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U.S. Delays Giving Up Oversight of Internet Administrator Icann

posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday August 18 2015, @07:48PM   
from the letting-go-is-hard dept.

AnonTechie writes:

The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday delayed for at least a year its plans to give up oversight of a key component of Internet governance.

The department said it would renew its contract with the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers for one year. ICANN administers the Internet's domain-name system, through contracts with the companies that sell website names and addresses. Commerce has overseen ICANN since the organization was created in 1998. Last year, the Obama administration said it planned to transfer ICANN oversight to an unspecified group of international stakeholders by September 2015.

Critics of the plan have expressed concerns that it may open the door to influence by foreign governments that aren't committed to Western principles of free expression, and may want to impose different rules for administering the Internet in different parts of the world.

Original is available at iBloomBerg.

[Also Covered By]: U.S. Transfer of Internet Oversight Is Delayed

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Original Submission

• Committed to freedom of expression... Committed to freedom of expression... (Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday August 18 2015, @08:00PM

  by c0lo (156) on Tuesday August 18 2015, @08:00PM (#224579) Journal

  You mean... only when doesn't conflict with US interests [boingboing.net]?

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  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

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• Re:Committed to freedom of expression... (Score: 2, Disagree) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 18 2015, @08:32PM

  by ikanreed (3164) on Tuesday August 18 2015, @08:32PM (#224588) Journal

  Yes, that's exactly what they mean.

  Tell people to take up Jihad in youtube videos, and they'll murder the fuck out of you. Broadly speaking, I see the people most in favor of that kind of action as being the same people asserting that free speech is absolute in other situations.

  Parent

• Re:Committed to freedom of expression... Re:Committed to freedom of expression... (Score: 3, Interesting) by patella.whack on Tuesday August 18 2015, @08:44PM

  by patella.whack (3848) on Tuesday August 18 2015, @08:44PM (#224593)

  I agree that US influence is a problem.
  I haven't noticed any viable alternatives, though...

  "planned to transfer Icann oversight to an unspecified group of international stakeholders."
  
  "the extension will provide time to work out additional details on how a “multistakeholder” governance approach might work."
  
  "the government plans to extend its contract with Icann for one year...with options to extend it another three years."

  This idea sounds like a clusterFck waiting to happen. Also smells like vacant political appeasement to the international community, unless these 'international stakeholders' have some extraordinary pull.
  
  My bet is these 'details' will never be 'worked' out and the extensions will continue indefinitely.

  Parent

  • Re:Committed to freedom of expression... (Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Tuesday August 18 2015, @09:44PM

    by purple_cobra (1435) on Tuesday August 18 2015, @09:44PM (#224606)

    Absolutely, and while they're all arguing then nothing gets done; that, of course, means that nothing *bad* is done, so it's not an entirely awful state of affairs.
    While I don't trust US-led governance, no immediately sensible alternatives come to mind either, i.e. better the devil you know. The thought of China or some other totalitarian state having their finger on the off button is a bit worrying, though as stated in another post, the US haven't been entirely benign.

    Ignore it until it all goes away.

    Parent