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ICANN's Cozy Relationship With the US Must End, Says EU
alphadogg writes "The exclusive relationship of ICANN with the U.S. must end, said the European Union's digital agenda chief on Wednesday. California-based ICANN is responsible for the assignment of top-level domains and has a long-standing operating agreement with the U.S. However, following the revelations by Edward Snowden of widespread surveillance of the Internet by the National Security Agency, many countries have questioned the arrangement. The historical relationship, noted in ICANN's Affirmation of Commitments, is outdated and the governance of the Internet must become more global, said the E.U. Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes. Kroes was presenting the European Commission's new policy on Internet governance, which rejects any United Nations or governmental takeover of Internet governance and calls for a move to globalize ICANN."
I'm failing to understand the issue here. Anything ICANN does is essentially public. Any changes to domain IP addresses have to propagate out to everyone, so it's not like they could cause traffic to be arbitrarily rerouted, etc. Sounds like just another straw man attempt to get the ICANN out of the US.
Better known as 318230.
The best way to stop spying is to not let any connections to foreign websites. Whilst i'm not one for great firewalls or suchlike (and as a brit i despise David Macaroon's internet filtering policy) maybe it's time to start filtering connections from certain countries. If the EU is so worked up about America controlling the internet (which it does) maybe it's time to set up a Euronet and filter connection to and from the US. Would it help keep the internet free? No. But the internet will never be free whilst it's run by a single country.
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
If you had made it to the end of the summary, you'd see that they are in fact asking for decentralisation and reject the role of the UN or any other single body in its operation.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
And the world Wide Web was invented by a brit in Switzerland. That doesn't mean that the Brits and the Swiss should have a monopoly over the control of it, hence why the W3C was created.
It's time the US did the right thing and opened up ICANN as an internationally let consortium, instead of a consortium that puts domestic needs first.
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
So we get that little bonus.
We inveted your language. We get that little bonus.
France invented your democratic process. They get that little bonus.
Scotland invented the TV, they get that little bonus.
Oh, no, you're merkins, therefore American Exceptionalism To The RESCUE!!!!
Right now, everyone is in an uproar over Net Neutrality, how (at the moment) we don't have it, and how the few big ISPs are going to ruin the Internet, turning it into another version of the Walled Gardens of the pre-Internet era. However we, once again, are just being distracted by this from the real threat: the rest of the world. We here in the U.S. need to remember: We're just a single-digit percentage of the world's total population, yet we've got (at the moment, anyway) an inordinate amount of power of the shape and direction of the Internet as a whole. In a moment of lucidity, one must ask the oneself: How long can this go on? It's not just possible, but probable, that the rest of the world will eventually have a say in the shape and nature of the Internet as a whole. What will it look like in 20 years? I personally don't think that the U.N. is the body that should have control over the course and form of the Internet any more than I think that the Olympics are just about athletic competition and not politics -- a comparison I'm making on purpose because that's what the Olympics are about: politics, and having the United Nations in control of the Internet would turn the Internet into just another political tool. I do not have the vision to know who (or what) should shape the future of the Internet, but I do recognize what a critical time in the Internet's history this moment in time is.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
We're just a single-digit percentage of the world's total population, yet we've got (at the moment, anyway) an inordinate amount of power of the shape and direction of the Internet as a whole.
I think the power of ICANN and the US is rather greatly overstated when it comes to the internet.
I personally don't think that the U.N. is the body that should have control over the course and form of the Internet
Ok, fair enough. Who should then? I hear this all the time how people dislike the UN for various reasons that they always seem unable to articulate but honestly I can't think of any other body better positioned to play quasi-neutral arbiter. Of course politics are going to play a role - doesn't matter who ultimately is the controlling body. If you don't like the UN filling this role then who else do you propose?
The headline should read:
ICANN's Cozy Relationship With the US Must End, Says ____________ [insert name of any country not spelled "United States of America" here]
Better known as 318230.
So the problem seems to be that ICANN is an american corporation, and thus subject to the laws of the US, and that in turn, could be used against foreign powers?
