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In less than two months the U.S. Department of Commerce will hand over control of the Internet to international authorities:
The department will finalize the transition effective Oct. 1, Assistant Secretary Lawrence Strickling wrote on Tuesday, barring what he called "any significant impediment."
The move means the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which is responsible for interpreting numerical addresses on the Web to a readable language, will move from U.S. control to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a multistakeholder body based in Los Angeles that includes countries such as China and Russia.
The move is not without its critics. In a letter to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker penned last week and signed by Republican senators Ted Cruz of Texas, James Lankford of Oklahoma, and Mike Lee of Utah, they stated:
"The proposal will significantly increase the power of foreign governments over the Internet, expand ICANN's historical core mission by creating a gateway to content regulation, and embolden [its] leadership to act without any real accountability."
[...] "We have uncovered that ICANN's Beijing office is actually located within the same building as the Cyberspace Administration of China, which is the central agency within the Chinese government's censorship regime," the trio wrote, noting that some of the American companies involved with the transition process had already "shown a willingness to acquiesce" to Chinese demands that they assist with blocking content in the country.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @08:26AM
Censor them ragheads but don't be censorin the porn! Yeeee-HAAAAAWW. Merica #1 FOREVER!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @03:36PM
I think you've got it the wrong way around. Both Christianity and Islam dominate the world [wikipedia.org].
Expect to see pr0n and bacon++ censored. Well actually I don't know. I didn't study internet governance in detail when I was at the Michigan Institute of Technology. After Clinton declared martial law, the internet was never the same again, that much I remember.
Really, in an odd way of looking at it, our best bet is that Christianity and Islam's little centuries-old feud finally kicks off Ragnarök. That's what some people called the year from hell. Three consecutive winters; the year summer never came, except that part comes after the war to end all wars instead of before. Some things can only be purified in fire.
Just remember to seal the 0.1%'s luxury vaults with cement. Being prepared to do that, to damn those maniacs all to hell for really, finally blowing it up, is what to prepare for now. Don't be tempted to try to negotiate with them for entrance into a vault. Just seal them in, leave them to rot, and work on building a better world. Remember that's what Líf and Lífþrasir [wikipedia.org] do once Ragnarök concludes in the old stories.
There is no "end of the world" as long as humans have the will to go on and drill towards the heavens instead of back into the cave they crawled out of.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday August 18 2016, @08:50AM
https://cdt.org/blog/why-the-iana-transition-matters-and-must-not-be-delayed/ [cdt.org]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @08:59AM
uhm... I only had the patience to read two paragraphs of the link you gave. the "arguments" are basically "various worries about are ludicrous".
so no, you did not link to the other side of the argument, you linked to someone saying "what I want to happen is good, and it's absurd to say otherwise".
which I think is kind of the basic "argument" for censorship in general...
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday August 18 2016, @09:22AM
That's what you get for not reading on. There are also a number of links in the blog post which discuss the "issues" in more detail.
The Washington Examiner article is one-sided in the extreme. If that side is "your" side, and you're uninterested in other points of view, by all means ignore it and live in your echo chamber.
It's no skin off my nose, friend.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @08:07PM
Many words, 0 bits actually said.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday August 18 2016, @11:12PM
You came just as far to say less.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday August 18 2016, @09:08AM
And then they'll start their own internet, with blackj... oh wait, no gambling. Just hookers then.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 5, Interesting) by coolgopher on Thursday August 18 2016, @09:20AM
Well, I'm convinced ICANN have been acting like a bunch of tools a lot of the time, but that's about it.
I'm certainly not sure that the influence the US has (had) over the Internet has been wholly positive, but I'm even less certain that handing it over to an international committee is any *better*. I mean, we see how well the UN "functions".
