[cooperation-wg] Yesterday's US Senate Hearing

> On 15 Sep 2016, at 14:44, Johan Helsingius <julf at julf.com> wrote:
> 
> it has become a veritable soap opera...

I thought it always was a soap opera.

FWIW I watched yesterday’s hearing. [Yes, I need to get out more.] Cruz’s conduct was  disgraceful and shameless. His whatabootery was off the scale.

Strickling and Marby were asked questions equivalent to “is it true you’ve stopped battering your wife?”. They carefully avoided rising to his bait. Cruz’s sock puppets were asked “do you agree it will be bad if Russia, Iran and China get control of the Internet?”. Cruz threatened NTIA staff and accused them of breaking the law. Elected politicians simply shouldn’t attack blameless civil servants like that and certainly not in public.

He was pursuing his own flawed agenda and ignored anything that contradicted that. His starting assumption is/was remarkable: USG is compelled to uphold the US First Amendment (free speech) and that somehow this extends to ICANN because of the IANA contract with NTIA.

Much as it pains me to say this, Kieren’s article in The Register absolutely nails it:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/14/ted_cruz_in_wrongheaded_internet_crusade/