ICANN, the group charged with overseeing the Internet’s addressing system, has submitted a report to the US Department of Commerce in which it argues that the time has come to end US oversight. In October 2006, the Department of Commerce and ICANN signed the Joint Project Agreement, a three-year pact that extended Commerce’s oversight of the body, while leaving open the possibility that the group would become independent as soon as April of this year. In the new report, ICANN argues that it has already met the requirements for independence and should therefore be freed from oversight.
ICANN is a license to print money. Where does the money go? Who will stop ICANN from using their monopoly position to pay themselves millions of dollars a year?
License to print money? Do you even know what ICANN is and what they do? I’m not exactly a fan of ICANN but a license to print money it ain’t.
You realize that paying money to yourself doesn’t actually increase the amount of money you have, right?
ICANN is getting $0.20 a year from every domain registered in .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .name, .jobs, and .mobi.
There is very little stopping them from raising that fee to $5/year.
There are over 80 million domains registered in .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .name, .jobs, and .mobi.
Source?
Look at your bills for domain registrations, the line labeled “ICANN fee” If the line isn’t there your registar isn’t itemizing it, ask them about the ICANN fee.
Edited 2008-01-25 14:01 UTC
drop the non-national TLDs.
that way usa, iran or anyone else can do whatever they want in their virtual corner, just like they can in the real corner.
want a xxx domain? set it up as a sub-domain of he national TLD..
That sounds like a really sensible solution. I like it.
Modded -1? WTF? That is just so sad and pathetic.
Notice that there is no “I dont like this person” option among the mod down reasons?
“drop the non-national TLDs.”
That would include a whole lot of restructuring. .com, .net, .org, etc are all non-national TLDs. What you suggest would include dropping those as well.
exactly.
but if you look at it, the usa government and usa corps seems to treat those as usa domains.
tmobile.com? a usa customers page.
att.com? same.
amazon.com? same.
microsoft.com? not exactly, but close.
also, most of the reasoning for not letting icann go seems to reolve around the creation of the .xxx domain.
if a non-national top level domain was not a option, its nearest equivalent would be a .xxx.us or .xxx.iran and so on.
each nation would be free to decides in their own corner of the world, just like they have been doing for ages on other topics.
its the existence of the non-national TLDs, and usa treating them as their property, thats causing most of the noise. remove them and one remove much of the reason to have icann under usa oversight.
hell, one remove much of the need of icann i suspect…
Well, yes. Or rather, you phase them out over time—after the cut-off you stop accepting new registrations.
Most companies wouldn’t care—they already register all the local variants of their names in the areas which they trade (to stop squatters getting hold of them).
It’s time for the US to stop thinking that it’s the center of the world – it isn’t. The whole internet structure should be governed by a global organisation, not one country.
Dave
Right, because as we’ve seen, a global organization such as the UN is a panacea, effectively manages conflict, and has no corruption… oh, wait …
You might want to do a bit more reading mate. The US has cast the most veto votes in the past 30 years, far more than all the other nations combined! That is not acting in the spirit of the United Nations, far from it. The US votes on keeping its interests alive, especially in the oil laden middle east. This is why it keeps vetoing the votes against Israel and the abominations that they are doing to the Palestinian provinces. The US doesn’t care about peace, it cares about power and subverting every other nation to its will. The US completely renounced the World court decision re: Nicaragua. It has deliberately undermined governments in Haiti, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq just to name a few. It has sponsored a variety of state terrorists, and refused extradition requests to have them appear in other countries for crimes against humanity, and terrorist activities. The US has sponsored monsters like Suharto, and Hussein. The US has encouraged the oppression of freedom and democracy in other countries, when that said freedom/democracy does NOT mean US interests.
I suggest you stop being so blindly patriotic, and actually do some research. The sooner the rest of the world bands together and takes full economic sanctions against the US, the better imho.
