A Compromise Of Sorts On Internet Control
Shay
Representatives from the U.S. and other nations - led by the European Union - that had sought to break up America's control over the Internet reached an accord last night that leaves the supervision of domain names and other technical resources unchanged. But the accord also established a new international forum intended to give governments a stronger voice in Internet policy issues, including the address system. The document is to be approved at a United Nations summit meeting on information-age issues that begins today in Tunisia.
This was an attempt by socialists to tax us to death and limit our speech. And it was no surprise that dictator nations were the ones most supportive of the European Union's proposal. Moving the Internet's control from ICANN to the United Nations - which ridiculously has some of these same nations on its Human Rights Commission - would help aid these governments' efforts to crack down on their populations. If the U.N. or countries want to control technology then they should create technology.
The ITU is over 140 years old but is now overseen by the UN. Earlier this year Houlin Zhao, director of the ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau voiced his desire to CNET for the ITU to have authority over the internet.
Forunately the ITU mandate is presently fairly narrow in scope. Their regulations deal with frrequency allocation so that the potential problem of radio frequency spectrum users in one country interfering with spectrum users in another country doesn't happen too often.
With all this renewed interested, however, ICANN needs to keep their nose clean and the geeks happy. I can't imagine them ever being any worse than the UN, but if there's widespread dissatisfaction with their performance in influential tech circles then bad things could happen. Some techs have a strong idealistic streak that leads to a stunningly naiive attitude about the UN.