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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?"
I suspect that if this goes through it'll be a start to where the internet speads apart and out, someday entire seperate networks set up. Like "ChinaNet" instead of internet. I imagine the seediness of the internet could only go up... Not that I mind. =]
Just a boy doing unproffesional IT work that's way above his head.
So basically the EU is trying to tell ICANN UCANT?
Wasn't this suppose to be the "WORLD Wide Web"?
I think someone lost sight of what they were doing...
When President Bush referred to The Internets, many people thought he was mis-speaking. He was apparently foreshadowing a plan to make sure that Europe gets off our Internet and makes their own!
I'm a big tall mofo.
Well this certainly sounds creepy.
"NO, we will NEVER relinquish control! The Internet is ours, only ours! moahahaha"
Although this would certainly sound more sinister spoken with a german or french accent.
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...
Let's hope they set up a good system that we all can use.
I'm not really sure why everyone's so worked up about this. If the US Gov. doesn't run things right, we can all just point our resolvers at an alternate root, like this one. And considering the the US was just maintaining the status quo, it really seems like even less of a big deal.
It looks like these guys are just gonna set up an alternate root for everyone and try to automate the system as much as possible. Hopefully it works.
BTW, anybody else annoyed that all these news articles on this keep confusing DNS with "The Internet?"
Doesn't RIPE handle Europes IP allocation now?
RIPE is the same thing isn't it, a collection of European ISPs that got together to handle distribution of IP addresses.
You can set up automated systems and launch shared responsibility campaigns untill your blue in the face.
The fact still remains that your shared trusted ultra 31337 root zone file won't actually be used.
The operators of the root servers have stated time and time again that their job is to only serve the root zone, the contents of which is the responsibility of ICANN (and in turn the US government).
This is just more "alternate root" quackery.
symetrix. We are building a religion, a limited edition.
This process is called decolonization ... It started for the USA with the Boston tea party, wanting independency from UK. And now the registrars are doing with their own kind of tea party, building their own root server, and wanting independency from the US, although in a different and in a much more peacefull way.
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.
I tell all my relatives, when they want to search for something on the internets all they gotta do is goto http://64.233.167.99/ It's this website called Google. It searches for stuff that you can find on the European network and the U.S. Network!!!
I wish they could come up with something for those windows updates, because it's really hard trying to remember 207.46.18.94...
Could the amount of time it would take the EU to put up a VAT-like name-server interpretation tax be measured in nanoseconds?
Cogito Ergo Sum
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)
--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 'Internet' is a network of networks, and exists only because of the peering and routing agreements of those who own the networks.
Therefore, to say the internet is 'owned' by anyone is a fallacy. Before people start getting jingoistic, no one country has a monopoly on the internet, just portions thereof. And since the protocols are open, it's not unreasonable to expect that if the US did start monkeying around with the DNS servers, then they would find their routes disappearing, leaving them with their very own intranet.
Corporate interests being what they are, I doubt it would happen.
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.
he say that CENTR is "an organisation representing the majority of the world's top-level domains".
this is crock - they represent their members, around 50 TLD's (http://www.centr.org/members/) - that's not even a simple majority of TLD (around 260 - see http://www.iana.org/cctld/cctld-whois.htm for some of them).
Read what this guy writes with a pinch of salt - he can't even get basic facts right.
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.
I challenge you to find me an instance where the US government has forcibly via a court order removed a:
1 - An Anti-War protestor
2 - Innocent Foreigners to a prison without trial
The USA just kidnapped a person off the streets of Italy using CIA agents. So give us a break if we believe the USA is going a little loopy right now and its better to protect the Internet from US loopyness!
Well, in fact we already have such extensions but in our native language. For france it's *.gouv.fr for "gouvernement", which I am quite sure you can easily translate.
A while ago, Bush managed to reach all the way across the world via the FBI and got an Indymedia server confiscated due to activities they'd covered at a protest. ... wake up Americans.
Keep on telling me that the US don't try to squash free speech
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 . . .
Strongly-held opinion, stated intelligibly, does not equal trollery.
Please mod parent up.
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE
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.
I'm not saying this is the end of Franco-American relations, but only that Americans will remember France's actions for longer than the French think.
I'm one of the Americans who were against the Iraqi invasion without UN support and supported France's stance. I am still waiting to see those WMDs, where are they? The sanctions against Iraq were working. Mind you I'm not saying I supported Saddam, I was against him when Reagan and Bush Sr supported him while he was using those WMDs against Iran as well as Kurds and others in Iraq.
The Washington Post's Gas Attack
FalconToday's outrage was yesterday's no big deal
Should there be a Law?
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