US Tech Firms Urge Congress To Allow Internet Domain Changeover (reuters.com) 128
Dustin Volz, reporting for Reuters: Major technology companies including Facebook, Google and Twitter are urging Congress to support a plan for the U.S. government to cede control of the internet's technical management to the global community, they said in a joint letter dated on Tuesday. The U.S. Commerce Department has primary oversight of the internet's management, largely because it was invented in the United States. Some Republican lawmakers are trying to block the handover to global stakeholders, which include businesses, tech experts and public interest advocates, saying it could stifle online freedom by giving voting rights to authoritarian governments. The years-long plan to transfer oversight of the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is scheduled to occur on Oct. 1 unless Congress votes to block the handover. The California-based corporation operates the database for domain names such as .com and .net and their corresponding numeric addresses that allow computers to connect. In the Sept. 13 letter, a copy of which had been reviewed by Reuters before it was sent, the technology companies said it was "imperative" that Congress does not delay the transition.
Why the hurry? (Score:5, Interesting)
It isn't just authoritarian governments -- many other democracies have no First Amendment-like protections.
When, not if, censorship decisions come down the pike, well, congratulations.
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And the hundreds of domains already ceased by the US government are _in no way_ censorship, right? Double standards, double standards....
Re: Why the hurry? (Score:1)
Good point. Turning this over to the globalists is a bad idea. Letting the corporate servant authoritarian US government run it is also a bad idea.
Sometimes there are no good choices. This should be strictly an administrative thing but it's going to turn into a tool of political warfare and censorship no matter what happens.
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The difference, I think, would be that the US government only seizes domain names that are within its own jurisdiction. It can't/won't seize thepiratebay.se, for example, though it could seize thepiratebay.org because .org is within its jurisdiction (but oddly it hasn't.)
However if we hand domain names over to an international body, then who knows what domains they might seize. I would imagine that, for example, Europe (especially Germany) might want to seize stormfront.org, middle eastern countries would l
Re: Why the hurry? (Score:1)
Everybody uses the same IP address: 1.1.1.1
The only problem is that only one person at a time can use the internet.
Re:Why the hurry? (Score:4, Informative)
I think I could argue that the kinds of commercial censorship that the US engages in are less damaging to freedom of speech and political freedom than the censoring of political speech that is usually referred to when we talk about censorship.
And I say that as an unrepentant, unashamed pirate who thinks that copyright is a bunch of hooey.
Re:Why the hurry? (Score:4, Insightful)
How is this in the best interest of the US to cede this control to someone else?
Our govt is supposed to try to make the BEST decisions for US, not the world...the USA.
Can someone explain to me, how ceding control of ICANN could possibly be in the best interest of America?
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seized
#TRIGGERED
-HRC
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Giving control away as planned will not make this better.
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Well as a US citizen though those people are much more accountable to me than some folks over at the UN. They are more easily sued, I can vote against politicians that enact stupid legislation, I have some hope of finding out what is really going on with FRA requests etc. I loose ALL OF THAT if this happens.
As to the rest of the world, I DON"T CARE. its America's Internet we built it. Don't like it, tough shit, go build your own Internet.
And companies aren't willing to uphold it because (Score:1)
... of "values" or because of government bullying.
It's 2016 and information still wants to be free.
The Internet is already too censured and ruled by a few with mostly Facebook and Twitter being in charge of so much content (Google is more tolerating I guess), none of them should censor and remove shit.
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I would had run my own freedom communication platform if only I had a jurisdiction to do so from.
Try to uphold as much of full freedom of speech in the US since you are one of the few where that kinda is a thing. Everywhere else it's accepted or even viewed as good that people aren't allowed to tell their opinion or spread new ideas.
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1. No one is under any obligation to pay you to say whatever you like. Demanding to be paid for your arbitrary content is absurd.
2. You know #killallmen was a joke mocking people like you who took it seriously, right? It mocked war video games and people who take sentence fragments out of context.
