US Tech Firms Urge Congress To Allow Internet Domain Changeover (reuters.com)

Dustin Volz, reporting for Reuters: Major technology companies including Facebook, Google and Twitter are urging Congress to support a plan for the U.S. government to cede control of the internet's technical management to the global community, they said in a joint letter dated on Tuesday. The U.S. Commerce Department has primary oversight of the internet's management, largely because it was invented in the United States. Some Republican lawmakers are trying to block the handover to global stakeholders, which include businesses, tech experts and public interest advocates, saying it could stifle online freedom by giving voting rights to authoritarian governments. The years-long plan to transfer oversight of the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is scheduled to occur on Oct. 1 unless Congress votes to block the handover. The California-based corporation operates the database for domain names such as .com and .net and their corresponding numeric addresses that allow computers to connect. In the Sept. 13 letter, a copy of which had been reviewed by Reuters before it was sent, the technology companies said it was "imperative" that Congress does not delay the transition.

Comments

Why the hurry?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

It isn't just authoritarian governments -- many other democracies have no First Amendment-like protections.

When, not if, censorship decisions come down the pike, well, congratulations.

Re:Why the hurry?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the hundreds of domains already ceased by the US government are _in no way_ censorship, right? Double standards, double standards....

Re:Why the hurry?

[MightyYar]

I think I could argue that the kinds of commercial censorship that the US engages in are less damaging to freedom of speech and political freedom than the censoring of political speech that is usually referred to when we talk about censorship.

And I say that as an unrepentant, unashamed pirate who thinks that copyright is a bunch of hooey.

Re:Why the hurry?

[cayenne8]

Here's my main question.

How is this in the best interest of the US to cede this control to someone else?

Our govt is supposed to try to make the BEST decisions for US, not the world...the USA.

Can someone explain to me, how ceding control of ICANN could possibly be in the best interest of America?

What control do they think ICANN has?

[damn_registrars]

ICANN has been gradually selling off what little control they have left over the years as it is. Their utterly idiotic decision to start selling off gTLDs to the highest bidders was one of their boldest of all moves but they really haven't had much relevance for some time. There aren't many things left to do to make it more deregulated and still have any kind of resolvable DNS.

"Facebook, Google and Twitter" ??

[RobotRunAmok]

One of those "major technology companies" is not like the others...

I'm not seeing good explanations here....

[King_TJ]

I read the article and I feel like nobody is being very forthcoming with the real motivations behind wanting to cede control of this to the "global community" or NOT wanting to.

How much does it cost U.S. taxpayers to maintain control of the domain name database? Or does it actually generate considerable positive revenue? (ICANN says it's "non profit" but so was our Major League Football association for a long time, as well as MasterCard.)

Why do companies with a big web presence, such as Facebook, want control to go global? Is there some problem they've experienced in the past where they can't get a domain registration in a timely manner because it's all U.S. based?

I can understand the concerns of the Republicans trying to block this transfer, if there's really no evidence ICANN isn't handling everything well as it stands today. The Internet WAS an American invention, based on our military network. It may indeed be a global thing today -- but I'm not sure it's wise to give away global control of the domain registration process if there's not a valid argument for why it would improve the efficiency of the process? (In other words, doing so just on some philosophical idea that "Global Internet isn't really global if domain database for it is run in the USA" doesn't sound like a good enough reason to change something that's worked well this whole time.)

Re: I'm not seeing good explanations here....

[johnsmithperson123]

If it's not broken.... Don't fix it. Running the internet is pretty cheap by US government standards.

Re:And companies aren't willing to uphold it becau

[aliquis]

I would had run my own freedom communication platform if only I had a jurisdiction to do so from.

Try to uphold as much of full freedom of speech in the US since you are one of the few where that kinda is a thing. Everywhere else it's accepted or even viewed as good that people aren't allowed to tell their opinion or spread new ideas.

Why

[TFlan91]

I see a lot of posts about "why".

Well the reason is that if the US doesn't give up control, countries have been threatening with building their own internet infrastructure to run in parallel.

If these countries (Brazil, Russia, etc) did create a "second internet", then Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc, would all be shut off from their customers in those regions.

Can't do the math?

They get a lower customer base, lower potential profit, lower actual revenue. Unless the spend the R&D on developing their platform to conform to the "second internet".

Re:Why

[slew]

Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc would get into the parallel networks, but it would be through the countries' gateways/filters. This implications of this are not good for the people in nations controlled by thugs.

China is the modern day case study for a for a parallel internetwork-domain system (via the great firewall).

The ".com" and other country specific versions of Google, Facebook and Twitter are all blocked by this firewall. There is self-censored Google.cn and Facebook.cn, but Twitter hasn't decided to get into the parallel network game yet (and get in bed with the censorship)...

The result is not really theoretical, you can look at the current situation and draw your own conclusions

Of course this is just a scaled up version of what is done in corporations already. If you are surfing the internet from work you likely are on a parallel internet that has domains censored today. The real issues are simply the scale of censoring and the laws and forum for arbitration of conflicting interests (e.g., is my-company.biz.com and my-company.biz a conflict? how about awatch.com and awatch.apple.com?)

Re:Why

[Red_Chaos1]

Well the reason is that if the US doesn't give up control, countries have been threatening with building their own internet infrastructure to run in parallel.

Since when was "do what I/we want or I'm going to take my ball and go elsewhere" been a valid reason?

If these countries (Brazil, Russia, etc) did create a "second internet", then Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc, would all be shut off from their customers in those regions.

As far as I can tell, they'll do the same thing once control is globalized. At least now, they can say "fine, we'll make our own Internet" and the rest of the sane world can say "cool, see you later, good luck with your Internet without any of the shit your people actually want because we don't care to jump through your retarded hoops to appease your insignificant ass" (and yes, it really is a matter of insignificance because the shit most of these countries are yammering about and want control for is to further enforce their own restrictions on others, whereas we enforce openness (for the most part anyway, far more open than many of these other countries would have it be)). Besides, regardless of how it works out, we already know most big Internet businesses will do what they need to to ensure their service is still available, but I'd rather that choice be at the corporations level, and not made a requirement at the behest of tantrum throwing nations/governments.

Can't do the math?

They get a lower customer base, lower potential profit, lower actual revenue. Unless the spend the R&D on developing their platform to conform to the "second internet".

Why yes, yes we can, and it's already been done. Look at what Google did with China. We didn't have to give up control of the openness of the Internet to the rest of the world. Let the nations that hate all that freedom build their own fucking Great Firewall and control their people that way. As I said above, if the Internet companies give enough of a fuck, they'll find a way to make stuff work, and that's as it should be, IMO.

Re:Cynically thinking...

[Nidi62]

I get a bad feeling for the transfer just from the list of supporters: Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Cloudflare and Yahoo. It feels, to me, that they are not doing it for freedom but rather for money. They are going to have services or other means of making money off the transfer where they cannot do it currently.

The problem is the Congressmen trying to block the changeover aren't doing so in the interests of online freedom, but rather in the interests of maintaining control over the internet. Either way it's all about power.

I don't know ...

[NoSalt]

For some reason this sounds to me like one of those situations where we say to ourselves, "What could happen if we cede control of the internet's technical management to the global community?" Then, six months, or a few years down the road, we look back and say "Ah ... that's what could happen; wish we hadn't done that."