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Four States Sue To Stop Internet Transition (thehill.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Republican attorneys general in four states are filing a lawsuit to block the transfer of internet domain systems oversight from the U.S. to an international governing body. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt and Nevada Attorney General Paul Laxalt filed a lawsuit on Wednesday night to stop the White House's proposed transition of Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions. The state officials cite constitutional concerns in their suit against the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, U.S. government and the Department of Commerce. "The Obama Administration's decision violates the Property Clause of the U.S. Constitution by giving away government property without congressional authorization, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by chilling speech, and the Administrative Procedure Act by acting beyond statutory authority," a statement released by Paxton's office reads. The attorneys generals claim that the U.S. government is ceding government property, pointing to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) review that "concluded that the transition does not involve a transfer of U.S. government property requiring Congressional approval." Paxton also echoed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's warnings that the transition could harm free speech on the internet by giving Russia, China and Iran a voice on the international governing body that would oversee internet domain systems. "Trusting authoritarian regimes to ensure the continued freedom of the internet is lunacy," Paxton said. "The president does not have the authority to simply give away America's pioneering role in ensuring that the internet remains a place where free expression can flourish."
That's not how you beg for us to give you our old toys.
The GAO is probably right, it doesn't require an act of congress, but the lawsuit only has to delay it long enough for Trump to become president. If Hillary becomes president, then it's pointless.
It could cause problems if domain names are influence-able by governments hostile to free speech, but If it gets too annoying, we'll all just switch to another name server. They can't keep the speech itself down, only certain domain names. My point is, that in the worst case, it's not the end of the world, and the Google index is much, much more important.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
They are afraid and uneducated, not right. There is a difference.
It's an election year. And another lawsuit for Republicans to fundraise money off of.
A role or a position is not something you can own. The internet is an international organization thing that doesn't belong to any country. The way it works is decided between the countries, and changing the way it works can be subject to voting or negotiations, but talking about property in this context is either retarded or plainly dishonest.
WOW, reading Ted Cruz's concern makes you wonder if he even has ANY idea what an 'authoritarian regime' really is? I mean seriously, I guess I would say "I agree' with him, which is why this needs to be stripped from the hands of the US government ASAP. They have used their 'authoritarian powers' to chill speech on the internet to no ends!
Hey Ted, lets not beat around the bush ok? Just come out & say that giving this to an 'international standards body' will reduce the US's ability to fuck with the rest of the world as you see fit.
We need to quit with this bullshit that the US has some kind of fundamentally benign government that only ever makes decisions that are good for everyone in the world or even individuals in their own country.
They are just pulling their inner racist card. Afraid of anyone and anything different from them so we can't let someone else have control or be in our neighborhood, etc. Same can be said about their moronic, clueless arguments against gun control. They fear monger and don't do anything or KNOW anything of any value at all. If they think our freedom of speech is going to be impacted even slightly by a change in who governs ICANN they are idiots. You're not being moved to Iran simply because ICANN is governed by an international body, as it should be.
Individual countries have already governed or tried to govern over their little tiny corners of the internet.
Your logic makes no sense at all.
Even if one considers the ICANN handoff to be a terrible plan; that still leaves the "and a state would have standing to block this why exactly?" problem unsolved.
I'm having trouble thinking of a reading of the constitution where one of the several states gets to stop the feds from making a change in management to a Department of Commerce contractor(handling a job previously done by a DoD contractor) overseeing the outgrowth of a federal military research project.
It'd be like Vermont going to court because they think that selling F-15s to the Saudis is a terrible plan. They may well be entirely correct; but even pretty minimalist readings of the constitution tend to give the feds most of the foreign policy power.
I'm deeply unclear on what the world thinks they'll get from ICANN that they haven't under US administration; and also unclear on what we have to gain from changing the situation; but I'm still baffled as to what possible standing state governments have on the issue.
The internet is an international organization thing that doesn't belong to any country. The way it works is decided between the countries, and changing the way it works can be subject to voting or negotiations,
Tell that to the people in China, Iran, North Korea and many other countries whose internet access is severely restricted by their government.
I'm guessing you're one of those people who thinks anyone who is white is racist by default, and any racist remarks directed towards white people can't ever be racist.
Then you wonder why white people are angry.
The internet has flourished in many ways because it's been controlled by a liberal free market country like the United States. The US is all about free speech, free flow of ideas, etc - much more so than any other country on Earth.
For most of the countries on Earth the idea of free speech (as in "say anything you want") is an alien concept. Go ahead and say something bad about the Thai royals in Thailand. How about registering "putinsucks.ru"? Have fun in the gulag.
Hey, you're going to create a website that competes against the national phone company? Good luck with that, little toad. You're going to blog about how government ministers are idiots? Yeah, goodbye to that too.
It'll happen slowly, and accelerate over time, like everything.
It only takes one bureaucrat to decide that zombo.com is a threat to the world order, and bam it's gone.
If anything, the whole-hearted embrace of the "world internet" here shows that most slashdot readers never left their parents' basement.
This is a non-event at worst
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Establishing that knowledge *can* be property is necessary, but not sufficient to establish that any piece of knowledge *is* property.
But at stake here isn't knowledge; it's administration.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
A role or a position is not something you can own.
So a contract can not be owned by the parties that signed it? The government may not own the role of ICANN but the services rendered are under contract between the two. And now the president is giving that contract away without consent from some of the other signing parties, particularly congress.
It's simple to understand. You have a contract with three people to preform a particular service of some kind. Then one of those three people decides to give away the contracting of your service to somebody outside the contract. This person basically gives the contract to somebody else. Your services go to that someone else that wasn't a part of the contract. The role you play in preforming those services for that contract goes with it. You signed it. Essentially the role you were contracted to preform is given away without the other two agreeing.
If the role is defined as a service it can be owned. ICANN's service was contracted by the government. Congress has say in this matter. It partially owns the services ICANN does. The service is the property. And now it's being given away without consent.
NTIA has had oversite of ICANN for about 20 years now. What have they done in that 20 years? .xxx domain. That's it.
They blocked creation of the
So what will we be losing?
Doing nothing is a very good thing. Think of all the somethings an organization that appointed Saudi Arabia chair of the human rights commission could do.