The transfer of ICANN

MadHatter wrote: This is something I truly hope gets stopped. I am not sure if it will but I really hope it gets blocked. Putting this body outside of US control creates the risk of internet censorship at the isp level from nations like China and various other nations that are not dedicated to a free exchange of ideas.
I frankly could care less about any promises the US made about the transfer. The risks are too great to risk turning control over to nations that have no care for allowing citizens freedom of expression and speech.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/09/30/ags-file-suit-in-last-ditch-bid-to-stop-hand-off-internet-control.html

Cayce wrote: Hey there!

So, this has been getting a lot of news recently, and sadly the press (Fox) and others have been putting a very negative spin on it. But, to cite a source I'll link below...

The IANA transition has no practical effect on the work and activities of the SSAC. Nor does the transition have any effect on the security and stability of website owners worldwide. The risk of compromise of a website owner does not increase as a result of the IANA transition, since ICANN and IANA do not control either the ownership of websites or the content on websites. Leading technical experts, industry associations, and civil society groups agree that allowing the IANA contract to expire is the best possible way to protect and promote the continued integrity of the Internet.

As someone who has worked in programming and tech for years, I agree with these views and know them to be true from a technical side of things. Plus, I can say that it's actually better for the US if the transfer happens for a multitude of reasons, but, I'll let the experts at Snopes explain below.

Snopes - America to Hand Off Internet Domain Name Control

Also, here's the Myth and Fact counterpoints below if you'd like to see it embedded.

Warning: Spoiler!

Myth:

This transition is “giving the Internet to authoritarian regimes.”

Fact:

The U.S. Government has made it clear that we will not accept a proposal that replaces its role with a government or intergovernmental organization.

The criteria specified by the Administration firmly establish Internet governance as the province of multistakeholder institutions, rather than governments or intergovernmental institutions, and reaffirm our commitment to preserving the Internet as an engine for economic growth, innovation, and free expression.

The U.S. government will only transition its role if and when it receives it receives a satisfactory proposal to replace its role from the global Internet community — the same industry, technical, and civil society entities that have successfully managed the technical functions of Internet governance for nearly twenty years.

Myth:

With the U.S. withdrawal from stewardship over the IANA functions, the U.N.’s International Telecommunication Union will take over the Internet – making it easier for repressive regimes to censor speech online.

Fact:

The transition process that is underway will help prevent authoritarian countries from exerting too much influence over the Internet by putting control of key Internet domain name functions in the hands of the global community of Internet stakeholders — specifically industry, technical experts, and civil society — instead of an intergovernmental organization.

Myth:

The U.S. Government transition will lead to blocking of websites.

Fact:

The Internet is not controlled by any one government or entity. It is a network of networks. The U.S. Government’s role with respect to the Domain Name system is a technical one. Our work has been content neutral and policy and judgment free.

Free expression online exists and flourishes not because of U.S. Government oversight with respect to the Domain Name System, or because of any asserted special relationship that the U.S. has with ICANN. Instead, free expression is protected because of the open, decentralized nature of the Internet and the neutral manner in which the technical aspects of the Internet are managed.

We have made clear in our announcement of the transition that open, decentralized and non-governmental management of the Internet must continue.

In further addition, more sources:

https://newrepublic.com/article/117093/us-withdraws-icann-why-its-no-big-deal

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/technology/297035-opposition-gets-facts-wrong-on-icanns-security-committee-and

Edan wrote:

MadHatter wrote: This is something I truly hope gets stopped. I am not sure if it will but I really hope it gets blocked. Putting this body outside of US control creates the risk of internet censorship at the isp level from nations like China and various other nations that are not dedicated to a free exchange of ideas.
I frankly could care less about any promises the US made about the transfer. The risks are too great to risk turning control over to nations that have no care for allowing citizens freedom of expression and speech.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/09/30/ags-file-suit-in-last-ditch-bid-to-stop-hand-off-internet-control.html

But why should one country have entire control over something that affects the whole world?

MadHatter wrote: I read each of those articles and see nothing that allays my concern. The myths and facts is just full of we really really promise that it won't fall to governmental control which is a promise that could change in a day or in 2000 years. Further the concept that little will change is likely true for now. However, should less than free speech loving nations like china manage to get a say then domain names like the ones for free Tibet website could find themselves in real trouble. Control of who names what is control of the websites themselves as its simple to shut down domain names you dont like if you refuse to allow sites with particular names.

Myth:

With the U.S. withdrawal from stewardship over the IANA functions, the U.N.’s International Telecommunication Union will take over the Internet – making it easier for repressive regimes to censor speech online.

Fact:

The transition process that is underway will help prevent authoritarian countries from exerting too much influence over the Internet by putting control of key Internet domain name functions in the hands of the global community of Internet stakeholders — specifically industry, technical experts, and civil society — instead of an intergovernmental organization.

Cayce wrote:

MadHatter wrote: I read each of those articles and see nothing that allays my concern. The myths and facts is just full of we really really promise that it won't fall to governmental control which is a promise that could change in a day or in 2000 years. Further the concept that little will change is likely true for now. However, should less than free speech loving nations like china manage to get a say then domain names like the ones for free Tibet website could find themselves in real trouble. Control of who names what is control of the websites themselves as its simple to shut down domain names you don't like if you refuse to allow sites with particular names.

Thank you for the reply! Allow me to direct you to the section I believe addresses your concerns.

Myth:

With the U.S. withdrawal from stewardship over the IANA functions, the U.N.’s International Telecommunication Union will take over the Internet – making it easier for repressive regimes to censor speech online.

