Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday August 18 2016, @08:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the control-by-committee dept.

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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday August 18 2016, @08:50AM

    by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Thursday August 18 2016, @08:50AM (#389526) Homepage Journal
    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @08:59AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @08:59AM (#389528)

    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

      by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Thursday August 18 2016, @09:22AM (#389536) Homepage Journal

      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

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @08:07PM (#389721)

    Many words, 0 bits actually said.