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

followup field

[JS_RIDDLER]

/. needs a followup field, to link to previous related articles.
I dont mind hearing about them again, it would just be nice to be able to see the past article. Kinda like the "Related Links" on the right side of the articles we have now.

It nice how this article DOES link to the previous story at the end.
which was Posted 09:43 AM -- Friday September 30 2005

If funny how he calls it the other day tho

Re:followup field

[Alex P Keaton in da]

Uh- lets be honest.
1. Post story about US vs World.
2. Watch discussion degenerate into a flame war, as it always does in these type of stories
3. Get tons and tons of comments, mostly angry rants by trolls and flame throwers posting as ac, which is all but gauranteed with a story like this
4. Get more pages refreshed
5. Serve more ads!
6. Profit.
Even a/c counts as a page view from a traffic standpoint. An intelligent conversation devoid of a/c and flaming gets many fewer posts and thus fewer total ads served. If it that complicated? If you can get a story like this up once in a day, double you money by running it again!!!

Re:followup field

[Peyna]

They used to have followups more frequently, in stories known as "Slashback." They're a rare occurrence anymore.

Re:followup field

[anaesthetica]

I thought the designated "follow up" space was a regular feature called "Slashback". Am I wrong?

Re:followup field

[Dogtanian]

Even a/c counts as a page view from a traffic standpoint. An intelligent conversation devoid of a/c and flaming gets many fewer posts and thus fewer total ads served. If it that complicated?

My feelings exactly. How naive do you have to be exactly to believe that all those "dupes" are really down the incompetence of the editors?

Slashdot is a large, well-visited site, with paid editors, and we're asked to believe that they're not capable of spotting stuff like this?

Sorry, it happens often enough that if it weren't deliberate, they'd have hired someone with two brain cells to rub together by now. Simple acknowledgements of the dupe or even of their supposed incompetence have become so much of a Slashdot "tradition" that it obscures the bleedingly obvious lack of plausibility these repeated "mistakes" have.

But in this case, I'm glad of the dupe, because without it, I'd have missed the banner advert for another gimmicky boy's toy^w^w^w brain-expanding, uh... glowy thing from ThinkGeek that I *must* buy!

Re:followup field

[mspohr]

Can you counteract dupe karma by stating that it's a dupe when you submit?

Re:followup field

[rizole]

A followup field would be nice. While we are at it how about a dupes field?

Re:followup field

[evildogeye]

It is ironic that one of the Slashdot's primary themes over the years has been the evilness and incompetence of Microsoft, and yet with their constant duplicates, Slashdot is either being evil or incompetent. Personally, I understand that business is business, and have no problems with this behavior - Slashdot attacts much their readership by constantly attacking Microsoft.

Embrace your moral hypocrisy!

Re:followup field

[tsm_sf]

Slashdot is a large, well-visited site, with paid editors, and we're asked to believe that they're not capable of spotting stuff like this?

Because you must click and post? I don't get this whole "OMG its a dupe" fad that's come into being. Why do you care? Is this just the post-modern version of the "neither news for nerds, NOR stuff that matters!" troll? I guess I'd rather have that back, they were filtered out by mods.

Re:followup field

[flibuste]

If you guys would read the news of the day, you'll find out that this story comes out from TODAY's meeting in Switzerland on that topic. The linked article states "30 September 2005". Duh! Excuse my inability to navigate in hyperspace to reach unknown layers of hyper-time, or get back in time, but this can hardly be a dupe from a previous slashdot post since it's dated from today. By the way, you learn in this article that, yes, US is still standing against the rest of the world to make sure ICANN doesn't become an international instance, or somebody else that is not from USA takes other the TLD business. I feel very sorry for you. That must suck to be a whinning loser.

Re:followup field

[Dogtanian]

I wouldn't go so far as to call Slashdot "evil".

"Cynical", very possibly. But they're neither a monopoly in an important commercial field, nor resorting to Microsoft-style tactics.

Govern

[certel]

I don't think anyone can really blame any country for wishing to control their own aspect of the internet.

Re:Govern

[diegocgteleline.es]

The problem is that Internet is not "their own", it is a world-wide service.

Yes, I guess we can't blame US for wanting to control certain things from another countries. I guess the EU would do the same. What buggers me is that our governments (US and EU) are so fucked up that it seems countries aren't able to think "hey, this is the Right Thing to do, let's do it because everybody will benefit". Instead, apparently they just think "let's do everything we can to have more power and control so we can have more money"

Re:Govern

[anaesthetica]

What buggers me is that our governments (US and EU) are so fucked up that it seems countries aren't able to think "hey, this is the Right Thing to do, let's do it because everybody will benefit". Instead, apparently they just think "let's do everything we can to have more power and control so we can have more money"

I agree. The U.S. has given power over the Internet to a private group with an international board. It doesn't directly control ICANN, but it does retain a veto--a right which it has infrequently exercised. The EU and the other countries are making a power play to move internet governance to the UN, where their governments can gain power over how the internet is used and regulated. This isn't altruistic in its motivations in the least, and it's certainly not The Right Thing To Do. Everybody has benefited from the internet so far, and it is only active government intervention that has limited people's access to free information.

Re:Govern

[certel]

Well, depends when you want to classify the internet as 'international' because the internet originated in the United States and just increased as other countries had the ability and technology to do so. So, one could argue that the internet IS the United States and we allowed access from other countries. Now that other countries are involved, they feel the need to have some type of control. It's a lose-lose situation.

Re:Govern

[DaveFromChicago]

Shouldn't someone check with Al Gore before they go messing with his internet?

Re:Govern

[jbellows_20]

What is the benefit of releasing control to an international governing body? More bureaucracy? From what I can see, things are working quite well right now. With so many businesses relying upon the internet these days, I believe that it's in everyones best interest that this sort of thing remain stable and protected.

Re:Govern

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, depends when you want to classify the world wide web as 'international' because the world wide web originated in Switzerland and just increased as other countries had the ability and technology to do so. So, one could argue that the world wide web IS Switzerland and they allowed access from other countries. Now that other countries are involved, they feel the need to have some type of control. It's a lose-lose situation. ;-)

Re:Govern

[Darkon]

Perhaps they should subsidize, develop, and control their own version of it then.

You know those investments were decades ago and surely long since amortized by now. The "we put money into it in the beginning so we owns it" argument is becoming a little stale. I'm sure other countries have invested substantial sums in infrastructure which makes up sections of the internet by now.

Re:Govern

[Pizpump]

The infrastructure was created by the U.S. Government. The WWW is nothing more than an interface allowing easy access. Control belongs to the US. End of argument.

Re:Govern

[MightyMartian]

Well, depends when you want to classify the world wide web as 'international' because the world wide web originated in Switzerland and just increased as other countries had the ability and technology to do so. So, one could argue that the world wide web IS Switzerland and they allowed access from other countries. Now that other countries are involved, they feel the need to have some type of control. It's a lose-lose situation. ;-)

Not really the same thing at all. HTTP is simply a communications protocol, like SMTP or IRC, that runs on top of an IP network. The underlying infrastructure was designed for the US government.

Re:Govern

[Iriel]

(I'm not an expert on this and I'm admitting it, so please be polite with your responses ^_^)

I can see some possible ups to controlling sections of the internet, but as a global tool for the spread of information, the very thing that a lot of people think the internet is designed for, it's mostly downhill.

So far, I haven't found much reason for giving up the root servers other than countries saying "I want one too". Please inform me (politely) if I am mistaken.

I'm not really sure if I can see a board of leaders controlling the internet doing anything to stablize things when they would still have to make policies that EVERYONE aggrees on. In which case, there would still be a great firewall for china, and whatever regulations a government had to ennact because they feel 'their internet' shouldn't be subject to the rules that the proclaimed world could shake hands on.

Besides, that kind of government regulation to override the global ones would require nations to set up offices to handle such legislation that would most likely be filled by aged politicians who think that broadband is a wide bracelet. So far, I haven't seen too many (a few, but still not too many) governments that had any clue about the current technologies they pass laws about.

Re:Govern

[Anonymous Coward]

By that argument, the US should give up their veto right or give the same right to everybody else. It's probably useless to argue about this with an American, but many people don't trust you, especially when you make a point of retaining privileges which can be used to hurt other countries. "I won't use it against you" kind of lacks a calming effect when you fight tooth and nail to prevent others from wielding the same power. The right thing to do is to respect that other countries want to feel safe too and avoid an administrative fracturing of the internet.

Re:Govern

[anaesthetica]

Right, the U.S., as a member of the UN, would have a good deal of say over Internet governance if this plan were to go forward. On the other hand, should the Internet have the U.S. along with every other government in the world having a say over its governance? The U.S. has given a private organization with an international board control over the Internet. It maintains a laissez-faire position, with the exception of a veto, which is not frequently (or at all) used.

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.

Re:Govern

[displaced80]

Ok -- this is Slashdot -- I think we all understand the 7-layer model.

The IP network would be worthless without the higher level protocols and services. Likewise, there's a whole stack of further inventions, developments and products of world-wide research that the IP concept grew from.

My point is, when it comes to the Internet, Nationalism (for that's what this is) is ugly. There's a pissing contest going on here and it's just plain dumb.

We're talking about root DNS. That's all. It's fucking pathetic that neither the powers that be, nor us /. plebs can discuss sensibly the best management of these (13?) servers that would be most beneficial for the global interoperability of the internet.

Instead, it's deteriorated to "We invented it! It's ours!". Don't behave as if the spread of the internet was pure altruism. It's spread because it made money for companies all over the globe. The internet may have been a US invention, but its current breadth, penetration and sheer utility is a product of global contribution. And that's why the people and corporations (and yes, if they've been paying attention, even the governments) of nations outside the US have a vested interest in the DNS.

Re:Govern

[Pentavirate]

It's funny. Every reason given as to why the internet should be given to the UN to control are the exact same reasons the US will never give the UN control of it. If a country is afraid the US will do something nasty to their root domain, the US would be afraid of this very same thing should someone else control the root servers. It would be completely absurd to ever think that the US will ever give up control of something that is so important to its own economy.

So every time I see a new argument as to why the US should give up control, as an American, it convinces me even more firmly that it should do everything it can to maintain control of it. It truly is a question of national security.

Re:Govern

[MightyMartian]

DNS has been in a state of crisis to one degree or another for over a decade now. This is hardly news, and neither are the demands that the US relinquish control. In a way, this is pretty much a variant on the infamous stories of how the ANSI C committees would get bogged down in political and nationalistic nonsense.

I contend that, as much as everyone, even some Americans, hate the way things are administered, no one is going to take their ball and go home.

Re:Govern

[hunterx11]

Freedom is more important than democracy, but it is rare that you can have one without the other. This, however, is one of those cases. The U.S. has shown no signs of censoring the internet at the DNS level. Many other countries would want to. If the U.S. really were exerting its power, I would be all for shifting it to the U.N., but right now countries are just trying to politicize something which shouldn't be political and has managed not to be as it is right now.

Re:Govern

[ZoneGray]

Well, the thing is "The Internet" isn't a single thing.

Anybody can run root servers today. The challenge is getting people to use them.

So why would the US give up control of root servers? Because the UN said it would be more fair? Republicans certainly wouldn't go for that, and if Democrats were in power, I doubt they would, either.

Likewise.... why would a foreign country set up their own root servers? Sure, they COULD, but would it really improve things for them? Would anybody but their own citizens use them? Sure, Bongo Congo could set up a ".com" registry in defiance of ICANN. But it would only be good as long as Bongo Congolians were forced to surf through the BC root servers.... and then they'd be isolated from the rest of the 'net. So it'll never happen, not in Bongo Congo and not in France.

The only way the Internet is going to "fracture" is if somebody tries to split off from the existing DNS services, and the downside to that far outweighs the upside, for every country.

That's just the way it is. Is it fair? Of course not. But it works, and that tends to win out.

Re:Govern

[dynamo]

It is also a question of national security that we stop being such dipshits to other countries and treat some as we would want to be treated when we can't boss everyone around anymore. That time is coming sooner and sooner each time we do some manipulative shit like this.

Re:Govern

[Anonymous Luddite]

>> Ok -- this is Slashdot -- I think we all understand the 7-layer model.

dude, this _is_ slashdot. Half your audience is thinking "pastry" when you say "7-layer"

Re:Govern

[dilvish_the_damned]

Where the root servers are hosted is just polical crap. What is needed is an international steering commitee. Along with that I suggest that each country is designated a top level domain, such as "au" for the aussies. Whats this? It already is? Ok, well let them host there own root level servers with the responsability of sharing alike with all the other root servers in the world. Once this is done then we have three things:
1) everyone can quit there bitching
2) No one has particular control of DNS (good things and bad things)
3) The US based registrars no longer have the monopoly (always good, or so I would think... something in the back of my mind is nagging at me just now, but I pay it no attention)

To assume that we (US) need to arbitrate the internet to the rest of the world can only lead to folly.
In the article it was mentioned some very sound reasons why it needs to stay as it is. Most profound is the theme that the internet works suprisingly well and once governments get involved maybe it wont (this is paraphrased and my interpretation). I do think that government has little place in the steering of the internet. However I think it is silly to think that countries do not have smart people as well that can 'deal' with the issues.
It seems like maybe the US wants to hold control over something where they have none. Lack of governmental controls is what has allowed the internet to become a powerfull information exchange device. I can only hope that the other countries involved do not lose sight of the significance of this provable fact.

Re:Govern

[Lucractius]

Bravo!

Re:Govern

[flibuste]

Control belongs to the US. End of argument.
For saying such a stupid thing, you must be an idiot. End of argument.

Re:Govern

[BiggerIsBetter]

Wasn't the US talking about MORE regulation the Internet, just the other day? I mean, damn near every porn site already has their disclaimers about age and whatever regulation the US imposed, and now they're talking about censoring porn between consenting adults too. Most of the more crazy stuff comes out the EU or Asia or South America already anyway. And this yet US sites like ogrish.com will happily show you people being beheaded.

Porn aside, US laywers are wetting themselves with anticipation to sue anyone online. P2P has only *just* survived thanks to American media corporations getting carried away with busting children and grandmothers. You want to outlaw encrypted VOIP communications so you can tap them. Your corporations happily support the likes of China with their firewall and filtering systems. Even your general IT and software instrustries are stagnating thanks to legal and ethical woes.

Some other nations *are* questionable in their intentions, but don't try to pretend that US corporations and legislators are all about freedom on the 'net.

Re:Govern

[squidinkcalligraphy]

it is only active government intervention that has limited people's access to free information.

erm - lawsuits by private companies wishing to silence critics/opponents? The free-for-all market-knows-best approach is just as dodgy as the others.

Re:Govern

[TheDracle]

I'm a bit split on this issue. I'm as liberal as they come, and I definitely don't agree with a lot of U.S. foreign policy. But, the Internet was never intended to be a "World Wide Service," it has been usurped into one, and provided graciously with American tax payer dollars (for development and now support) to the rest of the world. The truth is, the Internet was developed using significant tax payer money, and requiring a great deal of political support, for the purpose of providing a communications link in the case of a nuclear attack. Now, I don't agree with hyper-national security, and cold-wars based on realist national views. But everything the Internet has become was completely unintentional, and merely an afterthought. And now, that the afterthought has become incredibly significant, I understand how the U.S. would be reluctant to hand over something originally developed for national security to a international agency. To the government, and the military, the Internet is merely the infrastructure they invested in for providing an aspect of national defense. By giving it away, they will either have to build a new infrastructure which they control (at the expense of more American tax payer dollars, which they can try to justify as a donation to the international community), or hope that international entities don't use their U.N leverage to compromise their network in case of a war. But, the Internet is incredibly important to the international community as a channel of communication now. Perhaps another Internet should be developed, and controlled by the U.N. In parallel. I just don't see the U.S. Making another huge investment when it already has done so.

Re:Govern

[hernyo]

The US created it so the US have the right to owe it. [end of sentence]

Freaking capitalist ideology...the US created, offered it to the world and world adopted it. Today the world depends on the internet and it is normal that they just do not want a single political entity to have full control over it.

Re:Govern

[dkf]

I must be in the other half then, as I immediately thought about a number of chickens between six and eight...

And fragmentation is bad?

[null etc.]

Maybe I don't understand the issue thoroughly, but I think that fragmentation would actually be good. The "information infrastructure" is becoming just as critical to us as our "power grid", or other major utility. Why would any government trust a resource that critical to be managed by any organization outside of its control?

My opinion is that an international institution should define global standards that each country can than agree or disagree to implement, and if the US wants to be separate at that point, so be it.

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[garcia]

Maybe I don't understand the issue thoroughly, but I think that fragmentation would actually be good.

Yes, because Intranets are so fucking useful on a global scale, right? Hey, China would be thrilled! They wouldn't have to worry about the Great Firewall! Bush, his Family First supporters, and Mrs. Clinton would love that they could just block all porn from the United States' intranet. Switzerland would make a shitload of money proxying connections between all the different intranets and would unveil the Swiss Internet Bank where you could have an anonymous account access (for steep fees of course) to actually be able to use the Internet like it has been for year.

Yeah, fragmentation is bad.

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[elwin_windleaf]

"Why would any government trust a resource that critical to be managed by any organization outside of its control?"

I believe you hit it on the head, sir.

Seeing as how the Internet is a global network, having the core infrastructure of said network in the hands of one country is an awful lot of power. Theoretically, giving the UN control of the root DNS would give every member nation a share in the responsibility.

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[robertjw]

...think that fragmentation would actually be good.

Absolutely. There is no reason, even though the article try to insinuate otherwise, that anyone would have to setup their own Intranet without a connection to the rest of the world. Some countries might try do that to keep their citizens from accessing foreign sites by design, but there is no technical reason it's a necessity. In this case a little diversity and expansion of the technology would be a good thing. Heck, maybe someone will come up with a system better than DNS that we can all switch to.

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[Glendale2x]

We already do this. If you don't play nice or conform to the way the rest of the net works, your BGP session gets dropped and you can't talk to everyone who does want to play nice. Or others null route you at their border.

I can start up my own little internet any time I want. Anyone can, there's nothing stopping them. But if I don't have routes to things people want, I won't have any customer base to speak of. It's just that the current internet, with all its peering points and transit agreements, is what everyone really wants access to.

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[TheOrangeMan]

I think fragmentation would be a bad idea because I don't believe Chinas implementation of the Internet would be such a great thing.

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

You bring up a good point...without access to foreign pr0n there's really no point to the internet, imo.

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[Monkelectric]

Heres how things work now:

The US administers the root DNS servers, and countries are allowed to administer their own servers. In addition, ICANN alots (scarce) IP addresses. The original distribution of these IP addresses is now considered to be "unfair" because companies and countries were given HUGE address spaces because at the *TIME*, the ammount of addresses avaliable was thought to be nearly unlimited. I don't remeber how many addresses there are total, but its a lot. The assignment of addresses is complicated by the fact that routing tables have extreme constraints on their size and exact duplicates must be deployed to almost *every* internet router in the world. Yes the IP addresses were assigned "unfairly". In our defense, at the time they WERE alloted, nobody ever imagined the internet being what it is today.

So the UN is basically doing a power grab here. Many Americans fear the UN because it has *NO* accountability to anyone or any principles of free speech...at least in the US we have a constitution that (while not upheld all the time) protects individual rights, whereas the UN has no such restraints. We may find ourselves being regulated by the UN and retaliated against by the UN weilding the power we gave them, trying to restrict our free speech. Remember there are lots of countries where talking about certain things is illegal (france/germany: nazis, china: democracy).

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[garcia]

Don't know about you, but all my intranets connect to the Internet.

They do now, but in this scenerio COUNTRIES would be Intranets. That puts a huge limitation on the freedom of information (ala China).

Actually, thats all the 'Great Firewall' is, an attempt to make China on big intranet.

Thank you for proving my point.

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[MightyMartian]

Seeing as how the Internet is a global network, having the core infrastructure of said network in the hands of one country is an awful lot of power. Theoretically, giving the UN control of the root DNS would give every member nation a share in the responsibility.

You know, as much as I hate the idea of a single country controlling the Internet, I think I like the idea of it being administered by the UN even less. At the moment it is a lopsided system which delivers too much power into American hands, but it does actually function. I really shiver at the thought of UN nabobs getting their hands on it. Until someone can demonstrate precisely how giving it over to the UN would actually improve matters, I think we should all stick with the devil we know.

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[CompressedAir]

Your post just boils down to the idea that people get the government they deserve.

I don't see how lack of fragmentation prevents any of what you have listed (except perhaps the Swiss thing, but the Swiss have been getting rich off banking for a long time). I also don't see how fragmentation directly causes those things.

If the people in China do not want their internet censored by their government, then they should damn well stand up and say so. Blood may flow... but blood always flows eventually, one way or another.

I hope, sometime in my lifetime, the US and a democratically elected China can be good friends.

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[MightyMartian]

They do now, but in this scenerio COUNTRIES would be Intranets. That puts a huge limitation on the freedom of information (ala China).

By all accounts, China's current methods of controlling what its citizens see are trivially easy to overcome, and I can't see an Intranet being any worse. I suppose if every country stuck big motherf**king NAT firewalls at every border point, yes that would screw things, but then again, the Internet would pretty much cease to exist, and we'd be where we were thirty or fourty years ago, with different networks that had various levels of connectivity from great to not-at-all.

The problem with this scenario is even countries like China want connectivity with the outside world. They want foreign investors to be able to use their telecommunications networks to contact home, and they want their citizens to be able participate in global commerce, and to some extent, in the global culture. In particular, they want the wealth that can be generated by Chinese individuals and companies being part of the global information network. So they do the only thing they can reasonably do, try to control those aspects of the Internet that they don't want to have their citizens seeing and contributing in.

All this doom-and-gloom talk about little Cisco-esque network clouds misses the whole point of why everyone is so damned concerned about who controls root servers or IP provisioning. Nobody is so stupid as to actually kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[bankman]

Remember there are lots of countries where talking about certain things is illegal (france/germany: nazis, china: democracy).

For our suboptimally educated friends: It is not illegal to talk about Nazis in either France or Germany. It is illegal to promote Nazi ideas and distribute propaganda (public display of Nazi insignia like the Swastika and SS- or Sig runes falls under this category as well).

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[ramblin billy]

Yeah, and while the UN is waiting for Hell to freeze over, maybe they could do something about that little matter in Africa. You know, the fucking GENOCIDE! When they're finished with that they could start on AIDs, the international arms market, the proliferation of WMDs, human slavery and violations of human rights, the harboring of terrorists by nation states, the international drug trade and, if they have a little spare time, the attitude of the French.

Ok, so maybe I got a little carried away, no one is EVER going to be able to do anything about the attitude of the French. These are tough problems that impact millions of people all over the world. The UN's track record for dealing with these problems does not inspire much confidence. Let's face it, there are some influential members of the UN who have opinions that are in opposition to the beliefs of the net's inventors. You see, we KNOW if our rascals start getting too big for their britches we can snatch them back to reality. Who knows what the UN has the power and will to accomplish? I don't, and I'm not in a hurry to find out. Maybe the UN should concentrate on the problems crying out for attention and hold off on this one until we actually do something wrong.

billy - quit bugging us or we won't let you use google

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[Monkelectric]

fair enough. nazi's suck, but thats still wrong.

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[Thuktun]

I really shiver at the thought of UN nabobs getting their hands on it. Until someone can demonstrate precisely how giving it over to the UN would actually improve matters, I think we should all stick with the devil we know.

Anymore, the entire world uses and contributes to the Internet. It's gone beyond the USA. Do you have some concrete concerns about what would happen under UN control, or is this more anti-UN FUD?

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[Thuktun]

I don't remeber how many addresses there are total, but its [sic] a lot.

Well, IPv4 address space can represent 2^32 = 4.29 billion addresses. A number of these are reserved, but that doesn't lower the number much. However, 4.29 billion is NOT a lot when you consider there are over 50% more people in the world than addresses.

IPv6, by contrast, has an address space that is the square of the square of that number: 2^128 = 3.4 nonillion (3.4e30) addresses. That's over three sextillion addresses per square inch of our planet, according to some references. I think we can agree THAT is a LOT.

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[pacificdave]

Did you not understand what Billy said? Right now everything is running well with it privately run in US territory. The UN needs to work on other problems around the world than trying to get their hands into everything that they think should belong to the "world." The internet is open to the world but certain root levels need to be control by a trusting body. Why risk added complications by changing it now?

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[Rycross]

I remember reading the original article about this, a couple of months ago. The main voices from the UN came from countries that had little to do with the creation of the current internet. China was one of the countries as well. The stated goals of UN control were censorship and filtering of content. They mentioned the xxx domain name, and stated that they wanted to do something about spam. Now, doing something about spam seems well and good and all, but who gets to decide what is spam? And considering that China was showing interest here, I don't really feel good about handing over internet infrastructure to the UN.

As an American, I would have no objections to handing over control of the DNS root servers to an international body, provided that they are able to reliably keep it working, and avoid exerting control over the actual content. Given the facts, I'd say neither seemed likely.

The European Union, however, might be a different matter. And Europe has given us a lot in terms of developing the internet as we know it today.

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[Eli Gottlieb]

Excuse me? An entire half of the country voted AGAINST Bush, despite the fact that his opponent was almost as bad as him AND a pussy who wouldn't stand up for principles.

We, the non-Republican people of America, deserve access to the FULL Internet as long as we are willing to pay ISPs and techies appropriate sums proportional to the bandwidth we recieve in turn.

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[Monkelectric]

Well, IPv4 address space can represent 2^32 = 4.29 billion addresses. A number of these are reserved, but that doesn't lower the number much. However, 4.29 billion is NOT a lot when you consider there are over 50% more people in the world than addresses.

The reason I didnt mention a number is because its not as easy as 2^32. You have to take into account private addresses, unroutable adresses, etc etc ... I remember being assigned the problem in a combinatorics class and getting it wrong :)

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[pacificdave]

lol... I'm glad they don't trust me. It's safer for everyone that way.

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[mikek3332002]

At the moment it is a lopsided system which delivers too much power into American hands, but it does actually function.
Though americans account for a majority lot of internet traffic. Take the Geobytes hompage for example:
http://www.geobytes.com/gr.htm?gr&buttonid=16208&v iew=country.
The majority of visitors come from the US.
So shouldn't the country with most of the traffic be the one that controls it?

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

Then it's not a question of democracy, but of freedom. IMHO People have a right to freedom, even if 99% of the population were to vote against it (though in practice they would just publicly execute you I'm afraid). The freedom to run an ISP and to buy from an ISP is one such freedom and any government that wants to implement *any* censorship deverves to get f* in the A*.

By the way, concerning the US: you guys should really split up again into the North and South. The south wants a republic, so Let There Be One. The rest wants a more democratic solution, so Let There Be One. Yes, CA and FL would belong to the North I guess. And generally speaking: wasn't independence the whole point of the federacy? Maybe federal power and taxation should be reduced (yes, in Germany too). Too bad nobody listens to me. ;)

Re:And fragmentation is bad?

[Lucractius]

While a certain degree of mistrust is good. i belive that the level of mistrust in the present enviroment is beginning to erode society, Its just wonderful to see my post labeled flamebait when i was making a valid point. Why should you trust someone that doesnt trust you at all. You shouldnt, their distrust of you is a sign of unfamiliarity and a basic clue that they do not know you well enough to be someoene to trust.

Its not "america bashing" or whatever you want to call it. its a legitimate problem that is becoming worse with things like the HDCP crap being implemented because large international "root bodies" dont trust anyone. "EVERYONES A THEIF!!!"... a little suspicion is healthy, paranoia and FUD arent.

Anyway. back to my rolling along in life and trying to avoidng having people think i look suspicious in public...

Time warp

[pmike_bauer]

We had a discussion about this the other day
My flux capacitor is out of whack; the earth now rotates ~every six hours.

Re:Time warp

[jd]

Are those American, Imperial or Metric Hours?

Re:Time warp

[pmike_bauer]

Well, since we own the internet, make those American hours.
And biggie size it...with Freedom Fries.

Re:Time warp

[DarkBlackFox]

Let's do the time warp again.

(Sorry, I had to.)

Re:Time warp

[CyricZ]

It must be nice forgetting what you did six hours ago. I mean, let's say you went to the pub. You drink a bit, and in the end you fuck another man. I mean, you nail his ass raw, and he splatters his man juice all over your face. You feel guilty and filthy for six hours, but then you completely forget it even happened! Now, it's good that you don't feel guilty about it, but what do you go and do? You go to the pub, drink a bit, and you're off fucking men again.

Such forgetfulness has its pros and cons, I suppose. You don't feel bad about your mistakes, but you make them again and again. Of course, since you don't realize you're repeatedly making mistake, you're quite happy, in a naive sort of way.

Re:Time warp

[gmf]

In about 25% of the world, both articles were in fact posted on two different days. So what are you complaining about? ;)

Re:Time warp

[orkysoft]

Clearly you are too stupid to understand the Time Cube. 24 / 4 == 6 !

Re:Time warp

[Rude Turnip]

It seems like you've thought about this quite a bit.

Re:Time warp

[Guppy06]

Obviously he's talking about Jovian days! Duh!

Re:Time warp

[Asprin]

So why is it that we don't use the "mysterious powers of teh intarnets" to track down potential schtizophrenics and get them some help?

Brilliant Plan

[Erwos]

At least under the US, the citizens of one country have some oversight. Give them their own little organization independent of everyone, and they'll have absolutely none.

-Erwos

Re:Brilliant Plan

[JudgeFurious]

Will this council work with the level of efficiency and cooperation we've come to know and expect from the UN?

  That's what I thought. I'll take the US-Net.

  Thank You.

Re:Brilliant Plan

[rm999]

"At least under the US, the citizens of one country have some oversight. Give them their own little organization independent of everyone, and they'll have absolutely none."

The problem is majority of the internet users have NO oversight if the US runs things. I would trust a carefully chosen and organized body to organize things than a single government (which tends to be more unstable). For example, if Washington DC were nuked by terrorists, the US government could fall apart into an authoritorian government for at least a while. I would not want to trust some military government with the internet.

If everything is set up well, even an incompetent power-hungry organizing body could be kept in check. I would propose a system with so much bureaucracy controlling the body that not a whole lot would be drastically changed. For example, all the major countries could contribute a few intelligent people in the know-how (think professors) who would watch over the body like the senate over the president.

Re:Brilliant Plan

[RM6f9]

My only hope regarding your post is that you're joking - please tell me you're joking?

"Because the rest could perfectly agree on a interational (sic) treaty."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Re:Brilliant Plan

[MightyMartian]

If the the USA is not changing there position and a split occures, it would be US-Net/Rest-of-the-world-Net split. Because the rest could perfectly agree on a interational treaty

I'll wager that would never happen, and even if it did, just how long do you think it would take for engineers to find ways of glueing variant systems back together so that www.porn4me.com could be viewed from anywhere?

Re:Brilliant Plan

[MightyMartian]

I know of no model put forward that gives individual citizens any control at all. And if it were fully internationalized, then it's going to become one of those little extranational kingdoms run by bureaucrats who are either on the take or simply trying to preserve their domains. The Internet works right now, and the US, for all its flaws, is still, to my mind, a better steward than a pack of UN bureaucrats who will be as unaccountable in this domain as they are in the others.

dupe

[anaesthetica]

If by "the other day" you mean earlier today, in a story posted by yourself! Unbelievable. Simply stunning. I thought dupes couldn't get any more absurd, but this one takes the cake.

Re:dupe

[Fishstick]

Funny, I was thinking the same thing.

<pointless nitpick>Only, the Relativistic time dilation happens when approaching the speed of light, right?
</pointless nitpick>

Zonk is actually accelerating towards the speed of light. Calculation of his velocity as he approaches the speed of light based on the number of duplicate slashdot stories posted is left as an exercise to the reader.

Re:dupe

[interiot]

I wish I could be employed by Slashdot so I could get access to the magic (-6 offtopic) button.

Re:dupe

[farrellj]

Just for the record, I submitted the story shortly after I read it on the NY Times site, then went to the International Herald Tribune's site which NYT pointed to for the original. I submitted only after checking that the story had not already been posted on Slashdot. I do think that the story is important enough to have ongoing conversations aobut. It could fragment the Internet, just like what happened to Fidonet when people thoght they could do it better than the International Fido Net Association (IFNA). I don't want that to happen to the Internet, but I don't like politicians deciding how my technology works...or doesn't work. I mentioned in my submission that it might be time to establish a datahaven, and convince all the techies that the datahaven should run the DNS and IP assignments based purely on technical considerations. But that's just me.

ttyl
          Farrell

If it ain't broke..

[SaidinUnleashed]

...don't fix it.

I say the US has done a fine job in managing whatever it is managing.

The 'net has become a wonderful, open forum where anyone can express their ideas an opinions.

The UN tends to screw up everything it touches. I really don't want the internet to become another great cockup of the least organized, least effective polital body that has ever existed.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[WilliamSChips]

I really don't want the internet to become another great cockup of the least organized, least effective polital body that has ever existed.

Don't worry--FEMA doesn't run the Internet.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[SaidinUnleashed]

FEMA is not a political body. It's a grouping of volunteers and volunteer organizations.

There are only about 1,200 actual FEMA employees in the whole US, and they're mostly administrative staff.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[thesqlizer]

The UN tends to screw up everything it touches. I really don't want the internet to become another great cockup of the least organized, least effective polital body that has ever existed.

In general I for one am all for concensus building and getting buy-in from folks before moving ahead with something that can have large-scale, sweeping effects. That said, the UN tends to just take t-o-o-o-o long for just about anything, and ultimately every decision falls to its member nations for actual implementation.

Let's face it: there are some problems with ICANN; there are some issues with DNS; and what the HECK is going to happen with IP6?

Shifting control to the UN though doesn't seem like it's going to help fix things.

If there were one thing I would like to see, it's the addition of more ROOT servers--maybe a doubling of the current infrastructure. As we've already seen, those we have at present are too easily subject to the ne'erdwellers out there.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[ToasterofDOOM]

"...the least organized, least effective polital body that has ever existed." I think the League of Nations still holds that record, but you come in close second. Very close.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[Toloran]

I really don't want the internet to become another great cockup of the least organized, least effective polital body that has ever existed.

Not true, the League of Nations was even less effective. The biggest thing it ever did was send an angry letter.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[SaidinUnleashed]

I have a feeling that the slowness of the move to IPv6 is not the fault of ICANN, but rather it's the fault of content providers.

Tons of training, equipment, server, ifrastructure upgrades, etc.

It all comes down to the bottom line of businesses, and businesses have the right to make a profit. That's how capitalism and the open market work.

But I do believe that it will come back and bite them in the ass in a few short years. The FCC should do much the same thing that they did to make the long-distance telephone network come into being - ease it into existance through tax breaks and incentives for ISPs that move to IPv6 (to help cover costs), and maybe even setting goal to have it done.

Forcing an industry to make rapid changes, especially something as tenuous (not sure that's the right word, but it'll do) as the internet, would cause large problems, like instability, and maybe even /cause/ the fracturing that ICANN and the rest of use are afraid of.

Kind of a "slow and steady wins the race" model of conversion, or something.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[SaidinUnleashed]

re: 1

Do I trust the US government? Definately not. That is why I think it is best to leave them in control of it rather than a government that is not watched and scrutinized as closely as the US governemnt. A watched thief is less likely to steal, and all that.

As for the Chinese, Indians, etc, when you join an ISP, you are under the rules and regs of your ISP. The internet was started by the US government. Yes, it has grown far beyond the scope of the original intent of the network, but does that make it right to take the creation away from the creator? I know I would not want my successful idea taken away from me just because it was successful, without my consent of course, and the creators of the internet do not want to hand over the reins. That, of course, is their decision to make, by the right of the fact that they created it.

Gosh I hope that made sense.

re: 2

Quite a bit of the backbone of the net is provided by these companies. They also have a right to a say in how their privately owned resources are used.

Basicly, whoever owns something has the right to dictate control of it and not have it taken away by others who don't like it. Free enterprise, capitalism, open market, etc. The system works, and apparently very well.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[Jugalator]

I say the US has done a fine job in managing whatever it is managing.

I think what the UN don't want is things like the VeriSign fiasco...
A fine example of a not-so-fine job by a commercial body in the US.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[greythax]

I say the US has done a fine job in managing whatever it is managing.

And this gets modded insightful?

Our general stance of "my toy, go away" works for a lot of things, such as nukes, primarily because other countries have a hard time implementing them or affording their creation. DNS is NOT SUCH AN ITEM!

To be absolutely clear on this, if the rest of the world is so inclined, they can create their own TLDs for DNS. More importantly, they can, if they so desired, spoof our DNS completely. It would not be easy in the sense of flipping a switch, but it would be very easy compared to say, launching a major offensive.

Here are the implications of spoofing, in as close to layman terms as I can create. Yahoo.com points to a place here in the states (yeah, I know about redirects, but I am trying to keep this simple). If the UK wanted to, they could spoof the system so that any time a UK resident typed in "yahoo.com", it went to some decidedly non-US company. Or how about Ford.com.

In this case, the rest of the world can quite literally have a party on the internet to which we are not invited.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[necrognome]

You seem to misunderstand the concepts of control, government, and power. The U.S., via ICANN, does not attempt to "speak for" the world's people. The stance of the U.S. government, from adminstration to administration, has been that the world's people should speak for themselves (as far as the Internet is concerned). Would you rather have your voice taken away from you and given to an unelected international bureaucracy?

Re:If it ain't broke..

[AZURERAZOR]

1. It is controled by the USA, which means by its government. Most peolpe don't trust this government. Is this so hard to accept for US-citizens? Why shall the US speak for 1.3 billion Chinese, 1 billion Indians, or the other 3.5 billion people?

And we should give away the leadership rights of the internet away why?
-to placate the no good, corrupt bureaucrats at the UN
-to bow to the new "chinese" or "eastern" overloads
This is a silly conversation to continue having...
Who developed the internet? We did
Who maintained an open access for all people around the world? We have
Who gives a damn about the French and German whiners who continually gripe about the dominance of the US in World Politics and Finance? Not me

Re:If it ain't broke..

[Guppy06]

"I really don't want the internet to become another great cockup of the least organized, least effective polital body that has ever existed."

Have you looked at the United States Congress lately?

Or maybe the problem is that Congress is too effective. After all, consider the amount of internet control it's granted to the MPAA and RIAA. As far as I'm concerned as a US citizen, we're talking about the internet controlled by a body I have no electoral control over, or the internet controlled by a body I have no electoral control over. I'm not particularly fond of either poison.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[thesqlizer]

I have a feeling that the slowness of the move to IPv6 is not the fault of ICANN, but rather it's the fault of content providers.

Agreed. I was more implying that there are large issues like that with far-ranging consequences seem to linger and linger and that the UN may not be the best venue for their resolution.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[Oligonicella]

"Why shall the US speak for 1.3 billion Chinese"

Why not? The Chinese government certainly isn't speaking for them.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[WilliamSChips]

Whoops, nevermind then. *walks out with egg on his face*

Re:If it ain't broke..

[Achromatic1978]

but does that make it right to take the creation away from the creator?

Interestingly, in the eyes of most Slashdotters, when it comes to IP - music and software, absolutely it does. "That ideas belong to the community, and concepts like copyright exist only to allow some revenue to be generated for the creator".

Re:If it ain't broke..

[Achromatic1978]

How on earth is this insightful?

• It's not 'leadership rights of the internet'
• The "no good, corrupt" bureaucrats of the UN are any worse than those of the US, it's politicians and cronyism?
• To bow to who? What? Huh? How is allowing an international committee to maintain an important aspect of international network operations
• Who developed the web?
• Actually, it was for the very vast majority the non-US carriers that funded any of the US's international connectivity. The US carriers took the stance that "most people want to access content that is in the US, so you pay for it all, not the 50/50 approach that was taken for voice cabling"

Re:If it ain't broke..

[Achromatic1978]

More importantly, they can, if they so desired, spoof our DNS completely. It would not be easy in the sense of flipping a switch

Can? DO. Check out ORSN, a predominantly EU organisation of entities that have expressed issue with ICANN. They mirror the entire DNS hierarchy, have several large European ISPs using them as root servers, and DO literally have the ability to switch from a synced-to-ICANN to fully independent operation.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[Just Another Poster]

Also your argument That, of course, is their decision to make, by the right of the fact that they created it. is flawed. This implies that if you have an idea it belongs to you alone. This is not free either.

It's not an "idea". The root servers are owned and operated by private and government entities in the US.

At last I must say that capitalism != open market != freedom.

Capitalism requires open markets, and open markets occur wherever people are free.

But instead of going into detail here :-) read about free market and capitalism. And I might also refer to Noam Chomsky.

Noam Chomsky is a totalitarian psychopath.

Re:If it ain't broke..

[sotetf]

totally agree, leave it be. True saying. This is.

Security? Where?

[alexandreracine]

In so doing, the government 'intends to preserve the security and stability' of the technical underpinnings of the Internet.

Security on the Internet? What are they talking about?

Re:Security? Where?

[frodo from middle ea]

the lack of

Re:Security? Where?

[FST777]

In so doing, the government 'intends to preserve the security and stability' of the technical underpinnings of the Internet.

although it is a matter of debate, the technical underpinnings are reasonably stable, mainly because they are kept fairly secure. The fact that everyone else is ruining their own systems because they fail to secure them is not the point here.

Re:Security? Where?

[KillShill]

security = DRM/Insidious Computing.

i've translated it so many times that my mind does it automatically now.

security means secure against freedom.

what?! you thought you would be allowed to do whatever it is you wished without the consent of monied and powerful interests?

blasphemy!

What happened to "send a message"

[daves]

Did I see the story include a line about sending a message about Iraq? What happened to it?

Re:What happened to "send a message"

[Concerned Onlooker]

404: Country not found.

Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing wrong with fracturing.

All that would mean is that DNS goes from being a decentralized system with a central authority to a decentralized system. Once that happens well-tested capitalistic forces will come into play and things will sort out themselves. If the U.S. government chooses not to recognize the actions of foreign root servers, eventually U.S. ISPs will just start using the foreign root servers themselves. Participation in the Department of Commerce DNS roots is voluntary for all involved.

Fractured Internet?

[rackhamh]

Duct tape!

IT's all BS.

[mindstrm]

All authority that IANA or ICANN or any other organisation has over IP addresses and DNS is through the strictly VOLUNTARY participation by every ISP and even end user, out there. Their authority comes form the recognition that an authority is needed.. that addresses need to be allocated in an organized way.

IT is ultimately those who provide the infrastructure who will decide what needs to be organized and by whom. This isn't a government issue.. it's an ISP issue.

Re:IT's all BS.

[anaesthetica]

IT is ultimately those who provide the infrastructure who will decide what needs to be organized and by whom. This isn't a government issue.. it's an ISP issue.

Exactly. Which is why we don't need UN "governance". This is a power play by countries that want to regulate internet content, not a move designed to ensure the free flow of information. The internet has been doing just fine.

Re:IT's all BS.

[Red Flayer]

"IT is ultimately those who provide the infrastructure who will decide what needs to be organized and by whom. This isn't a government issue.. it's an ISP issue."

Except, of course, that the government currently has its finger in the pie. The US Dept of Commerce authorizes or denies changes to the DNS proposed by ICANN.

US Dept of Commerce announced in July that it would not relinquish this control:
http://www.circleid.com/article/1130_0_1_0_C/

Like any major infrastructure in the US, the government will always ensure that it has the final authority on what is and isn't allowed.

The problem, in this case, is that US Government control affects the infrastructure for other countries as well.

Re:IT's all BS.

[chill]

Except, of course, that the government currently has its finger in the pie. The US Dept of Commerce authorizes or denies changes to the DNS proposed by ICANN.

Except that anyone with a '486, a bunch of RAM and a fast connection could bypass it. Feel free to create your own TLD. The big problem is convincing everyone else to recognize you as authoritative, but it can happen.

Hell, you could create a private Internet that overlays the existing one and just have a TLD that is usable by your friends. How do we know that hasn't already been done?

All that has to happen is the big ISPs need to change what they consider authoritative for a TLD and voila! Balkanization. Department of Commerce or no, government or no, unless you have something equivalent to a "Great Firewall" that examines every packet for hidden/blacklisted DNS requests, you're going to have a hard time stopping it.

  -Charles

Re:IT's all BS.

[LionKimbro]

A power play it is. However, a power play is legitimate.

If people want UN governance over the DNS system, they can have UN governance.

If countries fear US control of the Internte DNS, then it is acceptable for them to want to create their own system.

The US can choose to play, or not to play.

Let's suppose the other countries of the world decide on an alternative Domain Name Systems. In some countries, they require it's us. In other countries, they only require it's use within the government. Gradually, over time, people of other countries adapt to the new system.

Except us, in the US. And, those people in the US who like the other system better, and switch to using it.

A power play like this is perfectly legitimate. You can only say "power plays are wrong" if you think that the structure of power now is irrevocably, and forevermore, perfect, and should never change.

In this case, I think it is wise of other countries to seek independent of the US control of the DNS system. Would you not agree?

Re:IT's all BS.

[anaesthetica]

Oh, I think that it's absolutely in the interests of the Communist Party of China to create their own DNS system. Same with Syria and North Korea and Belarus and Turkmenistan and the list goes on. Whether it's in the interests of the people of those countries is an entirely different matter. I don't think that the U.S. should give these countries a vote on Internet governance in the UN. If they want to take a shot at designing, implementing, financing and enforcing use of their own DNS system, good luck.

Re:IT's all BS.

[LionKimbro]

My understanding is that they are trying to build a unified system amongst themselves.

They can do it with or without the UN; The UN just happens to be a nice place to do it, since the venue's already set in place.

But if the US decides the UN isn't going to do it, and the US doesn't want to participate, then the US can shoot itself in the foot.

My fingers hurt...

[wormbin]

Can we import all the message from the other discussion we had today? Maybe Zonk can cut and paste them all to save us some time.

IF this happens

[Limburgher]

Will there also be a fracturing of existing standards going forward? Will HTML 5 be defined by individual countries? Might TCP/IP fork? Might firewall rules at national borders mess with worldwide connectivity?

I'd much rather let the UN manage the net than even begin to contemplate the above. I'm not saying the UN has properly managed everything they've touched, but there is no other international body capable of managing the internet. And it needs to not be exclusively under Amerikan control.

And I'm and Amerikan.

Re:IF this happens

[razmaspaz]

And I'm and Amerikan.
Who doesn't know how to spell Amerika.

Re:IF this happens

[CyricZ]

But you're not considering the economics of such a change. If some country were going to come up with their own version of HTML, or make changes to the TCP/IP protocols, then they would most likely only be cutting themselves off from the rest of the world.

Even a larger nation, like China or the US, would only be harming themselves if they tried a stunt like that. People in other nations could not interact with the modified systems, and thus the modified system would become isolated. When it comes to commercial matters, that's not a good idea. You don't get foreign clients by making your web site inaccessible to them.

So chances are that things would continue much as they do today. The only way to maximize utilization of the Internet is to conform. Those who fail to conform would only harm themselves, and the only option they have to prevent such harm is to conform.

Re:IF this happens

[Ironsides]

I'd much rather let the UN manage the net than even begin to contemplate the above. I'm not saying the UN has properly managed everything they've touched, but there is no other international body capable of managing the internet. And it needs to not be exclusively under Amerikan control. And I'm and Amerikan.

Then how about those other contries that want some control go build their own root DNS servers, since that seems to be what this is all about. And by the way, what country are you from exactly? Not the USA as for as I can tell since you say "Amerikan" and not "American".

Re:IF this happens

[oliana]

or "an"

Re:IF this happens

[anaesthetica]

Firewalls already mess with worldwide connectivity at national borders. Look at China. Giving the Internet to the UN, where China has veto power, is not going to solve the problem--it will aggravate the problem.

There may be no other international body capable of managing the internet (a specious claim on face), but granting you that, there are plenty of organizations capable of running the internet that are not international. ICANN has international board members and is doing just fine. Nor is the internet "exclusively under American control". The Department of Commerce retains a veto, but otherwise governance is left to ICANN.

Re:IF this happens

[coopaq]

And I'm and Amerikan.

Hey, Limburgher.

Ich bin ein Berliner!

Wiki

Re:IF this happens

[Limburgher]

Building root servers won't force ISPs in other nations to use them.

And I am in fact from the U$. :)

Re:IF this happens

[Limburgher]

I agree. The only major entity to successfully buck standards and survive without interoperability is Microsoft.

I don't actually think any nation would try it. I just think the idea of one country controlling all the root DNS servers is a bad idea. They should be distributed and managed cooperatively.

Re:IF this happens

[JudgeFurious]

Yes and you, in all your "Amerikan" glory are currently using the internet just fine which completely puts the lie to this idiotic idea you have that an international body of some kind must manage the internet.

  Trust me on this one pal. Regardless of your place of birth, citizenship, or current location you aren't even close to being an American.

Re:IF this happens

[Ironsides]

Building root servers won't force ISPs in other nations to use them.

No one is forcing the ISPs in other nations (or those other nations) to use the current 13 DNS rootservers either. They usually run their own local caches to cut down on bandwidth requirements. Why don't the other countries just build and run their own DNS servers? Why does the whole world have to use the same ones?

Re:IF this happens

[pyrrhonist]

If some country were going to come up with their own version of HTML, or make changes to the TCP/IP protocols, then they would most likely only be cutting themselves off from the rest of the world. Even a larger nation, like China or the US, would only be harming themselves if they tried a stunt like that. People in other nations could not interact with the modified systems, and thus the modified system would become isolated.

Actually, China did just that with their telephone system. In short, China made their own version of SS7, the protocol used for much of the PSTN.

You can still make calls to China, because telephone equipment manufactures found a 1.6 billion person market hard to ignore.

Re:IF this happens

[SubstormGuy]

Actually, on the hard Left many spell "America" "Amerika" or even "Amerikkka" to express thier view that America is a fascist state. If that is the original of this poster's "Amerika", then he can go fsck himself. And it would make perfect sense that people who hate America and its open, non-socialists ways would want to move the Internet into the realm of state control. The very existence of an open, consensual, non-state, (worst of all) phenomenally successful organism like the Internet is an insult to those who want the state to rule everything in the name of "social justice."

Re:IF this happens

[EzInKy]

I'd much rather let the UN manage the net than even begin to contemplate the above. I'm not saying the UN has properly managed everything they've touched, but there is no other international body capable of managing the internet. And it needs to not be exclusively under Amerikan control.


The problem is the UN is a conglomeration of nations, many of which throw people in jail for spelling their country's name wrong. Believe it or not there are even nations considered free who forbid the display of certain political symbols. The one thing the US government has going for it is that nobody trusts it, not even its own citizens.

This is just further proof...

[eno2001]

...of the United States' growing irrelevance on the world stage. Trust me. If the US disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow, there would be a brief hiccup and then it would be business as usual. After all, what is it we do for the world exactly, other than bully people?

Re:This is just further proof...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear economics has just a little bit to do with it, but you go right on believing that the US has no positive impact whatsoever. I guess it probably helps you sleep at night, huh?

Re:This is just further proof...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, have you heard of New York City? Removing that city alone would throw the global economy into a fucking tailspin the likes of which you've never imagined. It would take decades to recover from the loss of people/resources/data/stability that NYC provides alone to the global infrastructure. How can you claim that taking out the world's largest country in terms of GDP would not affect anything for more than a few days? You must have no sense of how things work on a world stage, or else you are a troll.

Re:This is just further proof...

[CupBeEmpty]

....If the US disappeared off the face of the map tomorrow? Hmmmm what would that be like. "Well I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords" "You're right down with ICANN and up with the glorious Interior Ministry of Internet Regulation and Sanitization" --or-- "Crap... all those root DNS servers were in the US weren't they... thats really all gone? Dang." --or-- "So what movies are out? Bollywood eh?" --or-- "WTF D00D why cant I l0gin to WoW!?!?" Anyway you are probably right no one would miss us except for a lot of immigrants, political refugees, and the people that receive our foreign aid but eh... I never cared much for them anyway.

Re:This is just further proof...

[rstultz]

Other than the fact that your comment is entirely ridiculous (Heard of Wall Street, Multinational companies, the UN [yah, it's based here and we do provide a decent amount of their budget, I think Japan is the only one who pays more], a university system that educates people from the accross the world?), this isn't about the U.S. bullying people. For once this is the U.S. government doing the right thing.

Ever heard of the great fire wall? Imagine giving china, saudi arabia, egypt, Libya, Zimbabwe and Cuba a say in running ICANN (or it's replacement). .XXX would be a joke, we'd be fighting over whether ISPs have to be registered with their state government, whether you have to be registered with the censors to have an IP address, etc.

While we have a fucked up government that I trust about as far as I can throw Dick Cheney, unfortunately the truth is that our government respects freedom better than the vast majority of the rest of the world. We have managed to largely keep politics out of ICANN (largely, not entirely) but that would be a thing of the past if it became a UN function.

Just think about the fact that slashdot would be illegal in a number of the countries clammering for control. Too much anti-government content.

Think about all of the totally inocuous things that get held up at the UN because the Arab League won't approve it unless there is a tag at the bottom calling Ariel Sharon a babykiller. Now imagine what those some people will do when they control the root DNS servers. Very easily wipe countries off of the map.

Ryan Stultz

Re:This is just further proof...

[csirac]

Just as a small factual correction, the DNS root servers are located in several parts of the world - only 7 of the 13 root nameservers are located in the USA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_nameserver

Re:This is just further proof...

[jdigriz]

Hiccup, my shiny metal ass!

We borrow boatloads of money from it and then buy lots of stuff using that money. If the US disappeared tomorrow, the world economy would crater because we owe everybody money. According to the Bureau of the Public Debt, we've paid $335,528,344,667.72 in interest payments alone on the national debt this last fiscal year. Yes, that's 335 Billion Dollars! I think the interest on the debt has cost more than the Iraq war so far.

Add to those interest payments our 500 billion a year trade deficit and that's a major hit to the world's economy.

Re:This is just further proof...

[frodo from middle ea]

As an non american let me venture to answer this..

Give plenty of business to countries like china and India. I do belive that the impressive growth numbers for these countries see this has been influenced by US economy.

America's oil consumption has made the middle east as rich as it is today,

And lastly , some very solid democratic principles, such as "freedom of speech", and other amendments etc. belive me these are some fasinating concepts that were unheard of before the founding fathers of USA brought them in the constitution. pity most americans seem to forget that.

Re:This is just further proof...

[nsayer]

You'd prefer the Chinese government to run things?

Let's compare, oh say, the Patriot Act - or better yet, Abu Grahib - to, oh say, Tienanmin Square.

Let's get a grip, folks. Even if you think our government sucks, would ANY of you prefer any of the alternatives currently on offer (I'll dispense with the customary "don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out" phraseology)?

Re:This is just further proof...

[gatkinso]

True, there would be a momentary notice that the aid has stopped, and then the world would be right back to starving and fighting.

Re:This is just further proof...

[csirac]

I do agree that the UN bureacracy would not be any more "efficient", however:

Ever heard of the great fire wall? Imagine giving china, saudi arabia, egypt, Libya, Zimbabwe and Cuba a say in running ICANN (or it's replacement). .XXX would be a joke, we'd be fighting over whether ISPs have to be registered with their state government, whether you have to be registered with the censors to have an IP address, etc.

... all of this has either already happend and/or is not stopped from doing so under the current system.

If anything, the UN bureacracy is where a fat lot of nothing occurs very very slowly. If you want a system where nothing overly drastic can happen, I think the UN would be a great administrator.

Just think about the fact that slashdot would be illegal in a number of the countries clammering for control. Too much anti-government content.

I'd like to know what it is about having the US in direct control (vs indirect control it would still have under the UN) that stops these things you mention from occuring.

Now imagine what those some people will do when they control the root DNS servers.

Personally, I think your fears are misplaced and stem from a misunderstanding of both the current system and the proposed changes, not to mention this bizarre notion you have that the UN as a body of United Nations might be suddenly influenced by some rogue country and make some outrageous decision overnight on behalf of the entire assembly without anyone noticing (and with everyone allowing)...

Re:This is just further proof...

[myukew]

The UN seems to be quite a good alternative to a single country controlling everything if you ask me

Re:This is just further proof...

[eno2001]

Thank you. I really think this stuff should be controlled by a global body representative of all the cooperative nations of the world. If the US doesn't want to cooperate, that's just one more slide into irrelevance. While a lot of you might bitch at me saying that I have the "freedom" to make these comments. I have to disagree. I post these comments but do have an inner concern that it's only a matter of time before our administration decrees that these kinds of comments are treasonous. I also know a lot of mouth breathing morons exist in this country that would WANT to see me put away for "treason" just because I say things like, "George W. Bush and his adminsitration are corrupt to the core and I would trust my own child to wolves before I would trust those morons".

Re:This is just further proof...

[eventhorizon5]

"If the US disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow..."
"After all, what is it we do for the world"

lol are you homicidal or something?

-eventhorizon

Re:This is just further proof...

[rale, the]

If someone wanted to form an agency of free nations to manage DNS and IP-allocation, I wouldn't mind the US giving it up, but I don't think I want countries that already censor internet content to have any say in how DNS is run.


the UN [yah, it's based here and we do provide a decent amount of their budget, I think Japan is the only one who pays more]

The US contributed 24.5% of the UN's budget in 2004. Japan 18.9%. No one else even broke 10%.

Re:This is just further proof...

[rstultz]

I agree. If it were going to be the EU, U.S., Canada, Australia, etc running it, I'd be a lot more comfortable. But this specifically is about giving developing nations a say. Look at developing nations. Not bedrocks fo freedom, by and large.

Re:This is just further proof...

[malkavian]

Actually, the US is so far from irrelevant, it's not funny.
The economics alone show that it couldn't just be removed without the rest of the world going into a deep economic depression (well, maybe China, India and a few other countries coming out unscathed, but the first world would tank big time).

I think the UN is worrying about the way the US is behaving. In late 2001, it had the world behind it all the way. Now just 4 years later, and it's about the most distrusted nation out there.
The ability to tweak the root zones is a rather large political stick. It can be used to gain concessions on such treaties as coverage of law (hey, the US controls the Root of the internet, thus traffic needs to use that to get the name, thus that name needs to obey US law).
An incredibly large stick indeed. And once the treaties pass, it's a stepping stone to further legal shenanigans. Until eventually, the world falls to US law (and the endless lawsuits) though the back door.
If the root servers were dropped outright from a given country, it's not as simple as slotting your own one in at that point, as there is no concensus in the world about where to look for definitive answers.
Basically, people who don't control the root servers then are very, very screwed.

My personal belief from what I see is that the UN is trying to make sure that doesn't happen, by having more points of consensus internationally.

Re:This is just further proof...

[Bent Mind]

Ever heard of the great fire wall? Imagine giving china, saudi arabia, egypt, Libya, Zimbabwe and Cuba a say in running ICANN (or it's replacement). .XXX would be a joke, we'd be fighting over whether ISPs have to be registered with their state government, whether you have to be registered with the censors to have an IP address, etc.

This is something I have never really understood. Why do we have .XXX, .COM, .ORG, .GOV, .MIL, .NET, .EDU, or any of the others I might have missed? Every country already has it's own code. Not that most people in the US realize it. What is wrong with .XXX.US, .COM.US, .ORG.US, .GOV.US, .MIL.US, .NET.US, .EDU.US, etc.? Personally, I wish more people would use the country codes. Then I wouldn't waste my time browsing a .COM only to find out they don't ship to my country. Imagine giving China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya, Zimbabwe and Cuba a say in running ICANN (or it's replacement). However, imagine limiting the international root servers to country codes and letting the indevidual countries control the subdomains. The only question I see then is how large an IP block to assign to each country. Of course, IPv6 should make this question moot.

Re:This is just further proof...

[Castar]

Even if you think our government sucks, would ANY of you prefer any of the alternatives currently on offer

You're right. We may be detained without trial indefinitely, abducted and tortured, or forced to sell ourselves into slavery to pay the RIAA, but at least we're not in Canada!

Seriously, since when were the alternatives the U.S. or China? There are countries out there better than ours, and a lot that are worse.

I'll dispense with the customary "don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out" phraseology

And since when are the alternatives to love it or to leave? Can't we point out the flaws and make improvements? Or is our only alternative to live under a dictatorship?

False dichotomies are all too present in US politics.

Re:This is just further proof...

[Retired Replicant]

You are so, so, so, so, so, wrong it is pathetic. If the US disappeared tomorrow, China would invade Taiwan, and North Korea would invade South Korea. Those communist regimes would then set their sights on Japan. Iran would attempt to take over Iraq, probably sparking a war with Saudi Arabia. Whoever was victorious would control the oil supply of the planet, and it would either be run by a bunch of sinsane radical Wahabbi Sunnis, or a bunch of insane radical Shiites. That wouldn't sit too well with China, Russia, India, or the EU. In short there would be World War 3 within a year if the US disappeared tomorrow.

Re:This is just further proof...

[nsayer]

Go re-read the grandparent. He said the world would be better off without the United States.

I suggest that without the United States and its present government, the big stick would wind up being waved around by Chinese communists.

And since when are the alternatives to love it or to leave? Can't we point out the flaws and make improvements?

And exactly how do you think you wound up with the freedom to point out flaws and make improvements? Would that still be the case had the American Revolution or any of the other conflicts since gone the other way?

Re:This is just further proof...

[nsayer]

The U.N. has been responsible for exactly one thing of any consequence in its entire history: Starting one war that to this day they still haven't finished.

Re:This is just further proof...

[Castar]

And exactly how do you think you wound up with the freedom to point out flaws and make improvements?

So because we're free to point out flaws, that means we shouldn't point out the flaws? Or that because we are free to make improvements, nothing can be improved?

Interesting.

Re:This is just further proof...

[CupBeEmpty]

That is more than half... so I rounded up

Re:This is just further proof...

[nsayer]

So because we're free to point out flaws, that means we shouldn't point out the flaws? Or that because we are free to make improvements, nothing can be improved?

Exactly where did I say (or even suggest) that?

Do whatever you like. All I'm saying is that if you think you'd have the freedom to do so had history taken a different turn, you're deluded.

Re:This is just further proof...

[Lucractius]

Let's get a grip, folks. Even if you think our government sucks, would ANY of you prefer any of the alternatives currently on offer (I'll dispense with the customary "don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out" phraseology)?

I dont even live in the US, Personaly, Id like to see those Sweedish UberGeeks get the Root control! ive never realy seen ANY problems of international size screwups from Sweeden.

Re:This is just further proof...

[Achromatic1978]

Oh, you are joking. There are countries a fraction of the size of the US that give orders of magnitude more aid than the US does. "The world would be right back to starving and fighting". Yeah, beyond Canada and Mexico, we've just discovered fire, and as a result are a little less scared of crawling out of our caves at night.

Re:This is just further proof...

[eno2001]

As opposed to insane neocon Americans?

Re:This is just further proof...

[gatkinso]

>> There are countries a fraction of the size of the US that give orders of magnitude more aid than the US does

Name them, then back up your claim (and be sure to include private donations as well).

Right.... Cambodia didn't slaughter a million of its own, Iran and Iraq lost well over a million on their 8 year war, and the Chinese cultural revolution... well knowbody can count how many millions died they stopped at 35 million.

As far as starving goes I won;t even respond to that.

I only just discovered you could killfile editors

[thumperward]

That's Zonk officially plonked. The only possible reason for duping your own story within the working day and adding a bleeding disclaimer at the end is to show off how pretty Politics is.

For those who haven't discovered it: It's in your home page prefs next to the topic ratings radio buttons.

Politics really is pretty though.

  - Chris

Let the third world build its own goddamn internet

[csoto]

Heh. Seriously, though, they're welcome to create their own.

Cool...

[fragmentate]

...more contract work for me!

Whatever the U.S. can manage poorly, a conglomoration of bureaucracies can do poorerestly.

Seriously...

[Comatose51]

Seriously guys, not only is this a dupe, but the summary:

There is currently a major conflict between the US and the rest of the world about the control of the Internet...
is such an over statement that it's almost misleading. We're not going to war with the world over this. It's a dispute. The only war so far are the flame wars that broke out on Slashdot when this was posted the first time. The Iraq War was a major conflict; this is a dispute that might have serious consequences on the Internet. Let's be a little more precise.

No, I'm not new to Slashdot. Yes, I'll probably be modded down for this but this is just so silly.

Re:Seriously...

[anaesthetica]

We're not going to war with the world over this.

Let's not jump to conclusions.

It has already Begun

[Brahmastra]

Starting with Slashdot's fractured editorial communications, posting duplicate stories on the same day?

Re:It has already Begun

[seanvaandering]

NO No no - you see - we moved the DNS root servers over the GMT timeline when this story was first posted, and moved them back in time for this one. So you see, it really is yesterday!

Re:It has already Begun

[Farmer Tim]

Considering both stories were posted by the same editor, that's a new low in fractured communications.

I don't care who controls the internet...as long as it isn't Zonk, otherwise we'll be seeing every web page and email twice.

Re:All according to plan

[beavioso]

Yeah because my subscription to the Economist is always getting held up by the USPO, and when I do get it, it's all censored, blacked-out text everywhere.

It's only obvious that the US gov't wants to stop this too!!!!

Re:All according to plan

[pete6677]

This will never happen, ironically due to corporate interests. Most large companies now do business overseas. Would they want those customers cut off from their website? Would they no longer want their employees to be able to send email to business partners in other countries?

Although there will certainly be conflicts regarding the internet in the coming years, there is too much invested for people to just give up on a solution and resort to fractionalized intranets.

Rome

[Spy Handler]

USA-controlled net is like the Roman empire's road system. Like USA, the Romans were hated by many barbarian nations because they got too powerful and pushed their weight around too much. These other nations couldn't wait for Rome to fall, and eventually it did.

When Rome did fall, the roads were taken over by various parties and sometimes looted for their stones and not very well maintained. But, those evil arrogant Romans got their uppcomance, and that's what really mattered.

Re:Rome

[Serveert]

And barbarian europe is pretty democratic right now.

Algeria had the same problem along with Zimbabwe.. Kick out the evil oppressive jerks, get your freedom, but now you no longer have the experience to make things smooth.

In the end though, as Europe showed, the slaves eventually take the reigns and they do well.

If there is a lesson to be learned it is that freedom is more important than stability even if the stability is achieved under authoritarian means. There may be hiccups but I'm sure there are some smart people outside of the USA who can figure out this problem.

Re:Rome

[servognome]

Kick out the evil oppressive jerks, get your freedom, but now you no longer have the experience to make things smooth.

And what you end up with is some other evil opprssive jerks take over. You either get those who just want to move into the power vaccuum to be in control, or you get those who have a "vision" of how things should be and work at all costs (including the wellbeing of those they want to help) to make that vision come true.
All democracy does is have that transition without all the bombs and shooting and stuff. The average people always end up being ruled by some "elite" class.

Re:Rome

[quax]

Your statement demonstrates clearly that you never lived in a functioning democracy.

Re:Rome

[RingDev]

"If there is a lesson to be learned it is that freedom is more important than stability even if the stability is achieved under authoritarian means. There may be hiccups but I'm sure there are some smart people outside of the USA who can figure out this problem."

Me personally, I'd rather live in peace and stability in a republic, than instability and bloodshed for true freedom. Would you rather live in Rome in 100 AD with running water sewers, hygene, public entertainment, representation in the government, libraries, etc. Or in the 5th century in Germany? Heck, the 12th Century in France? Maybe 14th century England for the rich. So yeah, the "slaves" picked up the reins, and it only took a millenium to get things straightened out.

-Rick

Re:Rome

[horos2c]

I hope you are being ironic here; Saying "But those evil arrogant Romans got their comeuppance is sort of like saying the "Tzars sure got them comeuppance by the communists and their secret police".

Yeah sure.. but lots of people had to die in both cases, of course.

I really don't want a fractured internet. It would suck, and it *could* happen.

Re:Rome

[Serveert]

Take Algerians.. The French would do "rat hunts" and beat up Algerians back in the good ol' days of Algerian stability. 90% of the landowners were French. Or take Iraq, a suicide bomb happens then families, children to old people, stand in line as US soldiers hand out water and rations. You have no power but foreigners occupying the green zone always have power and clean water. Not quite tyranny (despite al jazeera being banned)but still, being occupied is humiliating and having your natural resources divied up by occupiers cuts into your pride.

I'm sure some people second guessed our decision to break from England after we fumbled but this fumbling was necessary to get on with our lives.

Re:Rome

[RingDev]

err, not sure how we got from stability vs freedom to the benefits and downfalls of ocupation forces. As far as Iraq is concerned, it is currently highly unstable and highly free. As freedoms are reigned in, stability settles and life smooths out. The trick is knowing which freedoms to reign in (say like, the freedom to make a car bomb and use it as a daily commuter) and which ones to not reign in (freedom to assemble), etc.

And as for the US dividing up natural resources, I would point your attention to Kuwait, where the population has a much better opinion of Americans. Not in part because when we liberated them we left the oil fields to the government and citizens (as opposed to a private company) which gets each citizen a fat yearly check from the government for their portion of the oil field profits.

-Rick

Re:Rome

[quax]

I am quite happy the way that the system works in Germany. It also provides great entertainment when it produces cliff hangers like the one we currently have.

Of course Winston Churchill said it best:

"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."

Let's see Germany had a brain-dead emperor, fascism and then communism in one half of the country. Governments always suck but I assure you our current system is much better then any of those.

What kind of Democracy you prefer is a matter of taste. I really dislike the UK brand of Parliamentarism because it always produces a clear winner. Much prefer if parties have to form coalitions.

ob Bender

[steveness]

So we'll create our own Internet! With blackjack! And strippers!

On second forget the blackjack. And the Internet.

Re:ob Bender

[finkployd]

So we'll create our own Internet! With blackjack! And strippers!

I understand the joke (Futurama season 1 ep2), but think about this....

This is what we have now. What are the two most popular things on the internet? Porn and gambling.

Re:ob Bender

[NetCow]

ob nitpicking: It's "hookers", not "strippers" :).

Re:Fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Bing bing bing bing ... we have a winner. I was thinking the same thing. Is the internet THAT bad? What is the US doing wrong? Are we ruining the internet?

Not for nothing, but the US funded and created what is now the internet. And your b|tching that we don't give up control of root DNS servers? How's your internet connection, can you browse, shop, play games and read news? Thank the US then!

Next question; Who would you rather handle it? I've heard the U.N. mentioned - Food for oil anyone? Independant third party? Yeah, like they'll be immune to corruption. No thanks, I'll stick with old faithful and let the US keep it. Your internet connection will thank you.

Here's approx 0.33 of the posts (some collapsed)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not broke...(Score:5, Insightful) by FIT_Entry1 (468985) on Friday September 30, @09:46AM (#13683886) don't fix it. [ Reply to This ] Re:It's not broke... by KjuibFriday September 30, @10:18AM Re:It's not broke... by mwilli (Score:1)Friday September 30, @10:54AM Re:It's not broke... by rabeldable (Score:1)Friday September 30, @11:01AM Re:It's not broke... by pembo13 (Score:1)Friday September 30, @11:40AM Re:It's not broke... by Dwonis (Score:2)Friday September 30, @04:11PM Re:It's not broke...(Score:5, Insightful) by fitten (521191) on Friday September 30, @11:02AM (#13684732) Personally I think the internet is broke. back in the day the internet was free. Napster was legal. A dial-up connection got you anywhere. Email was important. I think the US did break it. Though, I believe the UN can do nothing to fix it. The Internet was never "free" in either sense of the word. You may have had an Internet connection but someone paid for it. In my case, the university I attended paid for the connection and we got use of it in exchange for going to school there. Napster was never declared "legal". It simply wasn't noticed and when it was, some people had problems with it. Just like if you steal a candybar from a store and never get caught, does that mean you didn't break the law? A dialup connection can still get you anywhere if you have the right service provider. Email is important, still. Just like anything else, there's always someone out there who will piss in the pool - spammers looking to make a quick buck or virus writers who do it for the hell of it. Do you have any specific examples of where the US broke the Internet? I'm entirely convinced that the UN can't even fix itself, which it needs to do badly before worring about taking on more responsibility (for anything). [ Reply to This | Parent ] Re:It's not broke... by Anonymous CowardFriday September 30, @12:10PM Re:It's not broke... by John Courtland (Score:2)Friday September 30, @12:49PM Re:It's not broke... by Dahan (Score:2)Friday September 30, @12:50PM Re:It's not broke... by ThJ (Score:1)Friday September 30, @12:58PM Re:It's not broke... by fitten (Score:1)Friday September 30, @01:29PM Re:It's not broke... by Cat_Byte (Score:2)Friday September 30, @02:58PM Why the U.N.? by QuaintRealist (Score:1)Friday September 30, @03:19PM Re:Why the U.N.? by Maclir (Score:2)Friday September 30, @04:09PM Re:It's not broke... by Holi (Score:2)Friday September 30, @03:24PM Re:It's not broke... by Mac Degger (Score:2)Friday September 30, @11:05AM Re:It's not broke... by lscotte (Score:1)Friday September 30, @11:13AM I don't know...(Score:5, Funny) by bullitB (447519) on Friday September 30, @11:15AM (#13684858) 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... [ Reply to This | Parent ] Re:I don't know... by chris macura (Score:1)Friday September 30, @11:52AM Re:I don't know... by dustinbarbour (Score:2)Friday September 30, @12:03PM Re:It's not broke... by Anonymous Coward (Score:3)Friday September 30, @11:26AM Re:It's not broke... by notsoanonymouscoward (Score:3)Friday September 30, @12:40PM Re:It's not broke... by pdgill (Score:1)Friday September 30, @11:35AM Re:It's not broke... by Anonymous CowardFriday September 30, @03:56PM Such Short Memories(Score:5, Funny) by Zane Hopkins (894230) on Friday September 30, @12:18PM (#13685717) (http://www.top-find.com/) Its not about being broken, its about trust. Do none of you remember back in 95 what happened to NeverNeverLand. 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

Dupe issues

[Bananatree3]

I sent the current editor an email about this being a dupe, and yet it was still published. On the other hand, they have also taken dupes down. So, I guess it is a mixed bag :/

i've heard about dupes before..

[mottie]

I am an infrequent reader so I usually scoff at people who complain about dupes, but they're both on the main page! that has to be the worst ever... http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/ 30/1254230&tid=95&tid=1&tid=219

Bush doesn't want to play nice?! Shock!

[M00NIE]

Ok seriously, there are arguments to both sides of this clearly. Sure America made it, but does that mean we get to KEEP it. The internet has moved into the ranks of "utility" like phone, power, sewage, water, etc. Would we argue that some country from the middle east gets to keep control of waterflow systems simply because aqueducts were likely invented in babylon?

Another WIPO? No thanks!

[CyricZ]

"Theoretically, giving the UN control of the root DNS would give every member nation a share in the responsibility."

Yeah, theoretically. But fuck theory at this time. This is a practical matter we're dealing with. The UN is not the ideal body to deal with such matters. I mean, look at the WIPO. It's been nothing but trouble. Now we have shitty WIPO-standardized legality infecting numerous other nations. Let's not let that sort of nonsense happen to the Internet as well.

Centralized anything is proven time and time again to be bad, be it computer systems, economic systems, intellectual property frameworks or whatnot.

Could this be a silly idea?

[ezweave]

The one thing that I don't really get, is that if you understand how it all works, this doesn't really make sense. I mean this isn't something that really matters, for the most part.

A little brush up on teh Intarweb

ARPNET was the origins of the "Intarwebs", it was replaced by the U.S. built and controlled NSFNET [wikipedia.org] (full transion in 1989, Military went to MILNET). All ISPs had to sign an agreement with NSFNET (1987-1995) to connect to the backbone. NSFNET was not federally controlled, it was controlled by "Merit Network, Inc" which was run by public universities. True, a good bit of funding came from taxes, but it was up to academics as to how it was used. In 1995, NSFNET was transitioned to NAP architecture, which provided much faster routing and the capabilites for more growth. Today the "backbone" [wikipedia.org] is a collection of commercial ISPs, a few private, and a few University controlled networks. There is little to no direct federal intervention.

DNS [wikipedia.org] servers are, of course, chained in the sense that one DNS references another DNS, and DNS entries spread like viruses (lookups are forwarded). The root [wikipedia.org] level DNS servers (serving requests from the root). Some of them are DoD owned, and some are privately owned.

But not all traffic is routed through the root level DNS servers. In fact you local DNS might not need to hit the next guy in the chain if he still has a valid lookup entry for your request (check the TTL, not all BIND [wikipedia.org] implementations do this correctly). So the traffic on the internet does not go through one space, and you probably dont hit the root level DNS servers that often. Not only that but the way DNS works, unless you hit the root server yourself, it never knows that you were making the request, all it knows is that DNS server at 217.88.99.42 (or what have you) hit it.

Basically this whole argument is kind of silly. No one really controls net traffic, perse. The root DNS servers (i.e. ICANN) do for the most part reside in the US, but because of the recursive nature of a DNS lookup, it does not really tell you what is going on (put a packet sniffer on your own BIND server and see what comes up).

