Should the UN Replace ICANN? 591
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo news has a story on how some developing countries want control of the assignment of network names and numbers turned over to an international body, such as the UN's ITU (International Telecommunication Union)."
Is this really a good idea? (Score:1, Interesting)
hrm. can we choose c) none of the above?
Conference (Score:5, Interesting)
ICANN was also still in a confusing semi-democratic phase at the time (this seems to be steadily decreasing) and also weirdly self-imploding. Ester Dyson also gave the most contentless speech I think I have ever heard - no doubt to ensure minimum offense to anyone in the audience.
As with all these things wheels within wheels... but I do wish the call for some form of ICANN democracy would renew [technologyreview.com] rather than lose it to a not very democratic body (i.e. the ITU) or to the corporations (kinda where it is now).
The ITU... ugh. (Score:5, Interesting)
The first problem is that they are hardly open. They charge a LOT for any of their documentation, which is split into many, many books. Unless you start off as rich as Bill Gates, you're unlikely to ever get enough of the texts to actually know what the standard even is.
The second is that they operate in a manner that resembles a medieval court. I half expect to see things by them with a royal seal and a coat of arms.
I have a much, much better idea and it's cheap. Let me run it. I would do a lot better job than either ICANN (ICAN'T) or the UN ever could. Given that most DNS servers cache, and therefore the actual throughput to replicate any top-level changes would be relatively low, I wouldn't need much more bandwidth than I already have.
(How much bandwidth do you need, when changes can take days to get anywhere? And how fast does the top-level domain change, anyway? I didn't know they added TLD extensions on a daily basis. Most of the actual domain names registered are registered with registrars lower down the heirarchy.)
If the DNS system switched from tree to grid, which it easily could and partially has, then a central administration system has nothing to do. Which is fine with me, if someone takes me seriously and gives me the job. Hey, I've no problem with world Governments paying me to do nothing, the way they do with Microsoft.
Re:Oh, great.... (Score:4, Interesting)
UN Arrogant? (Score:4, Interesting)
from the gold-medal-in-arrogance dept.
Say what? I don't know what this tagline is supposed to mean. Does it refer to ICANN or the UN? If this was directed at the UN, they are many things, but arrogant is not one of them. I know the average US citizen has been turned against them by the media portrayal, but this is a bit too much.
Anyways, the idea that an international body handle internation communication is not new, as pointed to by the the ITU already in place.
Re:The UN? The most corrupt buerocracy on the plan (Score:1, Interesting)
First: Spell Check is your friend.
It's "Bureaucracy", NOT however the fuck you spelled it above.
Also, there has never been any genocide in "ruanda", however the genocide in "Rawanda" is very well documented. I'd like to add that the USA didn't do anything during the Rawandan Genocide either.
Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.
The UN's lack of use (Score:3, Interesting)
Handing anything over to the UN is just asking it to be poorly managed by more people than could ever be needed to manage a particular task, and then to be delegated over repeatedly, until all sides are happy. Which, obviously will never happen and 1 side will just start ignoring them and doing what they like, which is an alarming trend as of late.
As is the case in Iraq and Sudan as of late, the nations that helped found the UN based on the League of Nations lack of authority, don't even listen to the UN, why put anything else under the jurisdiction of a useless entity?
Their only goal seems to be expand its bloat and watch and comment on the atrocities it's supposed to prevent, I for one am sick of international organizations that don't even stand up for themselves when they are trampled over again, and again.
The UN will go the way of the League of Nations, even though we all know it already has. Peacekeepers hiring prostitutes in Congo, people in Sudan starving to death, unchecked war in Iraq, and soon I'm sure war in another country with brown people in it, and hopefully some natural resources, yeehaw!
[cx]
Re:Oh, great.... (Score:1, Interesting)
ICANN is a waste of space (Score:2, Interesting)
If ICANN can't remove a crooked registrar's accreditation or get back stolen domains for you, what use are they?
As a charitable organisation, they seem pretty good at taking your money for doing nothing....
Re:Can United Nations REALLY stop cyber crime and (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Dear U.N. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's different people, different department, different goals.
Re:Can United Nations REALLY stop cyber crime and (Score:2, Interesting)
Everybody commits attrocities. However there is an increasing trend for UN troops and the corporations that act as support mechanisms for these troops to perform attrocities in hostile situations that are comparable to the situation that encouraged joe public to support such gross action in the first place.
