Icann

[Annie]

US Control of the Internet:

http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3564411

November 15, 2005
House to Vote on 'Net Governance
By Jim Wagner

The U.S. House of Representatives plans to ease any doubt the United Nations may have regarding Internet governance.

The House Tuesday will look at a resolution to keep the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) under U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) control. The "Sense of the Congress "resolution also wants to keep the authoritative root zone server on U.S. soil.

The resolution, introduced last month by Rep. John Doolittle of California's 4th District, notes "that it is incumbent upon the United States and other responsible governments to send clear signals to the marketplace that the current structure of oversight and management of the Internet's domain name and addressing service works and will continue to deliver tangible benefits to Internet users worldwide in the future."

A vote is expected tonight and would require a two-thirds majority.

Although a successful vote wouldn't make the resolution a U.S. law, it would send a clear message to delegates attending the United Nation's World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia this week: We can manage the Internet just fine, thank you very much.

The U.S. and the U.N. are in the middle of a debate over Internet governance. The current U.S. administration wants to keep control of the Internet through its veto power through the DoC, while many U.N. delegates favor a global Internet governance model beholden to no single government.

The U.N. established the Working Group on Internet Governance to find ways to support its model. The group came up with four possible scenarios ranging from complete U.N. control of Internet management through a Global Internet Council, to maintaining the status quo through the ICANN with beefed-up governmental input.

But according to a report in September, David Gross, the U.S. ambassador and coordinator for international communications and information policy at the Department of State, said U.N. management would be unacceptable.

The U.S. Senate then got into the fray with a "Sense of the Senate" resolution introduced by Sen. Norm Coleman in October. Like the House resolution up for debate today, this one seeks to keep Internet governance firmly in the hands of the U.S.

Coleman, in a statement at the time, said the Internet has flourished under U.S. care and doesn't need to move to an organization that has reform problems to address.

"It is irresponsible to expand the U.N.'s portfolio before it undertakes sweeping, overdue reform," he said in the statement. "If the U.N. was unable to properly administer the Oil-for-Food Program, I am afraid what the Internet would look like under U.N. control."

Coleman's resolution was referred to the Senate committee on foreign relations, where it sits today.

ICANN itself has a fine line to tread. As a subcontractor to the DoC, it wouldn't do to come out against its U.S. bosses even though the organization has been devoting much of its energies in recent times to separating from U.S. involvement.

Until earlier this year, ICANN has been operating under the assumption it would become a self-sustaining entity representing the global community, under a 2003 amendment to the memorandum of understanding with the DoC.

That all changed in July when Michael Gallagher, assistant Commerce secretary, said the U.S. intended to retain its veto power over ICANN.

In a hedge against any possible U.N. proposals, the ICANN board of directors will meet with its Governmental Advisory Committee to discuss how to strengthen its role within the organization.

The talks are expected to occur during ICANN's public meeting in Vancouver, Canada, which starts later this month.

 

[nosarcasm]

an unsuspected ally in the form of human rights organzations seems to back
up the current model under US control. Reporter Ohne Grenzen, a leftwing
pro free press organziation (who not too long ago got the Sacharow price)
is opposed to the change of ICANN supervision. They are worried
dictatorships will gain more influence over the internet this way.

http://www.reporter-ohne-grenzen.de/


already reporter complain that Tunesia is limiting their ability to report
What a mess. Why do they bother meeting there.

US congress did not help matters with their little stunt.

 

[Annie]

an unsuspected ally in the form of human rights organzations seems to back
up the current model under US control. Reporter Ohne Grenzen, a leftwing
pro free press organziation (who not too long ago got the Sacharow price)
is opposed to the change of ICANN supervision. They are worried
dictatorships will gain more influence over the internet this way.

http://www.reporter-ohne-grenzen.de/


already reporter complain that Tunesia is limiting their ability to report
What a mess. Why do they bother meeting there.

US congress did not help matters with their little stunt.

There were reports less than a week ago, that French postings were disappearing right and left from the internet.

 

[Annie]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/?id=110007578

Cease-Fire in Tunisia
The U.N.'s war on Internet freedom isn't over.

BY PETE DU PONT
Monday, November 21, 2005 12:01 a.m.

