Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
One of those "major technology companies" is not like the others...
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.)
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".
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.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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."