Moving Net Control From ICANN to Governments?

a whoabot writes "The BBC has a piece by Bill Thompson suggesting that "control" of the internet should move away from corporate groups(ICANN and the Web Consortium) and to governments. We previously had an article on ICANN and the UN World Summit on the Information Society. One quote: "We allow images of consensual sex in our cinemas, but not images of bestiality or child abuse. Why should the net be any different?" My personal answer: because the internet should not be another TV or cinema, it should be a free, user-as-peer and user-controllable media; a "reversible" media, as Baudrillard would put it; not user-as-consumer."

Re:VERY presumptious...

[toasted_calamari]

I think this pretty much sums it up:
http://www.eff.org/Publications/John_Perry_Barlow/ barlow_0296.declaration [eff.org]

It was written in 1996, but it's still pretty much a valid point.

Re:Well as suggested

[kyknos.org]

yes. but the world wide web, which is the most important part of internet today (and the part which is used by muggles and other non-geeks almost exclusivelly) is European creation (CERN, Switzerland)

Re:What a load of crap.

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

Bill Thompson is a regular at this one - check some of his previous missives to get a good grasp of his general tone. The only explanations I've been able to come up with are that either he is as naive as a concussed duckling and really, truly believes that governments aren't populated with liars, cheats and control freaks or he is being paid to put forward ideas that no rational computer expert would in the hope that the unwashed masses will support things like government control, palladium and so on.

Don't forget...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet is not a thing, it's an agreement.

See What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else. [worldofends.com]

One of the top countries pushing for gubmint control over the Internet is China. You know the country that has it's own firewall to help them government sniff out subversives.

Finally there are a few EU countries (France) that really like the idea as well. They want to protect their innocent youngsters from "American Culture which is so pervasive on the Internet".

I'd am VERY suspicious of such gubmints, the motives behind them dont seem very "egalitarian". They are self serving, and mostly trying to prevent the free exchange of ideas IMHO.

Re:adam smith

[PhoenixFlare]

And, if you'll forgive me, your attitude showcases how many in Europe and/or Asia seem to insist that American citizens always have the same stance and views as the US government.

A clue: We don't. People disagree with the government's policies, sometimes very vehemently. Sometimes things get changed because of it, sometimes they don't. Assuming that 100% of America's citizens totally support our government at all times is complete lunacy.

You don't seem to care about that, though, especially when you see a convinient chance for mudslinging.

UN Organizations != The General Assembly

[Vagary]

While I agree with you that the UN General Assembly suffers from a lack of moral clarity, I think you are confusing the GA with the entire UN System of Organizations.

It is highly unlikely that if the UN were given administrative control of the Internet that the General Assembly would be dealing with day-to-day policy. Instead, the GA would draft a charter for a UN organization, which would then be given somewhat free reign to manage and implement those policies. UN organizations are frequently endowed with very strongly pro-human-rights-and-democracy charters and are not obviously controlled by any particular country.

So while I agree with you that the UN is an imperfect organization, its track record is largely positive (which, of course, isn't newsworthy) and therefore I would be more comfortable giving control of the Internet to them than any other body proposed so far.

Re:government control

[sketerpot]

Mine has even less [sourceforge.net]. Cheers; it and Firebird make the web fun.

Moving net control back to your own server

[rs79]

> "When its controlled by the government, it will be lobbied into a capitalist tool of consumer exploitation. Profit at its best"

Wake up, it's already happened. At the end of one meeting 4 years ago the head trademark lawyer for IBM bragged they'd spend 2 years of their $30M a year Washington lobbying budget to make sure no new top level domains had been created to protect their intellectual property interests. Dave Farber was at that meeting (as was Vint "Darth" Cerf).

Roger Cochetti, then a VP of IBM, helped Ira Magazier pick the "interim" ICANN board in secret - when that was supposed to have been done by the internet community. Cochetti is now an NSI VP and figures prominently behind the scenes of ICANN.

