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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."
It's their obvious strategy. There is absolutely no reason they have to live with us controlling the internet. Just put their own root DNS servers in place, and legally mandate that all of their ISPs switch over. It's not rocket science, but it will fragment the internet a bit.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Which is, of course, exactly why the US wants to maintain control of it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Anytime your story ends with:
The internet will never be the same again.
You've already lost the battle against melodrama.
We are presumably discussing the Internet as an international network, and here the answer is obviously, "no-one can own this", because ownership will mean subversion of the Internet for political goals and thus its destruction.
But if we mean the millions of small and large (e.g. China) internets, each of these can and probably should be owned.
The problem of root DNS servers appears to be an artificial one, relatively easily solved if there was the political will to relinquish control and allow the free creation of arbitrary top level names. There are parallels where control has successfully been relinquished and the results are a nice mix of anarchy and order, suiting everyone. Newsnet is a good example.
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I've been saying this all along. The only debate that seems to be out there is which government should control the Internet. The best answer is NONE. Not the US, not the EU, but private citizens. Once Gov't gets their dirty little claws on a thing, you see things like China's little section of the Internet.
I honestly don't believe that any government has the right to control it. What needs to happen is for private citizens to take it back.
Pessimists.net - as if life wasn't depressing enough.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but won't dictatorships that terrorize their people have the same ability to vote in important matters as democratic countries? Hasn't there been a history of less than decent governments being represented in, say the Security Council? I mean, what is China doing there?
Regarding the Internet, I'm leaning towards saying "if it ain't broken, don't fix it". It's working OK the way it does today (although Verisign needs to get the boot). I also want to make sure that China and other such governments have no say over my Internet connection.
And the EU sure seems to be taking the hardball approach to this! I can't even see how they can possible force the control away from the US. They will be making complete fools of themselves if they end up splitting the Internet. Unlikely, but I'm sure they are willing to do so just to prove that the EU has the balls to stand up to the US...
Clever signature text goes here.
We should have pulled out of this idiotic thing [UN] a long time ago, and perhaps this will be the final straw
Maybe you should just obliterate the rest of the world so that there will be no problem after that with any foreign entity. What do you think?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
No. Because then the date line (meridian opposite of the prime meridian) would pass through heavily inhabited zones (Asia) rather than through the Pacific, which would be kind of disruptive.
Either way, this is irrelevent. The point is that, today, the Internet is a global network. It needs to be "governed" globally, not by one major player. I'm finding the nationalistic cries of outrage posted here difficult to stomach. Something tells me that if it were proposed that control of the World Wide Web be handed over to the EU, on the grounds it's a European invention, you'd be pretty pissed.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
But hey, it'll be fun to watch....
- Dan
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.
So the argument there is that because a private company controls the Internet the many foreign governments and populations that rely upon it should be content?
Incorrect. My argument is:
1. That the private company is already an international entity that serves international interests.
2. That said company has done an excellent job to date, and has shown no need for a government run entity.
3. That it is not the US policy to force private companies to give up ownership.
4. That the UN has no compelling argument for wanting control other than the fact that it wants it.
5. That the UN has a far poorer track record on joint ventures than ICANN has.
That is the argument, and I daresay that it's pretty ironclad. The moment someone can poke a reasonable hole in that logic, I will change my position. So far, no one has done more than insult me for my "american elitist position". Boo hoo. Find an argument that works, then we'll talk.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Well, I guess it is time to kill DNS alltogether. DNS is centralized by design. Tim Berners-Lee doesn't like centralized designs, and has referred to DNS as the achilles heel of the internet, and I think he has been thinking about replacements. What we need to remove control from any monolithic, centralized body. Make it webly. Then, they can argue over themselves, but control, they won't get.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
More to the point, the US doesn't have any control over the Internet it could hand over to the UN even if it wanted to. The article talks about the DNS system - or so I presume anyway, since it mentions root servers; it doesn't actually state anything about DNS. The US currently hosts the root DNS servers. Those root servers are special only in that everyone keeps using them; they have any authority only because everyone agrees that they do. There is nothing whatsoever stopping the UN from making its own root servers and telling everyone to use them; they will be ignored, but that's not US's fault. Such things has been tried in the past ("use our special DNS servers, and you can type keywords into your browsers address bar", and they died off from simple lack of interest.
I don't see how US could hand over something, which, in the end, is authority by being voluntarily recognized as the authoritative data source by everyone. Even if the US would take the root servers offline, there is no reason why everyone would start using UN's brave new root servers. More likely we would get a period of total chaos as several conflicting DNS namespaces would be in competition against each other.
This entire proposition is nonsensical and should be silently ignored.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Bingo. You can't have free speech and ban "hate speech" at the same time. It's a contradiction. Even though the US is falling into that hole too, it's nowhere as deep in as the EU is... yet.
The obvious solution is to put everyone on short horses.
1. Why do you care?
Some people don't like being assholes maybe?
2. Why take their word over your own trust in your own county?
I have a better suggestion for you..
Provided that there is anything in that thing you consider to be your head, try using it.
You should listen to both and decide for yourself. Listening to one side of a story is going to make you a fool by definition.
Bull. This is in fact a very simple matter. The internet is now a key part of the infrastructure of many countries and no matter if you like it or not, nations don't like it when a critical part of their infrastructure is controlled by a foreign government. The US wouldn't like and accept such a situation and other nations won't either, so the interesting question is not if this situation will change, but how it will change.
If they're going to try to "force" the US, I can certainly see the US resigning. The UN has been nothing but a pain for the longest time, passing resolutions that no one but the US is supposed to carry out. Then when we do carry out UN resolutions, we're censured as being an "empire builders" or "warmongerers". Isn't it nice that so many countries can tell us what to do while they sit on their high horses? The next natural step after resigning would be to setup defensive positions in case someone wants to take it farther than that. I'm hoping that the member countries would be smart enough to leave things alone and recognize that a US resignation would be their own fault.
I know that people like you don't want to hear it, but being part of the UN is of great benefit to the US (do you really think the "war against terror" can be won by the US alone for example) so the US leaving the UN, thereby destroying the international system would be a very stupid move indeed, to put it mildly.
Btw., I'd really like to hear some examples of the US carrying out UN resolutions and then getting blamed for it. Thanks in advance.
I hope that was sarcasm? Because you may be surprised at what you find in the history of the internet's invention.
Hihi, watching people like you rave about how the US invented the internet is just to funny.
Why? First because it is pretty senseless. So what if they did? What follows from it? That only the US should be able to use the inernet? Well, have fun then, cause a global network is sure going to be useful when it's not global. And what about other inventions? How about the US not using any technology that wasn't invented in the US? Wouldn't that be fun?
Second, what about the www? It sure wasn't invented in the US, but in Europe? So what follows from this? You guys keep the internet while we take the www? How utterly silly, childish and senseless.
You'll find it was created by scientists of various nationalities working together to make something useful.
Of various nationalities? Yes, but these were employees of American universities that had vested interests by US tax payers.
If I were an American workign in Germany and was part of an engineering team that built some great technology I can not suddenly decide that it belongs to the American people simply because I, as an American, worked on it.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I posted a comment or two the last time this came up, but now I will take a different tack: it is understandable that they want some way to maintain access to their country level domains even if the US goes utterly nuts. I suggested that is just what they should do.
.br and .tv. Starting this day the US root zone file would point to the UN zone file for look-ups for the domains. The UN file would of course point to the US file for the .us domains and for the existing international TLDs such as .com and .org. The UN could also create their own new TLDs, maybe .comnet or something, but the old ones stay with the US.
Now they want to force the issue, I think we should help them along. Tell the EU and the UN to pick a date on which the US root zone file will no longer be responsible for containing the look-up information for non US country domains such as
Now if they actually did this, the US part of the internet would not be order the control of an organization that is not beholden in the slightest way to the American people, while the rest of the world gets to deal with something administered by the UN or the EU. Really, what is so hard about this?
Oh, as for the internet being essential to the infrastructure of some countries, might it be said that the internet pretty much IS the infrastructure of the US economy, government and whotnot? Turn off the internet everywhere, and the transistion in the US would be substantially more severe than the transistion in Brazil (I am sure they would still get their taxes somehow).
What's with all this "we" business? Unless the poster actually had a founding hand in setting up what became the Internet, then how do they have any more right to it than anyone else? Because they happen to have been born in the same country as people who did? Accident of birth is no ethical basis for distributing non-local resources.
Do the US posters here really feel they have more in common with all other americans than they do with counterpart techies in Europe or Asia or Africa? Which community are you going to give precedence to? The US government that is comprised of tech-ignorant people with vested corporate interests (RIAA / MPAA, Pentagon, et al) and little adventurous spirit, or the IT literate and neophile tech community?
There is no reason why DNS could not be a distributed community effort. We've reached the level where such a thing could be implemented reliably. Hand it over to the techies. No-one will be happy with the means of modern information exchange under the control of one governmental organization no matter how much they tell us that "it's okay - we're the good guys."
People here spouting Fuck Em comments about the UN should ask themselves why they identify so much with their government. Why this sudden rush of Us and Them? Allowing a government to assign your loyalties to you by accident of birth seems a little old fashioned. Most posters at
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
> Let's see how long the US holds together without the monetary support of the
> rest of the world.
Just a point; if anyone tried to destroy the US monetarily, the effect on the rest of the workl would be easily as bad. The dependency works both ways. Yes, the US is dependent of foreign trade, but most of the nations we trade with are dependent on it as well. Some few nations would just suffer loss of income and products, but many would suffer pains equal to some of the worst natural disasters.
> And people with your attitude wonder why there is so much rampant
> anti-Americanism around the world today. You're too arrogant and conceited
> to see it.
Just a point. There are a few hundred million people in the US. All of them are not arrogant and conceited, any more than all the French are rude and smelly, all Muslims are terrorists, or all the Chinese are great at math.
Yes, there are legitimate grievances against the US. But much or what is perceived as US arrogance is merely the US attempting to retain it's own constitutional structure. A large portion of the world wants the US to tear up our constitution and remake ourselves in the image of the EU. And we aren't interested, now or ever.
> Thank goodness 99% of the Americans I know are fantastic people and
> don't live up to this stereotype.
Good to hear it. But stereotypes are like that. Most of the what the world knows about the US is garbage, heavily influenced by Hollywood. Just as most of what most Americans know about the Middle East is from Hollywood bull and news reports showing scenes of war and terror.
Thanks for your observations.
You miss the principle of Charity. Rather than call his logic invalid because he started with "EU/UN" and then dropped it in favor of just "UN", you should charitably add the "EU/" yourself and see if his argument holds up. Otherwise, you're just nitpicking at spelling errors at best or launching a veiled ad hominem "UN-hating gingoistic bigot!" attack at worst. As always win you ignore Charity, you may win points with the audience, but logic isn't a popularity contest.
That said, you completely failed to address his major arguments, which were:
There are obvious counterpoints to all of these, and I only consider #3 to be worthwhile. But you didn't make those counterpoints at all.
What is about to happen is that the Silver Age of the Internet is about to end. The Golden Age was before the web; the Silver age has lasted since '91 or so. Now we'll see fragmentation and provincialism. Whether that is good or bad is an open question, but it will surely be different.
What's really at stake in this struggle is who will have the power to block network access to and from a given country. Some countries are afraid of the US having that power, which they would "never" use, while the US is afraid of the UN having that power, which they also would "never" use.
It's neither more, nor less, than that.
sigs, as if you care.
This one is going to change the world, mind by mind.
Maybe, just maybe...
the US is a bunch of hos.
the EU is a bunch of hos.
people in general, are a bunch of hos.
I assume your world has been rocked.
(people aren't really that different. stop pretending your nationstate is unique! it's not!)
I'd be real interested to hear how the UN has helped with the "war on terror"? It seems to me that the "war on terror" has continued despite the UN's attempted interference at every turn.
How about UN Resolution 1441? To refresh your memory, that's the one that contains the admission by Iraq that they had Weapons of Mass Destruction, and that they would dispose of those weapons, and that they would prove that disposal to the UN.
Iraq failed to do so. Maybe they did get rid of their WMDs, but part of their responsibility was to prove to the UN that those were destroyed, and not just hidden for later use.
So it was up to the UN to enforce it. The UN went against its own resolution and refused to enforce it. So the US was the one who got to do the actual "enforcing"... And once it was complete and Saddam was out of power, the world turned on us for going AGAINST the UN (despite the fact that it was simply enforcing the UNs own resolution).
Excuse me, but the Internet (in the form of the ArpaNet and DarpaNet and finally the Internet) had been around for nearly twenty years before Tim Berners Lee did anything. He distributed his magic, shiny "web browser" across FTP and Gopher, two services that had fifteen years of use behind them before he came along. I was playing MUDs in 1985 across Telnet, long before Tim Berners Lee even got hired by CERN. At that time, the number of non-US nodes could have been measured in the dozens and they were almost all universities or research facilities. At the same time, companies in America were already fighting over IP addresses.
Your comment, "how technically it is very difficult for one country to "control the internet."" You think that's hard, wait until you see a committee of twenty countries trying to do it.
And I just can't wait until the UN/EU tries to impose a "Root Fee" to pay for managing it, that every man, woman, and child with an Internet conneection will have to pay. If you don't think the UN is thinking about this, then you don't understand the most fundamental rule of politics -- "It's all about the money."
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Thank you for making my argument for me. He was involved in the early design of WHAT? ARPANET!!!! A wholly US Government entity.
When was the last time you worked on a project for some Corporate entity where YOU ended up owning the work? I'll help you out with that one, never. The company owns it.
The US funded the research which created the protocols upon which the Internet is based. The Internet first existed in the US, but it wasn't invented, it evolved.
The Internet itself is simply a bunch of individual networks which have agreed to connect together using those protocols. For that reason, any attempt to "control" it is fatally flawed. There's nothing to control. One can presume to "take control" of the DNS "root servers," but there's nothing preventing someone else from creating their own set. Who wins depends strictly upon which set the individual networks point to, and no one has control over that decision except the individual network admins.
Let the Euros piss and moan, after which if they don't like the US influence over the Internet, they can instead join Fidonet http://www.fidonet.us/joinfido.htm :)
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
In A.D. 2005, war was beginning.
BUSH : What happen ?
ICANN : Somebody set up us the root
AMBASSADOR : We get signal
BUSH : What !!
BUSH : Main screen turn on
BUSH : Its you !!
E.U. : How are you gentlemen !!
E.U. : All your domain are belong to us
E.U. : You are on the way to destruction
BUSH : What you say !!
E.U. : You have no chance to survive make your time
E.U. : Ha ha ha ha ....
AMBASSADOR : President !!
BUSH : Take off every 'Zig'
BUSH : You know what you doing
BUSH : Move 'Zig'
BUSH : For great justice
RUMSFELD : THEY'RE CALLED F-16'S, DUMBASS