I feel sorrow and pity for the US citizens, because many of them know how bad their government is, but are powerless to fix it. Bush Jr. has lied his way through both terms, cheated to get voted in his first term, interfered with and perverted US law, spied on his population, further weakened the medical and welfare systems in the US. He has allied himself with the extreme right religious Christian nuts, who’d rather screw everyone else, than have anyone else have a different religious viewpoint to that of Christianism. Worse, Bush and his regime are widely disliked by almost every nation across the world, and deservedly so. Clinton might have gotten a blowjob from Monica, but he was more of a person than Bush Jr, an airforce deserter, ever was.
Don’t even get me started.
Dave
I’m pretty sure you just did.
But anyway, I’m washing my hands clean of this thread in advance. In other words, bash each other’s countries all you want in here (except mine of course
). I will only remove those that are way over the top. I think it’s wise to let you folks thunder in your basements every now and then.
Olé!
Every nation on this planet acts in its own interests.
The charges are of course all true, but that said, why don’t you tally up the list of despicable things China and Saudi Arabia have done for comparison? The simple fact is that most large nations have a lot of dirt under their fingernails, and in comparison to the things other world powers did in the past, toppling a few Latin-American governments here and there is actually pretty minor.
Beyond that, we’re talking about the internet here, not foreign policy. By all accounts, the people in the US in charge of the internet have done a pretty damn good job with it. Can you imagine what might have happened if China or Russia had invented the internet instead of the US? Do you think they would’ve done the same kind of job of promulgating the technology worldwide? Do you think it would be an open system like it is today, instead of a closed one with built-in mechanisms for censorship and content filtering?
I think one thing non-Americans have a hard-time coming to grips with is the fact that the “US government” is really a highly-heterogenous entity. It includes both cabals like the Haliburton gang that are happy to topple other countries for their own interests, but also a large, and by world standards competent and honest, civil service. The latter does a lot of good work, both within the country and outside of it, even while the former plans ways to enrich its members.
Edited 2008-01-25 17:42 UTC
Ever hear of the UN Oil-for-Food scandal? See http://www.globalpolicy.org/reform/business/2005/1029volcker.htm
How about the UN Sex Scandal? Rape and forced prostitution of women and girls by UN workers. Nice, huh?
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/081zx…
How about the UN Kickback Scandal in Cambodia?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119032899373334471.html?mod=googlen…
The UN is comprised of nothing but self-absorbed bureaucrats who are not immune to (but largely insulated from prosecution over) corruption, contrary to your starry-eyed idealism. I don’t have any problem with having a global organization run ICANN, but the only way that it will truly function in the interest of the citizens that it serves is to remove incentives for corruption. That means taking the money out of the equation. That means turning it into a purely administrative function.
As for your rant about US imperialism, you might consider doing a little reading, yourself. All countries on this earth have had their hand in violence and destruction toward other nations. Nobody has a monopoly on self-interest and, if you think so, you’re seriously delusional.
Don’t get me wrong – I realise other countries have dirty hands as well, but not to the extent that the US does. The US has started more wars in the 20th century than any other nation. The US has cast more veto votes in the past 30 years than any other nation. The US continues to interfere with the middle east, where it is neither not needed, nor wanted. The US continues to ignore international law when it doesn’t meet its concerns. Sure, other countries do this as well, but that doesn’t make it right. If the US government had any basic morality about it, it would abide by the decisions that the international court has found.
Good on Chavez in Venezuela for standing up to the US (although admittedly, he’s no innocent either). The US has made most of South America poor, courtesy of the IMF. Poor countries mean governments that are easily corruptible. Governments that are easily corruptible mean that they’re easily controllable, and will do what you want. Indonesia (under Suharto anyone?). The US basically watched the East Timor massacre develop and happen, providing funds to the corrupt and evil Suharto, who imho was no better than Hussein.
There is sufficient evidence to suggest that the Serbian atrocities occurred AFTER the NATO bombing, and probably would not have occurred, or occurred in the same amounts, if the bombing had been averted.
Israel continues to ignore the UN decisions against it, to withdraw from an illegal invasion of Palestine. It continues to break down occupied Palestinian territories into Cantons, with the expressed aim of weaking the Palestinian hold in what little land it has left on the West bank. It makes travelling for ordinary Palestinians deliberately difficult, killing any possibility of local trade amongst the people. The palestinians in this area are some of the poorest people in the world, but the media (predominantly owned by US interests I might add) fails to tell the real truth of that area.
