November 16, 2005
NICE TRY THOUGH:
US retains hold of the internet: The US has won its fight to stay in charge of the internet, despite opposition from many nations. (BBC, 11/16/05)
In an eleventh-hour agreement ahead of a UN internet summit in Tunis, Tunisia, negotiators agreed to leave the US in charge of the net's addressing system. [...]Disagreements over control of the internet had threatened to overshadow the summit, with countries such as China and Iran pushing for a international body under UN auspices to oversee the net.
The US had stood firm against this, arguing that it would stifle technological advance and increase censorship of the internet by undemocratic regimes.
The Tunis deal leaves the day-to-day management of the net in the hands of the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), which answers to the US government.
Icann will keep its current responsibilities for overseeing domain names and addressing systems, such as country domain suffixes, and managing how net browsers and e-mail programs direct traffic.
The 170 nations taking part in the negotiations agreed on the creation of an Intergovernmental Forum to discuss all internet issues, such as spam, viruses and cyber crime.
"We did not change anything on the role of the US government with regard to the technical aspects that we were very concerned about," said the top US negotiator David Gross after the agreement.
Mr Gross said the forum would not have oversight authority nor would it do "anything that will create any problems for the private sector".
Helped that the totalitarian regimes had no bargaining power--whgat are they going to do, restrict our access to their censored sites? Posted by Orrin Judd at November 16, 2005 9:33 AM
Help me out, as I am not a genius of techno-politics (there's a word).
Why do I care about this? It ain't gonna happen. The UN can "rule" all they want. The US is going to to them to pound sand.
What they CAN do in response (horrors)... is build "their own Internet(s)". At which time hackers will take about, oh, three days, to establish links between the two, or three, or four "Internets" (hey, Dubya was ahead of his time!).... and it will all be basically one Internet again.
As bloviating Bill O'Reilly sez.... "Where'my goin' wrong here?"
Posted by: Andrew X at November 16, 2005 10:43 AMI'm still trying to figure out how Tunis became such a locus of internet technology that it earned the distinction of hosting this "summit."
The U.N. is basically seeking the right to control the "legal" servers on the Internet, which theoretically would leave them open to being censored for carrying content not sanctioned by the U.N. Presumably, this would be political content considered undesirable by certain U.N. members.
Obviously, there could be nations that don't abide by any U.N. claims that could host sites free of those controls, in the same way the offshore U.S. sites now host online gambling operations. But the pressure to conform would be far greater if the U.S. was brought to heel by the U.N. (and odds are this issue will continue to crop up, especially if there's a Democrat in the White House who wants all those swell folks overseas to stop hating us because of what mean old George W. Bush did. Handing over the Internet would be considered a peace offering.).
Posted by: John at November 16, 2005 11:01 AMJohn, ever think about writing for the horror genre?
Posted by: Dennis at November 16, 2005 11:15 AMFear not World Government types. The WuSsIeS are biding their time. They just have to learn to count a lot higher in order to replace ICANN. If THEYCANN.
Posted by: Ed Bush at November 16, 2005 1:30 PMAndrew X has the basis of it. The bottom line is that nations like China can go off on their own any time, they don't need UN approval for that. The only thing the UN would be useful for is to make the USA obey dictates from China/Iran/Tunisia. There is no way that sort of friction in working on the web would be tolerated here – what politician would want to be the one to tell Joe American that he needs the permission of the UN to set up a website about his pet dog?
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at November 16, 2005 8:44 PM