Slashdot Mirror
Internet Power Struggle Reaching Climax
Fredden wrote to mention a BBC piece discussing the U.S.'s poor image when it comes to Internet management. From the article: "It has even lost the support of the European Union. It stands alone as the divisive battle over who runs the internet heads for a showdown at a key UN summit in Tunisia next month. The stakes are high, with the European Commissioner responsible for the net, Viviane Reding, warning of a potential web meltdown. " We've previously covered this story.
This story has been covered on /. at least three times, as noted in the post itself. There are really no new solutions offered here. Comments in the previous post have revolved around setting up alternate root notes for each country which may result in conflicts or fracturing, setting the root nodes to point to some authoritative German node for .de, Japanese node for .jp etc, but this still allows the controller of the root to start 'war'... where are the solutions? I don't see any coming down the pipe - this seems to be the political equivalent of an 'NP-hard' problem, and until someone proves otherwise with a feasible solution, can't we stop re-hashing old news? (Granted, there were a few more ideas offered in the comments to previous posts, but none of them really seem to solve the fundamental issue of decentralized control while maintaining a single Internet that uses DNS.)
... having to face Afronet, Amerinet and Eurasianet - hmm, sounds a bit 84 :(
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
The sheer pomposity that these people have, believing this struggle over a collection of DNS servers is going to cause an internet meltdown, boggles my mind. Stupid politics.
It's "PLOAF," not "P-LOAF." Ask about it.
That no single organization runs it? That destroying pieces of it will not disrupt the rest?
The success of the Internet is that its peer-peer nature has allowed it to evolve and struggle past any sort of obstacles, most of them having been technical. Now we have a political obstacle. Why is it necessary that any one organization "control the Internet"? Isn't that exactly not the point of its design?
This is making a fuss about nothing. All these years, the USA have never -- never -- abused its position of the Internet governor. There was no corruption scandal concerning the DNS root servers, which cannot be said about many "international" organisations (which are simple ruled not by a single country, but by an oligarchy of the USA, the EU and several other nations). So why change it?
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
.... from the USA and welcome our European backed Internet Overlords!
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
What is their real complaint?! Please enlighten me!
why not make a nice clean ipv6 network, and then we in the US can join them once we realize how much better it is?
DNS be damned 66.35.250.150 forever!
"Imagine the Brazilians or the Chinese doing their own internet. That would be the end of the story.
No, it would be the end of spam!
This is fine. I have no objection to this, but the last time this story was up on /. the EU and other UN states were talking about a coup! It sounds like they've backed down from this, and that's a good thing. I'm all in favor of an international forum for discussing internet-related issues. Their earlier statements smacked of "taking" the internet ("Wrestling" control of it, I believe was the phrase /. used). Hopefully, that was all diplomatic bluster to make their current demands seem infinitely more reasonable. It's worked on me so far. But I think this issue bears watching.
Electric Monkey Pants
The current design of a semi-centralized set of root servers is what is causing the whole problem to begin with. I say let it happen, let DNS fracture. I'm optomistic that some new decentralized way of doing domain name mapping will come of this.
So if i'm reading this correctly put a few un memebers on the Board of Icann and thus solves the problem. Now they Fell like they have control when in fact they still have NONE.
Just put Google in charge. It'll be that way in 5 years at the current rate.
... I'm going back to running a Wildcat BBS on a USR Courier 14.4 modem & a 386... who wants a login?
Basically it boils down to the fact that smaller nations want the right to filter and censor everything for everyone they find objectionable. Good riddance, let them go, I say.
I did RTFA, and still don't see what it has to do with Struggling to Reach Climax using the Power of the Internet.
I seem to have no problem...
Obviously, this article was posted and the subject covered yet again because slashdot likes having this incendiary debate over and over every week.
Watch as +5 posts slamming the US for wrongdoings from the past 200 years appear, and other people who blame the US for terrorism, environmental wrongs, rainy days and other ills will be come out of the woodwork.
This "politics" section is nothing but a giant troll site, or dailykos for nerds. Don't expect news or any intelligent discussion here.
Of course the EU doesn't like the US having control over the DNS name servers. The thing to remember is that these are politicians... they will threaten the worst possible outcome of not giving in, in an attempt to gain public support and force their opponent to give in. There won't be a "war" of any sort. It'll be all contained within the political arena. No politician will allow their constituents to be effectively cut off from the DNS nameservers, meaning the rest of the world will just have to deal with it until they can offer the US some reasonable trade for allowing the nameservers elsewhere.
It's like when one political group cuts funding in a certain area. The other group retaliates by threatening to adjust for the funding by cutting police, fire, and education services. They could just work to be more productive and cut things like gov. cars and employee cell phones, but instead will choose the most emotional service possible and threaten with that.
This is NOT going to affect us.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Quite honestly, I don't see the problem. What is the argument for seizine the governing of the I-Net from the USA? What have we done wrong? I know it's still working, as I am posting on Slashdot. So, out of the blue, The US of A is evil for governing that which is provided to all? Can someone explain what the problem with the current situation is?
Honesty may be the best policy, but by process of elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
Although the internet was designed to "route around" damage, its systems seem to assume an undamaged unified DNS system. I wonder if we need a new protocol (or tweaks to the old one) to create an international equivalent to NAT between countries with independently controlled DNS.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I know a lot of the leftist Euro slashdot readers currently have a great disdain for America, but most of the countries who want the US to give up some of its control over the internet aren't doing so because they're OSS fans or just want information to be free. Most, if not all, of them want to be able to excercise an even greater amount of control over what is available, not only to their own citizens, but to the rest of the planet. What do you think China, North Korea, Iran, etc will be pushing for once they have a little bit more say?
Oil for zone files scandal.
Remember back when the world respected the USA? A lot of that was because the USA also respected the world. Then the Texans took over...
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
Of course Slashdot prints half-truths and fearmongering 26 times a day, but it is fascinating to watch the mainstream press get this story wrong so many times. This argument is about the contents of a *text file*, one which the USA does not even currently control. ICANN publishes the root DNS information, and the root operators, who are dozens of independent, international parties, can choose to accept or decline. If the UN, the EU, or the National Hockey League wants to publish their own root information, they are perfectly free to do so. Why don't they put their zone out and see if anyone adopts it?
The only disruption that will occur here is if the EU pulls the plug. I don't think that the US has such plans, so this is just irresponsible propaganda. And these people want more say? First demonstrate some responsibility. I have to say that the behavior of the Europeans in this dispute has reversed my position, and I think that the most stable path for the internet is to leave the US in charge for now.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Maybe Arnold can shed some light on the situation. :)
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/arnoldcoming.html
ICANN will not change as the article says so. What will be created is a UN regulatory body without enforcement regimes. SOP for the UN solving problems. Abuses will not occur and stipulated in the charter for that body will be the fact that it should do nothing to violate the sovereign rights of each nation (ie. U.S. 1st Amendment). Although the "control" aspect will be a complete sham, I do think that this may have some positive consequences. This body could be used to coordinate the more technical nations in questions of global spam, copyrights and other IT issues, and negate the need for constant conferences. If we had a international group of people working together for years on these issues, we might actually make some progress.
I am and always will be a stereotype, because who in their right mind prefers mono?
And how is that relevant?
Kofi Annan, Coming to a Computer Near You! The Internet's long run as a global cyberzone of freedom--where governments take a "hands off" approach--is in jeopardy. Preparing for next month's U.N.-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (or WSIS) in Tunisia, the European Union and others are moving aggressively to set the stage for an as-yet unspecified U.N. body to assert control over Internet operations and policies now largely under the purview of the U.S. In recent meetings, for an example, an EU spokesman asserted that no single country should have final authority over this "global resource."
To his credit, the U.S. State Department's David Gross bristled back: "We will not agree to the U.N. taking over management of the Internet." That stands to reason. The Internet was developed in the U.S. (as are upgrades like Internet 2) and is not a collective "global resource." It is an evolving technology, largely privately owned and operated, and it should stay that way.
Nevertheless the "U.N. for the Internet" crowd say they want to "resolve" who should have authority over Internet traffic and domain-name management; how to close the global "digital divide"; and how to "harness the potential of information" for the world's impoverished. Also on the table: how much protection free speech and expression should receive online.
While WSIS conferees have agreed to retain language enshrining free speech (despite the disapproval of countries that clearly oppose it) this is not a battle we've comfortably won. Some of the countries clamoring for regulation under the auspices of the U.N.--such as China and Iran--are among the most egregious violators of human rights.
Meanwhile, regulators across the globe have long lobbied for greater control over Internet commerce and content. A French court has attempted to force Yahoo! to block the sale of offensive Nazi materials to French citizens. An Australian court has ruled that the online edition of Barron's (published by Dow Jones, parent company of The Wall Street Journal and this Web site), could be subjected to Aussie libel laws--which, following the British example, is much more intolerant of free speech than our own law. Chinese officials--with examples too numerous for this space--continue to seek to censor Internet search engines.
The implications for online commerce are profound. The moment one puts up a Web site, one has "gone global"--perhaps even automatically subjected oneself to the laws of every country on the planet.
A global Internet regulatory state could mean that We Are the World--on speech and libel laws, sales taxes, privacy policies, antitrust statutes and intellectual property. How then would a Web site operator or even a blogger know how to act or do business? Compliance with some 190 legal codes would be confusing, costly and technically impossible for all but the most well-heeled firms. The safest option would be to conform online speech or commercial activities to the most restrictive laws to ensure global compliance. If you like the idea of Robert Mugabe setting legal standards for everyone, then WSIS is for you.
The very confusion of laws makes some favor a "U.N. for the Internet" model. Others propose international treaties, or adjudication by the World Trade Organization, to stop retaliation and trade wars from erupting over privacy, gambling and pornography. Still others assert that the best answer is to do nothing, because the current unregulated Web environment has helped expand free speech and commerce globally for citizens, consumers and companies.
We favor the nonregulatory approach. But where laissez-faire is not an option, the second-best solution is that the legal standards governing Web content should be those of the "country of origin." Ideally, governments should assert authority only over citizens physically within its geographic borders. This would protect sovereignty and the principle of "consent of the governed" online. It would also give companies and consumers a "release valve
I only read site within North America anyway. And across the pond, they probably visit site in their own area mostly.
If the EU runs the Internet, would they ban holocaust denial or other forms of "hate speech" which are a crime in the EU?
While I don't agree with any of those groups, I'm rather fond of free speech.
(Personally, I think the US should have .com, .net, etc (due to ARPA's legacy), and every country should be responsible for their own country TLD. So Russia would be responsible for .ru, US would be responsible for .us, and Columbia would be responsible for .co, etc.)
It demonstrates the poor history Europe has in managing new resources. Can't you at least log in? As an anonymous coward ironically you are not relevant.
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
Unfortunately, the function of scientists and engineers is to have good ideas, make them work, and then watch the wealth obsessed and power mad take them over. It's a pity really. If we had the ability to organise, we could collectively hold the politicians to ransom - but it's not in our nature to do it, while it is in their nature to exploit.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
You have to say politically correct. Nations such as China would censor the internet in order to 'express their position on internet issues'. And instead of "we give a flying fuck what the hell they're doing to their own people", you say '[...] the details on how this would happen are vague.'
oooOOOoooo!!! oooOOOOOOO!!! uuUUGGGGGGRRRGHH!
Wait? That's not the kind of climax you meant?
Sorry. My mistake.
Four times the internet = Four times the Slashdot dupes.
God help us all.
The thing is, it's all based on the politics of mistrust. No one is pointing to actual problems with the administration of the net. Other countries just don't like the idea of depending on a network that is controlled by someone else.
OK, so build your own. Really. What's that you say, you want to have access to the one run by the US? OK, fine. But we run the servers. We won't screw it up, honest.
It's like a bunch of kids came to a playground and found one kid playing with his basketball. He's really good at it, and showed them how to play, too. After a while some of the kids decided they didn't need the first kid controlling the ball any more, so they said he should give it to them. They took a vote, and sure enough, the kid with the ball lost.
Guess what: it's our ball. You want to play with our ball? Fine, we want that, too (basketball is not much fun one-on-none). Just don't go claiming it's yours.
how is this offtopic? must have been a mod from the EU lol....
And if we decide to nuke Europe, there's no stopping us there, either. Of course, no one's afraid we're going to do that. So, why are they afraid we're going to do something abusive with the internet? I think you might have something with the Iraq issue, though. Kinda like, "Hello face, I'm going to cut off my nose!"
Seriously, as the GP asked, without resorting to general complaints, is there a reason to believe that we would do something abusive with the internet? Again, the problem with the general complaints, is that it seems that if we're as crazy as we're accused of being (and I'll admit that the foam at the mouth doesn't help), then why is the internet the object being protected? Wouldn't it make more sense for France to start building up their nuclear arsenal if they're really that frightened of what we might do?
(Before you get on a soap box about arms races, I'm not seriously suggesting France do that. I'm just pointing out that the internet doesn't seem as important as national security, even though it could be argued that it is a part of national security.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The US has leverage here in the purest sense of the word. It has the size and position to do whatever it wants, which is why the rest of the world is really upset. They can't just re-route because no matter how much hot air is made about the US losing the economic world, the rest of the world would still be equally devestated if they took their ball and went home.
