I'm taking this all as a fairly casual conversation except for the few one liners that I haven't responded to with much diplomacy. I'm open to the discussion and open to different views on the topic as a whole. Can you honestly say that the original post in the thread, let me quote for you:
"
RE: Should the US control the Internet?
Why not? We invented it.
"
- Dunston
Now does that sound like someone who's open to disussing the topic and hearing different view points? I read that as a simple lazy one liner of the age old reworded "we made it, you make your own"
I did not say that the US overall has said "we made it, bow to our will". What I said was that the individual who had no involvement in producing it said "we invented it, don't like it, make your own".
I'm focusing on individuals using a one-liner with no real indication of thought behind it separately from focusing on the overall discussion topic.
Yes, I did add the "bow down to us" for emphasis. This was still in terms of the individual who feels an unjustified sense of entitlement. The nationality of the individual is irrelevant even. I'd have said the same if someone came on here and said "hey, we made the canada arm.. you don't like it.. tell NASA to send it back and make there own." - same thing; a "we made it, make your own" argument with no thought.
I wrote sever different wordings for the same basic argument concept; each time a little different, sometimes for emphasis. I clearly said that my grief was with the fact that it's a lazy and dismissive argument. I also said clearly that I was open to the idea there the argument itself could in fact be very valid if it was shown to have some valid and rational thought behind it. In a number of posts I am happy to hear rational and valid arguments for ICANN control remaining within US borders. I've acknowledged that what isn't broken shouldn't be fixed. I probably should have clarified that this discussion is really all academic anyhow since it's very unlikely that anyone involved in it actually works for ICANN or is invited to the political meeting in the original article.
Even your response includes "give me some reason why it should be fixed". The original post I responded to did not offer any opening for further discussion. You have "lalalalala.. but". The original post has "lalalalalalala!".
Also:
Whom might that be? - I already said elsewhere that I didn't know. I mentioned that my knowledge of the UN is likely lacking. I even thanked another poster for suggesting a nationality neutral organization like IEEE which would maintain the top level domains based on best practices rather than any one countries political views.
The analogy I'll try to clarify because my writing can suck. Start with a small office; one server and a bunch of workstations in a star topology. I'd personally assign responsibility for 99% up time, user maintenance and the rest of the technology management tasks to an IT expert. I wouldn't give reception the administrators uname/passwd and say "best of luck, if the server goes down or a user ID isn't canceled on time then it's your neck." Reception and IT management already have there own task lists and workloads to manage. Both are different skill sets.
If we replace "business" with "military" (arguably the same thing), you have a clear rank structure through which recruits progress s based on training and promotion. As you move upward, you gain more responsibility for the branches under your position. Sargents manage Corporals, Corporals manage the level below them. In that case, I'm going to assign responsability for the IT structure of the base too someone of applicable rank. Corporal Clinger isn't going to be made responsible for the entire bases systems. I'm going to pick a Captain, hold his neck liable and give him a bunch of Corporal Clingers to order around.
Using an example directly related to computers. If I have a root folder with subfolders and I need to restrict access to the folder trees within that. I'm not going to give every user access to manage the root folder. I'm going to give the server admin rights to the root folder because the admin is that level above the regular users. Each of them get there own folder to work within of course but not each other's.
Now, the long winded analogy comes around to governments. The small business is planet Earth with it's Internet stretching out to all the different departments (countries). In my way of thinking about network structure, I don't put full responsibility for the user access list in the hands of one of the staff baried deep within one of the departments political structure. I give responsibility to an IT expert who's position is independent of the department heads. The IT expert would not answer to a middle manager who in turn answers to an upper manager who intern answers to the director of marketing. That would be poor business structure and network design. If (I discussed my knowledge of the UN already) the UN was a competent board of executives and each of the country a different department with it's own director (el presedente, despot, prime minister, king.. whatever), the current structure of the Internet is to have someone lower in the structure within a department managing the root level of the server. ICANN as an organization within the US is answerable to the government and is responsible for managing the root domains of a, now, international networking of systems.
The correlation I was seeing is that the Internet, though based on US developed technology (And we thank the brilliant indaviduals who did that work), has grown into something larger than any one country. It's root level is still being maintained by a subset grouping of only one country affected by it though. That is fine if the organization can remain independent of it's countries politicians but it's still not good network design.
I'm not sure if all that actually clarifies the analogy. Like I said though, other's have raised valid concerns about censorship which I've not seen in previous discussions over Internet control. "If it's not broken" is also a valid point to consider though I find censorship a stronger argument. Both of those allow for further discussion.
Trying to present complete reasoning in full detail could easily mean everyone turning in thousand word essays on the subject. In a discussion forum, I'm not trying to write pages of thesis support or a legal document.
This form of communication seems to develop in short bursts back and forth. In that regard, my reasoning may be very solid (or a complete reck) though I suspect it is simply just not expressed in full detail due to the nature of the forum. It's also not a finalized reasoning since the forum is for discussion would could easily lead to further reasoning.
It's still all academic anyhow since I doubt ICANN is going to suddenly respond to the comments of one of us individuals banging away in a random chat forum.
