Slashdot Mirror
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 The historical relationship, noted in ICANN's Affirmation of Commitments, is outdated and the governance of the Internet must become more global, said the E.U. Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes.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.
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?
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!!!!
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.
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.
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.
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
Nevermind that Europe, while better on privacy rights, is far worse on freedom of speech rights.
Not sure where you get this from, but I see this nonsense reiterated quite a bit here.
I'd be perfectly fine here sitting in the middle of Germany and saying that I'd like to see Israel get bombed flat or that the Jews are inferior people. Sure, people will think I'm an asshole, but there's no law against that. There is however a law that forbids you to claim that there was not a huge number of jews killed in WW2 or that concentration camps don't exist.
The French hate speech laws are of a similar nature, solving highly specific real world problems. One can debate the method of doing this via law, but in general European constitutions regard Free Speech as a paramount right, with verry narrow exceptions.
Here's something more closer to reality:
Nevermind that Europe, while miles better on privacy rights, is about equal (with few exceptions you'd have to hunt for) on freedom of speech rights.
captcha: nimble
Apparently you didn't read my entire comment because you missed shortly after that where I said that I don't know who or what should be shaping the Internet in the future.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
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.