RSSUN Conference Convenes on Net Control
By Ed Oswald | Published October 30, 2006, 11:00 AM
At a conference in Greece aimed at continuing the discussion over who should control the Internet, the United Nations once again renewed calls for diminishing the U.S. government's influence over ICANN. Additionally, an UN official said parties were growing tired of the argument that most did not understand the need for U.S. control.
International Telecommunications Union Secretary General Yoshio Utsumi said that no matter what has been said before or has been agreed upon, no one "can eternally claim they are the best." However, the most critical governments -- including Cuba, Iran and China -- are some of the most oppressive when it comes to free speech.
High-profile human-rights groups, who note the only clear alternative has come from these countries, have criticized the group's proposal, which calls for the UN to take complete control of the Internet.
"In view of the UN's negligent attitude to human rights - don't forget that its ad hoc commission was chaired by Libya - this is an alarming idea," Reporters Without Borders said. "Do we really want the countries that censor the Internet and jail cyber-dissidents to be in charge of the online flow of information?"
Reporters Without Borders did agree, however, that the United States should not have sole control of the system, but warned that any new proposal should not be controlled by any government, and work to satisfy free speech concerns.
Utsumi was joined in the calls for decentralization by the prime minister of Greece, Konstantnnos Karamanlns, and Viviane Reding, the European Commission's Commissioner for Information Society and Media. All seemed to agree that preserving democracy on the Internet itself should be central to the discussions held in Greece this week.
It should be noted that no U.S. representative made any statements at the conference, press reports indicate.
This is the same U.N. which did nothing about 250,000 deaths in Rwanda. They talk about carnage in DarFur and do nothing. They issue ultimatims to dictators, and do nothing; when they say go f--- yourselves.
We just finished a needless 30+ days of war between Israel and Lebanon; because the U.N. idiots failed to fully implement a resolution in 1982!
Let them set up their own DNS servers in their Geneva HQ offices and create their own U.N. internet.
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|Please....Greece jails those it finds playing/visiting/viewing banned games/sites/movies.
Yeah, we may be besmirched too(gambling anyone?)...but to a much lesser extent than each/all complainers.
That conference should be laughed out of existence.
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|So what if the US does't comply? Will countries create there own DNS servers, or has that all ready happen? Will the internet split up?
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|"At a conference in Greece aimed at continuing the discussion over who should control the Internet..."
Why do people insist on inflating this issue to make it appear to be more important than it is? This is not about control of the Internet, since there is no such entity that controls it. It is about who runs and maintains the root DNS servers. Is that really a big deal? Hardly. And giving the UN control over just about anything is certainly not the solution to any problem.
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|"Is that really a big deal?"
O.o I hope your joking.
Considering that the one who controls the DNS servers controls the traffic and ultimately who can get to what, I'd call that a pretty big deal.
Tell you what, let's let China control all those DNS servers and see how well that turns out.
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|This is a pretty scary topic for sure. I just can not imageine the useless UN in control of anything let alone the Internet.
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