Why don't you set up altrighttube.com to fund these videos? There might actually get a market, I mean look at Breitbart.
Bar the Door. (Score:2)
If they take away our porn, it's "Katy, bar the door!". [phrases.org.uk]
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These are domain names. It's like the Yellow Pages of the Internet. How does "censoring" a domain name prevent a particular form of expression?
I put that effective monopolies like Facebook are the bigger threat to free (as in speech) speech since voicing an unpopular opinion or posting a photo that SOMEBODY doesn't like to Facebook gets your account deleted. Enjoy the freedom!
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These are domain names. It's like the Yellow Pages of the Internet. How does "censoring" a domain name prevent a particular form of expression?
How many IP addresses for how many services do you suppose the average internet user has committed to memory? I would hazard that number is 0. When a service is delisted from DNS, it might as well not exist for most people. While technically removing a DNS entry is like being delisted in the yellow pages in that the server still exists and can be accessed by those who know its address, practically a name-less server is more like a radio station that has been taken off the air. Or more precisely, it's as
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this is a land grab for dictators. don't do it. (Score:2)
these days, I sorta regret voting to open The Connected Internet to commercial users.
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It isn't just authoritarian governments -- many other democracies have no First Amendment-like protections.
Yes it's critically important to make sure that domain names stay within control of a government who would never engage in censorship [thehill.com] of an internet domain.
What control do they think ICANN has? (Score:4, Informative)
"Facebook, Google and Twitter" ?? (Score:5, Funny)
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Previously Facebook (negatively.)
Nowadays Google (positively?)
But non of them are good enough. The US government isn't either but it's less likely to be bullied to change at-least =P
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One difference is that, if our fears are realized, the globalist overseers will give them comfort and indemnity from the responsibility to say 'no!' and not delete anything considered offensive, dangerous, or just 'improper' by anyone who can get the ear of the censors.
So, for instance;
- Christians plainly offend Islam, must by being Christian. Those who profess no faith also offend Islam, so take a number and get in line.
- Criticism of oppressive governments offends those governments. They can be expected
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Surrender the power of media and communication of the world to Facebook?
Sounds like a good idea. Not.
The Internet could be run globally if the idea was to keep it open for everyone and not censor anyone. But since it would rather be demands for censoring here and there globally and locally it's complete garbage. Power of it handed over to EFF, TPB, GNU and such possibly ...
I'm not seeing good explanations here.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I read the article and I feel like nobody is being very forthcoming with the real motivations behind wanting to cede control of this to the "global community" or NOT wanting to.
How much does it cost U.S. taxpayers to maintain control of the domain name database? Or does it actually generate considerable positive revenue? (ICANN says it's "non profit" but so was our Major League Football association for a long time, as well as MasterCard.)
Why do companies with a big web presence, such as Facebook, want control to go global? Is there some problem they've experienced in the past where they can't get a domain registration in a timely manner because it's all U.S. based?
I can understand the concerns of the Republicans trying to block this transfer, if there's really no evidence ICANN isn't handling everything well as it stands today. The Internet WAS an American invention, based on our military network. It may indeed be a global thing today -- but I'm not sure it's wise to give away global control of the domain registration process if there's not a valid argument for why it would improve the efficiency of the process? (In other words, doing so just on some philosophical idea that "Global Internet isn't really global if domain database for it is run in the USA" doesn't sound like a good enough reason to change something that's worked well this whole time.)
Re: I'm not seeing good explanations here.... (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's not even a rounding error on the profit and loss statements.
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Are you kidding?!
With the gTLD sales, ICANN is the most profitable department in the entire government!!
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I cannot find anything that says why this is a good idea. If FB, Google, etc, are supporting it there has to be a reason and they are not saying. I can speculate that these companies could possibly claim to be global entities and not US corporations and avoid taxes/regulations or otherwise piss off a US administration with no fear of the domain getting shut down. It is probably short sighted because they may have more control over the US government and more due process than some unelected international body
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It's probably much simpler than that. Right now, if they have a conflict with someone else over a domain name, they have to sue in a US court to seize it. If it's an international body partially run by large IT corporations, I have to imagine the rules might change a bit from first come first served.
