The Fracturing of the Internet

farrellj writes "There is currently a major conflict between the US and the rest of the world about the control of the Internet. They are fighting over who will control the root DNS servers and assign IP addresses. The US is against an independent international body to do this. This could fracture the Internet into multiple country and regional mini-internets, with conflicts over IP and Domain Name assignments, with no interconnects between them." From the article: "... the Bush administration said in July that the United States would 'maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.' In so doing, the government 'intends to preserve the security and stability' of the technical underpinnings of the Internet. Without consensus, some experts say that countries might move ahead with setting up their own domain name system, or DNS, as a way of bypassing Icann." Update: 09/30 20:45 GMT by Z : I believe this to be another view of the discussion we had a while back.

Comments

Needs to be taken from American hands

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet is about freedom. The US has in the last five to ten years become an enemy of such freedoms, take for example the PATRIOT act. The internet is simply too valuable a resource to be effectively put in the hands of people with such low regard for freedom and individual liberty (which include the right to privacy). I think its very clear that the US's motivation for not ceding to an accountable international organisation is primarily one of perceived "national security". The internet has to be in safe hands, and if a fracturing of the net is required then thats the price we shall have to pay to safeguard the whole.

Re:Govern

[heavy snowfall]

No, but it's hardly diplomatic behaviour we see from the US in this case. Nothing new about that though.

I'm not saying this as flamebait, but if the US actually tried to excercise their so-called power over the internet for something truly sinister, they would find it to be more of a swiss cheese than a sledgehammer to wield... :)

--
Use your bluetooth phone as a modem for Linux

Loop it back to em

[quibbs0]

I know how we can make the world 100% happy, completely democratic (although they already are of course):

I think we should give the terrorists a local loopback IP (127.0.0.1) so when they try to attack us, they accidently hit themselves. That'll show em! Shoulda paid more attention to subnetting in college!

These colors do not run

[jszep]

the Internet.

to the victor....

[xmorg]

We are your overlords. It is a privilage that we grant to you to be allowed to use our internet.

But do not dispare, citizens of the world. As we have found in our rise to power there is nothing that innovation and technology cannot solve.

I propose massive (nationwide) subnets. In this way you could have penty of 192..... adresses.

Also, I propose that we develop some sort of "domain mask". How it would work, is that when in America.... all the European sites would be addressible with their country code extention. (.au, .jp, .de) HOWEVER, when In the country, the domain mask will make your site accessible, by its exstention.(.com, .net) (if there is a domain of similar name in the US, you could alias it as .com.us. This could probably be done without infringing on anyone elses sovereignty.

Problem solved!

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[Lucractius]

The internet is open to the world but certain root levels need to be control by a trusting body.

Do you realy trust the US Goverment? They sure as hell dont trust you!

spin

[vague_ascetic]

The U.S. is pro-democracy, but only insofar as democracy is a means to guarantee a liberal and limited government. The UN is anything but, because of its member states, who are far more willing (indeed eager) to regulate, limit, and filter the internet. Other nations already have a voice--they just don't have ultimate control. And that's a good thing.

The U.S. is pro-democracy? - only insofar as it serves their intentions by giving it lip service. Historically the USA has been for Democracy only when the democratic process results in a government they find pliant or tolerable.

Our current pretender, Mr. Bush is allied with Musharraf, the Pakistani dictator who overthrew a democratically elected government. The Bush Admin has expended great efforts stretching the truth about N.Korea, Iran and Iraq, while hiding the truth about Pakistan's exportation of nuclear tech to other countries. Up until recently the Bush Administration was happy to ally with one of the world's present day devils, Uzbekistan's Karimov, and even after last May's Uzbek government's Andijon massacre of their protesting citzenry, which was described by one of the protestors with "They shot at us like rabbits", equivocated before supporting the EU demand for an International Inquiry. While this was going on, they had actively tried to destablize Chavez in Venezuela, who won his election. Then there is the Abdullah love pecks.

Are these allies of ours liberal and limited governments? The only reason the Bush Admin presently loudly touts democracy, is that it's the only even half-assed rationale left for Bush's War Upon Iraq. It certainly wasn't waged to get our real enemy, the 911 perps, many of whom have licked their wounds received from Afghanistan battles up in Pakistan.

And this is only our present Administration. The Pro Democracy spin is hype. The American Government is comprised of powermongering control freaks, the truth notwithstanding.

Yeah, so The USA is better than the Dynastic Maoposeur gang's Great Firewall of China, and mainliand's i-net policy of Hu owns Yu; so all your posts are belong to the People's Republic, but the US government is still insidious, and still without a clue. I was spooked to see how a weird-assed robot with a dot mil DNS resolution made a jump across two web domains on a previously invisible thread, in the temporary weblogs, only to have both providers(1 UK and 1 US based) erase its tracks on the permannent logs. Especially since the pages had nothing whatsover to do with "terrorism". One was a satire about Mike Savage's and Alan Ginsburg's frolicking relationship from the past, and the other some political cartoons.

The great terrorist hunters of the Naval War College , investigating adolescent humour poking fun at right-wing homophobia in their herculean attempts to probe and root out the evil doers. They aren't called Rear Admirals for nothing; In The Navy...

The USA politicians want control of the internet only for the sake of control, and for the advantages they can then provide to their cronies.