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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."
Idiot
Fuck off already
Muckin' with our intertubes.
That's not how you beg for us to give you our old toys.
I've known this has been coming for nearly 15 years. Why would they sue now?
own the internet? Don't say the darpa one because that wasnt the same tcp\ip version of the internet we have now.
...answer with Macbeth: "it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."
Far be it from me to agree with a republican, but if it's the US' to give, then surely it is their property then?
As for "chilling speech", this implies that an international body is capable of getting things done, but according to the republicans, an international body getting something is a rare sight to behold.
Anyways, these same republicans are the ones who brought in a massive spying and surveillance operation. What do you think has a bigger impact on free speech? An impossibly bureaucratic international body that can't agree on anything, or your federal government watching everything you say.
Why is America so avoidably dumb that these people keep getting into positions of power and influence?
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."
is under criminal indictment for being a dickweed.
The only thing of importance IANA has power over is the DNS root zone, but that is just meaningless (yes, lots of real estate value connected to it but in essence its meaningless). If google would be bought by the chinese it would be far worse.
Republicans speaking of free expression seems somehow disingenuous to me. Free expression has never been a hallmark of the GOP, whose members have often sought to silence dissent, as evidenced in the current Kaepernick protests. The US is one of the most authoritarian countries in the world.
I smell something fishy...
I wonder what his progress is and yes the US constitution clearly says both houses must vote for Obama to do this
http://saveie6.com/
Let's just get this over with, so we can have outsourced IT fall apart.
This will be a boon for the US as every other country will try to teach the US a lesson for past wrongs.
It will be a world population sized example of cutting your nose off to spite your face!
So go! Teach us terrible Americans a lesson!
do it like the communist brother country of north korea and opt out of the imperialist domain name system controlled by the united states! Enter bare ipv4 addresses instead! Its much better because everyone who owns a domain is a filthy capitalist who lives off the hard work of other people! Down with the imperialist west!
What is better has nothing to do with all this. A lot of those countries, that some Americans do not want to trust with co-managing a bit of the infrastructure, simply will not take no for an answer because they in turn do not trust the US.
Bottom line, share it or it gets forked. That wont make anyone happy and is even worse.
And lets be honest, there is not much harm that can come from this By now countries have much better ways for controlling their neck of the internet than corrupting the core infrastructure. They just don't need to.
This whole thing is mostly a pissing contest between national ego's.
And finally, if it turns out the US really is unhappy with the result, they can always fork it themselves.
Techdirt has covered this extensively. This is nothing more than typical Republican fear-mongering. Blocking the transition would actually make things *worse*. https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
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.
It's not really about Republicans or Democrats, just about abuse of power and taxpayer dollars. This is people who are clearly taking money from the taxpayer to advance their own political interests. Even the "anonymous" submission to slashdot is peppered not with the names of the states or the importance or lack of importance of the lawsuit, but just with the names of the attorneys general involved.
It is political posturing, pure and simple. The attorneys general should be fired for wasting government time and taxpayer money, and adding frivolous burdens to an already overburdened court system.
One would think that Attorneys General are good enough lawyers to understand the concepts of legal standing and tangible harm. But if they had they wouldn't have wasted taxpayer dollars filing suit on these grounds. Politics as usual in the good old USA.
We are the 198 proof..
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.
Look at their "stewardship" and i loose the term loosely of domain names. All those clowns care about is a fast buck for their members. They don't have the best interests of the public, the internet, or anyone but themselves at heart. Put ICANN in charge of the Internet WITHOUT US GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT and you'll have another Enron scale disaster. THE US GOVERMENT *IS* THE PEOPLE. ICANN IS NOT. To remove US Government oversight is to remove oversight by the people.
This person is deluded : "Completing the transition of oversight of the internet’s "address book" to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, not only fulfills an historic promise made by the United States government, but is also the best option to protect internet freedom." http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/09/28/should-the-us-give-up-oversight-of-internet-addresses/the-transition-to-icann-is-the-best-way-to-protect-internet-freedom
Please excuse my ignorance, but won't the opening the Web to other countries make it easier to cause mayhem??
