Are we just going to let the internet go down the toilet? (Al Gore, Putin)

[Dustyroad70]

Come on people, we are about to loose a wonderful freedom!
U.S. tech firms urge Congress to allow internet domain changeover | Reuters

[War Beagle]

Yep. There is nothing the global elites hate more than an unfettered internet.

[Camaro5]

So Al Gore invented the internet and Obama is going to flush it down the toilet like he does with everything else.

Nice.

[brownbagg]

First the Panama Canal and now internet u.s gives everything away

[middle-aged mom]

Originally Posted by Camaro5

So Al Gore invented the internet and Obama is going to flush it down the toilet like he does with everything else.

Nice.

US tech firms wriote a letter to Congress for the Federal Government to relinquish control to the private sector.

And out of this, you determined " Obama is going to flush the Internet down the toilet".

What's the liklihood this will be put to a vote, while Obama remains in office?

[Gungnir]

Originally Posted by chronic65

Come on people, we are about to loose a wonderful freedom!
U.S. tech firms urge Congress to allow internet domain changeover | Reuters

Don't make me laugh. When the evil empire (Microsoft) takes in the Fed government over secret warrants to access people's PII on their servers. When the Evil Empire is backed by Google, Apple, the ACLU et. al. it's really time to consider whether (from the article)

Some Republican lawmakers are trying to block the handover to global stakeholders, which include businesses, tech experts and public interest advocates, saying it could stifle online freedom by giving voting rights to authoritarian governments.

Applies to the US Government.

I mean how can we not consider ourselves authoritarian when the DOJ argues in the case mentioned that MS has no standing to bring it, because they are not suffering harm from the warrants, but MS is by law bound to not inform the people affected by those warrants. How could those harmed bring a case?

At least China is up front, we're all cloak and dagger and anyone working in tech knows we're at least as bad.

No offense but as a techie I'd vote for international regulation with less fear than leaving it in the hands of Congress and the executive.

[steven_h]

Originally Posted by middle-aged mom

US tech firms wriote a letter to Congress for the Federal Government to relinquish control to the private sector.

And out of this, you determined " Obama is going to flush the Internet down the toilet".

What's the liklihood this will be put to a vote, while Obama remains in office?

Actually, one of the issues that Obama is trying to do is relinquish DNR from ICANN (US sovereignty) and give it to a global entity. Basically it would be the UN of domain names. Yea, nothing can wrong with that, right?

The net is a US invention and we need to stop giving everything we create away for nothing!!!

Originally Posted by Gungnir

No offense but as a techie I'd vote for international regulation with less fear than leaving it in the hands of Congress and the executive.

From one techie to another, that would be a horrible idea

With the U.S. relinquishing control of ICANN, it will likely fall under the ITU's control and risk being subject to censorship. Once the U.S. cedes control of it, nothing would stop it from folding into the ITU, especially now that the Internet is classified as a telecommunications service. In fact, ICANN's CEO, Fadi Chehadé, has been considering the establishment of an office in Geneva, which is "the location of the largest U.N. presence outside New York," according to The Daily Caller. Chehadé has also reportedly said that "all governments are welcome" in regards to ICANN's jurisdiction.
At that point, Russia and China would have an easier time in censoring speech that is not to their liking. For instance, Republican Senators Ted Cruz (TX), Mike Lee (UT) and James Lankford (OK) wrote in a letter that they discovered "that ICANN's Beijing office is actually located within the same building as the Cyberspace Administration of China, which is the central agency within the Chinese government's censorship regime" and that U.S. companies are folding to China's mandates for censorship.
Even more chilling is the fact that ITU had passed a treaty that provided "authority to governments to close off their citizens' access to the global Internet" and creating "a digital Iron Curtain," according to The Wall Street Journal. If ICANN becomes a part of the U.N., then they too will be subject to this treaty.


This would allow countries that routinely ignore and violate human rights to take full control of information they deem unfit to read, for any reason or no reason.

The net will become a censored wasteland

AGAIN, it's a frikkiin horrible idea!

[Gungnir]

Originally Posted by steven_h

From one techie to another, that would be a horrible idea

With the U.S. relinquishing control of ICANN, it will likely fall under the ITU's control and risk being subject to censorship. Once the U.S. cedes control of it, nothing would stop it from folding into the ITU, especially now that the Internet is classified as a telecommunications service. In fact, ICANN's CEO, Fadi Chehadé, has been considering the establishment of an office in Geneva, which is "the location of the largest U.N. presence outside New York," according to The Daily Caller. Chehadé has also reportedly said that "all governments are welcome" in regards to ICANN's jurisdiction.
At that point, Russia and China would have an easier time in censoring speech that is not to their liking. For instance, Republican Senators Ted Cruz (TX), Mike Lee (UT) and James Lankford (OK) wrote in a letter that they discovered "that ICANN's Beijing office is actually located within the same building as the Cyberspace Administration of China, which is the central agency within the Chinese government's censorship regime" and that U.S. companies are folding to China's mandates for censorship.
Even more chilling is the fact that ITU had passed a treaty that provided "authority to governments to close off their citizens' access to the global Internet" and creating "a digital Iron Curtain," according to The Wall Street Journal. If ICANN becomes a part of the U.N., then they too will be subject to this treaty.


This would allow countries that routinely ignore and violate human rights to take full control of information they deem unfit to read, for any reason or no reason.

The net will become a censored wasteland

AGAIN, it's a frikkiin horrible idea!

Actually it's not. You'd have to get a majority on board to effect a change in how ICANN operates. Right now it's st the mercy of the US government who are with regularity violating the rights of US citizens in regards to their rights to privacy. It's getting so bad many common US names of Internet and cloud computing are considering not homing servers in the US.

BTW ICANN solely administers domain names primary DNS servers are operated all over the globe by both public and private enterprises. It's those (all of those) that would need to be altered to enable ICANN any means of censorship how are you planning on achieving that? Far easier to filter on national datacoms entry gateways. That would be under the control of national governments (or their proxies) of those entry gateways anyway.

Indeed what you experience even in the US is largely censored, because of content, the DMCA, yada, yada. Set up a TOR browser and see for yourself if you don't believe me. That's just one example there's Freenet, I2P, Zeronet, Riffle and others.

[Dane_in_LA]

Originally Posted by Gungnir

BTW ICANN solely administers domain names primary DNS servers are operated all over the globe by both public and private enterprises. It's those (all of those) that would need to be altered to enable ICANN any means of censorship how are you planning on achieving that? Far easier to filter on national datacoms entry gateways. That would be under the control of national governments (or their proxies) of those entry gateways anyway.

Agreed. The distributed nature of the Internet seems to be the disconnect for a lot of people. It's not as if ICANN holds a super-secret code to some highly secure Root Server that ultimately controls the rest of the Internet - ICANN is a mindnumbingly boring bureaucracy that issues standards. As you say, if national telecommunication authorities dislike those standards, there's no forcing them on anyone. The infrastructure as it's actually used is not under ICANN's control - not now, and not after the change.

In other words, this is not how it works, however entertaining the image: