ICANN's Cozy Relationship With the US Must End, Says EU 193
alphadogg writes "The exclusive relationship of ICANN with the U.S. must end, said the European Union's digital agenda chief on Wednesday. California-based ICANN is responsible for the assignment of top-level domains and has a long-standing operating agreement with the U.S. However, following the revelations by Edward Snowden of widespread surveillance of the Internet by the National Security Agency, many countries have questioned the arrangement. The historical relationship, noted in ICANN's Affirmation of Commitments, is outdated and the governance of the Internet must become more global, said the E.U. Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes. Kroes was presenting the European Commission's new policy on Internet governance, which rejects any United Nations or governmental takeover of Internet governance and calls for a move to globalize ICANN."
Re:Invent your own internet then (Score:2, Interesting)
Nevermind that Europe, while better on privacy rights, is far worse on freedom of speech rights.
Not sure where you get this from, but I see this nonsense reiterated quite a bit here.
I'd be perfectly fine here sitting in the middle of Germany and saying that I'd like to see Israel get bombed flat or that the Jews are inferior people. Sure, people will think I'm an asshole, but there's no law against that. There is however a law that forbids you to claim that there was not a huge number of jews killed in WW2 or that concentration camps don't exist.
The French hate speech laws are of a similar nature, solving highly specific real world problems. One can debate the method of doing this via law, but in general European constitutions regard Free Speech as a paramount right, with verry narrow exceptions.
Here's something more closer to reality:
Nevermind that Europe, while miles better on privacy rights, is about equal (with few exceptions you'd have to hunt for) on freedom of speech rights.
captcha: nimble