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.
That's what happens with frivolous lawsuits in the world I live in...
Since always you fuckin' chode.
"America's pioneering role in ensuring that the internet remains a place where free expression can flourish." Are you shitting me? Sorry for the bad langiage mr fbi watching my web cam and mr cia watching my data and mr google,mr microsoft ....
It's about time we have a president who really gets the cyber.
https://youtu.be/bYJ_H2c5IWc
You are welcome on my lawn.
who think they understand technology policy.... Their concern is only that Obama will leave office a success while his predecessor left in shame.
So either share the ball, or the other kids will just buy their own ball and won't let the US play.
The internet has been a wholly commercial entity for decades now.
If the government wanted to keep control of it, they shouldn't have handed it over, practically for free, to the various commercial interests that now have a stranglehold. It's a bit late to be complaining about it being "US property".
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.
People seem to be forgetting that IANA _and_ ICANN are on the chopping blocks. Forward look ups could use an alternative service, but what if someone just takes half your IPs away and gives them to someone else because they don't like what your sites do?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Please tell me this is satire.
Unless our government is being influenced by foreign entities or we wouldn't relinquish control. We're a land of free speech. Is taking donations from foreign countries mean we owe them back? As such the Hillary taking a billion from Saudi Arabia could be part of this. Her charity may do good work, but it also makes her look good which is a political agenda. This is similar to campaign contribution bribery. But I wouldn't think they'd sell out this quick! Be very against changing domain name control. I know it can all be reworked in a day, but it takes a long time to get everyone on board.
Now how will America slip their back-doors and spying into everything?
Cowboys vs. Aliens?
'giving away government property'
I am mystified by this snippet from the summary. What is the property referred to, and on what grounds does the government claim to 'own' it?
No, it is something else going on, likely some crap by the MPAA or RIAA because they fear loss of control over DNS.
This whole thing got traction everywhere outside of the USA when you bunch of idiots allowed your courts to mess with the DNS outside of the .us ccTLD.
The ICANN handover was *engineered* by all concerned parties to *protect* against an UN takeover of the DNS, which would result in such control going to ITU-T, which *WOULD* implement all cuontry-border policies wanted by enemies of the USA... because that's exactly how the ITU-T operates the international telephone network for decades.
Of course, some redneck imbeciles did not read their e-mail, and are attempting to mess with a national security operation by the USA to keep the Internet palatable to "democracy-style" interests (which my country happens to agree with, btw. We are a major proponent of the multi-stakeholder style of taking care of the Internet). Maybe the NSA should drop by these attorney general offices and have a talk with them about high treason.
For good or bad this will happen. The most direct effect I see is monetary. ICANN can now set their share of the revenue from each domain name with complete freedom. It is now 0.17 cents, I think!! I see that increasing "A LOT" in the future..
;) As said elsewhere if problems come up the internet will try to re route ;)
The other thing will be attempted global laws and regulations placed upon all internet users (crypto?, etc) to satisfy governments. After all every government whats to read "ALL" the communications in order to protect their people.
Whether these will be good or bad who knows. Only time will tell.
But it is going to be interesting
This is nothing new from the Obama administration, which from its inception has tried to destroy the U.S..
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Hey dickwad - most of it was built\owned by private entreprise you know that anti commie thing you american retards love forcing on the rest of the world at gunpoint.
And most of it isnt even in America but everyone knows american fucktards wouldn't even be able to name the next state over if they didnt play them sometimes at football.
With your back doors.
I'm surprised Florida didn't get in on that. They're usually front and center when something stupid, horrifying, dangerous, provincial, and narcissistic goes down.
Usually, second only to Texas. Which is easily the worst state in the US by a large margin.
Clinton is an honest lady and a square shooter. Clinton 2016!
We totally agree. That's why the USA should not be trusted to ensure the continued freedom of the internet.
Signed,
Canadians, Europeans, Australians, Japanese, etc.