Damned one way or another I'd say. We just need to keep the current system going long enough that we have the next one to jump to by the time the current one is well and truly on fire...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Unixnut on Thursday August 18 2016, @10:36AM
I don't know, the fact the UN can barely agree to do anything is excellent in my opinion. Sometimes to make sure you have some freedom, you have to tie up powers in such a way that they expend all their energy fighting each other, leaving no time for them to make everybody else's life a misery.
If we can get the UN equivalent internet company to not be able to reach consensus on blocking something (For example), then it will not happen, because if others are unhappy they may go do their own thing anyway.
Who knows what will happen though, so we will see in time.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday August 18 2016, @08:10PM
Instead of the US or some international committee running the internet, I think they should let the Swiss run it. They seem to be the most competent and trustworthy place on the planet for that sort of thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @10:43PM
Yes, they'll take anyone's gold regardless of where it came from and how it was obtained.
Amoral isn't necessarily the same as impartial.
(Score: 2) by deimios on Thursday August 18 2016, @09:54AM
No need. It would be only good if people would be abusing the copyright/DMCA to take down domain names as they wish. Oh wait...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fritsd on Thursday August 18 2016, @11:07AM
"The proposal will significantly increase the power of foreign governments over the Internet, (...)"
yes. I don't know if this is good or bad. However, it is the Internet. As in: the whole world's Internet. Just as long as it's not only the DPRK, UK and Iran in the commission.
"(...) expand ICANN's historical core mission by creating a gateway to content regulation, (...)"
OK, from this I conclude that US senator Ted Cruz and his fellow two senators are against content regulation. That is commendable, and good to know.
They wouldn't want an "UK Internet" where the government maintains a filter, and if you request to the government that you'd please want to access all the porn sites and other stuff the government has blocked (such as obscenity; definition: stuff that is against the current government, according to the current government. e.g. the chaos computer club), the government will heed your request and grant you full access.
And put *YOU* on a special list. So that they'd remember that they have to keep your connection uncensored, you know.
link: https://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/guides/security/protecting-children-online [broadbandchoices.co.uk]
quote (from september 2015):
Just wait until after Brexit; prime minister May wants to drag the UK out of the Human Rights Conference, so that all that EU mandated "freedom of speech" can be scrapped.
Link: Reporters sans frontières "enemies of the Internet" list 2014 [rsf.org]
"(...) and embolden [its] leadership to act without any real accountability."
I seriously thought that the ICANN is already acting without any real accountability or responsibility, by making all those ridiculous top-level domains for money. How could an ITU-governed ICANN possibly do any worse w.r.t. accountability? Serious question. If they do almost *nothing* but hold meetings, it sounds like an improvement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @01:26PM
The issue at hand isn't about a change to ICANN's governance, but about IANA becoming subject to ICANN's governance.
Today, ICANN controls domain names. Come October, ICANN will also control IP addresses.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday August 18 2016, @04:13PM
OK, from this I conclude that US senator Ted Cruz and his fellow two senators are against content regulation. That is commendable, and good to know.
BWHAHAHAHLAHA! Good one.
But seriously. They are all for content regulation... American content regulation. Though they really are not giving up anything here. Countries can still use their current justice systems to attack servers on their soil, and not ones on foreign soil without help. This change makes nothing freer or not.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday August 18 2016, @04:48PM
K, from this I conclude that US senator Ted Cruz and his fellow two senators are against content regulation. That is commendable, and good to know.
Ted Cruz: Net neutrality is 'Obamacare for the Internet'.
(Score: 2) by Techwolf on Thursday August 18 2016, @01:59PM
Just split the DNS into the two letter prefix that the UN assigns to countries. And then each country handle the root DNS server for all domains under that and administer however they want to. Open all domain under that two letters, like .uk, to all person or just restrict it to that country peoples. Or censor the hell out of it, they can only affect the domain they control, like .uk
(Score: 4, Informative) by NCommander on Thursday August 18 2016, @07:35PM
This is how it's done today. Every UN registered country can register a top level domain based on their ISO country code. Our link minifier, sylnt.us is in the US zone. blt.ly is in Libera's. For example, China only allows Chinese businesses to register a .cn name.
