Diary of a Wolfeman

There’s been some hubbub lately over how well ICANN is running things and other interests. I honestly can’t pick one side or the other for these topics, so I’m asking you – what do you think?

Should the United States give up control of the Internet, and if so, who should take over?

This is a tough one for me. Since an American agency invented and deployed the initial Internet system before openning it up to the world, I think we should retain control of the higher functions and further development. This was all taxpayer money, so it basically belongs to all Americans who pay taxes. (Yes, I know this is a rather grandiose viewpoint, bear with me.)

Mostly, I am afraid that any organization formed to control the internet on a global scale is going to become way too much like the U.N. – basically useless due to internecine politics. Any new governing body would have to be a-political – which can’t be done.

Net Neutrality
I go back and forth so much over this one it’s a tennis match. It seems logical that telcos should be able to charge extra to heavy bandwidth users. On the other end, it gets swampy quick.

Case in point: when I was running high-speed data downtown, we once lost service for a whole week. Seems that on a Saturday morning, some nitwit punched through a fiber trunk with a backhoe. Now, that line was owned by Company A, which leased access to Company B, which sub-let it to Company C, which sub-sub-let to Company D.The physical problem took only a day to fix, but it took another day for each of the Companies in turn to verify the work completed. In this example setup, which company gets to actually charge for the faster bandwidth? Do all 4 companies get to charge? How will this affect the end-user?

Anyone have any insight?