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Why is this getting brought up? Who is actually proposing it and pushing for it (besides the handful of tech giants that are known to be evil[TM]).
Why would it be good for US to give up control?
How will it benefit internet users and website owners
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An old axiom tells us to "follow the money". If FB, Google, etc are in favour, look at large corporations whose primary business is NOT internet-dependent, e.g. Exxon, Rio Tinto, Nestle, etc, and ask what they think.
If they answer "No", or "Meh, doesn't really affect us, it'll be business as usual", then it's about FB/Google/etc wanting more control.
If it's "Yes", then it's about ALL of them wanting more control.
I haven't seen any good reasons to cede control. The system isn't perfect, but the alternatives
Agreed. Re NFL, the teams make the money, pay tax (Score:2)
That's true, I haven't seen many good arguments either way.
> (ICANN says it's "non profit" but so was our Major League Football association for a long time
TEAMS in the NFL make money. The NFL *league office* doesn't make money, so it has no income taxes to pay (almost none, anyway).
The league office is not and never was a 501(c)(3) *charity*. It was a 501(c)(6) business league, an organization which does not itself make money, but exists to help other (tax-paying) businesses make money.
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At the TLD level, it would make sense for US sites to be .us, instead of .com/.org/.edu/.gov/.mil/.net. At least, make .us the final suffix.
As far as governance goes, it would make sense for ICANN and IANA to be international bodies, as opposed to ones under the US Dept of Commerce. Same for ARIN as well, since it services Canada and a bit of the Caribbean as well. Have a US national registry manage the internet as far as the US goes, but don't have it controlled by government
Cynically thinking... (Score:3)
I get a bad feeling for the transfer just from the list of supporters: Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Cloudflare and Yahoo. It feels, to me, that they are not doing it for freedom but rather for money. They are going to have services or other means of making money off the transfer where they cannot do it currently.
However, this is just a feeling. I would like to understand it better for why they want it. Time to read since the article is scant on details.
Re:Cynically thinking... (Score:5, Insightful)
I get a bad feeling for the transfer just from the list of supporters: Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Cloudflare and Yahoo. It feels, to me, that they are not doing it for freedom but rather for money. They are going to have services or other means of making money off the transfer where they cannot do it currently.
The problem is the Congressmen trying to block the changeover aren't doing so in the interests of online freedom, but rather in the interests of maintaining control over the internet. Either way it's all about power.
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I get a bad feeling for the transfer just from the list of supporters: Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Cloudflare and Yahoo. It feels, to me, that they are not doing it for freedom but rather for money. They are going to have services or other means of making money off the transfer where they cannot do it currently.
The problem is the Congressmen trying to block the changeover aren't doing so in the interests of online freedom, but rather in the interests of maintaining control over the internet. Either way it's all about power.
Oh, yes! I concur. However, this comes to mind: Better the devil you know. ;) We would switch from one government in power to multiple governments, corporations and trade organizations in power. It is already hard enough to protect people as it stands now. After the switch, it would be much harder.
Is there a rproblem with the current setup? (Score:2)
Is anyone finding ICANN to be lacking?
This is like the argument in Captain America: Civil War. Sure the Avengers don't have oversight by the world governments, but it's not like they weren't doing good things.
It seems like the current players, just want to cement control.
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Say a bad government, dictatorship, junta, company, brand, theocracy, kingdom, faith, cult is getting bad press due their own evil actions every decade. A lot of cash has been pushed to clean up the public image only to see low budget bloggers, online reporters and even the main stream press who takes a lot of ad money still report on factual events.
