Slashdot Mirror
US Government Withdraws IANA Contract From ICANN
mbone writes "The 'no cost' contract between the U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN over hosting the Internet Assigned Names and Number Authority (IANA) was supposed to be re-let this March. Now, it has been withdrawn, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) says that 'we are cancelling this RFP because we received no proposals that met the requirements requested by the global community.' This is a pretty stunning vote of no confidence in ICANN by the U.S. government, on the eve of the 43rd ICANN meeting in Costa Rica. Speculation is that this is related to the attempts of the ITU-T to take over Internet governance, but it also could be over the new global top level domains. I am sure we will be hearing a lot more about this in the weeks to come."
No seriously, what does it mean?
ICANN: Okay, we've been thinking about it and it's hard to see what's wrong with a XXX domain - at worst we still get porn everywhere on the internet, like we already have, and at best some of it's a bit more centralised where people can filter it.
US Government: AHHHHHHH it's like admitting sex exists. Don't do it, don't do it!
ICANN: Ah, well in the absence of any coherent arguments, we've decided to go ahead with the XXX domain.
US Government: WTF? We only went with an independent body for this sort of thing on the understanding that you'd follow our every whim. Right, we're not going to let you do it any more.
ICANN: So who is?
US Government: Ah, well, still you then okay, but we're cancelling our RFP and , uh, renewing you for another six months anyway until we have to renew you again after that,
Slashdot: BIG NEWS! Contract withdrawn, stunning vote of no confidence!
I think this clearly shows that U.S. government wants to control the internet and they aren't letting that control go away! This is a direct act of WAR! To the horses, people!
consumer device giant already
pretty easily becomes
customer device huge already
if English is not your first language.
cat
US Government: AHHHHHHH it's like admitting sex exists. Don't do it, don't do it!
This is Insightful? Give me a break.
First, .xxx solves absolutely no problems. It will not make porn easier to filter (why use .xxx if everyone is filtering it?). Arguments about specific TLDs aside, I seriously doubt that .xxx in particular has much to with this situation. Rather, .xxx is a symptom of a larger problem.
ICANN has stopped working to serve the public's interests. The proliferation of new TLDs, including .xxx, has been brought about for a single purpose: to make registrars more money. With .xxx its been nothing but a blatant extortion campaign against large companies -- "register, or else". If the goal of this direction is to fundamentally change the hierarchical nature of DNS (say, to move from www.microsoft.com and yro.slashdot.org to www.microsoft and yro.slashdot), then that is probably a good idea in the long run, but the way in which they're going about it is nothing more than a money grab.
Put simply, ICANN has stopped working for a better and more stable public Internet and has instead taken a dive directly into the registrars pockets. I personally would like nothing more than to see the US stick it to ICANN if it will help put them back on the right track (or work towards their outright replacement).
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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at worst we still get porn everywhere on the internet
No, at worst you have people spending millions of dollars to pay for domains that they don't need or want, but have to get for defensive purposes. The XXX domain is bad porn sites (since it leads the way to further censorship), it is bad for the fundies (since it does not involve sticking their head in the sand), and it is bad for all other corporations (because they have to buy domians for defensive purposes). The only people who benefit from having more generic TLDs are the registrars who will rake in tons of cash selling them.
None of these seem terribly far-fetched as regulations on the Internet...
Palm trees and 8
Put simply, ICANN has stopped working for a better and more stable public Internet and has instead taken a dive directly into the registrars pockets. I personally would like nothing more than to see the US stick it to ICANN if it will help put them back on the right track (or work towards their outright replacement).
The only flaw I can see in this reasoning, is that the US government has not shown any evidence that it wants "a better and more stable public Internet", at least not when there is any conflict between that and doing the bidding of the corporations who, ultimately, fill every politician's campaign coffers. Or conflict with repressing their political bête noire of the week.
I wonder if ICANN was making unhappy noises about domain seizures.
Hook, line and sinker.
Its the "heightened respect for local country laws" that has me worried here, as i wouldn't put it past the US gov to try to backdoor some nice great firewall of USA style crap for their corporate masters. Personally i think the net is just gonna end up more and more corrupted until we have to go to a darknet just to get back what we have. We got ICANN cranking out craptastic TLDs so their registar buds can make some cash trolling the corps, we got the US gov wanting to SOPA/PIPA the net, and we have dozens of countries that all want their own little control measures in place so they can make sure they don't get Arab Springed next.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
None of these seem terribly far-fetched as regulations on the Internet...
But they do seem terribly tyrannical.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I'd say the problem is more that international media conglomerates are asserting jurisdiction over a US defense network. Sort of like how the time that private corporation tried to assert jurisdiction over US Air Force Space Command GPS spectrum. Oh wait, they're still doing that. Anyway, DARPA never seized anyone's domain, and USAF generals risked their careers to stop LightSquared from breaking your GPS.
If your buds at the MPAA and RIAA didn't get what they wanted here in the colonies for a foreign domain, they'd just get it in that country. Nowhere is safe.
Aside from the whole .xxx fiasco, where the only people to register domains in that TLD were people who already owned the .com version and didn't want to see squatters in it. A good rule of thumb for defining a new TLD: Who will buy domain.newtld who wouldn't buy domain.fucksgoats just to stop someone else using it? If this set of people is not the majority, then it's not a worthwhile new TLD, it's just a money grab. The new TLDs failed the fucksgoats test.
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