That's what the moaning is all about, their is nothing they CAN do, and they are afraid that may be one day used against them. Another part of the problem is they fully intend to use to abuse their power if they get it, and they want to be able to regulate "hate speech" that the US refuses to block.
Never confuse volume with power.
Great, you've just slashdotted 66.35.250.150.
I've reached my climax over the internet several times
1. The issue of contention seems to be the DNS roots, not the entirity of the Internet. It is an integral part, but by no means the only part.
2. As for the "America paid for the Internet" argument we hear often, they only paid for their own part of it. I'm quite sure they didn't nip over to England to lay cables, or Australia, or Japan.
3. As for "America invented the Internet", sure Americans came up with some key parts of the Internet. However a lot of it is International in nature. The WWW, arguably the most visible part of the Internet, is a European creation.
However, I don't think central control is a good idea. Wasn't the Internet built around the concept of redundancy? Why don't we have a root server in each major country? England, USA, Japan, China, Australia, Israel, Russia? And so on... Having one nation control most of the DNS roots seems a bad idea in the end, especially considering the slippery slope the USA is becoming in terms of privacy and control issues.
This is not a troll against the USA by any means though, I'm just saying that keeping control of a fundamental worldwide technology/system is a bit silly.
C17H21NO4
The Euros Killed Kenny!
Kyle Broflowski: You bastards!
Why exactly do so many slashdotters want other countries running the internet? Do you really want other nations vying to censor the net with their own particular topics, such as Germany making nazi propaganda and/or paraphernalia illegal, or a bunch of Muslim nations banding together and attempting to make the display of uncovered female skin illegal, or Holland making deep-linking illegal, or China making anti-PRC information illegal?
Seeing how the internet was birthed out of US taxpayer dollars why should we let the UN run it?
if sign.nil? Sig.new
I think CmdrTaco is having trouble reching climax. :(
[The USA] is seen as arrogant and determined to remain the sheriff of the world wide web, regardless of whatever the rest of the world may think.
The first sentence of the BBC story is enough to discourage me from reading the rest of the article. Sheriff? So the USA polices the internet in some way? That is ridiculous. The only purpose of that article is to incite readers by scaring them into thinking the US has far more control of the internet than it actually does.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Didn't the internet start in the US?
So the poor management of distant European colonies in the 15th to 19th centuries is relevant to this in your mind?
We could clearly look at the current European economy for a current example. Educate yourself why don't you?
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
They'll be pushing for their interests, just like your government is pushing for yours. The world can self-regulate without the custody of the US.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
Things stay as they are. There is no legal authority outside of the US to compel ICANN to give up their position, and the US has said they won't. The UN can't pass a resolution to force it, the US will veto it. Basically people can choose to use the DNS system as it is, or they can go make their own.
Unless someone can find a good reason to give the US to make ICANN turn things over, there's not anything that can be done.
redundant? offtopic? how can the 2nd post be redundant unless the 1st post said the same thing (it doesn't)? how is it offtopic when the joke was made about the current topic? yet the guy to reply to me about the DNS is magically on topic and funny...you guys crack me up sometimes! :)
Most policitians say one thing when they really mean another. So what's their alterior motive for wanting to take away control from the US? Also, is it really that good of an idea? Design by committee...and all that?
If I wasn't an American, I'd look at this little temper tantrum and say: "Why should I let the Americans run the Internet? I didn't vote for any of those people." (Some of you don't get a chance to cast a meaningful vote for anything or anyone, but that's another story.)
But, I am, in fact, an American, so I say pretty much the same thing: "Why should I let the UN or the EU run the Internet? I didn't vote for any of those people."
As a matter of fact, whoever you are, where ever you are, you didn't vote for anyone running the net today, and, no no matter who wins this spat, you won't be able to vote for them tomorrow.
Don't know about you, but if I don't get a chance to vote for 'em, I really don't see much difference between one undemocratic, unrepresentative functionary and the next.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
if the US doesn't want to give it up? Airdrop a bunch of guys in robin-egg-blue helmets into ICANN?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
So, is anyone looking into obsoleting DNS completely?
It seems to me that a DHT (distributed hash table) based system combined with cryptographic signatures of name records could completely replace DNS with the added benefits that come from decentralization.
But I haven't thought about it too hard, has anyone else?
The Internet was an expensive development. Many different parties from many different nations spent a lot of money building it. And people like it. A lot. So it would be a massive undertaking to build your own network. You'd have to build a seperate network, make it compatible with the current Internet (since people still want to access that) and then entice/coerece enough people to join your network that IT'S the one everyone want to access, then force the people still on the old Internet to come play ball with you.
Even if it's feasable, which I think it isn't, it would be massively expensive. The UN likes the Internet the US started, they just want control over it. They are more than happy to have other fund their endevors.
Look at the American economy, nice deficit.
I've seen the problem described as "Teh US h4xx0r administration can cut off a country from the rest of the Internet". Pray tell, how? Block a range of IPs from making DNS requests? All it takes is one server in a neutral country to forward / cache those requests. If this did happen, you'd likely have about a million sysadmins jump to the task.
Like many political problems, the description is a lie. These countries want to be able to control the Internet (at least within their borders) themselves. They want to engage in suppression of free speech, and create impediments to global commerce. You can love or hate the US and the current administration, but over the last two-plus centuries, pray tell what other major country has done more to promote free speech? If you had to trust one other country or organization in this matter, which one would it be? The UN, where every crackpot dictator and totalitarian asshole is given a voice alongside the democratically elected crackpots and assholes? The EU, which doesn't even have a constitution yet? Russia? China? Iran? Yeah, right!
Yes, in theory, no one organization should control DNS and we should all join hands around the campfire and sing 'Kumbaya', but the real world is a rather fucked up place, and the US is probably the least of all evils in this case.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Why on earth do these keep getting modded as funny? It's the same damn joke EVERY TIME. I'm pretty sure I remember it not being funny the third time... You know, once you're a wit, twice you're a half-wit. Geometric progression or worse.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
I'm not surprised that a nation, which unlawfully invades other countries, tortures prisoners of war, detains people indefinitely without charges and bullies and threatens other nations and generally tells the world to fuck themselves whenever their opinion isn't immediately accepted isn't trusted by other nations to maintain something as vital as the internet.
Given the way the US has acted the last few years, I think the world is entirely justified about beeing worried about the US being in control of the internet. In the last few years, the US has had a worse international relations track record than even notorious offenders like Libya, China, North korea, Russia, you name it.
In my opinion, the US first needs to get its act together and start acting like a responsible nation before it expect to be trusted.
Ah well, I got enough karma. Do your worst.
Really. If the Europeans want to build their own DNS system and start issuing their own IPs, they can go right ahead. Same with China. That's the only option that they have. In the meantime, the USA should tell them to pound sand and we are under no obligation to fork over control of it to anyone.
This is my sig.
Someday we'll stop fighting in the Middle East, either because we run out of money or resolve. Then the Europeans will have to go in instead, and we will get our turn to call them names.
Why do I let myself get drawn into these arguments?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Really, once you allocate the ip numbers what else is needed?
The only part normal people really care about is the DNS system, and you can use any DNS system you want quite easily.
As for which unelected (or at least not by me) group controls it, I don't really care either.
Seriously- do you know what sites with easy to remember numbers would be worth? 66.66.66.66.66 would make you a billionaire....
Why are they talking to the US Govt? They should be talking to ICANN, who owns the root name list.
It's as if I complained to the city government about how the local newspaper manages their subscription list. The city doesn't own the subscription list, they don't manage the subscription list, so why would I complain to them about it?
I think this is a cultural thing, partly caused by the Europeans thinking that everything must come from the government. If it's run by a private firm, they don't want to deal with them directly, they insist on using the government as an intermediary, which just slows everything down and introduces chances for mis-communication.
Chip H.
In my opinion, it's extremely important to note that the countries that are pushing to have the UN control the european part of the Internet are Egypt, Iran, Libia and China (that I know about). Those countries don't like the idea of Internet we have, since PC diffused in these countries they have introduced laws to control the communications, describing it as a sovversive medium. They probably hope to be able to control strictly the communications from their countries.
I like the net to be a place of freedom of thought. Until now, US control permitted it, so they should keep it.
Indeed, the UN have lost a lot of the reputation they used to have. A lot of people here in Europe is starting to think it's just a bunch of corrupted politicians. I quite agree lately.
Here, let me lend you a clue. Try a reverse lookup on the IP
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Wow..."get AIDS and die." Now if that isn't a flaming faggot I don't quite know what is.
What about the U.N.'s management image?
I love how they managed that genocide in Rwanda.
Or managed the oil-for-food program in Iraq.
Or managed the Israeli / Palestinian peace process.
Or managed the Serbian peacekeeping operations.
I don't know how many of you listen to the TWiT (This Week in Tech) podcast. But this weeks show (26) has an interesting discussion with Leo Laporte, John C. Dvorak, Roger Chang and the rest about the current nature of the net and ICANN's worries.
Here's a link: http://www.twit.tv/
It would be easier to say:
.de land, whereas if a US-dweller wanted to get to a German IBM site, he'd say
http://www.ibm.com/
to get to the German ibm.com site if you're in
http://www.ibm.com.de/
You leave off the country identifier to get to sites inside your country, but add it when going international.
That could be extended in a natural way by saying anyone inside, e.g., the ibm.com.us domain only need refer to "http://www" to get to http://www.ibm.com.us/". In other words, the parts of the URL that match your domain need not be supplied.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
"The stakes are high, with the European Commissioner responsible for the net, Viviane Reding, warning of a potential web meltdown."
We Slashdotted the entire internet.... oh wait.
If the EU or the UN wish to set up their own root servers at their own expense, or circumvent things as they see fit, they are certainly welcome to. Perhaps they can even standardize on IPV6! But they're not actually doing anything.
So far, it's the standard UN, "Oh, someone should do something about this..." while their eyes all slowly turn and rest on the USA.
We're not handing over our root servers. Want to make your own? Great! Do it! I dare you to.
I double dare you.
With chocolate sprinkles on top. And whipped cream. And a cherry. mmm, sundaes.... sorry, where was I?
If the UN and EU are serious, let their actions suit their words. If they lack the resolve to act, then they demonstrate that they do not have the ability or focus necessary to administer the root DNS servers, either.
I find it pretty sad that I recognised that ip :(
I say we get to keep it.
And the next time the EU invents something that changes the world, they can keep that.
They should consider themselves lucky that we have set up a decentralized and generally fair and well-thought-out system of running things that makes the internet work so well.
We should only consider letting someone else control it if they can show themselves able to do a better job.
This is what this looks like to me. A bunch of inept, european bureaucrats trying to figure out who gets to live in which room of your house even though you built it, you painted it, you furnished it, you paid for it and you own the deed free and clear. You aren't selling, have no intention of selling and are becoming a bit annoyed by these low rent types who you've let in your house and who somehow think that because you've let them use your house it now belongs to them. It's an amazing amount of gall and lack of class. If you don't like the conditions in this house go build your own. How many European Union bureaucrats does it take to screw in a lightbulb? - No idea, they haven't even agreed on the fact that the previous lightbulb was a lightbulb and that it possibly might need changing and it will require a long study by the department of lightbulbs to determine if in fact there are any lightbulbs and whether or not those lightbulbs meet EU standards as laid out in the Treaty of blah.............
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
The whole point of the article is to say that the eu does NOT want to setup a new ICANN like body or to rule it directly:
"We have no intention to regulate the internet," said Commissioner Reding, reassuring the US that the EU was not proposing setting up a new global body."
The only thing they want is to setup a forum to talk about things icann does or could do and so to voice their opinion about it. This way they can more directly talk to the US, without having to go through it's ambassador.
"On the table are European proposals for some kind of international forum to discuss principles for running the internet.
The EU does not intend to scrap Icann. It would continue in its current technical role."
What this really is, is a place for countries to blow off steam about the fact they have about zilch controll over the internet without giving this controll to them. So really it is just a smart way to keep it all as it is today but without all the whining.
Since ICANN is private, there's the little matter of how the US could legally hand it to anybody. Legistlative branch could legistlate it in such a way that ICANN must defer to a governing body. Or the executive branch could use eminent domain (there's a pun in there somewhere) to take over ICANN, then hand it to a governing body. Both would require a degree of willpower that just isn't there. Other countries can decry US policy until they are blue, but none of the threats I've seen would motivate either branch. More likely to do the opposite. This is a time for carrots, not sticks.
Or the UN could come up with a plan that ICANN likes, that the US doesn't object enough to for some official to monkey wrench it, and you have your new governing body. Again, carrots, not sticks.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Internet Power Struggle Reaching Climax
EU: We've had better.
US: Huh?
I think the UN should just take it over. And in doing so, create their own internet, and sever any links that connect the US from the rest of the world.
I mean hey, that would take care of all the issues with the chinese people seeing all those websites about freedom and democracy.
Me being a USian wouldn't really have a probelm with it. Yeah, there are some nice bbc.co.uk articles worth reading. New Zealand and Australia have some nice things every now and then, but other than that I won't notice. I'd go as far as saying that 90% of the americans on the internet wouldn't really notice if the rest of the world left us.
NO, WAIT I'M WRONG! We WOULD notice. Our levels of Spam would suddenly become a fraction of what it is now. No more spam from russia and china. Sounds GREAT TO ME!
And as a sysadmin, this would really take care of our ipv4 issues. Now we can get all those IP's back that we gave to the rest of the world. We won't have to move to IPv6 anytime soon.
