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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 03/26/2014 05:19 PM, Suresh
Ramasubramanian wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:20D862A7-ACE7-4B28-803D-A8A411AD54D3@hserus.net"
type="cite">
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<div>FUD debunked<br>
<br>
--srs (iPad)</div>
<div><br>
Begin forwarded message:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">No, Barack Obama Isn't Handing Control of
the Internet Over to China<br>
BY JONATHAN ZITTRAIN<br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117093/us-withdraws-icann-why-its-no-big-deal"
target="_blank">http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117093/us-withdraws-icann-why-its-no-big-deal</a><br>
<br>
On March 14, the U.S. government announced that it would seek to
relinquish a privileged role in the management of Internet names
and numbers. An organization called ICANN—the non-profit
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers—is to
continue doing what it’s doing without maintaining an ongoing
contract with the Department of Commerce to do it. And what
does ICANN do? It helps keep IP addresses in order, ensuring
that each address—used to let parties on the Internet identify
one another—is not assigned more than once. And it facilitates
the addition of “top level domains,” those suffixes like .com,
.org, .uk, and more recently, .clothing, which, with a
concatenation of names to their left, become the names for
nearly all online destinations, including <a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://newrepublic.com"
target="_blank">newrepublic.com</a>. A receding role for the
U.S. government has been anticipated for over a decade, and the
move is both wise and of little impact. Some reaction has been
surprisingly alarmist.<br>
<br>
A Wall Street Journal columnist described it as “America’s
Internet surrender.” Said one member of Congress: “Giving up
control of ICANN will allow countries like China and Russia,
that don’t place the same value in freedom of speech, to better
define how the internet looks and operates.”<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br>
This is the natural consequence of the drama that USG and friends
put up at WCIT, whose unstated aim was to debunk and stall the
desire of developing countries for a democratic IG. The chickens are
coming home to roost....<br>
(I had raised this in my previous post as well).<br>
<br>
Of course, real democratisation of IG needs to go far far beyond
that of ICANN/CIR reform (which in itself is important), it needs
to address the core issues which provoked President Rousseff to
cancel her US visit last year...<br>
<br>
regards<br>
Guru<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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