Considering how critical the internet is to culture nowadays, it makes sense that it's an international commission to control it. However, if the US paid for mantaining the current infrastructure for years without getting any money from other countries and foreign companies, they should receive a payment for that.
TastesLikeChicken
Lifer
- Sep 12, 2004
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I can see plusses and minuses to this.
Minus - The US has had a relatively hands-off approach to the Internet thus far. Can you imagine what's going to happen when we put it in the hands of a couple hundred plus countries? Already China, Cuba, and others are clamoring for some sort of control. What about when Muslim countries and others begin lobbying the UN for resticted content so we don't offend their sensibilities?
Plus - The adoption of internet technologies worldwide. An expansion beyond US-centric control.
But I'm not sure the potential plusses outweighs the potential minuses.
Minus - The US has had a relatively hands-off approach to the Internet thus far. Can you imagine what's going to happen when we put it in the hands of a couple hundred plus countries? Already China, Cuba, and others are clamoring for some sort of control. What about when Muslim countries and others begin lobbying the UN for resticted content so we don't offend their sensibilities?
Plus - The adoption of internet technologies worldwide. An expansion beyond US-centric control.
But I'm not sure the potential plusses outweighs the potential minuses.
The UN, unfortunately, is all we have and must be made to work rather than sidelined in favour unilateral policy.
TastesLikeChicken
Lifer
- Sep 12, 2004
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Why?
We don't own any other country's infrastructure, but we do own some of the basics of the internet. What compelling reasoning for non-unilateralism can you proffer (also considering the potential drawbacks) for turning it over to the UN?
Does anyone know the history behind this? My question is WHY does the UN want control? Has the US been doing a poor job? Has the way its been run infringed upon the rights or the abilities of other countries? I just dont understand, aside from the power to say "we control the internet", why the UN would want to remove the US from the position it has been in. I assume that it is simply that some countries dont feel that they are being represented if they request changes, etc. Ugh the UN is such a beaurocratic sludge that I personally would prefer a different body be in charge.. a private company would have been ideal IMO. A company where representatives from different technology companies from different countries coming together to decide things. The same way they decide on standards for the computer fields - while sometimes messy I bet it would be faster and more efficient...
There are two main issues China and Europe have with US control of the internet. The first is that the assignment of IP addresses is completely and totally unfair and illogical. MIT has equivalent address space to the entire nation of China. The second issue is that the name assignments handled through ICANN are horrible, ICANN since chartered was supposed to open up many many more top level domains (.eu for example, at the creation it was expected that there would be over a 1000 top levels in the first year) but has failed to do so. In fact ICANN has reacted to political winds in the US by refusing to create the .xxx top level as a reaction to the xian conservatives. These two reasons are the primary motivators for moving the internet out of US control. Had ICANN reacted and became the international body it was intended to be INSTEAD of the poltically motivated puppet of corporate interests this situation likely wouldn't have presented itself.
Frankly I would rather the Europeans and Americans cooperate to create international administration that puts freedom of speech and commerce as the top priority so that dictators and totalitarian regimes don't gain control but with our current administration I don't count that likely.
Not only US and Europe. All the world should have be represented in the agency taking control of the internet. The free flow of informations can work wonders in developing countries.
The lack of understanding and knowledge about the internet and it's workings in this thread is staggering.
Good to see at least rahvin managed to bring some sense into it.
The US(or rather, the bodies in the US who are responsible) has been doing a pretty sh!tty job of administering the net, unfortunately I can't say I think the UN will do a better job.
The problem is that a bunch of politicians with a probably even more lacking understanding than the people in this thread are involved and probably don't even understand the problems they cause with their decisions, based on politics rather than technical merit.
Good to see at least rahvin managed to bring some sense into it.
The US(or rather, the bodies in the US who are responsible) has been doing a pretty sh!tty job of administering the net, unfortunately I can't say I think the UN will do a better job.
The problem is that a bunch of politicians with a probably even more lacking understanding than the people in this thread are involved and probably don't even understand the problems they cause with their decisions, based on politics rather than technical merit.
No. The UN is highly ineffective because those countries that share common values are allowing the insitution to be eroded. World representation brought us a UN commission on Human rights that had as members a majority of nations reconginzed world wide as the worst abusers of human rights in the world. World representation would only serve to set up methods and manners in which a nation like china could revoke domains and numbers assigned to freedom promoting websites. Allowing world wide representation in the assignment of names and numbers would be catastrophic because at some point majority control of the commission would be in the hands of those that wished to censor speech and expression, that must be prevented at all costs. Consider for a moment if they didn't like your webiste they could revoke your IP address and take control of your domain name, do you want China or NK or Iran or Syria to have any say in that?
