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The Clock Is Ticking For the US To Relinquish Control of ICANN (betanews.com)
Mark Wilson writes: The U.S. is not afraid to throw its weight around; it likes not only to be involved in things, but to be in control. For decades, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) — the non-profit organization that manages IP addresses and domain names — has been overseen by the U.S. Department of Commerce, much to the chagrin of people around the world. Most upset are those who point to the independent nature of the internet, and the need for any body with global power to be similarly indpendent. Later this year ICANN is set — at long last — to completely separate from the U.S. government.
While this does hinge on U.S. government approval, by the end of September, ICANN could instead be in the hands of businesses, individuals, and multiple global governments. While the changing of hands should not alter the way ICANN operates, it is hoped that it will go some way to restoring faith that may have been lost after revelations about online surveillance by the NSA and other U.S. government agencies.
While this does hinge on U.S. government approval, by the end of September, ICANN could instead be in the hands of businesses, individuals, and multiple global governments. While the changing of hands should not alter the way ICANN operates, it is hoped that it will go some way to restoring faith that may have been lost after revelations about online surveillance by the NSA and other U.S. government agencies.
For those who don't like it, start your own internets! There surely could be better designs.
This isn't going to happen. Period.
There is no way congress will pull their fingers out of their asses.
What does NSA spying have to do with who gives out domain names and IP address blocks? Stupidity.
Any link between ICANN and NSA (or any other information gathering organization) is utterly dumb. ICANN doesn't determine network protocols, ICANN doesn't have any say in encryption, ICANN doesn't deal with routing, ICANN is not about security. It is a little like linking the Dept of Agriculture with influence over the recent UN nuclear deal.
Moving ICANN away from a government can only mean one thing ... fees. The "corporation" part of their name is about to come into more play. Get ready to get gouged!
"While the changing of hands should not alter the way ICANN operates, it is hoped that it will go some way to restoring faith that may have been lost after revelations about online surveillance by the NSA and other U.S. government agencies."
Really? What do these two issues have to do with each other? Does the NSA somehow have a leg up on the competition because another US agency doles out IP address blocks?
Smells like anti-US idiocy, and I say that as someone who's not real thrilled with the NSA's activities.
Do you have ESP?
...While the changing of hands should not alter the way ICANN operates...
If the parties involved did not want the way ICANN operates to change, then why have they gone through such an effort in order to effect this change in the pecking order for ICANN?
.
fwiw, the efforts to pry ICANN away from US control have been going on since long before the NSA became a household name....
Switch ICANN to the UN, and things will be even worse. The US can be shamed by international pressure. The UN? Well, you are going to see censorship on a religious and political level that would have never existed before. Groups of political dissidents (think Kurds) would have their websites hunted down and destroyed, just like CP sites are now.
No thanks... the US isn't perfect, but that is a far better owner than repressive nations who will use the Internet to push their own political will and extreme agenda.
The story summary wrongly gives the impression that the US is forever interfering in ICANN's affairs. This is simply not true: while it does retain an oversight function, it has never used that to interfere in ICANN's operational matters. It does have ultimate oversight authority, and so is in theory the final recourse if ICANN should go off the rails. The question is, if the US gives that up, who gets the final say?
ICANN is a body that has power that Slashdotters should care about. It writes rules into the contracts it has with top level domain Registries, rules that individual domain registrants must obey. Mostly these rules are technical not policy, but that is changing. ICANN has long required domain registrants to submit to ICANN's Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy, which allows trademark owners to claim domains that are said to infringe their trademarks, even though the UDRP does not provide all the defences to trademark that ordinary law offers.
The UDRP is pretty much a settled part of ICANN's scope. But there are plenty of other interests (copyright owners, child protection campaigns, law enforcement groups from around the world) that would like ICANN to impose the rules they prefer on domain registrants too. And they're actively lobbying ICANN right now, have been for years.
