European Union Asks US To Free ICANN 503
An anonymous reader writes "Viviane Reding, Information Society Commissioner of the European Union, is calling for the United States to hand over control of ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers). She said that the organization running ICANN needs be free of control by a single nation, and rather controlled by a private entity and governed by multiple nations. ICANN, headquartered in Marina Del Rey, California, was created in 1998 to oversee a number of Internet related tasks. Reding said, 'In the long run, it is not defendable that the government department of only one country has oversight of an internet function which is used by hundreds of millions of people in countries all over the world.'"
"hand over control" - yum, troll link text! (Score:5, Interesting)
full bit:
"She said that the organization running ICANN needs be one free of control by one single nation but controlled by a private entity and governed by multiple nations."
That's quite a different story than implied by the summary's "hand over control [implied: to the EU]".
I still think it's a bad idea to let 'multiple nations' govern the thing - there's too many nations that would seriously curb what can and cannot be done. I don't think the U.S. having sole control is all that great either, but out of the various options - I'd sooner 'trust' the U.S. with it (given existing records, although I disagree with the whole .xxx domain getting nixed - especially since ICANN has/had plans to offer .anythingyouwant anyway) than, say, the U.N. or a grouping of e.g. U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China to pick a semi-random grouping there.
Re:Multinational control (Score:4, Interesting)
group of nations which all have a constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech.
Like France, Germany and England, all of which have speech restrictions which I find disturbing?
Re:Uh, no (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is that there's literally nothing stopping the US doing that if they want to. Sure, you might argue that for the last decade they haven't, but when the administration can change every 4 years, it's a hell of a leap of faith to take.
At least by having it internationally run, there'll be enough red tape and bureaucracy to prevent anything like that from happening.
Re:Uh... (Score:1, Interesting)
ICANN is non profit in the sense of block buster movies that always seem to lose money. Plenty of connected people have made money off of ICANN (in particular Jones Day lawyers).
They also did not (and probably still don't) follow the rules for non profits. Go read up on how the rules for picking the board of directors were modified after the "wrong" people were elected as the north american and european representatives. And how ICANN kept things secret from the board, that board members needed to do their job (resulting in Auerbach's lawsuit).
"Oh my G ..." ? (Score:1, Interesting)
You are perfectly right.
Europe is freedom of speech, but restricted by law.
US is freedom of speech, but restricted by religion.
Just a matter of choice : religion vs law ;-)
Anybody tried a "good old" blasphemy lately ?
Anybody as "hot" subject ... Europe is denying crime against humanity (for instance Holocaust). US is about chalenging the religion : "in god we trust".
Both are historical artefacts, you know ;-)
Rgs,
TM
Mod Parent Up (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of brave French men and women died fighting for their homelands while the Yanks made excuses and sat around eating ice cream in Times Square or whatever they were up to and didn't get involved til 1941. Show a bit of respect.
The French men and women were brave. The French Government failed them miserably though. Sitting behind their fortifications and ceding the intuitive to the Germans clearly wasn't the best approach to fighting the war. The collaboration of the Vichy regime also comes to mind as a stain on the history of France.
Regardless, I think you misread me. I made a cheap joke at the expense of the French but my underlying point was to dispute the notion that the British and Americans single-handily won the war. It took the efforts of every single Allied nation to defeat the Axis powers. That fact is beyond dispute for anyone who has bothered to give the subject even a cursory reading.
Re:Strong free speech rights in the US (Score:3, Interesting)
They're already trying to ban the words Miss and Mrs. [telegraph.co.uk]
Re:Uh, no (Score:3, Interesting)
That being said I hope USA take total and restrictive control over ICANN; simply because I want, and hope, that it will force Europe (and basically all the other nations of the world that want to use a type of internet like service) to think outside the box and find ways to adapt and marginalise ICANN and the current way of organizing things. To be more specific I believe the best way for something to remain free is to ensure that it is decentralised and broken into so many pieces it will be absolutely impossible for one organisation or nation to maintain oversight or control. This is because I trust the US Government as much as I trust most of the nations of the world; i.e. Not Very.
Re:NO. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text! (Score:3, Interesting)
exactly, ICANN has given control of local domains to local countries... it's just that the "big" names still reside in the US.
