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U.S. Insists On Keeping Control Of Internet
veggie boy writes "A U.S. official strongly objected to any notion of a U.N. body taking control of the domain servers that direct traffic on the Internet." From the article: "'We will not agree to the U.N. taking over the management of the Internet,' said Ambassador David Gross, the U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy at the State Department. 'Some countries want that. We think that's unacceptable.' Many countries, particularly developing ones, have become increasingly concerned about the U.S. control, which stems from the country's role in creating the Internet as a Pentagon project and funding much of its early development."
don't fix it.
calls on Thursday for a U.N. body to take over control of the main computers that direct traffic on the Internet
Which is Europes way of saying, "gimme, gimme, gimme, my turn to play with the toys!"
Many countries, particularly developing ones, have become increasingly concerned about the U.S. control
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? What do developing countries have to do with jack? They're small and tend to have very poor Internet infrastructures. Does this mean that we're now supposed to turn over control to them so they can screw it up?
Cripes. The Internet works. If it's not broke, DON'T FIX IT.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Yes, we're going to put the UN in charge of the Internet.
The organization that put Libya in charge of human rights. Yes, Brilliant.
Because, you know, the UN is so effective at doing this sort of thing.
Before this thread turns into yet another Anti-America/Anti-George Bush Slashdot flame war. . .
:)
America did in fact invent the thing so that's probably a good reason why America wants to keep control over it.
Besides shouldn't we ask Al Gore before we go making an important decision about this
To hand the Internet over to the UN is to hand control to a body based on the interests of free and non-free countries alike. The UN has no principals placing individual rights above consensus and political expediency. And wherever the UN cannot find consensus, it defaults to inaction, even where inaction allows continuous decline.
This is not a critique of the UN. The above works fairly well for mobilizing to help small countries in crisis. It works well when trying to avoid provoking a war, which is usually appropriate. The above does not work however, for furthering the spread of free* access to - and dissemination of - information.
Speech, not beer.
Giving control of the internet to the UN would mean giving China a say in how it is run. Given their idea of free speech (it's a Constitution right for the Chinese), that's really not acceptable.
From the Constitution of the People's Republic of China:
Article 35. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.
Lots have people have people have been trying to make big news out of this, but it's really nothing.
i) Control of DNS is not the same as control of the internet.
ii) If the US started to exercise internet control via DNS, alternative root servers would likely appear almost overnight. Remember that old saw about "routing round censorship"? This time it's actually true.
iii) As a Brit, I applaud the current essentially hands-off control the US has. We get all the benefits, US tax payers cover the actual cost.
iv) The UN couldn't find it's arse with both hands. Of course, neither can Congress, but at the moment the system is up and running and they'd have to actively intervene to screw it up. Migrating something as important as this to a new bureaucratic body doesn't bare thinking about.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I say let the UN have it. It is the Internet after all, to be handled internationally. The US can keep AOL in exchange...
I gave up sigs almost a year ago.
Oil for root, anyone?
--Saddam H.
Many countries, particularly developing ones, have become increasingly concerned about the U.S. control, which stems from the country's role in creating the Internet
Well, so long as Al Gore agrees he ought to have some say in who controls it - after all he did invent it.
Some countries want that. We think that's unacceptable.
This sort of attitude doesn't help create a warm fuzzy feeling about the US in the rest of the world. Someone in the Government should really take a step back and ask themselves why this would actually matter at all. The UN is the ideal place to run the internet rules at the moment, its got the largest reach and global membership and a stated goal of being independent.
That of course in unacceptable as co-operation with other countries is just plain wrong.
"We've been very, very clear throughout the process that there are certain things we can agree to and certain things we can't agree to," Gross told reporters at U.N. offices in Geneva. "It's not a negotiating issue. This is a matter of national policy."
A matter of national policy that cannot be negotiated? I don't seem to recall the 132nd ammendment stating that internet domain ownership is the right of every american citizen.
He said the United States was "deeply disappointed" with the European Union's proposal Wednesday advocating a "new cooperation model," which would involve governments in questions of naming, numbering and addressing on the Internet.
Because co-operation is bad eh? Damn those pesky Europeans for wanting oversight on a random organisation like ICANN which has been so successful and caused no issues thanks to its openness and brilliant decision making.
The US Goverment does itself, or its citizens, no favours by continually persuing unilateral rather than multi-lateral approaches.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I bet that if the US tried to make some policy change that was very unpopular with the world at large, it would probably not be able to really enforce it.
The internet is to distributed to completely control it. Sure, things could get real messy for a while, but it would eventually get sorted out.
And the U.S. is the bastion of the free? Remind again why the FBI needs to approve my encrypted VOIP software.
I agree. Every country should have to pay royalties to the US-government for letting them use their TCP-IP-technology.
This just shows the ungratefulness of the European-contries and the Jappers. At least China is developing its own standards.
or you have never had any dealings with the UN. I work in international development. If you really do not want to make forward progress, you turn the activity over to a UN agency.
The Register has the same story, with a different spin.
To me, looks like the US might not have a whole lot of choice in the matter, in the end.
yes, we have no bananas
It's still possible for other countries to do their own TLDs...
They just have to have the will to do it.
Then all they gotta do is convince/coerce all of the Internet entities in their respective countries to use THEIR TLD servers, they become the de-facto TLDs for those countries...
There's nothing to stop them but their lack of will...
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
I'm glad that our State Department stood up to the call for us to relinquish control of the internet domain servers to the UN. Let's be honest, the UN taints and screws up nearly everything they touch (ie Oil for Food) and they have no experience in technological matters such as these and supporting such a massive operation. Meantime, for over 30 years the US has rightfully controlled the servers and networks they financed in the first place. I wouldn't trust our networks with any other country in the world... feel free to call me cocky or chauvinistic but we foot the bill, so we should have control.
www.bradgroux.com
I am not American.
However, if I were, I'd feel like saying. You don't like it? Don't use it. Build your own. You're very welcome to.
For the next few years at least, I think the status quo is the sensible way forward.
Hmm... I suppose that did come off kind of flame-baity, didn't it?
Let me put it this way, I just stayed up most of the night documenting in my blog how the Chinese government abuses its people and ignores the very laws it put in place to protect its people. Now first thing in the morning, I hear that the UN wants to turn over full control of the DNS heirarchy to countries like China. Countries to whom "freedom" is just a word to be filtered. Countries where a constitution is just words on some expensive paper. Countries that care little for anything except maintaining their own power.
If we turn even the slightest control over to these people, it's a surefire guarantee that they will abuse it. They would use the technology to further oppress their people (illegally, I might add) and attempt to extend their influence to elsewhere in the world.
So I will repeat, the Internet is not broken. Don't fix it.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I read somewhere that Turkey was looking to start their own internet. Maybe the UN should be part of that, then everyone would be happy. :)
Like there is a big surprise here. The U.S. built the internet, so why should anybody else control it?
If the rest of the world doesn't like it, let them build their own internet with their own namespace and put their own DNS system on it. Since, AFAIK, the internet as we know it has grown by continual attachment to the U.S. developed core, nobody has a right to ask that the U.S. give up control.
My turn. Firstly i'm an Australian living in Europe. Im not anti-US in any way: i disagree with the current administration, but i value the anglo-european view of the world and the US is a big part of that.
.com, .net .org, and .us for sure but let the root servers be controled by the UN.
.iq (iraq) domain STILL hasnt been handed back to the government of Iraq.
Now: The anglo european view of the world is one of Freedom and Democracy. And no where is that espoused more than in the US. So what kind of hyprocracy is it to say: you can cant control your own countries identity on the internet. And you cant have a say in how its run.
Let the US keep control of
Case in point. The
Anyway, the US was founded on idealism and "self evident truths" and its breaking collective our hearts to see it fall before the alter of real-politik, pragmatism, and partisan politics.
Official GOD FAQ.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If a country wants to set up their own DNS that refers to the 'US' ones there is nothing stopping them. Introduce a law that requires people to use these non US servers.
Might be a problem for people in the US, but if it took off there would be nothing stopping integration.
It's a non issue.
'One proposal that countries have been discussing would wrest control of domain names from the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, and place it with an intergovernmental group, possibly under the United Nations.
Gross dismissed it as unacceptable.
"We've been very, very clear throughout the process that there are certain things we can agree to and certain things we can't agree to," Gross told reporters at U.N. offices in Geneva. "It's not a negotiating issue. This is a matter of national policy."'
The question is, why?
"Some negotiators from other countries said there was a growing sense that a compromise had to be reached and that no single country ought to be the ultimate authority over such a vital part of the global economy."
Could someone tell me why are they wrong? And if they are not wrong, what is this US opposition? If the USA doesn't like living in a world where there are multiple countries to deal with, they can just close their borders and shut down their trade. Noone will miss them.
It seems to me the US is playing "i don't want to do this and i won't tell why not". Those dealings are the most suspicious to me, as they are not only arrogant, but they cannot be sustained for a long time.
The Internet is of a growing importance, it shouldn't be held hostage by one single country just as no single country should have total control of anything which is used globally. I guess the EU thinks so too, because they set up their own GPS system. If the USA's position won't change, i guess people can just ignore the states and set up an alternative dns servers/architecture.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Perhaps the Gambinos are available.
Seriously, maybe it's a good idea to skip the idea that the creator retain control. I can see good reasons behind having international control over such an international tool of commerce and speech, rather than any nation having sole control. However, there must be a better option than the United Nations. Putting it in the hands of the United Nations, while inviting corruption, would also mean that such control would quickly become a blunt weapon of international diplomacy. The fact that /Iraq/ under Saddam Hussein was appointed head of the UN 'Conference on Disarmament' is a clear example of just how un-serious the UN is about actual effective government.
So, rather than headlining this article by suggesting the US refuses to hand over control. How about 'US Official Sees No Credible Alternative for Control of the Internet'?
I know I don't.
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
We'll be expecting your cheque/credit card number.
Thank you for your business.I gave up sigs almost a year ago.
All your internet are belong to us!
I for one re-welcome our ICANN overlords.
In Soviet America, The Internet finds you!
Won't somebody please think of the children?!
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
I'm writing this in english so you can understand but are you aware that people speak french, spanish, portuguese etc... are you aware that the Internet is what it is becouse all those people can reach each other? It's a privilege for all of us, Americans included, that it is that way. Being the birth place of the Internet gives you no "right" upon it and even if it did the Net nowadays is nothing without its diversity. Want it for yourself? Okdokey then, let the rest of the world firewall the US out. New nameservices would arise, new backbones, new infraistructure. This things can be replaced. I wonder if you can replace the rest of the world and all the diversity it has.
And yes, I really don't give a damn if any "offended" American mod me troll, I'm saying the truth, you like it or not.
There are pros and cons to both situations. Having a central institution that governs the DNS servers will be a benefit to the community in some ways. There is to much b.s. when you have representatives from every country trying to get their own little bit in here and there. However there should be more input for the DNS as its not just a US based network any more.
Is there a third alternative? Maybe decentralized governance? Self-governance? A meritocracy? Unpaid volunteership? Management by 1000 chimpanzees randomly pushing buttons?
The Internet is important to me. I'll feel troubled so long as I don't see an approach that works well and efficiently, is relatively bias and value neutral and allows reasonable freedom and privacy to the average user.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
Good post. :-)
Now let me ask this: What does Iraq need with their domain name? What does any country need with their domain name?
There are hardly any horrible restrictions on registering a domain name. If you live in Iraq and need an Iraq domain name, go register it. If you need a UK domain name, go register it. There's nothing standing in the way.
Right now there are specific guarantees we have about the quality of service the DNS system provides. Doling it out to different countries without a good reason is a good way to destroy that quality, especially when a country lacks the proper resources to maintain the systems.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Maybe we need to look forward to IPV6... Assign one byte pair to the current, US controlled internet, and the last four bytes represent all current IP addresses. Other countries get control of a byte-pair each, and they name them however they wish.
You realise that the US funded and developed ARPAnet - it was only when it was linked to other networks (JANET, AARNet, etc) that it became the internet? That is, if the US was to cut off all links to other countries, the rest of the world would be bigger than the USA-net?
- Chuq
Case in point. The .iq (iraq) domain STILL hasnt been handed back to the government of Iraq.
.iq domain?
That just goes to show you how little influence is exerted by the US government on the internet. Do you really think the administration wouldn't love to have a big ceremony "reopening" the
Like people have been saying. It is not broken. Don't fix it. And moreso please don't let the UN fix it. I wouldn't be worried about many of the European contries some crontrol, but letting China get anywhere close to even having any say on controlling the internet is incredibly stupid.
Before the inevitable US bashing starts, I've got to ask (as a non-American), whether this is really a bad thing?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that the current situation is in any way a viable long-term answer to the top-level administration of the net. What I am suggesting is that it's way better than letting the UN run the show. The status that the UN grants to some of the worst human rights abusers in the world (and no matter what your feelings about the current US administration, there is a vast gulf separating them from this status) would surely open the doors to all kinds of abuses. We've already seen how net restrictions can be applied in places like China and, let's be honest, there's not a single realistic indication that the US intends to move in this direction.
By all means, let's discuss a proper international framework for the administration of the net. But let's keep the UN, and nations which show blatant hostility to the free exchange of thoughts and ideas out of the picture.
and so I think control over it and the domain servers should stay in the U.S. of A. Now, it is a World Wide Web, but why should the US have to give up control to the U.N.? That could only have disaserous results. The Internet being a world wide network shouldn't have laws or rules or really a governing body deciding what can and can't take place on it, or who can or can't register a domain or put up a webpage. If the control of the Internet were to be passed to someone like the U.N. I would fear, much like the open source concern of slowing innovation and development by keeping source code private, that rules would be imposed for the "greater good" thus limiting progress and damaging the Internet as we know it. Worse yet, there may be a limitation imposed on the people or businesses that wish to buy and register domains. They may even try to standardize charges for purchasing and registering domains thus injuring businesses that are already in competition for your money keeping prices relatively inexpensive.
The US postal service has long been fighting to put a tax or "stamp" on every single e-mail sent via the Internet to recoup losses involved with instant communication and people not wanting to send letters any more. How can this ever really be accomplished? It really can't, unless there is a governing body that has central control and makes it a law. If this were the case, people would just begin to use another non e-mail means of electronic communication I would imagine. At which point some sort of stamp would be applied to that as well.
Leave the governing of the Internet to the people that create, maintain, and use it.
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
What does the creator of the internet have to say about this...
Next week on Slashdot, we ask you to send in your questions to Al Gore, creator of the internet. We'll give Mr. Gore the 10 best questions. So send them in.
[disclaimer: This is a joke, I am a democrate, I can make fun of my own, and G.W.B because... well because thats easy]
Ok, then where do we send the bill for you using binary computing, packet switching, WWW and most of the other base technologies that make up the internet? These were invented by folks all around the world, what the US DoD did was fund a load of academics to couple all of the systems into a robust network.
Antonio Porto (Brazil) "Nowadays our voting system in Brazil is based on ICTs, our tax collection system is based on ICTs, our public health system is based on ICTs. For us, the internet is much more than entertainment, it is vital for our constituencies, for our parliament in Brazil, for our society in Brazil. [With such a vital resource] how can one country control the Internet?"
Yang Xiaokun (China) "You cannot come to a meeting like this saying something is non-negotiable. You must show flexibility and compromise. [...] There must be change."
Even Great Britain isn't supporting the US on this. If even your staunchest suck-up^H^H^H^H^H ally isn't on your side
you're probably wrong.
> when it doesn't do what the US wants
> (e.g. give them carte blanche to invade a few countries)
Since when they need one?
Let's keep it with the US:
- The one nation in history using nuclear weapons on civilians.
- The nation that toppled the democratically elected government in Chile, to replace it with a dictatorship that killed thousands.
- The nation that did the same thing as above in many, many, other countries.
- The nation that sold Saddam WMDs and helped him to use them against Iran.
- The nation that is currently engaging in an illegal war in Iraq, started under false pretenses, that has already killed tensofthousands.
- The nation that doesn't grant the most basic human rights to it's POW.
Yes, Brilliant.
You can't let rational thought get in the way of a good flame-fest.
I'm sorry, "built the internet" - are you on something, or do you just have no working concept of what the physical structure of the internet involves? The US lay cables in its own borders, as did every other nation; we're talking about DNS management, not some tweaked out self-righteous neopatriotic dream you americans like to zone out to.
Fine then, I'm going to build my own internet, with blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget the internet.
And you think the UN would be any different? Granted the UN doesn't have the balls to enforce anything and just way for the US to do it. UN year one after Gulf War1: Bad Iraq, please comply with our order. y2: Bad Iraq, please comply with our order. y3: Bad Iraq, please comply with our order. y4: Bad Iraq, please comply with our order. . . . US: screw it all ready you gutless wonder an shoot the fools. If you don't we will. Now granted I wish there was no UN because it is a worlthless agency and money sink so I'm biased. As for US the bastion of freedom. Sad part is even with freedoms our US numbskull politians keep taking away we are still more free than other countries. Then again I've seen some countries just not enforce the rules they have. Either way. Other countries can pull an China and make their own national internet if they so wish. Now if the UN wants to buy control from the US for 5 or 6 Trillian dollers(And not paying for it with the money the US gives the UN) I'm all for it :D Then we will pull a China and you can have "The Internet".
PS: " huge overbearing bureauocracy" so damn true. But I found the same of most governments.
"Many countries, particularly developing ones, have become increasingly concerned about the U.S. control"
You could always roll your own, or invest in Google and wait for them to sart one of their own (as is the going rumor).
What you can't do is whine about it. Not when there are viable options that don;t require moving mountains to implement.
The .iq TLD administrator is (afiak) controlled by a texan DNS registration company. So the newly formed government of iraq is not currently *allowed to register* names like www.government.iq etc.
.iq could go to the UN and say "give us control of our own domain names now please" and not have to deal with a private for-profit company in texas..
Giving the UN control of the TLD's would mean the government of
Official GOD FAQ.
Fine. We'll build our own internet. With blackjack, and hookers! It'll . . . . . .
It'll be just like the old one!
My understanding is that the US created the protocols, what is classed as the World wide web, was created by Europe so the tld servers should really be in the EU by that logic. Do we want really want the last place where we have some form of freedom of speach controlled by a country thats all but run by businesses or do we want it run by an organisation that has every user from around the world's voice and a lot less influenced by companies. Not to mention if it's run by a collection of countries it stops a leader deciding that as something's based in a single country then that countries laws should apply
because the one thing I have noticed that is consistent about the General Assembly is anyway to codemn Israel is accepted. If not the GA then by any special event they sponsor.
The fact is the current arrangement is safe because the US can be held more accountable than the UN or worse some of the other countries that comprise the UN.
The other general rule is, impose new rules but don't press it should China or Russia oppose but lambast the US should it oppose.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I think this kind of self promotion is what pisses off other countries. This world has many stuck up self rightious arrogent countries and France only holds the lead by a tiny margin. Talking up one's own country's merits is possibly the worst thing that can be done in the UN. If I was an American diplomat I would rephrase that as:
Maybe then everyone could go home and get some work done tomorrow. Your argument would have the UN bickering for a year.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
The two complaints mentioned are 1) US and European companies snapped up all the good TLDs; 2) US and European companies have snapped up all the IP addresses, leaving only scraps.
.co.uk to look for UK business/media/whatever. The main people pissed off by this are prob. big Latin-American media companies that want a .com name taken by someone in Spain. They were late to the party & the good beer is gone. If they don't want to bring their own beer (country based URL), too bad.
my $.02:
1) All the TLDs are snapped up only in European languages. This should piss off basically no one. Why, every country has its' own TLD. To whit, American techies had to use www.theregister.co.uk for years before they decided to make a www.theregister.com version. Why, because everyone in the UK was used to typing
2) All the IP blocks are snapped up by Europeans & North-Americans. I'd say they are late to the party, too bad - but it's a legitimate complaint. Without IP addresses, they can't do what they want. However, what they really should do is mandate IPv6 so that there are more blocks to go around. The people who have blocks now don't want to pay for it, but if the rest of the world want's it - everyone will have to go along (or loose out on business if they don't interoperate well). I mean, really, how many addresses are lost by using a class A (127.x.y.z) block for loopback?
Hey, look - shiny toy: I want it!!! If they really wanted, they could use new.net and IPv6. Waaaaaaah!
the internet was born in the US. this really shouldn't even be up for debate, since no other country (and certainly not the corrupt UN) is qualified to "control" the net, no disrepect intended. many other countries have contributed greatly to the advancement and expansion of the internet over the past several years.
developing nations that want to use the net to advance their societies and economies should be reassured rather than apprehensive about the US managing things. put quite simply (and i'm sure it's already been said), if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
That just goes to show you how little influence is exerted by the US government on the internet. Do you really think the administration wouldn't love to have a big ceremony "reopening" the
That won't happen until Halliburton installs the grossly overpriced networking infrastructure.
Trolling is a art,
Our british taxes pay for it too, through the fees that our ccTLD pay to ICANN, and they have been increasing.
I think the US government fails to grasp that they don't have a choice in the matter. The root DNS servers are the roots because most DNS servers point to them in the root hints configuration. Any DNS server operator can point their servers to a different set of root servers by just changing that's in the root hints configuration. The question isn't whether the US government will allow a different set of roots but whether the alternate roots can convince the majority of DNS servers to re-point to them instead of the current roots.
And the above doesn't really matter directly anyway. The critical servers aren't the roots, really, but the TLD servers the roots delegate to, particularly the ones for the .com domain where it seems most of the biggest domain names are. That's where the real hands-on control is. The roots only affect things in a major way in that they determine what the TLD servers are for a given TLD. The only way alternate root servers can really affect things is if, in addition to getting a lot of people to use them, their operators can also convince people that using alternate, non-official TLD servers for the big domains is also a good idea. For practical reasons I don't see that happening anytime soon.
The French are a vital part of our foreign policy. They have specailized surrender training that the US has never successfully developed.
Maybe the U.N. should start it's own "internet" and make it IPv6 only. Then maybe the slow moving US would get off it's ass and actually start using the new addressing.
Case in point. The .iq (iraq) domain STILL hasnt been handed back to the government of Iraq.
I think it's because a lot of those IQ test pop-up sites are really wanting to start using it.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
And moreso please don't let the UN fix it.
It might be worth dropping the silly jingoism and having a look at how the world actually works. International telecommunications are already being coordinated (very successfully) by a UN agency, and have been since 1947. http://www.itu.int/home/
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I read this and thought they were bitching about the root servers, ran around looking up information/sources to point out there's no real problem with the current root servers setup, then found out they're whining about goddamned ICANN.
.aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, and .pro. The ICANN community is currently exploring possibilities to add additional gTLDs." ... amazing. what will they* think of next?
Repeat after me:
DNS is *not* the web.
ICANN's not perfect, but if you look at how they operate, you'd be surprised to find out they weren't setup by the UN. They're clearly the product and brainchild of a bunch of bureaucrats. There are huge fees to apply and propose, and then they arbitrarily create new TLDs to sustain the new fees rolling in the following application period. They burn through their government contract cash when all they do is push paper around, and then ask for more like a fat kid with a food fetish.
If the UN really wants to take control, I say fine - fuck it, stop our government wasting some money on this albatross.
ICANN
"In 2000, ICANN introduced seven new gTLDs:
* (and by they, I mean the people who dropped the huge fee to apply for those gTLDs, as ICANN doesn't think them up only approve them)
All they ever did was introduce competition by having multiple registrars, and that's not exactly some amazing idea, it's something that was *long* overdue.
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
Well, unless I was informed wrong, the US didn't create the internet at all. It was created a CERN as a method of allow scientists in different labs and/or working on seperate, yet related projects, to communicate and share data more efficiently. Funny how the US will not only try to govern a world technology, but will assume responsibility for its creation.
Sure, but you can be Damn sure the government of Iraq (you know the new one.. the one we put in place (we being aus, uk, us etc) ) aren't happy with having to go to an American registar to update their government DNS entries. And there's more examples too.
.tw?.
What if Taiwan wanted to register http://republic.tw/ ? Right now they can because they control their own DNS, but what if the US was ardently against TW independence, and controlled
Part of being a good citizen of the world is allowing for countries to make their own decisions. Its like trusting your kids, they'll never grow up if you dont give them responsiblilty for their own affairs.
And believe it or not, this stuff matters A LOT. To people outside the US. When the US says "you must obay the Non-Prolifiration Treaty, but we're going to build bunker buster nukes", or "Democracy is best, and no taxation with out represention, but we're going to control the Top Level Domains", people get upset. Trust me, i see it every day here in europe and i imagine its much worse in countries which are not strong US allies.
Official GOD FAQ.
There is no good reason for DNS to remain US governed, even under the auspices of ICANN. If the US Gov needs a timeline to transistion national security related communications over to a second system of networking then that is understandable and should be fought for without reservation but to say that there is no timeframe wherein they could make that change happen in order to turn over control to an international body... I call BS.
On the other hand, each government should also have control of it's own DNS servers within it's own geography for maintaining it's commerce and communications sovereignty... but this is not contradictory to a Int Body governing the allocation of address blocks to each country or determining policy for TLDs.
The US Gov doesn't currently control the telephone number address space for other countries, why is the internet different?
On the negative side of things... I'm fairly certain that China is the biggest supporter of getting DNS out of US hands and into the control of a Gov they have influence over, namely the UN. China would probably love to have the ability to cut off their people from accessing anything outside of China without a dispensation for commercial communications from their gov.... this will happen if the UN gets control and it will be really sad, but the Chinese people need to confront their gov on this one and demand more rights... if the people do, then the international public shoud support them against their gov via sanctions to not communicate with China, nor to trade with them. It will be messy but in the end will be better than treating them like the spoiled teenager that they are acting like. ("sorry Li, you can't drive the car cause you're not responsible enough" except Li is 30 years old and needs to go to work... so it should be "Li, if you get a DUI you go to jail. If you get into an accident and kill someone, you're going to jail. Be responsible. We won't bail you out.)
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I did say it should be changed? No. I've just poited out that the parent poster have a totaly wrong idea about what's worth on the Net. There is no such a thing like "i've build it, its *MINEEEE*" when you are talking about something that is much, much more than a bunch of cabling and servers, it's a record of the human expression on our era.
... what kind of hypocracy is it to say...
What a fantastic new word! As in "The line between democracy and hypocracy is thin indeed". Thank you.
fyi, North America includes Canada and I don't think your comment is directed at Canadians.
Wow, looks like it has been handed over. I tip my hat to you AKA. But my point is still valid.
If the US didnt *want* it handed over to the IQ gov, they could have stopped it, and probably would have.
And like the ACLU says: "even if you disagree with us, we will fight to the death for your right to say as such" (to paraphrase)
Official GOD FAQ.
A. the U.S. stopped underhanded tactics such as witholding money owed to the U.N.
B. the U.S. stopped vetoing resolutions against the proliferation of WMD re. Israel
C. the U.S. stopped vetoing resolutions against genocide
And that's just for starters! Please be in no doubt - WRT the U.N. America has a track record of putting its own interests way ahead of those of the rest of the world community, and until that changes there's not much hope of the U.N. getting any better.
Still, you can be sure that when American hegemony is undermined by the rise of China the U.S. will use every means at their disposal - including the U.N. - to try and cling on a little longer...
Iraq doesn't have to go anywhere. They have their domain under their control. The REASON why ICANN was reluctant was because the domain was previously part of an elaborate terrorist funding affair. You'd be reluctant to turn it back too, if you previously had to sieze it because of terrorist funding.
.Iq domains. Great freedom that is, eh?
Besides, so the Iraqis had to register through a foreign company. Big whoop. At least they could. Under current Iraqi regulations, private citizens are NOT allowed to have
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Let the other countries develop their own expensive and massive infrastructure then they won't need our permission to control it. Sounds very straightforward and simple. Now why doesn't Europe do that instead of trying to steal toys from the other kids eh?
Not be be a Troll or anything here, but should Iraq really be worrying about it's damn .iq Domain? I think that they should work on getting control over the physical part of their contry, lay down the law of the land, and set up the country's new infrastructure before they begin to worry about Cyberspace. Once Iraq has control over it's physical space, and the people know that there are now new laws and a new way to handle problems in the country, (the voice of the people) then is the time to start tackling more non-relavant to daily life things such as the .iq domain. How can a country that isn't able to govern it's land, feed it's people, and in it's governmental infancy supposed to add more on it's plate like the .iq domain? Food for thought.
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
to think that anyone can look at ICANN and how it has operated (free to the world mostly) over the years, and think there is a better way to run it. There has been no issue, or even hiccup regarding the function of ICANN or the root servers. It seems to me that anyone who wants control of these functions turned over to another governing body simply wants that because they need to change how these function operate...
To put a point on it, if they need to change control, it can only be due to the fact that the current controllers won't let them use it as a means of controlling others or let them use it for nefarious purposes.
As was said, it aint broke, don't fix it.... its not currently used in corrupt ways, we don't need to hand over control to others who just might (probably will) use it corruptly! No country even needs to be mentioned, its working... "don't change horses in the middle of the stream" as they say...
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I may not be a computer scientist defining how the Internet works, or a double-E working on new signaling methods, or even a CEO dumping gobs of cash into other things. What I am, is one of the many minions who have helped this Internet along the way. I've dug trenches, strung wires, configured thousands of routes, thousands of DNS zones, and probably multi-hundreds of websites, database servers, mail servers, anti-spam measures, etc. I help the Internet function properly, even in my own small way.
When I think about our US government, companies like Verisign and Worldcom, UN, or any other random organization interested in monkeying with MY Internet, I get a little protective. You see, I want this wild-west frontierism -- that is where innovation comes from -- a need for something that did not exist before, and the lack of rules or laws which would prevent me from building those things. Again, the free exchange of ideas.
If China wants to censor themselves, it's all them -- their routers, firewalls, and filters should not apply to me here in the US. I don't like it, but what can I say? That's not my system. The eventuality, is that some Chinese people will figure out ways around this, 'cause that's how the Internet works, right? Route around the failures?
I realize that routers and bandwidth cost money, but when you think about it, if there weren't any people using/administrating/publishing-on it, it wouldn't exist. It is people like me, people like Cmdr Taco (and yes, you too, Zonk), and all you fucked-up readers of Slashdot (and countless others) that make this Internet happen -- all sharing ideas, flames, stories, pictures, porn, and filth. We're all exchanging information between ourselves. This is how it should be, and I'll be damned if I let some assholes (from wherever) interfere with My Internet. Rogue nameservers indeed.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
What does any country need with their domain name?
.be domain? Do you not think every country would rather have full control over it's domain zone files?
You seem to have a very peculiar view of the DNS system, most likely due to the fact you live in the US.
I live in Belgium, which has top-level domain name ".be". Any individual or business can register whatevertheylike.be. Do you not think that Belgium would rather control it's own domain rather than depending on another country to make sure root zone files point to a.ns.dns.be for the
As root files will always be necessary, I would rather have a central (neutral) authority guard over such systems that trust on a (not so neutral) country to allow me to use my domain.
Coca-Cola, sometimes War.
In the next item of business, the US proposed that the UN should take control of Buckingham Palace.
No branch of the government or any agency of it currently is in control of the root nameservers. They are controlled by private organizations.
That is why this whole discussion is absurd and I generally ignore any idiots I hear talking about it. They aren't currently controlled by any government, and they shouldn't be either ( the UN ).
"One [government] to rule them all and in the darkness, bind them."
I'm not too keen on turning something that was (for all intents and purposes) invented, nurtured, and developed here, on American soil, over to european interests. What, now that the internet has political value the euro's want it? As far as I'm concerned, if they want it, they can reimburse us for the last 30 years of upkeep. This really strikes me as a thinly veiled grab for power. I really don't understand the logic that goes into making a suggestion like this. Just becuase everyone needs something doesn't make it communal property.
You have to admit, those wacky euros have a great sense of humor asking something ridiculous like this!
I understand the gist of your post, particularly with respect to consensus and inaction... But this bit of rousing patriotism is a classic example of an argument aimed at the choir and not the people you're supposedly trying to persuade.
Put yourself in the shoes of someone in Shannon, Ireland, who's sitting at a screen and reading the words "Pentagon" and "Internet" in the same sentence. This person followed "carnivore" a bit. She's familiar with the RIAA and MPAA tensions here, and with the general pressure of corporate interests on the net. She also would scoff, frankly, at your describing the US as "the only country founded on individual rights" -- that bit of flag waving would be almost ridiculous in her mind, given what appears to be our current torture policy in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and at Gitmo.
From the perspective of anyone in Western Europe, have we recently looked like the best guardian of individual freedoms? I'm all for 'em, myself -- the Bill of Rights is tacked to my cube farm wall, right here -- and even I think some measure of international oversight could help ensure my own freedom to information.
And you think this would convince who, exactly, if it falls flat for me?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
what makes you think this one's American then? Just because you may have been told that it started out from the DARPAnet doesn't mean similar activities weren't initiated in Geneva (CERN) and both connected somewhere in the middle. Now why don't we just cut you off from the rest of the world and let you screw around on your own continent, satisfied with the idea that you're the only ones there?
And define "broken". Sure, your body is still operational were I to break your legs, smash your teeth and pull out your fingernails. But it'd be painful no? Same thing here.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
> RE: UN Control of the Net: "We think that that's inappropriate," Ambassador David Gross, the U.S.
> coordinator for international communications and information policy at the State Department told
> reporters at U.N. offices in Geneva. "The genius of the Internet is that it has been flexible (and)
> private sector led."
Really?! DARPA is private sector!? Cool...I never knew...
The US funds the United Nations more than anyone else. It even gave the UN its headquarters. US taxpayers fund this Pentagon project that has exploded into the greatest vehicle for mass communication in history. The only thing that will change if the UN takes control would be more layers of bureaucracy and inefficiency in getting the same job done. Not to mention the potential^Winevitable corruption this will bring.
This will cost the US taxpayer even more... And prop up the most disgraceful bureaucracy of all - the UN - all the while continuing with their "hate Israel, hate America" rhetoric and their legitimizing of unjust, evil governments*. Umm, who's paying for this group-masturbation? You guessed it. The free people of the United States.
This hideous organization has no right to take control of root DNS from the US.
*Zimbabwe, Libya, SUDAN (!!) on the UN Human Rights Council.
*After allowing God's people to have their rightful homeland in 1948, the UN condemns Israel at every turn ever since. Check out this figure: In the United Nation's General Assembly, 429 anti-Israel resolutions were passed from 1967 to 1988. Israel was "condemned" 321 times. Arab nations? Not once.
*60th anniversary of liberation of Aushwitz, Kofi Annan: "evil only prevails when good men do nothing", the same fucking day as hundreds of thousands of Sudanese civilians are exterminated because they are black and "inferior" to the Muslims... oh, that's right, Kanye West says it's Bush who hates black people - he must be right...
*I could go on if you really want me to, you get the picture. Morality is universal. When it is charaded as selectively as it is by the UN, it isn't morality. It's politics.
If anyone in other countries are really bothered they can go point their DNS servers to other root servers.
I can't help but see the parallel between the story of Chicken Little and this article. The US built this from the ground up, while the world watched and did nothing. Now that it's successful everyone wants a piece of it. So to paraphrase, the US slaved away and made the bread (aka internet), and everyone else now wants to eat it. I don't think I'm wrong in saying that the rest of the world can start making their own bread any time now.
I have heard of no credible evidence that the US is abusing their administration of the internet. Yet other countries want control of it. The only logical conclusion is that these same countries must also have ideas of how the system could be abused, and can't wait to implement them. Censorship is probably on the forefront of each of these countries minds. (Some are worried about it happening, some are salavating at the chance to abuse it.)
Countries know they can not build a corrupt system from the ground up, since no one will use it, so they are attempting to gain control of what people are currently using. I just see transferring control as the equivalent of giving a child a button with "Blow Up World" written on it.
OK.. usually I stay out of this sort of discussion.. but this is just idiocy. Firstly ... the title is sensationalistic and just wrong. They are talking about DNS not routing.. They are mutually exclusive. The US doesn't control ROUTING. The packets will still get to wherever they need to go even if we turned off the servers and went home. Now I know many systems are dependent on the root servers, but it doesn't have to be that way.. the root server lookup list can be modified by your ISP and you would be none the wiser. This is why the Internet is a "Distributed" infrustucture.
... If its not broke... don't fix it.
And to speak to the political nature.... It the old grizzled engineers that have built and maintained these servers for over 30 years. The internet wouldn't be here if not for them. You wouldn't be reading this if not for them. I'm sorry it has to be this way... but they all live in the US for the most part. And if you don't want to see it all fall apart, you might just want to leave the system be. I will echo an earlier post
I couldn't fail to disagree with you any less.
There is a big difference between individual rights and general welfare. There's always some self-absorbed douche-bag in the government who thinks he knows what's good for you better than you do. At least with specifically enumerated individual rights, the courts can stop that asshole from infringing on your rights. This is only true in the US.
Dear other countries,
Did the US force you to connect to the Internet? Could you have instead banded together to make your own network? How the Internet works has long been public knowledge. Most of the people on the planet live outside the US, including many or most of the smartest engineers. In addition, most of the world's resources and assets (i.e. wealth) lie outside the US borders. Why not start the UNternet or EUternet or INDIAnet or NotUSnet and include the whole world except the US? I promise G. Bush will not invade your country with geeks carrying routers and spools of Cat5E cable.
The Internet is a global resource only because you voluntarily connected to it, knowing full well who controls it. You are welcome to our research and are free to improve upon what we've built, and you don't even have to invite us to be a part of it though it would be nice if you did. However, don't come to a picnic in my backyard and demand a say in how I landscape my yard.
Warmest regards,
A US Citizen
We actually stood up against the UN for a change.
The UN has its place, but they are trying to grab WAY too much power in their quest to be an effective 'world government'.
This is just one example.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And they do a terrible job: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/29/itu_ip_loc k/
If you ask me, neither one should be in control.
It is not the USA's web (CERN anyone? other academic institutions?), and they haven't built it out of the good of their hearts (the US just don't do that). It is apparently not broken but in need of some band aids to keep it going and a polish here and there to keep it shiny.
The UN is not a bad place. Sure, You keep whining about the oil for food programme and how they weren't here or there, but in general they've been helping a lot of people around the world for a lot of years. That's more than can be said of the US.
I think it's time to cut off the US and let them play in their own sandbox. Build a great wall c.q. dome around the continent so its inherent stupidity and ignorance cannot escape. Of course we'll rescue a few smart people first the way they did when they looted Germany after WW2 of their knowledge.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The (programmable) computer was invented in the UK. Please kindly give us full control over all computers based in the US.
You know, if the US feels strongly enough about who owns any TLD, we'll get our way - between trade threats and real threats - no matter who "owns" DNS. The man with the gun standing in front of the servers ultimately owns them.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
> Does Libya's working toward its foreign policy goal of exterminating the Jews in
> Israel count? I guess not. If it is against Jews, it is not a human rights
> violation.
Libya's foreign policy goal is not the extermination of Jews in Israel, as far as I'm aware.
bad things happen.
v ernance/
There is no real reason for the US to oppose internationalisation of DNS control save xenophobia, and of course nationalist vitriol.
In conclusion internet held ransom to Dick Cheney and Ronald McDonald Rumsfield = bad, Poor countries with the ability to control their own DNS = good.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/30/eu_net_go
It's not an case of "the rest of us" vs "good ol uncle sam"... though please feel free to buy guns... and wait in the basement for... the UN to take away your rights to monopolise the internet and drive Hummers.
Oh,, sorry world, internet is down today, our leftist parties are calling for a strike today and some spirited employees have sabotaged the servers already. oops.
Exactly what I was thinking. Nothing against India, but they are not very politically stable at the moment. If the US has one thing going for it, we have a very stable government. What advantage would there be for us to give up a critical service like maintaining domain servers and give that management to other, less stable countries.
On top of that, no one has to use the US's domain servers, or for that matter ICANN's domain names. A country like India or China could run all of their own domain servers and just proxy out to any sites in the rest of the world that they wanted their people to see.
Finally, what advantage would there be to other countries if they managed the domain servers. I thought all of the names and IP addresses were allocated through ICANN. The only possible reason that I can see to do this is so they could force IP6 and make the US update, of course they wouldn't have the money to make this work either, so we would still be in a mess.
Find coupons in Greeley
Uh, the u.s. can't even handle an evacuation. Sorry, but it's true.
Now see what a dumn argument that was, feeling stupid yet?. And I'm still waiting for a good reason for the u.s. to control the internet.
It is so great to see so many Americans take up the fight for global freedom and democracy through dictatorishp of the internet.
"So what kind of hyprocracy is it to say: you can cant control your own countries identity on the internet. And you cant have a say in how its run."
Actually other countries do have control of their country level domains.
The question I have is this. Why turn it over to the UN?
1. The US did build the internet and has allowed other countries to use it.
2. Not every country in the world is even a member of the UN but I think that that everyone has observers their now.
I do not see any real benefit for the US to turn it over to the UN. Frankly the way the UN is run I see no real benifit to anybody.
It works now and no country has to use the internet if they don't want to. If the UN wants to control root servers why not get everyone together and set up a modern IP6 network with secure encryption from front to back and see where that leads. The UN shouldn't be trying to hijack what is really US property. If the UN thinks they can do a better job then do it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Anyone can start their own internet, and (most) countries have servers to manage DNS for local root domains (.us, .ve, .uk, .es, etc) and they could use those to create other roots domains, no need for ICANN, or Verisign or the UN. The problem is they would have to convince people of using those and there lies the trouble. The most important root domain is .com, it is really the only one that matters. Most countries have (wrongly, in my opinion) refuse to use their root domains alone, creating secondary level domains (like .co.uk) making the URLs longer for no reason. The US created .com, .net and the others. They don't even use .us too much. Let the other countries create significant important content for other root domains to bloom... Cuba and North Korea are on the Internet, not because the UN intervened, or because the US is very nice, but because of the open nature of the Internet... Compare email to IM to see why big entities should not control anything...
Considering the internet is so vast, can it really seriously be defined as the property of one country anyway? I mean sure us American's pay for it tax wise, but if thats the issue let the EU tax the euro and send that over here. Then they can say they own part of it to.
All this seems like is
1) hatred of america, like people that dislike bill gates cause he has money, people hate people with things they can't have; and oh-so many of them are willing to say you got it unfairly, when I assure you 90% of countries have a history faaaaaarrrr worst than America's. But thank you England, if it weren't for your religious bigotry us American's wouldn't exist!
2) Just some global unification crap. The UN is gonna die, and when that happens do you want the internet to go with it? Besides, most people here (/.) feel like their rights online are being taken away slowly but surely, I assure that if the internet was handed over to the UN the pace would speed up immediately.
We hear and we obey =P. No in all honesty the Internet SHOULD NOT be regulated by government. Governments have agenda's, moral policy makers, the list goes on. The US root servers were implemented by our military at great expense. The interenet revolution was funded by the US Govt.
Now after all of it is up and running you think a piece of our national security should be handed over to the most incompetent and impotent body of politics ever created? Just to be clear on what the UN actually is. The reason the UN exists is to prevent a breakdown in communication between world powers that would result in a catastrophic world war. The UN DOES NOT exist to regulate or govern international affairs because the members of this world body are not elected and the funding is not representative.
Is it really a threat if these countries make their own web? China already has one and I could care less. I have a better idea. How about these other countries fund the UN 1/10th the amount the US does before they start bitching about how we run OUR internet. We don't hold a gun to their heads making them join in.
The USA paid for the development of the internet, put in the manhours to develop it and "perfect" it. Then let the world share it for free. And now they're supposed to give the whole thing away entirely? It doesn't really make sense. And i utterly detest the US government as much as the next guy so don't get your panties twisted thinking i'm pro everything USA.
Waiting for you by the bridge
There are so many things wrong with this is is not even funny. First of all, almost all pentagon research is done by academics, so it's really silly to say that academics run things better than the pentagon.
Second of all, the WWW was NOT, repeat NOT, regardless of what you may have red in Dan Browns Angels and Demons, created by an academic working in switzerland. This is categorically not true, and the fact that it is not true is so well documented that I should not have to ever correct anyone about this. The invention of HTML has very little to do with the creation of the internet. First of all, hypertext was around long before HTML, and hypertext files could already be transmitted over the (existing) internet. This is merely another standard for turing text into page layouts, which happens to be in widespread use. It is a small part of the internet at best.
I'm not even going to address your last paragraph. You're so far out there that you probably have escape velocity.
These things should be obvious, but does not seem to be. Worse is that the current crop of politicians in Washington does not seem to be able to grasp these simple truths.
Similarly, when the internet became an international phenomena, it no longer is under the control of the US congress. This is maybe seen as something strange inside the borders of the US, but again just think a bit broader. So it is not for the US State Department to say what is acceptable and unacceptable, even though they have the right of their own opinion like any other country in the world. ICANN also have every right (in the world so to say) to fight for their privilege position, with or without of the help of US politicians, but this privilege is given them by the international community and can therefor be retracted by the same community. That ICANN has this privilege for historical reasons does not, as all the other examples above, prove that it will have these privileges in the future. Not to hard to grasp, is it?
Now, you can of course say that the US can just say no and keep the internet for themselves. Well, that is fine of course, but then the international community will either accept this or will make their own solutions. And the EU have not had problems in the past to make their own solutions and will probably do the same this time if the US slows the process down too much. Because it seems to be clear that the international community always would want something as important for their own economy and information flow to be under an independent governing body not controlled by any one country, especially not countries they see as hostile to themselves or who seems to not have the necessary skills. I guess the reason the international community is pressing ahead with this natural evolution of the internet at this point of time, is to no small degree due to the current incompetence in the political leaders in the US.
