September 30, 2005 1:13 AM PDT
U.N. agency says it's ready to govern the Net
International Telecommunications Union would gladly take over for the United States' ICANN. Not so fast, says the U.S. State Department.
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Pentagon or not, internet is the result of an international effort and the US just put things together by financing the final stages of its development. Don't be brainwashed but rather google for the reliable sources of the history of the internet. Physicist came with the idea, not pentagon.
The rest of the world will finally create their own separate network if US doesn't listen. I mean, why should we listen to one country telling us how to run our shows? 'Doing the good job' - says who? Compared to what? Until when?
These "news" try to play it down by saying only the developing countries are concerned which is just propaganda! They contradict themselves by mentioning the EU more times than 'developing countries'.
Even if the Americans did invent the internet, what about the more important inventions by other countries? Do those countries want to control them? There is no sense or logic at all in this!
You may not understand but this is what rights are about - whether or not Americans like it. What I'm quite sure about is that the American scientists who are in the internet's forefront and probably more citizens/internet users than not know that this is just a simple bureaucratic greed.
That said, do you really want Iran, Cuba and Communist China to be in charge of what is free and open exchange of information? Do you want countries that cannot keep the lights on more than 8 hours a day in charge of keeping the internet up and running?
No, you want the only country on the planet that time and time again proves it can get the job done 24/76/365 for over 229 years in charge of the internet.
The U.N. ... ah, the U.N. I think we have an ambassador who can project what the average American thinks into the U.N.: The right combination of lip-service and disdain. After all these years it is obvious that the U.N. is not able to pour water out of a boot with instructions written under the heel, nor are they able to get more than 2¢ of every donated dollar to the poor of the world.
The U.N. should just do what it does best: debate, ***** about the United States, and hold their hand out for money from the developed world to give 98¢ on the dollar to dictators. And leave the internet to the professionals.
Thanks for stopping by ... have a nice day!!
Since theyve had so much success in eraticating worldwide poverty, starvation and genocide with their supreme buerocracy, lets give them the internet! *extreme sarcasm*
"What Gives the US The Right?" you uneducated hethans may ask. Maybe the fact that the US STARTED IT. Ever Heard of the ARPANET?
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET" target="_newWindow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET</a>
Other countries can join in, but dont get pretentious. We started it, we created it, its OURS.
The UN has yet to create international laws concerning online material distribution, copywright laws and censorship. They've done a crappy job thus far with online affairs and yet you want them to have control over the internet??? ITS NOT EVEN THEIRS!
Just because other countries are jealous, DOESNT mean they have the right or power to take things that arent theirs. After All, nobody is stopping them from creating their own network.
PUBLIC STUPIDITY BE GONE!!!
"Do you want countries that cannot keep the lights on more than 8 hours a day in charge of keeping the internet up and running?"
"No, you want the only country on the planet that..."
Of course, typical American mindset... you'll actually be amazed if you ever see what other countries outside US are capable of... otherwise the rest is just ignorance of which no argument can shift...
Andrew:
"Don't forget that the US created the UN so they could meddle in world affairs with world backing. They used to love the UN then. But the UN no longer sees things the same way as the US government so the US calls the UN irrelevant."
Many countries have evolved and they now refuse to make the policies of one country's state department their laws.
_
Once again... no matter who created the internet, as long as it involves every nation then its control has to be internationalized. It's not something personal against any country. Do you really find it to be a problem that other countries demand to be a part of what affects their economies and their everyday lives? Or do you find it normal that one country should give itself the absolute rights of being in charge of such a responsibility? Of course, that is only possible if that country does not view itself as one of the countries, which is evidently the case now. However, should the second network be created it will just run fine like every other Scientific Organization (Standards, Governance, etc) but all I know is that companies like Google, CNET and Microsoft will just follow the other network anyway.
In the late '90s when US companies where barred from selling their encryption software outside the US many companies made billions by just selling exactly the same software technology to the rest of the world. When the US government finally realised that it was a bad move then US companies like Versign had to settle for the remainder of the market share or try to use their power to buy the companies that had a first-entrant competitive advantage; and should the global network split many problems like these will emerge and it might even be bad for many US companies. But as far as us the consumers outside US are concerned, we've got nothing to lose because we'll just continue getting whatever we were getting before. Americans will however continue to be isolated and continue to believe that everything outside US is second grade, which is cool but kinda illiterate.
