Slashdot Mirror
EU Domain Registries & ICANN
rob_levine writes "Following on from the announcement a few weeks ago that the U.S. Department Of Commerce intends to retain control of the Internet's root domain servers (originally to be relinquished in 2006), several EU domain registries are preparing to build, test and install a system to prevent U.S. government meddling, according to this article in The Register.
Could this be the beginning of the end of the centralised autocracy that is ICANN?"
.bigot
Re-read the facts.
ICANN is the 'offical' governing body of the internet framework, but it is a not-for-profit company, and has no real teeth. The depatement of comerce, a US governmental department says that they control domain names, and that ICANN has no real power over what ICANN manages.
The EU sees this as a threat since they are basically depending on the US government to maintain economic and social stability for all. I don't see a problem with this. If they can divide the IP blocks into multiple regions, I don't see the harm in doing it for DNS names. As long as everyone gets along and the systems blend together, no harm to me.
Bye!
I believe ICANN brought this upon themselves. Or at least the people responsible for the root DNS servers to be "owned" by USA. Somebody said "but USA invented the internet" as an argument that it's just and right. Another smart person said that germany invented the gas engine. So then shouldn't germany have the control of all cars? My point being, is that the operation of internet should be an international effort. There should be no monopolies on any part of the internet. This creates nice opportunities for companies like verisign to ask higher registration fees. Where does this money go? I can hardly believe any of it is used to find all the registerated "spam"-domains with false registration info. Or regulating the people getting screwed over by their ICANN-certified registrar who in the reality doesnt seem very ICANN-certified. No refunds...
I like how "a meeting of worldwide top-level domain owners" settle things by a show of hands.
I know that it was us american boys who invented the internets, but it seems really hokey to take arbitrary control of it. I agree someone needs to be checking on these things - we can't just open this all the way up to hackers, but do we really need to establish our internet penis in this fashion?
It was ARPA funding that got the first working packet switching network off the ground, and it was ARPA funding that made it into the internet, but that doesn't mean that all of the innovation was American - the whole reason cross network switching was invented was to be able to tie america's ARPAnet to several european networks.
www.olin.edu
Yeah, but the question is; who lost sight? .. and the answer will most likely depend on where you live.
Either way, given the US's history on using government resources to spy on regular industry (Echelon Airbus etc) and general political climate, having any sort of essential infrastructure under sovereing US control scares the shit out of me. This is one place where the the world needs to take a proactive stance, utilize our common synergies and come up with a global market-leading solution. Nothign short of it will do!
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
Wow, you sure think this stuff is easy.
The big problem is that legally, nothing stops a US company from getting a court order restraint against ICANN in the future if a
Got an answer to that? anyone?
Great idea - replace a reliable US-controlled registrar with a bureaucratic Eurotrash controlled registrar.
I can't decide whether you're a troll, a bigot, or if it's a feeble attempt at sarcasm.
Sure, when it comes to this matter, the U.S. government may be called controll freaks (although I find it completely justified and, besides, I haven't noticed any negative impact of the current policy so far), but replacing that control with the European bureaucracy and laziness, that is even worse!
If you haven't noticed, the Europeans are also putting up their separate Euro-GPS system. It seems quite clear that the rest of the world wants alternatives to US technologies, even if they work, they're efficient and/or well managed. That should tell you something of the level of trust other countries have in future US foreign policies.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
There are instances where spreading control out between multiple groups can be a bad thing. Too many cooks and all that. When you're dealing with something so vital as The Internet is now, you don't necessarily want to turn it over to something like the UN, which is so full of infighting and maneuvering for power that simple decisions could take ages.
Yeah, ICANN is all about red tape, but then again all government-esque agencies are. Even the international ones... especially the international ones. It gets worse the more people are involved.
Many claim that it's not fair that the US maintains control of the root servers and the TLDs and so on... well, who invested a majority of the money that developed The Internet we know now? Who bought and installed and maintained those root servers? Yes, there were many simultaneous endeavours to invent brothers and sisters to the Internet, but well, the US kinda won out. Controlling the root servers and who can sell which TLD, to me, isn't really all that bad of a thing. It's one group, under one government ensuring smooth operation of arguably the most important computers in the world.
Fragmentation of DNS would be an absolutely horrible thing. You'd have sites available to some parts of the world, not available to the others, mismatches on records etc because you know if everyone wants to own their own root server, they probably won't sync up all that much (if at all)
Despite some shady dealings with TLD registrars, they've done their job reasonably well. Everything works, we've had relatively few problems overall.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
What I find interesting is that GWB is doing everything possible to assure that the rest of the world will isolate us. As it is, we were going to turn this over. But then people like Rove (the white house traitor), decided not to. The stupid thing is that this will become a war over who controls the name servers. I am guessing that American ISPs will be told to block access to the other name servers.
In the end, all of this planet EXCEPT for USA will switch. Then we will switch once we get a sane president. But when all is said and done, all other nations will look at us as foolish and not worth following.
Has anybody been paying attention to the little war that is started in Galleo vs. GPS? Already a number of other nations (EU, Australia, Russia, China, etc) are pledging to move to using it (mostly due to not under US control).
several EU domain registries are preparing to build, test and install a system to prevent U.S. government meddling
I'm all for decentralization, if the synchronization can be worked out, but these guys sound like Eurocooks.
Can they cite any examples of 'U.S. Government Meddling' or are these just they guys who make a living complaining about Bush's belt buckles?
I rather suspect the current Commerce position is one of no-confidence in ICANN to prevent a cyber-attack on the DNS infrastructure. We don't have any data about this, but a sudden glimmer of competence from ICANN would be anomalous.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Please replace the flag in the Slashdot Politics section banner with something more global and nonpartisan. As seen in the recent 4th of July poll, there are a hell of a lot of non-Yanks reading Slashdot.
How about a generic image of a protest?
significant development of Internet assets (softwares, methodologies )has shifted to RIPE (NL, that's in Europe...) since the 90s when MIT started to get greedy and for profited the route server.
ICANN is not an authority: it is a 1 guy (dead) and one secretary office.
The route servers would then finally be able to curtail spam right at the root: no root service for spammer networks (oh, sorry, only U.S. root service.... let's keep the commercial interests going, right?).
While ICANN et al are supposed to be internationally run, the 'inter' is still missing...
Putting myself into the boots of a foreign government, I'd hurry to make the Internet international, and not be administrated by people who cannot even protect their own DoD servers (lol).
and the meddling.....
during the first Gulf War, Cisco disabled military routers because someone did not pay a bill...... OPen up NAPs for real hardware would be a next good project.
My personal opinion is that the U.N. should run the INternet agencies; this way they can disconnect nations who don't pay their dues....
--Mike--
1 - Anti-War Site
2 - Site advocating equal right for gay people or any other group
The US may have freedom of speech issues, but not the extent of allowing the DNS System to be run by the UN. Just remember the UN Human Rights committee is chaired by who? Or what is state of free speech in China (I love all the chinese blogs we freedom in the title)?
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
As a U.S. citizen, and reading from the article,
But what is most disturbing about Gallagher's presentation, is how it endlessly refers to the president. The first slide has a picture of George Bush. The second begins "Thanks to the president's policies, America's economy is strong". The next slide is "The president's broadband vision". The next slide leads with a quote from Bush and two pictures of him. And on and on it goes. There is barely a single slide that doesn't quote from the president.,
it's no wonder there's concern. Isn't this exactly the kind of posturing that U.S. citizens are so quick to criticize when it comes from other nations.
This may not speak to the DNS issue, but it certainly speaks to our tiny view of the world.
ICANN is no more the "official" authority over DNS than Coke is the "official" cola of the world. The US Dept of Commerce has no authority to designate ICANN (or IANA, a job that ICANN does under contract) as an "official" this or "official" that over the DNS or IP address space.
Any one can honor any DNS system they chose to select - that's part of the end-to-end principle of the net. Most of us English speakers vote with our feet for those name services that provide our familiar DNS name space. But those who don't speak English are beginning to vote with their feet to set up systems that are not so oriented towards English or subject to ICANN's pro-trademark, highly taxed regime, and highly privacy unfriendly regime.
US courts only have jurisdiction in the USA and US territories.
Tough luck.
Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
I don't have anything against ICANN, but it seems to me that a decentralized system of root servers is right in line with the nature of the internet. I'm not sure how good or bad this would turn out to be compared to the current system, but in theory it seems to be consistent with the core ideas of the internet.
that's how I see it anyway . . .
Why are so many Americans questioning the idea that Europe wants to have root servers of their own?
Just imagine that the roles were reversed. Just imagine that Europe owned all the root servers. You can bet the US would immediately decide to get their own root servers. You want to be independent.
How can this not be obvious? It's important infrastructure, and you don't want to be entirely at the mercy of foreign powers. What's wrong with that?
Why do so many Americans assume that everybody else is far less cocky than Americans are? This weird assumption has astonished me for years.
This assumption was especially perplexing before the Iraq war, when Americans assumed that Iraqi and other Muslims would be far more docile than Americans could ever be, that they would accept occupation and peace would be possible. Why assume that?
Americans would never accept foreign occupation, why assume that others would? Where do you get these strange ideas?
Fortunately, Europe and the US are friendly and have common goals. Even so, Europe wanting its own root servers is just as natural as the United States wanting their own if the roles were reversed.
Sheesh.
--
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
> apprehending this person themselves?
Perhaps because Italian law enforcement was closely monitoring the Hassan as part of a much wider investigation into potential terrorist ties in Milan, an operation which the ham-handed actions of the CIA operatives may have jeoparadized?
Perhaps because, after the claims made in Powell's WMD presentation turned out to be all bogus, the US's intelligence community has little international credibility, and when they claim "he's a terror suspect!" without providing evidence, nobody listens?
Perhaps because Italy has a funny little practice known as "innocent until proven guilty"?
I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea---your government is indeed capable of making mistakes. Sticking your head in the sand doesn't change that fact.
People rejected a bad constitution, what is the problem with that?
A constitution should be made with a vision on what is desired, not as a consequence of repeated compromise.
A constitution should never even approach the 600+ pages the EU Constitution had. Two, three pages at most, like the Constitution of the USA!!! Once it's only a couple of pages then you can add a few more pages of amendments. I'm glad France shotr it down!!!
FalconShould there be a Law?
but one does wish [Europe] were better friends in times of need. Instead, we got sour Chirac and soulless Schroeder. You will, I'm sure, excuse the bitterness.
Blair is a European, too, you know.
-- Nick "Hallo this is Beel Gates, und I pronounce weendows as