I've read several articles, but I'm still having trouble understanding the reasoning, or even the technical details.
Does anyone understand what's going on?
What exactly is wrong with the current setup?
I would greatly appreciate an informed opinion.
In addition, ICANN the organization will have new accountability measures that will allow the community to challenge decisions it makes. It provides new powers like spilling its Board under certain circumstances.
One of the main drivers to change the current setup is NTIA's role above is seen as undue US government influence in what should be a purely technical operation by many. Over the years some have advocated fundamentally altering how ICANN works (like moving it to the UN) because of the US Government's influence. By transferring the primary oversight role to the multi-stakeholder community (users, business, non-profits, etc.) who have always really driven ICANN's decisions anyway, it is hoped that that criticism will go away and pressure to fundamentally alter how it works will dissipate.
As you say the actual running of ICANN/IANA and the internet at large is really managed under a multi stake holder model and is very inclusive and diversified.
Arguments to the contrary are typically FUD.
Infrastructure diplomats.
I think a lot of politicians (ahem Ted Cruz) are trying to frame the transition in a shadowy way to discredit the current administration, but its simply a procedural thing thats been in the works for a long while.
ICANN has a list of squashed conspiracy theories. https://www.icann.org/iana-stewardship-questions
But for many years no one did this, except very rarely. And the honors were left to some folks in the US, IANA/ICANN. Do not be fooled by the acronyms and the fabricated processes and formalities on the official websites. IANA was essentially one person. Bless the hearts of those who worked to create the early internet but these "organizations" derive their "authority" from nowhere. The internet is an abstraction, a term to describe different networks that cooperate.
The generally static nature of the root.zone file changed recently. It has doubled, maybe tripled in size and is now filled with TLDs such as .loans and .cologne. As well as trademarks such as .google, .microsoft, etc. These can also capture traffic from users who type strings into address bars that are not FQDNs.
ICANN charged $85K+ just to bid on these beauties; they made some very easy money. Most of them are worthless. Exit time for ICANN. :)
Now that it is filled with garbage, and perhaps anticipating some finger-pointing, it is time to acknowledge that the root.zone belongs to everyone and is managed by all countries of the world, not only the US.
The "transfer". More fabricated formalities.
The truth is that anyone can exercise control over the root.zone file, and anyone can serve it. Whether you choose to follow them or not is up to you. (Most users just let default DNS settings decide this for them.)
Similar to the early IANA, one person can do this job. I maintain and serve my own root.zone. I am the only user but there could just as well be hundreds of users. This could grow to thousands which could grow to millions which could grow to hundreds of millions which could grow to...
This is what happened with the DNS. It started out small and grew big. Believe it or not it is still not that big. I could fit all domain names in existence on consumer-sized storage media.
Thus concludes an opinion. Mildly informed.
Someone has to do that job for it to all work. Do the managers of the hundreds of TLDs around the world contact you to update your version? No, they send them to IANA.
The IANA's job is simply to be the authoritative repository of unique identifiers and associated configuration data — TLDs, IP addresses, port numbers, MIME types, etc. You are free to use your own bespoke IP addressing scheme, port numbers and MIME types too, but don't expect to be able interoperate with anyone else.
For instance, I'd love it if this recent TLD vomit could be nipped in the bud by people choosing to run their own root.zone. But as it stands doing so myself would merely inconvenience me. And this herd effect is magnified further because the custom is for ISPs to run recursive resolvers for their customers.
Then, the international corporation would decide what websites you can access, and if the website you want to have a look at doesn't adhere to the corporation's view, it will simply become inaccessible.
There is also the question of political relevance; that is, why the urgency? Why require that this be passed during the Obama administration just before an election, and without congressional input?
To stop this? See this petition.
https://wh.gov/iMbbv Which routes to: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov//petition/stop-icann-handov...
ALSO, an interesting side note:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-29/4-states-sue-block-...
Right now domains like wikileaks.org and thepiratebay.se exist. Will they continue to exist in the same manner going forward? Or, in a few years, will attacks on these domains be made, and their domains seized?
I'm really concerned about this, above all.
The history of the The Pirate Bay's many domain names (thepiratebay.xx has been registered at some point for almost any value of xx) clearly shows that different TLDs have different policies. Many revoked thepiratebay.xx on request, but some (like .se and .org) haven't.
I don't know what it would mean for ICANN to apply pressure to a TLD manager to change their rules or make an exception in order to revoke or transfer a name. But it would be a form of political pressure; there is no contractual obligation by TLDs to do whatever ICANN tells them to, and there is no technological mechanism in DNS itself to do so. Naively, ICANN seems to present less danger in this regard than the US Government did. Of course that doesn't mean the danger was or is small in absolute terms: the US Government is very good at political pressure!
Milton Mueller at Internet Governance Project (1).
his latest blog post may shed some light (2).
1. http://www.internetgovernance.org
2. http://www.internetgovernance.org/2016/09/28/its-over-yestoi...
So which is it? Have they produced no report because there is nothing to report on (which is obviously silly; there's something to report, regardless of your opinion), or have they produced no report because of partisan gridlock? If the latter, as they suggest, how does that imply that there's nothing to report on?
It would actually imply the opposite, that there is much to report on, but that political pressure is preventing them from reporting on it due to how an unbiased report would inconvenience certain political agendas.
Just imagine, a CEO sees some troubling reports about his company's stock, hearing rumors of fraud and audits and lawsuits. He orders an accountant to produce a financial report for the last 6 months by Friday. Friday comes and goes, and so does another, until several months have gone by. Finally the CEO concludes that, since his accountant hasn't produced the ordered report, there must be nothing to report, and everything is fine. ??? That's the same logic they use in this article.
This is just one example of the double-minded perspective presented in that article. The IGP is obviously strongly biased toward one political party, and they write deceptive articles to confuse the public and handwave away legitimate concerns.
This is the primary issue I have with every single one of ICANN's rebuttals[1]: nothing will change (so they say), and yet, here we are, making a change.
Okay, then, here's a stupid question: why is a change being made? Ted Cruz may be an ass, but that doesn't make ICANN's position correct.
If nothing will change, they guess what? No change is necessary. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
If something will change, then ICANN should be entirely up front about what that change exactly is. Instead, we get a bunch of denials that nothing will change, the US has no current role anyway, yadda yadda yadda, but serious you guys, we have to change this right now.
We're talking about managing the DNS system here, that's not an "insignificant" thing, as other commenters have suggested.
Yes, existing ASes can already block specific domains today. Fine. But ICANN could easily become a Title IX-type situation, where ASes are forced to block specific domain names in order to remain part of the global Internet system.[2]
It's true it doesn't police ASes that direction today, under the existing ICANN governance model, but there's (to my knowledge) no reason why that couldn't be true today (under US control), and I see no reason why adding "more stakeholders" will make the situation any less likely in the future. If anything, it makes it more likely: look at the UN. Certainly ICANN itself doesn't think it's any less likely, but here's what they don't say: with this change, it'll be extremely hard for US citizens to fix if it does come about. That's not "insignificant" to me.
[0] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/y2k-2-0-is-the-us...
[1] https://www.icann.org/iana-stewardship-questions
[2] For instance, consider how the US Justice Dept. is using "Dear Colleague" letters in 2016 to force schools to adopt a less-rigorous sexual assault policy or face loss of federal funding. ICANN could apply similar pressure to ASes in the future (not funding, but zone updates or whatever).
I am particularly concerned that it is described as a purely technical move with no effect on censorship capabilities as if those are mutually exclusive.
What is the goal here? What problem is this solving?
"It will signal that the U.S. has changed its position and no longer believes in a private-sector led internet and that governments will play a primary role in making the final decision. Russia, China, and others will welcome such a decision."
(https://www.icann.org/iana-stewardship-questions)
ICANN and others are afraid that certain, mostly authoritarian governments will want to break away from the global DNS and/or IP allocation system to form alternative, walled systems under the pretext that the US government 'controls the internet'.
So ICANN and others want to take away any argument, however feeble, that supports this position.
I really don't see any upside to this, as a US citizen strongly in favor of free speech. There very well may be no downside, but I've seen no strong case for this that doesn't come down to global politics to appease other nations with far less stringent free speech protections.
Why was it changed in 1998? ISI was perfectly capable of handling the function.
Ted Cruz is indignant that the US Department of Commerce is transitioning out of a role it took up from ISI in 1998. This is the same Department of Commerce which Cruz pledges he is trying to abolish on his web site ( https://www.tedcruz.org/five-for-freedom-summary ).
Even minor changes have to actually happen at some point. This is one that has been under discussion for a long time. It just happens to be happening now.
Whether this transition will help prevent that from happening remains to seen.
What exactly was wrong with the 1998 setup? ISI and Jon Postel were managing fine back then.
I also don't recall a "US control over ICANN" that could be "relinquished" being part of the original ICANN proposal. I don't think that would have gone over well with the European operators at the IETF meetings. If it had been they probably would have stuck with the CCITT's x.25 networks, Minitel and such.
"From its origins as a U.S.-based research vehicle, the Internet is rapidly becoming an international medium for commerce, education and communication. The traditional means of organizing its technical functions need to evolve as well. The pressures for change are coming from many different quarters:
* There is widespread dissatisfaction about the absence of competition in domain name registration.
* Conflicts between trademark holders and domain name holders are becoming more common. Mechanisms for resolving these conflicts are expensive and cumbersome.
* Many commercial interests, staking their future on the successful growth of the Internet, are calling for a more formal and robust management structure.
* An increasing percentage of Internet users reside outside of the U.S., and those stakeholders want to participate in Internet coordination.
* As Internet names increasingly have commercial value, the decision to add new top-level domains cannot be made on an ad hoc basis by entities or individuals that are not formally accountable to the Internet community.
* As the Internet becomes commercial, it becomes less appropriate for U.S. research agencies to direct and fund these functions."
John Postel did great things for the Internet. However, to make a point or as a 'test', one day in 1998 he redirected most of the Internet's DNS root server traffic to different servers. That was the last straw - maybe the only straw. Here's the Wikipedia version, which matches my vague memory of the story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Postel#DNS_Root_Authority...