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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.
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.
Please give me a break!
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
As opposed to the country which imprisons without trial and tortures in Abu Gharib and Guantanamo, then lies about it?
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 am assuming you have heard of a country called India, which is a developing nation. If you still don't get it, then get out of your basement and watch the real world. We are not in 70s anymore.
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
'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
What if a cowboy in the govt decides to switch off all traffic to China... I wouldn't worry about that. Some cowboy in the Chinese government is already seeing to it without our asking. :^P
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
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.
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
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]
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. We'll build our own internet. With blackjack, and hookers! It'll . . . . . .
It'll be just like the old one!
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!
They are a developing country all right.....developing all that outsourced software...
Sorry, couldn't resist
I got nothin'
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."
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.
Yes, we're going to put the UN in charge of the Internet.
Yes, and while the US doesn't have exactly a spotless record regarding human rights, it at least has the technical competancy to manage something like the internet and is a lot more financially sound than the UN. And it is not like there is any particular wonderful track record on human rights coming out of the UN, or its member nations as a group.
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...
Xaosiecte has an excellent point. The UN oil for food scandal shows that the UN is just a toy for the powerful to pad their own pockets while rapaciously criticizing a founding member who has been willing to shed blood for other's freedoms. Libya inability to PR their human rights violations, is less a function of PR and more a function of lack of restraint. The fact that someone would defend Libya on human rights indicates a fundemental problem with that person's ability to observe? be rational? think?
The US is by no means perfect! But no other country has a proven track record of supporting other people's freedoms over the past 100 yrs. Furthermore, we have no obligation to turn over a system that we developed to promulgate and enable communication to the the CORRUPT UN, just because we were successful.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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?
You tell me.
"Villagers in India's Andamans and Nicobar Islands have denounced 'paltry' tsunami compensation relief they have received from the local government.
One woman received a cheque of just two rupees (less than five US cents) for damage to her coconut crops."
I also remember reading an article recently about how India's Air Force kicked our ass in joint training exercises
While the Indian Air Force did 'win' several (even 'most') of the engagements, to say they 'kicked our ass' is a bit misleading.
No AWACS, which the USAF would use if it were real
Older F-15C, lacking the upgraded, longer range radar, against newer IAF Su-30's.
No BVR engagements
The USAF sent 5 jets, and were outnumbered during the A-A portions of the exercise. This was a DACT exercise, not a 'beat the other guy' situation.
Having said that...
General Hal Hornburg, head of the US Air Combat Command said "that we may not be as far ahead of the rest of the world as we once thought we were"
From an IAF official:
"We have appreciated the compliments but we are being pragmatic. We have no doubt about the technological superiority of the US Air Force. The exercise in Gwalior was a low-level one and involved conventional fighter tactics."
Spin it how you want, but that's not quite "kicking our ass"
In fact it would have better been described as "protecting the f-22 budget" rather than getting our ass kicked.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
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.
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.
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.
Dear citizen of Earth,
Thank you for your grand link pasting efforts. However, this is not about nationalism. Being a nation built on immigration we recognize, value, and sometimes improve upon contributions from the world over. The problem with your argument is the US isn't complaining about anything you listed. I'm not aware of anyone complaining that China invented paper money, or China controls the production of paper money. See, I'm not even sure how that fits. We're not complaining about our republican (note: lowercase r) form of government. The closest you come to something that fits the discussion is the world wide web, which is governed by W3C. I'm not aware of any complaints about that, are you?
I'm not saying "US is #1" or "world is teh sux0r!". My point is that the US made the investment in money, time, knowledge, material. We did not send out armies of technicians to secretly wire your countries with network cable. I'm pretty sure you guys said, "Hey, look what they built. That's pretty cool. Let's hook up to it." An alternate scenario has instead, "Hey, look what they built. That's pretty cool. I'm not comfortable with the US governance of this network though. Fortunately the protocol is open and well documented. Let's get build our own similar network, but instead it will be governed by the all countries. If we need to we can bridge to the US network later."
So you see, it could have gone differently but you didn't choose that path. Wishing you had now is sour grapes.
Warmest regards,
A US Citizen