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Rebuilding Iraq's Internet
Anselm writes "According to this article at Wired.com, "The war has left Iraq's Internet infrastructure in shambles. Now, a British ISP hopes to fund the reconstruction through sales of domain names ending in .iq." While I have no use for an IQ domain, the article does make me wonder: Should geeks around the world take the lead in getting Iraq back online?"
Try and feed them first.
Boo freakady who. Iraq has so many other problems right now. Why dont geeks send MONEY, FOOD to local companies like CARE that help the people of Iraq. By providing food, 100% of the people can use it. how many iraq's have a computer much less have ever been online? Yeah, in a year or two from now, when people are feed and they are dying for disesases, then worry abou rebuilding the internet systems...
Geeks should definitely get involved and they should do it through GeekCorps since that works through the PeaceCorps and international organizations.
Suicide Booth: You are now dead! Thank you for using Stop and Drop, America's favorite since 2008.
Yes, because, God knows, getting on the 'Net is every Iraqi's first priority at the moment.
How does this help the Iraqi people? All this does is give the rest of the world more domain space, while not giving Iraq the full value of their "property".
Why couldn't it be an Iraqi company that sells the domains? This would allow the country to keep all of the proceeds, instead of only getting some of the value.
I'm not against the UK, the US, France or anybody, but I think this might be one area where this company is being opportunistic.
An online Starcraft RPG? Only at
In soviet Russia, all your us are belong to base!
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
I thought Halliburton had a lucrative contract to do this too?
evil adrian
Doesn't rebuilding the Internet in Iraq require other critical resources first?
You know.... like ELECTRICITY?
Seriously, this is pathetic! Basically some company trying to profit off selling country code domain names to sites not in the country, while there's still too much chaos for anyone inside the country to take notice!
You're asking one of two questions:
Q) "I'm planning to do something to help rebuild Iraq's communications. Is that a good idea?"
A)That's great! Bless you!
Q) "Should "we" / "the community" / hackers / geeks do something to help rebuild Iraq's communications?"
A) Uhhh, sure. Go open a Sourceforge project.
Re: .iq domains -- I can see high.iq and low.iq going, and probably sex.iq. I suspect oil is going to continue to drive their economy, though.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
No one said they should spend the money they receive for food and health instead on Internet access. They simply want to build the Internet infrastructure in Iraq into something that can be used by the masses. I would say freedom of information coincides quite nicely with the coalitions effort to build Iraq into a land free people. Pulling these people out of the knowldege embargo imposed by Saddam Hussein and his regime will help freedom survive in an area of the world that is known for it's denial of free information to citizens. Knowledge _IS_ power. When Iraqi citizens can get equal acess to information they can see other side of the coin, instead of the state controlled side only. Why do you think so many totalitarian governments want to control the Internet access to their countries (CHINA)? So it does coincide with the freedom initiative quite well.
Besides you have to start the plans now to rebuild if you want to get it done later. This type of rebuilding is going to last a lifetime and take a tremendous amount of planning and effort.
If people in the US and the UK value their lives, they will resist the impulse to try to turn Iraq into a colony that is run for corporate profit. (And yes, that's what this is, even though these guys are masquerading as a charity: they intend to take a cut from selling the "high.iq" domain). Iraq's domain namespace belongs to the Iraqi people, not to a clever British IT consultancy. Similarly, the decision as to whether to deploy GSM or CDMA belongs to the future Iraqi government, not to a congressman in the pocket of Qualcomm. Next, we'll see a bunch of Midwestern farmers clamor to get the government to buy up their grain and dump it on Iraq, thereby setting back efforts to rebuild Iraqi agriculture (which employs far more Iraqis than the oil industry does).
We're now at a tipping point: we can either insist that Iraq be run in the interest of Iraqis, or we can allow it to be taken over by a bunch of cronies and lobbyists. If the latter happens, we'll generate so much hate that it will be unsafe for Americans and Brits to travel abroad.
The .iq TLD should belong to the people of Iraq. They should have the final say as to who gets access to it. Selling it off like .tv and .cx today would basicly mean that this ISP is taking advantage of these people because their government is in shambles. Shame on them.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Would make for great datacenters. Does any other place in the world have a higher density of nuclear resistant underground bunkers?
I am sure the US bunker buster bombs didn't get them all.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Let's not forget that Iraq is not Afghanistan. It is a "modern" country that had a scumbag for a leader.
--Joey
I am using modern in the context of the Middle East, it is not modern by Western European or American standards.
I don't understand the sentiment of posters who complain that this is a dumb idea because they need help with food/water first, etc... blah.
/. readers wouldn't be able to physically help deliver meal packets or dig wells (ay least not as ably as the Red Cross or United Way could), so why not do something else that you CAN do?
The best way to help the Iraqi's is to contribute whatever you can the best you can. If you're a skilled IT professional who can donate time to help rebuild their IT infrastructure.. GREAT! Why should anybody be complaining about that?
Sure they need food. But there are PLENTY of agencies that can help with that and if you can donate some money to that cause, wonderful. It shouldn't stop you from contributing your niche knowledge too.
When it comes to hands on skill I'll bet the vast majority of the
As a community the readership does have a skill in a particular industry and to suggest that the Iraqis won't need that kind of help because of other problems is nonsense. The sooner everyone does what they can according to their abilities the sooner we'll all be better off.
Sure, they need food and safe water first, but there is a future in Iraq that people can think and talk about. There's already huge aid packages being put together.
Iraq needs an economy in order to become self-sufficient. Things like this ARE going to be important. Let's try to make Iraq into a prosperous country.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I have seen too many people making references to Iraq by appending other country's values to it. So read this from the CIA
/ iz.html
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos
It has information like literacy rates, religions, etc. I was surprised by a few things, for example, I thought all Iraqis were Arabs, but it turns out there are a fair amount of Turks, Assyrians etc.
I hope they can become a shining example of democracy in a region that is dominated by dictators.
After all, Italy, Germany and Japan have it pretty well now!
--Joey
Just last night I was listening to the shopping list of problems at Baghdad hospitals right now and thought to myself "well, I'm no help with that, but if they've got IT problems, I'd go help."
I realize there are far bigger issues in the conflict, and the world; but as another poster said, I'm a lot better at fixing technology then at fixing people or giving away food.
I'm not sure if there really is a requirement for an IT Peace Corp, but it's a nice idea. Post-war nerd squad to setup communications infrastructure. Internet, TV, radio, cell phones, we can do all that stuff.
Geeks Without Borders. Attractive idea.
I'm not sure if you were being sarcastic or not. But, YES. The US acted on the will of its people through their represented officials. It is the people who drilled themselves into this dillema; they financed an unneeded war out of their own pockets causing an astounding debt to accumulate. Surely they would have anticipated that Iraq will need money once the war is over and have taken that into account! The responsibility for re-building Iraq to a state equal to, or better than it's previous state is the sole responsibility of the United States and it's allies that joined the war. Everyone who had nothing-to-do-with it has already absolved themselves of both the guilt associated with the unneeded deaths, the financial requirements of war, and responsibility of the betterment of that country's future. It's simple common sense and fairness.
I think before CITRI plants their flag in Baghdad, they might want to consider the fact that somebody already owns the .iq root server.
From linked page:
Sponsoring Organization:
Alani Corp.
c/o InfoCom
630 International Parkway
Richardson, Texas 75081
United States
I'll pass up expected comment about Texans owning a chunk of Iraq... </troll>
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
That has been the case since the fall of the Soviet Union and will be true for at least another decade, when China gets its legs.
The point being, now everyone knows it. The gloves are off and the neo-cons will strike while the iron is hot. On the one hand, the U.S. denies that it intends to hit Syria and Iran next and on the other hand they're already setting up to do exactly that.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
Absolutely, but not before giving at least a small contribution to the World Food Programme, which is in desperate need of funds to combat starvation in both Iraq and sub-Saharan Africa at the same time. Then there will be enough people alive to use the internet!
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
This embarrassing project is doomed to fail for two very obvious reasons:
1) Very few (non-Iraqi) people or organizations will want a domain name visibly associated with an ignoble war, death and destruction, and a long-term dictatorship.
2) Very few people (and I include the members of Mensa which are mentioned as an example in CITRI's web page) will want a domain name that broadcasts how proud they are of their ability to pass standard intelligence tests. You see it's just not cool to be clever. Not that way, anyway.
I suspect the only takers - at a knock-down price - will be the tasteless owners of shoddy porn, gambling and con-merchant websites. And spammers great and small.
This is absolutely disgusting. These people are clearly taking advantage of someone else's (Iraq's) misfortune to try and make a buck. This group does not already control the .iq domain, but they know that if they can steal it, it'll be like having a licence to print money. Absolutely nothing is being said on their website about how much of this money they're collecting would actually be going to Iraq, and frankly, I suspect that "paying big salaries at Citri" will somehow also be considered to be an important part of the general welfare of Iraq's IT infrastructure.
Let's see, there's also the small matter of it's not necessarily the desire of the Iraqi people that their domain space be sold off to people outside Iraq. For all we know, they could want a more conservative approach to be taken with it, and have it only be allowed for use by companies and organizations that reside within Iraq.
From their web page:
"The auction is set to continue over an intense two month period, after which funds will be called upon from the winners of each bid, and registrations formalised."
Translation:
s/auction/looting/;
"In the case that a registration is not successful, no funds will be charged, unless the individual wishes to make a donation to the fund."
Translation:
"If the piles of money offered for domains doesn't change the minds of the people in the IANA and get us Iraq's domain, then you won't be out a penny."