[KLUG Advocacy] Re: [KLUG Members] Should the United Nations run the Internet?

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> >>>http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,104413,00.html
> >>One of many articles on this topic.
> >Actually this has been percolating for some time.  I remember reading
> >snippets about this quite awhile ago....
> Yes, this is what I mean by "One of many articles..."

I assumed,  I wanted to emphasize that it didn't mean "many {recent} articles",
but that there is a long -chronology- of articles.

> >It seems like the natural progression to move this now-major conduit of 
> >information and commerce to the world's primary administrative body.
> Seems like a reasonable time to start. I tend to discount a lot of the 
> shrill whining that seems to surround this sort of topic as well as the
> rather unrealisitc crowing of UN (perhaps non-) functionaries about how
> they are going to "liberate these resources from the clutches of the
> developed countries".

The UN does moderate the influence of the bloated self-important bully
countries.  Those shrill whiners and the dogs who would give the world to those
bully countries on a platter create an at least vaguely reasonable center, sort
of the point of a democratic institution.  And (IMHO) that demonstrates the very
reason there needs to be such a super-state institution.

>>>This is one of those things which sounds good in principle and is likely
>>>happen at some point in the future. I suspect that ITU itself may not have
>>>the technical expertise to do this now.
>>>A constructive process to go to ITU-administered Internet oversight could
>>>be executed over a 3-5 year period, IMO.
>>Sure, anything like this takes a LONG time.
>Given the way of lot of this develops, 3-5 years is not condiered a long
>time. It's my estimate, based on observing how the ITU works over about
>25 years, and it's offered FWIW.

It is even more interesting to postulate the time live for some convergence of
IETF, IANA, ICANN, and ISOC (and probably a half dozen others).   Maybe it will
never happen, but it all seems unduly fragmented.  Of course, fragmentation can
also be a good thing.

> >>For those readers who have some philosopical objection to this transition,
> >Personally, I agree with the policies of the UN more often than our own
> >national policies.
> In general, or is there something about this US administration that casues
> you to say this.

Current situations have emphasized this,  but it has pretty much been true since
I "came of age".

> >So I'd feel better about this than creating some
> >board of corporate oligarchs to oversee it, as currently exists at ICANN
> >and other multi-national "regulartory" bodies.
> It is interesting to see how "un-American" ICANN actually is, for those
> who think this is a power play to "take the Internet away from the
> Americans".

I most meant their deeply flawed election process, continued attempts to push
out at-large representatives, etc...

http://www.icannwatch.org/
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/17/171217&mode=thread&tid=95
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/30/1958218&mode=thread&tid=95
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/11/1831210&mode=thread&tid=95
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/31/2035207&mode=thread&tid=95
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/28/232206&mode=thread&tid=95

> >>need merely point out that the radio spectrum has been under general ITU
> ad-ministration since the 1950's, as have other forms...
> >Shocking!
> Background, for those who are not as up on this stuff as our Program 
> Director and resident LDAPper par excellence....

Aw, schucks.....

BTW, the UN is a heavy user of LDAP technologies -
http://accsubs.unsystem.org/iscc-intranet/work/itexchange/LDAP/ldap.htm

Unfortunately most of it is via M$-Exhange integration. Ick!