Also, the UN have an established bureaucracy that are already involved in similar tasks as the governing of an international entity like the internet. The UN of course is nothing more or less than the international community agrees to let it be, and in this case the international community agrees that the internet is important for everyone and therefor should be well run. Our American friends should not think that other countries are as naive as them. China knows perfectly well that it cannot control the flow of information on the internet, and there is no reason to believe that China will try to do something foolish as that who ever is governing the internet. Of course, China will probably still be under communist rule for a while and one thing they will do is to control the information inside their country, and the great firewall will still be there whoever is running the internet. But the Chinese leaders are no fools and have shown themselves to be very much the capitalist willing to use any tool to make their economy run smoother.
If I dare giving advice to our US friends, I would say that it would be a much better tactic for the US to get back some politicians, Republican or Democrat or whatever, who understand how the world works. You had some hard hitting realists back in the cold war, Europeans miss those guys even though we did not see eye-to-eye with their politics usually. It does not seem the tactic of playing the spoiled brat in the neighbourhood these last years have gotten much advantag
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
Which is why there's this push to get it uinder UN and not coutry controll.
"Finally, what advantage would there be to other countries if they managed the domain servers."
Why do you think the US doesn't want to relinquish controll? There has been soem hefty critisism of the ICANN in recent years, so there might actually be some benefit in handing that over to a non-partisan organisation.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Really -- the Americans built the damn thing. So build something better. Is it essential to the world? Well, maybe, but why the hell did the world connect to the internet knowing they had no control. Damn, use some common sense. If you want to annex Poland, you don't ask Russia to give you Poland. You go get Poland yourself.
--Jim (me)
I love this attitude that the Internet is horribly broken. Right now I can go out, register a domain name, set up a server and DNS, and have an operating website within...(checks stopwatch) 4 minutes and 12 seconds. Yup, there it is. Page comes up and everything. Hmmm, no FBI guys knocking on my door. No payment to the U.S. government, no Patriot Act induced arrests. Total cost, under $10US. And you say this system is painfully broken?
Now, consider the idea that we would hand this over to the largest beaurocracy in the world. Do you really think I wouldn't then be spending at least an hour filling out forms? Do you really think the average citizen would be able to afford a web site, or do you think that the U.N., with a sudden vast new source of revenue, would start charging about $50 a month for DNS? Do I really want someone from Namibia with my personal information and my credit card number?
The U.S. built the basis of the Internet when they built DARPANet and ARAPANet in the early 70's. Yes, there were other networks (BitNet springs to mind) but the Internet is nearly 100% American grown. The IP protocol came out of ARPANet, and CERN didn't have it. The U.S. Government sank billions into the initial creation of the Internet, designing the very signals and software that power it, not just "laying cables". Do you really think they want to relinquish control of the DNS servers that point at their military computers to a foreign government? How easy would it be for Syria (a security council member) to then poison the DNS and redirect all millitary communications to their collector site? How about routing traffic and packet sniffing sensitive military information? If you don't think that an organization composed of 200 dictators, tyrants, and thugs, and 70 democracies is not capable of corruption...well, I'll let you figure it out.
Painful? I don't see it. Leave it as it is. It ain't broke.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Are you saying that the US is singlehandedly responsible for laying all the cable worldwide that serves as infrastructure to the internet? If not, then what the hell is with the "backyard" analogy? It's everyone's backyard, dumbass, and we only want a say on what goes on in OUR part. America can keep it's "landscape" just the way it wants it. That's the whole damn point - everyone gets a say, not just you guys.
Warmest regards,
The Rest of the World
May I point out the the world wide web, one of the most widespread and well known parts of the Internet, was developed by a European (an Englishman in fact)?
The Internet as it is now was an International effort, just because the US kickstarted it doesn't make it your brainchild.
(Remember Russia got a man into space first)
C17H21NO4
At least with specifically enumerated individual rights, the courts can stop that asshole from infringing on your rights. This is only true in the US.
Really? How is this different from the European Convention on Human Rights, which enumerates specific individual rights and gives the courts the power to make it damn tough for governments to breach them?
I'm not going to deny that the US has a fine constitutional history, and I'm not going to deny that it protects the rights of law-abiding citizens as well as any other nation on Earth, and better than the vast majority (though its record for non-citizens is somewhat worse, and its treatment of criminals is not at all impressive). But you Americans need to get the idea that you're somehow "unique" out of your heads. You're not unique. There are many other nations where the rights of the individual are enumerated and protected. You're good, sure. You're even the best, if you select your criteria carefully enough. But you're not something so amazingly special that no other nation has ever come close to matching you. Sorry, but you're not.
We created a product. If the UN wants it, buy it.
I'm sure America would be willing to part with it for say....$5 trillion. The US is based on Capitalism. You want it? Buy it.
Do you seriously believe that?
.. ...
The three largest contributors in august 2005 are:
1. Pakistan (9,881)
2. Bangladesh (8,812)
3. India (6,321)
21. France (600)
29. USA (334)
To spell it out for you - France contributes almost twice as many! What's really interesting is that the top three nations are all neighbours - and used to belong to the same British controlled territory (India) - and are Muslim nations or have large populations of Muslims (present day India). Oh, and they're not exactly as rich as the US...
I'm sure you could find other sources to improve on these figures however the whole point is still valid - the US is not a large contributor compared with the rest of the world. The world is not incapable of functioning just because it's poor/undeveloped. Of course the US pays for a lot of it, but that's another matter isn't it?
Article 51. The exercise by citizens of the People's Republic of China of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society and of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens.
Sort of takes the edge off Article 35, doesn't it?
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Mod parent down as troll.
I fail to see the problem. Perhaps someone can make it more clear.
:) could just be copied from the current DNS masters.
:)
But couldn't the UN simply setup their own DNS masters and the countries that don't want US control use that? dot com, edu, org, etc... (no, etc isn't one.... tho maybe it should be...
US keeps it's "control", UN get's it's "control".
Everyone feels that they are in the right and the other is in the wrong.
Just how international politics is suppose to work.
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
I think this US control of the Internet is what's been holding it back. Maybe with international bureaucracy and UN regulation, this "Internet" thing will finally take off...
Don't sell yourselves short.. you guys did a fine job of marching out of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos with your tails between your legs. I think you did just as well as the French there.
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
I'm just inviting a 'Troll' mod here...
Syria: "There's more and more spam every day. Who are the victims? Developing and least-developed countries, too. There is no serious intention to stop this spam by those who are the transporters of the spam, because they benefit...The only solution is for us to buy equipment from the countries which send this spam in order to deal with spam. However, this, we believe, is not acceptable."
Brazil, responding to ICANN's approval of .xxx domains: "For those that are still wondering what Triple-X means, let's be specific, Mr. Chairman. They are talking about pornography. These are things that go very deep in our values in many of our countries. In my country, Brazil, we are very worried about this kind of decision-making process where they simply decide upon creating such new top-level generic domain names."
China: "We feel that the public policy issue of Internet should be solved jointly by the sovereign states in the U.N. framework...For instance, spam, network security and cyberspace--we should look for an appropriate specialized agency of the United Nations as a competent body."
Ghana: "There was unanimity for the need for an additional body...This body would therefore address all issues relating to the Internet within the confines of the available expertise which would be anchored at the U.N."
These are the people that want to control the internet. They don't want some hands off technical control, they have specific cultural, moral and economic ideals they wish to implement in relation to the Internet. Yes, spam is bad. But "stopping spam" by a macro control mechanism is a control on information. This is contrary to the legal and user technological controls we are implementing now. Do you trust the UN to actually handle specific information on the Internet via their multicultralism moral compass? I don't.
And I thought people here knew better, but no! Apparently even the "tech people" from the colonies are blindly patriotic fools. Jesus that makes me sad. All the more reason to handle the control to UN I say..
Who is making the definition of "terrorist funding affair" above? Is it the right of the US or a US company to define when the internet should be about free speech or when speech should be silent because it is from a "terrorist"?
So the ICANN should judge the laws of the land they give domains to? Because the argument seems to be that a country should not have the right over a domain if its citizens is not living under freedom whatever arbitrary way that is defined in the US at the current moment.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
I am a liberal, borderline socialist American who believes in a strong United Nations and disagrees with 95% of the US' actions overseas. But that said I don't see the problem here. The US built it, then allowed other countries to use it, and honestly they should be a little grateful. If I invite you to stay at my house you can't suddenly demand your own room and that I put your name on the deed, you know.
Yeah... you forget "veto power" though. A UN organization would never be allowed to do something like that because one or more of the veto powers can just keep it completely lummoxed and ineffectual.
The position paper lists out a whole host of issues, IPV6, fair internet pricing for all countries, internet crime, freedom of information, and a lot of other similar issues. (It is an easy read, I recommend it). Over all, it didn't seem like control of the root servers would allow you to deal with nearly any of the listed issues. How on earth can control of the root DNS servers prevent email scam letters? Really all that seemed to happen is everyone listed their list of issues in a single paper and decided that the first step to solving it would be to control the DNS servers.
I think most people reading this will agree with me that control of the DNS servers won't solve any of this. At best you could try to use your control as leverage to get what you want (i.e. cut off service), but if you actually do this you splinter the internet and all the IT workers start scrambling to make patches to get around what you did!
If the paper had limited itself to questions of domain name ownership, it might have been worth considering, but as written I can't support their policy. Whoever controls the root DNS servers should be worried about two things only. Keeping them running and figuring out fair ways to pass out domain names.
The only thing even remotely related was IPV6, maybe. But my understanding is the root servers aren't holding it back, it is all the routers that need to be reconfigured. I know that the U.S. got the lion's share of the IPV4 addresses. It was just because we were first. But everyone knows that "if you build it, we will come!" start laying down an IPV6 infrastructure and the U.S. will join rather than be left behind.
Here's the problem...
There is no way to prevent the rest of the world from deciding they don't like the US handling the Domain Servers and building/maintaining their own.
There is a rule of thumb that if you can't actually prevent someone from doing something they want to do, don't try - you'll only fail and lose your credibility. The only reason other countries haven't set up their own infrastructure is that it is easier to let the US do it. (Cheaper too but, to a developed country, a few million is nothing to their budget.) As soon as US control gets "annoying" to them, they will throw a few million at the problem and the US will cease being an annoyance. Then it will be the US who will have problems due to their previous big-headed postion.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
I am anti-US on many things, but let back them by saying this.
The USA created the Internet as we know it today, it is their creation, from their tax payers money. As much as I dislike many things that the USA is doing and has done in the past. I'm going to have to say that I'm behind them on keeping control of what is theirs, which happens to be the foundation of the Internet as we know it.
Just due to the fact that it is now a globally used system that effects everyone in the modern world does not give any body/group the right to demand rights of control over that system. Just as new protocols are created over time and are layered ontop of the old to keep the system running regardless of 'obsolete' hardware/software that might be in some remote corner of the web, so to should the U.N create a system that runs along side the current one if it so desperatly wants control. That is the most logical solution to the problem at hand. Countries and corporations can create 'internal' networks that overide the current systems of the Internet.
The fact that the developing world does not see that as the most logical first step attempt at a solution at hand is evidence that they are not ready to have control over a system such as complex as the Internet.
I whole heartly back the US on their choice to not hand it over.
If only we'd kept control of television transmission by the UK when Logie Baird invented it. Just think of the power we'd have over the citizens of the United States...!
~Pev
You are wrong. See also:
In the UK, it is a common occurance for an Act of Parliament (a law) to be overturned by the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that it infringes those rights. This is much the same process as a US law being found unconstitutional.
I've no reason to believe the EU and US are alone in having constitutions which grant rights to their individual citizens. In the UK, the concept dates back to the Magna Carta of 1215 AD and I doubt that was the first example in the world, either (although most historical examples, including the original US constitution, had exemptions for various untermensch such as females, slaves etc.).
That said... IMHO the Internet is America's ball. It invented it. It owns it [1]. It can do with it as it pleases. I'm grateful that they let us foreigners on it. But that has nothing to do with any superiority of constitutions.
[1] Actually NATO invented it, but seeing as NATO funding was provided in the vast majority by the USA, as a fellow NATO-member Brit, I'm not complaining.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
The UN is hardly a neutral body, in my opinion. Unless neutrality is defined as making resolutions and threats of enforcement and never following through on them.
I'd sooner hand control over to the Swiss, who have a much better track record of real neutrality.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
Jeebus - what part of "We built it, it's ours, unhook your shit from our network and go build your own if you don't like it" don't you understand.
where is the "I feel for ya, but that's some funny ass shit" moderation?
If a subset of Internet users wanted to, they could define a "new" network using a separate set of DNS servers, different standards for naming domains, etc. No one would have to pay for "extra" network wiring since very likely the new net could tunnel over existing lines.
We use the current root servers and addressing system by de facto standard and convention, not because they're required for Internet operation or because they're the only way to do things.
I always thought that this same "starting over" would be a good thing to do for the Usenet news groups - to reset their membership to a time before spammers, monkeys with keyboards, and mental defectives when group content was almost all signal with no noise. Those of you old enough to remember that can appreciate how good it was back then. Not perfect to be sure, but it was at least possible to have an intelligent conversation sometimes. Create a separate usenet with better protocols, better controls, and encryption, and deploy it.
The US government would try to crack down on it, outlaw non regulated network creation, and outlaw anything they didn't control, bringing us one step closer to the second United States civil war.
Erik
PS: Rob, integrate Kupu into Slashdot. Text boxes with manual html codes went out of style ten years ago.
You don't know what you're talking about. If you'd READ the article I linked to, you would have found this:
ICANN re-possessed the domain name in 2002 after the Texas-based company which was running it, InfoCom was involved in allegations of funnelling cash to the Islamic extremist group, Hamas.
No censoring was going on. The domain was seized because it was used as a cover for money laundering of terrorist organizations. Go ahead and prove how anything got censored because of this. If anything, it's more likely that the Hamas group was getting InfoCom to censor domains.
So the ICANN should judge the laws of the land they give domains to?
Who said anything about that? Oh, you made that up. Under ICANN, domains are domains, and anyone can have them. Iq was turned over to Iraq. Now Iraq imposes restrictions. No one has judged them on that, other than public opinion. What's your opinion? (If you actually have an informed one, that is.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
No...it's the geek who's interfacing with the input device of the servers (whilst the man with the gun at the door who has no idea what the geek is doing is protecting said geek) who ulimately owns it :)
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Secondly, this is an obvious prelude to taxation of the internet. Currently, the US can't demand taxes for e-commerce (mostly because Congress has a moratorium in place), leaving the issue up to the states. And of course, how can you tax a transaction that takes place between a seller in Ghana and a buyer in Hong Kong? Right now, you can't, but guess what! If you give control over the internet (or at least ICANN and DNS to start with; they'll demand more control later) to the UN they will have more control than they've ever had before. Up until today the UN has never been about control; it's been a place where countries can come to whine to each other and make occasional diplomatic concessions. But the UN doesn't control jack squat. If we gave them the internet they would actually become a world government rather than the Pointless Bickering Group they are currently.
I'm not one of those "OMG! NewWorldOrder! I hope the rapture is soon!!!11!!!one" dorks, but the idea of the UN controlling the internet does not sit well with me. Yet, it is inevitable. I just hope we can delay it as long as possible. I will miss the Wild West feel of the 'net. And I don't look forward to paying the UN tax.
