ICANN forum targets US control of the Net
THIS SPRING, ICANN wanted to run away from the USA. The outfit - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - is hired by the U.S. government to help it manage key Internet functions. Now ICANN wants the USA to protect it from “government minders” in places like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Brazil, China, Myanmar, and North Korea to name just a few of the boogie men they fear.
Many foreign government officials and technology gurus want ICANN moved aside for a UN agency to control the Internet. There is lots of talk about the United States having way too much control over a tool that's used by more than 1.4 billion people worldwide.
One side of the row can be summed it up this way: "Our concern is that countries that have been the most vocal advocates of changing control of the Internet are not countries that support an open Internet," according to Leslie Harris, the president of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit U.S. open-Internet advocacy group. "It's hard to believe that turning over the Internet to a body subject to negotiations between China's version of the Internet and North Korea's version of the Internet will result in an Internet that's more open and free."
The other side of the tug of war goes like this: "The Internet has become an everyday instrument of particular importance for the entire world, yet it's still under the control of one country," said Rogerio Santanna, Brazil's secretary of logistics and information technology. "No one country should be able to make decisions that will affect Internet users everywhere."
"Should the U.N. gain control of the Internet," the conservative U.S. research center the Heritage Foundation wrote on its Web site, "it would give meddlesome governments the opportunity to censor and regulate the medium until its usefulness as a vehicle for freedom of expression and international competition is crippled."
"We feel there would be a very healthy check and balances if there was something independent of the United States and ICANN to oversee the system," said Syracuse University professor Milton Mueller, who's part of the academic policy group the Internet Governance Project.
In recent past the US government backed themselves into deep quicksand by
forcing telephone companies to give NSA (National Security Agency) access to
everything on the Internet. We say “everything” because USA is the
telephone
switch board for the world.
The telcos say if they didn't play ball with NSA, they could be accused of
violating US of A's state
secrets
act.
Who is right? INQminds say: parking this lorry someplace in the middle of a Brazilian Rugby Field would be about right.
However, getting to that middle ground, which will satisfy 1.4 billion computer junkies, is not going to be easy. Stay tuned this week and watch the accusations and chest pounding by government spokesbunnies with small minds who really want to control our freedom to tell their bosses to sod off.
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"We say “everything” because USA is the telephone switch board for the world."

...and by "everything", you do mean "EVERYTHING".

http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/769/nsaspyingdiagramuh7.jpg

the less control the US/NSA/CIA/RIAA/MPAA has over the internet, the better for everybody that uses it.
I hate to break this to you, but the govt isn't the one in control of the internet, it's the corporations that bribe (uh, I mean lobby) the politions that are in control.

As for checks and balances, the govt can't even handle the checks and balances within itself.
Sure, hand it over to the UN. That way we can have a Head of ICANN from China to go with the Head of Human Rights from Libya. 

Love it or loathe it, the US gave the world the Internet and it was the only country in the world to have the freedoms to make it possible. Until there is a large number of countries with the same levels of freedom, privacy and accountability, it should stay that way.

Here in Blighty we do not even come close to the level that the US has managed, let alone giving the whole thing to the childish titfer that is the UN.
Let me see if I understand this: the U.S. Department of Defense created the Internet, U.S. taxpayers paid for it's development and research, and now snivelling socialists from other countries want to take control of it for themselves? Because they've somehow mistaken the graciousness of being allowed to use it with an inherent right to use it? Because they believe the history of the world for the last 231ish years has provided overwhelming evidence that things operate in a much more free, rational, and altruistic manner when the U.S. isn't running the show?

Yeah, that sounds about right.
Well I think that pretty much went down the drain ever since Joe User has been able to log on to MyFaceSpaceBookDegreesWhatever.
Not to mention that forums of all kinds have no statutary obligation to uphold freedom of expression (yep - not following the latest judgement of the Court in any case).
The only freedom of expression that exists on the Web is the possibility of creating a web site to post one's opinions - and there's nothing that keeps any given country from filtering it at the door.
So this sounds like just another straw argument to distract from whatever is the real deal going on in the dark rooms of ICANN.
The world is just going to have to be content with a free and open internet that has boosted economies, improved quality of life, and may be the greatest invention of the 20th century. Oh the horror.
The Internet is a concept, not an actual physical entity, so if a country wants to change the way things are done, why don't they just get their own servers? If that's really the issue, than they should petition for their own personal chunk of IPv6 and make the change themselves.

Am I missing something?
This idea that the US invented the internet and gifted it to the world is absurd. I'm Canadian, Canadian Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, although there are others with somewhat credible competing claims, one in France, one in Russia (which if anything strengthens my point). 

The NSA is illegally (under both US and international law) misusing its wieretapping powers. OK all you Americans, give us back all your phones, we never should have gifted them to you as you clearly weren't ready to play nice. Also enclose any fax machines, cell phones, VOIP hardware, internet DSL, etc. which, while some may have been invented in the US, arguably wouldn't exist without the first telephone.

This whole China, Libya, etc. strawman should also be put to bed. The International Telecommunications Union branch of the UN governs the international telephone and radio spectrums amongst other things, and you don't see them politicized, and the ITU has existed since 1865. With the internet we have ICANN in charge of IP and DNS addressing (at base little different from phone or radio addressing) and we have a process completely politicized and skewed towards the US. See the recent decisions on the .xxx top level domain and WHOIS privacy for just two examples of USG meddling. If current metrics hold true one-half of all internet users will be in China by 2010 with India second and the US a shrinking third. As the saying goes, the internet sees control as damage and routes around it. -g
Check your hysteria at the door, fnord. Even a cursory search of the net will provide sites detailing it's history.

And the net routes around control, eh? Tell that to the millions of Chinese who have no hope of reaching websites that their government has decided are bad for "national enthusiasm".
Hey, fnord idiot. Alexander Graham Bell WAS NOT CANADIAN he was born in Scotland and later became an American citizen and only lived in Canada from 1870-1871. Granted he had a summer house in Beinn Bhreagh in Nova Scotia. Though, unfortunatly for you vacationing in Canada (even if they do it every year) doesn't make someone Canadian. Even though Canada may have claimed him as "a native son" by Alexander Graham Bells own words he considered himself American. Oh and for your information the Telephone was first patented in the U.S.A. Also, the telephone was solely an invention. Granted it was an invention that changed the way people communicate but still it was just an invention. The internet was created not just as an invention or form of communication but as a forum. By forum I mean you don't share ideas simply by voice but by picture, sound, video, word all at once and not just to one other person but all of your collegues at the same time and they can respoind back. Just like you would in real life. A Forum that was created and is maintained by the U.S. Thats the reason it should (at least for now) remain in thier control. Also the idea of getting different countries to get thier own servers wouldn't work. Several countries talked about that a few years ago. Though, if the did that the internet would fracture. Individual countries or continents would each end up with thier own version of the internet with only loose connectivity between all of the differenet internets.
Well, China, Germany and some other countries are testing new technology similar to internet.

Hopefully, in the next 10 or 20 years, internet will be among seveal networking technologies that people can actually choose, if the US chooses to control Internet all by itself.

Just be rational, guys. Do u really believe other governments would like to see something as vital as intenet being control by a single country?