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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 our authority over DNS is legally US government property in any sense the framers would have agreed upon, even stretching that concept of property to include intangible property.
Even if you can argue that DNS is American government property, it's pretty useless property. Since it is largely administered in a decentralized fashion, if the rest of the world wants it can set up its own DNS system and have people in their country point to their preferred root servers.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
You live in a society where if you utter the word "nigger" you're branded a racist if you're white, and an elightened african american if you're black. And this is independent of the context where such word is used.
It's like saying only women have the right to use the word "clitoris" or "vagina", and if a men utters it well then he is a sick piece of garbage. What if he happens to be a doctor ?
It's not really about Republicans or Democrats, just about abuse of power and taxpayer dollars
I just assumed the Attorneys General involved were up for re-election, or had their eyes on a Governorship or something. I also know the real reason why they are wrong about this, it's because Lyin' Ted Cruz thinks its a good idea.
ICANN includes IANA with it. IANA is the authority for IP address ownership. If you don't have an IP address, no amount of fucking with DNS will allow you to be reachable.
The status quo is such that the US government doesn't seize ownership of either domain names or IP addresses, except those that are registered or otherwise managed within its own jurisdiction. Sites that the US government really hates (thepiratebay for example) don't have a problem existing so long as their names and numbers aren't any of those delegated for use within the US. There hasn't been any indication at all that this will ever change.
If governance over the whole thing transfers elsewhere, there isn't any telling what new rules can be added. Examples could include international laws being enforced in ways that they've never previously been enforced, such as WIPO rules being applied to kill sites like thepiratebay.
It's not a global asset it's a US asset we designed and built that we have been nice enough to let others use.
It's not a global asset it's a US asset we designed and built that we have been nice enough to let others use.
What like the GPS system? The original design and infrastructure may have been American designed, but the internet as a whole nowadays very much is not and you don't own it anymore than England owns the English language.
Wanna buy a shirt?
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Such complete bullshit.
The US were fairly heavily involved in some of the pre-internet stuff that the internet would later be built on. But the US only contribution to the core of the internet was Vint Cerf's internet protocol. Everything else was collaboratively developed by people from all over the world, much of it with no US involvement at all. Including the internet's killer app - the world wide web, which was built at CERN in Switzerland.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *