http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04...erview_lisbon/

Russia is the new USSR, based on the way Putin has been acting. But we can definitely give ICANN a place on the digital axis of evil.

*THANK YOU!* futurismo for posting that link.

What I find very bothersome is the common belief that somehow ICANN is important to the internet. It is not. Imagine if ICANN were to vanish in a poof of money-colored smoke. There would be a great deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of ICANN's beneficiaries, the trademark aggregation (as opposed to the trademark creation) industry and the incumbent DNS registries (mainly Verisign.) But apart from that, the internet would keep on going like an Energizer bunny without missing a beat - packets would still flow, names would still resolve, IP addresses would still be allocated.

Truer words were never spoken ....

But given that those other countries have not yet objected to the fact that several of the DNS root servers are operated by the US military, a group whose obligation to protect the US supersedes that of protecting the internet (it would not surprise me if I were to hear that those military-operated root servers were being data mined with the data stream being piped into an intelligence agency. This is pure speculation, I have no information either way).

IMHO it's silly to think otherwise - I've mentioned this very issue many times myself here on DS.

To be clear, I've no problems with it being done, I just have a problem with fessing up to this fact and how it then influences US's control over the internet with no regard for any other country and it's interests (such as native TLDs / China / I-DNS / etc).

Did you see this earlier story:

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-6172758-7.html

"The closest thing the Internet has to a governing body seems to want the same kind of immunity from national laws that the International Red Cross and the International Olympic Committee have enjoyed for decades.

A recent report prepared for the board of ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) says the organization should "explore the private international organization model" and it should "operationalize whatever outcomes result."

Dejargonized, that means ICANN could become largely immune from civil lawsuits, police searches and taxes, and its employees would have quasi-diplomatic privileges (such as importing items into the U.S. without paying customs duties)."

The one peice of the puzzle I'd not put together before this was how I-DNS backed down on their native TLD implementation. I'm wondering if the miltary/NSA is in fact supportive of ICANN as a proxy to help control the flow of lookups through their root servers. If so that could explain why I-DNS's solution disappeared and why ICANN never followed through on their promised native TLD implementation.

At least the ICANN are answerable - in part - to the US government.

If they did ever manage an International status with immunities and quasi-diplomatic priveleges,then,they really might look like an ivory towered Kremlin floating on a Swiftian flying island - taxing the DNS without representaion or accountabilty.

Yes but as noted in his comments ICANN does NOT actually control the ROOT. That suggests to me that they'd be a shill for Verisign, or Verisign would simply start ignoring them alltogether.