The problem comes from two points, management of generic TLDs (.com, .net, etc.) and the root servers themselves. For DNS to more or less work, you need to have all sites on the internet work from a common set of root servers (in DNS terms these are "."). Those root servers have records for each TLD which points to the organization that controls said root. So in the case of .com, the root servers have a pointer to Verisign's .com DNS servers, which then point to second level domains. Any country today could override their users DNS roots by rerouting the IP addresses that point to the root. To give you an idea of how easy this is, here at SN, we have a pseudo top-level domain (li694-22) for all our machines which resolve against a private root.
The issue at hand is who controls the root servers which has the list of pointers. Right now its IANA who operates it under lease/contract to the US government. There have been at times movements to try and create new DNS root zones not controlled by IANA but they never got very much traction. OpenNIC [wikipedia.org] is probably the largest of them, but it rather moot. Unless there becomes a pressing need to replace the roots, I doubt we'll ever see any alternate DNS roots gain a significant amount of marketshare. If you're really paranoid, there are decentralized roots if you don't want to work off a central authority. Namecoin is an implementation of decentralized DNS based on bitcoin, and Tor and I2P have pseudo *.onio and *.i2p roots which work against their protocols and not against the public DNS system.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Thursday August 18 2016, @04:03PM
Why is this a good idea?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @05:47PM
Consider who did it, then ask that question again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @10:06PM
Why is this a good idea?
Obama's plan has been to reduce America's power, and their influence in the world. [youtube.com] He's an anti-colonialist that sees America / UK and other historically colonialist nations to have stolen their wealth from 3rd world nations.
In every single way the people of the USA have less power, economic advantage, and influence he sees as good. And yet, moronic leftists keep voting for fuckwads like this without even researching their ideological stances.
So, that's why the Internet which only prospered because it was built on the soil of free of speech, becoming more in control all the other nations which have censor happy politicians is a good thing. If the US laws won't let them censor the net, so that for example: Hillary Clinton can keep her Thesis which praises the radical communist Saul Alinsky under wraps [hillaryclintonquarterly.com], then let's move the control of the Internet to nations where we can. It's yet another step in the direction of keeping the peasants stupid (in the example, keeping people from knowing that she started her career with the thesis that radical communism would be more effective if implemented from the inside of the government, the goal being to bring division and crisis so a new regime can be installed. So, a move from mob violence ("community" organizing) into using the government against itself and its people -- Meanwhile idiots scratch their head wondering why our government is doing shit that's bad for us.
And that's why this is seen as "a good idea" by the elites in charge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @10:15PM
Saul Alinsky
Here is a summary of his Rules for Radicals, [sli.mg] which outline how to create a communist police state, and this explains precisely why the democrats advocates for the things they do. The mask of feel good excuses for achieving these ends is never to be peeled off, lest you stop voting for your own demise. And that's why people who vote without researching and are more susceptible to propaganda and narcissism typically vote left. Take some evil, sugar coat it, "Vote for this, it's good for you and anyone that says otherwise is a sexist / racist." That's the Democratic platform. s/sexist|racist/satan/ and you've got the Neo Conservative platform, btw.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @05:19PM
The sooner those political goons manage to totally bugger it up (which they have openly declared to be their avowed attention) the sooner we can implement something a lot less centralised, a lot more ad hoc networking friendly, and where bodies such as ICANN are a lot less relevant.
Alas, sometimes people have to really break something before improvement happens.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @05:22PM
attention = intention
This message brought to you by autocorrect and companies that think machines are smarter than people.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @05:19PM
Not saying the US in control is perfect, as it isn't by any stretch, but i dont trust a bunch of socialists in control that dont even pretend to believe in free speech.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Thursday August 18 2016, @07:20PM
Being able to DMCA anything off the internet with an email is better because we pretend to care about freedom of speech. Got it...