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EU Passes Resolution Against ITU Asserting Control Over Internet
An anonymous reader writes "Today, the European Parliament passed a resolution that condemns the upcoming attempt from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to assert control over the Internet, and instructed its 27 Member States to act accordingly. This follows an attempt from the ITU to assert itself as the governing body and control the Internet. From the article: 'The resolution, which was passed with a large majority, included Members of European Parliament (MEPs) from all major party groups, and the Pirate Party’s Amelia Andersdotter had been playing a central role in its drafting, together with MEPs Marietje Schaake and Judith Sargentini from the Netherlands, Sabine Verheyen and Petra Kammerevert from Germany, Ivailo Kalfin from Bulgaria, and Catherine Trautmann from France.'"
These aren't things that would change if the US didn't hold the keys to the internet.
The control of the internet lands on one organization: IANA. Right now, IANA delegates its powers to ICANN. IANA is merely responsible for deciding who gets what IP addresses and domain names. The ITU wants to usurp that power for themselves, for who knows what ends, or why they think the status quo is wrong.
In any case, even if say the ITU, the EU, China, or even nobody at all had the keys to IANA, the US would still be able to go after Dotcom and Wikileaks due to pre-existing treaties and strong arming tactics that don't require the internet to even exist in the first place.
Regardless though, there is no such thing as an "open internet" in your definition of the term. SOMEBODY has to decide who gets what names and numbers. There are theoretical ways of decentralizing DNS, (which in my opinion will be riddled with problems, although it will at least perform the intended function) but you CAN NOT decentralize IP address assignments without introducing a whole mess of other problems. It would be akin to not having a regulatory authority on who gets licenses to any given RF spectrum.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
To be honest, while I don't like the ITU either I think we shouldn't give our support to the US for free. We should try to exploit our leverage in this situation and tell the Americans that if they want us to support them keeping their 'net they have to govern it more responsibly. Particularly the area of gTLDs is one where there's lots of room for improvement, and Europe shouldn't give up its bargaining positions for free.