Unfortunately for internation opinion of the US; most of the world associates UN actions with the US... they do afterall provide a large number of the troops to these 'hotspots'. And often there appears to be some tangible conspiracy theory behind such actions.
The moral really should be similar to that of the failed League of Nations... keep out of everybodies business... unless its your business. In which case ask nicely that they stop.
Firstly, I don't want to increase my knowledge of the facts, ignorance is bliss. Secondly... was I supposed to explain something?
Also your double negative reads poorly; I would have written similar to: "Your reply betrays your ignorance of the facts and fails to explain..."
I think my point is that the UN shouldn't be responsible for stopping cyber-crime...
Re:Can United Nations REALLY stop cyber crime and (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow, you might have a point. That's the exact same thing I hear from soldiers that are returning from Iraq. There's actually a lot of positive news, but the netwroks don't care about reporting it.
Re:Can United Nations REALLY stop cyber crime and (Score:3, Interesting)
Just be careful what you wish for. You might get it.
Should the UN take over the Internet? 1 word: (Score:4, Interesting)
That's the short reply. Long version: the UN, as evidenced by the oil-for-food scandal [economist.com] and their attempts to impose a tax on the U.S. [rightmarch.com], is a corrupt organization of politicos bent on controlling everything - not unlike the American government, really.
The trouble is, the UN wants to make everything a bureaucratic struggle [acepilots.com], such as in Darfur [badgerherald.com], and that bureaucracy would strangle the organization of the Internet.
More often than not, decentralization works better than centralization -- smaller businesses tend not to abuse their customers as much as big businesses do, smaller governments tend not to abuse their people as much as bigger governments do, and so on. It's a matter of accountability - like with the problem of increasing numbers of managers over one's head back at the office, increasing the number of "official" overseers only bogs down efficiency. Let the customers of an organization or individual be the real overseers (as is the case currently w/ ICANN) - this is a decentralizing move.
Hence, in the name of decentralization, in the name of not being tied up in corruption (at least as much of it as the UN clearly is), in the name of efficiency -- I would argue that leaving ICANN in its current position is better than putting it under the wing of the UN.
(Note to knee-jerk UN defenders: the UN has its place as a means of mediating conflicts between nations and smoothing things over; as a forum for foreign relations. But we should all be worried when it starts interfering with the sovereignty of any nation, whether that nation is ours or not.)
Re:The ITU... ugh. (Score:3, Interesting)
X.500 is one. But. The ITU fought long and had against TCP/IP. Guess what was the first thing that went over the fist transatlantic X.25 link? TCP/IP packets. Where there's a geek there's a way.
The difference? TCP/IP is actually usefull.
I'd let you run it. Hell my aunt Nellie could do as better job than the morons currently runing it.
(How much bandwidth do you need, when changes can take days to get anywhere? And how fast does the top-level domain change, anyway? I didn't know they added TLD extensions on a daily basis. Most of the actual domain names registered are registered with registrars lower down the heirarchy.)
The root zone changes 4-7 times a month. Usually just nameserver changes. Usually French terriroties for some odd reason.
We diff the root zone every day.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:3, Interesting)
Honestly? Check your facts. Our wealthy allies are probably worse than all the developing nations together.
The largest market for the pharmaceuticals created in the US is the EU. However most of these (poorer as you say?) nations have cost controls which mean that we in the US largely pay for this R&D. We subsidize the cheap drugs in Canada, the UK, and elsewhere. We have no cost controls here, so we pay.
We should have some cost controls here to prevent the biotech companies from using American funds to subsidize inexpensive drugs in Canada. They and the EU are the ones that are ripping us off, not the countries in Africa or Southeast Asia.
Re:The UN????? (Score:2, Interesting)
The ITU consists mostly of Telcos who would have done everything to stop "packet-oriented" (as opposed to "connection-oriented") networking back in the 80ies, if they hadn't underestimated it.
The ITU is als _the_ body for enacting patent-ridden so-called standards. All "design by commitee", so every company can bring in their patents.
The ITU _is_ Evil.
Re:Can United Nations REALLY stop cyber crime and (Score:3, Interesting)
The very REASON there is support by powerful elements inside the US to turn "control" of the internet over to the UN IS TO BE ABLE TO GLOBALLY IMPOSE RULES AND RESTRICTIONS. If some attempted change ot rule or restriction came out of the US it would be "imperialism" and fail. If some change or rule or restriction comes out of the UN, well then it is a "Golbal Treaty" and governments are almost obligated to jump on board. It also becomes very possible for a majority of compliant countries to declare that treaty compliance is a condition for some country to receive an international network connection. According to the treaty the US and EU and other compliant countries would cut off any non-compliant country from the global network.