And this brings up another problem: Taxation without representation. If I'm paying the UN's bills, I expect to have a direct say in how things are run (not this bullshit where the president appoints somebody - Bolton represents the Bush administration, not the American people). Right now the UN represents nations, not people. There had better be a new governing council (a parliament of regular citizens throughout the world?) set up before we even think about handing over the internet. Heck, we can run the elections and even hold some of the meetings over the internet if that helps, but there is no excuse for the UN not to consult the citizens of earth. How can they assume that the governments out there actual represent the people when the people didn't even elect many of the regimes currently in power? Yet, these very same countries - like China - currently agitating for control of the internet would fight my proposal for a Citizen UN to the last nail. What rank hypocrisy. What bullshit. This isn't about freedom, or democracy, or "playing fair." It's about one thing, and one thing only: CONTROL.
So, fine; you want control of the internet, UN? Well then we the people of earth want control over you. You open up to democracy and freedom and create a new council of regular folk, elected by their peers, and then we can transition control of the DNS servers to the UN. The internet is the best thing to happen to Democracy in the last 100 years (if not more) and I think it would a collosal mistake to hand it over to an institutional as slow, backwards and useless as the UN without making sure we can guide the internet into a new age of freedom for all of the world.
Electric Monkey Pants
I have to totally agree with a comment another reader posted early in the replies: Why should the US give up what it created? That doesn't make any sense why the US should. So because the Internet is used internationally means they should lose ownership? That doesn't make sense. Take Bill Gates, whether you like him or not, he created an empire and an operating system that is used the world over...should he give it up to the UN because the operating system is use internationally and is important?....I think not. I think it's like everything else in the world: The US is powerful and other countries are always looking at ways to take power away...Get over it. -linuxbtdsc
The rationale for making the move, according to The Fine Article:
Some countries have been frustrated that the United States and European countries that got on the Internet first gobbled up most of the available addresses required for computers to connect, leaving developing nations with a limited supply to share.
They also want greater assurance that as they come to rely on the Internet more for governmental and other services, their plans won't get derailed by some future U.S. policy.
Regarding available address blocks--right or wrong, those address blocks have been allocated. Unless the UN wants to magically "unallocate" from their current owners and "reallocate" them to other entities in the name of "fairness", it's a fait accompli. Don't expect a bunch of support from the U.S./EU in this regard--why help your potential assassin slip the knife in?
I would, in any circumstance, be interested in qualifying how real this misallocation actually is. The article dropped the ball on that.
Regarding policy--fine and good; certainly the same worry the U.S. has of others managing the 'net. So what entity would anyone entrust to fairly balance policy to everyone's satisfaction? No entity, not even the almighty U.N., is going to pass everyone's smell test (just ask the Israeli government what they think of the U.N., for example). And given the organization's legendary slowness in framing and publicizing policy on anything, how would these other countries be helped at all?
And wouldn't the U.S. want the same assurance that a bunch of African and Asian countries with their own agendas and suspicions of the "Great Corporatic Hedonist" isn't going to gang up and derail their own plans, via death-by-governing-committee?
Also, as with the address space, I'd be interested in details on some of these initiatives that have been derailed by U.S. governance policy. Again, the article fans, unfortunately.
A move would solve neither of these concerns.
Any country that can elect George Bush as its leader, shouldn't be allowed to run anything! Most of you probobly didn't realise there were other countries, until you found them connecting to your internet..
Linus Torvalds is Finnish. Jarkko Oikarinen (the inventor of IRC) is also Finnish. The web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee, a Briton. The MySQL project was founded by David Axmark (Swedish), Allan Larsson (Swedish) and Michael "Monty" Widenius (Finnish). Python was created by Guido van Rossum, who is a Dutchman. Maybe you were being ironic and I missed it.
Have you missed the last decade? You know, when the internet became a myor moneymaker, and having local domain names made a lot of people a lot of money, improved trade etc?
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
The less a tyrant controls, the less misery he causes. Liberals hate tyranny and human suffering. Therefore a liberal who seeks to hobble a tyrant rightly practices his faith.
A thus hobbled tyrant's appeal to principles of fairness and justice is an abuse of those principles. To demand justice before the law is first and foremost to deny any one the privilege to commit crime. Yet to abet a tyrant is to prop up and support that very privilege in him. Injustice lies not in hunting down one criminal but in accepting another.
where business is the government. Here in the US, businesses such as eBay get to set their own rules for the most part. The US government has done nothing to prevent you from using the Internet to bid on adult items on eBay.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
You keep telling yourself that.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
The DNS system works right now. There's exactly no reason to move the infrastructure except for matters of national pride and possibly national security. And the fact is that there is nothing stopping any of these countries from developing an alternate DNS plan of their own.
I don't think it's impossible that the UN could do this right, but it's a change that doesn't need to be made. And I don't want to simply play up "Oil for Food" or "Libya as Human Rights Chair" to counter people's "Iraq" and "Guantanamo Bay" cries, but it does illustrate that the UN has it's own issues which make it likely that the effort in moving the control is probably not worth the effort of doing it. There's no perceptible benefit in making this move in terms of human rights or bureaucracy and those cases illustrate that the UN is not a slam dunk as an improvement over the US by a long shot.
It tends to be a feel good thing to say that the "World" should run a global infrastructure, but the fact is that most of the world is either technically unsophisticated, impoverished and/or run by people who make George Bush look like Eleanor Roosevelt. Even the parts of the world that are none of the above have had their own issues in the past with genocide, human rights abuses and other unsavory trends. The fact that Europe currently looks like more or a "white hat" to some than the US is simply a confluence of situations which could easily change come next election in either of those places. Europe has been fascist before, and can be again. The US has had witch hunts in the past and can have them again.
If Europe or India or China want some control, then they should build out their own extension to the system and then integrate it. China and Europe didn't insist on internationalizing NASA to get to space, they built their own rockets and shot them off. A DNS infrastructure is nowhere near the same investment and they will not be breaking what is working now.
The US created the system and it continues to work. That is enough reason for it to keep it where it is. It sucks that it was promised that it would be distributed and that was retracted, but that's a diplomatic embarassment, not a technical consideration.
First, let it be said i live in the UK (btw, fuck the EU, they should use the pound!) so there is no anti-anybody bias here but this is typical of the EU.
You'd think i'd be in support of them, but far from it, apart from making a mockery of laws, they seem to be represented by every bent and dirty politician this side of the atlantic (Mendelson was pratically kicked out of England for being a wanker).
Its not just that either! each and every one seem to beleive in almost (in my warped view) a intellectual socialism, and this is a prime example!
No questions asked, America invented the internet (Its cool, the UK are still better) not even John Kerry would deny that (though he may claim it started in his back yard) pretty much every bit of tech that runs the routing, the serving, anything was developed in America.
Now for some weird and wonderful reson, the EU seems to think that because its this great comglomerate of nations that everybody who isn't them must bow at the knee and kiss the sandles.
*Sigh* as per my normal posts i'll sum up:
The Europe was jealous as fuck, because they're lame (cept england) and no matter how hard Bush tries, America will still be more powerful, militarily, and economically that the all the european countries put together.
Europe will never admit this
We all gang up on America, Welcome to the EU
Ask for something completely unfounded, unreasonably and unrealistic, like...mmm...the internet
America says: Fuck You Dude!
EU makes angry faces
catches America's eye
Backs the fuck off.
I cant remember how this started but dammit it'll finish with:
The EU is a bad idea.
It gives lots of crappy little countries who have been piggybacking/freeloading of England for years the idea that they dont need as and the dont they anybody else!
Basically Europe is going through puberty people!!
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
A whole "China" subthread, and while everyone may be rightfully concerned about civil liberties in China, this discussion is about the operation of root DNS. Root DNS has *nothing* to say about civil liberties. But it does talk to *existence* of top-level domains, and now we need to wonder about Taiwan and the existence of the ".tw" domain. Taiwan is the elephant in the room for everyone. They get treated like a nation, they have the ".tw" domain, the US sells them weapons, etc. But China considers them a renegade province, and periodically rattles the sabre over it.
Does anyone know if there is any official diplomatic recognition of Taiwan, any official embassies exchanged?
How do we do business with them? Unofficial embassies? (Trade missions?)
Would the Taiwanese rather peacefully join China, (and all that means giving up) or would they rather risk turning their island into another Chechnya?
Is China ready to kill the goose, by turning it into a Chechnya, in order to claim it?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
You still don't get it. In many countries Hamas is not looked upon as a terrorist organization. Who is defining Hamas to be a terrorist organization, and why does it have anything to do with the domains for Iraq? Answer this simple question.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
What, you don't think the US Government is stable? Hell, it's so stable on election day there isn't even any signficant difference in the candidates policy positions. I never said the government was efficient or economical, but it's definitely stable.
Find coupons in Greeley
Exactly. If the UN wants control over the internet, they can setup their own UN internet. They can fund a UN DNS system, they can pay for the upkeep, the bandwidth, and trying to promote other people to use it.
I'm quite fine with the current internet how it is. I don't see the US really doing much evil with the internet, and the current 'internet' DNS system IS the US' baby. Look at China, they basically already have their own 'internet'. This is just a bunch of whining democrats who don't know anything, and want control over something that other people worked hard to create and maintain.
"It's my internet! *waves flag*" sigh..
This is so tiresome. First of all, US didn't build the Internet. US built a network named ARPANet, which evolved into the Internet with help from the whole world, in the same sense the mobile phone network evolved from european inventions. Whoever created the vacuum tube shouldn't get credits for the transistor.
Second, US don't control the Internet. The Internet controls itself. The only thing US can do is cut themselves of the global network (like China). US cannot even shut down the root DNS servers because about 40% of them are distributed systems. The only thing that would happen with the Internet if US disappeared is DNS would be screwed up for a while until UN or whatever just seized control of the thing and just ignored the US controlled DNS servers.
Cheers.
"U.S. Insists On Keeping Control Of Internet"
Sure, that's one way to put it. Another way would be to say :
U.S. Insists On Keeping Internet out of the hands of corrupt petty goons
Support the FairTax
Why not let the Americans keep control of ipv4 and let the UN lead the way with ipv6?
A few developing countrys like Japan, UK, Germany, South Korea, France, Australia, Russia and China are, apparently outside of the US of A and probably have the skills and the money to make this happen.
All they'd need is a few local mandates to force the regional ISPs to supply IPv6 addresses in addition to IPv4 and setup a DNS or 6 in in each country, under the control of that country and you have yourself a UN solution. The US could kick in it heals and refuse to co-operate, but when the US consumers see Europeans have all the advantages that IPv6 brings (what are they again?) they'll probably start complaining.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
If the US wants to keep control of the Internet because it started it... then maybe we need to hand control of human life itself over to IRAQ, where it started.
Give it to a global governing body, not the US Government.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
If the US gives up control of the Internet, it will soon be filled with socialists, pornography (ok more pornography), gays, atheists, abortion providers, tax-raisers, and foreigners. Surely you can see that this scenario is so terrifying that the US must keep control.
Also, the Iraq War has nothing to do with the Internet as much as you'd like to think it's the focus of every single person in the United States. Believe me most poeple here don't like it either. That doesn't mean we need China or the UN running the Internet. As if they don't have their own corruption and censorship problems.
We conceived it, designed it, built it and paid for it. You, who couldn't have done any of the four, are fortunate enough to benefit from our creation for almost none of the cost. Now you, who hate us and envy us, want to control what you couldn't create on your own.
Sounds reasonable to me. Not.
Syncerus
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
...of the time when I was working on my undergraduate senior project and went to the local Kinko's to make a bunch of copies. This was at about 2:00AM. The "clerk" looked at the title of my paper which involved the word "Internet". He then proceeded to tell me that he had once met the owner of the Internet at a party. This intrigued me, since I had ben under the apparently mistaken impression that nobody "owned" the internet per se. Anyway, he went on to talk about a trip to Africa where he had seen people that had hinges in their skulls so they could flip them open and touch their brains. Drugs do wonderful things sometimes - especially since he decided not to charge me for my $30 copying and binding job.
So, I guess the US Government 'owns' (pwns?) the internet? I wonder if it is good at parties...
And you actually believe this? You really believe that I'm worse off in the UK just because the US system is based on an individual's rights?
I think the US obsesses about the roots of its government.
jh
You fail to realize that has nothing to do with the US running the Internet. You are using a US commercial website in which case even if YOUR country ran the Internet it would not change Ebay's policies.
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Er, I don't think you read the article. According to said article (which by the way was not published in the US) the US government had been asking ICAAN to release the TLD back to Iraq.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
The guy opening up his skull ?
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
Tell us how you really feel.
Many governments are unhappy about the current situation, therefore something must be wrong no? Ignoring other people's ideas is what's broken about the internet in its current state. Also cybersquatting is a great problem IMO.
The revenue source of the UN mose certainly lies not within the way it handles its aid. Your Namibia comment does not cut wood either. You are solely responsible for the whereabouts of your credit card number. Also what makes the information classified right now? What prevents me from requesting your address info from a WHOIS server? And what makes America so uniquely capable of handling that data? Have they not constructed a database, for mere mortals to peruse, containing your credit card information, picture, ID number and nutritional preference if ever you travelled by plane? Certainly the "Do not call" database has been managed quite perfectly.
The internet is not 100% American grown (sic). Not by far. Even without the US influence it would still have developed, but in a different way. The US also did not invent atomic bombs, they were there first.
The military argument is moot. The military has its own network for sensitive data. At least ours does.
The Syria argument is nonexistent. You know the great thing about the UN? It consists of various countries. Not one country can do as it pleases and thus changes are very well scrutinized before implemented.
Not so with the US. The US has been known for changing its mind and doing whatever it fancies (Kyoto, Iraq). Sure, now it more or less works but tomorrow it may not. It may be used more and more as a political tool by the US. Its reluctance to consider alternative control organisations certainly point in that direction. If any country is unstable in its policies it is the US.
And come on, Packet sniffing the US military traffic? any idea how the net works? any idea why it is DECENTRALIZED? And uses switches, hubs and the likes? Because there is no one main router through which all traffic passes! thus packet sniffing is NOT an issue. And Encryption? It appears you have not thought about your arguments.
And your last argument implies your government is not corrupt? Kyoto, Iraq.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Uh, the u.s. can't even handle an evacuation. Sorry, but it's true. Now see what a dumn argument that was, feeling stupid yet?. And I'm still waiting for a good reason for the u.s. to control the internet.
Stupid? Good one, from some one who can't even spell "damn" correctly.
I think the follow-up posts about ownership and creation (which I too stated in previous post) says it all. I tell you what, whenever you create something useful, you should give it away to anyone with no questions asked. Doesn't that make you feel good now. Oh and by the way, you've just given away a revenue stream as well. Good for you. Yet, I get modded overrated for telling the truth. Big surprise there.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
And you think the United Nations (ahem, Oil-for-Food scandal) is more trustworthy?
I got news for ya: there is no international government. So, you tell me which country is a more trustworthy than the US in this context? If said Denmark or Holland or something reasonable, I might have to listen to you. But the UN?!
