The Internet is being given away to the UN

[Statboy]

Wasn't sure whether this was tech chat or serious discussion, as it is a deeply political issue. Currently the Obama administration is giving control of ICANN to the the UN. The Republicans have tried to push through a number of measures and lawsuits to stop this, so far unsuccessfully.

What this actually means is firstly this puts a stop to victims of terror being able to sue the website owned by terrorists to get compensation.

"U.S. control of domain names has guaranteed freedom of speech and commerce across the Internet, against the strenuous efforts of countries like China and Iran to suppress Internet traffic and content. In addition, victims of international terror have found potential relief in U.S. courts by suing to seize the domain names of countries like Iran in lieu of direct compensation. Without U.S. control, those victims would have no possible recourse." -Joel Pollak

This first part of Pollak's statement is the most worrying to me. China, Iran, Russia, these nations are all apart of the UN with China and Russia being two of the five permanent members of the powerful Security Council. What happens when one of these countries or all 3 of them band together to start trying to silence American news agencies because of Free Speech? It's not an "if" they will try to pull IP's from American news agencies but a when, and more importantly how hard will the rest of the UN actually fight to let America keep its freedom of the press?

As much as I bash American news agencies for taking sides politically, at least they are free to report any story, what happens when that goes away? It will be openly conservative news agencies like BrietBart that go first, but it won't stop there.

 

[Statboy]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...ch-bid-to-stop-hand-off-internet-control.html

That is the only mainstream news article I could find, it seems CNN and MSNBC aren't even covering this story

 

[theLumberJack]

BBC Article.
The Globe and Mail.
CTV Article.
CBS.

 

[Reechard]

Meh. If push comes to shove, we still have ARIN and IANA and build a new naming system overnight. All they would control would be the domain names. We still have control of the actual network itself. Would it be a major pain in the ass? yes. Would it change the entire fabric of the internet? Not any more or less than it's been changing rapidly over the past 3 decades.

 

[Statboy]

We won't have IANA, that's going with ICANN, and I don't know what ARIN is. Its not going to be as easy as just building a new naming system. Especially if a Dem is charge, they would probably help target conservative media's and then increase government oversight to prevent them from getting back on again. 10 years ago the very thought of this happening would be outrageous, now I have trouble believing anything is outside the realm of possibility. Having the backbone providers still in our control is really big, but what happens when the next Democrat pres thinks that should handed over as well?