Free Republic

Excerpt - The organization that oversees Internet addresses is expected Thursday to approve a proposal to create an unlimited number of so-called top-level domains -- the familiar suffixes like ".com" at the end of Web addresses. Under the plan, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will allow organizations to apply for any top-level domain. Businesses, for example, could use brand names such as ".ibm" or ".ebay" in their Web addresses. Cities could sign up for names like ".nyc" or ".berlin." It will also be possible to apply to use more general terms, such as ".news" or ".sports," to...

NEW YORK (AP) - The Internet's key oversight agency is taking a preliminary step toward combating domain name tasting - the online equivalent of buying expensive clothes on a charge card only to return them for a full refund after wearing them to a party. Entrepreneurs have been taking advantage of a five-day grace period to sample domain names, keeping the relative few that might generate advertising revenues and dropping the rest before paying. The grace period was originally designed to rectify legitimate mistakes, such as registrants mistyping the domain name they are about to buy. But with automation and...

NEW YORK - Debate over U.S. control of core Internet systems threatens to overtake an international meeting in Brazil next week that was meant to cover topics including spam, free speech and cheaper access. The Internet Governance Forum is the result of a compromise world leaders reached at a U.N. summit in Tunisia two years ago. They agreed to let the United States remain in charge. But they established an annual forum to discuss emerging issues, including whether control of how Internet addresses are assigned — and thus how people use the Internet — should remain with the U.S. government...

NEW YORK (AP) - New Internet addresses for general use could start appearing in the summer of 2008 under a timeline the Internet's key oversight agency announced Thursday. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers invited public comment on procedures for creating new names, the first expansion for general use since 2000. Names added since then have been limited to specific regions or industries. "This is all about choice," ICANN Chief Executive Paul Twomey said in a statement. "We want the diversity of the world's people, geography and business to be able to be represented in the domain name...

The Chinese are rapidly becoming big net users Tests have been carried out to see if spelling internet domains with non-English characters will disrupt the smooth running of the net.The tests are a step towards the formal use of non-English character sets such as Chinese and Arabic in domain names. Internationalised domain names will make the net easier to use for the majority of net users who do not have English as their first language. The work to introduce these character sets should be finished by 2008. Dummy run The tests were carried out by the Internet Corporation for...

Excerpt - In a legal decision that stunned even the lawyers for the victor, a U.S. District Court judge on Mar. 8 handed over the embattled Web registrar Registerfly.com to the executive who was running it when it began to founder. Judge Peter Sheridan ruled in favor of defendant Kevin Medina, who had been chief executive of the parent company, Unifiednames, before he was fired by two other board members on Feb. 12. ~ snip ~ Naruszewicz, one of the two who had fired Medina and taken control of the company, doesn't plan to appeal the judge's decision. "We lost...

Last month, the Commerce Department said it would retain oversight of ICANN for another three years, although it agreed to be less actively engaged. Reding called that "the first step in the right direction." "We do not need governments to have hands on ICANN. That's why we have discussed this for years with the Americans in order to leave ICANN free, to leave ICANN independent, without government oversight," she said. "We will monitor very closely what will happen in the next months and years and hope that ICANN can be independent." The United States and other governments, she added, should...

Judge Denies Demand To Shut Down Spamhaus By Gregg Keizer Courtesy of TechWeb News A federal judge has rejected an e-mail marketing company's request that the Internet domain assigned to Spamhaus, a non-profit organization based in the U.K., be suspended, giving the anti-spam group's blacklist a reprieve and avoiding a clash over U.S. rulings against the Internet. U.S. District Court Judge Charles Kocoras denied the proposed motion from e360Insight, an Illinois-based company that sued Spamhaus for adding its domain to the blacklist, a database of spammers and suspected spammers that is widely used by spam filtering services and software. Spamhaus...

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the U.S. Department of Commerce couldn't be cozier. ICANN and the DoC this week inked a five-year contract, renewing a deal in which the nonprofit group had managed technical details of the Internet since 1998. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it consists of five one-year options. ICANN will continue to conduct its Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) tasks, which include allocating IP address space, assigning protocol identifiers, and managing generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name systems and root servers. Most importantly, ICANN will...

In a meeting that will go down in internet history, the United States government last night conceded that it can no longer expect to maintain its position as the ultimate authority over the internet. Having been the internet's instigator and, since 1998, its voluntary taskmaster, the US government finally agreed to transition its control over not-for-profit internet overseeing organisation ICANN, making the organisation a more international body. However, assistant commerce secretary John Kneuer, the US official in charge of such matters, also made clear that the US was still determined to keep control of the net's root zone file -...

There will be much to discuss (http://www.icann.org/meetings/marrakech/) at ICANN's Marrakech meeting which kicks off this Saturday, but one question rises about all others: what will happen to the internet on 30 September 2006? ICANN has its own agenda to discuss, but that agenda and what people actually want to discuss are a little different. As is the fundamental issue that everyone at that meeting should be talking about. This is our account of what is likely to happen, why, and what it all means. First off, here are the specific items on the ICANN check list: Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs)...

Newly released e-mails allege U.S. government officials pressured a leading Internet authority into voting against creating a kind of red-light district for adult Web sites. The apparent involvement of the U.S. Department of Commerce, President Bush's chief political operative Karl Rove and others is significant. If true, it means the U.S. government violated terms of a complicated arrangement it has with ICANN, the Internet authority that voted 9-5 two weeks ago not to OK the .xxx proposal. What ICM Registry, the company that proposed the top-level domain, wanted was permission to distribute Web addresses that ended in .xxx to be...

See for example this thread first. Again, adult topics and situations, so clear the kids out of the room. And for those who are not computer geeks, ICANN is the "Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers". They have something to do with defining and assigning internet domains and suchforth. ICANN has announced it rejects The web domain called .XXX (If you surf with one hand I'll bet you understand) ...but you still could type "Google" and "Sex"

A SPECIAL domain for sex websites has bitten the dust at an international meeting in New Zealand today, with Australia, the US and the European Union moving to kill off a proposal for ICANN to create a ".xxx" domain for pornography. Amid vociferous opposition, ICANN, the international body that is responsible for internet domain names, has been considering a proposal by US company ICM Registry for the new code. But governments have been fighting a rearguard action to have the plan canned, with the US Department of Commerce and the European Commission writing to ICANN opposing the proposal. Australia brought...

The body that oversees net addresses has approved a controversial deal over the future of the .com domain. The deal gives US firm Verisign control of .com until 2012 and lets it raise prices in at least four of the next six years. The board of net overseer the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers was split over the agreement. Critics said the deal virtually granted Verisign an everlasting monopoly over the iconic net domain. Final approval The deal agreed between Icann and Verisign signals the end of lawsuits filed by the organisations against each other. The legal action...

The American people simply have no idea what it’s like to live in a totalitarian society. We go where we want; watch movies and television shows or any kind; start new businesses on a whim; shop in huge supermarkets that carry any item imaginable; even sit in public places and say anything we want about political leaders. Today in our modern society, many of us sit at our computer for hours on end sending e-mails, corresponding, web surfing, researching, subscribing to web sites, gaining information, booking hotels and airline reservations, buying gifts, even creating personal web sites – or blogs...

Friends of freedom breathed a sigh of relief last November when the World Summit on the Information Society held in Tunis came to a close without control of the Internet being ceded to a collection of foreign governments under the auspices of the United Nations. Although the international confabulation was unsuccessful in wresting control from the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) -- a quasi-governmental non-profit organization -- Tunis was just the opening gambit in the UN’s drive for control. We face a long, drawn out battle to preserve the freedom and independence of the World Wide...

German computer engineers are building an alternative to the Internet to make a political statement. A Dutch company has built one to make money. China has created three suffixes in Chinese characters substituting for .com and the like, resulting in Web sites and email addresses inaccessible to users outside of China... The Internet...uses a so-called domain-name system, also called the "root," that consists of 264 suffixes. These include .com, .net, .org and country codes such as .jp for Japan. The root is coordinated by a private, nonprofit group in Marina del Rey, Calif., called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names...

2005: The year the US government undermined the internet And no, it's not what you're thinking Published Thursday 29th December 2005 19:34 GMT 2005 in review 2005 will be forever seen as the year in which the US government managed to keep unilateral control of the internet, despite widespread opposition by the rest of the world. However, while this very public spat went on, everyone failed to notice a related change that will have far greater implications for everyday internet users and for the internet itself. That change will see greater state-controlled censorship on the internet, reduce people's ability to...

The quasi-governmental organization that oversees the Internet has tentatively approved a ".asia" Web domain to unify the Asia-Pacific community, but the group has delayed a decision on whether to move forward with a ".xxx" zone for pornography sites. At its annual meeting this past weekend in Vancouver, British Columbia, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers took up several topics related to the global administration of the Internet, which has become a heated topic because the U.S. has insisted on maintaining oversight. The new ".asia." domain would supplement suffixes available for individual countries, such as ".cn" for China and...

...The Internet will reach its full potential as a medium and facilitator for global economic expansion and development in an environment free from burdensome intergovernmental oversight and control. The success of the Internet lies in its inherently decentralized nature, with the most significant growth taking place at the outer edges of the network through innovative new applications and services. Burdensome, bureaucratic oversight is out of place in an Internet structure that has worked so well for many around the globe. We regret the recent positions on Internet governance(i.e., the “new cooperation model”) offered by the European Union, the Presidency of...

The World Summit in Tunis last month was overshadowed by the global argument over internet governance. Its biggest controversy came with the proposition put forward by the EU a month earlier that there be a new inter-governmental body that oversee ICANN. The US government - which currently enjoys unilateral control over the internet infrastructure - was furious and launched an enormous lobbying campaign, both public and private, across the board to retain its position. Most significant among all those lobbying efforts was a letter sent from the US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to the UK foreign minister Jack Straw...

Greetings, and a quick tip: Anyone in favor of censorship and internet taxes can skip the rest of this column. OK. For those still with me, who probably agree it is not a good idea to have Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe editing your blog and then charging you for it, it’s time to talk about the great UN internet grab. Thanks to the U.S. just saying no, the UN bid to get its hands on our keyboards failed this month at the United Nations Internet conclave in Tunis. But don’t drop your guard. The UN will be back. The pickings are...

TUNIS, Tunisia (CNN) -- At the recent World Summit on the Information Society held in Tunisia's capital, delegates from the 174 participating countries met with the aim of bridging the "digital divide" that separates rich and poor nations. But even higher on the agenda was the demand to reduce U.S. control over the Internet. And despite the summit bringing together more than 30 heads of state and government, and about 20,000 of their officials, the battle for control of what is seen as a commercial goldmine, ended in a declaration that allowed the status quo to continue. In theory, no...

The proposed .xxx porn domain has been kicked into the long grass just days before it was due to meet final approval. ICANN chairman Vint Cerf stunned an open meeting of the governmental advistory committee (GAC) in Vancouver late on Tuesday when he announced that the whole issue had been pulled from the Board meeting agenda - where it had been the first topic of discussion. The reason given (this time) was that the GAC needed time to review a 350-page ICANN report on the domain's feasibility before it could provide its approval (or disapproval). That's a red herring though....

Summary: Foreign governments want control of the Internet transferred from an American NGO to an international institution. Washington has responded with a Monroe Doctrine for our times, setting the stage for further controversy. As historic documents go, the statement issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce on June 30 was low-key even by American standards of informality. No flowery language, no fountain-penned signatures, no Great Seal of the United States -- only 331 words on a single page. But the simplicity of the presentation belied the importance of the content, which was Washington's attempt to settle a crucial problem of...

We're hearing tales of two scenarios--one pessimistic, one optimistic--for the future of the Net. If the paranoids are right, the Net's toast. If they're not, it will be because we fought to save it, perhaps in a new way we haven't talked about before. Davids, meet your Goliaths. This is a long essay. There is, however, no limit to how long I could have made it. The subjects covered here are no less enormous than the Net and its future. Even optimists agree that the Net's future as a free and open environment for business and culture is facing many...

TUNIS, Tunisia -- Despite a late-night agreement averting a global showdown over continued U.S. control of the Internet's addressing system, many delegates to a U.N. technology summit did not believe the Americans emerged victorious. Representatives of a number of countries remained adamant that U.S. control must be tempered if the Internet is to fully reach its potential. And even traditional allies of Washington considered it to have opened the door to the possibility of more shared governance. President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe spoke for the more radical opposition to U.S. control, saying Washington and its allies cannot continue to "insist...

The United Nations has lost its bid to take control of the Internet. That's a good thing, because it was a poor idea at every level. According to a CNN dispatch from a global summit in Tunisia, the U.N. based its argument on the need to close the "digital divide" that separates rich and poor nations. But it's hard to understand how U.N. control over domain names and technical issues would help poorer nations make fuller use of technology. The U.N. certainly hasn't been a factor in the growth of the Internet in the U.S. or Europe. And I doubt...

TUNIS, Tunisia — A U.N. technology summit opened Wednesday after an 11th-hour agreement that leaves the United States with ultimate oversight of the main computers that direct the Internet's flow of information, commerce and dissent. A lingering and vocal struggle over the Internet's plumbing and its addressing system has overshadowed the summit's original intent: to address ways to expand communications technologies to poorer parts of the world. Negotiators from more than 100 countries agreed late Tuesday to leave the United States in charge, through a quasi-independent body called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. That averted...

Efforts to replace U.S. oversight of the Internet with an international committee were defeated yesterday during U.N.-sponsored meetings. Hundreds of government, nonprofit and industry delegates meeting at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, Tunisia, agreed to establish a new international forum to discuss Internet issues, but it would not have any policy-making power. "No new organizations were created," said David Gross, the State Department's Internet policy chief and head of the U.S. delegation. "No oversight mechanisms were established by anyone over anyone. There was also no change in the U.S. government's role in relation to the Internet,...

Unnoticed by the public the fight for control of the only allegedly anarchischen InterNet escalates far away. The fronts are clear: the USA against the remainder of the world. With the information summit in Tunis this week hard arguments are approaching. Who travels in these days after Tunesien, already in the airport terminal by Postern and posters with strange abbreviations one welcomes. The "gate to the Orient", admits spectacular excavation places and Kamel-safari, welcomed on it proudly and wide the participants of the "WSIS 2005", for the beaches by Djerba or Monastir, for its the world summit of the information...

ALARM - Agreement in Tunis on a progressive evolution of Internet TUNIS - an agreement on a progressive modification of the Internet was reached Tuesday, avoiding a rupture between the United States, hostile with any international control, and the rest of the world, announced negotiators at the world Top on the company of the information (SMSI) of Tunis. MORE...

WSIS Tunis It’s been four years since the issue of how the internet should be run, and by whom, became an official United Nations topic. And yet despite hundreds of hours of talks, three preparatory meetings and a world summit, there is only one thing that the world’s governments can agree on: Masood Khan, Pakistan’s ambassador. Click Here If a certain US senator and a certain EU commissioner are to be believed, the internet is five days away from total collapse as governments are finally forced into a corner and told to agree on a framework for future Internet governance....

Keep the Internet Free By Arch Puddington Saturday, November 12, 2005; Page A25 Delegates from around the world will gather next week in Tunisia for what is known as the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Few people are aware of WSIS's existence, its mission or the purpose of this conference. That is unfortunate, since the principal agenda item calls for a wholesale change in governance of the Internet that could lead to a significant setback for global freedom of information. Although many are under the impression that the Internet is unregulated, this is not entirely the case. There...

It's been a good ride, this whole Internet thing. To hear its boosters tell it, the Net has, in addition to the porn, online poker and cheap drugs, given us democratized information, become a tool for the undermining of totalitarian regimes and given people in the farthest corners of the Earth a window on the wider world that would have been unthinkable before Al Gore invented the Internet (sic).But all that is about to change -- starting tomorrow. The bad news is that we can't really do anything about it. The good news is that the changes that are coming...

FRANKFURT, GERMANY - -- On the global Internet these days, the United States is less trusted and more alone. The worldwide network was born on U.S. shores, but that matters little to the growing number of nations now demanding shared control. An escalating feud over Internet governance is threatening to transform a U.N. summit in Tunisia next week into an acrimonious showdown between the United States and challengers including the European Union. The debate is over whether Washington, through its oversight of a quasi-independent agency, should continue as the ultimate administrator of all the Web's domains -- not only over...

FRANKFURT, GERMANY - On the global Internet these days, the United States is less trusted and more alone. The worldwide network was born on U.S. shores, but that matters little to the growing number of nations that are demanding shared control. An escalating feud over Internet governance is threatening to transform a U.N. summit in Tunisia next week into an acrimonious showdown between the U.S. and challengers, including the European Union. The debate is over whether Washington, through its oversight of a quasi-independent agency, should continue as the ultimate administrator of all the Web's domains — not only over .com...

Since its beginning, the Internet has proved a supercharged way to advance liberty. That's enough for some governments to want to take control of it away from the U.S. They must be stopped. These governments — Iran and Brazil leading the charge — feel threatened. They should. Iran's rulers show no respect for political freedom; Brazil's have little if any grasp of economic liberties. So, with the help of the European information commissioner, these countries next month will meet in Tunisia. Their World Summit will try to enact a "model of cooperation" in which Internet governance can be internationalized. If...

International bureaucrats and assorted countries are struggling to wrest control of "Internet governance" from that old unilateralist bogeyman, the United States. There's one big problem with this picture: Cyberspace isn't "governed" by the U.S. or anyone else, and that's the beauty of it. But if the United Nations gets its way..., the Web will end up under its control.... Internet governance, such as it is, currently falls under the purview of a California-based nonprofit called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Better known as Icann, it was created by the U.S. Commerce Department in 1998 to administer the...