Sure, some companies may do business overseas, so the big ISP's can build a 'gateway' product. Let them pay per meg to use it. All international traffic can go through there. Those can be run by EU/UN friendly companies.
So, bring it on world. Cut us off. See if we care! The South shall rise again!
(Yeah, I just wanted to say that last part)
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
The fact that most of the internet infrastructure is in ASCII, I believe, speaks for itself.
Domain names
C code
HTML
American Standard Code for Information Interchange
That means only Americans should be using the internet.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
Let me lend you a clue, buy "humor for dummies".
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
I agree, we could all use less of it.
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
The UN just decided they have control over the internet? How the heck does that work exactly? UN - "Umm...by the way, we've come to the conclusion that you're doing a poor job 'running' the internet and well...we've decided to take it away from you." USA - "How did you just decide that you control the internet when the whole point is that no one does? Is there any validity to your actions, or is this just another pissing contest?" UN - "Shut up! Our logic is undeniable!" ...
28:06:42:12 - That is when the world will end...
Then why don't you come and try and take the internet from us. *cracks knuckles*
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Try a reverse lookup on the IP
Are you nuts? If everybody did that, we might 66.35.250.150-dot slashdot!!!
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
i would support splintering at nodes based on continents, that would sure as heck help me out with filtering out spam at least :)
sigs suck
That is what most nations attacking the US over control are looking for. The First Ammendment of the US Constitution makes it difficult or impossible to ban political sites. The Germans want the Nazi stuff banned, the Chinese want Falun Gong and other stuff banned. The Iranians want anti-government stuff banned. They try and try but can't get around the international aspect of the internet so they are going to the control issue.
It's disgusting and the world is better off if they form their own intenet. Fact is almost all commerce will continue on the current internet and those countries will marginalize themselves by such a move as the rest of us go more and more netcentric. We won't see a net by continent, just an uncensored and a censored version.
That is the most accurate description of the European Union from an american that I have seen, great stuff :D
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
The reason countries such as China and Iran want more censorship should be known to all Slashdot readers. But some may not know that European governments have a long history of trying to keep down unrest by controlling the mass media. That's why, unlike US, they and Canada set up broadcasting as a government monopoly. Our belief that it's better to let dissent have a free voice is foreign to them.
Europe, particularly France and Germany, face two serious problems that their governments wrongly think can be kept under control by keeping certain ideologies off the Internet.
1. The extremely high unemployment rates of poorly educated young men--fertile ground for racist, neo-Nazi groups. Ironically, this is unlike the original Nazism, which, as Who Voted for Hitler demonstrated, appealed most to the educated. The poor went Communist, although the Nazis and the Communist often worked in concert to destroy the middle.
2. Immigrants from Arab/Muslim countries who are also angry and unemployed. Europe has not yet learned how to handle immigrants. They send them off to ghettos and throw money at them. The two groups may even find a way to work in concert.
Europe isn't going to solve either problem by censorship. Both groups will find ways around whatever is done. Europe is simply going to have to learn from the U.S. how to have a vibrant economy and how to integrate diverse people into a society.
And that's the catch. All too many Western Europeans think they have nothing to learn from the U.S. culturally, socially or economically. And until that changes, matters will go from bad to worse.
And I might add that the childish European attitude, "We will hate you if you don't do things our way," is growing tiresome. Hate us, see if we care. You're obsessed about us. We regard you an oversized and aging Disneyland. Nations without children and without the courage to fight an evil as clear-cut as terrorism have no future.
And yes, there are Europeans and even European countries, particularly in the east, that aren't caught up in this folly. But the folly of Europeans that covered the world in blood in the twentieth century seems still evident in the twenty-first century.
--Mike Perry, Seattle
In fact there are products that implement local DNS on your computer so you can still browse by name if the main DNS servers are down/unreachable.
The DNS data -USED- to be huge- but now it is a dot on a typical 300 gig hard drive.
Nothing prevents any country, business, or person from setting up a new DNS server and saying "come here for your addresses first!" And all you have to do is configure your computer to use them.
If I set up a server, I could list a range of addresses on it by totally different names. I'd kinda like the Max domain.
www.msn.max
www.maxo.max
www.min.max
www.slashdot.max (aka www.duplicatearticles.max)
If you configured your browser to look at my computer for addresses first, then you could use those addresses in your browser and other programs.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Personally, I do not believe the UN has any business interfering in either technology, and it would seem to me power-grabbing actions like this are simply a disincentive for the military to openly share technology with our international friends in the future.
I for one would think a more appropriate reaction from the UN would be gratitude for sharing the technology in the first place and bearing the financial burden. Appearently that isn't the case, though.
Seriously, the USA exercises exactly as much control over the namespace each sysadmin chooses to give them.
Change your name service switch configuration and Jack's a doughnut!
Now, IP address numbers, that's another matter entirely. Packet routing depends on the numbers, and allocation of the numbers = control of the Internet. If I hate you, I'll give you a number in a chinese or korean block that has been blacklisted globally for spamming - take that you filthy wogs!!
For readers mercifully free of the burden of a sense of humor: I'm not a racist. For those unfamiliar with proper english: Wogs start at Calais.
1. Threaten internet meltdown to gain concessions
2. gain political influence over IP addresses and DNS registration.
3. Create U.N. "user fee" i.e. tax for IP and DNS
4. Profit!!
This is about censorship and taxation plain and simple. Alot of countries don't like the "wild west" say anything, find anything, freedom available now.
The politicians see a very unregulated and untaxed power void....
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
It's really frightening how many nationalist posts there are here.
So many arguments about how other nations will control things and how there's censorship, etc., etc.
Well, I hate to mention it, but the MPAA and RIAA are American organizations that persist in changing US legislation to crack down on anything that even remotely impacts their business model.
Without considering human rights or agressive military aid and intervention by the US government, just consider that we have a government in which fair use is being bought and sold away from the American people. With ICANN under the oversight of the Department of Commerce, who's to say that such power would not extend further?
International agencies are often slow to response to crises, but they also make it a lot harder for a single entity with those agencies to take control. Ceding control of the root servers to such an agency would be more likely to prevent Americans losing control to their own corporations.
Unfortunately, we have a lot of nationalists who can't see what's wrong in America, having been fooled into believing that patriotism and blind faith in the nation are the same thing. They are most certainly not.
Remember the Ike didn't trust the military-industrial complex during the Cold War. Why should I trust Hollywood/Mass-Media backed legislators now?
(There's no such thing as liberal mass-media. When was the last time you saw a liberal corporation on Wall Street?)
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
Can't help feeling Bill Clinton would have handled this better. He'd have seen it coming. He'd have worked out some compromise or agreement that would have saved face all round and kept the show on the road even if, in practice, it meant recasting the administration of the internet in the way of the general postal union and other intergovernmental things that work perfectly well and sensibly. He'd even have smiled winningly for the cameras with some of the EU's more repulsive political operators like Jack Straw.
The Bush administration seems to have only one negotiating tactic in any situation. They say "We are bigshots. Who are you, Mr Nobodaddy?" expecting instant submission. Instead the whole thing blows up into an intractable mess six months down the line. Well, here's this one. The next one will probably follow the exact same script.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
I say the US did all the leg work controll of the internet that exists todoay rightfully belongs to us. If they don't like it run their own DNS, and watch it FAIL because the economic buying power of America means you have to have you're site on our servers or you might as well not exist. This is just another UN power grab. Its a currpt organization that is EVIL and run by EVIL people who try and paint us the freedome spreaders as criminals while they sanction theft and abuse the world over. If I were Bush I would kick the whole damn organization out of NYC and off American soil and tell all those "diplomats" for those nations we are at war with begone with in 24 hours or be a prisoner.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
It might not be as bad as all that, though, if you start to ask the question: how often do people surf outside their own native language?
This is going to hurt foreign countries worse than it's going to hurt the U.S.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
http://www.itu.int/home/
"The ITU, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland is an international organization within the United Nations System where governments and the private sector coordinate global telecom networks and services."
The UN/ITU tried foisting their version of the internet on folks in the 80's and 90's. Some sucess that was. Instead of simple well thought out protocols that needed a working implementation before the RFC would be accepted the ITU had large committees that would find a "compromise" solution between competing proposals. The agreed upon standards were almost always the logical sum of several proposals with several "modes" the protocols could run in. The result was large, complex protocols that were difficult to understand and implement. ITU provided a very graphic demonstration of why one should never allow people that have no interest writing the code, implement the specs.
It would be a shame if the ITU used its special talents to aid the IP development.
"Internet Power Struggle Reaching Climax"
Oh geez. Why don't they both get a vibrator, and leave us alone?
Was it just me or do those two words together in a headline conjur up something else ;)
IMHO - As far as the disgruntled Europeans go - I say fuck em! Let them start their own internet!
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
The DNS mess isn't as bad as it could be though:
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
Well, all I see is rising Euro, and falling Dollar. And this is supposed to prove your point how?
It's that they fear that in a war-time situation we could "abuse" our control over the Internet? Of course they wouldn't probably come right out and put it like that. But that may be the main concern. If that's the case then it's safe to assume that the Internet is similar to GPS. The EU/EN understand that we strategically disable service from time to time in different places. So they're solution there is simply to build their own GPS system. Can't really do that with the Internet though.
That's alright, I've set up a mirror at 127.0.0.1.
Strictly speaking the US is not a democracy, it's a republic. We vote for people who vote on stuff. Practically speaking we're not a democracy because the government has been completely bought and paid for by K Street lobbyists/corrupt politicians/Moral Majority and their corporate masters, and the Supreme court was willing to intercede in the 2000 election.
I can't "falsify" anything for you, but it is true the citizens of DC have no Congressional representation. I believe they do vote for President though.
Enjoy what you can while you can.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
EU et all got all concerned about GPS too. Their governments used GPS and wanted some gurantee that it wouldn't be turned off on them. Only in this case, they're building their own system. They've no more right to DNS than they do to GPS.
On a global scale, the US is pretty small. If India and/or China decided to make their own internet, separate from the present one, then we're pretty useless. It's going to happen anyways, why fight it? It makes sense. Given the nature of the Internet, I find this to be its natural progression.
How in gods name is the US not running the interenet well? Seems to work fine for me. This just sounds like a dumb political power struggle more than anything else. I realy don't see how, besides totally destroying the internet, the European Union could get control from the US. Weve got all the equipment and people, and no amount of blabbering or voting is going to change that unless the US wants it to.
Comment has already been poasted in the 100,000+ dupe articles about "the brokan intarweb". Please mod this karma whore down.
As much as it sounds a sacrilege to you, many very old, civilized and respectful countries imposed limits to free speech - it does not make these countries less democratic than yours, just different. As for global unregulated commerce, it remains yet to be seem if it is good for developing and under-developed nations or just another tool to transfer resources from the poor countries to the rich.
Your description of the UN as [a place] where every crackpot dictator and totalitarian asshole is given a voice alongside the democratically elected crackpots and assholes may sound funny to neo-conservative Bush-loving ears, but it discounts all good the UN and its associate organizations did for decades and still do today. Obviously it is not fashionable to admit certain UN actions are not only good, they are essential where and when they occur (because there is no one else to perform them), but in fact they are. Without the UN the world, specially the worst and poorer parts of the world, would be a far worse place.
As it is, I am all for moving the top domain control to a supranational organization, if only to take it away from a country whose leaders has recently proved themselves to be war-mongering liars. At the moment, the only organization with such reach and resources is the UN, but I wouldn't mind if the "Techies Without Borders" took over.
I picked France in my example because they do have an arsenal. However, unlike the USSR and USA they did not pursue a Mutually Assured Destruction approach. So, if we are willing to suffer "collateral" casualties, we can nuke France and "win". Keep in mind that what I'm talking about is insane, but if the EU (or France) truly thinks we're insane...
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
So What if DNS fractures. Let China/Brazil/EU/et. al. run their own DNS root. In the end the People (sysadmins) will decide what DNS structures to use. And that is the biggest reason China/Brazil/EU want control.
Man I wish I didn't use up all my mod point this morning - this story (like the last one posted) could really use them.
This is about ICANN - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. It is in charge of the dissemination of domain names and IP addresses. Things have to have identifiers - you can't get information from another computer, unless you have some way of finding that computer and initiating communication. That is why every computer on the internet must have an address, and they must be unique (even NAT'd computers: IP + Port gives a unique address of how to reach the computer you want). To insure this uniqueness the process of assigning and publishing these addresses is centralized. People have suggested ways to change this but all the suggestions suck. So no, the internet is not this amorphous decentralized thing that people make it out to be. In fact most things about it are more hierarchical than web-like in distribution, but there is just enough redundancy that it is fairly fault proof.
On the the real issue. For years, this job has been done by the ICANN, which is an international private non-profit corporation, and save for a few annoyances, it has worked out fine and well. However, ICANN is operating under contract from the US government (I forget the exact department) with the knowledge that if ICANN misbehaves the government will slap them back into line. Thus far, the government has not had to do this, and has wisely been almost entirely hands off. Even when ICANN refused to give the IQ domain name to the provisional government in Iraq, the government did not use it's position over ICANN put any particular pressure on them.
The looming question though is what the US government considers misbehaving. This isn't spelled out anywhere for the most part. So far the government has played nice - but who's to say what they will do in the future. Many people therefore want a more international body to be the final say over ICANN (or its equivalent), but their proposals are all as equally vague as the US's policy.