The solution then is to 'globalize' it? Where is it going to be 'globalized' to? Which country could it exist in where it would have immunity to any laws and act with impunity in regards to them?
When I see the complaints against it by China, Russia, the EU, and so on, they're always advocating more restrictions, protection of their interests. They want the ability to blacklist sites that talk about their politicians, that discuss unfavorable religions or religious rights, that cover alternative lifestyles such as gay or transgender, and so on. They want to do it without arbitration, automatically.
What they really are complaining about is that they don't have absolute control over it, and they want it. Everything else is just a pleasant lie or deliberate misdirection.
Let's be fair; the US has more than it's fair share of faults, but our definition of freedom is still incredibly wide reaching compared with the vast majority of countries in the world, and we're big enough to make it hard to push us around with political power alone. That's the big problem they're seeing. ... besides, use of the current DNS registry system is entirely voluntary. There's nothing to stop someone from coming up with their own, like the TOR network did. If it's better, people will use it over the current one. Though, I think they realize that any replacement that is more strictly controlled will never be considered 'better', so they need to subvert the current one.
The US "must" do this? I do not think that word means what you think it means.
I can see why the EU and/or UN would want the US to give up control over the ICANN contract, but every time this comes up, I have yet to see a single reason presented as to why the US would agree to do it.
Diplomacy involves the practical application of either the proverbial Carrot or Stick or Both. "Do this or I'll write further Official Letters demanding it" is not much of a stick, and it certainly isn't a carrot.
Icann is probably more global than any other group out there. It has about 2/3 of the nations involved. The CEO is lebanonese who naturalized to america. The top ppl of icann that makes decisions are from all over. Other than being based in USA, it is already global.
The stewardship the US has exercised has been far from perfect, and recent years have shown it to be even worse than previously believed. But for all that, even within the context of recent revelations, it has still proven considerably less-intolerable of a steward than any other proposal yet put forward.
For all the EU's talk of Internet freedom, most nations have moved to curtail it within their own borders, and their efforts have achieved considerably more support within their borders than the corresponding efforts of the US: not a good sign. The UN-based proposals, meanwhile, are almost universally fronted by foxes seeking employment as henhouse guards, and not only does the UN lack any provisions to exclude them from this kind of power, it considers this a feature, not a bug. Allowing a body like that control over communication simply is not sane: too many foxes will hold too much of the power too much of the time. And then there is the move by the BRIC nations to set up "their own Internet," which suffers the same problems as the UN proposal, only with the the foxes enshrined permanently at the top of the heap.
With these options, what's left? The US has shown that it cannot be trusted, but there are degrees of untrustworthiness, and while the publicly-known actions of the US are inexcusable, every other nation or group that has put forth a bid to succeed it openly intends to do far worse. The US is simply the best of a bad lot, and with no other lots coming down the pipeline, I see no other solution for now.
But who will then collect all the money for those TLD's?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
It's time the US did the right thing and opened up ICANN as an internationally let consortium, instead of a consortium that puts domestic needs first.
It time the EU did the right thing and went and fucked itself.
Metaphorically speaking by not keeping a check on the spending of some of the Southern countries (Greece and Spain spring to mind) - it has.
De-centralized DNS would be better.
That would be the only true solution. The current DNS setup sucks.
NameCoin was the only workable distributed DNS solution I've seen, and it never prevented the domain squatting problem. Do you know of any better projects?
They want the current DNS hierarchy to be split into different hierarchies that all follow the same model. They want to turn US control into country or EU control. Same nonsense, different tyrants.
What the world needs is something peer2peer and cryptographically strong.
It time the EU did the right thing and went and fucked itself.
What happened to thinking win-win? You suggest the US should remain the power hungry tyrant, the EU wants a new power hungry tyrant.
A decent peer2peer DNS reimplementation would remove the need for any tyrants at all.
I fail to see how internet addressing and numbering is directly related to the NSA (and GCHQ, which Neelie Kroes fails to mention) spying on individuals. Also the argument of agility seems a bit off too. Once you start adding a multitude of (governments) stakeholders to any project, things tend to slow down not become more agile.
