The Internet & US Government to Split

[longknife]

How many of us users know that the body that “controls” the internet, ICANN, is subject to oversight by the US government? (It doesn't say which government agency does it) Seems ICANN is a private corporation – something else I've forgotten.

This article, Internet set to cut cord with US government this year @ http://phys.org/news/2016-01-internet-cord-year.html links to this article, ICANN chief urges wide Internet control @ http://phys.org/news/2014-11-icann-chief-urges-wide-internet.html

Now, perhaps one of our -unbiased – nerds here can explain this to us simple users.

 

[SixFoot]

Bump

 

[TheCrusader]

ICANN in part operates domain name servers, which are giant processors that take your "google.com" and translates that into the actual IP address for google's web servers where you download their site's content.

They and others who do similar services on the most root level (I think there are 12 such major domain servers), have generally been over sighted by the US, more or less informally, such that no one entity controls this crucial aspect of the internet.

In China for instance, their domain servers which are centrally controlled, don't hold records for certain websites and so you cannot reach certain websites such as an example, Google, because when you type in "google.com" there's no matching address for it.

ICANN is apparently suggesting this informal relationship will come to an end, so long as they can continue to provide a guarantee that the US-European dominated Internet will include ALL the Domains there are to include.

For instance, every Chinese website that is legal and has access to the Internet at large, is recorded and "named" in these servers.

It seems all parties agree that it doesn't really matter if there's oversight or not from the US, since it's all informal anyway, as long as the job gets done.

 

[waltky]

A good example of how access could be under non-American control - $2/hr. internet...

Google helps offer vastly faster Internet in Cuba
Mar 21,`16 -- Google is opening a cutting-edge online technology center at the studio of one of Cuba's most famous artists, offering free Internet at speeds nearly 70 times faster than those now available to the Cuban public. President Obama says Google's efforts in Cuba are part of a wider plan to improve access to the Internet across the island.

The U.S. technology giant has built a studio equipped with dozens of laptops, cellphones and virtual-reality goggles at the complex run by Alexis Leiva Machado, a sculptor known as Kcho. President Barack Obama said Sunday that Google was also launching a broader effort to improve Cubans' Internet access across the island. Neither he nor the company gave details. In an exclusive tour of the site with The Associated Press on Monday, Google's head of Cuba operations, Brett Perlmutter, said the company was optimistic that the Google+Kcho.Mor studio would be part of a broader cooperative effort to bring Internet access to the Cuban people. "We want to show the world what happens when you combine Cuban creative energy with technology that's first in class," he said.

The studio will be open five days a week, from 7 a.m. to midnight, for about 40 people at a time, Kcho said. The project has limited reach but enormous symbolic importance in a country that has long maintained strict control of Internet access, which some Cuban officials sees as a potential national security threat. Officials have described said the Internet as a potential tool for the United States to exert influence over the island's culture and politics. The connection at the Kcho studio is provided by Cuba's state-run telecommunications company over a new fiber-optic connection and President Obama's comments indicate that the new Google-Cuba relationship was negotiated at the highest levels of the U.S. and Cuban governments.

Perlmutter declined to comment on any broader plans by the company, but said that the Kcho center would feature upload and download speed of 70 megabytes per second, blazingly fast in comparison with the public WiFi available to most Cubans for fees of $2 an hour, nearly a tenth of the average monthly salary, for an hour of access at roughly 1 megabyte per second. Kcho said he was paying for the new connection himself but declined to say how much he was being charged. Google has been trying for more than a year to improve Cuba's access to the Web with large-scale projects like those it has carried out in other developing countries. Kcho has long maintained close relationship with the Castro government and became the first independent source of free Internet in Cuba last year when he began offering free WiFi at his studio.

Soon after, the Cuban government announced that it was opening $2-an-hour WiFi spots across the country in a move that has dramatically increased Cubans' access to the Internet, allowing many to video-chat with families abroad and see relatives for the first time. Cuba still has one of the world's lowest rates of Internet penetration.

News from The Associated Press

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dat's right - there goes intenet freedom...

Administration Preparing to ‘Give the Internet Away’ to Foreign Despots
June 10, 2016 – A federal agency on Thursday moved the U.S. closer to relinquishing oversight of the Internet’s domain name system, prompting some Republican critics to warn that doing so could allow authoritarian governments to “try to undermine the new system of Internet governance and thereby threaten free speech around the world.”

Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, James Lankford of Oklahoma and Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin also accused the administration of violating federal law by spending money on preparations towards the transition plan despite congressional funding prohibitions. The Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) said Thursday that a proposal to shift control of the domain name system (DNS) away from the U.S. government meets criteria it laid down in March 2014. Since the late 1990s, a not-for-profit body called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has been responsible for overseeing Web domains and assigning protocol addresses – the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions.

NTIA has stewardship of ICANN, but in 2014 the administration announced that when NTIA’s contract expires in September it plans to relinquish that role. Supporters say the system has worked, and that despite formal NTIA oversight it has been largely free of U.S. government interference. But governments of countries such as China and Russia have long objected to what they view as unacceptable U.S. control, and would like to wield more control themselves, conceivably through the U.N. A key criterion set by the administration for the change is that NTIA’s role may not be replaced by one that is led by governments or intergovernmental organizations. Instead it must enhance the so-called “multi-stakeholder” model, involving all private and public sector users, including businesses and academia.

NTIA administrator Lawrence Strickling said in a statement Thursday that a proposal developed by “the Internet’s multi-stakeholder community” meets the criteria. “The plan developed by the community will strengthen the multi-stakeholder approach that has helped the Internet to grow and thrive, while maintaining the stability, security, and openness that users across the globe depend on today,” he said. “Most important, the plan does not replace NTIA’s role with a government-led or intergovernmental organization solution,” the statement said.

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[HenryBHough]

If it's for sale China will buy it.

You'll like it.

Or be blocked from it.

But, hey, The Clinton Foundation really needs the money.........