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http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/state-ags-sue-to-stop-internet-transition-228893
Four Republican state attorneys general are suing to stop the Obama administration from transferring oversight of the internet to an international body, arguing the transition would violate the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit — filed Wednesday in a Texas federal court — threatens to throw up a new roadblock to one of the White House's top tech priorities, just days before the scheduled Oct. 1 transfer of the internet's address system is set to take place.
In their lawsuit, the attorneys general for Arizona, Oklahoma, Nevada and Texas contend that the transition, lacking congressional approval, amounts to an illegal giveaway of U.S. government property. They also express fear that the proposed new steward of the system, a nonprofit known as ICANN, would be so unchecked that it could "effectively enable or prohibit speech on the Internet."
The four states further contend that ICANN could revoke the U.S. government's exclusive use of .gov and .mil, the domains used by states, federal agencies and the U.S. military for their websites. And the four attorneys general argue that ICANN's "current practices often foster a lack of transparency that, in turn, allows illegal activity to occur."
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday September 30 2016, @02:32PM
Heh. Maybe it's the notion of ICANN having that much power that they find distasteful.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Fnord666 on Friday September 30 2016, @02:55PM
Heh. Maybe it's the notion of ICANN having that much power that they find distasteful.
More like they don't like the notion of anyone other than themselves having this power.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @03:39PM
I can't believe you fools are falling for wanker_monkey's bullshit.
His entire shtick is to nit-pick some phrase from the summary and make like it is a big deal when it doesn't mean shit.
Here's the full sentence from the actual complaint: [discourse.net]
37. In this case, NTIA intends to delegate its approval authority over changes to the root zone file to ICANN and Verisign, and give these companies unbridled discretion to make changes to that file, with no substantive constraints on their decisions to grant or deny requests to alter the file that effectively enable or prohibit speech on the Internet.
Their claim is that there will be no oversight of a system that can be used to censor. Everybody here knows how google's control of search can also be used to censor, we hear it all the time in trumped up stories about google hiding criticism of clinton. If google's ability to censor without oversight is bad, then if you are consistent, so too is ICANN's ability to censor. And they don't even have market pressures on them to keep them semi-honest.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday September 30 2016, @04:36PM
I never said it was a big deal. Not every comment is required to be insightful or informative, and this one was not meant to be either.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @06:45PM
> I never said it was a big deal. Not every comment is required to be insightful or informative, and this one was not meant to be either.
Wow. You willingly admit the intent of your post was to be inane and useless. I'm impressed. At least you own the fact that you add absolutely nothing to the conversation. That counts for something. Not much, but something.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday September 30 2016, @08:20PM
I didn't say the intent was to be inane and useless; I said that it was not intended to be insightful or informative. But there's no "mildly facetious" mod.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk