Except that if as the article suggests, ICANN is replaced by a UN agency, UN law would become, in some ways, directly enforceable by that agency (at least insofar as the replacement agency has the ability to enforce.)
Any devolution of ICANN's powers to the UN (which, if not massively fucked up, is probably healthier for the internet than keeping it under one country) would likely be an administrative handover. I seriously doubt it would be done on the basis that the G77 voting as a block could take control of the net.
For an analogy, look at the way the UN peacekeepers typically handle things. They go someplace where there's peacekeeping.. and then they sit there. They don't do anything and avoid taking a side at all costs. If either side says they're not welcome anymore, they're gone.
The UN isn't a government, it's a really big conference room.
Having the Internet controlled primarily by the US and US-friendly organizations may not be ideal, but it would be better than having it controlled by a China, Russia, Mid-east dominated body.
The objective of whom? Please, name names. Or don't bother.
If I don't trust the motives and agendas of some of the regimes behind that push, so sue me? The US isn't exactly a paragon these days, and our political system somewhat corrupted by the influence of highly-concentrated wealth, but I also see signs of a long-overdue self-corrective reaction to that, enabled in large part by the open Internet.
Is such a reaction possible in other more restrictive, more authoritarian regimes? Doesn't look like it, and ones like China are doing all they can make sure it stays that way, but who knows. We shall see...
In other situations Russia and China fight to reduce the power of the UN. Mostly situations where western powers are seeking UN legitimacy for piercing national sovereignty, such as in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Today Russia opposed UN intervention in Syria, and I think China does as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_peacekeeping#Hum...
[edit] The US abstained - http://usun.state.gov/briefing/statements/2010/151133.htm
I don't know how much you can read into things. In war, you usually have the bad guys and the worse guys. If you put a good person in a war zone he or she will do bad things.
Bingo. Not for the country as a whole, or the people within it, but definitely for the executive branch.
I don't know how much you can read into things.
I don't think there is any real need to look for a subtle subtext here. The UN certainly isn't bothering to be particularly subtle.
In war, you usually have the bad guys and the worse guys.
In that case you accept no possibility of a defensive or peacekeeping force working on behalf of ordinary people and think that soldiers are mindless thugs who will just loot anyone they are sent to protect. I don't accept that and think that it is possible to have a culture of respect on the ground, but only if that permeates the entire organisation and only if infractions by those people that you are imposing on a situation are publicly investigated and properly dealt with as a matter of absolute policy.
If you put a good person in a war zone he or she will do bad things.
If I take that statement at face value, then I'd have to say that history contains plenty of examples to the contrary.
It seems like the article authors or the leakers are "reading between the lines" but I'd be happier to have a link and a reference number so I could read the proposal in context.
Which is still almost zero.