ICANN/Verisign Proposal Would Allow Any Government To Seize Domain Names (freespeech.com) 91
Longtime Slashdot reader GeorgeK and author at FreeSpeech.com writes: ICANN and Verisign have quietly proposed enormous changes to global domain name policy in their proposed renewal of the .NET registry agreement, which is now open for public comments. They've proposed allowing any government in the world to cancel, redirect, or transfer to their control applicable domain names. This is an outrageous and dangerous proposal that must be stopped, as it does not respect due process. While this proposal is currently only for .NET domain names, presumably they would want to also apply it to other extensions like .COM as those contracts come up for renewal. "This proposal represents a complete government takeover of domain names, with no due process protections for registrants," adds Kirikos. "It would usurp the role of registrars, making governments go directly to Verisign (or any other registry that adopts similar language) to achieve anything they desired. It literally overturns more than two decades of global domain name policy."
Furthermore, Kirikos claims ICANN and Verisign "have deliberately timed the comment period to avoid public scrutiny." He writes: "The public comment period opened on April 13, 2023, and is scheduled to end (currently) on May 25, 2023. However, the ICANN76 public meeting was held between March 11 and March 16, 2023, and the ICANN77 public meeting will be held between June 12 and June 15, 2023. Thus, they published the proposal only after the ICANN76 public meeting had ended (where we could have asked ICANN staff and the board questions about the proposal), and seek to end the public comment period before ICANN77 begins. This is likely not by chance, but by design."
Furthermore, Kirikos claims ICANN and Verisign "have deliberately timed the comment period to avoid public scrutiny." He writes: "The public comment period opened on April 13, 2023, and is scheduled to end (currently) on May 25, 2023. However, the ICANN76 public meeting was held between March 11 and March 16, 2023, and the ICANN77 public meeting will be held between June 12 and June 15, 2023. Thus, they published the proposal only after the ICANN76 public meeting had ended (where we could have asked ICANN staff and the board questions about the proposal), and seek to end the public comment period before ICANN77 begins. This is likely not by chance, but by design."
ICANN doing dodgy stuff for the US government? (Score:5, Funny)
They're improving! (Score:3, Insightful)
They're now doing dodgy stuff for any government. And with them a california corporation, none of any transparency/accountability anything that normally applies to western governments applies to them. Complete sellouts, no recourse whatsoever.
Long run, this really isn't tenable. But then, last round someone claimed to be working on a fully decentralised DNS replacement, and nothing has happened in the years since. Looks like the tech guys can't take on government on their own.
Re:They're improving! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Long run, .com isn't really tenable. We need for DNS what IANA has done for IP space. The relationship between ICANN and Verisign may look like that of IANA and ARIN, but it's not - because .com is not actually restricted by region. As such, it is a de facto global interest and can't really work under US jurisdiction.
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And Verisign are definitely not dirty money-grubbing bastards. Uh uh.
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What is 100% certain is the Biden administration is behind this. The insiders there have been trying to hand over the Internet to world government control since the 0bama days.
Just look at ICANNs long history with WEF, and then the EU people specifically Vera Jourova, said the quiet part out loud there just this year - paraphrasing but "The US will have hate speech laws soon enough"
We saw Biden's failure to set up Nina Jankowicz as our own minister of truth earlier as well. They could not get around 1A an
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> Few can recognize what political spam looks like.
I don't see any difficulty in recognizing political spam. Spam, no matter what adjective describes it, is persistent unwanted messaging. Whether I requested it last year and am now tired of it, or whether the campaign bought my email address on the dark web -- if I don't want it, and you don't stop when I ask you to, then it's spam.
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ok way - These a facts, the US Government built the internet and Obama and others have tried to transfer control of key assets like the name registry to international bodies. How does that promote the gneneral welfare of Americans? Right it does not - it gives other nations power of us in return for jack and shit.
Its also True that despite being WRONG about many of the things they tried very hard to censor and shut down over the past few years, the current Admin (a retread of a lot of Obama people) attempt
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Before I ask you whether you're off your meds, can I ask you about miscarriage? Because as many unborn babies die each year from miscarriage as do from abortion.
Surely you agree that we should promote bi
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My major point regarding abortion and giving the unborn the same status as
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the US Government built the internet and Obama and others have tried to transfer control of key assets like the name registry to international bodies. How does that promote the gneneral welfare of Americans?
Because it's not a US network anymore. The rest of the world does not want America as its peacekeeper. The choice is either the US has a separate Internet firewalled off from the world, or we figure out a way to get along. I'm sure you'd like to disband the UN and NATO too. I'm sure Russia would like that too.
the current Admin (a retread of a lot of Obama people) attempted to basically setup a government entity to decide what is disinformation.
If you agree that propaganda is a bad thing for government's to participate in, then anti-propaganda is probably good. As long as the anti-propaganda is structured in a way that it can't become pr
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The rest of the world does not want America as its peacekeeper.
Not even sure its worth debating this delusional bullshit. The world wants the US to be its peace keeper. The difference is cost borne defending Ukraine by the US vs the EU is all you need to see that! Meanwhile the French president is busy saying how he does not want to get drawn into America's conflict which China - code for we are not helping defend Taiwan.
So yeah the rest of the world treats us like shit. That isn't a lie its fact. the EU especially is a blood sucking vulture state. You're damn well
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More lies there is NOT one anit-abortion law that has been proposed let alone enacted since Dobbs that does not have exceptions for the life of the mother. In fact it is the abortion lobby that endangers Women by confusing women and practitioners alike on this topic causing delays when life saving care is needed.
That is, in fact, a lie [theatlantic.com]. Idaho did just that. Some people genuinely believe that the life of the mother should not trump the life of the fetus, ignoring the fact that the latter cannot live without the former, and these people have political power in some parts of the U.S.
So no, this is not the left spreading disinformation here.
This is also straying wildly off-topic, but to bring it back on-topic, with these changes in the law, a country that bans abortion could take the domain names of abortion clinics,
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proposed as in introduced in a legistlative body, its not a lie. In fact your Atlantic article is doing exactly what I suggested, its deliberately making providers think that offering necessary emergency procedures could get them in trouble.
Congratulations you are helping endanger women!
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proposed as in introduced in a legistlative body, its not a lie. In fact your Atlantic article is doing exactly what I suggested, its deliberately making providers think that offering necessary emergency procedures could get them in trouble.
You're now into hair-splitting territory. They made it part of their state's Republican party platform to pass laws that would ban abortion, and rejected calls to add an exception for the life of the mother. The line between proposing that such laws are desirable and actually introducing those laws is very, very thin.
And many of the laws cover only the life of the mother, but not the health of the mother. In the real world, that distinction has caused actual hospitals to delay care in cases of non-viable
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or pay $2 for a stamp to send email.
Interesting you bring that up. The fact that you can send snail mail for 63 cents to almost anywhere in the world is because the US is a member of the Universal Postal Union. And that's even while the USPS is the US's baby.
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This post is a self-own. You are the dumb-dumb that thinks the other side are the dumb-dumbs, because you big smart, and republicans evil/bad/stupid.
Oh, no, not you. You formed your own opinion. You didn't hear someone bitching on NPR or MNSBC about republican propaganda.
And you can't understand why between equity and equality, republicans support one and oppose the other.
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I am not Russian or Chinese shill! You are probably are because what I see is you running influence and distracting for the seriousness of this issue long enough for Russia and China to gain greater influence over ICANN. I am trying preserve US control and importantly US judical oversight here!
Anyone listening Beerismydad's bullshit should think critically about who is arguing for what exactly before they go thinking who is agitator or useful idiot.
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If ICANN doesn't want this, they don't have to renew with Verisign. Let someone else have it. It's not like we would be worse off to be rid of Verisign's influence.
Re:ICANN doing dodgy stuff for the US government? (Score:4, Insightful)
More like ICANN is doing this for Fortune 500 Companies. That is where the $ is.
This will make it easier for Companies to steal domains from individuals who have had a static WEB Pages on their own domain for decades. They could just take it with out paying the person a trivial amount, increasing execs bonuses.
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So Nissan can finally forcibly take nissan.com is what you are saying.
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'all you need is to bribe literally any tin-pot dictator, and you can yank a domain name officially?"
If I'm reading this correctly, governments would only have control of their nation TLDs. Zaire's government, for example, could only seize domain names in .cd.
The kicker in this is it would give the US government control over .com, .edu, .net, etc., since those are technically all US TLDs.
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Because Facebook and Youtube is super interested in letting foreign governments take over their domain names! /s
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Why in the hell would you say this is for the US government? It's almost certainly either because of bribery and extortion by the CHINESE and RUSSIAN governments. When the U.S. government ran the internet entirely there was never any hint of corrupt management like this.
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If the summary is correct, they are willing to do dodgy stuff for any country in the world.
How long before Russia, China, North Korea, etc decides to demand for a random .net domain just cos they didnt like the organisation owning the domain or what is hosted in the domain?
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ICANN's version of a "better system" is "infinite variety of monetizable TLDs".
Makes one wonder (Score:2)
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We'll simply get a two-tiered internet. One "official" one with the clean names and one run by the people who got pissed enough by that bullshit and who have the ability to do so.
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We already have different views of name resolution.
Recently was on a network where 'homeip.net' name I use wouldn't resolve correctly. Turned out their DNS basically looks at all domains handled by afraid and hijacks them in the name of 'anti-phishing'.
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We'll simply get a two-tiered internet. One "official" one with the clean names and one run by the people who got pissed enough by that bullshit and who have the ability to do so.
We already have "dark" webs. Even USNET is still around for those who want to communicate from the "underground", so you're kind of talking about people who got pissed decades ago. That said, we're still here talking about someone taking over the Achilles heel of all of it.
Sounds like those who have the ability to do so, will be trading hosts.txt again.
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We'll simply get a two-tiered internet. One "official" one with the clean names and one run by the people who got pissed enough by that bullshit and who have the ability to do so.
I disagreed with their decision to allow for purchase TLDs (top level domains, like .coke instead of .com). However, that means that if anyone disagrees with how any particular TLD is being run, they can just use another one, or even start their own. Let .com/.net/.org die off - who cares.
There are even alternative root name servers one can use. Routing around this BS is a solved problem for all but those who currently own names under .com/.net that are at risk of getting their name stolen by some governmen
Who is Poohs captured asset? (Score:4, Insightful)
This has poo has Pooh written all over it.
Sure, the suits at Verisign love having all reward and no risk. That's probably just the sales pitch to get useful idiots across the line though.
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Indeed - *any* government can make a take-down request... so long as they pay the right dollars. Destroying your own reason for existence is now a revenue stream.
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This has poo has Pooh written all over it.
Not really. China is so in control of their own internet they don't need ICANN's or Verisign's' permission to do anything. Pooh cares very little what happens outside his wall.
NO ITS MY domain (Score:1)
one govt takes it , other govt take sit back this could be fun
Re:NO ITS MY domain (Score:4, Funny)
We, the clean and open ICANN, hereby find it proven that the United States Government can legally claim the use of the
Final Decision. No appeals are permitted.
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Verisign doesn't handle .ru though. I'm not sure why ICANN would make that contract with the .ru authority, since there aren't web sites from many countries operating under .ru domains.
Re:in line with modern attitudes (Score:5, Informative)
Property rights? In America? That's been dead since the 80s when the Comprehensive Crime Control Act passed and strengthened the existing concepts of civil asset forfeiture to not require any kind of due process whatsoever.
Hell, just last year the FBI seized upwards of 86 million dollars in cash, jewelry, and other goods from people at one bank because they felt that any safety deposit box containing cash or goods valued in excess of 5000$ total must have been involved in crime. No charges, no evidence, just the stipulation that they felt it must be related to unknown crime. A California judge dismissed a class action case against the FBI effectively endorsing their tactics.
And no, no one can get all RABBLERABBLERABBLE-YOUR-TEAM-NO-YOUR-TEAM about it. That act had passed with massive bipartisan support at the time. The 4th amendment bit about seizure has long since been rendered moot. Seizing domains is pretty tame compared to what happens on the regular in the past 40 years.
Obligatory post calling for (Score:3)
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There are ERC20 prototypes but the real ones are coming.
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The whole purpose of centralization is to have unique identities and agree on protocols for information exchange. It's not much better than calling for decentralized control over assigning IPv4 addresses.
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Re: Obligatory post calling for (Score:4, Interesting)
How can you have decentralized DNS?
It's not too difficult. You just have different root servers pointing to their own hierarchy of domain name data.
I used to work for a company that had its own Intranet and internal naming hierarchy. Although what I proposed above isn't exactly the same thing, it could work in the global Internet as well. Point your system at a 'custom' DNS server and you can resolve names as that server defines.
Hence Google (and others) push to get us onto DNS over HTTPS. Your browser and apps won't be able to bypass the 'approved' resolution that they provide. And Google will suddenly become the defacto registrar for all names. They are already stuffing their camel's nose under the tent by insisting that, in order to operate within their walled garden, one must obtain a certificate from them.
ICANN will do what ICANN will do (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget though this is for any Government not just the one you most love to harp on.
Very dangerous (Score:3)
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You are assuming that neither Russia nor China are in possession of the relevant private keys.
I hope you are right.
I would not bet my house that you are.
Fork of DNS roots (Score:2)
This will eventually lead to a fork of DNS roots, as one could setup their own DNS infrastructure and forego the "public" DNS...
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But how long before your packets aren't forwarded through Internet backbones without proper authentication?
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We've been saying that for at least 15, maybe 20 years.
It hasn't happened so far. I wonder what it'll take to make it happen.
Pffft (Score:3)
Worry about governments seizing your assets and freedom without due process first. Things like the Patriot Act made a whole lot of bad things possible.
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Such things going on in the world. (Score:1)
This seems to be another example of a change in the direction against what was originally intended.
Those individuals doing this should be highlighted and recognized for their intent to misdirect. And removed!
not necessary (Score:2)
Any government can force ISPs to use their DNS systems right now, effectively allowing them to take over any domain within their territorial control now. The ISPs don't have a real choice if they want to stay in business.
Balkanization of the internet (Score:2)
This breaks the internet and the only people who benefit are those seeking controls over information flow. Who are the people sonsoring this agenda?
ICANN should be disbanded (Score:4, Interesting)
ICANN has been hopelessly corrupt for decades. The entire cesspool of an organization needs to be flushed down the drain.
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The U.N. should take over the whole thing. It's the only organization setup for this kind of thing - it's not perfect but none are and it's the best thing we've got. It also means that it'll take a lot of global influence to manipulate it; more than it takes to mess with any other org.
Otherwise if it has to be local... the EFF or ACLU seem like good owners...at least for a while.
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Give it to the UN, the organisation that repeatedly puts countries like Eritrea in charge of Human Rights? Why on Earth do you think they would do a good job at this?
An argument could be made for the ITU, but that is now dominated by China and its proxies, where they repeatly try and make the Internet less secure.
So... (Score:3)
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What would Jon Postel say about this? (Score:2)
From his entry in the Internet Hall of Fame [internethalloffame.org]:
For many, Jon's greatest contribution to the Internet was his role in creating the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). This task - which he volunteered to take on and which he at first performed manually - provided the stability the Internet's numbering and protocol management systems needed for it to grow and scale. He was also involved with the Los Nettos network (a regional network for the greater Los Angeles area) and was one of Internet Society's founders, the first individual member; and he served as a Trustee from 1993-98.
He died October 16, 1998 at the age of 55.
[curly-apostrophes and em-dashes replaced with straight-apostrophes and en-dashes to accommodate Slashdot limitations]
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What's the word I'm looking for? (Score:2)
Oh yeah - it's "wildcards". As in "I'm from the government, and I'm here to claim ownership of the domain or domains named 'https://*.*'. That is all.
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Is it SAFE to post a comment on ICANN?
Obligatory "Told ya so"... (Score:2)
There were plenty of us who warned this sort of garbage would happen back in 2016 when some were celebrating the severing of ICANN from US Govt control. As bad as the US Govt can be at times, and as imperfect as the US is, oversight of critical bits of the internet was best left in the control of the US where at least certain rights are enshrined in law and in a Constitution of a country that at least tries to maintain the Rule of Law.
Every single time some activity is placed under wishy washy globalist do-