As ICANN Gains Full Oversight Of Domain Name System, Some Wonder If It Means the US Has Given Away The Internet (bbc.com)

The U.S. has given up its remaining control over the Internet. The formal handover, which took effect on Saturday, followed a last-ditch attempt by a group of Republicans to block the move. They had argued that the US concession would open the door for authoritarian governments get control of the network of networks, leading to greater censorship. From a BBC report:A judge in Texas has put the kibosh on a last-minute legal attempt to block the controversial decision for the US to give up control of one of the key systems that powers the internet. It's a move being breathlessly described by some as the US "giving up the internet" to the likes of China, Russia and the Middle East. For starters, while they can take the credit for inventing the underlying technology, the US never "had the internet" to begin with. Nobody did. It's a, duh, network. Decentralised. That's what makes it so powerful. But there are bits of internet infrastructure that some people and governments do have control over, and that's what this row is all about. One of them is the DNS - Domain Name System. This is the system for looking after web addresses. Thanks to the DNS, when you type bbc.com, you're taken to the correct servers for the BBC website. It saves you the grief of having to remember a string of numbers. That pairing of names and numbers is kept in one great big master file, the land registry of the web. The only organisation that can make changes is Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. As of Saturday 1 October 2016, Icann will no longer be under US government oversight.

Comments

Backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

They had argued that the US concession would open the door for authoritarian governments get control of the network

Rather it has been liberated from the control of an authoritarian government.

Re:Backwards

[RobotRunAmok]

Maybe on your planet.

Here on Earth, keeping the Internet under U.S. control is/was its only chance for keeping the exchange of thoughts and idea unfettered.

Re:Backwards

[Man On Pink Corner]

OK, so let's take a look at these ominous-sounding acronyms, one by one.

CDA is the Communications Decency Act. It makes sense to start off with this one because it not only has the most Orwellian name, but it also represents one of the earliest assaults against online freedom of expression by American politicians. In the US, our legislators face no penalties when they pass overtly unconstitutional laws, but the laws themselves still have to survive court challenges. This happened more or less immediately with the CDA, and the result was genuinely ironic. The only significant part of the CDA that survived was Section 230, which is what releases server operators from responsibility for information posted by their users. So the CDA is actually one of the most important pieces of legislation protecting free expression on the Internet.

COPA Like the problematic parts of the CDA, the Child Online Protection Act was almost immediately struck down, this time in its entirety.

DMCA Another two-edged sword. Some believe that freedom of expression and copyright laws are mutually exclusive. I'm sympathetic to this point of view myself, but the fact is that our Constitution explicitly authorizes Congress to regulate "intellectual property." Unsurprisingly this is also true of essentially every civilized country on Earth. All of them, in the US's place, would have ended up with a DMCA-like law of their own. The differences is that similar legislation in those countries wouldn't have had to conform to the First Amendment. Much like the CDA, one of the parts of the DMCA that survived court challenges is the "safe harbor" provision that has proven to be vitally important to the growth and maintenance of a more-or-less free Internet. Look what's happening in the EU, for instance, where you're no longer allowed to run an open WiFi access point. The DMCA and CDA are what keep this kind of bullshit from happening in the US.

COPPA is the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. It doesn't address free speech, unless your idea of free speech is the freedom to collect personal information from children under 13 without their parents' supervision. If that's your idea of free speech, we're done here.

CIPA, the Children's Internet Protection Act, is problematic from a free-expression standpoint. But it is also strictly limited in scope to schools and libraries that receive government funding. It has no effect on the rights of any private citizens or organizations.

DOPA ("Deleting Online Predators Act") is one I hadn't heard of. It was introduced in Congress but appears to have made no progress toward passage since 2007. It's not the law, so it's not relevant.

COICA, "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act," and its successor PIPA, "Protect IP Act" also were shelved after widespread protests.

SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, was basically an attempt by the content industries to buy a legislative end run around the DMCA's safe harbor provision. Like the DMCA it comes into play only in the context of copyright law. Like PIPA, it failed to pass in the wake of widespread protests.

CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, doesn't appear to have anything to do with freedom of speech. It "allows for the sharing of Internet traffic information between the US government and technology and manufacturing companies." It wouldn't be affected one way or the other by the ICANN transfer and isn't germane here.

It's not clear what you mean by "the USITC requesting site blockings." Presumably another case where the right to infringe copyrights collides with the right to free sp

US

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is one of the most repressive governments on Earth. I can't wait to get the fuck out of here.

Duh, no one owns it, it's a network

[phantomfive]

There are plenty of networks that are completely owned. I have to confess that I myself, own at least one network.

"Nobody did. It's a, duh, network."

Re: Lovely

[dunkelfalke]

I think, countries with the most prison inmates hate freedom.

Re: Different ideas, indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's saying the government isn't allowed to limit your free speech whether or not you are anonymous. A private entity might or might not do that, but it also can't enlist the government in finding that anonymous source if no crime or tort has been committed and they are unsuccessful in determining the identity of the anonymous participant.

Re: Different ideas, indeed

[PatientZero]

Citation needed please. What politician had their right to free speech shit upon?

The entire population of Iraq when the U.S. unilaterally disabled the .iq gTLD and Wikileaks domain in the leadup to the Iraq War.

Re:The US never "owned" the Internet.

[Shane_Optima]

"Discovery"? Like how radium was discovered?

Yes, as you imply, clearly the WWW is the most important foundational piece of the Internet. Not the invention or popularization of markup languages or Arpanet or Telenet or any of the other early American computer networks.