Whether we like it or not, this is a very large question for the world. The Internet and other ways of connecting on a cyber level, as evidenced by even this website itself and programs such as AIM and IRC, is quickly becoming the new medium. Blogging's half-assed transition into an independant journalism and other expressions through this plane are transforming into the new 6'o clock news. That being said, one can't samply refute a question such as this with 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'. It needs a bit more depth. Although I do agree with the above statement, I believe that are far more important reasons that the Internet shouldn't be transferred into the UN. It seems to me that this transfer from a system that works and is sealed away from the government by apathy and red tape, to a transfer that would keep such a system in through red tape, would be disasterous. Countries that don't respect the right of free speech or don't allow it could try to force censorships, or even make the internet politically correct. Countries, the biggest of our worries seeming to be China, would only slow the internet down if we gave it to the UN. I think that the beaurocracy would only muddle the internet and cripple it, if not alter it in ways that it shouldn't. I'm not saying it should stay in the hands of the US. I'm saying it should stay out of the hands of the UN.
It doesn't make any difference if it is transferred to the UN either. It will only make a difference, only if Chinese takeover, which is a dream. But I am certain, the Chinese are building their own network probably better than the Americans(Ya don't be overconfident, we saw our disaster management system during Katrina and Rita).
Look at these intellectual patriots like Kai-Fu-Lee. I wonder how many such computer scientists, Nuclear scientists, Chemists have returned back with rich experience in the US to build China.
Give 5 more years, they will have better weapons than US and they may join hands with Russia to JAM American satellites.
>
The US doen't have control of the internet. Not in any real sense.
Simple. The US considers Hamas to be a terrorist organization. Anyone who does business with them inside the US borders for the purpose of funding terrorist operations WILL be tried and prosecuted. If Iraq (which was run at the time by a guy who gased his own people and pushed children out of helicopters) wanted its domain name, they shouldn't have been trying to illegally funnel money out of the US by stepping on our generous nature.
Iraq and the Hamas took a gamble to support terrorist opertions. They lost. Boo hoo.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
India has the largest middle class in the world.
They may be "developing" but they have more people with college degrees than we do.
The problem is the inherent instablity due to their location in the world and their monsterous underclass. Let's employ them but it will still be a while before we can trust them with our precious consumer data... Oh, what the hell am I saying???
"The Borba"
The US kicked ass at the Bay of Pigs. And they totally put the Canadians to shame in the War of 1812. And they totally stuck it out in Somalia.
the US going "It's our ball and we're going to say how the game is played"
I'd expect that from a child, not what is supposed to be th worlds leading democracy.
"USA want exclusive control? Fine, make a new network that is owned and operated exsclusively by USA and you can keep all control you want, just don't try to hook it up internationally."
We did. You are using it to post your message. It's called the Internet. It started of as (D)Arpanet and evolved into what you are using today. Here, see the history for yourself.
At first glance, it kinda makes sense to have the internet controlled by some internationl organization (although as many have said, the UN doesn't look competent enough). Thinking brought up a question: Why don't the "interested parties" just create their own DNS roots, IP address policies, etc? Is it that the content they want control of is on the US part of the internet? This is a serious question to those outside of US. If the other countries took it over and the US said "fine, then don't talk to our internet" would it basically sour the deal? Is The US part of the network needed that bad to keep countries from just "routing around" US control? Can some non-US folks answer this one? I'm curious...
:)
as a side note, I keep hoping someone will try just so SOMEONE can switch over to IPv6 since US won't...that and morbid curiosity to see how US would react to being cut out of the loop
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
I agree. Let's review now; U.S. DARPA creates the Internet, gives it to the world as a global commerce machine. Now the freeloading countries using the infrastructure the U.S. invented want to manage it?
F_ck you, U.N. b_tches.
Its not about being broken, its about trust. Do none of you remember back in 95 what happened to NeverNeverLand.
.nn websites, so nobody knew what was happening, and you couldn't email .nn anymore. It was like NeverNeverLand just dissappeared off the map, and soon people forgot it was there, forgot it ever existed.
.nn off of the root servers.
The US wanted to invade to close all of the Pirate Training Camps, but the NeverNeverLand government was vocal across the internet in claiming there were no training camps, just theme parks. So what happened, the US kicked NeverNeverLands domain (.nn) out of the root servers. Suddenly no one in NeverNeverLand could email one another, the government collapsed and the country went into chaos.
But worse, nobody could access any
Now it's just an legend, like atlantis, and all because the US kicked
Remember it's happened once, it can happed again.
I don't think the UK is better or worse off, but do you have a bill of rights addressing individual freedoms?
The more you know, the less you understand.
After all, it is broadcast on radio frequencies all over the world. Don't worry, we will still let UK taxpayers pay for it, we just want China, Cuba, and North Korea to have a say in the content that is being broadcast into their territory. It just isn't fair that only the UK should control this wonderful resource that is enjoyed all over the world. If only that hateful greedy limey bastards would stop oppressing nations like the Sudan, Indonesia, Venezuala with this agressive imperialist act of not turning over the BBC to the U.N..
... as well as any national broadcast network in any country where the programs can be recieved by those outside that country. After all, the airwaves belong to all of us, and it just isn't fair that a radio station in German, paid for by German tax payers, should not be collectivly controlled by the world.
Also, the CBC should be put under control of the U.N.
After that, we need to get the U.N. to take over the Louvre. After all, the Louvre is considered an important part of our World Heritage, and so should be compelled by an international body to eliminate the clearly western bias of most of the artwork contained within. We just aren't going to accept the arrogant attitude that just because the French built the Louvre, paid for the Louvre, and nurtured the Louvre to be the preeminent art mueseum in the world, that they have the right to control it! Zambia, Bolivia, and North Korea have some wonderful ideas of what they are going to do with the place.
Well... I just checked out the Wikipedia page on root servers, and it seems most of the root servers aren't even in the U.S. anymore -- just the "nominal" ones. These international root servers apparently cache their data periodically.
So, let's say Europe is sick of letting the U.S. control the root servers. Let's say Europe doesn't like some policy change the U.S. makes about a domain. Whatever.
Why not just stop caching data from the "nominal" root servers and maintain your own root servers as standalone? All the ISPs in your country could base themselves off of your root servers. It's not like the data changes all that often, anyway. And you could always make treaties with interesting countries to keep each other's root servers up to date.
Why does anyone need the U.S. government's permission to take over root server duty? I'm not getting it. What's stopping the rest of the world from just doing their own thing spontaneously?
All the root servers do is keep track of the servers for the various domains, right? Go standalone, and hire a nerd to spend all day verifying the various country domains and keep them updated.
Or am I missing the problem?
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
I'm an American - I know my government well - in my opinion they should not be totally in control of any aspect of the internet. It's too important to the entire world and I think that (especially lately) the US government has shown that the only thing it cares about is power and control. Power and control over the world's resources, regardless of what that means to the people who own, live near or have interests in those things.
To them, they view the internet as a military tool. Nothing more. When I say that I don't mean for their own direct use, they have their internet2 or whatever - they see it as something to be controlled. Just like if you want to control access to a city militarily one of the things you want to do is control all bridges or access points. They want to retain that ability.
Yes, I am aware of the internets beginnings. Al Gore worked very hard. - (is that joke way too old and played out?...sorry). No seriously I am aware of the internet's beginnings and the progression from Arpanet etc - it's not the same as it was. It is like comparing a child to an adult. Though its parents (US military, research, and academic communities - who basically work with the military in many cases) could control it when it was a 2 year old - they should not have full control over it as an adult. The entire world relies on it too much.
The current administration doesn't believe in international law or in any sort of cooperation with anything or anybody unless it suits their own interests. What they do believe in is Orwellian doublespeak about freedom and compassion - don't get me wrong, these issues are mot limited to the current administration either - they are just a very extreme example of it in my opinion.
Personally, I believe control of the root servers and everything else that makes up the backbone of the net should be spread out - both for redundency's sake and to prevent any one country for being a complete failure point (whether it's from a tyrant taking control or a natural disaster) or from having so much say over what happens that they control everything.
This may not be realistic presently. I know that the major fiber lines are probably owned by large corporations...
oh...WTF should we all just give up and put a giant glowing "TM: A wholly owned subsidiary of the United States" in orbit around the earth so that when visitors from other planets see Earth in their telescopes or viewports they will know right away who owns and runs things? WTF?
That's sort of my point. The basis of UK law is that you don't have individual rights. You don't even get to really own property.
But at the end of the day I don't think we're any worse off for it.
jh
n/t
you had me at #!
And the Spanish allow wild bulls to run through their streets. What's your point, other than to point out an event that would be identical wherever it may have occured. Humans aren't all that different, be they from New Orleans, Tokyo, or Sidney.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
1) Because it helps the people who want to take the DNS system away from ICANN gain support. If you tell a non tech user the truth: That a US orginization has defacto control over the root name servers, but that those roots could at any time stop listening to them with no legal repercussions and that the DNS system is just the one everyone uses for now, another could be created, they won't care, even if they follow all that. I mean really, who gives a shit if the a US group has DNS control? To the average user, who's never been involved in a domain dispute, they do a fine job. If, however you say they are "controlling the Internet" that makes peopel nervous. They have visions of US imperalism extending over the Internet, the US telling them what they can and can't do, and they say ya, we should end that.
2) Because that's what the UN actually wants. They don't just want TLD control, they want to regulate the Internet's content. The current head of the UN telecommunications committee is China's former minister of telecommunications, in other words the guy responsable for censoring their citizens. Slashdot linked to an interview with him some time ago which I just can't find now unfortunately where he makes it clear that he sees the UN have a greater regulatory role over the net and getting to decide what content is acceptable and not.
Isolationist view? Not at all. This has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with freedom to choose one's course of action. Growing up in the US I learned I have choices. I chose what to study in school, I chose what job to take, and I'm currently choosing what new job to change to. I am free to choose what clothes I wear and I'm even free to make this decision based on where the clothes are made. I don't have to use Windows, but I do. I have access to over 100 TV channels but I only watch the programming I want to watch.
This is why I don't understand why you're upset that you get US programming. Assuming you're Christopher Burke, the registrant of craznar.com, you live in Australia. I'm not up on Australian law but I'm pretty sure I would have heard if there was a law requiring you to watch US programming. If you don't like it, don't watch it. If it's on your TV it's there probably because someone thinks they can make money off of showing it. If you have something like public access TV (as is required here in the US), you are free to create your own entertainment and broadcast it. And ironically, thanks to the Internet, you can probably find, download, and distribute the programming you value.
So, Christopher, don't resort to name calling and rhetoric. Take your passion, gather up other smart individuals, and start the ANZnet. The US doesn't own your cabling. Heck, with wireless you don't even need cabling. Hating the US won't get you anywhere...that's not constructive.
Granted, fragmentation would be bad, but it strikes me as inevitable as long as there are physical borders.
Enforcement of the use of particular root servers would, of course, be interesting to see attempted.
You could've hired me.
Thinking even more about this, this isn't a UN place. In the telecomunications arena, they don't control it. They control the ways countries interface telephone systems, but not how they deal out telephone numbers, etc.. Why not do the same with the internet? let countries dictate their own network, but set policies on how they interface. For example, a standard on top level country codes naming and how to access a server that is tied to another countries root DNS. This should be feasable. it might fracture the internet to some extent, but doesn't have to and probabaly won't in practice. If the US wants to allow everyone to access the way they do now, then they can. If some nation doesn't, then it's their problem and their citizens can register a web site with us! :)
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
I for one appreciate the foreign contribution to the internet. I mean just look what Nigeria gave us... a whole Internet sub culture where serious criminals will put loaves of bread on their head. Not to mention the serious amount of network security tests performed by the Chinese, Russians, and eastern Europeans. And how can we forget all those infected Windows machines which act as good little DDoS drones and are found all across asia.
Yup, the Internet has massively dwarfed what the US brought to the table.
Make your own DNS system... With black jack. And hookers! In fact, forget the DNS systems!
In all seriousness, nobody is making you or anyone else listen to ICANN. It's all voluntary. The root servers (a number of which are not located in US, or controlled by US companies) choose to listen to ICANN. Whoever ICANN says is authoritavie for TLDs, they listen to. Your DNS server then chooses to listen to the roots, when it can't find a domain, it talks to them and asks them where to go.
None of this is required. One or more roots could stop listening to ICANN, a new top level orignization could be set up. For that matter you could set one up in parallel, use domains that ICANN doesn't, and have DNS servers look at both root clusters, they'd get ICANN domains from the current roots, the new domains from your roots.
So don't say to the US "Look, we understand you built all this, and that it's all located and administered in the US, but we want you to just hand over control to us. No, we aren't going to buy any of it from you, you should just give it to us because, um, well we want it." That's stupid. If the US DNS system is so problematic, make a new one. No, yours won't replace it overnight, but if the current one really is so bad, and the new one really is good, it'll happen.
And then order all of their national ISPs to switch over? It's not like we have technical control over their DNS lookups.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Because they paid for it. If that's not a good reason then I want your car, your home and your computer, because you don't have any good reason why you should control them.
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
Looking through all the comments here, the general trend seems to be Americas saying 'Its ours, we paid for it, why should we give it away?' and everyone else saying 'Why should we let you have the ability to re-map our country level domain into oblivion?'
.com or .br. This file is currently maintained by ICANN under the authority of the US Commerce Department. It would seem that every other country and ISP in the world refers to this one file out of a combination of a desire to maintain uniformity and momentum/laziness/cheapness.
Note: I just realized this is a very long comment so here is the summary: The US should maintain control of the root zones file and servers, but other countries should establish their own redundant copies of said file and servers to administer for their own use.
Disclaimer: I am an American.
Now I don't completely understand what the 'Root Zone File' is supposed to do, but the general idea seems to be that it lists the locations of the individual TLD name servers, i.e.: where to find the server that lists all domain names for
I can't see why other countries could not choose to maintain their own root files for use by ISPs in their country (or multi-national trade alliance). This way, even if the US goes genuinely nuts and cuts off international access (don't worry, the megacorps won't let us), the various national TLDs would continue to work for the rest of the world.
On the other hand, suppose the US turns the one and only Root Zone File over to an agency of a quasi-governmental group that is not elected-by or held-accountable in any way, shape or form to any of the individual citizens of this planet, that gives equal voting power to representative democracies and authoritarian regimes of all sizes and that (perhaps understandably) and sometimes projects a general attitude towards the US of 'give us money and keep the NYPD from towing our illegally parked cars, but otherwise go bugger yourself.'
Given these two scenarios, I think it far more likely that a UN agency would decide to cut the US off from the internet than the US deciding to cut any other country off. And given that we did build it and pay for it in the first place and maintaining it functioning order is vital to the economic and security interests of the United States, I think it is the right, privilege and prerogative of the US to keep control of the root zone file and servers. Other countries can easily clone these files and servers in their own countries, controlled by their own agencies, for use by their own citizens and corporations, and until someone decides to very deliberately screw things up in one country, the change would be completely transparent to internet users worldwide.
To me, this is really boils down to the same debate as control of the GPS system. The ONLY difference is that with GPS, the US was adamant from the get-go that it was ours to control as we pleased (we did pledge (not quite a sworn promise or treaty, but a pledge) to not use selective denial outside of war zones, but that's it). Realizing how important GPS had become, Europe decided to build Galileo (whether they actually produce the funding is another story for another day). Given how important the internet is, why there isn't already a European equivalent to ICANN for managing European TLDs (is there?) is really beyond me.