Paul Volcker's recent report on the United Nations Oil for Food scandal taught us a great deal about how the U.N. works. Ten billion dollars worth of Iraqi oil was illegally smuggled to adjacent nations. Saddam Hussein collected $229 million in bribes from 139 of 248 companies involved in the oil business and $1.5 billion in kickbacks and illegal payments from 2,253 firms out of 3,614 providing humanitarian goods under the U.N. program. The U.N., which supervised and controlled the Oil for Food program, did nothing about any of it.

Mr. Volcker concluded that the "Secretariat, the Security Council and U.N. contractors failed most grievously in their responsibilities to monitor the integrity of the program." Secretary-General Kofi Annan's reaction was that the report was helpful, but he has taken no action at all against the United Nations employees Mr. Volcker found to have performed unethically and improperly.

Indeed, last Tuesday Mr. Annan took action to reinstate U.N. Deputy Director Joseph Stephanides, who was fired six months ago for illegal bidding procedures. It seems that Mr. Annan didn't think what had happened in the Oil for Food program was really that bad after all. Or to put it our own perspective, Dennis Kozlowski stole $600 million from Tyco and got eight to 25 years in prison; Kofi Annan supervised more than $12 billion in international theft and will stay in his job.

All of which explains why allowing the United Nations to be in charge of running the Internet is a very bad idea.

The Internet is one of the greatest mechanisms of progress in the history of the world. More than one billion people use it; anyone with a computer and a connection has access to 167 million megabytes of information that is instantly available. Ideas and information can be shared, explained, tested and improved upon. Because of the Internet, governments, economies, institutions and individuals can and do prosper.

But the availability of such information threatens a great many despotic nations which do not believe individuals should have access to information that may be damaging to their governmental societies. The regimes in China, Cuba, Iran, Syria and Tunisia, for example, believe Internet content must be controlled so that individuals do not have access to any information that has not been approved by their governments. In China the word "democracy" is not allowed on the Internet; it is just too dangerous to the communist government. And so such nations want international controls on Internet usages and content.

Today no organization or government controls the Internet. The mechanics of participation--domain names, suffixes like .com and .org, and technical codes--are supervised by the independent organization Icann, an acronym for Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, based in America and loosely overseen by the U.S. government. Much of the rest of the world, gathered last week in Tunisia for the U.N.-hosted World Summit on the Information Society, wants to take over that responsibility, or as European Union spokesman Martin Selmayr put it, the U.S. must "give up their unilateral control and everything will be fine." Perhaps as fine as it is in China, where, according to the New York Times, "major search engines . . . must stop posting their own commentary articles and instead make available only pieces generated by government-controlled newspapers and news agencies."

Old Europe and the despotic nations want exactly that--international Internet content control. And they have convinced the EU establishment that U.N. control of the Internet would be just and appropriate. The last United Nations World Summit on the Internet--held in 2003--concluded that "governments should intervene . . . to maximize economic and social benefits and serve national priorities." The report of the U.N. Working Group on Internet Governance says it would have "respect for cultural and linguistic diversity, " explaining that meant "multilingual, diverse, and culturally appropriate content" on the Internet.

And what is "culturally appropriate" content? If your nation is a free society--America, Ireland, Australia--a free and unregulated-content Internet is a good thing. For dictatorships and state controlled societies--the former USSR, China or Cuba--it is a catastrophe, for allowing citizens free access to information puts your government at risk. And if you are in between--a socialist government like France or Germany--U.N. control is a good thing because government control is always better than unregulated markets.

The good news is that last Wednesday U.N. and U.S. representatives in Tunis agreed upon, and the World Summit then adopted, a process that at least for the moment avoids U.N. control of the Internet. It created an Internet Governance Forum that allows current Icann operational mechanisms to continue, has no regulatory power, and will begin meeting in 2006 to consider all aspects of Internet governance.

But the war against Internet freedom is far from over; Mr. Annan again demands international discussions of "Internet governance issues" and says that change has become necessary regarding Icann Internet oversight. So first the U.N. and the E.U. will seek Internet content control, and then perhaps the old U.N. idea of applying an international tax on e-mail messages.