The Internet is still largely, "grass roots". It is largely peer-to-peer. The only centralized items are the root DNS servers.

Since the U.S. gov does not really control "the Internet", why should we change that? It sounds good in a meeting to say "you control the Internet and that isn't right", but that is gross over-simplification. Nobody really "controls" the internet. If their argument is just about moving or adding new root DNS servers, that wouldn't really matter, but instead it sounds like "politics as usual", that is to say FUD./p

Re:Could this be a silly idea?

[Lost Race]

A much clearer explanation of the deal with root DNS was posted way back in this morning, in that other discussion tangentially related to this one.

http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=16387 7&cid=13686095

Re:Could this be a silly idea?

[aaronl]

The EU putting up a positioning constellation is a whole lot different. The US GPS system and the EU Galileo project do the same thing with the same data. They will both tell you your current position. The EU just decided to spend a huge amount of money to make another system, when all of the current hardware is pre-set to be use just GPS. They'll have to convince people to use it, at all. However, big deal; it's the EU's money and I don't care how they spend it. I don't live there.

Now, having another set of root DNS servers, on the other hand, will quickly give you out different data. It will *break* DNS, because now there would not be authoritative root servers. There would be the US servers, which most of the world would be using and almost all of the world is using now, and then there would be the EU/UN servers, which people would have to purposefully reconfigure their systems to use. If the EU wants to *run* a few of the nameservers, they could try to do that, instead of working so publicly to screw up the existing system because of their arrogance.

Plus, you can't just assign an address at the root level. That's complete bunk and shows a lack of understanding on what a root server is. The root contains records to servers for things like ".com" and ".uk". It is the final '.' in an address, which we don't usually include. "slashdot.org." is the real address to here. You would query '.' for what the servers for ".org" are. Then you would query ".org" for what authoritative server is for "slashdot.org", and then you would query *that* server and then have the address.

Ultimately, of course, the EU can do whatever they want. So if they decide to set up their own DNS servers, most of the Internet will decide they don't care. So let the EU throw a hissy fit temper tantrum. The government body obviously doesn't understand how DNS works, but they sure don't have a problem screwing with it anyway.

Seems to me...

[HerculesMO]

The US is just being the Microsoft of the world.

I wonder where a lot of our values come from and now I know... our government is a shadow of how corrupt our society is so welp... there you have it.

Re:Needs to be taken from American hands

[Capitalist1]

Consider that the US is the only country in the history of the world that was founded on principles of individual liberty and the protection of individual rights - even if it was applied inconsistently. The rest of the world still hasn't accepted even the mostly painfully obvious of those principles, much less equalled or surpassed the US in forming a society based on them.

And you want to give the rest of the world a say in the running of the Internet.. for freedom and individual liberty?

You must have been smoking the dirty rocks again.

Ah, Slashdot...

[wumpus188]

You buy the ticket, You take the ride... as they say.

wrapper protocol for zones?

[G4from128k]

What stops people (router makers, network software designers, etc.) from adding an zone-based over-layer to the DNS system. For most traffic, the local packets would use their local DNS. But, if you want to go international, you wrap your request in something that routes that request to the appropriate international gateway to that zone where it is unwrapped and sent to the remote DNS. From a UI standpoint, addresses would get an over-the-top level domain so that we might have www.google.com.ru, www.google.com.us, www.google.com.ch, etc. would resolve to their respective zones.

Of course, the current install-base of systems might be somewhat unhappy (or at least restricted to accessing only their local zones), but I'd bet some clever individuals would create nice proxies that create backward compatible gateways. And given the massive size of IPv6, I'm sure someone can do an international version of NAT to remap conflicted DNS entries between zones.

Plus

[nightsweat]

It would be really really hard to get a good bagel.

Re:Needs to be taken from American hands

[the computer guy nex]

The number of misconceptions of the PATRIOT act almost total the number of anti-Microsoft posts anymore. Let me clue you in. The PATRIOT act does not give the government one ability it did not have before, it simply expanded the definitions of these old laws to include terrorism. The government could look at your library history previously, and now they can if they can prove to a judge you are a terrorist. The government could wire tap your phone if you were a drug dealer, now they can if you are a terrorist. The only thing you could call new would be the 'roaving wiretaps'. Previously you could ditch a phone tap by simply buying a new pre-paid phone, requiring the government to present evidence in front of a judge again. Now the wiretap exists on any phone you purchase. Please, bash things all you want. Its fun to read, but at least do some research first.

It IS broken!

[jd]

We need IPv6 and IPSec to be mandatory. By yesterday, preferably. (IPv6 isn't just about namespace - it provides mobility, smart MTUs, automatic configuration, mandatory security, superior routing and reduced latency.) DNS is so political, everyone registers the same name on every TLD, making the entire concept of TLDs utterly futile. DNS servers need to be using DNSSEC. If people used routing protocols that supported multipath, you wouldn't get router loops. Multicast should be supplied to the home, not just the corporate giants.

I'd call what we have not just broken but shot to shit. To quote Twisted Sister, "If that's your best, your best won't do!"

Re:It IS broken!

[Dwonis]

IPSEC is a complicated mess, and you basically need DNSSEC (which, AFAIK, doesn't really work yet) in order for it to be secure on a wide scale.

Re:It IS broken!

[finkployd]

Technically you need DNSSEC for HTTPS and SSH to work as well, and we do not have that. TLS is a very cryptographically strong idea, but it all depends on DNS which is horribly insecure. Oddly, people debate about 1024bit keys vs 2048 and the like, but they never think about this.

Finkployd

Re:Needs to be taken from American hands

[anaesthetica]

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.

You're right. Let's give control to Syria, North Korea, and China. These UN members in good standing will keep the internet safe, while the U.S. and its back-dues to the UN can reap the whirlwind of wanting to retain control over their own creation, which they so presumptuously chose to share with the rest of the world.

Re:All according to plan

[nokilli]

To do business overseas, they'll just run another website overseas.

Compared to the effort required for l10n and i18n colocating overseas is next to nothing.

Being prepared for when it does break.

[CyricZ]

If it's not broken, then of course you don't try to fix it. But then again, you also have to be prepared in case it does break.

It's better for some action to be taken now, before the US government chooses to take a course of action that is detrimental to the Internet as a whole. At least then the rest of the world can have a somewhat functional Internet, even if the US is not involved.

Re:Being prepared for when it does break.

[petermgreen]

Oh if the USA got really troublesome someone else WOULD take over the internet.

There are already alternative DNS roots that could be switched to pretty damn quickly and ip allocation is a long term issue it may make be a pita to have no ip allocation body for a while but it wouldn't destroy the existing network structure.

The only thing that gives the USA *ANY* control over the internet right now is that all major ISPs cooperate with it.

Re:Being prepared for when it does break.

[pyrrhonist]

It's better for some action to be taken now, before the US government chooses to take a course of action that is detrimental to the Internet as a whole. At least then the rest of the world can have a somewhat functional Internet

Considering that...

• The C, F, I, J and K root servers are distributed with anycast, and thus exist in multiple locations on different continents.
• The M root server is located in Tokyo, Japan.
• Most of the physical machines are not owned by U.S. interests.
• ORSN duplicates the ICANN root zone information.

I think it's pretty safe to say that the rest of the world will continue to have a functional Internet no matter what the U.S. Government does.

dupe disaster control?

[jshaped]

"We had a discussion about this the other day"

by admitting that this is basically a dupe,
is this some sort of a preemptive strike against dupe comments?

Why?

[LWATCDR]

Why should the US give over control of the root DNS to the UN?
The US funded the construction of the Internet and has invited other nations to use it. Each nation has as much control over the network in it's contry as they want. Look at China and North Korea for examples.
Each country has control over it's nation level domain. The UK has control over .uk and so on.
I do not see how the UN or anybody has the right to demand the US to give over control of the root domain servers or get bent if the US says thanks but we feel like that would be a bad idea.

If the member of the UN really feel like they should have root name server control well then I suggest that the UN gets a bunch of nations together and build the UNNet. You could use IP6 from the start and have point to point encryption from the start.

Knock yourselves out.

Re:Why?

[BeanThere]

The US funded the construction of the Internet and has invited other nations to use it

"Invited"? Wow, you make it sound like some huge altruistic project where the rest of the world is just freely "using" something built by the US. You do realise that all those other countries PAY for every byte of their traffic that comes into or passes through the US? The US makes a profit from other countries for being a major international traffic and content hub - it's an export, a for-profit enterprise like anything else. And the infrastructure within foreign countries is paid for and built entirely by the people in those countries. In fact, interconnect agreements between the US and other countries are already financially skewed disproportionately in favour of the US.

The US invented most of the technologies that the Internet is built on, but they didn't "give" anything to anyone else, except perhaps RFC specs. But if you start going down that silly "we invented this it's ours" route, then you also have to be willing to relinquish control of every technology not invented in the US (e.g. fiber optics, CD-ROMs, Linux, C++, etc.). Guess what, everyone benefits when everyone shares, and the US has benefitted much from other countries, not just the other way round, contrary to popular belief.

Re:Why?

[LWATCDR]

"The US makes a profit from other countries for being a major international traffic and content hub - it's an export, a for-profit enterprise like anything else."
And why should it give any of that up?
Companies in the US do continue to pay Phillips money for CD licenses. Since CDs are so important to the world don't you think they should turn it over to the UN?
As far as Linux and C++ the US isn't DEMANDING that and never did DEMAND that Linus turn over control to the UN.
The US built and paid for the DNS infrastructure.
As I said if the UN thinks they can do a better job then do it.

Zonk = 11 stories today.

[elbenito69]

Anyone else notice Zonk's submitted ELEVEN stories today? Think Comment Spam is a problem? Now we have story spamming. I for one welcome our new Zonk overlords.

i hear there's rumours..

[Festering Leper]

..on the internets!

simply would never work.

[CDPatten]

The reality is that ALL major (minor for that matter) corporations in the world would want to be on the US internet. All US companies would want to be on the US internet. At the end of the day, and after billions of dollars wasted, it would wind up looking like it does now. That said, don't other countries already get to manage their own root servers for their country extension, .ca, .uk, etc.? The UN is a colossal corrupt failure, I think someone else in the other post put it best, give control of the internet to the organization that made Syria head of human rights? What a joke.

But here is the real flame bate for all you liberals out there: The internet is a US invention that was shared with the world... it would be hugely successful today with or without the support of Bulgaria. Our closest allies and us have made the internet what it is today, not some third world nation. Australia and the UK have not been pushing for this issue, its coming from "developing" countries and France... the EU is very divided on most issues, and this is another one. I say screw the French and let them setup their own "super duper internet".

Re:simply would never work.

[tsotha]

Well, France is a developing country.

In any event, they probably will set up their own "super duper internet", just as soon as they settle on a complete set of new French words so they don't have to use dirty English for technology English-speakers invented.

What's the big deal?

[Spazmania]

This sounds like someone making a mountain out of a mole hill. I mean really, what's the big deal?

IP addresses are already controlled regionally, not by the US. Europe and Asia each have their own registries. Theoretically they manage the IP space under rules set by the IANA, but in reality nobody is going to nay-say them if they don't.

Law and regulation? Ha! The US will regulate for the US and anyone who doesn't like that can block our IP addresses at their border. That's not going to change. Get over it.

The DNS root zone? All 62kbytes of it? Shoot. If you don't want to run ICANN's root zone, download it and run your own version. I do.

Or is control of your own counry's top-level zone not good enough for you? Is there some special zone you particularly feel you need to add to the defacto global root zone? No? Then what the hell are you complaining about!

Don't get me wrong, the ICANN is run by a non-accountable bunch of bufoons, many from Verisign, the same company that somehow managed to lose money selling domain names and ssl certificates. If anyone deserves a comeuppance, they do. But that's not the point, the point is: the system as it is now is stable, functional and reasonably cheap.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Sven Tuerpe]

I mean really, what's the big deal?

Bureaucrats trying to take over the Net? Or at least to create the impression that there were a "debate" regarding the "alternative theory" that the Net must have been created by an intelligent designer?

Re:What's the big deal?

[rleesBSD]

Well, I think a large number of Europeans use ".com" and ".net" TLDs. They think that on a national level our ".us" is the same as their ".uk, .de, etc", ... but they consider the ".com, .net, and .org" domains to have international implications.

They don't like the fact that the U.S. has complete physical control over those top level domains. Sure, Europeans have registrars who can make entries for those domains, but the entries are made by applying to the U.S. company that controls and maintains the physical database for those TLDs in Hearndon, Va. (and paying them a fee)

Even for their own national ".uk, .de, etc" domains, they don't have complete control, because a www user's client will nearly always resolve the address by first hitting on a U.S. controlled root server, which then hands off to the national registry for the country (Nominic in Brittain)

So, I see their beef with us. I just don't quite know what the solution is ...

Re:What's the big deal?

[Spazmania]

They don't like the fact that the U.S. has complete physical control over [.com, .net and .org].

Tough beans. We got here first, we created it and those three domains are now ours. While I can see why other countries may want to cash in at this late date, I can't imagine a reason why the US bend over and take it.

They aren't monopolies. There are quite literally hundreds of top level domains to choose from. If you don't like the US rules for .com, don't register in .com. If you register in .com, understand that you're buying a US product.

a www user's client will nearly always resolve the address by first hitting on a U.S. controlled root server

This is controlled at the ISP level. The ISP's servers are typically configured to start at the US root servers for non-authorative domains.

This is trivially changable for any country that (A) wants to and (B) has at least some competence in DNS. They simply set up their own root servers (starting with the 62kb anonymous-ftpable root zone from the ICANN) and then madate that all ISPs in the country use their root servers instead. Truthfully, the ISP'd get better performance anyway running traffic to a nearby server.

We created it, we own it.

[Pizpump]

If other countries don't like it, they can get the f*** off and start their own. Why should we capitulate on this issue? Ridiculous.

Re:We created it, we own it.

[ScrewMaster]

Amerrrrica ... FUCK YEAH!

Damn, that was a funny movie.

Gov't has nothing to control

[wsanders]

>> Except, of course, that the government currently has its finger in the pie.

How exactly, other than funding ICANN?

Say China splits off from DNS - I can point my servers at China's root servers and if the gov't want to stop me they can kiss my butt. I know this argument may not penetrate your tunfoil hat, but they can't stop me without filtering packets, and fighting the US telco indutry tooth and nail over that.

Re:Gov't has nothing to control

[Red Flayer]

By authorizing/denying changes proposed by ICANN.

Don't get your panties all in a bunch. I'm not saying that it's unpossible for someone to point a server at a non-DNS root server.

I am saying simply that this is a government issue, because the government is involved with it. OP said it is not a government issue, I was simply pointing out that it is one. Although you are correct, it is only a government issue because we agree to let it be one.

international != independent

[Anonymous Coward]

How does a group being "international" always equate (in the bizarro leftist /. world anyway) with "independent"? as in:

The US is against an independent international body to do this.

Independent of what? A single country? And if so, so what? The UN is independent of a single country and it's the most corrupt organization on the planet (see Oil for Food amoung others).

Rude houseguests

[RentonSentinel]

The US built a house. It was called the internet. We invited everyone over to enjoy our house. Stay as long as you like. Hell, take a dip in the pool. Set up shop in the garage.

Now, the houseguests are bitching because they don't own the house. Fuck you houseguest. Its our house, its always been our house. If you are so inconvenienced, build your own house, but don't cry to me when its a crappier, less desireable house.

Re:Rude houseguests

[pclminion]

Try this:

Tim Berners Lee built a plaza. It was called the World Wide Web. He invited everybody to set up shop in the plaza, distributing whatever information they wanted, and using his bloody wonderful hyperlinks. And many US corporations became wealthy because the World Wide Web was an enabler of commerce.

The US built a network to give some academics a place to play. CERN (an organization which I assure you has scant ties to the United States) turned it into something that benefits billions around the world.

So sit down and shut the fuck up.

Re:Rude houseguests

[bezuwork's friend]

No, it's more like the US developed a system to heat, light, etc. a house, so the world built a communal house spanning land owned by each country. Since the US was the first to implement the technology, it has controlled who gets what account in the system. Now, the other countries want to govern who gets what account in their own countries, even if account names overlap with those of other countries. Um, I don't see what the US can do if other countries want to do this. Sure, it can cut the other countries off, but in the short and long run, it will be the US who suffers more, not the rest of the world.

Please don't mess up with this...

[Pecisk]

Yeah, I don't like current US goverment too (no offence to US citizens, lot of good things coming from you, just sometimes all that shortsighted greed from your coorporations are killing common sense in me), BUT please please PLEASE don't mess with INTERNET infrastructure. Because it works now and there is NO need something to change. Please drop your arrogance from both sides. I don't see reason why Internet should not stay that way it is now. Yes, there are always room for improvement, but please...

Simply. Don't. Do. That.

Re:Please don't mess up with this...

[FreshFunk510]

Us Americans know how to leverage our super-hegemony over the world. Next month we will soon be auctioning off these set of domain names:

• *.fr
• *.de
• *.it
• *.uk

Or we will simply hold them for ransom until the next UN resolution.

Re:All according to plan

[nokilli]

The Economist? LOL.

Try such pesky venues like Scoop or the Guardian or pravda or AlJazeera. Venues which can and do publish stories which the U.S. government would rather you not see, like the election fiasco or the pictures of atrocities we commit or the fact that the war on Iraq started well before Congressional authorization.

Meanwhile, here in America they've got our whore media turning their backs as the caskets are unloaded at Dover and in Iraq our military appears to be actively hunting down foreign journalists. It's clear that they seek to control all access to information, the only question is, to what lengths will they go to do that?
--
You didn't know.

No "citizens" control ICANN, including US citizens

[billstewart]

ICANN isn't controlled by the citizens of the US; it's basically autonomous, and went to a lot of work to free itself of the shackles of public participation in its board, especially any subset of the public including Karl Auerbach.
It's occasionally influenced by the US Commerce Department, which is occasionally influenced by the Bush Administration, who are occasionally influenced by right-wingers, rich corporations, or cosmic rays, but AFAICT, the only effect the Bushies have had on it is to suggest that they'd like ICANN to create .xxx and then insist that ICANN delay .xxx because some other right-wingers didn't like it.

The "IP" that ICANN cares about isn't the "Internet Protocol" - it's "Intellectual Property". The real influence behind ICANN is the WIPO-mongers, whoever they are, that have gotten ICANN to insist that anybody who registers a domain name anywhere under their control provide enough information to serve them with a subpoena for a trademark lawsuit (and possibly for a website-content lawsuit from RIAA, etc., but it's really trademarks that matter.)

The US and Censorship

[Thu25245]

Can you reach any of those pages?

http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage/
http://www.korea-dpr.com/
http://www.iran-daily.com/1384/2389/html/
http://www.cubaweb.cu/

If so, you're making use of a system maintained by the US Government.

Now try acessing
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/coredocs.html/ from China or

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sofocus=b s&sbrftog=1&catref=C6&fstype=1&from=R10&satitle=na zi+hitler&sacat=-1%26catref%3DC6&bs=Search&sargn=- 1%26saslc%3D2&sadis=200&fpos=ZIP%2FPostal&ftrt=1&f trv=1&saprclo=&saprchi=&fsop=1%26fsoo%3D1&coaction =compare&copagenum=1&coentrypage=search&fgtp= from Germany or France.

Seriously, who would you rather have in charge of the internet?

Re:The US and Censorship

[Sven Tuerpe]

Now try acessing (...) http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sofocus=b s&sbrftog=1&catref=C6&fstype=1&from=R10&satitle=na zi+hitler&sacat=-1%26catref%3DC6&bs=Search&sargn=- 1%26saslc%3D2&sadis=200&fpos=ZIP%2FPostal&ftrt=1&f trv=1&saprclo=&saprchi=&fsop=1%26fsoo%3D1&coaction =compare&copagenum=1&coentrypage=search&fgtp= from Germany or France.

Works fine from Germany.

Re:The US and Censorship

[WindBourne]

How odd? You seem to equate Aljazeera with Korea, Iran and Cuba? I do not think so. It is more neutral than the old pravda, Sino Daily, and Fox news. One of the things that surprises me is the that some of the content from there seems to take days and weeks to show up in things such as Fox news. And by then it is a little blurb. However, I have noticed that every so often when I access the site, I have been blocked from certain pages. But if I access it via a european proxy, I can see it.

Re:The US and Censorship

[BeanThere]

Let's be honest though, the main reason the US government doesn't bother to censor Korean/Iranian etc. websites is that realistically speaking those countries/ideologies don't really pose any realistic threat at all. If any power ever rose to truly challenge the US, or any foreign ideology ever appeared to be taking widespread hold in the US and threatening the power base of the leaders, I don't doubt for a minute that we would start seeing government-mandated censorship of foreign sites (under the guise of "protecting US national security", or "blocking hate-speech", or "protecting children from terrorist propaganda" and whatever other excuse is cooked up).

Re:The US and Censorship

[cpghost]

Seriously, who would you rather have in charge of the internet?

The US Government has done a pretty good job at running the Internet (at least the parts it still has control over, which is not as much as many may think!); as long as we forget about small mishaps like... *ahem*, *cough*, ... who controls the Iraq ccTLD again?

The control of the US Government (actually the Department of Commerce) of the Internet is extremely non-intrusive: the IETF establishes standards by consensus, other standards bodies are also often run by volunteers based on technical merit (and consensus among vendors). Even ICANN is quite free to manage the namespace almost without government interference. Getting out of the way, and supervising stuff like the DoC does, is pretty smart for such a system. Granted: not always 100% perfect, but anyone remembers ISO standards thought up by a U.N. body? Yuck!

But, more important than that: the real point is accountability and political influence. If the US Government goofed something up, they will be easier to politically influence than a U.N. agency. Would we really want to deal with a burocratic monster that is backed by 190+ governments if something goes awry? Dealing with one government is already hard enough.

Re:The US and Censorship

[mckyj57]

Let's be honest though,

No, let's be fanciful like you are being.

the main reason the US government doesn't bother to censor Korean/Iranian etc. websites is that realistically speaking those countries/ideologies don't really pose any realistic threat at all. If any power ever rose to truly challenge the US, or any foreign ideology ever appeared to be taking widespread hold in the US and threatening the power base of the leaders, I don't doubt for a minute that we would start seeing government-mandated censorship of foreign sites (under the guise of "protecting US national security", or "blocking hate-speech", or "protecting children from terrorist propaganda" and whatever other excuse is cooked up).

You must be from somewhere outside the US.

Can you show me examples of this happening in the US? No, you can't. You know why? Because it simply does not happen. The US doesn't censor, because it is simply impossible here -- no one would pay attention. You would get 1000 people taking the info and publishing it on the net. The censorship would make the newspapers and TV, and it would become a cause celebre.

You will get people who say that the US does censor things, but when you ask them what has been censored it is inevitably something that is so bogus and so off that you find that the only reason no one is heard of it is because it is off the wall.

American Propaganda Machine at work

[Luthair]

The US is hardly unique in having a constitution or more importantly a bill of rights.

Re:American Propaganda Machine at work

[DerProfi]

C- for reading comprehension. Emphasis on "...founded on..." above.

Re:what isn't...

[Catbeller]

Offtopic? Listen, We-create-our-own-reality types. That IS the topic. Bush and his fellow ideologues are flipping off the planet, creating their New American Century so well described by the Project for the New American Century thinktank that so many of his people were part of. After the Soviets broke up their empire, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rice et al wanted the US to become the de facto and de jure world government. This DNS holdoff is only one aspect of this war.

The world is in a semi-polite revolt against the NWO of the Bushes. The damage of the grab for our empire is horrendous.

Re:Let the third world build its own goddamn inter

[csirac]

Heh. Seriously, though, they're welcome to create their own.

Are you implying that all the non-third-world countries would prefer it to be controlled directly by the US as opposed to the UN?

Seems to me like a strange opinion for Americans, considering the UN would be a more democratic alternative...

Given that they pretty much had no other option (and that it was politically convenient for the great firewall of China), what with the pathetic number of IPv4 addresses allocated to them (amusing considering the amount that IBM and GE etc. own with having entire blocks of class A), China's done a pretty good job of "creating their own" Internet.

Re: Pussies

[RentonSentinel]

Exactly... these people are using something we have graciously provided to them. Now our generocity is rewarded with bitching. Bitching that they want to OWN what we built. They want to OWN what we let them use.

And they even bitch at the idea that they build their own! Jeez... I guess we shouldn't have built the internet. We should have just bitched about how nice the French phone system was, and how mean it was of the French not to hand it over to us. All that complaining might have got us a French phone system right about now. But it would not have created the internet. Only willpower can do that.

These ingrateful, rude, international socialists need to take a good look at their soul. What in the fuck is keeping them from being as successful as we are? Why can't they make their own network? Why do they have to constantly bitch and complain that we arent' giving them enough? Why does Bush control their destiny? Why aren't they in charge of their own lives?

Do you think our ARMY our DARPA cried and whined when the Soviets made some kind of tech advancement? Do you think we went to the UN and wrang our hands about how "unfair" it is? I swear to god, Slashdot users are the most coddled babies on the fucking planet.

Please...

[eventhorizon5]

Fracturing? lol. First of all, it's ISPs in multiple countries that control the majority of DNS and IP allocations, not ICANN or whatever. Have any of you actually managed DNS servers before? TLD servers only manage what their name implies - TOP LEVEL. Around 99% of DNS servers are not top level servers, and they also handle around 99% of all DNS traffic (correct me on this if I'm wrong). The funniest thing is this point: where did the Internet originate? In Europe? - the entire thing resulted from merging US academic networks with US government networks; so just like the people in here who would want to see the US destroyed (I noticed one post with a guy who said that nothing would really happen if the US just "disappeared" off the face of the Earth), did you ever think about what would happen if the US wasn't around to create the Internet? If someone disagrees with me, then they should easily agree with the wacky idea that Linus Torvalds should cease being the lead of the Linux kernel project - hey, he created it, he manages it, but why not turn control of it all over to the UN or something? lol.

And for those who would agree with that guy I mentioned, would you like it if the companies and organizations that own the oceanic fiber lines to shut them down, cutting off all communication between the US and every other country? Just like that one guy said - "If the US disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow, there would be a brief hiccup and then it would be business as usual. After all, what is it we do for the world exactly, other than bully people?" lol. Basically the perfect response would be "ok, we'll ship you off to some random country in Europe, and then cut off the fiber lines connecting Europe to the US. Then I guess you'd get your wish, and be in utopia." - then you'll suddenly realize that you've lost access to over 80% of the entire Internet, including the cores. Or you could go the opposite direction, and make the IP allocation open to everyone; then you could have fun watching the entire Internet slowly come to a screeching halt, as everyone just sets up IP networks with any addresses, and everything starts conflicting. What about MAC address allocation? Who needs to control that? Why not just let everyone choose their own random MAC addresses when they get a new nic? lol

Btw, while we're on the topic of a UN-controlled Internet as some people have said, why not just go all the way and start a global ID system for every person? lol. Wouldn't that be lovely... sure.. whatever.

-eventhorizon

Re:Please...

[eventhorizon5]

"Get back in your box"

lol - yeah...

-eventhorizon

US vs. UN

[MSTCrow5429]

There are currently two choices to who controls the Internet; either the United States, or the United Nations. Contrary to PR, the United Nations is not an "independent, international body." The United States is, for the time being, satisfied with leaving the content of the Internet up to individuals, and only coming into play with technical issues. The U.N. has repeatedly stated its desire to control the Internet for purposes of censorship and crushing dissident speech. Do we really want to move control of the Internet to a body where governments like China and Iran will have a say in what we can and can't say about their human rights abuses and totalitarian regimes? Far better to leave it in the hands of the United States, which at least has a tradition of freedom of speech and open dissent against the government, if not always in practice.

Another View...

[Stanistani]

"It's a very shocking and profound change of the EU's position," said David Gross, the State Department official in charge of America's international communications policy. "The EU's proposal seems to represent an historic shift in the regulatory approach to the Internet from one that is based on private sector leadership to a government, top-down control of the Internet."
To the horror of the assembled delegates, the dapper State department official started making guttural grunting noises - his eyes bulged, and his body seemed to almost triple in size, muscles bursting out of his clothes. "HULK SMASH INTERNET!! RARRRGH!" Witnesses report his skin had an unnatural, greenish tint.

don't agree

[diegocgteleline.es]

It doesn't directly control ICANN, but it does retain a veto--a right which it has infrequently exercised.

Somehow I find that Internet would be much better by the "intergovernmental body" the EU is proposing than by a PRIVATE entity. We all saw what happened with verizon, when they set the IP addresses of all the unregistered .org and .org domain names to their own search engine page. Yeah, I'm happy that governments aren't able to defend people's rights when such things happen...

Re:don't agree

[anaesthetica]

So you would prefer an organization with an international board where all 191 governments got to actively meddle in its affairs, to an organization with an international board in which one country has a veto, but by-in-large lets it run in a laissez-faire manner? I'm less afraid of a Verizon search page than I am of the Great Firewall of China.

Re:don't agree

[MightyMartian]

That's pretty much my stand. All in all, the US has been a damn good steward of the Internet, willingly giving itself a limited role. If there were abuses, then I'd be all for moving it into other hands, but this isn't a complaint based in helping the average Internet user or company or organization that uses the Internet or has an Internet presence. This is just nationalistic jingoism, and while there's a lot I don't like about American policy, the management of the Internet is one thing I can't fault them for.

Re:don't agree

[Dun Malg]

We all saw what happened with verizon, when they set the IP addresses of all the unregistered .org and .org domain names to their own search engine page.

Christ Almighty, people, it's Verisign. "Verizon" is a telephone service provider

"another view of the discussion"

[slavemowgli]

"another view of the discussion" - is that the new Slashspeak euphemism for dupes? :)

What's the issue?

[east coast]

I don't see the internet being mismanaged. So what's the big deal? I think this would be a different issue if the US was using it's influence to beat out foreign interests but this isn't the case. The UN certainly hasn't done anything right in it's existance, why would this be any different?

Judge again?

[way2trivial]

there are more differences than that.

You claim, consulting a judge is not required "AGAIN" and I would say, now due to the patriot act, a judge is not required the first time around.

http://www.aclu.org/NationalSecurity/NationalSecur ity.cfm?ID=9154&c=111

and (iv) allowing the FBI to use its "intelligence" authority to circumvent the judicial review of the probable cause requirement of the Fourth Amendment.

any thoughts on that small bit of research?

yep, that's why they passed the DMCA, for freedom.

[plasmacutter]

"Consider that the US is the only country in the history of the world that was founded on principles of individual liberty and the protection of individual rights"

founded yes, adherant no. I'd say canada is the closest nation today to what the united states was the last time its laws actually adhered to the constitution.

let's have a look at the most egregious laws:

-nixon's drug control acts, which gave some non-accountable fda yokles legislaive power in violation of the constitution.

-the DMCA, which subtlely overthrows personal property rights and gives movie/record/software cartels the right to make technology illegal.

-the tellecommunications acts, which give the FCC legislative authority which should according to the constitution be congressional alone.

and those were just the government exceeding the constitution's definitions of legislative power. There are the greater political hotbeds of guantanamo bay, and unfunded federal mandates upon states, but we won't get into those.

Badly Broken, but This Won't Fix It

[billstewart]

ICANN is badly broken - it's not responsive to the user community, and the only "IP" it cares about is "Intellectual Property", not "Internet Protocol". That's why ICANN has insisted that everybody who registers domains in TLDs controlled by ICANN provide True Names and ICBM-addresses to facilitate trademark lawsuits, in spite of the major privacy problems with that change in whois semantics, and why it took them many years to add any additional TLDs, after taking over from the IETF Ad-Hoc Committee that had already developed a plan to do so.

However, most of the proposals for "Internet Governance" that the WSIS gang have come up with have been evil, clueless, or both.

• ICANN doesn't control the Internet, only DNS policies and IP address assignments, and expanding that scope would be Bad.
• China wants to "govern" the Internet by getting the rest of the world to enforce their censorship policies, which are currently too easy for Chinese citizens to evade by using non-China-based websites, email, and IM servers. A few other governments also want to use "governance" to censor pornography, free speech that criticizes them politics, and pornography. (Really, it's just about pr0n and evil nasty terrorists, pay no attention to that press censor behind the curtain.) ICANN currently has no control over this except perhaps blocking registry of Fulan-Gong.com
• Some third-world countries want "Internet Governance" to tax rich Internet users to subsidize internet connectivity into their countres. Not only do they fundamentally misunderstand how the Internet works, the major problem in many of those countries is telecom monopolies that provide overpriced inadequate service, and the first step in getting their citizens decent internet access is to get the telco monopolies out of the way. That doesn't mean there aren't also infrastructure problems, or that an infusion of cash couldn't be useful, but in general they'd be giving more money and power to their PTT monopolies, which is mostly counterproductive.
• I really hate treating ICANN as the Good Guys here, so I won't - this is a conflict between the Bad Guys and the Worse Guys.

DNS isn't The Internet - splitting DNS would be ugly, stupid, and easily repaired, e.g. by creating records like [newTLD].[existingTLD] or [newTLD].[NewTLDowner].net.

Do we really need more political interference?

[Torinir]

Seriously, do we need to see more political e-penis waving over who "controls the internets?"

The 'Net was doing pretty well until everyone wanted to control it. Yes, you had the occasional spammer, troll or complete retard, but the general surfing was decent enough and you could even find your favourite style of pr0n without being inundated with popups, popunders, exploits and virii. And no government watchdogs to harass average people about what they can and cannot view or download online.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I think the government can take their "legislation for the benefit of the people" and shove it so far up their @$$es that they'll be spitting it out for a week. It's amazing how the "anarchistic" Internet of even 5 years ago had a lot higher quality information than today. I honestly don't expect it to get better either, regardless of who is in "control."

Re:The US will maintain control, one way or the ot

[MKalus]

The UN is nothing but a soapbox for petty dictators and thugs.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

I do not want an organization whose general assembly is dominated by autocrats to be able to censor domains based on their concept of what is acceptable. Everything basically works fine with the US running it with very little actual central control.

MMmhh, you mean like the whole XXX domain idea?

But the more important point is this: what would happen if China or North Korea were able to remove all domain names referring to sites advocating freedom, or Iran were able to pull all porn domains, etc.? Every client would simply switch to a different set of root servers controlled in the same lasseiz-faire manner as the current roots, and in 5 years we'd be back in the same situation.

Right, because as you can see in the UN getting everybody to agree to enact things are such an easy (and fast) task.

An international body would most likely have less influence on the DNS System then when the Mothership (aka US) decides to forcea block / change.

I say we just send the UN some Dell brochures and tell them to set up their own damn servers if they want to control DNS so badly. Then we can laugh as they beg to get people in the free world to actually use them.

I think you miss their point entirely.

M.

Re:Politicians should not touch nameservers!!!

[MightyMartian]

I've seen no evidence that the current US administration has even really mentioned the Internet. Look, the US government now relies upon it as much as virtually every organization on the planet. Screwing with it would do as much harm to US domestic interests as it would do to the organization the US was trying to screw.

Essentially the Internet is being run right now via Mexican standoff mentality. As much as I'm sure China would love to completely isolate their domestic networks via some variant TCP/IP, they simply can't afford to do it, and these are the guys that have big freakin' proxies and routers sniffing out that-which-cannot-be-seen.

The Internet's strength is its universal connectivity. Any country that messed with that would now find themselves isolated. Beyond that, it would likely be very easy to remarry variants of HTTP or TCP/IP if that were needed. If, say, Iran, came up with HTTP-Iran, with the purpose of mucking about with the average Iranian's ability to view foreign pages, how long before the Mozilla Foundation or someone else came up with a browser or plugin that allowed them to view foreign pages, or foreigners to view HTTP-Iran pages? This is the age when DVD copy protection schemes are broken in hours or days, for goodness sake.

No one wants to fragment the Internet. It would render it useless, or, if the hackers got involved, render the whole thing moot anyways. I'll wager that the US government has long wished to get out of the Internet business anyways, but no one has been able to produce an alternate model that is any better. It's too important to the US and allied national economies to hand over to an organization that is known for incompetence, graft, nepotism and vast bureaucracy.

Re:Needs to be taken from American hands

[javcrapa]

Who was the last country ton INVADE another one? Syria, North Korea, or China? NO! it was the US! (which shouldnt be called America). So, who is the bigger danger?

Re:what isn't...

[notsoanonymouscoward]

Yawn. If they want control, they can set up their own network and go for it. Come up with their own IPvX and make it play with IPv4 to access the US content. Otherwise, STFU!!!!11` This is our fscking toy and we'll decide who plays with it. This sense of entitlement is sickening. They need to innovate on their own and make it so useful, the netizens of the US clamor for access to THEIR network.

Ridiculous

[Intangion]

The US and other nations who have been BUILDING and using the internet for longer deserve to keep what they worked hard to establish, you cant wrestle away control of TLDN from a group that EARNED THE RIGHT to the RESPONCIBILITY of handling dns just because some developing nations that didnt help build the internet, and dont even have as many netizens as the rest of the world, suddenly want 'a fair share' , what the hell is a fair share? what is wrong with the way the TLDNS works now? they have been doing a phenominal job for decades. and are not controlled by the government. Other governments DO have control of 'their peice of the pie' with their own extentions. I think this is a clear case of jealous smaller nations wanting to steal what we have worked hard to create. whats next? you cant just steal something away from an organization who is being nice enough to SHARE it with you in the first place. what if other countries decided our space program gave us an unfair advantage and demanded we hand over control of nasa and all our facilities/shuttles/programs that we spent our money funding. why should we have to plan it out, plant the seeds, grow it from nothing, make it flourish, and then HAND OVER THE TREE? just cause we were nice enough to share the fruit? and now everyone wants more?

Re:Ridiculous

[idries]

While I agree with you that it's a bit cheeky for countries that didn't contribute to the development of the internet to insist on their say etc. I would like to point out that the main conflict of interests is between the US and Europe. Europe had a role of similar magnitude to that of the US in the early development of the internet. Although TCP and IP were developed in the US, http and HTML were originally developed at CERN (in Europe). Also much of the original European Internet infrastructure predates the use of IP networks and DNS in Europe.

Given that http was developed by an organization funded mostly by European taxes, and that Europe's adoption of IP (over protocols like X.25) was pivotal in the worldwide adoption of IP I don't really see that the US has 'EARNED THE RIGHT' anymore than the European nations. Your argument works very well for 3rd world countries, but that's not really what the article is about.

You are correct, but...

[Tetravus]

"It sounds good in a meeting to say "you control the Internet and that isn't right.""
So you've answered your own question ;)

Also if countries were to implement their own local DNS systems, there would need to be a gateway between local traffic and foreign traffic to handle IP address translations, but other than that there wouldn't be any real changes to the system (at least that I can see), and I don't think throwing an additional router into the mix at each country's border is going to bring the 'net to its knees anytime soon.

Re:You are correct, but...

[aaronl]

Blarg, DNS is not IP address delegation. The whole point is that these countries want the UN to run DNS *naming*. The UN would decide if you were allowed to have that domain name, and the UN would solve domain name disputes. They would decide who was a root nameserver, how often zone files were refreshed, etc.

IP block delegation is completely separate from DNS. It's even handled by an entirely different set of people, like ARIN.

Also, to reiterate the thousand times stated truth, the US does not control the Internet. The US has oversight of ICANN, which delegates the root DNS servers. DNS isn't the Internet, either, it's just a system to translate IP address to symbolic names, and vice versa.

DNS isn't The Internet - no Fractures Here

[billstewart]

These aren't the Internet Fractures you're looking for - you can move along.

DNS isn't "The Internet" - it's just DNS. Fracturing the root would be stupid, especially when it can be easily glued back together by sticking ".newTLD" under an existing TLD or 2LD, e.g. ".newTLD.net" or ".newtld.neustarsucks.com". But it wouldn't break The Internet - IP would still work, and protocols that embed DNS names into their interactions such as HTTP and SMTP can all support multiple names, e.g. the people who own foo.newtld might need to accept connections for www.foo.newtld.net and user@www.foo.newtld.net or they'd find that lots of people can't access their sites, but that's really no different than the problems faced by people who used the earlier Alternate Root projects such as Orange Root or ORSC or whatever.

Distributed

[CrazedWalrus]

I understand the idea of the root DNS servers is to allow clients to locate com., net., etc, but can't this be distributed? I mean, isn't there a way to allow several root DNS servers (I know it's distributed now, technically, but I mean with regard to control)?

Say, EU controls one, China controls one, India one, etc. One of these decides to add a new TLD. Given a system to control/arbitrate collisions and some basic rules of etiquette, what's the big deal? Let the root-level sync up a couple times a week (I mean, how often are TLDs added, anyway?!).

The only thing I can think of is that one country starts creating TLDs en masse in an effort to grab all the 'good ones' (sovereign squatting?).

I haven't put a lot of thought into this, but it seems like the internet was generally designed around distribution and delegation of authority -- can't we work it out with DNS as well at the root level? Why does it have to be an all-or-nothing thing?

If everyone would stop the dick-slapping, this might actually work out to a technical advantage allowing better redundancy. The biggest trouble is making sure that no one takes advantage of their control, and that they all stay in synch.

*shrug*

Just a thought. It's Friday and I'm feeling optimistic.

In all honesty..

[Kylere]

If each country maintained its own national DNS servers I would not have a problem with it, then you script in only the countries you needed, leaving the rest commented out. Since I already block free.spam mails e.g. hotmail, aol, and yahoo, ignoring one country would cut my 419 scams entirely. As a work issue, in my work environment, no one needs access to any foreign sites in any way, this would greatly simplify all our firewall and access issues.

Then we need to pass some laws eliminating the ability of federal or state governments to apply any restrictions to which countries a person has the right to access from home/library.

Which is why I block all the ads I can...

[FatSean]

They want to play me? I can play them too. Meh.

Re:No "citizens" control ICANN, including US citiz

[stwrtpj]

The "IP" that ICANN cares about isn't the "Internet Protocol" - it's "Intellectual Property". The real influence behind ICANN is the WIPO-mongers, whoever they are, that have gotten ICANN to insist that anybody who registers a domain name anywhere under their control provide enough information to serve them with a subpoena for a trademark lawsuit (and possibly for a website-content lawsuit from RIAA, etc., but it's really trademarks that matter.)

So are you proposing that it would be better that people register anonymously? What if there is a real need to know who the real person behind the domain name is, such as in the case of someone running a spam operation? While there have been admittedly few convictions for spamming, in many cases it was the domain name registration info that led to the real person.

While I will say that the conduct of organizations like the RIAA is certainly still cause for concern, it is in no way as much an issue as freedom of speech, and that is what I would be more worried about if control went to the UN. At least under the current system, I'm free to register a domain name whose purpose would be to speak out against the RIAA and there is nothing that they can do about it. Several members of the UN have expressed a desire to have a say in the content of the internet. Even ICANN does not have a real say in that, except where possibly copyright law is considered.

Route around network failures.

[NathanBFH]

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

Won't happen. I think history has shown that, like how the Internet routes around network failures, business routes around government.

Let it fracture, replace it with a wireless mesh

[Safe Sex Goddess]

Seems to me like the internet is ready to fracture. Aren't there geeks somewhere smart enough to figure out a mesh protocol that let's two people find each other without having root servers?

Hopefully it would make a good protocol for finding dates too.

Re:If CERN created the internet

[RentonSentinel]

They why don't they do what they want with it! Bwahahahaha.... don't make me laugh....

a big toss up

[salparadyse]

Between the "in what way has the "American control of the internet" thus far been at fault - it works for me?" school and the "how can one country have control over such a global thing?" school. One representative from EVERY country on earth appointed to a global body that controls the net is the ONLY natural/obvious/fair solution.

Internet Taxation

[brocktoon]

I was surprised that no one has brought up a source of motivation for internet control being taxation. If the UN gains substantial control over internet domain name assignments, this could be an opportunity to implement a global tax. Say the UN gets control over .net assignments-- the next time you renew your domain name, you may be paying a percentage to the UN as an effective global tax. For instance: http://www.newrules.org/retail/EUtax.html

Don't know would be more accurate in your case...

[Anonymous Coward]

> We all saw what happened with verizon, when they set the IP addresses of all the unregistered .org and .org domain names to their own search engine page.

That's VeriSign. Verizon is a phone company.

And I did see what happened--DNS operators the world over upgraded their DNS software. The new versions of BIND then returned NXDOMAIN, following appropriate standards, when it was told not to allow delegation for that domain and someone was returning a wildcard record. VeriSign then finally quit the damn stupid idea after realizing that it wasn't going to work, anyhow.

Next time, pick something you know more about :P

Party Next Door

[Roger W Moore]

Hmmm....well as a "house guest" (and member of the rest of the world) if thats what you think you really want, lets build our own house and see how you like living in your empty dwelling listening to the party next door.

Re:Party Next Door

[RentonSentinel]

But there's no reason we couldn't still go to each others parties! And we'd both feel much better knowing that each one of us has our own place to call "home" and to do whatever we like within at the end of the day.

Re:Party Next Door

[Lucractius]

better logic, Why dont we kick you out of the 9 tenths we built up in extentions around your house.

Re:Party Next Door

[CyricZ]

I hope Michael Moore shows up at your party.

Please take it away from U.S.

[dynamo]

As an American citizen, I'm ashamed of my government's behavior in this issue. We don't deserve control. I'd like to see the internet fracture into many pieces so that it's more difficult to censor / regulate. Fuck our power-grubbing leaders.

Re:Please take it away from U.S.

[cpghost]

I'd like to see the internet fracture into many pieces so that it's more difficult to censor / regulate.

Actually, the US Government has (up to now anyways) done a pretty good job, keeping OUT of the day to day business of running the Internet: just think of IETF and other orgs that are being run mostly by volunteers based on technical merit and vendor consensus. There's not that much control the government actually exercises on the Internet.

It may do so on content providers within the US, but that has nothing to do with control over the Internet infrastructure per se.

Now, to fracturing the Internet: IF control of government(s) get too strong, the internet will fracture automatically into autonomous networks anyway. It's bound to happen, and by the same token, it won't destroy connectivity at all. Even autonomous networks can reconnect in a pretty random way. The Internet architecture is designed to survive nuclear attacks and will always route around not only destroyed areas, but also around problems (such as overly strong government control).

That's the beauty of the Internet. It's virtually unbreakable as a whole.

Re:Let the third world build its own goddamn inter

[True Grit]

what with the pathetic number of IPv4 addresses allocated to them (amusing considering the amount that IBM and GE etc. own with having entire blocks of class A),

If the internet had been designed from the beginning to be a global service, this criticism might make sense, but the internet started, and existed for many, many years afterwards, as an *internal*, US creation. Only in *hindsight* do those IPv4 allocations look wrong now.

Observation...

[OneFix at Work]

Yea, because those international bodies (like the UN) have proven time and time again that they are so fast to respond.

The backbone of what is now known collectively as "the internet" was originally a collection of "fragmented networks" which can trace their origin back to ARPANET (a project done by the US DOD)...at some point in time these countries were begging to become part of "our" network (or someone elses that would eventually become part of "our" network). But, in 1998, ICANN won the bid to take control of the contract to take control of the root dns servers from the US Government...

So, the "fracturing of the internet" is a step backwards...and if it actually happened, then they would essentially be stepping back into the days of compuserve...which may be just fine...I mean how many sites in the US do people in the EU visit? Google? Yahoo? Slashdot? Wikipedia? Micro$oft? Cisco?...nah...just cut the cord...remember that even resources that have servers located in other countries share information with the US centers of operation...

Maybe they would come up with good alternatives to the more popular sites, but what's more than likely to happen is about a week later...once all of the sites that use ICANN's servers (everyone right now) started blocking the new "rogue dns root(s)", the people on these networks would be calling to be reconnected to the American resources that were previously available to their countries. What's funny is there ARE actually a few "alternate dns roots" that hand out top level domains that many are not too familiar with...what it sounds like they are actually arguing for is control of the "generic" tlds (.com, .net, etc)...and let me guess...the real people behind this are likely to be for-profit companies in the EU instead of the non-profit companies based out of the US (like ICANN and OSRC)...

The EU is not the "rest of the world"

[Retired Replicant]

Let's be accurate about that. The EU, with it's hodgepodge of restrictive, leftist politically-correct speech codes, is trying assert control over the internet. If the EU is going to control speech on the internet, why don't we go one better give China control over the internet? I for one feel more comfortable with the US in charge.

Okay Fine!!

[Eric Damron]

Give each country there own giant NAT box and be done with it!

Exactly: frying pan/fire

[bradleyland]

Why the UN? Because there's no corruption in the UN, right?

Re:Exactly: frying pan/fire

[WilliamSChips]

Give me something that isn't from a right-wing newspaper.
The most corrupt thing in the UN is the US having a veto on everything the UN does. The UN would be much more effective if it didn't have those stupid vetoes.

Postal Service

[Roger W Moore]

So given that several people have come out in favour of the US retaining control given that they invented the Internet in the first place, do these same people think that Britain should have control over what stamps countries are allowed to use in the postal services since it invented the stamp? Yes I know that is a completely insane idea...but so is one country trying to control all IP addresses and names.

Why the UN shouldn't manage the Internet

[DeLanceS]

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 to Reporters without Borders. Say what you will about the US, but at least this isn't going on at the root level.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050929/D8CTK2SO2 .html

Re:Why the UN shouldn't manage the Internet

[Achromatic1978]

Some of us would think that it was a fantastic idea, to raise awareness, both domestic and international, and maybe encourage the removal of some of that censorship.

One Comment I Have Not Yet Seen

[mkoenecke]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Re:Needs to be taken from American hands

[Bent Mind]

Not that I'm really sure what control the top level domains have over the Internet (other than naming a new www.somesite.moronic_stuff... However,

You're right. Let's give control to Syria, North Korea, and China.

Wasn't one of the main points of the American revolution lack of representation in England? Now we have a service that's used internationaly, but controlled by a country that refuses to allow representation.

wanting to retain control over their own creation, which they so presumptuously chose to share with the rest of the world.

I wonder, just how much of the Internet was created by the US? Sure, all of that fiber in the US and the lines connecting the US to Europe were funded and developed by Americans. However, computer networks existed before the current Internet. I remember, back about 1986 or so, calling Italy to download messages from their networks to share on my BBS. Europe had their own networks that agreed to connect America's Internet in the interest of communicating with America.

AHHHHHHHHH

[ImaNihilist]

The third world war will not be fought over land, power, or religion. The third world war will be fought over DNS and IP addresses. In the midst of the fight, Google will release GoogleNet in an attempt to unify the internet under a single problem. At 11:10am on March 7, 2014 Google will become self aware and launch a nuclear attack against mankind.

Re:Let the third world build its own goddamn inter

[csirac]

I'm not saying it's "wrong" as such (I guess it was a pretty negative statement though), I'm just pointing out facts which happen to be amusing (to me :-).

UN and Free Speech

[logicnazi]

While in principle the idea that an international body should control an international resource seems to be a good one I am cautious about the pragmatic realities of an international body doing this. In particular I worry about DNS and IP assignment policies being used to suppress certain kinds of free speech.

Even other western democracies have much less protection of free speech. Germany prevents racist speech as do many other countries. Will domain names be denied to people with racist propoganda? If this is a UN controlled organization will the generally assembelly have power over it? Could the many islamic nations ban together to prevent anti-islamic websites being given domain names?

I know some of you will object and say the US isn't perfect in terms of free speech and cite examples like the DMCA and various federal wiretap laws. My response is severalfold, first it is important to distingush privacy concerns from free speech concerns and I think the later are much more important than the other. Secondly while the US doesn't extend free speech rights as far as I would like in terms of copyright type information this is still commercial speech not personal/political speech. I mean can you really deny that it is more important to be able to make political or religious statements than ones about how to hack an xbox? Moreover, the problem with the DMCA type laws is that they are spreading so moving it out of the US gains no benefit.

Ultimately because so much of the infrastructure is already in the US the internet is already at the mercy of the US government and giving another body power only increases the number of people who can censor it. Moreover while the US isn't perfect it does seem to have one of the strongest protections of free speech in the face of majority oppossition.

Microsoft will decide. Period.

[cpghost]

Actually, this is all about choosing a DNS root within or outside U.S. or U.N. jurisdiction. The whole "power" of ICANN is that We, the People^WUsers, choose to connect to ICANN controlled root servers. Nothing prevents us (in theory) picking other root servers at all.

Now comes the catch: Microsoft controls over 90% of the market share; and they configure the resolvers to query some root servers. Whatever Microsoft chooses to be the default, will effectively de facto BE the default. If they (Microsoft) choose to side with the US, the DNS will be US controlled as it is now. If they choose to side with the U.N., it will be U.N. controlled.

It's really that simple.

A good reason the UN should not control it.

[Oligonicella]

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Facing heated protest, the United Nations on Wednesday defended Tunisia's hosting of a U.N. summit about Internet access in the developing world, even though the north African nation has been repeatedly accused of rights abuses that include blocking Web sites it dislikes.

Earlier this week, a coalition of human rights groups known as the Tunisia Monitoring Group issued a report that declared Tunisia unfit to hold the World Summit on the Information Society, set for November, because of reports that the government has stepped up attacks on the press and civil society.

The group, which has frequently criticized the selection of Tunisia as the host country, said the government has blocked access to Web sites belonging to Reporters Without Borders, other human rights watchdogs, and the independent press, while police monitor e-mails and Internet cafes.

"It does question to some extent the U.N.'s credibility that a world summit on the information society is taking place in a society where access to some Web sites is restricted," said Alexis Krikorian, of the International Publishers' Association. "It's amazing that such a summit would take place in a country like this."

Hey, I've got an idea!

[dheltzel]

Why don't we just make "meta domains" or "hyper domains" and give each country one of them to manage themselves, then they could assign all the subdomains themselves, any way they want. We could even make an abbreviated name and just tack it onto the end of the domain names. Something like ".uk" for the domains controlled by the UK, and so forth, you get the idea.

It that a great idea, or what? I can't believe that no one's thought of this before. Maybe I'll get a Nobel Peace Prize for coming up with the idea that brings harmony to the internet.

Re:Meh to this whole thing

[nbutler19]

"if we need more root servers we set up a DNS server thats up to snuff to handle billions of queries per day, and you add it to 'the' file"

it's not that simple.

from rfc 3226:

" The current number of root servers is limited to 13 as that is the
      maximum number of name servers and their address records that fit in
      one 512-octet answer for a SOA record. If root servers start
      advertising A6 or KEY records then the answer for the root NS records
      will not fit in a single 512-octet DNS message, resulting in a large
      number of TCP query connections to the root servers."

we're currently limited to only 13 root servers. so adding another one is not a current option.

Bush != safe and stable government

[Numen]

It's the business of the US populace who they elect as their leader.... that goes without saying, but one has to realise there will be a reaction to who they choose.

Electing Bush as President once could be put down to an accident.... a second time and other countries started to question the stability of the country that elected him. Now all these other countries may well be in the wrong, and the US may have the right of it, but widespread polls outside the US consistenctly show the people in other countries regard Bush as the single most dangerous man on the planet, and more dangerous that S. Hussein..... in short they're no happier with a country that Bush is leader holding the reigns that they would have been pre regiime-change Iraq.

That is what a large portion of the planet is reacting to. Not the US in and of itself, but the man you elected as your leader twice (to the amazement of anybody not American), and to whom most of the rest of the planet wouln't trust the running of a corner store. Truthfully, everybody else may be wrong, I'm just trying to convey sentiment in large portions of the rest of the world... we think Bush is a moron, and we don't trust the people who decided he was they best they could find as their leader.

For the record, as I realise this does wade into traditionally anti-American flame territory... I'm English, I've traditionally been very pro the Anglo-American relationship, and a Europsceptic, but I want nothing to do with a Bush lead regime, and if you elect another muppet as your leader then yeah, I'm in favour of the EU backing away from the US on any matter of international import... and that includes DNS

The man's a nut job..... That's what most of us out here thing. We may well be wrong, but right or wrong it's how we view him. In light of that we view the US as a country whose leader is a nut. We therefore don't consider the US a safe and stable country to entrust anything in.

It's your president we don't trust, not the US. Your trustworthiness is only in question because you elected him.

I'm sorry if this gets read as anti-American as I enjoy the company of a fair few American colleagues, and more than a few online friends. I think the world is a better place to have had the US in it, but men of worse character than normal have convinced enough people to fear all else but their vision.

Good luck over the next couple of years, and I look forward to you electing a leader that might actualy qualify for a McJob before you attempt to make him Leader of The Free World.

Thowin' out ideas

[lanced]

Okay, I'm not a know it all, but I'd like to think I know quite a bit in this area. So I'd like to throw some ideas out, because I'm interested in the oft insightful freedback from /..

Okay, first thought: this wouldn't cause a split in the net, just in the Internet's DNS system. Although this would be bad, it isn't the end of the world (wide web). One simple work around, is that consumers could use multiple DNS servers, depending on which root server the intended site is using. Inconvenient, yes; impossible, no.

That being said, my second thought is this: what is keeping the US as the authority? Might I suggest that this is a case of build it and they will come. It seems to me that if some international org. starts an alternative name service, perhaps one that simply augments the data from current root servers, it would be up to the larger ISP's to decide to start using the new augmented service.

So, thoughts? Am I way off base here, is that really that simple? Thanks!

I see this as a geekly opportunity

[serutan]

The more complicated something is, the more opportunities for those who can figure it out. If the Internet becomes fractured, think of the market for clever ways to interoperate seamlessly across the fractures! Mr. Crusher, ahead frac factor five!

Re:All according to plan

[elamdaly]

Try such pesky venues like Scoop or the Guardian or pravda or AlJazeera

You forgot the NY Times, The Wapo, and CNN.

The 'caskets' meme is *so* old. It's now Judith Miller!( gee, what happened to 'Mother' Sheehan? )

Anyhoo, your obviously lax on your medicinal schedule.

Re:Fine

[Lucractius]

My net connection is rediculously overpriced and pathetic compared to the offerings available from other companies but i dont pay the bill so im stuck with it. While were here. How the hell do you manage to THINK that the US "funded and created" the millions of miles of telecomunications infastructure across the globe thats used by other countries that the Internet now uses... logicaly the Internet could be said to be Using OTHER countries telcom hardware.

Its just another example of "world revolves around washington" political and social copernicanism.

Re: Pussies

[Lucractius]

HA time to stop opening the mouth before the foot enters.

Check the total Investment in the Internet GLOBALY by the US goverment and then compare with the investment by other COMPANIES ... not even countries... Just Commercial companies. The Goverments contribution is now and for a LONG time has been, barely a fraction of the total invested in the net. The companies own it. Not the USA. Get the facts.

Oh and dont play the "But their US companies!" card... You know its stupid, if you dont... well then... guess that makes you [ fill in your own blank here ]

Re:to the victor....

[Lucractius]

.au is the australian Country code and .jp is the Japanese one. Neither of these are European.

*patches up the facts with some good old Duct Tape*

OK - so what if a split does occur?

[squidinkcalligraphy]

Well, for a start you'd get twice as many IP addresses, though that would not be ideal as they could not communicate with each other. If only the DNS section were to split, that could still work as then you'd just have two seperate namespaces; something like

http://US:slashdot.org

and

http://EU:slashdot.org

or some such thing - this could probably be done without modifyin client software even, though search engines would have a bit of work to do. But at the end of the day, the two DNS systems would probably be near identical save a few contensious sites. The popularity of each system would determine which one survived.

But back to IP - a split may actually be good in this sense, as the new system could use IPv6. About fscking time! The new international/EU body would be responsible for dishing out IPv6 addresses, with possibly a new namespace too, while the 'old' internet would still be accessible through a gateway.

But back to DNS - This is probably going to be a moot point before too long anyway - who needs DNS when you have google? (Oh the irony!)

I read quite an interesting proposal for a DNS system based on FreeNet - completely distributed and just about uncontrollable, but based on popularity. If georgewbush.com wants to take over gwbush.com, then it just has to be more popular. Now _that's_ democracy.

Re:Thowin' out ideas - BIND is the problem

[rleesBSD]

The problem is that the current "U.S. controlled root-server" addresses are "hard coded" into tens of millions of BIND dns server installations. (The default named.ca file shipped with BIND) Defaults are also hard-coded into various resolvers for DNS (for browsers, etc).

So, we have the issue of installed-base = current-root-servers. It would be like starting from zero to overtake the existing MPEG formats for music, video, etc. Could be done, but tough task ....

Re:Fine

[Achromatic1978]

That's pretty accurate actually. The general policy for telcos when laying cable across oceans was always that the cost would be split equally between countries who used it. That was back in the old, voice days. Several companies laying cable got... slightly pissed off when they arranged to lay fiber for data and the net - which across ten thousand miles of Pacific Ocean... "isnt cheap", and the US ends decided they didn't need to pay a cent for it, because it was for people of the world to access the net, most of which was in the US. They kept up this argument, even when it was demonstrated that circa 30 per cent of the traffic over some links was US outbound initiated.

This was a few years ago. Not sure how it is now.

I see now

[gimione]

this is why we must have Yards and Meters....

Thanks for "aiding" us :P

[bufalo_1973]

Thanks, US, for invading Cuba and Philippines when it was Spanish. Thanks for helping Europe AFTER you were bombed by Japan (prior to this many american fortunes were made trading with nazi Germany). Thank you for helping Europe in the WWI... but not from the beginning. Thank you for letting Franco stay calm in Spain BECAUSE HE WAS A NATIONAL-CHRISTIAN DICTATOR. Oh, and thank you too for pushing patents laws in Europe.

Yes, we Europeans have to give many thanks to the US (government).

Stop thinking 'Hollywood movies' = 'real world'.

Re:Needs to be taken from American hands

[Zey]

Consider that the US is the only country in the history of the world that was founded on principles of individual liberty and the protection of individual rights

Unless you were either non-white or female or both.

Though I guess "freedom and liberty for around 30%" doesn't have the same ring to it, eh?

Re:to the victor....

[xmorg]

Lies.

Europeans (in the politically correct sense) are Caucasian, and Japanese are asian. Therfore Europeons are a subset of asian being CAUCasian. Therefore Japanese are Europeans.

Austrailians are fron England, and talk like English (But from the south) so they are europeans too. :-p

Elephant

[Dogtanian]

Because you must click and post?

Of course not. Are you implying that I should refrain from pointing out what I consider to be obvious because Slashdot is a "free" site? I'm not sure that makes sense, or is even relevant.

Why do you care?

I'm not really that bothered per se. I just think the explanation that all the dupes are down to simple incompetence has become rather implausible.... it's the five-ton elephant in the middle of the room that no-one notices. Perversely, the more commonplace it becomes, the more it seems to get accepted; it started off being joked about, and now people are used to it, no-one stops to think how implausible the whole "incompetent editors" thing is, in spite of the increasing silliness of that explanation in light of recent dupes.

I mean, Zonk posted both stories himself.

I don't get this whole "OMG its a dupe" fad that's come into being

I don't either; and for a different reason- namely that for all the bitching about dupes that goes on, it's always complaining about the supposed incompetence of the editors.

I mean, there are footprints all over the butter, and they aren't even considering the elephant in the fridge as a possible cause!

Is this just the post-modern version of the "neither news for nerds, NOR stuff that matters!" troll

No, I'm not a troll (check my posting history; plenty of lightweight crap, but nothing really trollish). I'm just someone who, having read the same "OMG its a dupe, the editors suck"-type post several times, then seeing someone else who'd spotted the elephant in the room had to reply to it.

I really think you missed the point when you put this done as another "OMG it's a dupe!!!" post. It's *about* the lack of insight in such posts as much as it's about the dupes themselves.

Anyway, Slashdot are a free site, so I'm not going to lay into them for trying to increase their pageviews; I'm just not going along with the 'incompetence' nonsense.

Time to get back on topic

[SoloFlyer2]

If someone was to setup a World root DNS server, which basically was to check its own records then failing a match check ICANNs records ( for a legacy match :P ) It would slowly solve this whole problem...

Even if ISP's and the like didnt have their records point to the World root DNS Servers when people started to complain that they couldnt acess website x because their ISP didnt point to the World root DNS server, ISPs would slowly migrate until hey presto no one uses ICANN anymore they, instead register with WRDS... and US loses control... Easy...

you could even have some sort of setup where the worl root dns server just held a list saying

goto ICANN for .com .net .gov
goto (insert new australian root dns server here) for .com.au .net.au .gov.au
goto (insert new english root dns server here) for .co.uk .net.uk .gov.uk
etc...

each country will them have control only over the top level domain name assigned to them and there will still be a world controled body which oversees everything and is used as the root dns server by everyone ( it could even mirror the records held by each of the countries

iraqi TLD

[hernyo]

The U.S. has shown no signs of censoring the internet at the DNS level.

If ICANN would be politically independent the iraqi TLD would be operated by an iraqi organization.

See http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/ 08/1239221&tid=95&tid=219

And in fact

[WindBourne]

Concerning Aljazeera, here is an interesting article that shows how corrupt our admin is, but you will not see it on fox news.

True Names and ICBM-addresses

[TheJOsh!(tm)]

Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile- addresses??

Re:to the victor....

[Lucractius]

Bah if anything the diet of rehashed US tv we get down here in Australia (unless you like the ABC [ australias equivalent of PBS ] which has lots of BBC on it... urgh not another slow dull british cop show ) makes us more American than British so there :P

The cause for this is blindingly obvious...

[slushbat]

What happened to the xxx domain? The moral minority were outraged. There could be rude things, tits, gay people. So the president intervened and put it on hold. That is why we can no longer tolerate US control of the internerd. We want our filth and we want it now. Rise up and overthrow the imperialist prurient opressors.

Re:spin

[anaesthetica]

It's too bad you were modded down so quickly, because you do raise a point that has been debated in U.S. foreign policy since the beginning of the Cold War, and even further back in more isolated circumstances.

The United States certainly will support dictators, and has done so a number of times throughout the country's history. Musharraf and Karimov are only the latest two. U.S. idealism is, of course, tempered by pragmatic decisions about supporting the "lesser of two evils" and believing that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Those are tough choices to make, and I don't believe that any foreign policy maker likes to be in a situation where they have to support an illigitimate regime. In the two cases you mention, Musharraf and Karimov were willing to support the U.S. efforts against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and U.S. policy makers clearly felt that the latter were bigger threats than the two dictators. That's certainly debatable. But it's quite clear that the U.S. would have been able to make very little headway against the Taliban or Al Qaeda if it did not ally with local power centers, as distasteful as they are.

I think my original point remains. The U.S. has been quite willing to overthrow democratically elected governments that it did not think would ultimately guarantee freedom. The two key examples are Mossadegh and Allende. It's debatable, and indeed still hotly debated, whether the U.S. overreacted towards these two leaders. They were leftists and ideologically aligned with the Soviet Union (the ultimate geostrategic threat the U.S.), but neither were totalitarians themselves. I think the U.S. didn't want to find out whether, after consolidating their power, these leaders would move toward support of the USSR--a totalitarian state that *did* oppress the liberties of every nation it dominated.

Re:spin

[Opie812]

But it's quite clear that the U.S. would have been able to make very little headway against the Taliban or Al Qaeda if it did not ally with local power centers, as distasteful as they are.

Not necessiarily (sp?) clear. The United States is perfectly willing to invade a country on a pre-text ties to Al-Qaeda where clearly none existed (ie, Iraq for the uninitiated). Why did they not simply invade Pakistan? That would have been two birds with one stone. Get rid of an EVIL dictator and go after Al-Qaeda.

It seems to me "American Idealism" is a mantra used time-and-again to justify her blatent self-interest to the world and the U.S. general public.

Re:spin

[vague_ascetic]

• First, I appreciate your understanding that my post wasn't "flame bait", but fervent dissent. That has been an unusual response to me in many places, both web and real over the last few years. Generally, people would rather pass me off as a "leftist" than respond rationally, which confuses and bemuses me, since my views are often what once was defined as "conservative", and now the politiquechic call paleoconservative.
• Second, I did a bit of light browsing of links you graciously provided. Based on this, I am now making many assumptions about your personal knowledge.
• Third, my past experiences with wikipedia have caused me to be very distrustful of any topic current, political or socially divisive. Maybe we can discuss the whys another time.
• Fourth, The modding down of my previous post could be viewed as favourable, since it decreases the noise to signal.

The USA's desire to affect the leadership of other countries does predate the Cold War. Most notably in the willingness to overthrow Central and South American leaders that were viewed as antithetical to the wishes of American business which had interests in the region. It wasn't a lack of will that kept the government form acting this way before that, it was a lack of ability. Duane Clarridge's take on the History of the Monroe Doctrine is illustrative from multiple viewpoints. The whole interview of Clarridge is brightly illuminative upon the dangers and ills of covert action. Here is a man who still arrogantly believes that America's secret services have a right and a duty to act extra-constitutionally to effectuate a US President's unlawful desires.

I am an absolutist when it comes to the constitution's delineation of the rights of humans, and the limitations placed upon the government. Anything else is tyranny. This is not hyperbole, nor is it negotiable. "No person shall be held", and "In all criminal prosecutions" are not rights the government has conferred upon its citizens. They are rights all humans naturally possess, and a just government will not infringe upon these rights. The concept; "Unlawful Combatants" , is an unconstitutional obscenity. This practise needs to be terminated with extreme predjudice. Once again, I will never negotiate this, for to do so is to betray the Dreamtime, and means the end of what little faith I still posess.

In almost all instances, when a country picks a leftist as a leader in a verifiably fair democratic process, America would be much better off not trying to upset the result, and instead look to the next election, helping insure that there will be one. It is a blatant lack of faith in America to think that, over the long run, citizenry in other countries will not see the truth, and choose properly in the elections of their leaders. All too often American intervention has either cemented the power of leaders the US government opposed or led to an undemocratic and brutal right-wing military regime. I believe a very good example of the first case is Cuba and Castro. His power has been greatly aided by our providing causes he could point a finger of blame at, when it was his failures of policy which were truly to blame. Cuba is definitely a case where the Christian path recommended by Paul should have been chosen:

"if thine enemy hunger, feed him;
if he thirst, give him drink:
for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head"
--Romans 12:20

The problem would have been solved years ago this way.

In the case of Karimov, there be no equivocations. Our alliance, for whatever reasons offered, was wrong. Former UK Uzbek Ambassaor Murray is correct in his analysis, and it is shameful that mainstream American media has for the most part ignored what he has said about Karimov and Uzbekistan. He clearly stated the issues

Re:spin

[anaesthetica]

That's quite a long comment.

What I notice in your writing is a kind of unqualified support for democracy as an institution, which is somewhat disturbing because the same sentiment was loudly proclaimed by President Bush in his second inaugural address. Perhaps this is where neoconservatism and the leftists meet, I'm not sure.

Regarding the Monroe Doctrine, it was designed to keep European colonial power out of the Western Hemisphere. You seem to be upset with the Roosevelt Corrollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which was around the same time the U.S. became a world power (the last turn of the century). This Mr. Clarridge does not seem to know his history all that well, and whomever transcribed the interview can't spell--which casts doubt on the relevance of the interview to one's understanding of how those two historical doctrines have shaped U.S. attitudes toward interventionism.

The "Unlawful Combatant" designation is only unconstitutional if applied to a citizen of the United States (where I agree with you, it should not be used). Otherwise, there is no constitutional provision for how to deal with foreign combatants encountered in military operations.

I agree, generally, that the United States should respect the legitimacy of democratically elected leaders. On the other hand, the context of the Cold War remains crucial to the understanding of U.S. actions toward several leftist leaders at the time. If a country were to elect a pro-Soviet leftist leader, it would be pulled into the Soviet sphere of influence, altering the balance of power, both regionally and globally. The greater concern (however unfair to the populace of the given country) was the advantage that the Soviets would gain relative to the "Free World."

Alliance with dictators does weaken the U.S. image, but Clinton and Bush both had policies of pushing for humanitarian reforms, rather than simply cutting off relations. After Andijon, Bush demanded an inquiry, which got the U.S. thrown out of Uzbekistan and cooperation in the War on Terror cut off. That was a pretty big sacrifice for the sake of siding with the people.

U.S. support for Pakistan throughout the Cold War had to do with both the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan and India's socialist and pro-Soviet policies. Pakistan was wedged right in-between and served as a buffer. China supported Pakistan as well, for largely the same reasons: antagonism with both the USSR and India.

As with any war, it is the poor who do the dying. Afghanistan for Russia was no different, just as Vietnam was for America. The key point was that for the legitimacy and public support for the Soviet leadership to dry up, the people would have to feel the effects of the Cold War directly. Russians wouldn't feel political manuevering amongst Latin American government. But if their kids started dying for nothing, like ours did in Vietnam, then they'd feel it alright. And Afghanistan weakened Brezhnev substantially.

I agree that we took our eye off the ball in diverting so many resources to go fight Saddam in Iraq. I think we've given the Iraqis a good opportunity, but it wasn't an opportunity we had to give them. We should have made sure al Qaeda was rolled up first. As far as alliances within Afghanistan, we didn't have the time to get thousands of troops into the theater--we started the war in under three weeks (the fastest beginning to a war in U.S. history as far as I can tell). We needed an anti-Taliban army, and the Northern Alliance was exactly that, which is why al Qaeda assassinated their top general one or two days before 9/11--they knew we would need the Northern Alliance. Allying with drug dealers is neither here nor there--it is quite easy to prioritize the war on al Qaeda over the "War on Drugs."

We should not have allied with India right off the bat, because Muslims get very upset by India's treatment of Muslim, and because of the Kashmir conflict. Similarly, openly allying with Russia would be bad because of Chechnya and the n

Re:spin

[vague_ascetic]

Quickly on a few points, because I do tend to throw a tremendous quantity of words, and feel the need to express myself here.

The Clarridge/Monroe Doctrine was meant to be an example of the secret services gone awry. You are aware of Dewey Clarridge, aren't you? He represents to a large degree the failures and dangers of covert action. The interview was also to show you just what arrogance was involved with this fear of Soviet intervention. He readily admits that Nicaragua would have fallen with a breath of an American attack, and then goes on to make unsubstantiated claims about the inherent dangers to the region. I am not a socialist by any stretch of the imagination, and unlike so many of the contemporary American conservatives, I've never been a socialist, trotskyite, newlefty, etc. The hive mentality is offensive.

Our equivocating Pakistani policies are to a very large degree, the source of their ills. Zbigniev's great game, and the absolute regancomic insanity. It all boils down to the omlette analogy, which is always offered as an excuse for acts of evil by persons whose heads are not being cracked upon the side of the bowel, contents being drained into the batter.

The Afghanistan war ended up being unnecessary; the cardboard bear was already crumbling trying to support itself with legs made from the inferior paper product manufactured by state run industries. Some Russian have even begaun to vocalise their belief that the Fist of the Kremlin was actually extended by the US intervention into Afghanistan. The CIA lied to the gimper, just to make the ole man happy.

Do not speak of expediency when rationalising the alliance with Uzbekistan. Karimov's inhumane acts should have precluded our association, regardless of the short-term gain, and Bush did not immediately jump upon the international investigation bandwagon after Andijon, the first official words were equivocations and cautionary advice to a people whose military had "shot at them like rabbits". This from an administration which had by this time revised their cause for War Upon Iraq as the freeing of an opressed people from a tyrannical ruler. Bush rendered persons to the Karimov government, knowing full well what the likely result of this would be. Cowardly, and unworthy acts from the head of a civilised nation. The piper will have to be paid for this in the future, just as the price for the reagan comedy came due on September 11, 2001 (as well as the bills of Carter, Bush the first and Clinton to lesser degrees)

An unqualified support for democracy is disturbing? It is nothing other than a strict constitutional constructionism, and an application of the founders original intent. You insult me by comparing what you see as my unqualified support for democratic process to Mr. Bush's lip service. No matter what he has said, Bush is not a supporter of democratic processes. This is a laughable assertion.

General JohnBoy got jilted by his election date,
He was loser to a dead man in the 'Show-Me' State.
JohnBoy got revenge with his appointment to AG
from a president selected on less than a plurality.

Actually, I place very strong qualifications on the democratic process. I value liberty above democracy. This is American at its core. There must always be restrictions placed upon democratic institutions to protect the liberty of minorities. Without limiting the reach of the mob, the guillotine becomes a likely probability. This is why a just government must provide due process of law to all humans.

I cannot see anything within the Constitution that limits the universality of due process of law. Please illuminate me, and not with the equivocations of nine old f**ks with fetishes for black satin moo moos. Ground it within the Constitution itself.

I am walkabout, remember? I speak truth from the dreamtime. It is self-evident: all humans are created equal and endowed by what they perceive as their creator with inalienable rights. That

Re:spin

[anaesthetica]

I am walkabout, remember? I speak truth from the dreamtime.

I'm not sure the exact definition of walkabout/dreamtime, but I'm pretty sure it means that we're just going to have to agree to disagree.