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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.
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.
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.
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?
I think that China, Brazil, Iran, etc. are worried about the potential for what they see as "abuse of power" in their eyes. They don't want the U. S. to be able to dictate to them about their use of the internet in any way, shape, or form.
From what I can see though, according to TFA, the UN doesn't want to take over or strip away Icann's role as a regulator of web traffic. Rather, they wish for Icann to become independent as it was supposed to in September of 2006. When the U. S. said no, it wasn't gonna give it up, that's when the ruckus started.
If Icann could truly become an independent body, not bending to the political agendas of various countries (including the U. S.), how could that be a bad thing?
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
Mod up..
It is about taxes and money. ICANN is largely independent anyway and most root DNS servers are operated at universities and research centers. Its not like its run from the pentagon.
Personally I do not see why its a big deal but I am an American so I view it differently. The internet as it is right now is a wild place and libertarian. Things just happen. The internet should be run by a non profit charter or organization and governments should not run it. Perhaps they could work on the physical infustructure with corporations but nothing else. Maybe a treaty is needed?
I am thinking right now of the old rumors that IP addresses are running out and IPv6 needs to be implemented that was being said around 5 or 6 years ago. How would we upgrade the internet with newer protocols?
Part of me does thing more control is needed. Spyware, IP address spoofing, spamming, and fraud, are just reasons why I think some research into a second next generation internet is needed. Also I heard many fiber optic networks have troulbe with IPv4 because of the way the protocol is setup. Maybe someone could enlighten me.
http://saveie6.com/
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?
Agreed. I have many, many more spam and firewall rules specifically against other countries. About 50% of my spam gets hit with one rule that reverse lookups the URLs that resolve to be in Korea or China. I have another spam rule for cn, br, ru, tw being in the headers.
I'm not one to come to the US's defense just because I was born there. But in general, we are fairly honest people. Sometimes I'm shocked, but then I realize that its usually more expensive to do shady but legal business than to do it straight.
It would only be a PITA for those few sites for which some nation decided to make their own version available. And as for Trademark disputes, either it doesn't apply in the nation, in which case ibm has no recourse nor expectation, or it does, in which case ibms recourse is through the courts of that country as expected.
Most users would never even notice the system, because de.http would be just another kind of bookmark, and google will still be able to index across national boundaries without any real difficulty.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
The entire idea is that the U.S. going back on its years-old promise to turn DNS over to ICANN is being seen, by itself, as abusing its position as internet governor.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Exactly right, in that it's all about money and power. Other concerns include foreign governments being able to control facets of the Internet where the US would otherwise say no.
Taxes, Internet Surveillence, and even the ability to require payments to reserve names in each country. Suddenly foreign governments can do all sorts of things to each other by stretching their Internet-puppet-strings. They could even hold portions of the Internet hostage or resell domains in their own country if they would profit more from their local commercial interest. "Hmm, I can claim $150,000 from this local manufacturer to give them volvo.com so I think I'll go ahead and do that."
So far:
The US has been fairly honest and without a great deal of corruption in this business. I would not expect that from Brazil, China or many member countries of the EU.
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.
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.
Just to clarify, Germany runs the .de (.dk is Denmark), and East Timor already has a TLD, .tp, although they will probably want to change it to since .tp stands for Portuguese Timor; .tl (Timor Leste) or .tl (Timor Lorosae) could be used I think.
You mean like what happened when Libya was taken off the net a few months ago? Oops, they didn't.
As a test, I ran a traceroute from Bulgaria to Brazil. The packets go through New York, Atlanta, Orlando, and Miami. How is that not using what WE paid for???????
I have worked all over the world with the internet. A few months ago I was in the Republic of Georgia. To get to Kazakstan it STILL went through the US.
ICANN isn't viewed particularly fondly by those outside the US, most because it takes almost no notice of the view of the various gTLDs; and because it looks like it wants to tax those gTLD to pay for its existance. You won't have heard this in the US media of course, but are you surprised? You may have heard of the phrase "no taxation without representation" before?
The US had agreed to get the US governments hands off the decision making process, then back tracked and said that no, on balance they would like to go back on that and ignore agreements, keeping the 'authorisation' role. This pissed off lots of people who were waiting for Sept 2006 with gritted teeth. The US misjudged their position.
The US government, and its religious nuts, have already interfered (with .XXX). Most consider this a taste of what it might do in future (eg axis of evil = delete the gTLD from the root so they 'disappear'). In short, nobody trusts them.
A proportion of the root servers are already outside the geographic US. Its not difficult to setup a forum to discuss policy, give an automated mechanism to allow gTLD and other non-gTLD controllers the ability to update the root servers, and cut the US gov out of the process.
The root DNS maybe at the root of everything, but a change of who says what is served and how is not going to bring the walls crumbling down. Nobody is likely to say that .COM DNS is now provided by someone else; unless someone does something stupid. However the ability to opt out of that stupidity is what is being taken and there isn't really much that the US can do to stop it, short of threatening force.
Oh yes, and the reporting on this is really, really bad.
The UN is, at its heart, only a forum. Like in every forum, including online ones, you've got posturing and trolling going on.
You can't expect a forum to have any credibility, however its members put together might.
To get anything done in the UN you need to have the approval of all the moderators, i.e. each and everyone of the members of the security council. Since the US is one of them, if the US don't approve, any amount of screaming bloody murder at the UN will achieve precisely nothing.
It's not that the UN lacks credibility, it's only that to progress at the UN requires unanimity.
Here's a good link for you in the future when you're replying to the "war for oil" conspiracy nuts: Why we went to war.
Remember, the fact that we found no weapons does not mean that the weapons weren't the reason. Unless you want to call President Clinton a Texas oil barron, saying the Iraq war was for oil makes you a conspiracy nut who is to lazy or too blind to see the facts.
see, this is why i have trouble understanding why the eu/un are so upset about this. there is really nothing to control. the US doesnt "control" anything, it just so happens that the commonly used root file is administered by a company located in the US.