The IFWP [ifwp.org] effort, started in Becky Burr's (US Department of Commerce who have oversight over ICANN) office at the suggestion of Kathy Kleinman and Mikki Barry and had 3 meetings worldwide - Reston Va, Geneva, Singapore to determins consensus points [harvard.edu] to use as guidelines to create bylaws and elect a board for the organization that would replace IANA. While this was going on Cochetti and Magaziner were running around in secret getting the likes of Ether Dysan and Mike Roberts on board. Mike Single handedly tanked [mail-archive.com] the IFWP effort [interesting-people.org] (notice he has Farbers ear) and became the first president of ICANN and his organization was the recipeint [sdnpk.org] of the "intellectual infrastructure fund" [nsf.gov] - the domain tax fund that we all paid into back then, and and .edu. Nice little payoff. Esther was by her own admission clueless about the whole thing and did nothing. It's probably just a concidence she was in IBM commercials at the time.

(" Esther Dyson says that she was approached by Roger Cochetti of IBM and Ira Magaziner in Aspen, Colorado and asked if she would be interested in joining the ICANN Board. The IFWP wrap up was finally completely derailed by ICANN's refusal to participate in the meeting." [democracy.org.nz]

ICANN was created to do one thing: make new tlds at a time when it seemed (at least to the US government) the US government had to step in to solve the war between the IAHC camp (who had just been shut down) and the alt root camp (who seemed to be making progress). Magaziner met with us all and created the "white paper" [doc.gov] that was going to create 7 new tlds immediatly. Trademark lawyers and the EU freaked and when it was revised as the "green paper" [doc.gov] it had punted to "ICANN will create a method to elect a board and a process to create new tlds". Instead they spent 3 years futzing around with the UDRP and other things trademaek laywrs wanted and didn't get round to new tlds till the fall of 2000 and it must have had all of ten minutes thought put into it and was intentinally lame as hell. To this day the new tlds that were picked are still viewed by ICANN as a "feasability study" to deteremine the effect of net stability when adding new tlds. Never mind in that period 100 new cctlds were added almost all of which were commmercial in nature.

Then you have the "Government Advisory Committe" the well named GAC of ICANN. Governments of the world get to meet in secret and "advise" ICANN.

Govrernments and the Tradmark Lobby have already coopted ICANN. It's foolish to worry that the ITU/UN will let this happen if they're in control, it's already happened.

So, don't move control of the internet to ineffective treaty organizations, move it to you

Re:One person's vice is another persons virtue

[Kirill Lokshin]

There is absolutely nothing preventing a company (or anyone running a router, for that matter) from messing with the routing protocols. In fact, on a small network (i.e. one that uses a distance-vector protocol), it's quite possible to disable all traffic by advertising incorrect routes.

However, the backbone routers run BGP, which provides the admins with a snapshot of the entire route to a destination rather than just the next hop. If someone along that route begins interfering with traffic, the route can be changed to avoid them. To prevent A from reaching B, a group would need to control routers on all the possible links from A to B, which is very difficult, especially if there are wireless connections somewhere in the chain.

Re:Give control to Switzerland

[daem0n1x]

Sealand is a hoax. There's no such country. It is a fantasy created by a crazy English to perform scams.
The guy sold passports and issued official papers for money. Those were not forgeries, they were official papers issued by the government of... a non-existing country. He made a lot of money from this.
The guy was arrested 1 or 2 years ago. I didn't know his site was still online.

Re:Give control to Switzerland

[Zeinfeld]

Yes, an at-sea platform that the british government could annex if it so chose--or anyone could sink--run my a man with delusions of grandeur is a MUCH BETTER choice than a nation surrounded by the Alps with a 400+ year history of neutrality and a multi-million man militia.

Actually the UK did annex Sealand. The UN had a general law of the sea treaty under which every country could extend its territorial limit. The UK did this and sealand has been in the UK for over a decade.

The sealand loonies dispute this, but the UK does not recognize their sovereignty claim, nor does any other country (man made structures are not considered sovereign by the same treaty and longstanding precedent).

Sealand is really trading on a myth, it is pretty obvious that if the UK get really upset (drugs, kiddie porn) the games of 'king' Roy and familly will not prevent a bust.

In fact the UK can easily arrest anyone they choose as they travel to or from the platform.