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It gave the U.S. to April 2006 to correct its actions. This is unprecedented since usually the World Bank is the U.S.' allied agency of choice.
It seems a Caribbean country sued the U.S. for violating some agreement and blocking its servicing of the offshore sports book industry that is $10-16 billion USD/year income.
What deal was set that could be enforced by the World Court and/or World Bank that allows any U.S. markets or assets to go offshore to the Caribbean? I thought our official policy was to bring business back to the U.S.
You see I never read one so what are they talking about? I think this is a ploy. The U.N. says lets take the whole thing over and the U.S. says ok you can have pornography and offshore gambling. Everyone acts surprised at the compromise and we are taken for a ride.
It is illegal and anti-constitutional in Germany and Japan because we, the U.S., put it into their treaties after we beat them, to export jobs and business in effect taking dollars out of their budgets.
U.S. Citizens may not all like gambling but it is $10-16 billion USD being forced offshore. Even if we don't like pornography, we lose all control whatsoever if we give it to ICANN, the U.N. and no one knows what they think or cares.
I smell fish and there is smoke and mirrors in the air. When the U.S. needs money to pay its debt for disasters why the heck are we even allowing this travesty to continue.
The smoking gun is the World Bank sanction last month. The U.S. agreed to something like giving up U.S. control of some industry and assets and the rest of the protest is just smoke and mirrors.
As for the rest of your comment, it's completely wrong.
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/3529386" target="_newWindow">http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/3529386</a>
"The World Trade Organization (WTO) has given the United States until April to clarify its laws permitting Internet betting on horse racing but banning all other types of online gambling."
"In its April ruling supporting the U.S. ban on gambling, the WTO found "the possibility that the [Interstate Horseracing Act] exempts only domestic suppliers of some remote betting services for horse racing from the prohibitions" on remote gambling in pre-existing federal laws."
The only two things that are at issue here are domain names and IP addresses. ICANN, under US contract, pretends to own both. In fact, there are a dozen DNS (name) root server operators who predate ICANN and who haven't had reason to defy ICANN, but they, and not ICANN, own their own servers. Anybody could set up a DNS server, or even a root -- what matters is what server the end user points to, and what root it resolves to. It's a free market. If either the ITU or ICANN screwed up, ISPs or even end users on their own (yes, you can change your own PC's settings) could select a different DNS. It could be messy, if there were conflicting assignements of the same specific name, but it would NOT impede Internet content.
Numbering is a bit messier, but again the regional registries predate ICANN and have gotten along fine so far. If ICANN or ITU screwed up, the registries could still make their own agreements. Or for that matter Tier 1 backbone operators could set their own rules, and only accept BGP messages that conformed to their own desires. Again, this could theoretically cause some real headaches, but it doesn't involve content, just the assignment of 32-bit numbers. (And IPv6 128-bit numbers, not that anybody gives a tinkers' dam about them.)
The ITU predates the UN by most of a century. It hasn't always done a great job, but it seems more professional and indeed more open than ICANN, which AFAIK was created by Melvin Dummar in his own version of Jon Postel's will. (Only Melvin's name in this case is Sims.)
What is ITU looking to do??? Virtually nothing...
So bug off.
users really care who administers handing out .com, approving
whether or not .biz or .xxx gets added, etc? Not really.
But the other side of the coin is that as a nation, ownership of
the net naming agency is control of certain aspects of the net,
including the master DNS servers and the topographic mapping
of TCP/IP numbers. It means the NSA and it's co-hort agencies
have a hand-up in being able to engage in electronic poking and
in electronic warfare (imagine for a moment that you can
temporarily ruin the DNS info for country X's military acquisition
websites, thus keeping it's vendors from being able to log-in,
and using the redirect to harvest passwords/accounts/etc). The
value of this control, from a military perspective, is huge and
only apt to become ever more important in a world where
progressively more and more of the communications runs across
the 'net'.
Just my suspicions.
Cheers
=-= The CyberPoet