Here's a big blast of logic for you: what country invented the majority of the internet's protocols, hardware, and design? Domain registrations really don't have a whole lot to do with spying either and that's the majority of what ICANN handles. The W3C has more of an impact on the actual internet.
US invented the internet, we get that little bonus. It's like a unique wonder in Civ 5. This country gets the bonuses, end of story. If your country colonizes the moon or something, you get those benefits.
The inventor of the television: http://www.televisionheaven.co... http://www.televisionheaven.co... The world’s first programmable electronic computer Tommy Flowers, Flowers was born at 160 Abbot Road, Poplar in London’s East End on 22 December 1905, the son of a bricklayer. Thomas “Tommy” Harold Flowers, MBE (22 December 1905 – 28 October 1998) was a British engineer. During World War II, Flowers designed Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer, to help solve encrypted German messages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... World Wide Web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
So we get that little bonus. ...
We inveted your language. We get that little bonus.
France invented your democratic process. They get that little bonus.
Scotland invented the TV, they get that little bonus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Farnsworth
I think the mormon's invented the useful TV....
Well, partly. Much as I love Philo T. Farnsworth:
inventors.about.com/od/tstartinventions/a/Television.htm
But, actually, Scottland has a decent claim. From that universal reference source, Wikipedia (and if you don't like what they say, write something else!):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_television
"On March 25, 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of televised silhouette images in motion, at Selfridge's Department Store in London.[7] AT&T's Bell Telephone Laboratories transmitted halftone still images of transparencies in May 1925. On June 13 of that year, Charles Francis Jenkins transmitted the silhouette image of a toy windmill in motion, over a distance of five miles from a naval radio station in Maryland to his laboratory in Washington, D.C., using a lensed disk scanner with a 48-line resolution.[8][9]
However, if television is defined as the live transmission of moving images with continuous tonal variation, Baird first achieved this privately on October 2, 1925. But strictly speaking, Baird had not yet achieved moving images for his scanner worked at only five images per second, below the threshold required to give the illusion of motion, usually defined as at least 12 images per second. By January, he had improved the scan rate to 12.5 images per second.[citation needed] Then on January 26, 1926 Baird gave what is widely recognized as being the world's first demonstration of a working television system, to members of the Royal Institution and a newspaper reporter from The Times, at his laboratory in 22 Frith Street, Soho, London.[10] Unlike later electronic systems with several hundred lines of resolution, Baird's vertically scanned image, using a scanning disk embedded with a double spiral of lenses, had only 30 lines, just enough to reproduce a recognizable human face.
In 1927, Baird transmitted a signal over 438 miles (705 km) of telephone line between London and Glasgow..."
Farnsworth's first demo was September 1927, by the way, so all of this precedes his public demo.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I've given up on the internet.
Posting "I've given up on the internet" on the internet wins today's oxymoron prize.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
We invented the internet, if it wasn't for DARPA and Al Gore, there would be no ICANN. Just like with GPS. If you don't like the US version, build your own.
Nevermind that Europe, while better on privacy rights, is far worse on freedom of speech rights. Technical measures can help with privacy but it is very hard to overcome freedom of speech restrictions with software ('m talking rights to, not the ability to. Ability means nothing if it lands you in jail or your speech is removed)
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
You've got it backwards. It's the Greeks, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians and Irish that are pounding their benefactors to the north.
That might change, but I doubt it. So far it's all theater.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
DNS needs to be redesigned. The internet can't exist in a neutral state having one organization with control over any critical part of the network. Distributed DNS seems to be the answer.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
At least they appear to get it with regard to the UN; the US will never submit control of ICANN's many responsibilities to ITU or any other UN snuggery and deserves the eternal gratitude of the entire species for that profound wisdom.
So at least their "new policy" hasn't automatically obviated itself.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
But there's exactly jack and shit they can do if ICANN and the US tell them to fuck off.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The only reason why it's acceptable to allow ICANN to be controlled by the U.S. is because they have the strongest free speech laws. I simply don't trust other countries as much as the U.S. in that regard.
Zooko’s Triangle tells us it isn't an easy problem to solve.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z...