Each individual country has control over assigning it's own domain names. The only reason the EU wants ICANN out from under the US government is that it can then be sued within an inch of it's life in every single nation that wants more restrictions. People in the EU don't really understand that all ICANN gives out are names, I believe another group grants IP ranges, so ICANN has no real power. Even international enforcement has been put under WIPO rules rather than US court rules. Being under the US government shields it from many of the petty lawsuits, like when the Google execs were arrested over a YouTube video... making it private removes the shield and lets governments like the EU have their way.
Re:Uh, no (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean like the time when they kicked North Korea's ass out of South Korea? Yeah that was an UN action (Resolution 84). Or how it served as a forum for the US and USSR to work out the Cuban Missile Crisis instead of fighting it out? How about the first Persian Gulf war, the one that's approved by the UN and not based on bullshit? Don't we wish we listened to the UN instead of Bush and Fox News the second time around?
The UN is huge and has many organs. Most of them are successful enough that you never hear about them and the work that they do. Of course there are failures but a world without the UN would be a far worse place.
Stop sucking on Fox News' teats.
Corrected: What the road system is really like (Score:5, Interesting)
Lets consider a better analogy.
We build at OUR EXPENSE an entire series of roads, spanning both countries and continents, and we tie the traffic system into YOUR control system.
We REIMBURSE you for your troubles, paying you a small fee for each traffic light you operate (DNS Registration), resulting in cheaper operational costs for everyone.
We however have grown concerned over your ability to operate our traffic as a neutral controller, as some of your states believe they can hijack and disable our traffic lights, if it bothers their locals. They have not been entirely successful yet, but they have caused disruptions that should never of been possible in the first place.
http://blog.cdt.org/2009/01/24/kentucky-court-rules-that-domain-names-arent-craps-tables/ [cdt.org]
The options we have available to us to minimize US laws/regulations on both our local and international traffic, we have the following options:
1. We leave the system in your hands (and whim), and hope for the best.
2. You hand over the control to an multinational committee
3. We sever our dependence on your system, and create our own. This however will more then likely cause international traffic crashes.
Anyone who thinks that its America's right to retain control over the entire INTERNATIONAL internet will suffer when countries develop their own control system in disgust.
Anyone who thinks America is more reliable then a committee might have a point, but 'because were better then you', is never going to be an accepted reason.
Re:Uh, no (Score:4, Interesting)
It was torture when the Japanese did it to Americans, so it's torture now.
Re:ICANN does not control anything (Score:4, Interesting)
ICANN consists of multiple parts. The important part is the IANA, which publishes such things as official port assignments, assigning IP addresses, assigning autonomous system numbers, publishing the root zone file, and acting as the registry for the .arpa and .int TLDs.
Virtually all of that it does on behalf of the IETF. That said, some of that is done autonomously without directly involving the IETF. For example, IP address assignment, except for special purpose assignments like assigning the multicast region it does autonomously. (Of note, it only assigns to a small number of other organizations who subassign IP addresses, continuing on down until an IP address gets assigned to your connection.) Similarly, the AS numbering is done autonomously. Of significant note, with the exception of special TLDs like .arpa, determining the contents of the majority of the root domain file is a task done autonomously.
As for the rest of ICANN, pretty much all it does is set policy for the DNS, and arbitrate disputes, etc.
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Now, for what should be done with ICANN, the solution is simple.
Split out the IANA as a separate entity under the direct oversight of the IAB, as a group under the ISOC, but not a component of the IETF.
Change the IANA's function to be purely a registry, publishing lists of assignments made by other parties.
Assign the responsibility for assignment of IP address ranges to the IAB. (My understanding is that the IAB is effectively already responsible for those assignments).
Create a fourth significant ISOC organization (Other than the IETF, IRTF, and IANA per above), under the oversight of the IAB. This organization would take the role of setting policy for the DNS, effectively performing all functions of the current ICANN, except those the IANA.
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So rather than hand ICANN over to the EU or UN, we hand it over to an existing international organization who is already effectively in charge of the Internet, the ISOC, who breaks it into two separate pieces, and incorporates it into its organizational structure in the usual fashion.
