This implies there is someone who could take over that can be trusted. I'm not convinced there is, personally. The question then becomes "Who do you trust more than the US" in this context. I think the answer to that question would be more interesting.
You realize that the whole point of creating this huge complicated multi-stakeholder consensus-driven organization is exactly that there is no-one that can be trusted. Taking control away from US does not give it to anyone else, instead it put into this machinery that is specifically designed to avoid requiring trust.
Maybe it's how UN was supposed to work. Unfortunately, it's not how it works. And while I am very suspicious of US government, I'd better trust them with the future of the Internet than a pact between Russia, China, Iran and whatever voting block they could buy this week.
> Taking control away from US does not give it to anyone else, instead it put into this machinery that is specifically designed to avoid requiring trust.
At the end of the day, someone(s) will be in a position to "pull the plug" or just alter the machine in some way. I think your view is a bit naive. The machines have to be physically located somewhere and they're going to be open to vulnerabilities because someone needs to perform routine maintenance. There will also need to be a group or organization to oversee the day-to-day operations and handle things a machine can't. It's yet another avenue for corruption. Your ideal "control" simply doesn't exist and cannot exist. Someone has to be in control.
It reminds me a bit of the whole superpower conundrum. There are those who want the U.S to step down as the world's police. The question then becomes, who would replace them? This question confuses those people because they do not grasp the whole "nature abhors a vacuum" aspect of the problem. They also ignore the human element, which is that people are greedy, corrupt and power driven. Especially leaders of countries. These people want the U.S gone but won't connect the dots further to see what would happen, and what life would be like without them acting as the world's sole superpower. What would happen is another entity would step in and fill the role. That is guaranteed. It's a certainty because nations have been fighting wars for that mantle since before WW1. And I'm sorry, but I prefer the U.S to China or Russia. They're simply the lesser of the evils. And not by a small amount.
To deny it is to deny the fact that Russia and China would stand aside and not make an attempt to grab that power. Do you honestly believe China or Russia won't leap at the chance? Let's say you honestly do. Ok, so then the question becomes, "What about 25 years from now after Putin has died and there's a completely new administration at the helm. Can you say that they won't grab for power?" It doesn't require people not leaping to grab that power today, but for all time in the future. And believing that someone won't eventually grab for it is beyond naive because it's denying human nature.
I say stick it in Iceland... a country that's at least shown itself to stand for its convictions when they let the banking system hang themselves.
There is a perception of Switzerland's stance on privacy becoming increasingly weak as time goes by, showing that their convictions at the very least are becoming diluted in favour of international pressure.
Giving it to a country that can be invaded and handed over at will and for whose sovereignty even the good guys have no respect whatsoever [0] does not seem like a good idea.
There is no such implication. But in any case it seems wise to spread responsibility, given that the US has already abused the system and others haven't because they couldn't.
The problem I see is that since ICANN is located within the US, the system will still be abused, because ICANN falls under US jurisdiction with all its moronic justice system and draconian, though generally ineffective, "intellectual property" law enforcement.
Well most countries have the same or worse intellectual property laws. It's just that the U.S. is most prolific because when people are pirating movies, video games, music, or software they are very likely to be pirating American stuff versus, say, stuff from Malaysia. I understand the reaction from American media and software companies.
Now, with that being said I'm very much supportive of "pirating" in that I don't believe that it's stealing since that would mean corporations are entitled to potential future profits.
Another thing you pointed out was how ineffective it is. And you're right. Basically nobody cares anymore unless you're making a noticeable amount of money from doing so or just generally doing something other than pirating stuff.
Aside from questions about intellectual property, I think the U.S. generally has pretty great laws regarding the Internet. Compare that to, say, Australia where vaginas that don't look "normal" are banned, or the outright censorship in most of the world. With the U.S. being the epicenter of the software industry for the time being, it's very sensitive to any regulation or law involving the Internet.
Uhm, first of all, I don't have anything in particular against fighting piracy, at least not commercial piracy.
Unfortunately, the US has used the domain name system to fight piracy without due process in other countries rather than acting within their own jurisdiction and closing illegal servers within their own jurisdiction. That's an (a) abuse of the domain name system, which is (b) technically inefficient -- just use an alternative root server --, and (c) hitting the wrong people such as people who merely put links on their web server rather than those who actually infringe copyright.
Because of this documented and patently stupid abuse of the DNS system the US ought not control the root servers, not because of US laws or anything else related to piracy. I couldn't give a shit about piracy, but I do give a shit when some server that is perfectly legal in Spain suddenly becomes inaccessible and replaced by an FBI logo, just because some technically inept dumbass judge in East Texas thinks so.
Whether other countries would do better than the US is debatable. I'm glad you like the laws of the US so much, but have a hard time sharing your opinion about them and can think of various more worthy candidate countries for the label "best laws".
Can U.S. courts force ICANN to seize domains registered under ccTLDs?
