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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.
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.)
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)
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!
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?
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
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?
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?
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.
oooOOOoooo!!! oooOOOOOOO!!! uuUUGGGGGGRRRGHH!
Wait? That's not the kind of climax you meant?
Sorry. My mistake.
Great, you've just slashdotted 66.35.250.150.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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?
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.