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Acronyms:
ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
IETF - the Internet Engineering Task Force
IAB - the Internet Architecture Board
IESG - the Internet Engineering Steering Group
IRTF - the Internet Research Task Force
IRSG - the Internet Research Steering group
ISOC - the Internet Society
RFC - "Request For Comments"
For a more detailed description of those terms see RFC 2860
How about the rest just ignores the US? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep. The US created the internet. If you want to be the ultimate authority, or let a group of countries have a consensus over a network--go create your own damn Internet.
I know I'll get modded troll, but here goes.
An interesting idea (that will never happen in practice) would be to mirror all the DNS data that's only stored in the US, and probably the RFCs too, then (from the non-US side) drop all packets crossing the US/non-US border.
There we go, now we have our own Internet. What's that, US? You want on it?
I hope it doesn't happen (all my cool shit is in the US). But in case US really becomes too much a problem for everyone else, there's the solution.
Imagine the nightmares when both sides allocate IP addresses previously used by the other side, and the networks have to be merged again...
Speculation: oh the fun! :)
Re:Gotta give Stalin some credit... (Score:3, Interesting)
If the dictator Joseph Stalin had not have killed a few million German soldiers and destroyed I think at least 20,000 tanks during the course of the Russio-German war, D-Day would have been awful tough for the United States and Great Britain. What sort of shape would the German army have been in without having endured the winter offensive on Moscow, the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk and then Operation Bagration.
For the record, 2/3 of all German casualties in WW2 were on the Eastern front. That is manpower, for artillery and tanks it's up to 4/5. Note also that Germans started racking massive casualties in the West only from 1943 onwards, when they've already had their ass kicked in the East for the most part.
At the same time, you know, Stalin didn't do that. Soviet soldiers did that, and Stalin, in fact, made a lot of blunders, esp. right before and early in the war, that made the Soviet casualties much higher than they had to be. The credit for USSR winning WW2 goes mostly to the people of the country, not to its leaders.
It's also fairly educational to compare WW2 military casualties [wikipedia.org] for the USSR, and US/UK/France.
Re:Uh, no (Score:3, Interesting)
The Japanese version of waterboarding killed people, or injured them for life. Ours does neither.
Interesting. Can you provide a citation for this?
Re:Uh, no (Score:4, Interesting)
The government-issued arms and ammunition would have been the preferred choice, but millions of old .30-30 deer rifles and .45-70 buffalo/elk guns could have been pressed into service at an instant.
And you don't think that fighting such an action would result in higher casualties than the neat set-piece battles we got to fight on the Western Front? The battles that we fought with full benefit of aerial supremacy, attacks on the rear area Axis logistical network and an Ally to the East that had already been bleeding the German Army for three years?
I'm a big fan of the "rifle behind every blade of grass" concept but I don't think for a moment that it wouldn't have been every bit as desperate and bloody as the Eastern Front was.
Re:Uh, no (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, I agree with you. I would slice the standing army down to a small professional force tasked primarily with training, operating advanced weapons systems (air defense and artillery) and defending important American outposts that aren't attached to the mainland (Guam, the Mariana's and Hawaii come to mind).
I would keep the Navy largely as is but make it solely responsible for our nuclear deterrent. I don't see the point of keeping around expensive ICBMs that are easily located and destroyed when we can station our nuclear deterrent on submarines that are virtually impossible to locate. The Navy would be our first line of defense (what are the odds that Canada or Mexico invade us?) as well as the last line of defense (the aforementioned nuclear deterrent).
I'm also tempted to say that the Air Force should be folded back into the Army. It was spun off as a separate service because of the notion that strategic bombing alone would win wars. This notion has not been borne out in any of the wars we've ever fought. Boots on the ground win wars. The Air Force exists to ensure those boots fight under friendly skies while the the boots of the enemy don't. Why should it be a separate service? Fold it back in the Army and make it part of the professional force that would be maintained during peacetime.
The rest of our defense would fall to the organized militia (National Guard and State Defense Forces) and unorganized militia (everybody else) if the shit hit the fan. I would also advocate withdrawing from the world and letting them pay for their own national defense. We'll get involved in their disputes when and if those disputes pose a clear and present threat to the national security of the United States.