Under US oversight, there was a principled commitment to the openness of the Internet, and the possibility of an ultimate recourse to Congress if these lobbyists capture ICANN. When that oversight disappears, it will be crucial to have enshrined in ICANN's constitution effective and enforceable means to constrain ICANN from scope creep. Arguments about that are what is delaying the removal of US oversight, with intellectual property lawyers and foreign governments fighting hard to give ICANN a broad Mission that allows it to implement their demands.
Sometime in September, there will be a rubber stamped "DENIED" pounded onto this proposal, and things will continue as they are.
There is so much butt hurt bullshit in this "movement" to wrest control form "evil" America. Just FOAD.
American operated ICANN has worked perfectly for everyone, except regimes wanting to stifle the internet. There is absolutely no legitimate reason to change ICANN, with the possible exception of preventing them form creating anymore bullshit TLDs of any kind, most especially crazy minority language UTF-8 character TLDs.
The internet's working just fine. We don't need the input of any other experts or management bodies.
The NSA forced private companies to cooperate. The "government" or not aspect is meaningless.
Here is the line that bothers me the most:
While the changing of hands should not alter the way ICANN operates, it is hoped that it will go some way
In particular "should" and "hoped" both mean that nobody has any clue, and they are changing the system without being able to demonstrate it is going to be functional, much less better.
Is this about the claims that the USA got an unfair amount of IPV4 address space early on and should give some of it to the third world countries in case they might need it some day?
----before you Reply/criticize, please read at least one of the links I posted below - thank you ---
Change in ICANN has been impossible to come by. The only "representative of the people", Karl Aurbach
tried for years to get some accountability, some rationality, some responsibility. Instead all he got was
stonewalled. It makes for interesting but not hopeful reading that ICANN is ready to manage a global
network with ANY sort of eye to "the stakeholders."
It's like letting the MAFIAA manage the Internet. Their goals are to please THEIR stakeholders, which
do not include those of us who enjoy Pandora, Spotify, Hulu, Bittorrent, etc.
Here's that "interesting reading" I promised. It's a small but representative subset.
http://www.circleid.com/posts/...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
http://archive.icann.org/en/co...
https://w2.eff.org/Infrastruct...
Ehud
Maybe because the US government created the whole fucking thing?
Shouldn't matter anyway - IPv6 has more than enough addresses.
Yes yes... its very trendy to hate on the US. But please consider the alternative here. The United Nations? Most nations in the world have a less ironclad notion of free speech than the Americans. To the contrary, the vast majority of governments desire radically restricted speech.
And surrendering ICANN to these people is likely to result in new rules put in place to restrict speech more than anything.
Keep in mind, why do these countries want authority over ICANN? What is it doing or not doing that they don't like? What would the US government be saying yes or no to here that has them so upset?
To those that will cite snowden in all situations, keep in mind that the push to get ICANN under international control predated that and regardless taking ICANN from the US won't change any of that anyway.
The entire thing is likely to be a shitshow.
That said, the good news is that ICANN just controls the DNS registries... so... worst case, if the whomevers fuck it up beyond repair we can just bypass their fuckwitted tables and use our own.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Why would third world countries need lots of IPv4 space? They are rolling out native IPv6 to end users, SNI pretty much means web hosting no longer needs piles of IPv4 Addresses. IPv4 needs to go away.
We allocated IPv4 on first come first served basis, it's a limited resource and redistributing it is not worth the hassle.
No sir I dont like it.
There were no revelations made about NSA which were not already suspected by non-general-public security specialists. Who else would administer it? UN? Most of its members would look to put in rules in place to increase censorship. US still remains one of the few places in the Western Civilization where speech is free by law. Even if it means offensive speech or speech which is not politically correct or speech which is "unethical" by some other subjective standard. Releasing control of ICANN from the US government would mean giving up the tenant of entirely free speech.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I really can't see how this is going to make ICANN more responsive or more trustworthy. We'll just end up with a bunch of questionable actors pushing their own (more restrictive) agendas. Look at how Iceland and Japan have been trying to stack the International Whaling bodies or what happens when you put Saudi Arabia and China on Human Rights boards. Some NGOs are sock puppets for their governments or corporations. European governments aren't any more trustowrthy. They drank from the same data tap trough as the US government.