Remember: DNS is all informal and about trust. Your computer trusts it's DNS servers. They are configured by you, or by DHCP if you prefer. Either way, you (the adminsitrator) ahve control over it. Those DNS servers don't have to play by the normal rules. You can point your computer at DNS servers that look up non-existant TLDs and it'll work just fine. You can create your own TLD and use it for your own network. It'll work for any computer that trusts your DNS servers.
The next level is the same. Your DNS servers trust root servers to give them information on TLDs. Specifically, they trust the root-servers.net (root-servers.org if you want the website) root servers, unless you've messed with the config. These are generally called THE root servers, since they are the largest and most widely used. They are a divers group of computers, many located in the US and administered by US companies or the government, but several not (RIPE runs K, WIDE runs M).
Now as I said, your DNS server don't have to trust them. You can use another set of roots, like those that ORSN or OpenNIC run, or you can make your own.
So what about past the roots? Well they trust ICANN. They don't actually contact them for lookup info via DNS, but ICANN tells the roots who is authoritave for what domains and the roots listen. Again, nobody is forcing them, there are other roots that listen to different oversight groups, and some that listen to nobody. However the roots choose to listen to ICANN, thus ICANN has authority over the roots, and by extension anyone who uses them for DNS.
The thing people seem to confuse is this isn't government-mandidated authority, this isn't "You use these roots or we arrest you" kind of thing. It's all just a de facto agreement that's grown out of the orignal infastructure. If you don't like it, you are free to ignore it. You can create your own root system, with your own TLDs and do your own mapping on IPs however you see fit. Nobody will come after you.
The other side of that, is that there's not really a way to "force" the US to give up control. Europe can tell the roots they aren't to listen to ICANN, and the roots can "and probably will" ignore them. I suppose they can in theory make K stop since RIPE runs it, but the rest they have no jursdiction over. Also, since the largest number of the roots are run by the US government or US companies, it's likely they'd not listen.
The only real way to "force" the US out is to create a competing DNS system, that works so much better that people decide to switch. Barring that, the US has to decide to tell ICANN to hand over control, and the roots have to go along with it.
Okay then... so US Military and a few universities/colleges doing research for them create and design the Internet, as well as provide its first links. More institutions hop on as an effort to share information better between systems, and eventually goes global and becomes considered 'public'.
So why should the US give anything up? The Internet has become a public commodity around the world, but is still the US's brainchild. The whole work has something at stake, which is of course why this is coming to play, but keep it in the US control. If people would like, make agreements (and make them enforcable) that the US can't embargo using the Internet.
ARIN is the AMERICAN registry for internet numbers. The root servers are located all over the world but the 'master' root server is controlled by the US. So what? Until the US screws up, lets give them the benefit of the doubt of doing the same good job they've done for many years.
PS: I'm not an American.
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
OK first, we could make all online discussions really simple if we could come up with some sort of symbol or placeholder for a few concepts which hardly need any further exposition.
(666USA666) - This would be the placeholder for "The United States is evil and I am very angry but also experiencing a vague sort of pleasure in finding another reason to hate the United States." This would not cover extended, dispassionate discourse on the problems of the United States, but rather would stand in for such things as "Loud fat Americans! I HATE ALL OF YOU! I AM EXPERICING SCHADENFREUDE AT YOUR IRAQ PROBLEMS! Also you have no culture and crappy food!"
You could put two of them together, like . This would be vaguely the equivalent of a -vv switch on your favorite command line program. You could even do it three times. We could set a threshold of, say, 5 placeholders in a row to represent, say, a fairly robust, Al Qaeda sort of hatred for the USA, and then maybe like just once would be, perhaps, the way American liberals feel about the USA.
Then we could have:
(AmericaHYUK) - This would be the predictable ugly, dumb response we have grown to love to hate from so many Americans. This could be a stand-in for the trusty old saw, "WE BAILED YER ASSES OUTTA WW2 YOU EUROFLITS!" or "LOL FREEDOM CONSTITUTION LOL," "WE'LL PUT A BOOT IN YER ASS, IT'S THE AMURRICAN WAY!" or whatever it is that Americans say when faced with the fact that most of the world doesn't regard the USA as groovy as people from the US tend to do.
This is my contribution to all debate on the internet for this week. I hereby release both placeholders into the public domain, and this ought to help out with brevity.
Alright as for the whole internet, I say we put the Netherlands in charge.
No I'm not from the Netherlands but have you noticed that for such a geographically small country, they make up 1/3rd the population of the internet (Barring most of Asia, but I can't read their character sets so I typically stay away anyway)? If I just came to earth on a spaceship and spent my time learning about humanity on the internet. I'd guess that the Netherlands was the last remaning superpower.
Also, they tend to speak fairly superb English, which makes it easy for dumb ethnocentric Amurricans like myself. They seem to have an excess of technical skill and don't make a nuisance of themselves. Plus, who has anything against the Netherlands?
I say we put the Netherlands in charge. Here's to you, Netherlands.
You think I'm being sarcastic but I'm not. I love you guys.
They know nobody would go for it. ICANN is far from perfect and nobody but an ICANN member will tell you otherwise, but generally they do an acceptable job. You pays your money to the correct authority, you gets your TLD. Simple as that. Countries are given their own TLDs, to administer as they please, which can be selling it or metering it out in some other way, and there are a number of commercial ones, with different regulations and different companies selling them. Works pretty well over all.
So it'd be a hard sell to convince people that ICANN is so bad that they should switch. Sure, the people who got the short end of the stick in a domain dispute would be happy to jump on board but there are really supprisingly few of those. There's a lot of domains to go around, and other than a big company getting retarded every once and a while it's fairly uncommon.
So they realise it'd be a tough, and probably losing battle, not to mention somewhat costly in infastructure. So instead of fighting it, they've decided to bitch that the US should just hand control over so they can run what's already been put in place.
So though you are correct, they should have a nice glass of shut the fuck up and build their own roots (I argue the same thing) realisticly, I know it'll never happen. They will just keep agitating for control of the existing ones.
Most of the US control is "grandfathered" in due that US invented all of the basic hardware and middle-ware protocols that compromise the InterNet. The invention that made the net really take off was Berner-Lees standardization World Wide Web user interfaces- a Brit working in Switzerland.
The US governement, not industry, funded most of the Web's inventions, first through Defense Advanced Research, then National Science Foundation, and finally through Al Gore's Information Superhighway money. There were some contributions from industry like Xerox Parcs Ethernet. This InterNet technology was mostly a free and unrestricted gift to the rest of the world.
Let the US keep control of .com, .net .org, and .us for sure but let the root servers be controled by the UN.
.com, .net .org, .biz and all that and just put it all under .us. My domain would then become either houghi.us or houghi.org.us
et rid of
That way each country has its own say in it. Each country would have a say if people from other countries can or can not get a domain name.
Now even if the whole world wants a new TLD, the US can just say `shove it`.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Let's all work on a secure distributed DNS system, shall we? :)
To hell with UN and US. Let Sealand manage it. The only way to go.
And what if the U.N. decided not to give Taiwan control of the .tw TLD, or to not have a .tw TLD at all, due to China's insistence that Taiwan is not an independent country?
Someone has to be in control at the top, and there will always be the potential for political interference.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
If everyone outside the US truly finds this so very disturbing, then how about we Europeans - possibly together with the rest of the world - simply set up our own DNS root servers and point our local DNS servers there ? This entire debate is completely absurd - US is incapable of keeping DNS system under control. It simply offers a DNS root server service, which, for whatever reason, people keep on using from their own free will. If Europe set up its own DNS root server, there would be nothing the US could do about it - and if people would keep on using the old American DNS root server, that would hardly be USAs fault, now would it ?
It's not like DNS root server is a land area or natural resource that can be conquered; it is a database server that responds to queries over the Internet. There's nothing special about the current root servers, they just happen to be the ones that everyone considers authoritative. Just put up another server and convince everyone to use it. If you can't do that, then I guess that they are happy with the current system.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
we didn't ask the US to dump crap TV on us ...
Um, actually, you did. If nobody outside of the U.S. was interested in American TV, nobody would watch it, and the TV stations wouldn't waste their time with it. People in Europe don't eat Twinkies, because only Americans can stand them. Our exports are only successful if the foreign populations are interested. There's no American Army division going to people's houses in France and forcing them to watch "Everybody Loves Raymond."
...then don't use it.
--- You are in a little twisty maze of comments, all different.
the web is NOT the internet, jackass. the core protocols, the foundations (arpanet) - all that was developed (and paid for, mind you) right here in the US.
really, if your country doesn't like it, set up your own internet. you'll still be using those American developed technologies. they're open and available for anyone to use, for the benefit of everyone (you know, since we're such ignorant and selfish bastards).
let's see how it works out for you. face it, without the US, there would be no internet as you and i know it. america, believe it or not, has a tendency to promote free expression and enterprise, and the internet can be seen as that spirit manifested for the world to enjoy, learn from, and advance itself with. i don't want any other country managing it or trying to enforce their silly moral absolutes on it. i don't want places like China or Saudi Arabia or Iran deciding what's okay and what's not.
it all started here, and you are free to use it. don't start getting all pushy about who's running things if it's working just fine.
Does it please you to believe that what has fed.gov.us done to cut your access to deviant porn?
I wholeheartedly agree. If they could see further from one inch they would see they don't own anything related to the internet, except what is physically in their country. All that shit about owning and inventing the internet is pissing me off because its just simply the same "america is the bestest freest countri" idiocism.
Maybe africans should demand ownership of all fire related inventions, or europians for pretty much invented before 1773. Now they wouldn't like that, would they?
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
a) Transfer could cause mass-DNS-outages/destroy the very fabric of space time itself!
b) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_nameserver -- showing the US government only controls what, 3 root name servers directly? (even though US commerce department could change that, it obviously is allowing ICANN to create international roots...)
c) DNS root servers are not the internet, and thus if other countries want to control 'the internet' or really the WWW (world wide web) they can just set up their own root servers and try to convince everyone to use them.
d) the UN sucks as managing anything, and the 'internet' would just go into pieces, you'd have 'the US internet', the 'retarded internet', the 'chinese internet, the 'other people internet', though that kind of already happens by itself.
e)"they can just close their borders and shut down their trade. Noone will miss them."
I really wish they would, with some exceptions. Mexico, Canada, Japan, the U.K., and some other countries seem to do just fine with the US as a whole and I see no reason for us to stop trade or interaction with them. As for the rest of the world? I say we cut our network connections, cease our trade, and go information blackout on their asses. I don't feel the US needs them, and would become a much better country if it became more self-reliant again.
f) "Some countries have been frustrated that the United States and European countries that got on the Internet first gobbled up most of the available addresses required for computers to connect, leaving developing nations with a limited supply to share." -- those countries could be leaders and use ipv6, plenty of ip addresses there. China does it, why can't they? or are they talking about domain names? ffs, those are commercially owned, it's not our fault our people like to buy and use them!
g) We spent our money, and we continue to spend our money, creating, maintaining, etc alot of the root namservers and a large portion of the internet. And yet we should allow a group of other countries who paid nothing and had nothing to do with the development or research or anything behind it to have partial control? Like I said, if they want new root namservers, more power to them to setting them up and getting people to change. But they cannot have ours. Our's work. We know our's work. Everyone else knows our's work.
Last I leave with you this note: the internet is not held hostage by the US. We don't control the internet. We theoretically control WWW policy. But that is not the internet.
Soooo..."If the USA's position won't change, i guess people can just ignore the states and set up an alternative dns servers/architecture."
That's exactly what they should do instead crying to us if they don't like it. And good luck to them there, as it would be HELL to do such a thing (from a technical and security standpoint.)
To sum up my point, these little joint training exercises are a bunch of paltry nations against the United States with a blindfold, hands tied behind back, and a poisoned daggar in the side (in reference to the final scene in the movie Gladiator).
There are lots of alternative root DNS projects out there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root and it's only a matter of ISPs dns or your own dns settings to support them.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
I don't want to get into whether or not America has or doesn't have the right to operate the root servers. As far as I can see, they're doing a good enough job, and to base operations on ideology is not usually the most efficient way to keep those operations running successfully (The Soviet Union anyone?). Having said that, from a Brit's point of view, the Bush administration is getting very scary, and our own leaders just seem to be following along with their tongues hanging out.
However from a totally practical point of view, having one country operating the globally-accepted authoritative servers creates a single (albeit very large and well-protected) point of failure. Maybe we should come up with a way for each country to operate its' own root servers in such a way that they *must* all be synchronised with everyone else's, and they must all contain *identical* mappings.
Redundancy == Good.
Sadly, that glorious shining vision requires a lot more international co-operation than is feasible at the moment.
"Life is pain Highness. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something"
Westly, The Princess Bride
If they want an Internet so bad, why don't they make their own? They could call it Euronet, and put up a "Yankee keep out!" sign on it.
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
There may be good internationally coordinated agencies, but the ITU is not one of them.
You know how patent encumbered the MPEG standards? That's largely the result of the ITU and their absurd RAND patent policy. Remember the Open Systems Interconnect fiasco, where some bright guys decided to completely replace all the internet protocols with their own incompatible crap? Yeah, ITU-T was involved there too.
It's amusing that these same people who were unable to do what the IETF did are now trying to gain control over their creation through political nonsense. Maybe they'll figure out how to deal with their own IP block in the process.
Indeed, the track record of the U.N. is mixed. What I don't see being discussed is whether or not this is even its role. Really, the U.N. was set up to mediate international disputes by methods other than the traditional (gunfire). Where is the dispute? Has the U.S. mishandled its authority here? If what we are proposing is to have the U.N. manage something because the current managers might mishandle it, aren't we asking for a worldwide nanny state? Do we want this?
Using plain ol' text since 1968
Ok, since when does this UN tripe hold any water whatsoever? Let's leave aside the fact that the UN is probably the worst organization you could possibly put in charge over the internet for now. Instead let's focus on the heart of the matter--
It's not yours.
No, hear me out. This isn't some nationalistic pride crap, it's a fact of life. Why should the US give away control of the very thing it created? It's like them demanding joint control over Walmart because they're so widely used. It's assnine. Yes, yes, I understand that sole control over the internet by the US might threaten your sensibilities. I can also understand where your individual governments might be worried about strategic concerns. But pardon me if I can't sympathise. China didn't develop it. The EU doesn't own the hardware. France doesn't manage it. It's patently assnine to actually expect the US to give up control of this corporate entity just because other countries are feeling left out. Instead, I have an alternate solution that's far more feasible than this poor excuse for a whiney pissing match--
Make your own.
Yep, that's right. You want to retain tactical and economic control over your country's internet, cut yourself off from the US and the "normal" internet, develop your own infrastructure and go to town. If you feel like it, allow access to the US internet. Manage it the way you want. have a blast. I didn't say it was an elegant solution, but it gives you control over your government's own internet destiny instead of being beholdent to the good will of the US. You're contry is not being forced to use the US infrastructure, just that bitching and moaning to them about their monopoly is easier than actaully taking control of their own destiny. After all, it's far easier to take a piece of somebody else's pie than baking your own. Or do you expect Microsoft to piecemeal control of itself to the UN too?
Wait... Silly question. Of course you do.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
So, if nobody reaches an agreement, are we going to get back to the BBS era when there were a number of different networks instead of the giant, monolithic Internet?
