US endorses Internet Governance Forum United Nations

It's our internet.

I thought it was Al Gore's internet.

>>The last-minute deal, reached just hours before the WSIS began on Wednesday, effectively postpones a long-simmering dispute over the future of Internet management.<<

>>The US stressed that the UN forum will have no regulatory power. "It will have no oversight function, (remain) non-operational and engage only in dialogue," Ambassador Gross said. We have "no concerns that it would morph into something unsavoury".<<

Eactly why did we sign the agreement President Clinton, I mean President Bush?

Lets not be rash,now (s).

After all, that great bastion of liberalism,Algore, created the internet and by golly, since he isn't really all that busy, I think he could donate his time and give them a hand creating a new internet, just for libs and commies.

Fair is fair, no? (more s)

The only difference should be that the default language of the new internet must be French.

"By signing the statement, the Bush administration formally endorsed the creation of an "Internet Governance Forum" that will meet for the first time in 2006 under the auspices of the UN. The forum is meant to be a central point for global discussions of everything from computer security and online crime to spam and other "misuses of the Internet"."

By endorsing, they mean the US government agreed to participate in a forum that has no real power.

""It is a matter of justice and legitimacy that all people must have a say in the way the Internet is governed," Luisa Diogo, the prime minister of Mozambique, told the thousands of delegates who have gathered in Tunisia's capital city."

The legitimacy of the Internet has nothing to do with a bunch of self absorbed politicians. It's a proven technology.

What's in question here is how domain names are issued and maintained, not content on the Internet itself.

The way it has been administered has worked well. It's being administered by a private nonprofit organization that was put in charge of it by the government that created the technology.

There is no compelling reason for this to change.

"Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe offered a more ominous warning. The US and allies such as the UK unreasonably "insist on being world policemen on the management of the Internet", and that must change, Mugabe said."

More false words and blustering. Countries have control over their own domestic networks. They can choose to block sites from their networks if the choose to do so. China chooses to do so, and does.

The US isn't blocking content from other countries' servers from going to another country's network.

"Over the last few months, the administration's envoys have found themselves increasingly isolated in preliminary meetings leading up to the Tunisia summit.

The European Union, for instance, implicitly backed the creation of a stronger UN body... "

That's strange. I didn't see a single one of these countries decide to sever their networks from the Internet. I haven't seen popular web sites jumping to some alternative worldwide network. Did I miss this isolation?

The Internet doesn't need governance. The domain names need administered. IP addresses need administered. They're being administered by a consistent set of rules now, and it's working well in the vast majority of situations.

I have little doubt that The UN is looking at the Internet as something to tax and control. The UN has proven itself to be both corrupt and incompetent. It is in no one's best interest to give them ANY kind of control over the Internet. The only ones who might benefit are bureaucrats. The Internet, the people who rely on it for information, and the companies that rely on it can only be harmed by the interference of the UN.

Big mistake. Should have undermined it instead.

"Camel's nose under the tent"......Exactly.
The Bush Administration is not nearly as leery of the UN as they would have Conservatives believe.

A few remarks to the crowd of reflexive anti-UN posters. First, this issue is far more complex than this article describes (though Declan McCulloughg certainly know better, his employer isn't really into deep analysis journalism)

Second, those that fear there is a great scheme to make money, are nmostly correct. All those non-technical cushy-wushy feelgood NGOs on this proces, and certainly all those crazed third world dictator governments simply demand cash. The rest of the sounds they make is just distraction. Show me one NGO that does not demand money out of some unspecified internet-user finmanced slush fund.

Third, even that is not the core problem. It is just the vultures circeling over a sick animal. The current central administrative body, ICANN, excells most at alienating people. ICANN, an uncontrolled, fast growing and therefore constantly underfundend buerocacy, tried to levy multi-million $ "domain-taxes" on the European registries, basically for one line of text entry in a centrally administrated file and the reliable operation of a hand full of not so expensive servers. They balked. ICANN tried to, ahem, put pressure on them. Threatened them. They still balked. ICANN pissed the Chinese off by idly sitting for several years on the issue of non-ascii doamins, which the emerging chinese Internet industry direly needed. ICANN made US sweetheart deals with Verizon and others when contractes for generic domain registries were up for reassigment. ICANN pissed the average Joe user off when it first started a decent plan for user involvement and representation and a year later systematically destroyed the whole thing again. ICANN pissed the open source community off by basically declaring Paul Vixie and the Internet Software Consortium - the organization that develops and maintains Bind - unfit to run an internet registry (in order to give the .org Registry to someone else in one of those aforementioned sweetheart deals).

I could go on. name me one stakeholder in ICANN and I can tell you where ICANN has unfairly treted him, snubbed him, angered him. So whatever Support ICANN has left is based on most people's (in as well as outside of the US) larger mistrust of the ITU.

Did I mention that ICANN is basically run by lawyers ? One key weakness of ICANN actually is that it resides and is chartered in the US and therefore can be sued over anything it does by anyone. And it has vastly less resources for that than the big players it tries to regulate. That makes its "lead counsel" and his band of lawyers the real leadership inside ICANN, while the directors are window dressing. Also, because of the constant fears of beeing sued ICANN has become an pretty secretive organization which barres its constituency any insight into its decision making.

What can be done ? Well, if the US wants to keep ICANN's role, it will have to step up.

First, ICANN needs a legal framework (some kind of immunity) to work within without being theratened with or constantly hauled into court.
Second, there needs to be transparency and oversight. Have the GAO or somebody else qualified control ICANN and force thier culture to be opened up, if necessary by replacing key personnel.
Third, someone has to keep buerocartic growth in check.
Fourth, last but not least, there has to e a universal, well defined and widely accepted source of funding. And by the old motto of the Boston Tea Party, as long as the US Goverment calls all the shots, they also will have to pay all the bills.

The next WSIS debate will come. The next round of talks. of demands. And in a few years, ITU or WIPO or someone else will have ICANNs functions, if the US Government doesnn't get its act together soon.

And don't kid yourself - technically nobody owns the internet any more. Its just a matter of whose lead the majority will follow.

A writer in the WSJ this week said it was just a matter of time before Europe has its own. Ditto China.

Mugabe objects to US control of the internet