[kictanet] China: US must hand over Internet control to the world

[alice at apc.org]

And speaking of our KeNIC, do you recall the un-delegation of .iq. (Dot Iraq) sometime, here's a view on that from China. 
Best
Alice

From "China Peoples Daily" 


http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90777/7915248.html

US must hand over Internet control to the world
(People's Daily Online)
11:10, August 18, 2012

The Internet has become one of the most important resources in the world 
in just a few decades, but the governance mechanism for such an 
important international resource is still dominated by a private sector 
organization and a single country.

The U.S. government said in a statement on July 1, 2005 that its 
Commerce Department would continue to support the work of Internet 
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and indefinitely 
retain oversight of the Internet’s 13 root servers.

This indicated the U.S. decision to retain ultimate control over the 
global Internet, which enabled it to unilaterally close the Internet of 
another country. A suddenly paralyzed Internet would definitely cause 
huge social and economic losses to the country.

More and more countries are beginning to question the U.S. control over 
the world’s Internet as the international resource should be managed and 
supervised by all countries together. However, the United States has 
conducted a pre-emptive strike, and refused to give up control over the 
Internet in the name of protecting the resource. The refusal reflects 
its hegemonic mentality and double standards.

The United States controls and owns all cyberspaces in the world, and 
other countries can only lease Internet addresses and domain names from 
the United States, leading to the U.S. hegemonic monopoly over the 
world’s Internet.

During the Iraq War, the U.S. government in 2003 asked ICANN to 
terminate services relating to Iraq’s top-level domain name “.iq” and 
then all websites with the domain name “.iq” disappeared overnight. The 
United States has taken advantage of its control over the Internet to 
launch an invisible war against disobedient countries and to intimidate 
and threaten other countries.

The United States have repeatedly called for “protecting Internet 
freedom.”In fact, it is only protecting its own “Internet freedom” even 
at the expense of other countries. Ten of the global Internet’s 13 root 
servers are located in the United States, and the U.S. government can 
supervise the Internet for national security reasons according to the 
U.S. law. By doing so, the United States actually gains access to all 
information transmitted online, while other countries can do nothing 
about it.

Ultimate control over the Internet has been an important tool for the 
United States to promote its power politics and hegemony worldwide, and 
any other country may fall victim to this. As a big country on the 
Internet, China opposes the U.S. unreasonable and unilateral management 
of the Internet, and seeks to work with the international community to 
build a new international Internet governance system.