Sad News: US Keeps Internet After All

[bluesman]

Sad News: US Govt. Keeps Internet After All

Here's an update on that big November conference I referred to here earlier. I had been overjoyed at the time that the US (and therefore Verisign & ICANN) were being tossed in the trash in favor of a world body controlling the internet. At least that was the plan.

But I had underestimated the sneaky Bush administration swooping in at the last minute, of course. (On top of that, ICANN recently announced they will give back all .com and .net, etc. registration powers to Verisign ONLY.) Yikes! Welcome back to 1994, everybody!

Here's the horrible news about the conference, from a news excerpt:


Nov. 16, 2005

U.S. MAINTAINS CONTROL OF NET

By Kevin Poulsen

TUNIS, Tunisia -- Negotiators working late into the night Tuesday shook hands on a deal that creates a new U.N.-sponsored global forum to explore problems like spam and cybercrime, while leaving the United States firmly in control of the internet's domain name system.

The last minute accord settled an issue that threatened to derail the U.N.'s World Summit on the Information Society, which began here Wednesday. The multilateral gathering -- conceived to bridge the "digital divide" between rich nations and poor -- has drawn thousands of delegates and observers from around the globe to this port city in the North African desert.

A U.N. working group, followed by governments including China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and the 25-member European Union, had all proposed taking away control of the domain name "root zone file" from the United States and handing it off to a multinational agency. The root file is the master list of allowed top-level domains -- currently numbering nearly 300, including generic domains like .com and .info, and hundreds of two-letter county codes like .uk and .au.

The United States and business groups had opposed the proposals, arguing that multilateral control would compromise the stability of the system, and that the current model has generally worked well.

The domain name system is currently administered by the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned names and Numbers, or ICANN, an organization established by the Clinton administration in 1998. It is loosely supervised by the U.S. Commerce Department.

"We are thrilled with the document," said Ambassador David Gross, head of the U.S. delegation here. "It preserved the unique role of the United States government in ensuring the reliability and stability of the internet. It took no action with regard to existing institutions like ICANN and others."


© 2005 Kevin Poulsen

 

[CrazyTech]

Sad news indeed, the internet continues to run properly without a hitch. Power hasn't been handed over to a group that doesn't even exist yet and which is part of an organization being investigated at the very highest level for accepting bribes. What is the world coming to these days?

 

[kjmz]

Sad news indeed, the internet continues to run properly without a hitch. Power hasn't been handed over to a group that doesn't even exist yet and which is part of an organization being investigated at the very highest level for accepting bribes. What is the world coming to these days?

lol, I thought the exact same thing.

 

[harkster]

:tu: That is good news.

Granted there are problems but nothing compared to what would happen by giving control to the UN. :imho:

 

[MadAboutDomains]

Ur all american probably :P

 

[kjmz]

Ur all american probably :P

Nope, I'm Canadian. I just think that America knows what there doing, that's why everybody is scared of them and comments about them because their jealous.

 

[MadAboutDomains]

No, no jealousy at all! They weren't gunna give it to me anyway.

 

[Virgil]

Ur all american probably :P

It's not even a matter of nationality; The internet was created in the US, the whole infrastructure, concept and soul of it.

Read more about Internet .

Remember that ignorance sometimes leads to unnecessary conflicts.

 

[bluesman]

Sad news indeed, the internet continues to run properly without a hitch. Power hasn't been handed over to a group that doesn't even exist yet and which is part of an organization being investigated at the very highest level for accepting bribes. What is the world coming to these days?

Ha! Hopefully that was meant as satire, friend. The bloody reign of Verisign for over 5 years of price-goughing, domain name hostaging and general registration mismanagement will never be forgotten by those of us who aren't newbies to the web. Therefore their new sweetheart deal with ICANN, wherein this monster is being brought back to life - with NO competition once again - spells total disaster. Our only hope was that the U.S. would be forced to relinquish it's iron hold on the net, allowing a world body committee to finally iron things out - and now that hope has been officially dashed.

But all of the above sounds great to YOU, though? That's what you call "running properly without a hitch"?

Try telling that to folks like the hundreds of victims of conman outfits like Kentech - who have been allowed by ICANN to roam almost hassle-free (except for a handful of arbitration cases) over the internet for half a decade and counting!

And you further carp about that world internet management committee not being finalized - you mean the world committee that will NOT exist as it was planned to be, because it has been decided instead that the U.S. will NOT be giving up its hold on the net? Very funny!

 

[CrazyTech]

Apparently you're not too familiar with the inner workings of the American legal system nor capitalism for that matter.

http://www.dnjournal.com/articles/icann-verisign.htm

 

[Masahiro]

Leave it as it is is my opinion - and I live in the UK.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is the old saying.

 

[bluesman]

It's not even a matter of nationality; The internet was created in the US, the whole infrastructure, concept and soul of it. Read more about Internet.

Glad to see that you realize this issue is not a matter of nationality. Therefore it's totally irrelevant where it was created.

And BTW, since its humble military warning beginnings, the net has grown into quite a Frankenstein in many respects. And the concept regarding the US Govt, running the net, as mouthed by many - "sure, he's a jerk but at least he's OUR jerk" has always proven to be very risky business. The world body running things would have been a much better deal.

(Same goes for things like war - if a world body had decided the current situation, our boys wouldn't still be getting killed for Christmas in Iraq right now.)

 

[Zeeble]

Remember that ignorance sometimes leads to unnecessary conflicts.

Absolutely:

Please read this:

The collective network gained a public face in the 1990s. In August 1991 CERN in Switzerland publicized the new World Wide Web project, two years after Tim Berners-Lee had begun creating HTML, HTTP and the first few web pages at CERN in Switzerland. In 1993 the Mosaic web browser version 1.0 was released, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic/technical Internet. By 1996 the word "Internet" was common public currency, but it referred almost entirely to the World Wide Web.

Please note that Tim Berners-Lee was British, and CERN was Swiss.

Although I am not of course saying that the US played a large part in the expansion of the Internet. But what I am saying is that the USA was the ONLY country involved, which is why it should NOT be the ONLY country involved today.

 

[Lyte]

the world body running things would have been a much better deal. (Same goes for things like war - if a world body had decided the current situation, our boys wouldn't still be getting killed for Christmas in Iraq right now.)

Oh yeah, the U.N. has handled all the other important issues spectacularly! Let’s review… oil for food, genocide in Africa, and sexual assaults by its members, just to name a few. They sure have proven their worth! :tu: *

Lyte

*Now that was satire!

 

[bluesman]

Please note that Tim Berners-Lee was British, and CERN was Swiss... ...it [the US] should NOT be the ONLY country involved today.

The British? The Swiss? What do people in countries like THEM know? Who cares about anyone in the world except the US? Yes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it - let's just let the US government continue to allow ICANN to run rampant and give away all the registrations back to their legal bed-partner Verisign, so Verisgn can jack up all the domain name prices sky high!

Sure. Now I'm waiting for someone to tell me AGAIN how a world body committee would have botched things up any worse than this!

Oh yeah, the U.N. has handled all the other important issues spectacularly! Let’s review… oil for food, genocide in Africa...

Hey, I'm sorry - I misunderstood where some of you are coming from:

I somehow DIDN'T realize that the U.N. is also supposed to be held fully accountable for not being psychic and thereby having total control in preventing every single negative event in the world!

My bad.

 

[IAmAllanShore]

Folks,
This has been debated at length before (And this "news" is a little late in coming here...), and bluesman you are doing more ad hominem attacks than debating any real issues. Neither situation is perfect, but this is where the current arrangement stands. Trashing America or the UN will not help.
Thread closed.
-Allan