It sounds like a reasonable step. Insofar as the Internet is governed, it should be governed by an international body, right? The problem with the analysis is that the Internet is not governed at all. Icann ensures that allocated domain names link to one unique site, in just the way that telephone numbers link to one, and only one, connection. It is a technical job. The fact that Icann is located in California and governed by US law is insignificant. Like Microsoft - also located in the US - it is accountable to its customers, not any government. So why...

Sovereignty or subjugation: Tacking on an international tax By Paul M. Weyrich The United States government is sovereignty. Thus, we Americans legislate, administer and adjudicate our own laws. Challenges to our sovereignty are emanating from the United Nations, the bureaucrats of which are interested in promoting a transfer of income and resources from the Developed World to the Third World. Difficult as it may be for Americans to imagine, unless our politicians have the courage to defend our national sovereignty, we may be shelling out tax money to satiate Big Blue's voracious appetite for revenue. Imagine paying an "international" tax...

Kofi Annan, Coming to a Computer Near You! The Internet's long run as a global cyberzone of freedom--where governments take a "hands off" approach--is in jeopardy. Preparing for next month's U.N.-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (or WSIS) in Tunisia, the European Union and others are moving aggressively to set the stage for an as-yet unspecified U.N. body to assert control over Internet operations and policies now largely under the purview of the U.S. In recent meetings, for an example, an EU spokesman asserted that no single country should have final authority over this "global resource." To his credit,...

UN telcom agency says would be ready to run Internet Fri Sep 30, 2005 6:28 PM BST Printer Friendly | Email Article | RSS By Robert Evans GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations' International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is ready to take over governance of the Internet from the United States., ITU head Yoshio Utsumi said on Friday. The United States has clashed with the European Union and much of the rest of the world over the future of the Internet. It currently manages the global information system through a partnership with California-based company ICANN. "We could do it if we...

Once again, Canada on opposite side of official U.S. position on a moral issue TORONTO, August 22, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Canadian non-profit company is to be the primary manager for a new internet domain, .xxx, a new virtual red light district approved for the internet by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in June.The Toronto-based International Foundation for Online Responsibility (IFFOR) is the sponsor for .xxx., according to a PC World report. ICM Registry is the owner of the domain, but IFFOR will independently oversee all aspects of the operation of the .xxx domain.According to its...

The Bush administration is objecting to the creation of a .xxx domain, saying it has concerns about a virtual red light district reserved exclusively for Internet pornography. Michael Gallagher, assistant secretary at the Commerce Department, has asked for a hold to be placed on the contract to run the new top-level domain until the .xxx suffix can receive further scrutiny. The domain was scheduled to receive final approval Tuesday. "The Department of Commerce has received nearly 6,000 letters and e-mails from individuals expressing concern about the impact of pornography on families and children," Gallagher said in a letter on Thursday...

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Internet's key oversight agency has quietly authorized Iraq's new government to manage its own domain name, allowing for the restoration of Internet addresses ending in ".iq." The suffix had been in limbo after the 2002 federal indictment of the Texas-based company that was running it on charges of funneling money to a member of the Islamic extremist group Hamas. InfoCom Corp., which sold computers and Web services in the Middle East and got the ".iq" assignment in 1997, was convicted in April along with its chief executive and two brothers. The board of the Internet...

A U.N. panel says the United States should give up control of the core functions of the Internet -- a position the United States has already rejected. The United Nations' Working Group on Internet Governance -- WGIG -- released a report this week that says U.S. control of the Internet's technical underpinnings should end. However, the panel failed to agree on a future governance structure and put forward four alternatives, the BBC reported. The alternatives will be discussed Nov. 16-18 at the U.N. World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, Tunisia. The United States beat the WGIG panel to...

A UN group charged with deciding how the net should be run has failed to reach a decision. The group's report suggests four possible futures for net governance that range from no change to complete overhaul. The proposals will go forward to a key UN net and society conference due to take place in November.

BLUNT AMENDMENT TO PREVENT INTERNATIONAL TAXES PASSES --“International taxation out of step with our nation’s formative opposition to ‘taxation without representation’” - WASHINGTON---An amendment sponsored by House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) to the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for fiscal years 2006 and 2007 will prevent the taxation of American citizens or businesses by international entities. The amendment passed the House today by voice vote. “The United States already pays nearly 25 percent of the United Nations’ $2 billion annual budget,” Blunt said. “This payment, of course, comes out of the pockets of the American people. “Congress sent the...