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US Agency Lines Up Broad Support For ICANN Transition (pcworld.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCWorld: A U.S. agency has lined up broad support for its plan to end the government's oversight of the Internet's domain name system, despite opposition from some Republicans in Congress. The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on Thursday released statements of support for a plan to end its oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Among supporters of a plan, developed by the ICANN community, to transition ICANN's domain name coordination functions to a multistakeholder governance model are Amazon.com, Google, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Facebook, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Computer and Communications Industry Association. NTIA on Thursday announced it had reviewed the community proposal and found it meets the agency's criteria for allowing the ICANN privatization plan to move forward. The community plan maintains the openness of the Internet and maintains the security and stability of the DNS, said NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling. It does not replace NTIA's oversight with another government organization, he said, although that's been a fear of some critics of the NTIA plan. On Wednesday, Ted Cruz proposed a bill, the Protecting Internet Freedom Act, that would prohibit the U.S. government from relinquishing its role with respect to overseeing the web's domain name system (DNS), unless explicitly authorized by Congress.
In which we recognise the benefit of the bill to society is inversely proportional to how beneficial the name of the bill suggests it is.
Well, some Democrats also oppose this bill. So, I guess there is opposition from both Democrats and Republicans, but you only mention the Republicans, presumably to make them sound "evil". Congratulations!! You've officially arrived as a member of the press!!
That word community. Sounds caring sharing doesn't it? ICANN is technically a non-profit. In reality it's been a huge gravy train for all aboard. You can see that in all the ridiculous top level domain names they've spat out which have created a lot of confusion and added no real value but lined the pockets of ICANN's staff and partner businesses. So let us ditch the bullshit pure and simple: these latest changes are new ways for them to make money.
A few places are comparably free, but the vast majority of the world's population, regretfully, continues to live under regimes considerably more oppressive than the US. And I'm not talking just the usual suspects — like China or Russia — generally respectable places like India can be quite intolerant of unpopular opinions and authoritarian in controlling the information networks. It may seem crazy to Americans, but Germans and Brits, for another example, routinely get arrested simply for saying the wrong things on social media — in the US attempts to criminalize "hate speech" are still duly resisted.
Not to mention certain sunny locales, where one's had can be removed for apostasy.
Reducing America's control over the Internet will — inevitably and by definition — increase the share of control by these governments.
We've seen this before — UN's "Human Rights Council" is a good example of it. All of the things about it, that the so called "Liberals", dismiss as "myths", are actually quite true. It will happen to the Internet's governance — inasmuch as it needs any — as well.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Here's the thing.
ICANN transition isn't going to be to some benevolent non-profit like it is where you are. It's going to be a worst of all worlds situation.
Expect:
1) The religious freedom of Saudi Arabia
2) The political freedom of North Korea
3) The IP freedom of the United States