The freedoms that USA gave the world, freedom of speech, freedom of the press is then pa
The US government (Score:2, Troll)
the 'hand it over' world (Score:1)
This is basically rewarding the mediocrity of the world, and soon mediocrity will be enforced on the internet (only the radicals who are Jihadists and Marxists will get a pass).
Why (Score:5, Insightful)
I see a lot of posts about "why".
Well the reason is that if the US doesn't give up control, countries have been threatening with building their own internet infrastructure to run in parallel.
If these countries (Brazil, Russia, etc) did create a "second internet", then Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc, would all be shut off from their customers in those regions.
Can't do the math?
They get a lower customer base, lower potential profit, lower actual revenue. Unless the spend the R&D on developing their platform to conform to the "second internet".
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Re:Why (Score:5, Informative)
Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc would get into the parallel networks, but it would be through the countries' gateways/filters. This implications of this are not good for the people in nations controlled by thugs.
China is the modern day case study for a for a parallel internetwork-domain system (via the great firewall).
The ".com" and other country specific versions of Google, Facebook and Twitter are all blocked by this firewall. There is self-censored Google.cn and Facebook.cn, but Twitter hasn't decided to get into the parallel network game yet (and get in bed with the censorship)...
The result is not really theoretical, you can look at the current situation and draw your own conclusions
Of course this is just a scaled up version of what is done in corporations already. If you are surfing the internet from work you likely are on a parallel internet that has domains censored today. The real issues are simply the scale of censoring and the laws and forum for arbitration of conflicting interests (e.g., is my-company.biz.com and my-company.biz a conflict? how about awatch.com and awatch.apple.com?)
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Kind of like Internet 2 maybe??
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I kind of feel like this is the way things will go eventually anyway. Each country having its own enclave with firewalls and filters between the networks.
This actually would solve some problems like attacks or illegal goods/services (file sharing?) originating from other countries.
I can see a lot of reasons why ours and other governments would be for this. Which is why I think it will happen.
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I get that.
What I mean is a completely separate system that is incompatible with TCP/IP. A new protocol and address space, completely redesigned with gateway routers that know how to translate between the two networks.
Re:Why (Score:4, Insightful)
Since when was "do what I/we want or I'm going to take my ball and go elsewhere" been a valid reason?
As far as I can tell, they'll do the same thing once control is globalized. At least now, they can say "fine, we'll make our own Internet" and the rest of the sane world can say "cool, see you later, good luck with your Internet without any of the shit your people actually want because we don't care to jump through your retarded hoops to appease your insignificant ass" (and yes, it really is a matter of insignificance because the shit most of these countries are yammering about and want control for is to further enforce their own restrictions on others, whereas we enforce openness (for the most part anyway, far more open than many of these other countries would have it be)). Besides, regardless of how it works out, we already know most big Internet businesses will do what they need to to ensure their service is still available, but I'd rather that choice be at the corporations level, and not made a requirement at the behest of tantrum throwing nations/governments.
Why yes, yes we can, and it's already been done. Look at what Google did with China. We didn't have to give up control of the openness of the Internet to the rest of the world. Let the nations that hate all that freedom build their own fucking Great Firewall and control their people that way. As I said above, if the Internet companies give enough of a fuck, they'll find a way to make stuff work, and that's as it should be, IMO.
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Well the reason is that if the US doesn't give up control, countries have been threatening with building their own internet infrastructure to run in parallel.
Isn't it great that the internet was designed to handle that case. It's a feature, not a bug.
What are those countries complaints? What's they're motivation for running their own DNS service? Are they legitimate and technical? Is ICANN not living up to their stated mission goals?
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This is simply laughable.
The idea of a parallel internet run by BRICs? Who is going to buy into and provide services to it? Who is going to trust a group of the most authoritarian and/or corrupt and/or inefficient governments to manage such a network?
And the money and mindshare has a center of gravity heavily biased towards EU/US/Japan/ANZ economies. There's money to be made in BRICs, but so much less relative to the effort of running a large-scale network. It's like Windows Phone -- by all accounts, a
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Well the reason is that if the US doesn't give up control, countries have been threatening with building their own internet infrastructure to run in parallel.
