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EU, UN to Wrestle Internet Control From US
Anonymous Coward writes "The Guardian is reporting that the EU, obviously unimpressed with the US's refusal to relinguish control of the Internet, will be forming several comittees and forums with a mind to forcibly remove control of the Internet from the United States." From the article: "Old allies in world politics, representatives from the UK and US sat just feet away from each other, but all looked straight ahead as Hendon explained the EU had decided to end the US government's unilateral control of the internet and put in place a new body that would now run this revolutionary communications medium. The issue of who should control the net had proved an extremely divisive issue, and for 11 days the world's governments traded blows. For the vast majority of people who use the internet, the only real concern is getting on it. But with the internet now essential to countries' basic infrastructure - Brazil relies on it for 90% of its tax collection - the question of who has control has become critical."
So some places outside the US, as is their right, are going to set up their own root servers. This kind of thing has been done many times before. Those other alt-roots have never been very heavily subscribed. Naturally that reference level could change, if other countries mandate that their ISPs use the new alt-roots.
But you know what? To the extent that the data coming out of the latest alt-roots conflict with the ICANN, they will be generally perceived as broken, particularly but not exclusively from the point of view of users in the US. For example, domain names will fail to resolve, or will resolve to the "wrong" place. If the new alt-roots do much of anything differently, users will start pointing their DNS clients at nameservers that resolve up to the ICANN. So for example if China sets up something that won't resolve (say) freechina.net, the individual users will soon learn to point their DNS clients at US nameservers.
The only way I can see these new alt-roots being heavily subscribed is if they make sure they agree with the ICANN everywhere ICANN has a route to a name, and if their use is legally mandated so that ISPs are forced to go through the hassle of changing. If they do that, the only value that they could possibly add would be of including extra domains that resolve for the alt-roots, and that ICANN does not yet have. Is there really a lot of demand for such a thing? I'm not sure.
Couple that with anycast and other emerging redundancy methods and I'd say we have a pretty global effort to maintain DNS going on.
Again, according to wikipedia.org:
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Since you've been modded up, I'm surprised that nobody has bothered to explain to you yet that the web isn't the internet.
It is neither; it is IP, TCP, UDP, DNS and so on. These were all invented in the US. And the specific item in question is not the internet at large, but DNS in particular.
Y'know, I expect my grandmother to fall into the fallacy of believing that the World Wide Web is the same thing as the Internet, but I expect more from a Slashdot reader. Silly me.
Sorry, factually incorrect:
= 328791
http://www.unausa.org/site/pp.asp?c=fvKRI8MPJpF&b
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
"In December 2000, the Assembly agreed to revise the scale of assessments to make them better reflect current global circumstances. As part of that agreement, the regular budget ceiling was reduced from 25 to 22 percent; this is the rate at which the United States is assessed. The United States is the only member that meets that ceiling, all other members' assessment rates are lower."
So make no mistake, without US backing, the UN would be nothing.End transmission.
This quote is from the following web site:
"The United States is the largest financial contributor to the UN, and has been every year since its creation in 1945. U.S. contributions to the UN system in 2003 were well over $3 billion. In-kind contributions include items such as food donations for the World Food Program.
The U.S.-assessed contribution to the UN regular budget in 2003 was $341 million, and to UN specialized agencies was over $400 million. The United States also contributed $686 million in assessments to the peacekeeping budget; $57 million for the support of the international war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia; and $6 million for preparatory work relating to the Capital Master Plan to renovate the UN Headquarters in New York. Moreover, each year the United States provides a significant amount in voluntary contributions to the UN and its affiliated agencies and activities, largely for humanitarian and development programs."
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Back in July the US surprised everyone by saying that despite the previous agreement that ICANN control of root servers would end in Sept 2006, they would instead keep control into the future, not matter what everyone else thought.
Everyone else was understandable miffed, particularly when they saw it was being driven politically, by Bush, and that ICANN continued to be ICANN and were trying to tax domain registrations, including country specific domain registrations (.de, .uk, etc.)
Work was ongoing to redefine things on the run up to the expected ending of ICANN control, including automated management functions and working groups to define future structure. I'm sure Bush and his fundamentalist Christian take on the .XXX domain was just the last straw.
I expect that given the preceeding agreement, and the relative simplicity of changing control of the root servers that live outside the US, the UN, EU, and the rest of the world expected negotiation at the recent PrepCom3 conference. What they got however was arrogance and statements that made it clear the US failed to understand they didn't have the choice to ignore past agreements.
So, the timetable is clear. ICANNs contract ends between March-Sept 2006 and during that time the new body will take control. Given the likelihood that they won't charge the registrar tax (remember that automated system), just about everyone will switch and Bush will end up with egg on his face. Thus I'll bet that in the real summit in November he will have to give in an acceptable change, since he really has no control of the matter.