So the world politicians are untrusting of the US, for fear that they may change their hands-off policy, especially with our increasingly unilateral behavior. Therefore, they want ultimate say over the internet, whatever that means. Likewise the US and a large portion of the technical community are untrusting of the UN, because some of them see the UN as incompentant or corrupt, and because European technical regulators are far more politicized on heavy-handed than their US counterparts, and also because more totalitarian governments are on the front line of the push. So we don't want to hand over control to a new party, when the current arrangement is working just fine.
In short, since neither side has managed to spell out what it actually wants, it has just turned into a big ideological mess. What they need to do is table the discussion on who will run the internet and start talking about how the internet should be run. Each side should think of all the things that they are worried about if the other has control, and then sit down and write policy that alleviates these concerns. But until it is determined what power the "Head of the Internet" has, and more importantly what powers it does not have, then nothing productive can happen. It will continue to generate a bunch of "we created it - we run it" and "you guys think you rule the world but you don't" gargbage - just like on slashdot.
I (and the GP) was wondering why the EU doesn't trust us, since we've been good stewards (AFAIK) with respect to the internet.
So, I guess it's only fair to ask why we wouldn't trust the UN.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Well, since this whole thread is going to be a trollfest from start to finish, we might as well get this one in early:
The problem with the above is that the rest of the world doesn't believe that any more. The current US administration has quite possibly done more to damage international relations for the US than any other in modern history, and this is probably among the first of many ways it's going to come back to bite them and the citizens they represent.
It's not the only one: I watched with great sadness as people whom I know to have given very generously to things like the tsunami appeal openly refused to donate anything in the aftermath of Katrina, such was their loathing for the current state of affairs across the pond. Outside the US, the tragedy that hundreds of people died and countless thousands were displaced isn't what registers with a lot of people any more; they just see the mighty US get what they thought it had coming.
I honestly don't think a lot of US citizens realise just how negative their nation's world image is right now. People outside hear claims about protecting human rights, and the first thing they think of is the images from Gitmo. Every time this thread comes up, half a million zealots start claiming the US created the Internet, and the rest of us don't know whether to laugh or cry at the ignorance and naivety. War for oil, the environment, refusing to submit political and military leaders for internationally-recognised war trials while prosecuting leaders of other nations claiming that same authority, using trade power as a way to force other countries to change their legal systems to benefit US corporations at the expense of their own population, supporting dubious regimes in other nations... the list goes on, and none of it's pretty. You have to wonder how any remotely smart US citizen thought their administration could do this and never face any consequences.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Governments hate the internet... the free, virtually anonymous, uncensorable, decentralized and global communication amoung people is not desirable for the power elite. They prefer easily trackable and controllable traditional forms of communication. It is the goal of every government to turn the internet into something like television, radio, and telephone that can be easily controlled and monitored.
So the issued to be considered are:
1. China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuala, and the other nations that have been pushing for U.N. governance of the internet, have openly said that the reason to do so is to better control it. This is not conspiracy theory, this is easily verifiable fact. They have openly said that the current way the internet works makes it too hard to fight spam, track criminals, protect people from pornography and hate speech, etc, and that the U.N. should take control so that the Internet can be better policed, taxed, and servers can be licenced. The explicit and open goals of U.N. control of the Internet is so that governments can completly control it.
2. With ICANN (which isn't the U.S. government by the way) "controlling" the Internet (which they don't really do), it is pretty clear that the Internet is still largely anarchy.
So, you have a choice. Turn over control of the Internet to the U.N., and absolutly, certainly, without question turn the internet into a government controlled medium like TV or radio. (remember, this is not speculation, this is the whole reason why countries are saying they want the U.N. to control the internet. This is what the U.N. is promising as the main benifit of the U.N. controlling the Internet).
Or, we can leave it how it is for now, and have the small chance that the U.S. government might do something disruptive (which it hasn't done yet, and currently legally does not have the power to do... and if it did, it could easily be worked around by nearly every other country). And we will have the option open to form some better system later in the future.
Inevitable Extreme Authoritarianism vs. the slight possibility of slight Authoritarianism which can then be easily corrected - I am going to choose the latter.
Perhaps it IS dangerous for any one organization (ICANN which is based in the United States) to have too much power over the internet. That is fine. That is a legit point. There are many ways to handle it other than giving absolute power to a different political body (The UN which is based in the United States). The internet could be made completly decentralized. Or perhaps the U.N. could be given control with a set of restrictions that makes sure the Internet always stays free. But none of these are being discussed, because the people advocating U.N. control find those ideas undesirable.
I think it is sad that the majority of people on Slashdot are willing to see the Internet becoming a controlled Authoritarian medium (as the U.N. openly and proudly promises to make it), in order to pursue their knee-jerk anti-American agenda.
It's really funny. The slashdot crowd is all gung-ho about making laws and letting the UN do this and that when it comes to any other field but computers (which is our expertise). But as soon as someone mentions software patents, or the DNS servers, or anything within our field, it becomes obvious to us that the government should stay out of it. Maybe this is what cable, DSL, and cellphone company technicians feel like when we talk about giving wifi over to the government.
Just thinking out loud.
By cutting deals with big ISPs (or installing a browser plugin), new.net tried to sucker people into using their DNS servers instead of the ICANN root DNS servers, thus allowing them to superimpose their domains on top of ICANN.
Obviously, this hasn't worked out as planned, the root DNS servers are happy all by themselves, and new.net is pretty much just a registrar.
However, if you're, say, the EU, this is how you'd fork DNS, and it'll work just the same for you as it did for new.net.
Why? It violates Metcalfe's law. Remember- the value of a network increases exponentially with the number of nodes on the network. If you have a subset of the network able to resolve certain names which another subset can't, the value of each subset diminishes non-linearly!
And here's the kicker- to co-exist with existing DNS name space, you have to offer it as a subset of your offered name space. Meaning, if subset A talks to all ICANN addresses, and subset B talks to ICANN addresses + custom addresses, subset B offers less value than subset A, because value of custom addresses is negative! To be accessible to both strict subset A and strict subset B, you must pay ICANN... and pay the custom namespace. Or you can just pay ICANN.
Now take the next possibility- ignore ICANN completely, and run your own root DNS servers. This is trivially circumvented, and again, falls foul of Metcalfe's Law, since you're now no longer able to resolve names of the entire existing Internet. Even if we assume that a large block of countries agree collating their DNS efforts together, it's still less than the entirety of the Internet, so its value is less!
So this whole business is just bluff and fluff by politicians who want to grab power. The really sad part is that they're so incredibly short-sighted as to actually believe that what they want to do will increase their individual power...
So what does that mean for who controls DNS? The US and the rest of the world could disagree over who is the final authority of DNS. The way DNS works, there is a small set of root servers which are the authorities from which all the other name servers get their "orientation" as it were. The US government could declare, "These are the root servers we recommend." And then Europe could say, "Well, these are the root servers we would like you to use." And Bruce, who studies philosophy in outback Australia could also say, "These are my name servers, and every host on the net shall be named Bruce."
What would happen in such a scenario? Sites that wanted both US and non-US presence would probably want to get themselves registered the same way in the US and Euro root servers. Existing reg companies like Register.com and GoDaddy would probably include that as part of their package. Domains would probably cost a bit more because of that. Well, domains are very cheap as it is so that's not a big deal. Meanwhile, Bruce with his root servers would probably not get any attention and almost no one would use them. That's fine.
As you can see from this example, no one is running the system. No one has power. The only power is concensus and individual choice. If more people like the US way than the EU way, then the US root servers will be used. Or it could be the opposite. Or whatever.
So this whole thing is a non-story. It doesn't matter what the US wants or what Europe wants or even what ICANN wants. ICANN only has authority in that they have the concensus of Internet users right now. If they make enough of them angry they will lose that concensus.
Aren't virtually all of the accusations that President Bush leveled against Islamic extremists in his speech today equally true of himself and his government? When will the President stop killing civilians in Iraq, stop protecting the drug trade in Afghanistan, stop torturing prisoners, stop developing dangerous new weapons, stop trampling human rights abroad and democracy at home?
The response he got was: "I would hope that you can see a vast moral difference between the Presidents decision to defend the American people from further attacks and the actions of Islamic radicals who intentionally murder innocent civilians, to advance their evil ideology and agenda."
This damn perception you have two wrongs make a right, ie. that 'war a'int evil if you have some good intentions' it TOTAL BS. YOU seriously live in a country that has free speech? REALLY??!! Yeah, you're probably the leader in talking about it OVER and over and over again like it's something independent to the US alone (and then you make some silly comparison with countries like communist russia, china, or whoever you've had feuds with, completely disregarding the hundreds of civilized countries you could be making comparisons with) - try going up to a cop and saying "I am going to kill the president." IT IS AGAINST THE LAW to make a verbal death threat to the president - you can be arrested for it. Free speech should mean being able to say something without being hassled by law authorites - start making certains statements, fanatical or otherwise, and you will get in trouble (even my country's going to start deporting 'Islamic fundamentalists' for 'insighting hatred' through speech). You talk about promoting free speech for 200+ years - yeah you had it in your fine constitution, but wtf did that mean? 50/60 years ago, black people were being being lynched for looking at people the wrong way, let alone saying anything. It was just a piece of paper which was ignored, yet you kept referring to it over and over again as some fucking beacon of liberty.
You're talking about a country who has enough money and gall to spontaneously invade other countries (these aren't the middle ages ffs, even though you weren't around then, because you didn't invade your own country and attempt to kill off/segregate the locals until a few hundred years ago) - you're not the least of all evils. To openly do evil things in 'the name of freedom' means nothing. And the rest of the world has become pretty damn annoyed about your government too, not just the American public.
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
It has been said that the "Rest of the World" hates the fact that the US is the "ultimate owner" of the internet. Mark my words this is going to be a repeat of the situation with China, Chinese Taipei (tiwain), and the OLYMPICS. I have no problem the Chinese, the Chinese Gov., however, is a very different story. "They are a Freedome hating superpower that won't go away, ergo, the fact most of its citizens didn't know the US had been on the moon in 1967 untill the early 1990's (Damn thats effective censorship)." --Me Back to the point. Taiwan was not represented as Taiwan in the last olympics. "Why Chris, why was this so?" the reason was because the Chinese Gov. went to several smaller countries and used the polotical might that comes with its size (Resources, People, Land Mass, ect) and got them to vote so that when Taiwan won metals the Taiwan flag, and national anthem were off limits. I believe the Chinese will use its votes to controll access to places like Tiawan and make life hell. I believe the Chinese is using the same methods to get votes so it can controll the DNS servers and quash domestic dissidents. I believe the "Rest of the World" is the manipulative Chinese Gov. try a few links : General: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3541180.st m
WIKI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Taipei_at_the _2004_Summer_Olympics
HORSES MOUTH: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-08/0 7/content_363055.htm
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-11/21/con tent_283675.htm
Hmmm?
It might not be as bad as all that, though, if you start to ask the question: how often do people surf outside their own native language?
Without any intention of flamebaiting (as ever) I guess roughly 100% of the educated non-native with regard to command of some type of "English" (the French might not fall into this scheme) - hmm, but who is educated these days?
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
These countries want to be able to control the Internet (at least within their borders) themselves. They want to engage in suppression of free speech, and create impediments to global commerce.
Well, then let them build their own network! No, being serious here - there is a way to solve all of this. Someone needs to develop their own DNS-like system and while they are at it develop a alternative to HTTP (because this is what we are really talking about here isn't it folks, "teh web"). When they get this new system up and running they can just go ahead and run it on our TCP/IP networks if they'd like (for a fee). By no means however is this going to take DNS control from us here in the states, ours would just exist along side "theirs".
It's possible, so these people should stop bitching.
Then again you would need to get American software companies like Microsoft to ship modified software to you specially because everything in it relies on DNS today (Active Directory can't work without it) and you would need to change a lot of other things, but it's possible.
You can love or hate the US and the current administration, but over the last two-plus centuries, pray tell what other major country has done more to promote free speech?
Well, I don't know about this part of the post. I hate the administration and I don't think they are doing a damn thing for free speech (remember the loyalty oath to see a Bush speech and USAPATRIOT) but I love America and what it stands for and I think only we should be in control for the reason you stated above - some regimes want to censor the Internet.
What scares me is that giving the UN control of the DNS servers will allow people from outside of America control an American's inherent right to free speech. If I put up a site that dishes on the Queen of England then she can petition the UN to revoke my domain name. If I wanted to put a site up called BRANDNAME-SUCKS.COM WIPO might close me down.
It isn't that I don't trust the UN - I just don't trust anyone I can't "see" in an American court.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Right and the Eu arena neeeeever did that and they stilll don't do any of that. Get a life, learn some history, read some news. If you magically think that the EU is any better at managing "collatoral damage" your full of shit and you are unilateral. Btw in case you havn't figured it out yet, your absoultely right the us wouldn't allow control of a key economic component by one player, oh wait yes they would, the key player would be oh um, itself yea.
>warning of a potential web meltdown
One man's "meltdown" is another man's liberation. Of course we folks in the US think it's a meltdown. What good are control freaks if they don't have control?
Yes but try explaining what DNS actualy is and does; how it is not the same as the Interweb; and how we all use a common set of root servers by convention and for convenience rather than necessity to your average moron off the street...
These people barely understand the different between the Web and Email. OH NOES AMERICAL CONTROLS THE INTERNETS is much easier for them to digest.
The beauty of the system is that the UN, the EU or any other set of nepotistic kleptomaniacs can declare themselves the lords of the Internet if they want to; I'll just keep using the root zone hints file supplied by ISC BIND, thank you very much.
Here is a photo of Al Gore as he addresses the rest of the world over the poor image they have of the USA and its Internet policies. Caption included.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
...but I would miss my friends. Roughly half of my online acquaintances live in foreign countries.
Most of my music is foreign and I watch some animes; it'd be difficult for me to get any more if we were cut off.
I've taken to browsing Spanish and French web pages as I'm learning both languages. I'd lose the ability to do this also.
There are countless internet communities that span countries. The fracture that would result from this is bigger than you seem to think.
Perhaps the opinions expressed by the US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, have in some way lead to distrust of American intentions.
I wonder how many UN ambassadors have seen the video. Bolton gets quite Hitlarian at the end.
Should try v!agra.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Making .com and other TLD's have only local significance will breaks things (not necessarily all things, but some things). It also means that anyone who wants to maintain a consistent .com address would have to deal with potentially hundreds of domain authorities, at significant additional expense and with the likely result that they end up NOT owning some, leading to massive confusion.
If, on the other hand, some central authority acts as a clearinghouse for all those country authorities, how does that significantly differ with what's already in place? There's still a global DNS oligarchy.
Finally, what you wish can already be done much more efficiently from the DNS servers within an organization - just base the response on where the request comes from.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I fear anyone taking control of the Internet for reasons of personal security.
One: If some of the other governments want to be able to spy on individuals and they had control of the Internet, who would be able to stop them? They could even spy on individuals from other countries and if they found out that individual was going to visit their country they could just wait for them to arrive and arrest them so they could take them to court for offenses committed against that country. The US protects everyone in that they make it illegal to spy on individuals. (Note: I think this is an area that the big music labels are going to get in trouble with)
Two: What will happen to free speech? Would other countries be able to put a lid on what is said online?
Three: The internet is suppose to be free. Will other countries try to put a price tag on the internet other than paying ISPs?
Thats just three of the things that concern me. There are others and I'm sure most everyone can thing of other things that would be a concern that I haven't thought of.
Point is, why change unless the other countries and organizations can provide assurances that the Internet wouldn't change in ways that might hurt some or create benifits for a very few.
We sorta do, actually...
I, being a citizen of the European Union, can certainly understand the concern of our
politicians. US citicens should be able to sympathize with our worries - imagine if some foreign country could cut off access for US citicens to official US sites...
At the present, my ability to locate www.eu.int could be effectively cut off (or the site could be replaced) by the US administration. Not that I believe the US would ever interfere with the operation of the internet for any purpose, but the mere possibility is somewhat frightening.
On the other hand, EU may be aiding the devil. I would trust the EU to operate the root server without interference, maybe even more than the current US set-up. But that's really not the option.
If control was given over to an international setup, it would inevitable mean that nation states around the world would have more control of their local DNS services. This is almost certain to be abused by less than democratic countries to limit access to information.
Ideally, democratic countries around the world would set up an organisation to manage centralized internet services like DNS in an independent manner. However, since this option is not on the table, for the sake of citicens in living under oppressive regimes, the outcome is to leave the DNS service under US control.
I Think Al Gore Should Decide. After All, He Did Invent It.
Just remember, your view of the US is controlled by those who have a vested interest in controlling you. But, it's funny that you described the nations that are pushing the wrest control of the DNS from the US.
While I may not agree with much of what ICANN has done, I fear UN control of the net much more. What was it Ms. Reding said? Not so much control, but ' "model of cooperation", of an international forum to discuss the internet.'. Yes, the famous "model of cooperation" that has crippled the UN for years. Remember, we are talking of the same organization that put Libya in charge of the UN human rights organizations. The same UN that is run by a crooked family business that pirated funds away fro the so called "Oil for Food" program in Iraq. The same UN that stood idly by in both Bosnia and Rwanda while attrocities were committed. The article then goes on to claim China, Iran, Brazil and a lot of African countries want more control. Of course they do. They want to rope off their own neck of the woods and supress true free speach within their countries. I say $2#** the UN.
The only arguments I ever hear in favor of letting the US in control of the World Wide Web are the following:
First of all, Hitler was doing a great job running Germany too, before he went all crazy and made the jews "lesser human". Sure, the US is doing a great job _now_, but what if there are some frictions between the US and some other country in the future, and the only way the US could hit that country, was to deny it access to the WWW? Would the US do that? It's possible, it's likely, even. You can't compare this to nukes because that country wouldn't be able to do anything back on the same scale. The fear of using nukes is that once you start, it never stops until the whole world is gone.
Second, the US did indeed invent the internet, but the internet would never have become what it is now, if it weren't for us Europeans who invented the World Wide Web. Yes, that's right, we've invented that thing that you're reading from atm. And that's what this discussion is about. It's not about the internet, the internet was designed so it's as redundant as possible. No one would care if the US suddenly dissallowed access to it's internet from outside the US. Well, probably most people would, because most spam received? Yep, 57% originates from the US. So stop the silly "we invented it!!11one" remarks, 'cause you don't. You're just making an ass out of yourself. Stop the spam comments as well.
Free speech? Americans yelling "free speech!" in every discussion is like (World \ Americans) yelling "Iraq!" in every discussion. It's so silly it hurts. You want the US to have a monopoly on the WWW in order to keep "Free Speech"? How does that compute? Of course, it's no solution to hand over control from one country to another, there should be some international organization that takes care of it. And once that's accomplished, your precious "Free Speech" will be even greater than before. Because like I said in #1, the US probably wouldn't be afraid to cut off a portion of the world.
Why does (World / US) want to get control of the WWW out of the US? The same reason why you wouldn't want some other country to control wether your trains, airplanes, etc, arrive at the correct location without you having any say in it.I know a lot of the leftist Euro slashdot readers currently have a great disdain for America,
What you don't know is that a lot of rightish, centerish and otherwiseish Euros, Africans, Asians, South-Americans, Australians and pretty much everyone else in the world also has a very dim view of America. Some other comment explained quite well why, the point here is that absolutely everyone outside your borders doesn't know whether to laugh or cry anymore when you run around claiming that whoever doesn't totally love you must be a communist, a terrorist or just plain crazy. In fact, aside from the communist part the rest of the world thinks that pretty much describes you.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Obviously we're not going to bomb France. It also seems obvious (to us, at least) that we're not going to "bomb" the internet, either. The question remains, why do some people (perhaps such as yourself) think otherwise? This is a real question. Invoking "Iraq" doesn't answer the question, it only inspires more questions. It sounds like what you're saying is that France (EU, UN, or whoever) doesn't like us, they don't think we like them, and so aren't comfortable with us being in control of something as strategically valuable as the internet.
Granted, most Americans would be easily riled up right now if France was the one in charge. Doesn't make the argument any more intelligent, though.
So, the question remains - is there a real reason to be worried, or is this just a case of politicians being politicians? I'm really asking, and not rhetorically.
Some thoughts: it would be hard for us to disrupt the internet for Europe without disrupting it for us, as well - unless you imagine there's going to be a vast US conspiracy that we remarkably manage to keep hidden from everyone else. I'm no internet expert, so maybe I'm missing something. What are the real dangers here? What would be the dangers if France were in charge?
For the record, I have no problem with the UN being in charge of the internet. I'm just trying to understand what the fears are. I could understand it more if the pols were just wanting to do it for the sake of distributing the load better, or if there were specific complaints about what we're doing wrong, but I haven't heard any of that. Maybe I haven't been listening well enough, or maybe this is just a case of Much Ado About Nothing.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I honestly don't think a lot of US citizens realise just how negative their nation's world image is right now.
And most rational US citizens laugh at this mock criticism. Why should we, especially from nations implicated in slavery, corruption, tyranny, empire, racism, genocide and overall total moral lapse? You can't imagine how hard normal Americans laugh at the pathetic G7 protestors when we see countless dirty, angry, unemployed European perpetual college student anarchists screaming paranoid messages at the cameras. It's clear the message is consistent with the messenger: one does not expect reasoned thought from dirty minds and bodies.
Truly, if our billions in foreign aid, international economic development, continual bailing out of the World Bank and defaulting nations, support for 1/5 of the UN's budget, etc. isn't enough for you, then let's put an end to it and hear your plans for a change. It's really very difficult to have any respect or empathy when you haven't walked in our shoes, and particularly absurd when you realize these US haters completely disregard both history and reason. (If I hear another French citizen complain about US colonialism, I'm going to personally buy him/her one-way ticket to French Guiana, die their skin black and ship them off to where they can discover how "equal and enlightened" they really are). No Japanese, German, Brit, Frenchman, Italian, Chinese or Russian can ever speak as a legitimate peer to an American on issues of empire and principal.
Regarding the UN Internet control racket and how people that matter view the situation, the reality is that the international business community tends to work well with US business, and from what I've read on the UN Internet power grab, international businesses overwhelmingly prefer the status quo. Most are aware that the UN's motive is not to establish some administrative harmony (if there is such a thing, and if so, it certainly isn't found at the UN), but rather as a financial control mechanism to extract money from Western businesses for the redistribution to the UN international elite.
Consider Oil for Food, which implicates many of Western Europe's governments in the world's largest corruption scheme. Internet for Money is its sequal. Want to keep your domain name and have it registered in the US? A $1,000 annual UN domain permit may be necessary. Better yet, a progressive scheme that allows the UN to confiscate millions from the Western world's largest corporations.
Many regard the Internet move as a logical response from the UN once the Oil for Food money has dried up. Understand that these corrupt officials and their community still have expenses to satisfy and a lifestyle to continue. Lacking a US-subsidized construction project to skim, another racket needs to be employed.
Republic.
And these days I am not sure it's better then if we voted on everything.
At least it would add a layer of seperation from the government and corporation.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It has not corrupted US abosolutely has it?
Have we engaged and started in any illegal and unjust wars of unprovoked aggression based upon well known pure lies with no acknowledgement or repurcussions for anybody involved?
Have we contradicted our own founding principles by starting to take away rights and liberties in a wholesale fashion removing checks and balances and other destructions of the Constitution?
Have we ever been the only ones to openly engage in nuclear warfare and used that as a threat to achieve the goals of our global corporatacracy as our republic rotted away into an empire?
Have we ever lied and broken treaties and used biological warfare embedded in blankets given to starving people for the sole purpose of genocide? Or forced people to stay in one place with no food and give them food filled with maggots and a fatal gun shot if you go elsewhere to look for food?
Have we ever broken a treaty or international charter the moment it did not fully suit our disconnected leader's high ambitions?
Have we ever engaged in subversive activity such as supporting and fueling coups to overthrow democratically elected government officials who refused to be a pawn?
Have we ever setup a puppet government only to come back and overthrow them once they become sovereign and independent?
Have we ever tried to push a religion into the philosophy of patriotism or the practices of our branches of government in direct violation of the wishes of our founding fathers showing us to be critical hypocrites at the core to start with?
Have we ever been so stupid as to mix more religion with government despite clear lessons given to the world by such mistakes like with Iran?
Have we ever had a president state their imaginary friend or book of fairy tales told them to put our young soldiers in harms way for no damn good reason and murder innocents in a wholesale fashion?
Have we ever used any advantage of our super power status to bully and/or intimidate other nations into doing our will and bidding?
Have we ever deployed an unbalanced and unfair policy in a part of the world clearly tilting things in the favor of a nation connected to imaginary friends and books of fairy tales while displacing the true indigenous peoples?
Has our government ever failed anybody miserably such as abandoning thousands to drown and starve while living in their own filth or allowing poverty to explode and become more common than water on our planet or allowed a large number of our citizens to go without basic medical/dental care?
Have we ever been such a bigots as to mark and label fellow human beings as second class citziens or sub-humans based soley upon their sexual orientation?
Have we ever had a problem of blaming society, TV, movies, video games, etc for our social failures and rapid downfall instead of looking to ourselves and learning to once again accept/admit responsibility and deal with the consequences while correcting things?
Yes, our track record speaks for itself and makes the whole case and damn...does it ever scream too.
Death To women's Rights
OK, wait, let me see if I got this right -- free speech (I assume we're excepting yelling "Fire" in a crewded theatre and such) is not necessarily a good thing? OK, I guess you can have that "different" view, but when you try to impose it on everyone else's internet, then that's when we have a problem
I CLE_ID=42088>rape the children and steal oil-for-food money?
I haven't said that - I have said there are a whole scale between a contitutional mandate free speech right and a dictatorial information control. Many important European countries (UK, France, Germany, for instance) don't have this absolute right and they are, in some aspects, more democratic the the USA.
The internet wasn't designed to be, nor should anyone try to mold it into, something that is "good for developing and under-developed nations." Oh, and how in the hell is the internet "just another tool to transfer resources from the poor countries to the rich?" That's so out there you've just got to back it up with something. Please.
Now that is just cute - under what logical falacy you change "global unregulated commerce" (what I said) to "the internet" (what you said) and pretend to make any valid conclusions about anything? I was clearly answering to the top poster, I quoted the text I was answering to, and yet you choose to leave the reference out and just make up something that wasn't there. Cute, indeed.