If the US attempts to impose Trusted Computing on the world, that is "imperialism" and no one will stand for it. If the UN decides on Trusted Computing standards for the Global network
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Re:I've got karma to burn, and a bone to pick (Score:3, Interesting)
Ahh, the powers of self-delusion. If the US tried to do the whole "global domination" thing, back in '45, what we'd have is an Iron Curtain significantly more to the West. The Red Army, marching forward ever since Hitler's botch in taking Moscow, was all but unstoppable -- if the US had shown any kind of imperialistic ambitions, Stalin would have just plowed on until he reached Normandy... Unlike the Nazis, the Reds were fully stocked, and they numbered in the millions.
Stalin himself was an evil man. No one disputes this. However, his successors as chairmen were significantly more reasonable than him -- Gorbachev was, at any rate, a much more reasonable character than his actor counterpart, who sold weapons to the Iraqi, to the counterrevolutionaries in Iran and Nicaragua, etc. Comparing the "Final Solution" Nazis favorably to them is insulting the troops who fought and died to storm the concentration camps (most of which were Russian!)
The Russians still had most of their operating capacity. If the US hadn't poured money to rebuild Western Europe, the Soviets would have... and then Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Norway would be the last bastions of Capitalism in Europe. Same thing with China. The US simply wasn't quick enough with the dough to save Chiang Kai-shek's government from the Communists, but was able to avoid that fate for Japan. Don't believe for a moment the Marshall Plan was carried out due to charity on Truman's part...
Please share some of that weed you're having. Wake up and smell the coffee -- the Internet is an INTERNATIONAL venture; even if you don't venture beyond the English-language part of it, there's still plenty of it outside of the US (.uk and .au, for example, are linked frequently here in Slashdot). It makes sense that the IANA an the ICANN, which provide a service to THE WHOLE WORLD, not be under the aegis of US law. It's undue (yes, undue) privilege to the US.
Re:Can United Nations REALLY stop cyber crime and (Score:5, Interesting)
You never hear the small, positive stories. The media want to see blood. It sells.
Nothing happens unless there is a UN member or a coalition of UN members that has the means and the willingness to interfere. Other countries than the US do take on missions if they feel they have the means to pull it off.
What about France on the Ivory Coast [worldpress.org]? A quote:
"Without France, we would find ourselves in a second Rwanda," claimed Ibrahim Coulibaly, one of the rebels who took control of the north in September 2002, in an interview with Courrier International (Nov 17).
Or the UNMEE force in Ethiopia and Eritrea [unmeeonline.org], where the Netherlands and Canada initially volunteered, but only after explicit assurances by the US through the media that they could call in US air support from bases in Saudi Arabia if needed. The force now mostly consists of troops from India, Jordania, and Kenya.
65,000 UN soldiers (excluding forces like the French one on the Ivory Coast) are currently serving in 16 UN operations worldwide [un.org], and most of those are succesful.
Srebrenica [pipex.com] is a good example of what happens if you are willing but do not really have the means to pull it off yourself (and your 'ally' the US is secretly arming [srpska-mreza.com] the side you are supposed to disarm according to your UN mandate). The Netherlands' force mistakenly assumed it could rely on air support by allies if needed, and the small force didn't have the means to take out Serbian tanks. The Serbs blocked munitions and arms supplies over the road for months before they attacked the enclave.
The US is the only country with a network of air force bases all over the world, and even the US would probably have had problems providing sufficient air lift and air support quickly in Rwanda. For smaller countries involvement in Rwanda could only have ended in embarassment.
All of this has hardly any bearing on the functioning of the UN bureaucracy. It is about cynical international diplomacy.
Re:Mod parent and grandparent up! (Score:1, Interesting)
I think what the neocons intend is much worse than simply dissolving the UN, which would, IMHO, be no great loss. What they intend to do is to turn the UN into what the Delian League [wsu.edu] became: the beginnings of an empire.
I think the difference between the Bush administration and its critics is that the critics of the Bush administration want the UN to be the beginning of a empire whose ruling class will be international: a lot of them don't realize that this is what they're arguing for. The Bush admin wants that empire to be American-run, and they do realize what they're arguing for.
No one in the US really wants out of the UN except the Libertarians, who got about 400,000 votes in the last Presidential election. Everyone else wants to keep it going, but they differ on what its purpose should be.