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Plan Would Give Government Virtual Veto Over Internet Governance
An anonymous reader writes The debate over Internet governance for much of the past decade has
often come down to a battle between ICANN and the United Nations.
The reality has always been far more complicated. The U.S. still
maintains contractual
control over ICANN, while all governments exert considerable
power within the ICANN model through the Governmental
Advisory Committee (GAC). Now governments are looking for even
more power, seeking a near-complete
veto power of ICANN decisions.
I don't know if I want some government who may not like my religion or race being able to stamp my website out of existence just because it doesn't jive with their dogma.
I'll take the current means. There is enough religious persecution without having countries knock you offline on the net.
I don't know about you, but I would rather have the USA, despite all of its faults (and we have many), in control of these things instead of countries like Iran or North Korea.
Love sees no species.
Yeah, I get you. Democratic governments give you, the citizen, no ability to influence affairs.
I know you're trying to reference the fact that your nation(almost certainly the US) has a broken democracy, but I still challenge that it doesn't result in complete disenfranchisement.
The internet isn't some entity you can control. It's a network of individual entities. There are hubs, but there is no internet "core".
It sounds like the governments bent on censorship have managed to pack the ICANN board enough to get this proposal seriously considered but not enough that the ICANN board can't still usually override them:
ICANN is now proposing that the threshold be increased so that 2/3 of eligible ICANN board members would be required to vote against GAC advice in order to reject it
Why else would ICANN's own board even be considering giving this power away?
It's considered broken by people who do get involved, because we have a crappy two party system where the two parties are nearly identical on the one front that truly matters: Fundamental and constitutional liberties. Those of us who vote third party realize that voting for the lesser of the two evil scumbags does not solve anything, and yet we are few.
In a democracy, and especially a two party cesspool like ours, you get the government that other people deserve.
I'm from Norway. I think the United States has handled it well and there are few countries I would trust to do so.
Who didn't see this coming?
Easy I can name 2:
1. Iran
2. North Korea
Time to offend someone
There alternative DNS systems
That nobody but crazies and enthusiasts use.
Seriously, you're talking about a world where we haven't been able to get IPV6 up and running. Do you really think people are going to voluntarily switch roots, and put up with the catastrophic brokenness that would bring?
Then again many people outside the USA aren't entirely comfortable with the USA having control over internet governance. Mind you, there are many other countries equally unsuited. The problem is that if one single country has control then one country might decide to use that control to further its own interests. And I don't think that it's a good trade to give all power to one country just to ensure that certain other countries get no power at all.
Of course this is about power shifting towards governments in general. This is to be expected - after all, we can't just have random people running the internet and governments happen to be the very things that represent their countries internationally. I expect ICANN to become something like the ITU: A UN agency that handles infrastructure governance. That does seem to be the safest and fairest option. Do Iran and North Korea get a voice? Yes, they do, just as they should. But that doesn't mean they run the show.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Are those our only choices?
Until it became the world's shopping mall, governance of the Internet was rather simple.
At this point, I'd be content to see the Internet blown up completely and something else take its place. It's been too badly corrupted to ever deliver on any of the promise it had when it first became open to the general public.
The first day commerce was conducted on the Internet was the day it started to die. What we see now is a corpse reanimated by the needs of oppressive governments, telcos and huge, mostly evil corporations. It will never get better. There's no fixing it once the money-grubbers and rent-seekers and government upskirters took control.
You are welcome on my lawn.
A-ha!
after all, we can't just have random people running the internet
I will differ with you here. Random people can and do "run the internet" all the time. Individual network service providers choose to whom they are going to connect. They choose how to route their traffic. Anybody can choose to use alternative DNS roots. The internet can be run by random people just fine.