If these countries (Brazil, Russia, etc) did create a "second internet", then Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc, would all be shut off from their customers in those regions.
Great example!
So, as a result, the Internet will need to comply with the whims or regulations of Brazil and Russia. You've surely seen that they really have a poor view of encryption as well.
Granted, the USA isn't rocking freedom of encryption right now, but I like our chances of changing the US government over changing the mind of the world.
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I see a lot of posts about "why".
Well the reason is that if the US doesn't give up control, countries have been threatening with building their own internet infrastructure to run in parallel.
If these countries (Brazil, Russia, etc) did create a "second internet", then Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc, would all be shut off from their customers in those regions.
I get all of that, but why does that make it a good idea to then cede control of ICANN to an international body and give countries such as China an official role in internet governance globally? Right now these authoritarian regimes are limited to just fucking up their own national networks, why give them the opportunity to fuck things up globally?
Granted things are never going to go back to "the good old days" of the mid 90's in terms of laissez faire internet self-governance, but I've yet to see a convin
Well there you go (Score:2)
" the technology companies said it was "imperative" that Congress does not delay the transition"
I can't think of a better reason to delay the transition, than giant multinational tech corps are insisting "it's the best possible thing".
Let's remember that as venal, stupid, and parochial as the US Congress is, they at least have a *purported* interest in the greatest good for the public. Twitter? Facebook? Google? None of them even have that, aside from the crocodile-tears of social responsibility their m
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That's fine. If we continue to act like we own the Internet then other countries will just make their own, incompatible versions. We will then be allowed to interact (trade packets) via trade agreements and treaties which will be facilitated by controlled interconnects.
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Yeah I get that. But what if, for example, Russia decides to say: All Internet traffic will flow through government owned pipes and no more non-encrypted traffic will flow over our border routers from foreign sources?
Sure, disruptive even devastating to the status quo, but think about the benefits from a government perspective.
Now they can absolutely ensure that no packets coming in to the country are malicious because they can inspect everything. They can put the kibosh on illegal file sharing or whatever
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They're a sovereign country. They can do things like that. They can throw people in jail for not liking Putin. Hell, they can *kill* millions of their population, and still have dilettante western actors remonstrate angrily that there's nothing wrong with Socialism.
You seem to have forgotten that the internet we have is what it is because it's CURRENTLY being run by an enlightened Western society. Has the US/NSA/etc pulled some dirty sneaky shit while running it? Yep. Do you think they (or anyone else
Just say no to ICANN (Score:1)
I don't know ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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We need to fix the domain name system such that it's a technical issue rather than a legal issue. Decentralize it.
Like trademarks, several items in the Internet require uniqueness. Domain names are one, IP addresses another, protocol numbers are a third, autonomous system numbers for Border Gateway Protocol are a fourth, and I could go on.
SOMEthing has to make a decision, to avoid collisions, and in some cases (such as protocol numbers) the namespace is small and should not be assigned lightly.
Doing this a
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I've wondered if a block chain method could do the job...
Panama Canal, anyone? (Score:1)
The US didn't get any compensation for that act but, all-in-all, the canal still seem to be fulfilling its purpose - for the US and the rest of the world.
Oh, lord, this nonsense again (Score:3)
This is meaningless outside of symbolism.
Anybody can set up an alternate root server, and the only thing that makes any particular root server's assignments valuable is if ISPs in general use it. At worst, if ICANN (or any successor) abuses control over the root servers, there will be a few weeks until everybody switches to a fork under new management (probably under a consortium of businesses led by Google anyway). And as the so-called US government oversight of the current servers is entirely without any practical effects at all, so would be "surrendering" it.
The fact that US "control" keeps generating news stories is the obvious reason to give it up; it causes antagonism and controversy without adding any value at all.
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Your location details have been recorded. Be prepared to assimilate. You shall conform.
----Message End----