[governance] People's Daily of China: US must hand over Internet control to the world

[Norbert Bollow]

David Conrad <drc at virtualized.org> wrote:
> As mentioned previously, .IQ was dysfunctional and remained so until
> a redelegation was done in 2005.  The USG did not ask ICANN to
> "terminate services" to .IQ. The folks who ran the TLD were arrested
> (in Texas, US I believe) and put into jail for violating US law (not
> a lawyer and don't know the details so won't argue whether that
> arrest was appropriate), but this is unrelated to ICANN.

It might nevertheless be relevant to the question of the
trustworthiness of the US as host country and overseer of ICANN and
most root-server operators -- especially when viewed from the
perspective of non-Western countries. From such an outside perspective,
the results of a government invention matter much more than the
specific procedural means.

According to Kieren McCarthy's article [1], the charges were of "dealing
illegally with a senior Hamas operative, Mousa abu Marzook, and of
illegally exporting computer equipment and technology to Libya and
Syria - described by US officials as state sponsors of terrorism."
[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/04/09/iraq_its_domain/

I suspect that pretty much everyone in the Arabic world would have
viewed those business relationships as quite legitimate (quite
independently of the question of legality under US law).

It furthermore seems clear that this arrest was not a routine matter of
law enforcement, but rather a highly political case. Again according to
Kieren McCarthy's article, US Attorney General John Ashcroft
personally announced the arrest.

Greetings,
Norbert

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