You may not like having a US agency be a key player but at least you only have one player to monitor/harass/attack. Now you will end up with a whole bunch of players from non-accountable organizations.
You really shouldn't be concerned about the NSA, or even the Dept. of Commerce. I'm more concerned that the ICANN leadership thinks that anyone outside of their inner circle doesn't matter:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
No way in hells do I want these clowns running around without adult supervision...
Where are the issues published about how ICANN does business? And why are the issues, issues?
First of all, ICANN has been motivated by profit for some time. If you don't agree, then try to come up with an alternate explanation for why they decided - in spite of significant protest against - to start selling gTLDs to the highest bidders.
Second, the US government is owned by corporate America regardless. The crowning achievement of this was likely the 2010 "health care" bill, which is a solid contender for the tile of the largest corporate handout in the history of government.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
and the possibility of an ultimate recourse to Congress
You are kidding, right? The 95% of the world living outside of the USA have absolutely no recourse to your Congress.
I agree, but the public in general has even less recourse when it comes to the UN.
If ever there was a good reason to use distributed blockchain database model, IP address and domain name ownership would be one of them.
You can't handle the truth.
Face it. The EU will screw this up. Europe will screw this up. The UN will screw this up.
There's nobody better to do the job of running ICANN anywhere in the world than the US Federal Government.
Seriously, can anyone point to any systemic problem with the way ICANN operates now that seriously adversely affects the way the Internet works?
Saying, "Because those evil, greedy, capitalist running-dog Americans," is not a valid argument.
Nothing is stopping any country not happy with ICANN's control from using their own root nameserver, or an alternate one. It's almost like the technology was designed to facilitate it in the first place.
Expect that weakling Obama to give it away. Not used to a President who hates his country.
The US management of ICANN has largely been hands off. And NSA surveillance of Internet traffic is not dependent on who manages its address space. So that will continue.
What will happen, if ICANN is placed under the authority of weaker management, is that every little tin pot dictator and authoritarian regime will attempt to impose their authority over their corner of it. And instead of ICANNs current policy of keeping local autocrats at arms length, they will be forced into supporting their authority.
Have gnu, will travel.
Translation: While this is never going to happen
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
The USA is by far the worst country to run ICANN, with the exception of all the others.
I mean sure, the USA spy on everyone, but then everyone else has tried to get into that game as much as possible anyway through data sharing and so on.
The US will take down things at the behest of the copyright cartel, but they still allow things which other countries outlaw on various "moral" grounds. So if you don't like the USA's takedowns, you won't like anyone else's either.
And the list goes on.
Do I like what the US does in this regard? HELL NO! But I fairly sure I might like another group even less.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I don't see the big deal. The only thing they really control is registered blocks of IP addresses. As far as domain names... it's since different DNS services can compete side by side; anyone can come up with an alternative system.
One can easily alias domain names from one system into their own top level domain like:
microsoft.com.icann
Furthermore programs could then have search paths for multiple domain system. The system is easily extended. An improvement on this would be if web sites that instead did something like a cname to a GUID and then the GUID/PubKey and that is what is then resolved to an IP address.
What I would like to see is them forcing the issue of IPv6. Such as in order to renew your IPv4 block you must insure that a certain percentage of your network is IPv6 with this number growing year after year. Also they could reduce the blocks of already assigned IPv4 addresses. It's not like people/businesses don't have alternative in IPv6.
The Internet wasn't something the world did overnight.
The US taxes payers flipped the bill for the hardware, and research when there was nothing.
The US should be payed in full plus interest before we give any of it up.
Besides do you think that any other government or even the UN can do better...
You misspelled "Hillary Clinton will accept bribes from anyone in the world, as shown by the donation list to the Clinton Foundation. But that was while she was Secretary of State, not a member of congress...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
America invented the bloody thing. Why *shouldn't* America keep control over it?