When the U.S. attends those IGF meetings, our representative will surely be reminded of the repeated advice Tony Mauro, the Supreme Court correspondent for The American Lawyer, recalls receiving from Europeans at a run-up meeting of the U.N. Internet group in Budapest three years ago. Do not invoke the First Amendment in Internet discussions, he was told, for it is viewed as a sign of U.S. arrogance.

If the U.N. establishment believes free speech is arrogance, we can be confident that U.N. control of the Internet would be calamitous.

 

[Annie]

http://techcentralstation.com/112205B.html

You Want to Keep This Revolution? Be Ready to Fight For It.
By Glenn Harlan Reynolds

I've been writing about Internet free speech for a long time in Internet years. I've written about the new communications media's effect on old media, the challenge it poses to dictators, and its effect on U.S. elections. But the truest thing I've ever written on the subject was this:

"You want to keep this media revolution going? Be ready to fight for it."
That's been brought home by events both abroad, and in the United States.

Abroad, we've seen the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Tunisia, which many observers feared would lead to a dictator-inspired U.N. takeover of the Internet that would gradually limit free speech. As Claudia Rosett observed:

"The U.N. Web site for this event goes heavy on high-tech doo-dads, and very light on the highly relevant big picture. For instance, the site includes two scroll bars. One shows select news coverage of the summit. The other shows funding contributions from various quarters, including the governments of Syria, Libya and Saudi Arabia, all distinguished as perennial members of Freedom House's list of the world most repressive regimes. Except the U.N. site doesn't make mention of the censorship and brutal internal repression of these regimes--only of their participation, and their money. . . . What Mr. Annan evidently does not care to understand, and after his zillion-year career at the U.N. probably never will, is that for purposes of helping the poor, the problem is not a digital divide. It is not the bytes, gigs, blogs and digital wing-dings that define that terrible line between the haves and the have-nots. These are symptoms of the real difference, which we would do better to call the dictatorial divide."​

Rosett was among many warning that the WSIS would be a power grab by the U.N. It was surely intended as the opening move in such a power grab, but it's been beaten back -- for the moment -- by postponing any action until next year. That's a victory of sorts, but only a temporary one. The real tenor can be seen in the Tunisian host government's willingness to trample free speech relating to the conference itself. People who dispatch "a phalanx of secret police" to free-speech gatherings can hardly be trusted where free speech is concerned.

In the United States, meanwhile, things aren't that bad -- secret police have never had much of a foothold here -- but so-called campaign finance "reform" law has had the potential to shut down much Internet political discussion, by treating favorable comments about a candidate as "contributions" subject to regulation.

A recent Federal Election Commission decision on Internet political speech makes that appear a bit less likely. But once again, the victory is only temporary and contingent -- not certain.

But, of course, that's true of pretty much all civil-liberties victories, isn't it? So no matter what happens, this will still be true: You want to keep this media revolution going? Be ready to fight for it.

Glenn Reynolds is author of An Army of Davids.

 

[musicman]

You are a treasure, Kathianne. It amazes me how far off most people's radar screens this story is. Yet it is one of the principal battles of our age.

 

[Johnney]

Coleman, in a statement at the time, said the Internet has flourished under U.S. care and doesn't need to move to an organization that has reform problems to address.
"It is irresponsible to expand the U.N.'s portfolio before it undertakes sweeping, overdue reform," he said in the statement. "If the U.N. was unable to properly administer the Oil-for-Food Program, I am afraid what the Internet would look like under U.N. control."

exactly! if you cant get your own house in order, then why try to get something as big as the net in order on the side?
i mean, imagine it... you get the news they want you to see, no cartoons as they could be making fun of some government some place. no tech sites (we wouldnt want the populace to be getting smarter than the monkeys in charge now would we?), absolutley no porn (wheres my guns!), definatley no political sites (cant have people voicing any opinions now).

they should jsut due and go away. i wouldnt piss on the un if it were on fire


as for culturally appropriate content.... now thats going to be a tough one. whats appropriate here (politics, guns, porn...etc) isnt going to be appropriate in some pinko commie country (rape, fucking sheep, murder...etc).
so let them take charge and the net will go down. they cant jsut grasp the fact that we built it first and best. as ive stated before in other posts, let them build their own net and govern that one. leave ours alone.