Doesn't work like that. Each nation already has the power to block certains IPs from the computer in its territory, but of course has no power over what happens outside its borders. Having a world representation wouldn't change the cohercitive powers, but the promotive ones. For example: many NGOs operating in Africa are (from a long time) asking somebody to enact a set of policies to help the region catch up with the internet revolution. A part of the problem is that any language other than english is now under-represented in the web. We should have different agencies discussing the rational developement of the WWW for the needs of the whole world. The web has infinite possibilities to help the development of the so called third-world countries. If you cut them out now, you are condamning them to be excluded from any partecipation to global cultural sphere. Again: international organizations and agencies don't have any cohercitive power over the constitutional freedoms of any country, so don't worry about China or N.Korea banning you from getting into any website. As for their own population: each government has sovranity inside its borders.
And yes: I do want China, North Korea or Iran to be able to speak, just like any other country, because they cannot change anything outside their borders. But I strongly support equal representation of each country in international organizations. No matter how much you (or I) dislike their policies, they represent their people's interests. And their people interests are equally important to my interests. Besides: if you emarginate a country from the international governance you are sure to turn it into an even more angry and paranoid regime. The more ideas and technology circulate, the more open the system will be.
P.S. I worked in the United Nations Development Program, and NEVER a majority of countries in the Human Rights council was made of human rights abusers. Same for Unicef, Fao, Amnesty. You would be surprised to know that very often even the members of a country's diplomatic mission to the UN aware of internal problems in their own country work to fix them even against what would seem their government's will. They worked more to have their government accept UN will than the opposite. Most of them have the idea they are working for their people and their country, not their government. That's a pretty big difference.
How can they force the US to give up control? Sounds like another typical colonialism attempt by the EU.
It's either easy or impossible, depending on how you define 'give up control'. If they set up rival top level DNS services and ignore the US ones, they have effectively done so - for every network that chooses to use them.
Obviously many US networks will refuse to acknowledge them, but whether that's an issue for them or not depends mostly on who sides with the UN vs the existing ICANN setup.
This has some potential to end up as a horrendous mess - what multinational wants to sit with the hassle of having to pay two agencies for the same domain name, let alone two probably conflicting rules on what you can have. ( I forsee the UN enforcing the .us suffix, and I can see a lot of people telling them to go f$# themselves ).
I can see their point - the internet is inarguably a valuable global resource, and the current setup is undeniably horribly biased toward the USA, but any hostile attempts to usurp control are just going to end up as a mess, no matter what happens.
They are mostly taking it over because the way you've handled the thing about ip's is fvcking stupid. You had enough,t he rest of the world didn't. But nah, why would you want to change it?
They're not taking it over, they are trying to steal it. Others are free to create their own internet. Of course instead of doing that work themselves, they'd rather steal from the US.
Why do you have so much hate for the rest of the world? You are clearly misinformed on this topic and yet are confident in accusing everyone else of stealing something... do you actually know what the internet is? If you did you would know it cannot be 'stolen' and that it would take no significant 'work' by other countries to set up thier own root servers. The only argument against doing so is that it would cut the US off from the rest of the world and visa versa.
Edit:
Again, why the hate? Other countries may 'WANT' but also tend to give freely when asked. Last year the EU gave just over $35 billion in aid to other countries, but the US with it's superior economy contributed a third of that amount, mostly to israel. The president only had to click his fingers and thousands of british troops, hundreds of fighter-bombers, etc arrive to back him up. So other countries asked for something from the US, why not negotiate with them?
Actually, it isn't 'hate' and it isn't directed at 'the rest of the world'. More like a bigoted opinion of Europe. Once you've been around here long enough, you'll start to notice this pattern of his sooner or later. Someone brings up Europe(And it doesn't matter in what context or what the subject is) and you'll eventually find him making some sort of attack against europe or the people living there.
Now, as for who should 'control' the internet. I'm inclined to agree with Dissipate. Hand it over to private enterprises entirely. I don't trust any single governmental entity to not censor the hell out of the internet eventually.
The problem with that is that they'll try to exploit it every way they can.
See for example the disastous wildcard that NSI/Verisign inserted for the TLD's they're supposed to admin.
Luckily that was abandoned fairly quickly after massive protests from pretty much everyone with half a clue, but it shows what some companies will do given the chance.
True, the Verisign incident is an exemple of the negative side of what could happen when a company is incharge of things. Still, I'd rather place it in the hands of companies out to make extra money, than governments that will censor it. Beside, it's easier to force companies(Such as verisign) to listen to the will of the people who have a clue, than it is to get governments to do so.
Problem is, this company would have the rules set by the government, so you end up with the government setting the rules, only that a private company executes upon those rules.
No easy solution really, though I'd say a completely non political body that's driven with the good of the internet rather than any single entity in mind would be the best thing.
How such a thing could be setup is another question though, but it should be far easier to get technicans from various countries to get along than politicans, seeng as techies are generally interested in results and doing The Right Thing(tm) instead of flexing their political muscles.
Where it should have it's seat is irrelevant to me, the US, UK, Sweden...who cares, that's the point of the internet.
As long as it's not in France
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