Wow, are they still talking. One would have thought the adage:-
"Best to stay quiet and be thought an idiot than speak and remove all doubt"
Would have sunk in in the land of the free.
This is and never has been an issue, it's a technical commercial and global matter of private commerce and as such petty politics or nation states be damned. If you don't like an independent ICANN then fine, set up your own, the rest of us will go on without you.
Most of the stuff that is the internet is ours, not yours, so if you demand the sole ownership of the internet and its governance, BUY THE FUCKING STUFF WE MADE OFF US.
TIA
The rest of the world.
The argument is "Nothing BAD will happen", not "Nothing will change".
Why would a phone book be considered as being "the system"?
Any number of indexing methods could be used to help forward from a symbol/word to IP address.
... all wanted to get out of town quick to go home and campaign for their own re-elections (1/3 the senators elected every 2 years) or to support others in their parties in the elections.
As a result, the Senate whipped-up a "continuing resolution" bill to keep the government open and running at FY2016 levels until December, matched it with the equivalent bill from the House, and sent it to Obama for a signature, then they all abandoned DC. They'll be back after the November elections. At this point, only this court action can block Obama from giving up the ICANN oversight to the globalists, and giving places like Saudi Arabia as much input into internet control as places like the US and UK.... you know, the sort that Arrests a kid for talking on a split-screen on YouTube with a GIRL
THIS is what makes these globalist do-gooder orgs (like the UN) so dangerous: they treat all nations equally no matter whether they are run by evil rat dictators like North Korea, twisted evil monarchies like Saudi Arabia, twisted evil theocracies like Iran, or demoracies like the US, UK, France, Japan, Australia etc. It's why a Democracy like Israel which allows Jews, Christians, atheists, Muslims, etc to be citizens and even to serve in parliament is continually out-voted by 50+ Muslim-run nations where Christians, Jews, Atheists, etc are not welcome, and depending on the form of Islam: gays are jailed/killed, women are prohibited from doing things like driving cars or going to school, Bibles and Christmas decorations are forbidden and anybody with them is jailed...
whose president (Obama) and SecState (Hillary Clinton) jailed a YouTube filmmaker (who had NOTHING to do Libya) as a scapegoat for the Benghazi debacle. and then kept him in prison for a year, even while his prison was letting-out violent offenders in order to get into compliance with a prison overcrowding court ruling, and even had him transferred to a Texas prison so he'd remain behind bars as the California prisons were still overcrowded.
No need to start an effort to free him now; he is out of jail and now living as a poor homeless man whose life is in ruins.
I find it interesting that nobody in Hollywood ever took up the cause of the jailed filmmaker - they all rant about "free speech" and yet are Hillary bots.
They thought the proper government channels would stop it... but then the Senate flaked-out and went home to campaign for re-election, and the president eagerly supported the globalist giveaway action. The start of the US fiscal year is tomorrow (October 1) and many policies like this are keyed to the fiscal (rather than calendar) year.
Quite simply: this is the last chance to stop it, so they are responsibly taking it even though it should never have come to this.
These state officials are worried about things like protecting their citizens from online bank fraud and credit card fraud in a "brave new world" where the US Commerce Dept no longer has an oversight role in the DNS system and there may no longer be the same legal foundations for establishing digital footprints in fraud cases, fewer protections for consumers and a reduction in certainty that www.myhometownbank.com actually goes to the proper IP address for myhometownbank and not nigerianprince.ru
If, as you say, it's no big deal, then:
why the hell are the elite billionaires spending so much time and money fixating on it and demanding it?????
why the hell are so many foul and obnoxious government that hate free speech demanding it????
This is eerily similar to a famous otherwise unrelated Obama argument:
The man keeps insisting that there's nothing special about labeling terror acts as "radical Islamic terrorism".... but he has absolutely refused to use thos words and insists he will not use them and insists that anybody using them might trigger ordinary Muslims to go crazy and start murdering people.... but the words are apparently still unimportant.
Time to setup a parallel network.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada