards, and international postage standards. It does this so that different countries systems can interoperate just fine, whatever the UNSC does is completely irrelevant as these bodies are run by completely different people in completely different places. It makes sense to add ICANN to this set off bodies which the UN already handles so well because the UN's track record of handling such things is thus far excellent, whilst the US' record with the internet is becoming ever worse- from small town US Judges ordering foreign company's domain names be seized through to government backed seizure of domain names, the US just isn't a trustworthy overseer of the internet anymore.
The UN put Libya on the Human Rights Council. They only suspended their involvement when Gaddafi started fucking over the people who asked for better government. I don't want the UN involved. At all.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
So, let me get this straight. We're perfectly happy to have the ITU (which is a UN agency) in charge of international telephone calls, and we freak out when the US or any corporation tries to take control. But we're also perfectly happy to have ICANN (an unaccountable private corporation based in the US) in charge of domain names, and we freak out when the UN tries to take control.
Huh? Is it just a matter of knee-jerk response and "all change is bad," or is there something more to it than that?
For what it's worth, I think ICANN has been a disaster and something like ITU, or a new UN-sponsored agency, would be much better. We need a negotiated Internet equivalent of the ITRs, rather than the ad-hoc mess we have now.
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.
...haz cheezburger?
Hate to break it to you, but the US has lost the moral high ground when it comes to internet freedom.
When was the last time the US Gov blocked / turned off the Internet to deprive the people freedom of speech? Did they block WikiLeaks? No they did not. Your ideological rant is not supported by, you know, actual facts.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.