Fact:

The transition process that is underway will help prevent authoritarian countries from exerting too much influence over the Internet by putting control of key Internet domain name functions in the hands of the global community of Internet stakeholders — specifically industry, technical experts, and civil society — instead of an intergovernmental organization.

Simply put, China, or any other country cannot use this to 'block' anything. That's not how the Internet works at all.

This type of technology (DNS) has been around forever, and it's very well understood. There's no reason to be afraid of this, and I'd love to break it down in technical terms if you like.

I believe that as Jedi we should never rush towards a fearful response without hard facts, and this particular situation is well documented, and has a lot of hard facts pointing towards the opposite of what everyone is worried about.

Cayce wrote: This type of technology (DNS) has been around forever, and it's very well understood. There's no reason to be afraid of this, and I'd love to break it down in technical terms if you like.

MadHatter wrote: You may well be right that my fears are rushed and overblown. And if so that is not a very proper response. However, that section CLAIMS that it will not allow for governmental control but that does not mean its true. Simply put a Chinese tech corporation is in effect beholden to their government. So should that corporation gain enough influence then yes they could indeed become an issue. So I would be interested to hear how if a nation or block of nations that are not for free speech gained control via corporations over ICANN how that would not in effect impact free speech. If I understand it correctly ICANN controls domain names and could stop names such as free Tibet or some site named deemed racist or hate speech. If I am wrong then I am responding out of ignorance and would be happy for correction.

Parnerium wrote: Could you? I'd really love to learn more about this.

Let's say you want to go to reddit.com. You type it into your browser and suddenly you're there. But this actually happens in a couple of hops. First, you need to find the .com server. Once you've found that, it will tell you where to find reddit.com. Once you're at reddit.com, it'll tell you how to find r/funny or wherever you want to go.
But hold on a minute - who tells you how to get to .com in the first place? That would be one of the 13 root servers run by different organisations around the world - some are run by the US Government, and others are run by private and/or foreign organisations.

The list of all of the top level domains, like .com, is maintained and published by ICANN in its root file. If you wanted to create a new TLD, like .explanation, you'd need to get ICANN's approval. Once you have that, it will be published in the root zone, and whoever controls .explanation can start selling/using websites under that domain.

But who is ICANN? It's not some faceless entity - it's like a big tent that everyone meets under to talk about the Internet. And they've got a really cool way of making decisions - consensus. Consensus is better than voting, because with voting you can have 60% of people screwing over the other 40%. With consensus, everyone has to agree. So everyone meets up at ICANN to make decisions about these kinds of things - which domains to let into the root (and other things). These people include private businesses, civil society, governments, academics, technical community, and others.
This group of people, called "the multistakeholder community" has been running the Internet for the past 20 years. They've done a pretty good job, that's why today it works so well.

When the US government created ICANN, they always planned to let the multistakeholder community take control of this. But because it was all new, they kept a special role for the government. They had a kind of "veto" power over ICANN - that they never really used - but the threat that they would use it kept ICANN honest. The US was like a benevolant steward, keeping an eye on ICANN and the community, and making sure it didn't screw things up. It was always the understanding that this was a temporary role, but because everything was fine, no one really pressured the US to step back and they were fine with the status quo.

Then Snowden happened and the world was really angry with the US. Some countries felt concerned that the US government had this special power. They started making noise and said that control of ICANN should move to the United Nations. This is a very bad idea - because when governments start making technical decisions for political reasons, you'll end up with crappy outcomes.

So the US Government annonced that it would step back from this role and transition oversight of ICANN to the multistakeholder community.

The Republicans have been making political hay out of this, because on the surface, it looks like out of nowhere, Obama's "giving away the Internet" and you can't explain why this isn't true in a soundbite. To believe this is to fundamentally misunderstand how the Internet works. This power that the US has isn't really a power at all. If the US had used it, say, to remove .ir from the root and knock Iran of the Internet, there's no way other countries would have tolerated this. They would have created a new ICANN and moved everything over. And there's no technical reason why they can't do this at any time. The only reason people stay with ICANN is because it works.

Now, you might say - "but now Iran and China will be able to knock .com off the Internet and harm/censor America's Internet!" But remember that consensus thing we were talking about? In the multistakeholder model, countries participate on the same level as all the other participants - academics, companies, technical people. So if China and Iran want .com to be taken off the root, then they'll need to convince the US, UK, France, Netherlands etc and also Google, Microsoft, Facebook etc. And if they can do that, then maybe they have a point!

What about censorship on a lower level? What if someone wants to censor reddit.com? That also won't work - because ICANN only operates at the root - so (conceivably) they could take down .com - but they couldn't take down specific domains under .com. Censorship happens on the country/ISP level - not at the ICANN level. Countries that censor their Internet will still do so after this transition, there is nothing that ICANN can do to stop that.

For the average Internet user, there is nothing to worry about. This is a minor, mostly symbolic change that the whole technical community supports - here you can see a long list of statements from various companies, industry bodies and civil society groups in support of this change - note the names of the companies/industry bodies that support this: https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/iana-stewardship-support-statements-13sep16-en.pdf

Here's a brief video by the guy who invented the Internet explaining this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd3dH90tdhk
Sorry for the long explanation, but that's about as simple as I can give it. If you look at my previous comments, you'll see I've been going across reddit trying to add some common sense into this issue, because some people are getting really bent out of shape about this, when they really shouldn't. I don't work for ICANN, but I do know a lot about this issue, because I've been involved (on a very, very low level).

TLDR: The world is not going crazy, the government is not about to censor your Internet.