New things are always on the horizon
First Guy: Look, I made this incredible communication device!
Other Guys: Wow. Cool! Can we use it?
First Guy: Sure!
Other Guys: OK, but we own it now, OK?
First Guy: Uh......
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
What does Net Neutrality have to do with ICANN in the first place?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
If countries outside those borders don't like it, then they can ignore it.
Be careful what you wish for. There seems to be an increasing sentiment almost everywhere that the US is getting far too big for its boots and it is in the best interests of other nations to distance themselves and reduce their dependence on US-controlled interests.
To that end, it is certainly technically possible for an alternative internet to be developed that is independent of the US, and for all of the essential infrastructure to be distributed globally. In fact, for many reasons starting over and fixing some of the problems that were never anticipated decades ago would be a very good thing for almost everyone. But right now, the cost and administrative effort required to do so are prohibitive, and so the status quo remains.
If you push too hard and provide enough incentive for that decentralisation and replacement to actually start happening, there will be exactly one loser, and the economic cost alone would be devastating.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Best of both worlds :)
The inventor of the computer is actually John Atanasoff: http://www.computerhistory.org...
He claimed, successfully, the title
Were those who awarded him the title aware of the Zuse Z3 (it's two items above the ABC item on the page whose URL you cited (note: HTML, despite being a British rather than an all-American invention, isn't that hard to use, and if you use it when posting to /., URLs automatically get turned into links you can click)? It, unlike the ABC, was programmable, although it wasn't stored-program (it was programmed with punched tape) and didn't have, for example, conditional branches.
Since names can be so political and controversial, I propose that we just simply use a numerical address.
Fits right in with ICANN, "Numbers" being what the second "N" stands for.
What a careless comment. Many were terminated for much less. He's now a target of US regime.
If by "he" you mean "the European Union's digital agenda chief", if the US government looks for a "he", then Ms. Kroes is safe.
EU hate the fact that the 'net is effectively owned by the USA (and this is an Aussie typing). The EU can't organise a decent chook raffle, so leave ICANN alone, it works so don't try to 'fix' it.
You want a signature? You can't handle a signature!!
I didn't say there were no reasons that it might be nice if ICANN was not under a US contract.
What I said was that there aren't any reasons for the US to go along with this plan. No national government is in the business of giving away power to other countries simply because those other countries want it.
They might take ICANN's advice: And use a non-ICANN international internet naming system. ICANN would then be limited to the US's intranet, if that.
Which they'd likely have LESS control over.
Meaning their "third option" is to spend out money they don't have already and don't really want to spend to build out a naming system themselves.
This is why they're making power grabs for ICANN. The work's already done, dusted and paid for. If they can steal^H^H^H^co-opt it, they don't have to do any real work or incur any real expenses themselves.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Firstly, I'm not "offended" that the EU would like control of the ICANN contract. I'm simply stating diplomatic realities that simply demanding something when you offer no good reason for the other party to comply is empty grandstanding.
What, specifically, has the US Dept. of Commerce made ICANN do that it would no longer do if it's contract was turned over to another political body? What problem, specifically, with the US owning the ICANN contract are you trying to solve?
And again, why would the US agree to this? All I see is a bunch of whining about how unfair the situation is. What I don't see are any credible threats or inducements for the US to go along. The EU would have just as much luck asking the Russians to pretty please hand over some natural gas for free because it's so unfair that Siberia has such rich petrochemcial resources and Europe does not.
Once there IS a credible counter-proposal, (i.e. "If the US maintains control of ICANN, we'll set up something different", or "If the US gives up control of ICANN, we'll give the US control of...") I imagine the US might come to the bargaining table. But simply complaining about the status quo changes nothing.
Decentralization is key to the survival of internet. But right now DNS and IP addresses need centralization and it seems pretty complicated to decentralize it.
Can you please specify what it is that must be paid for and how much it is?
Thanks to Russian leaks, we already know the answer: "fuck EU"
Same nonsense, different tyrants.
EU Commission is far worse: they never ever have to cope with citizen
You did not. Switzerland did.