My guess is not. gTLDs run by registrars not operating in the U.S. nonetheless probably sign ToS agreements with ICANN that effectively permit seizures by U.S. authorities. But for ccTLDs I doubt this is the case (it's hinted at in this white paper, https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/guidance-domain-...).
If you want to run a Pirate Bay or something, you're probably safest registering a domain under a ccTLD for a country with a lax policy.
While reasonable gTLDs like .inc, .corp and .ltd get ignored, instead we have .aerospace and .google for reasons that have never been properly explained.
They've also handed over .app to Google simply because Google was willing to pay a stupid amount of money for the rights, and Google can't even figure out how to sell these yet: https://www.registry.google
Frankly I think the middle-road that we had for a while was pretty much the worst of all worlds, and I like the mostly-liberated relatively flat model better. You either have hierarchy or you don't, and DNS/ICANN never really manged to create (and enforce!) true hierarchy at TLD level.
Personally I would like a strictly hierarchical model (e.g. ccTLDs only with restricted 2nd level) more, but to enforce such system would have meant essentially a complete reboot of DNS which obviously would never happen. gTLDs were imho a mistake (probably caused by not being to able to predict the explosive growth of internet), but if we can't get rid of them then just liberating them makes lots of sense.
Is this really a problem? No alternate TLDs have ever caught on. .com continues to be the only TLD that most people care about. Even a .net domain makes you a second-class citizen on the web.
It's really a problem because there's no telling what might be a domain tomorrow. Will ICANN sell `.x` to buy everyone on the board a new car? Will they start issuing gTLDs in Klingon language? What about Emoji?
This makes writing code that vets a fully qualified domain name a lot more complicated. If anything could be a domain name they you need to lean on DNS to do testing, and if that's not producing concrete answers, you have no idea if it's valid or not.
Is clownpenis.fart a possible domain? Twenty years ago, no way that would ever happen. Now I'm surprised it hasn't.
Ideally you want a root namespace that's clean, orderly and predictable so that people can comprehend it. microsoft.com looks legit. microsoft4u.info feels sketchy, and it should. microsoft.xyz is...legit? Or not? I can't tell any more, the waters are so muddied.
Plus, ICANN doesn't seem to consider the ramifications of some of their decisions. The right-to-left gTLDs are obviously a great thing for speakers of certain languages like Hebrew and Arabic, but they also carry severe security hazards: http://www.rafayhackingarticles.net/2016/08/google-chrome-fi...
TLD/SLD should never have been a paradigm. I say merge SLDs from .com into TLDs and start selling TLDs only. With all pre existing TLDs grandfathered in.
So the USG seizes a small number of domains in decades of stewardship, and that's all you've got as your gripe?
That's like Warren Buffett making you $50 million over 30 years, and then you get upset with him when he loses you a few dollars.
Given the extreme risk of allowing censorship-heavy nations like China and Russia to have new influence over the system, it's very obvious this is a terrible move.
Do you think UN can be trusted on this? I can't remember anything from the history of the UN that would give me an idea they have better regard for property rights and freedoms of people than US government.
At least US politicians are susceptible to some minimal electoral feedback from the people. The only way to influence UN functionaries known to work is bribes.
Yes, just pointing out that the USG cannot be trusted, free speech laws or not.
In the 90s I considered the gTLDs (.com, .net, .org) most attractive, because I wasn't quite sure how local governments would react and USG seemed reliable.
Now the situation is reversed, I value domains in local ccTLDs more than the gTLDs. Of course, ICANN creating an insane number of gTLDs doesn't help either.
Technically, yes. The US government could directly change DNS entries for ccTLDs in the root zone (or sign alternate versions and use them for hacking).
However, that would be the nuclear option. And I guess most countries would see that as an act of war.
Creating alternate DNS roots isn't very hard.
So just like the US is technically capable of launching missiles in the direction of North Korea, but doesn't do it. It is very unlike that the US would directly mess with ccTLDs.
From a security point of view, locally installing trust anchors for all ccTLDs would be a good idea though.
That's an interesting point that you shouldn't credit me for making; I was just implying that other countries will also have arbitrary rules about what lives under their ccTLDs.
Yes, but you would have to comply with one set of rules instead of with the rules of the US as well. For example, in the Rojadirecta case, a Spanish .es domain would have avoided interference by the US. So that's why I consider local ccTLD domains better than gTLDs.
If the question is whether the US would be a good steward of international domains or other international aspects of the Internet, then the USG has proven that it cannot be trusted.
I'm not saying that any other government would do better, but the new structure reduces (at least in theory) the influence of governments to almost zero and puts oversight in the hand of the Internet community. For better or worse, the Internet community seems to have a better track record than the US government.
So they cannot be trusted.
Of course, in practice, what goes into the root zone is controlled by ICANN. The whole oversight has been mostly theoretical for many years now.