Just because China does bad things, doesn’t make it right for the US to do so. A good person leads by example, and so should a good country. The problem is that the US, and the majority of the populace have been wrapped up in their own pompous self beliefs of righteousness, and their own lies, and they truly think that they’re the best of the planet. I’m sorry to break your bubble, but you ain’t.
I firmly believe that the founding fathers would be absolutely disgusted in the current US governments behaviour, where the president ignores the will of the Senate (a majority vote I might add). There is sufficient evidence at hand to show that Bush Jr, Cheney, Rice and a host of others should all be impeached, and locked away in a jail for a long, long while. It’ll never happen, because the system is designed to protect those that are in power, and that breach the laws.
As to the US having done a good job of managing the Internet, I’m not doubting that. What I am doubting is the ability of the US to make changes to the infrastructure that are non self involved.
In general, the UN doesn’t work as well as it should due to one thing:
by nature – humans are greedy.
We will never become a true society until we learn to deal with this evil aspect of ourselves. Most humans are despicable creatures. I’m glad I get to live my 4 score and 10 years or whatever and no more, because I’m generally ashamed of being a human. I’m not perfect, but I recognise how bad a species we are, whereas others refuse to.
Dave
To be fair to America, it hasn’t done that badly at keeping the net a free platform.
If you made it an international organisation then it would be another bearpit for nationalistic issues. China for example due to its size and power would HAVE to be included, yet at the same time it is creating its ‘great firewwall of china’. I personally wouldnt want someone so adept at stifeling speach to help run the internet
sadly, icann cant really stop china from creating their great firewall, any more then it can help it.
as long as all chinese pages stay within the chinese top level domain, china can put up government border routers that filter or shut out all non-chinese pages.
and nothing about icann can do anything about that in either way.
Definitely. They did make some mistakes here and there, but overall, they did a pretty good job, and I’m sure the EU (for instance) would have been hopelessly incompetent at managing something similar.
There is no need for it to be an international organisation. All that needs to be done is severe the tie between the US government and ICANN – ICANN can function just as fine without it.
I do agree, though, that some sort of disaster scenario must be in place, where, if needed because ICANN fcuks up majorly, the US government can re-establish the tie. That should not be easy though, but I have to admit it would probably be a wise thing to have something like that in place for our own peace of mind.
Edited 2008-01-25 12:06 UTC
I wouldn’t want an international oversight on it… Because I’m paranoid
And paranoia is what makes the USA great! ;D
The USA hasn’t done that bad with it. Sure, they wouldn’t allow .xxx domains, but oh well.
China has absolutely every right to do what it wants to the Internet within its “borders” (whether it’s morally right is a different matter, but that’s not a point of law or technical abilities). What gives the US the right to tell China what to do?
The US government has long preached one thing to its opponents, and done exactly that thing themselves, much to the dismay of the rest of the world. Worse, the US simply ignores international law, the Geneva conventions, and the the spirit of the United Nations (veto votes anyone?).
The US CANNOT be trusted with anything that has global ramifications imho – it will corrupt things to suit its own greedy needs. If you want to really know the truth about the US government, read anything by Noam Chomsky. Very enlightening stuff.
Dave
When you people mention ‘Veto Votes’ (gasp!), please list off some that you don’t agree with. A lot of people don’t know what you are talking about and probably won’t go research it. Vetoing something doesnt automatically make you evil.
AND further more, it’s the ‘American Government’, not ‘America’ doing what you people whine about. If the American Populace would farking wake up, they’d try and put an end to it, I’m sure… I hope.
Vetoing something doesnt automatically make you evil.
Except if you’re French.
good call, forgot about them
Yes, because we know how good global organizations are at maintaining freedom…
I don’t think the internet is safe in the hands of an organization that has to answer to China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. There is far too great a risk of an international body bowing to pressure from these sorts of conservative societies and doing something stupid as a result.
Can we, like, stop assuming that simply severing the tie between ICANN and the US gov. automatically means it must be governed by an international organisation?
Thank you.