The Great Internet Giveaway

image credit: salon.com

Internet management EXPIRED

Bad news. I might have thought it would be a banner headline, but if you scrolled down, Drudge linked to this Yahoo.com report:

The US government on Saturday ended its formal oversight role over the internet, handing over management of the online address system to a global non-profit entity.

The US Commerce Department announced that its contract had expired with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which manages the internet's so-called "root zone."

That leaves ICANN as a self-regulating organization that will be operated by the internet's "stakeholders" -- engineers, academics, businesses, non-government and government groups.

The move is part of a decades-old plan by the US to "privatize" the internet, and backers have said it would help maintain its integrity around the world.

US and ICANN officials have said the contract had given Washington a symbolic role as overseer or the internet's "root zone" where new online domains and addresses are created.

But critics, including some US lawmakers, argued that this was a "giveaway" by Washington that could allow authoritarian regimes to seize control.

A last-ditch effort by critics to block the plan -- a lawsuit filed by four US states -- failed when a Texas federal judge refused to issue an injunction to stop the transition.

Read the rest here. No good can come of this.

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Obama's illegal Internet giveaway

photo credit: wnd.com

State AGs sue to stop Obama's internet transition

  

Politico’s Tony Romm reports:

Four Republican state Attorneys General [Mike DeWine is not one of them] are suing to stop the Obama administration from transferring oversight of the internet to an international body, arguing the transition would violate the U.S. Constitution.

The lawsuit — filed Wednesday in a Texas federal court — threatens to throw up a new roadblock to one of the White House’s top tech priorities, just days before the scheduled Oct. 1 transfer of the internet’s address system is set to take place.

In their lawsuit, the attorneys general for Arizona, Oklahoma, Nevada and Texas contend that the transition, lacking congressional approval, amounts to an illegal giveaway of U.S. government property. They also express fear that the proposed new steward of the system, a nonprofit known as ICANN, would be so unchecked that it could “effectively enable or prohibit speech on the Internet.”

The four states further contend that ICANN could revoke the U.S. government’s exclusive use of .gov and .mil, the domains used by states, federal agencies and the U.S. military for their websites. And the four attorneys general argue that ICANN’s “current practices often foster a lack of transparency that, in turn, allows illegal activity to occur.”

“Trusting authoritarian regimes to ensure the continued freedom of the internet is lunacy,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a statement. “The president does not have the authority to simply give away America’s pioneering role in ensuring that the internet remains a place where free expression can flourish.”

Read the rest here. Ohio AG Mike DeWine’s website is here. 

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