It's nice of the DoC to "relinquish" control, but I really don't see it changing much other than quieting down some hype from countries that were saying they were pissed at the US for "controlling" the Internet. And I couldn't really see those countries doing anything about it unless the US did something actually bad, which they wouldn't do IMHO.
I look forward to the ITU equitably allocating domain names and IP
addresses.
"NTIA will not accept a proposal that replaces the NTIA role with a government or an inter-governmental organization solution."
Let's hope you're right, but I note that the ITU isn't an inter-governmental organization, it's (depending on which part of their web site you believe) a specialized agency of the United Nations, or an organization based on public-private partnership since its inception, with a membership of 193 countries and over 700 private-sector entities and academic institutions. Sounds totally multistakeholder to me.
Excellent point... given that ITU's (full) Members are governments, I suspect
it would be deemed an inter-governmental organization, but in the end it's the
NTIA's views on this question that will actually matter.
It's nice of the DoC to "relinquish" control, but I really don't see it changing much other than quieting down some hype from countries that were saying they were pissed at the US for "controlling" the Internet. And I couldn't really see those countries doing anything about it unless the US did something actually bad, which they wouldn't do IMHO.
It's nice of the DoC to "relinquish" control, but I really don't see it
changing much other than quieting down some hype from countries that were
saying they were pissed at the US for "controlling" the Internet. And I
couldn't really see those countries doing anything about it unless the US
did something actually bad, which they wouldn't do IMHO.
Was I being a pollyanna?
Yep, way to optimistic. The world always wants the success of capitalism
as long as they don't have to create the climate for it, they just want it
handed to them. Once they have it they turn it back toward socialism and
proceed to F%^$ it up. Gee, sound like the direction our system's been
trying to go in for the last 6 years.
It's nice of the DoC to "relinquish" control, but I really don't see it
changing much other than quieting down some hype from countries that were
saying they were pissed at the US for "controlling" the Internet. And I
couldn't really see those countries doing anything about it unless the US
did something actually bad, which they wouldn't do IMHO.
Was I being a pollyanna?
Yep, way to optimistic. The world always wants the success of capitalism
as long as they don't have to create the climate for it, they just want it
handed to them. Once they have it they turn it back toward socialism and
proceed to F%^$ it up. Gee, sound like the direction our system's been
trying to go in for the last 6 years.
Not for nothing, but what does capitalism have to do with this? The Internet was a creation of a combination of Government investment (not just US mind you, the ARPANET was not the only early network that ended up merging into the early Internet, there were European networks as well). Today's Internet is a cooperative endeavor that is not "owned" by anyone (the pieces, of course, are); and the governance is mostly a cooperative endeavor (yes ICANN is under contract to the US Government, but primarily operates on its own). Capitalism, if anything, is a negative factor in the mix - as evidenced by the practices of some of the backbone owners and particularly the large cable and telephone companies who own a lot of the network edge (at least in the US, where access costs are higher, and bandwidths are lower, than some far more socialist countries).
Now one can argue about under- and over- regulation; and who is to do the regulating (treating US carriers under common carriage regimes would, IMHO, would have positive results. Handing ICANN over to the ITU would create a bureacratic nightmare, for example). But that's a separate issue entirely - and coincidentally, the issue on the table.
As to being a pollyanna: I agree, way to optimistic. But not for reasons having to do with communism vs. socialism - but for reasons of a proven system that works vs. handing control over to bureaucrats who might F&^k it up. Personally, I think the caveats that NTIA has attached to "relinquishing control" sound like somebody has got it right - handing ICANN over to, say ISOC might work very well (nobody complains about ISOC control of the IETF). The question is, whether political pressures will lead to a horribly bad decision.
>> Let's hope you're right, but I note that the ITU isn't an
>> inter-governmental organization,
>It was able to obtain a delegation for ITU.INT, so it's
>inter-governmental enough in DNS terms.
Yes, it was delegated a month before TPC.INT was. Could you clarify
the point you're making?
The ITU is an agency of the United Nations. Which is an organization
created by treaty, of which various nations' governments are members.
How is the ITU _not_ an Inter-governmental organization?
If it is not, then what kind of organizations does the NTIA memo say will
be excluded?
The ITU is an agency of the United Nations. Which is an organization
created by treaty, of which various nations' governments are members.
Actually, the ITU is more than twice as old as the UN, and merged with the UN in 1947. As noted in a previous message, the ITU has both government and non-government members, more of the later than the former, which arguably makes it a multi-stakeholder entity. I entirely believe that NTIA doesn't want the ITU involved with ICANN, but the ITU has made it abundantly clear over the years that it wants a seat at the table, preferably its own table.
I listened to the ICANN press conference this morning, the gist of which was don't worry, nothing will change, but once the NTIA opens up the ICANN management contract (or whatever it's called these days) to other parties, keeping the ITU out will be a challenge.
Yes, the ITU is a very old agreement. It's also been more or less
painless to us on the low end of the ladder even though of late they
are doing their best to screw it up.
Personally, I'm not too terribly worried about ICANN. Granted, the
politicians have gotten markedly more efficient at converting gold
into sh** in recent years but I think it will take them quite a while
to royally fk up the internet, especially if they are relying on going
through ICANN to do it.
What's the worst they can do at this point? Make .bobtodd and
.bubbagump TLDs? This is different from some of the crap we've got now
in what way??
What's the worst they can do at this point? Make .bobtodd and
.bubbagump TLDs? This is different from some of the crap we've got now
in what way??
Well, ICANN has come pretty close to delegating .HOME and .CORP to domain speculators, despite the vast amount of informal use which would get badly screwed up.
Like I said, I look forward to the ITU equitably delegating domain names and IP addresses. Sorry the US has enough names already, the next ten million go to underserved areas. And since we know that phone numbers work great with per-country prefixes, we're going to improve the DNS so domain names always start with the country code.
On the other hand, I am very concerned about what they would do to the
numbers side of things..
Just keep their grubby paws off the IETF and the internet standards
process..... I doubt there's much reason for concern. IPv4 is pretty
much already spoken for, and probably even they could not screw up IPv6
allocation. It's not as if they would be free to invent crazy new
numbering schemes.
I'm not too worried about what they could do to TLDs... It would be hard to
make a bigger mess than ICANN already has.
What comes to mind is scrapping WHOIS due to "privacy concerns", and
replacing it with a filing with a private national authority for the TLD,
accessible primarily to law enforcement (and not incident
responders/operators/infosec/anti-spam people).
How TLDs COULD be screwed up worse than ICANN......
introducing "regional TLDs", for coded regions (similar to DVD region
locking), and region-locking existing TLDs --- Or certain agreements and
fees will be required for an ISP to "subscribe" to a certain TLD,
including agreement to pay kickbacks for "Data transfer" and termination
fees related to DNS queries and site access, according to rate schedules
that the receiving country will be free to set, however exorbitantly they
like ---- to the benefit of certain countries desiring to limit access
or charge access fees for subscription to out-of-region DNS content; and
splitting the root zone, so that domains registered in a certain region
cannot be resolved in other regions,