Well, to these left-wing liberal Bush-hating ears it sounds right about spot on. And it doesn't discount any of the (few, but notable) good things that group of crackpots and assholes has done. Right. Without the UN who would http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ART
Exactly what and how I was saying - you concentrate on your government (very small, very petty) marketing hotspots and forget the UNESCO, the UNICEF, the Peace Corps and a miriad of other actions that do not interest you. Because they are geared toward giving a better life and a better chance to very poor people in coutries you don't even know exist. But, hey, the agenda says "The UN is bad" so all of it must be bad.
Enjoy your web censored by China and Syria. We'll be here having fun here on the web as it was meant to be. Free.
Is your web free? Interesting, mine is too. But I don't think I have to thank the USA for it. I also happen to live in a democracy, with regularly elected leaders and its own approved laws. That was one of my points: if all you can say is "Syria will control the Internet!!" you are largely off-base. Syria won't control the Internet. Neither will China. But the USA won't either.
http://66.35.250.150/ It's all you need.
when [America] run[s] around claiming that whoever doesn't totally love you must be a communist, a terrorist or just plain crazy.
That'd be a great argument if that ever happened.
everything in moderation
And why should the rest of the world have to rely on the word of a country that is still socially largely in the middle ages...
If you're a history major you should kill yourself, and if you're not an American you should peruse your own country's history. No country is the center of light and hope, the sooner everyone figures that out, the better off we'll be.
East Timor already has a TLD, .tp, although they will probably want to change it to since .tp stands for Portuguese Timor;
Thanks, I was wondering why East Timor's country code was .tp. I knew East Timor was a Portugese colony, up until 1974-5 when Portugal granted them their independence, but I hadn't thought the "p" in ".tp" was for Portugese. It makes sense.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
"shouldn't not" was supposed to be "should not". Sorry about that.
Get some.
The optimist in me thinks that "right now" cronyism is beginning to stall. A fairly interesting read is at http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/, although you'll want to go down to October 10th's entry.
Don't ask what the pessimist (AKA the realist) in me is thinking.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
So, you think it's a real concern that we might nuke Europe ... and you're worried about how the internet is managed. Okay.
And, of course, I should stress that I did not "suggest" that the US nuke Europe. I said "what if". I'm fairly certain that you realize that, but just in case you somehow misread what I wrote, well, read it again.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
" I don't want DNS record flipping back and forth depending on who's in favour."
And that has happened how many times with the root servers so far?
Face it, you're pissed off because (a) it runs that way now (b) it is run in an apolitical way (c) you hate Bush.
Idiot. Hope that cancer doesn't spread.
What do you think the US will be pushing for? Look at the DMCA, look at the number of christian fundamentalists. We leftist Europeans, rightly or wrongly, believe we're more likely to remain free than you are. We don't want our freedom to be dependent on that of the US.
I am trolling
All ISPs provide some sort of DNS caching servers today for their customers (otherwize their customers would complain about slow internet service which isn't the same as slow DNS, but customers don't understand the difference).
.com, .us, .br, etc...) and points them to a domain server authoritative for that domain. In practice, the ISPs caching DNS server never really forwards any top level requests to the root (or it would be too slow).
.us - a.gtld.biz (209.173.53.162) united states (NeuStar)
.br - b.dns.br.br (200.209.30.5) brazil (Comite Gestor da Internet no Brasil)
.cn - dns3.cnnic.net.cn (210.52.214.84) china (Chinese Academy of Sciences)
.com - c.gtld-servers.net (192.26.92.30) generic "com" tld (Verisign)
Most DNS cacheing servers managed by ISP don't answer queries from outside the range of IP allocated to their customers (trying to avoid free-loaders). In the past freeloading was common (e.g., the old UUNET dns was much better than some of the early "cheap" ISPs), but the situation has evolved to the fact that once you a committed to an ISP, you are pretty much tied to their DNS cacheing servers. Today, Different DNS servers have different quality of service and if you don't like it, your only recourse is to switch ISPs.
Of course the "root" server is that everyone is all up in a huff about is rarely hit (usually due to a type-o). And only just responds to top-level domain queries (e.g.,
For example, country specific pointers...
The only question I can imagine is if there is a "credentialing" dispute (e.g., suppose there's a civil war in a country, and the "government" wanted to change the authoritative domain IP address for their top level domain, what do you do). I can't imagine this happens often at all nor that if a real dispute arose, if UN would be any better than the US at this (given any civil war related dispute would probably bubble up the the UN security council anyhow which the US has veto power on), this aspect seems like just a petty turf war that really won't affect any of the countries that are complaining (unless their intelligence services are predicting a coup d'etat) and is just posturing for the real issue...
The big beef issue is for influence of the generic top level domains. For example:
Right now, Verisign really controls this part of net-namespace and other countries can't tax this (for example, brazil can tax google.com.br, but not google.com). Nor can other countries directly stick their noses in name disputes in domains they don't have their fingers into. I imagine right now Verisign really only responds to US/ICANN pressure on name disputes and pricing/taxes), but if thier "daddy" is the UN, they'd have to kiss some other butt instead. It doesn't surprize me that everyone wants to be the "daddy" of verisign (or more specifically to fire them and hire their own son's company into that role, for example).
You must be new here.
(Sorry I could not resist.)
I haven't said that [free speech is not necessarily good] - I have said there are a whole scale between a contitutional mandate free speech right and a dictatorial information control. Many important European countries (UK, France, Germany, for instance) don't have this absolute right and they are, in some aspects, more democratic the the USA.
OK, so? Democracy is not key to the Internet the way Free Speech is. Why should those with a history of officially limiting speech be given any control of it, either individually or as a collective body? The UN charter even goes so far as to qualify it's endorsement of free speech -- it's OK "as long as it doesn't go against the principles or goals of the UN." I can think of a lot of astuff on the internet that violates that qualifier, and I'd rather keep it all, thanks. In this discussion it doesn't matter how democratic your country is.
Now that is just cute - under what logical falacy you change "global unregulated commerce" (what I said) to "the internet" (what you said) and pretend to make any valid conclusions about anything? I was clearly answering to the top poster, I quoted the text I was answering to, and yet you choose to leave the reference out and just make up something that wasn't there. Cute, indeed.
GP poster said "These countries want to be able to control the Internet . . . engage in suppression of free speech, and create impediments to global commerce." You tellingly replied: "As for global unregulated commerce, it remains yet to be seem if it is good for developing and under-developed nations or just another tool to transfer resources from the poor countries to the rich." You clearly accepted the premise that the Internet facilitates global commerce on some level, then argued that this might not be good for certain countries. So maybe the internet should be controlled by a body that might regulate global commerce with these countries' interests in mind. My argument is that, whether or not the Internet enables global commerce and whether or not that it good for any given country should play no role in Internet regulaton (or lack thereof) or who runs the ICANN servers. So, if following your thinking yet disagreeing is cute, then I'm fucking adorable.
Exactly what and how I was saying - you concentrate on your government (very small, very petty) marketing hotspots and forget the UNESCO, the UNICEF, the Peace Corps and a miriad of other actions that do not interest you. Because they are geared toward giving a better life and a better chance to very poor people in coutries you don't even know exist. But, hey, the agenda says "The UN is bad" so all of it must be bad.
Reverse the argument and take a taste, it's easy and fun!: you concentrate on your government's (very small, very petty) marketing hotspots and forget the child rape, the oil-for-food scandal, the kickbacks and bribes, and myriad other examlpes of corruption that do not interest you. Because they show credibility issues that are reasonable to consider before handing over control of the internet to the UN. But, hey, your agenda says "The US is bad" so all of it must be bad. Taste good?
Is your web free? Interesting, mine is too. But I don't think I have to thank the USA for it. I also happen to live in a democracy, with regularly elected leaders and its own approved laws. That was one of my points: if all you can say is "Syria will control the Internet!!" you are largely off-base. Syria won't control the Internet. Neither will China. But the USA won't either.
You need to read my post again champ. I didn't say "Syria will control the Internet!!" I said Syria and China will have a say (that they currently lack) in what goes on your internet. My internet will remain free. I can point to management problems in the UN, censorship problems in China, etc. that cause me concern when I think about them having a vote on what goes on my internet. Can you tell me one thing the US has done with ICANN to make you so worried you want to wrestle control from the devil you know and hand it to the one you don't?
everything in moderation
I agree with you that I would prefer the US to any international body so long as the First Amendment holds any weight in America. But if, politically, there needs to be a compromise, it seems like there are more options than just the corrupt, undemocratic wannabe-world-government organization that is the UN.
For instance, how about a different treaty organization? One that comprises countries that have good enough track records with free speech. I wouldn't mind letting Britain or Japan into the club, and it seems like Germany has probably learned its lesson about government over-reach by now. Or how about Ireland or Iceland? They seem to have caught on to the government noninterference thing well enough. Maybe Australia. It is a Common Law country that usually doesn't mind letting us do what we want.
My point is that we might be able to satisfy people by putting the root servers into the hands of an international treaty organization of the good guys. We could ensure that free speech and commerce were protected in the treaty itself and could pick the members of this organization so that we know they'd honor that protection.
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
I think the US govt should let the UN/EU take over the DNS roots.
At the same time, fund an open-source library which uses distributed, PKI-verified p2p to keep host names up to date between huge numbers of hosts.
Finally, they should have ICANN publish a root certificate, and start issuing/delegating domain assignments under it.
The stakes are high, with the European Commissioner responsible for the net, Viviane Reding, warning of a potential web meltdown.
So is she, like, the European Al Gore?
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
pe1rxq: "The US didn't build the internet"
How wrong is that... We, ie: the US, started the internet with ARPANET which the first backbones it started on. This is why it is said that the US built the internet. Since the US taxpayers funded the initial start of this great network i don't see any reason why we should hand over the root servers, we run it just fine as it is now. What the UN really needs to do is tear down the great firewall of china. If the UN accomplished that along with few other feats then MAYBE they would deserve some amount of control. But hey, we made the first "ball", and this is only just a powerplay.
Though its just a 'fear tactic', please.. let the web melt.. the entire internet collapse in on itself.
its degenerated into a cesspool after it was 'commercialized'. Letting it out into the hands of the 'public' was a mistake in the first place.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yeah, so I'm replying to the wrong message, I know. Screw it, this is where I started typing it, this is where it's gonna go. There's lots of times that I feel my country makes stupid decisions. Going to war in Iraq (the second time), supporting bannana republics in South & Central America, spending billions on (some) war(s) on abstract noun(s). But telling the UN to go to hell & die rather than letting them take over the internet - that's the best idea they've had in forever. Face it - the problem of the UN General Assembly is like the problem of the US Senate, multipled a few times. Tiny developing world countries, with little population or wealth, have the same say as the US, UK, China, or Russia? Yes, security council, blah blah blah... in the long run, a good portion of the UN is dedicated to whining about how the wealthy of the world have exploited us. Is it true? Well, sometimes, yes. Would it be helpful to direct the further growth of one of the most important 20th century inventions? Pretty much never. And that's about all I have to say about that.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I don't think the majority of the USA gives a rats rear end what the rest of the world thinks of us. We've been cleaning up messes the Euroweenies have been creating for over 70 years! We are sick and tired of coming to everyone elses defense and then, after we get done cleaning it up, have them spit in our face. If the rest of the world wants to make a better internet, fine, go for it. But until you do, get use to the fact that the United States military was the institution that actually started the "internet" way back during the beginning of the cold war. The UN can pass all the resolutions it wants. Maybe they will have better luck with that, than the countless resolutions they've passed over the years against (name just about any mideast country)
This reminds me of an ancient story about a Chinese emperor. There was a brilliant scientist in China who discovered the principles of flight well before the rest of the world. He demonstrated this to the emporer by building a gigantic kite and used it to raise himself into the air. Everyone was impressed except the emperor. Instead of seeing the potential for revolutionising his society where his people can soar above the clouds like the birds he saw the invention as allowing hoards of barbarians to breach the Great Wall. His beautiful, pristine world would be shattered. The scientist was put to death and all his works were burnt.
> The problem with the above is that the rest of the world doesn't believe that any more. The current US administration has quite possibly done more to damage international relations for the US than any other in modern history, and this is probably among the first of many ways it's going to come back to bite them and the citizens they represent.
The "current administration" DOES NOT CONTROL DNS. The Commerce Dept. has a rarely-used veto power. That's it. They can't make them do anything. ICANN's board, however backasswards in whatever other respects is international and is not really under this administration's thumb. Even if you believe that Bush is Hitler 2.0 and planning to invade the whole damn world after his term expires to avoid leaving office, they'd still have to send troops over to ICANN to make them do things.
Giving a government--especially the UN--tighter control over it is NOT reasonable. I don't want the US to have any more control over this than it does now, either, frankly.
Finally, these are still the private assets of a private corporation. Unless the US abuses eminent domain, they can't take the DNS servers over.
So please, spare us those silly "The Internet is international! The US has no right to hold it hostage!" complaints and either have the ITU make their own damn DNS servers, instead of taking ICANN's servers, and work with ICANN to link them up, or cram it. I mostly want two things from the people running them: 1) That they know what the hell they're doing. 2) That they interfere as little as possible.
Yes, ICANN can rightfully be criticized in many respects, but they've at least managed to leave well enough alone and the people calling for this in the UN have even less of a clue as to how this actually works. ICANN wasn't responsible for VeriSign's TLD wildcards, they helped shut those down. If the UN had any clue, this request would be going to ICANN (not the US Government) and it would come from people who actually know what the hell DNS is (other than "the evil US controls it!"), probably within the ITU, who would work with ICANN instead of saying: "Give us all your servers. We want to control them. They're ours, now. Tough luck."
So long as they're making silly demands, and so long as they don't know what the hell they're doing, I see no reason to give them a damn thing.
a solution in search of problem. Really folks, get over it. Things are working reasonably well. Why ask for the UN to get involved and screw it up?
Once again, the UN is trying to get control of something which is not theirs. The United States invented the Internet. The world should be happy we are not charging them a tax to access the internet. Under no means should the US relinquish control.
... on the internet... its climaxing.
THAT we can be sure of.
Just abolish DNS.
Is it that hard to remember 3ffe:0501:0008:0000:0260:97ff:fe40:efab? Oh, you would rather type in www.google.com? Oh, poor baby.
I tried to get them to change the headline on this. I thought anything with the phrase "Struggle Reaching Climax" would be very misleading but apparently they didn't understand the quandry I found myself in.
get your dirty sig off me, you filthy APE!
Currently to register a .com.au domain in Australia we have to pay a local registrar who in turns pays one of the American root registrars to register the domain. The same goes for every country, if you want an internet domain you will be paying money to Americans for it. I say good on the EU and UN for wanting to change this.
Thats the only real reason that they want teh intarweb in 3rd world countries.... THEY WANT OUR PR0N!!!!
"Outside the US, the tragedy that hundreds of people died and countless thousands were displaced isn't what registers with a lot of people any more; they just see the mighty US get what they thought it had coming."
well, congratulations to the people who feel that way, because they're just as petty as the boogeyman whom they hate.
anyone who sees mass death and destruction in a foreign nation state as "Getting What They Had Coming" is slime. that's the end of the story. and most of the time these kinds of people are making the same arrogant mistake that they often attribute exclusively to Arrogant America (or whoever, as the case may be). of course, america makes the mistake as much as anyone. the mistake is reducing an entire Nation State to a homogenous mass of people who are somehow EACH INDIVIDUALLY GUILTY for the crimes of their GOVERNMENT even though they have nothing to do with it most of the time, and usually disapprove of it, as a majority, and otherwise didn't vote for them or support them in any particular way. (just look at the polls for president's approval ratings, which are worse than clinton's during the impeachment)
it's gonna take a little more subtlety to make a peaceful, functional world, folks.
if you were to take the most evil corrupt nation on the face of the planet and destroy it, you'd be killing millions of innocent people who just happen to be there, along with the crooks. it's a fact of life.
the idea that a massive natural disaster, or warfare, or what have you, that kills thousands of people can somehow be a stroke of righteous justice is a very sickening delusion. in fact, i think every genocide or atrocity ever committed is based on it. a natural disaster isn't perpetrated by anyone, but evidently the same notions shape peoples reactions to it.
At least there was no unfounded claim of the EU being responsible for the Internet and/or web/email etc.
English as second language has its disavantages - I've read "founder" instead of "funder" and in the heat of the moment went on from there. My bad... :)
On the real subject of funding, I'd say that the US co-authored and signed the UN Charter, that clearly establishes that each member State's contribution is calculated on the basis of its share of the world economy. Want to pay less? Become poorer...
Hm. I hope this post doesn't knock me off your "friends" list... :)
/. and I can request /. but you resolve to a useful news site, while I'm stuck with this one. :)
/.'s address when you surf to monkeybutts.arefunny for all it matters publicly. Just don't configure a publicly reachable root server with contradictory or inconsistencies with the ICANN root servers.
Yes but try explaining what DNS actualy is and does; how it is not the same as the Interweb; and how we all use a common set of root servers by convention and for convenience rather than necessity to your average moron off the street..
Actually, we use a common set of root servers so that any given DNS request for a "public" host address will result in the same response for every requestor, regardless of what host (and what network) originated the request. The public namespace needs to be authorative for public addresses, period. We can't have a namespace where you can request
The e-commerce fraud and phishing opportunities abound in inconsistent namespaces.
If someone wants to populate their machine's "hosts" file or run named locally with gibberish TLDs, that's fine as long as it's not configured to answer public DNS requests authoritatively. Hell, have your machine reply with
The beauty of the system is that the UN, the EU or any other set of nepotistic kleptomaniacs can declare themselves the lords of the Internet if they want to; I'll just keep using the root zone hints file supplied by ISC BIND, thank you very much.
As long as there is one set of relatively apolitical, geographically diverse, compitently administered, and fully authoritative roots, I don't much care who publishes the root zone--ICANN or whoever.
So you really mean the US will invade and depose the brutal dictators of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Kwait and Egypt and apologyze for supporting in the past the brutal dictators of Iran, Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Brazil, South Africa, Iraq and a list too long to keep listing? We'd really like to see that.
Gas prices are not cheaper here, but that doesn't prove that the war wasn't for oil. Who says that the 'war for oil' (if that's really what it is) is for the benefit of the lowly citizens of this country.
Exxon Mobil reaps record profits
Oil industry awash in record levels of cash
Oil Companies Experiencing Record Profits
You said that Bush was an oil man, well... it's the oil men who are raking in the dough right now.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
The complaint thus-far seems to be "the U.S. runs it, and they have too much control. Forget that they created the Internet - seize it from them! Power to the people!"
It's like the rest of the world are a swarm of Marxist morons trying to overthrow their "evil capitalist oppressors."
What, exactly are the technical -- not politically-ideological, but *TECHNICAL* -- problems that has the U.S. has failed to solve? And why, exactly, would a massively-bureaucratic and corrupt attempt at a single world government body do any better job?
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Ok, and the towel heads who flew the planes into the buildings where in every country BUT Iraq? Yeah right! As for the WMD things, there have been at least 1/2 dozen stockpiles of the stuff picked up, but thanks to the MSM, you won't hear about it, because it doesn't fit the MSM mold of "anything that is good for Bush isn't worth talking about", but "anything that makes Bush look bad, we'll talk about for a week". I guess you'd rather take on these idiot towel head bomb morons over hear, than over there.
"And why should the rest of the world have to rely on the word of a country that is still socially largely in the middle ages (support for unilateral wars of aggression, summary torture and execution of prisoners of war, mass civilian slaughter .. aka collatoral damage..., support for capital punishment, etc etc) that it won't use its power against us?"
.. aka collatoral damage..., support for capital punishment, etc etc".
Because that culturally archaic nation is the only one that has stated very clearly and succinctly that it doesn't if you write scathing internet postings about how much you hate "unilateral wars of aggression, summary torture and execution of prisoners of war, mass civilian slaughter
When the rest of the world can promise to steward the internet in the style that America has, namely by not using their control over ICANN to in any way to disrupt the free flow of information and speech even when it violates their own laws, they can have it. Until that time, the rest of the world is just going to have to suffer with it being a pain in the ass to disrupt the freedom of speech, the free flow of information, and lack of taxes. If they want to control the internet, they are just going to have to do it the old fashion way. If you need help, give Iran or China a call. I am sure they would be more then happy to help filter out all that undesirable information. Don't like how the US is not helping disrupting the free flow of information? Build your own internet. The US is not forcing anyone to point towards their servers.
It's not the only one: I watched with great sadness as people whom I know to have given very generously to things like the tsunami appeal openly refused to donate anything in the aftermath of Katrina, such was their loathing for the current state of affairs across the pond.
What I saw from here was the US (government) not accepting help and trying to look tough. I saw doctors from other countries being turned out (because they weren't licensed to work in the USA, even Canadian doctors, etc), as well as various other aid. I saw a US government saying "we will take care of our people" and yet doing jack shit.
Personally, in such a scenario, I would be tempted to say "well screw them then." Not the people in distress, but the lawyers, politicians, and others who have created a policital monster pupeteered by so many fucking strings that above it all is just a tangled mess that nobody can get through to those US citizens who both need and want them.
The isolationism and egotism of the american beaurocracy is killing the country. Eventually they will cut off ties to all friendly nations, either by alienating them or just plain ignoring them.
As a Canadian I find a lot of people around here look down on Americans... but really it's because many of the most vocal groups cloud out the real people. Thankfully, sites like slashdot allow me communication with many of the intelligent and thoughtful people in the USA, reaffirming my believe that there are a lot of good people down there who just aren't being heard for some reason...
I really don't know much about the locations of the root DNS servers, but I do know that control on them is a large part of controlling the internet. Are they all US-based, or spread-out across various contries?
Personally, I see absolutely no reason why a system wherein each continent or group controls it's own root servers (perhaps primary and secondary) could not be achieved. I'm in Canada here. Why not have a North American (or if you want, a Canadian and US) DNS server for domains from each country here, and one for Europe, etc.
An initial connection to an unknown offcontinent site would take longer, yes... as the local server would have to determine which master-server contains the DNS entry... but once it's cached you're good. And if something manages to kill, say, either the connection to Europe or both it's master servers, well chances are you have a bigger problem than just invalid DNS queries.
It's one thing to argue about the issue of control, but what are the proposals for replacing the existing system before we argue about who controls it?
If the US didn't go along with it, any European who wanted their website to be accessible by Americans would have to either convince individual American ISPs to use their root servers, or would have to continue using the U.S. root servers for their site (perhaps in addition to the new European ones).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The issue is: who will be in charge of ICANN in the future?
ICANN's job is: to accept or reject domain names and to say which domain names point to which IP addresses.
The source of problem is: the U.S. has refused to give up control of ICANN to UN. Other countries want the U.S. to give up control of ICANN.
The stake of controlling ICANN is: money from taxing domain names and power to censor news and information.
The consequence is: domain names will point to different computers depending on where you are. You have to manually type in the IP address to specify the domain name server or web server you want to use, especially if you travel out of country or do business with foreign entities.
The impact is: If you are a geek, it is only a minor disruption. If you are working for a company, it means more work. If you are not a geek, your IT admin will take care of it and you probably won't notice any different while surfing the net.
The U.S. strength is: the U.S. is the largest market in the world for trades and businesses. Its military is the best in the world. Countries do not want to risk disrupting their trade communications with the U.S. or any retaliation from the U.S.
The U.S. weakness is: Many root servers (internet infrastructure if you will) are located outside the U.S. allowing other countries to set up their own systems if they wanted. The U.S. depends on oil and goods from these countries to power its market.
The solution is: ???
I vote for the first person who will vow to stab verisign in the eyeballs^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hstop sitefinder. Once or twice a week I get redirected to a Network Solutions sitefinder-a-like.
For the most part the internet is governed by the corps, who basically understand its only useful because it is a free for all. For the most part, this works fine, with occasional DNS hijinx. I'm rather scared of what would happen if a government or governing agent decided it actually wanted some form of control. Kiss those privacy rights good bye.
-Myren
Bluntly, the UN wants to hire more burecrats and spend (waste) millions of dollars on a whole new inefficient body to manage internet naming.
This is what they want.
The power over being able to punish countries like Saudia Arabia and others that block news about freedom and democracry will come later.
I trust the UN to do a decent job at anything much less than the USA government. At least the US goverment is elected (unlike *cough* the UN members that are appointed by elite government officials).
How can open countries like western Europe want to give up any possible democratic organization, even if it is in another country, to an un-elected body of elites like the UN?
..you can't expect to weild supreme executive authority just because some watery tart threw some sword at you.
We do have a right to be irritated here, you know. The confiscation of another nation's property by force can certainly be construed as an act of war. If this situation were reversed, you would be screaming bloody murder at the sheer arrogance of the uncaring United States and hurling epithet after epithet. But since it's the United States that's being stung, that's okay, I guess. Hypocrites.
... they won't do anything. And you know what? We won't ... because we aren't as evil, imperialistic or as ugly as we're made out to be.
... there's more to this than meets the eye? Could the EU politicians be lying to us? Could it be that other nations want control of DNS in order to control what their people can see and do with the Internet? Say it ain't so, Joe. Say it ain't so!
... we executed an unpopular unilateral action against Iraq, because we thought it was the right thing to do. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, the jury's still out on that one. So now the EU's petulant "leadership", having spent months critizing America's willful disregard of their wishes, is now proposing to simply confiscate (CONFISCATE!) the root servers that are within their borders! Is that really okay with you? They are doing this on an equally unilateral basis because they claim it's the right thing to do. And all based on a "feeling" of concern, without evidence of any actual operational failures or U.S. governmental abuse to justify their actions (but plenty of politics and power-mongering to go around) and little regard for who might get hurt if this predicted "Internet Meltdown" actually occurs. Truly unbelievable, or it would be were it not happening. WMD's, anyone? So I guess you EU types don't need facts, or have to care about anyone but yourself, or have to wait for the U.N. to tell you when to take a dump either. Interesting. We'll remember that.
ICANN isn't viewed fondly within the U.S. either, believe me, and for a lot of other reasons. But at least the United States attempted to give other nations a say in the operation the Internet. And it's a damn good thing that network was implemented here first, because I can't see Russia or China or pretty much any other nation being that open about it. For that matter, I can't see anyone having the brass cojones to even threaten Russia or China this way. Good way to find a Spetznatz team running your root zone for you. But the evil imperialistic United States and all those Ugly Americans? Ha
We quite deliberately dispersed multiple root servers in order to help assure that the network would work for anyone and everyone (even those who would qualify as our enemies): we could have just kept them all here. Perhaps we should have: we'd not be having this discussion then. In effect, because those systems are located on foreign soil those nations already have de-facto control of them: frankly, I don't see what all the hoo-rah is all about. I mean, if the United States Government ever did abuse the system in any way, they could just send in a few cops and take them over. Unless
And the hypocrisy here is rife. Sure
I know how nobody 'round the world respects us and all (as you non-U.S. Slashdotters keep incessantly reminding us) but you know, that works both ways. My respect for the leadership of the European Union just went down a notch. I had thought better of them.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
power struggle?? We got the power and they don't. Don't seem like much of a struggle to me.
The only thing the EU could take control of DNS wise is K. It's run by RIPE. M is run by WIDE which means getting Japan to go along. The rest? Run by American companies, universities or branches of the government. So then what? Pass a law declaring that private citizens and ISPs must change their DNS servers to use only K as a root? I don't see how they could possibly pull that one off, never mind the enforcement if they did.
DNS is all just a set of conventions and trusts remember. The roots trust ICANN. Nobody makes them, any root could go and trust any other authoriy, or become their own. DNS servers trust the roots. They can trust one or all of them, or none. You can set your DNS server to be it's own root and not listen to ICANN, or listen to an alternate root like OpenNIC.
So sure, maybe the EU has or can get the legal authority to force K to stop listening to ICANN, but they can't force any of the rest of them. So unless they decide to go all George Orwell and force private citizens and companies to stop listening to the roots, they are sunk. The only alternative, is to create their own roots and try and convince people, including Americans, it's in their best intrest to use those as well as or instead of the ICANN roots.
That's the real problem here is the Internet is by and large the US's toy. When everyone else came along to play, they could have setup their own thing. They could have decided to reuse the entire IP space internally. Then, we would have had to develop a way for those spaces to communicate, and a way would have been developed. Or, even had they gone along with that, it would have been very easy for each country to setup their own root as they went along. Then all the roots could run their own zone and copy each other's zone, and they could all vote about adding new domains and who would administer those.
But nobody did.
People would just in and just use what the US had provided. The countries setup nothing, and individual orginizations would just setup DNS using UC Berkely's (now ISC, also US based) BIND which used the US roots. As need for DNS grew the US kept adding more roots, and nobody else bothered. Finally with the 11th root one was created outside the US, but even that chose to just join on the US system.
Well guess what? All this has lead to de facto US control. Everyone chose to join their network and play by their rules, it means they have a degree of control. Now since it's all just due to conventions, it can be changed by people deciding to use a new convention, but it can't be forced. The EU can't force the US to give up control of the US roots or ICANN.
With each country behind somthing like a NAT / Masqurade router so each country can assign from the full range of addresses?
Perhaps if a user in one country accesses a server in another country, that server is given a temporary "local" address which it keeps for a time. With each packet exchanged that time is renewed.
I hate YOU, CyricZAssface. Shut up and die.
I scanned through all of the replies and lots of people mention "DNS this and DNS that."
.cn delegated to China, that country has complete control over what domains and hostnames exist within it.
That's only *part* of the problem.
If someone decided to RTFA you'll see that what other countries are worried about is the USA's control over address space. With
You don't _need_ a hostname to be "present" on the Internet but you do NEED a valid IP address to connect your computers to it with.
Presently IP address allocation (v4 as well as v6) is all controlled by ICANN as well. What these other countries would like to see is the control over address assignment placed into an organisation that is backed by the UN rather and is responsible to the UN rather than to share holders or any particular government(s).
The simple fact is that, apart from limited and somewhat futile attempts to monitor terrorist activity online, the U.S. government has allowed the Internet to run its own course. Whether this stems from a policy of respect for freedom of speech or a simple inability to locate relevant information effectively - it is a little bit of both - the Internet works. The point has been brought up that China is pushing for more control in order to persecute religious and political dissidents, that the Arab world would use whatever control they had been given to make things difficult for Israel, that petty regimes the world over would use their control to silence any dissent. It is true that the influx of information threatens the party line that most citizenries are given - at least for those curious enough to look. How dangerous this really is to the worlds more secretive regimes is questionable - since the Internet tends to segregate itself along linguistic barriers (most of the world's people not knowing more than one language), the Clintonian fantasy of democracy and freedom spreading through every Ethernet cable will probably not happen. Instead, what we see is a slightly more anarchic version of the cultures we see in meatspace, with the same prejudices, fears, and aspirations. I think the real danger, if such a move is made, will be certain forms of censorship in the West. If control of the internet is handed over to regions of the world which have higher rates of petty corruption, it would be very, very easy for parties in the West - large corporations especially - to make their voices heard. A bribe here, a sugar-coated deal with some top official there, and then suddenly corporations can shut down file-sharing sites, blogs which are just a bit too critical of their product, or which publicize some piece of dirt they'd rather keep secret, you name it - as long as the site is dependent upon this country.
a wise wit once said "if you're not with us, you're against us"
Also you forgot about the deal to give over the control of roots by 2006.
All I saw was "we're not bad" and "it's you who is bad" and "this is not fair" and "you don't respect us? well I don't respect you!"
Lot's of words, dodging the issues and no meat. How typical for an USsian.
Truly unbelievable,
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
For example. This time it's .xxx, maybe next time it's .gov and after that it might be something even more stupid.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
That was actually Jesus.
No, the sad thing is that they love to say you're all idiots when that's just as bad as saying you're either for us or against us. I smell no small amount of hypocrisy here. (For those of you who don't realize it, they're both very bad generalizations.)
Getting back to the topic at hand however, I think a lot of the fear-mongering from Americans is not as much a pro-neo-conservative bent as much as a pro-libertarian bent (which, honestly, I think is the general sentiment of a lot more people here than just the Americans who are saying "Yay, ICANN!"). The idea that the internet should be controlled by any one (or coalition of) government(s) is a rather dark and dreary idea reminiscent of 1984 or any other number of dystopian societies, and one that naturally is revolting to the thoughts of the libertarian. Hence the American (thus-far) idea that lassez-faire has done more good for the Internet than bad, and the European coalition idea would stagnate the Internet. (One need only look at Germany's recent election to get a good idea of why this can be a bad thing.)
United States of America (American territory) : 22
United States of America (in Iraq) : 108
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
The easiest way to fragment the Internet is to make international agreements and involve diplomats and politicians. The EC is known for its ability to apply paralizing bureaucracy to anything they get their hands on. They should best be kept as far away from the Internet as possible.
Let us not forget that the largest media company in the world gets most of its revenues from taxpayers of a European Country, socialist style. Government involvement is integrated into the mentality whithin that institution. They choose their headlines and story angles accordingly.
Congratulations to the moderators using mod points to extinguish alternate opinion. Score a point for American fascism.
Reporters Without Borders ranks Germany above the U.S. Publish an article in favor of Hitler in the U.S., and you'll be mocked and pitied. Publish that article in Germany, you'll be jailed.
Of course, it would never occur to Reporters Without Borders that suppressing speech they disagree with is a bad thing, which is reflected in their rather silly rankings.
What about the whole Verisign DNS ads crap, where ICANN wasn't/couldn't do anything...? That's just an example of why we need change...
Europe's Galileo development will bring a second, alternate global positioning network. The satellite constellation is currently being built up.
(One need only look at Germany's recent election to get a good idea of why this can be a bad thing.)
Ehm, excuse me? I happen to be a german, as well as unhappy with the election, the results, etc. - but how exactly does this election show a general "bad thing"? At least we have more than two parties here, and even though the majorities are close calls, we didn't have a 49.9% vs. 50.1% stalemate the way you guys did during your last two presidential elections.
And besides, if you can read german I recommend doing some research starting maybe on wikipedia - most german governments had fairly small majorities, often in the 50-60% bracket. It wasn't a problem the other 10 or so times, it won't be a problem this time, the media is just making a crisis out of it because that sells better.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
There is no control already is a lie describtion as well. True, it is all about power and money here on all sides, nothing new. I see many reactions go like: 1. USA USA USA (whatever, the world can do without you, but can you?). 2. USA = internet (now it is half the worldconnections, but be sure you will receive a world connection overkill very soon - think of being just 1/10 of the worldconnections if you're lucky, so don't play the dumbass). 3. Fuck the other politics for the moment (don't mention the UN), look at the fact that you do not want a seperate web, which will happen if there isn't one truely world organisation (even if it was for the form). Handing over to a global organisaton in a good manner will STILL allow more influence then otherwise. Pick your smartest I would say. "and the US is probably the least of all evils in this case." - keep american dreaming.
I have been using the expression "Jack's a Doughnut" rather frequently with my British relations, and they've started picking it up!
If I may be so bold as to respond, I would have to say that the general unease and uncertain outcome as to who was going to be leading a coalition in the Bundestag (or if it was going to be a presumably more ineffective outcome of a grand coalition) is more than enough reason as to why an Internet coalition can be a bad thing: if people don't agree, then noone's leading. Not to mention the partisan politicking and potentially disastrous compromising potentially necessary in such a coalition.
I would hope that you'd agree that the last thing we need is a compromise between a coalition and WIPO to the effect of "We will let you send out autonomous search engines to search for copyrighted material and bring anyone who has them to court automatically wherever you are, in exchange for giving us money to our budgets."
I will concede on your point about majorities, however. On the other hand, Republican and Democratic majorities in the U.S. Congress are not often much better than the majorities you claim are in the Bundestag. Even today, with what is called the most Republican Congress in some time, in the House, they only have a 53% majority and in the Senate, they have only a 55% majority. Even in 1977, the most biased Congress since the beginning of World War II (Feel free to take a look at the party divisions in the House and Senate if you don't believe me), the Democrats only had a 67% majority in the House and a 61% majority in the Senate.
Just make sure you don't mention India! They only have, what, 1 billion people, and an 80% favorable view of the US.
These days, all of Dubya's oil buddies in the US and in Saudi Arabia are swimming in money due to high oil prices. In Clinton's days, the totalitarian, islamic fundamentalist Saudi regime was in big trouble, since oil prices were so low that they couldn't simply bribe any opposition into silence any more. Basically, that's where al Qaeda came from: As the oil pie got smaller, the rulers kept the biggest piece, causing envy.
So we could imagine that plunging the region into crisis and shutting down Iraqi production for good and thus raising oil prices sky high was a conscious ploy to make every oil magnate on the planet rich beyond belief.
Somehow I tend to believe more in Dubya's incompetence, though, since there's enough evidence for it: "We will be greeted as liberators, organize elections and the markets will fix things by themselves." That's what they said. All of America was mumbling that mantra in the build-up to the war. Since 99% of Americans knew shit about Eyeraq before the war and the CIA provably knew fuck all about it, why would we expect the White House to understand the many tensions complicating Iraqi politics?
Keep in mind: Failing utterly at your goals is not proof that you never had them.
Go on, get drunk, break into a jewelry store, pass out on its floor and try to convince the judge: "I can't have possibly intended to burgle this store, since I botched it so badly."
Nobody's taking away your "right" to say what you want, or anyone's "right" to read what you say. They're just doing the rest of us a favor and marking your bullshit as such.
Extinguish alternate opinion? Maybe they just recognized that you're an asshole, asshole.
May I ask what in particular? It's obviously significant enough that you've noticed!
I certainly hope not. However, I think it would need a dramatic shift in the administration to restore the confidence of the outside world.
Bush and his entire inner circle would probably have to go for a start. That includes a lot of the people he's appointed to other key roles, many of whom aren't exactly popular outside the US administration anyway; appointing someone who's on the record as saying they don't like a major international organisation to be your liaison with that organisation isn't exactly stunning diplomacy!
Then you'd have to have a demonstrable attitude shift among the major replacements; less Donald Rumsfeld and more Colin Powell, if you know what I mean. There's not a lot anyone can do about the SCOTUS, so we'll have to hope the senior justices can rise above the politics when it comes to international affairs. Stamping on the obvious rule of big business over Congress and the Senate, and the resultant aggressive foreign policy, wouldn't do any harm, either.
With those measures in place, the US would at least no longer be actively hostile towards even its "allies". A couple of years making a genuine effort to re-engage with international dialogs on everything from security to the environment to intellectual property law to, yes, the Internet, would go a long way.
I don't see why this needs to take more than a few years, but the US population would be wise to elect more diplomatic representatives if it wants to see it happen.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
At the highest tension of the cold war the US was buying or trading stuff with the USSR.
That did not stop a certain President to call them the "Evil EMpire" and to start "Star Wars"....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Who are you? Nobody.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
At least I'm not a coward, and have the balls to mark my posts as my own - unlike you.
All of the technologies and so forth belong to the DoD, but America is the country that has made it all possible.
should read:
All of the technologies and so forth don't belong to the DoD, but America is the country that has made it all possible.
Get your Unix fortune now!
"I did it, it's my ball"
I only say develop an alternative to HTTP because I would assume that they want a different protocol and port number because who wants accidentally hit an American site?
It's more like: we are watching the ball and you want to take it to play with it. Why should we let you go break it when we have watched it faithfully this long? Besides, you play by different, more restrictive rules in some cases. Those rules jeopardize the ball.
Get your Unix fortune now!