If other countries don't like the US being the role of administrator then they are welcome to start their own networks. See if the people will prefer them or the internet. The US government created and funded darpanet and then opened the technology to universities and people all over the world in a gesture of good will. He who pays the bills calls the shots. We created the internet and we have the right to control the DNS servers. Don't like it, make your own.
They can make their own Internet. This entire issue is just another example of how billions of US dollars (both private and taxpayer dollars) have been used to develop a wondrous technology that has changed the world, and now everyone wants to get a piece of the pie. It's like those roommates who find every excuse in the book to avoid washing dishes or preparing their own meal, but when you make something nice, they are all over you like vultures and paint you as the bad buy for not sharing.
I just can't talk to you when you're right here.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-5780117.html
The U.S. Treasury Department has blacklisted more than 60 Cuba-centric sites, many maintained by a travel company called Tour & Marketing International. The last update to the list was published by the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control on June 30.
Indeed, I have heard of the ITU and agree with you that they are a better fit. This answers the rhetorical (why the U.N.?) part of my question. With regard to the remainder, I will do you the courtesy of assuming that you have heard of the "law of unintended consequences". When the need arises to "fix" the internet, perhaps the ITU would be the body to whom we should turn. Until then...
Using plain ol' text since 1968
It worked out well for both sides. The USAF got to go to Congress and say they weren't as far ahead as they thought, and the IAF got a big morale boost that also helped the sitting gov't. A number of defense industry analyst bloggers commented on this at the time.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
Sure, but we built our own here. Those are our cables, our servers, its OUR internet.
No, WE paid our own infrastructure. Who do you fail to see THAT? And, please don't go all pathetic on me here, i never called you a fascist.
We practically fetishize free speech in the US. You can say more about more in the US than in any other nation with a functioning central gov't and police force. If free speech is your concern, there is no better government to handle the internet than the US. I studied free speech law extensively at law school, and I discussed comparative law with a lot of the foreign students. This isn't to say that the US gov't administration of the internet is perfect, but it's as good as you're going to get.
As for the DMCA, blame your own lawmakers. I think it stinks, too, but if your lawmakers were short-sighted enough to take the candy our corporate shills offered them, well, that's not the fault of the US electorate.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
That is _not_ my point at all. And had it happened elsewhere, something else would have happened. And it would probably have been better organized.
Nobody gets my point. I am not saying, "we invented the network protocols so we should reign supreme." I am saying, "we built a network based on published protocols. Everyone connected to it knowing we are the decision makers." Anyone is free to build a network. In fact, I have one in my own home. I control who has access. I pass out the IP addresses. I connect to the Internet so I have to abide by the rules of whoever makes policies and sets standards for the Internet. But in my own home no one tells me what to do (my wife doesn't count when it comes to the network).
If there was only one fire in the world, somewhere in Africa, and everyone had to go to that one fire for light, heat, and warmth, then your analogy would work. The Africans could set the rules for fire-related activites. However, fire technology is well known and documented so we can all have our own fires and govern them as we see fit (subject to local laws). It's the same with the Internet. We built a network but the technology is well known and documented. There's no reason to come to our fire and demand a say in how we tend it; go build your own fire.
Sorry, i tried to spell "dumb". And i think my responses to the those before you answer your questions. And yes, thank you, i *do* feel good.
What is it with all those utter idiots here? The US built its OWN part of the internet. And you can have it, nobody will complain about that. It is just that many other countries would like someone ELSE than the US to control their part of it. And believe it or not, many of those countries would rather trust the UN than the US. Now why is that?
Actually the US Built all of the Internet. The backbone of the Internet you know the MAE routers are in the US. The US built the DNS system as well. Why do you think it has root control?
Not to mention DNS and TCP/IP was all created by the US Department of Defense.
I don't care if many countries would rather trust the UN then the US. They can if they want to. Nothing is stopping the UN and it's member from creating a new network. The US built the internet and then allowed other countries access to the backbone.
I suggest you read the history of Internet before you start calling people idiots.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Unless the federal government has some really, truly massive off-books income sources, that's way off the mark. Aside from classified budgets for espionage, the total is more like $20B to $25B per year for DoD R&D and procurement. That's a lot of money, but an order of magnitude lower than your estimates.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Oh, sorry. I forgot to mention companies that actually have bought politians. Please add the likes of RIAA, MPAA and other major corporations as a logical conclusion of 'and we're it's legal to give money to politicians to change their vote'.
Anyway, and I'm not trolling now or trying to make your argument look bad in any way, but look down between your legs. If you are male, have your genitals been mutilated when you we're a child, or do you still have a foreskin?
My point is, most American males are born into bondage by religious fanatics, and I am glad I wasn't born in America so I get to keep my foreskin, to the pleasure of me and my girlfriends, both past, present and future.
But we are getting far from the original discussion.
Freedom means that even countries that hate the US should have control over their part of the internet. I don't approve of what most non-free country's leaders say, but they should be allowed to say it even if your government don't want them to.
I get upset everytime I see Bin-Laden on al-Jazira, but I'm glad they exist.
And you should judge any country on how they treat their prisoners (think: Lyndie England, Guantanamo, Anal rape in Federal Prisons.)
How many /.ers are suggesting the rest of the world leave the internet if they don't like it.
I can't believe how many of them think that it's the US's right to own the internet.
I also can't believe how quickly the pro-US content is rated up, and other rated down - irrespective of the content itself.
I am genuinely dissappointed, but luckily unlike the internet - I can leave this melting pot of self interest.
See how quickly this one goes to 0.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
The following news story shows exactly why the UN should not be allowed to manage the Internet. They are holding their tech conference in Tunisia, a country that blocks access to Reporters without Borders. Say what you will about the US, but at least this isn't going on at the root level.
2 .html
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050929/D8CTK2SO
I'm not sure what part of the U.N. is pitiful. The General Assembly might appear quite crippled, but that's the part of the U.N. that's there to provide a forum for countries to argue with each other. Other than the General Assembly, The U.N. does have a very good record for running large international organisations, many of which are run efficiently enough that most people don't hear about them.
I, for one, would like to see more detail about the proposal of how the U.N. plans to do it. Considering the track record of the US Federal Government, it honestly wouldn't surprise me if the UN could do a better job.
"Seriously, if you want the internet, make your own."
Which is exactly what is going to happen.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
The dark ages (and other amusements) are PROOF of the staying power and innate vitality of Western Civilization. Our culture has survived the burning of the library at Alexandria, the sacking of Rome, the dark ages, plague, a thousand years' worth of brutal conflict, the church and its anti-intellectual mania, the church's inquisition, and countless other ridiculous stumbling blocks -- all to produce in the end the most powerful, world-encompassing civilization that has ever existed, a civilization whose science, mathematics, technology and culture every other culture has adopted, a civilization over EIGHT THOUSAND YEARS OLD.
And after all this, India, who had it relatively easy compared to us, DIDN'T SPLIT THE ATOM OR PRODUCE A MODERN SCIENCE. And, even though a certain sort of Indian likes to imperiously claim that Indians are the smartest people on the planet, their country boasts an enormous poverty-stricken underclass, less than a 50% literacy rate, huge problems with their infrastructure... All while we "dumb Americans" have a literacy rate far up in the 90's and have all our trains running on time.
My point is not that "India Sucks". My point is that India doesn't have a fraction of the bragging rights snooty indians often try to claim. I think they should try and develop a little humility, concentrate on DEVELOPING that "developing country", and quit bragging about how great they are. If the rest of you had a lick of common sense, you'd feel the same way.
And you think I'm a fucktard? Who cares? I'm correct.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
-FL
Everybody Loves Raymond is crap. You want some good comedy, go download Faulty Towers, Red Dwarf, Fools and Horses, or the original Hitchhiker's Guide.
But have any of my friends in Thailand (where I used to live) heard of them? Noooo! Course they know Everybody Loves Raymond...
Now, I don't think the UN should necessarily have control over the web. Frankly, I'd like to see redundant DNS servers set up in every country so that nobody can unilaterally turn off the web if it has content they don't like. But this is not an ideal world. This is a world where a psychopathic weenie can shut you down if it doesn't like what you publish. Hasn't happened yet, but it can and probably will.
-FL
Oh please. Stars and Stripes dogma.
The U.S. is the most controlled social experiment on the face of the Earth. It has one of the very lowest standards of living among all the industrialized nations! --The American media, that bastion of 'free expression', dictates behavior and social norms to such a degree that those it controls are barely even aware of it. It's military arm is down-right evil; what other country regularly destroys new and budding democratic nations to ensure that it stays on top of the economic power game, and does so by funding lunatic right-wing fascists and selling wars to a brainwashed public. Look at what is happening in Venezuela for the latest example of CIA treachery. It happens time and again, and America is going to reap what is has sown. You will learn.
The internet can be shut down at a moment's notice and the Big Switch resides on American soil, where the world's latest, nastiest fascist dictator has already taken power and is growing his dark legions.
The rest of the world has good reason to feel more than a little nervous. --I don't think the UN is the solution; ideally I'd like to see redundant DNS servers in every country on the globe. But that's not going to happen when so many people are drunk on the myth of "America The Good".
-FL
No one wants this to happen except the UN (and other governments who will gain from being able to legislate subversive websites off the Net). BBC, CBC, etc. have nothing to do with it.
Mod troll down as parent.
Sheesh, the french are so touchy about their cowardice.
Careful. Those French forgot all about how their country got wiped out in a couple of days by some Germans with tanks, and had to setup shop in a cafe in Morocco. It's hard to run a government when the owner - Akhim - keeps asking you to buy drinks or leave.
Last time I ran the clock, the US and Britain were the oldest continuous governments on Earth. We've born the burden of having to prop everyone else the fuck back up.
Tim Berners-Lee invented the web, not the internet.
It's nice to be American I guess, well my US Citizen wife does like it. For me, as a Dutchman as for many other non-US citizens, we just have to suffer from the White House and Capitol Hill witts and whims....... and suffer we do! Wheter it's Iraq invasions (no UN embargo), to wheter it's the Internet: The US goes it's own way....... We suffer, coz we're not allowed to vote for the US Congress and US President. And if the USA call itself a democracy, but impose strickt control on the world, that's a bit of a hypocracy and to me sounds a bit contradicting! So the USA wants to keep strickt control on an Internet that has been invented by the European CERN? That's a fascinating fact, as it shows to me again the worthlessness of European politcians, they just gave it all away! Yes, we should take the blame then on ourselves....... besides, I always thought it was invented by DARPA or the US Army research branch, as well as some commercial companies had their "intranets" (My dad worked at IBM, and was using email long ago in the early seventies already, he never got the fuzz when internet went public, as to him it was normal). Point is, a global product as internet, should be globally regulated. Especially with DNS, it's like the national currency, the US is making the Brittish pounds, the Euro, the Yen and so forth. No country would accept this and it becomes time the US starts to get that the world doesn't like this state of being! We want to control our own destiny. My wife jokinly tells me that the US doesn't care, and she doesn't, as she is American and sees her country thriving. Now being in the Netherlands and being bitched on dailly by the "Dutch friends", she starts to get the perception of the world! This whole thing goes beyond the internet, it's part of the whole US arrogance, and slowly this arrogance will destroy the US, as it will aleniate more and more former allies and friends, untill only the UK and Australia are left, and even there the citizens start to hate Americans. I hope for my wifes nation, they realise this sooner, before the rest of the world discover they can do without the US and start to isolate the US from the outside (reversed isolation).
The wise are not erudite, the erudite not wise!
[whole thing about photographs]
It doesn't matter if soldiers aren't supposed to take pictures. Or that the army isn't idiots.
Censorship is per definition when you torture people behind closed doors away from medias eyes for instance, then you censor information. If you can't get information out of prisoners in the view of a camera, you are probably comitting war crimes. If you had pictures of how Iraqies are treated in prisons in Iraq on the 11 o'clock news, the government would loose the war on the homefront within a week.
The fact that you don't see this is the evidence of censorship. Nothing else.
Have you for instance seen, as I have on European TV, pictures of Iraqies being tortured by having the soles of their feet whipped with canes? It was a common torture method during Saddams rule, and it's still common in "free" Iraq.
I've watched a lot of CNN since the war started but I've stopped. It's all too one sided, and too far from the real truth.
"So would your television have no problem with say.....American style TV and movie violence? I don't mean the average fake looking gun shootout. I hear Europeans complaining about that all the time. Heck, in some countries over there, American games have the blood edited out, or other things edited out. But anyway, let's get back to language, you can hear a "fuck" or "shit" or "damn" or "son of a bitch" or even "asshole" on TV on certain shows. They don't get fined. You really have to go out of your way to be offensive usually to get fined."
TV doesn't have any problem with violence. The movie industry in Sweden does. Some movies are censored and some graphical violence is cut out. But that has gotten a lot better since the eighties, when it was common. Nowadays allmost all movies are uncut. Last movie I can rembered that was censored in the theaters was Terminator 2. But some of your "GTA made my kid go on a shooting spree!" has bled over here but nothing has actually happened since "The Last Ninja" which was the game that started the debate.
"So, in other words, you honestly think that the majority of the people of the world hate the people of the United States. And hate our country.... even if excluding the government that runs it."
No. Since you don't seem to speak english I will repeat myself. "A majority of the rest of the world dislike you as a whole country, government, people, soldiers abroad, christian nuts and especially the likes of RIAA and MPAA."
"That explains why I have so many foreign friends over the net that say you are so full of bullshit. I think you're just a bigot."
Oh, I'm a bigot? Especially since I'm a university teacher at an international masters program with a minority of Swedish students. The rest are, French, German, Norwegian, Icelandic, Danish, Hungarian, American, Canadian, Brittish, Italian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Mexican, from Panama, Colombian, Swiss, Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Australian, Thai Korean and a Palestinian.
But I guess you'll just have to take my word for it.
Your attitude on the other hand is exactly what people dislike, the whole "we are the best, and we can do what the fuck we like" makes you come off like a real asshole, even though you probably are an OK guy, considering you frequent slashdot.
"You do realise that the President is Commander and Chief of the Armed Forces yes?"
Yes. But he does not have the power to start wars without being attacked.
"That's established in the Constitution. And that bill, passed through Congress, authorised the President to use military force against Iraq. So how is it exactly a violation of the Constitution?"
Incorrect. It authorized him to start war on Iraq as he saw fit. And he did so even though Iraq didn't have any WMD.
The power to start a war should lie with congress and not one man. That's the violation. If it would have been correct, there would have been a vote in congress "Should we start war with Iraq?",
They don't want you to find that hard to find that crazy uzbekistanian porn.
You have too much faith in humanity. I think you just need someone to point at and whine about. People are stupid when frightened, not organized. They turn into sheep. Just look at the tramplings that occur when fires erupt around large crowds, or whatever. Look at what happened on the other side of the world, when the tsunami hit. Something else doesn't happen, and it will never be oranized.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
And your last argument implies your government is not corrupt? Kyoto, Iraq.
Iraq was poorly handled. True, the US could probably have reached a better diplomatic solution. No, we couldn't have just left Saddam to his own devices and simply lifted or continued sanctions. Either would have been disasterous.
Kyoto - Better to take positive action and develop alternative energy sources while reducing methane and other greenhouse gasses than going straight to limiting CO2 production before there are any alternatives. The focus on CO2 as opposed to other stronger greenhouse gasses would seem to be linked to a desire to limit industrial capacity in the developed world.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.