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EU Claims Internet Could Fall Apart Next Month
freaktheclown writes "The battle for the control of the Internet could hit a climax next month, with the EU saying that it could 'fall apart.' From the article: 'The European commission is warning that if a deal cannot be reached at a meeting in Tunisia next month the Internet will split apart. At issue is the role of the US government in overseeing the Internet's address structure, called the domain name system (DNS), which enables communication between the world's computers. It is managed by the California-based, not-for-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) under contract to the US Department of Commerce.'"
Let them all start their own DNS systems, breaking the Internet into segments. Let their own stupidity be their punishment. First, they will legislate that ISPs operating in their countries will no be allowed to use root DNS servers other than their own...
Then, their citizens will realize that this effectively isolates them from anyone smart enough to stick with the current, very functional, system. Then, the break away group will begin bickering back and forth as some members want to use their control of DNS to influence both local and international political views. It will further splinter into smaller useless segments.
At some point the citizenry in some of the smarter countries that broke away will realize how stupid this is when they can't use credit cards controlled by US banks, or interact with US companies easily. They will usher the bureaucrats out to the gallows and the hole problem will be solved.
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This whole thing is about controlling the flow of information. The currect (US led) system has 0 political control of domains. The US government doesn't tell ICANN to remove a root DNS entry if they have a problem. The find the server and seize it according to the law. If it is overseas, they work with the local government.
We bitch about the government restricting freedom of speech here in the US in general, but Europeans and especially China and the middle east are the the people with no real freedom in that respect (they can't even legally complain about not having freedom of speech in may cases). Allowing governments like that any control over the Internet on the international scale would be a disaster for free speech and a victory for dictators and autocrats that want complete control.
Spell check? Why bother. That is what grammer/spelling Nazi freaks who waiste band width posting "spell right" are for.
What can happen is that a bunch of governments set up their own root servers which no ISP in their right mind will direct their DNS servers at. Nothing will change and the world will continue as it was, except someone gets to look a bit silly.
Evil people are out to get you.
Shouldn't the headline read:
"EU Claws Internet Apart Next Month"?
This is a deliberate act by our European govfriends, not something that "happens" on its own.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Just to restate - the internet's not going to "fall apart" on it's own. They're planning on breaking it. The terminology they use makes it sound like the network's fragile and about to break. That's not the case.
This just in from Chicken Little- The Sky is Falling. Isn't it amazing that now suddenly if they don't get control the whole thing is going to fail? Wonder how it has held up all of these years.
There's absolutely no reason why the Internet has to fall apart. If it does then it's because they want it to. I think the countries behind this push for change should seriously consider whether they're doing more harm than good... if you were a citizen in a country that decided to "break off" from the rest of the Internet, wouldn't you prefer to keep your access to the old one rather than start over from scratch?
I would expect to see a huge demand for access to the primary Internet, and the new one would just sortof shrivel up and die.
Let them split...just see how long it will last. The article says China, Brazil, Russia, and some Arab states may end up creating their own versions of the internet. I say go ahead. I don't read Chinese, Brazillian-Portuguese, Russian or Arabic anyway. If the EU decided to jump in on this too I say go ahead it won't last long. No matter how much pressure the EU puts on the US to gain partial control of the root servers the bottom line is by splitting the internet you are going to piss off 225 million+ internet users in the EU who no longer can get to all their favorite sites anymore. For many people this might just be enough to cause a massive loss of business which would bring pressure from the thousands of ISPs throughout europe against the EU. I applaud these countries for wanting to actively participate in the architecture of the internet but I think they should remember not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Help me out here: I understand the politics here. That part makes sense.
But who are the corporate winners? Call me a cynic, but I'm far too jaded to believe this is all one big "f*ck you" to the US. And I refuse to believe its about "control" when our control isn't the least bit restrictive.
Someone's going to make bank off this. Politicians are puppets not puppetmasters.
Who profits?
Follow the money.
Any insights?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
ICANN is not a multi billion $ mega corporation. If it were one no country would have bothered about this. All the politicians would have gotton some kickbacks and would have been happy letting them control do what ever they want.
Mine, Mine, Mine, ... Mine, Mine..... *sigh*. The real problem comes in domain name ownership. I can see it now people asking the question "Am I at http://www.wellsfargo.com/ the bank or http://www.wellsfargo.com/ the Nigerian scam site. What it really boils down to is taxes. The internet is a system that exceeds the lawbreakers(makers whatever) ability to grasp in a manor that they can wrap a tax around.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
Because they US can't be trusted not to destroy it...
And the UN or the EU can? Mod parent up as Funny.
Fortunately nobody had to trust the US to *invent* the Internet.
-=Maggie Leber=-
Pornography and other sexual pastimes performed between consenting adults is under threat in the united states as we speak.
I don't think you can say that the USA has the "most free speech".
Blar.
"Viviane Reding, European IT commissioner, says that if a multilateral approach cannot be agreed, countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and some Arab states could start operating their own versions of the internet and the ubiquity that has made it such a success will disappear."
;)
If China, Russia, Brazil and some Arab states start their own Internet like networks I can get rid of the RBL lookup code on my mail system. Excellent!
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
Thank Bush that our new UN ambassador, John "Blow Up the UN" Bolton, is so widely respected for diplomatic consensus building and multilateral internationalism. His committment to peaceful cooperation among all American allies and enemies, as well as his softspoken manner in reconciliation behind selfless American leadership, will surely manage this crisis. And his love of the Internet as a global medium unfettered by politics will certainly prioritize this matter beyond the usual politics.
--
make install -not war
Most of the spam comes from the USA. It's a known fact (they send 42% of it IIRC, something like 4x more than the next country on the list).
If you were to be cutoff the rest of the internet, you'd most likely have more spam than ever.
///<sig
Y2K wasn't a disaster, _because_ people like me busted our asses to make sure things wouldn't break. (In my case, medical diagnostic systems). The fact that it ended up to be a non-event was specifically because of the efforts, not because it didn't have the potential to be a huge problem.
That said, this is strictly a case of the EU posturing, and is a political rather than a technical problem. Other than being completely and utterly different in cause and potential threat than Y2K, your comments are right on.
The smartass in me wants to say "Well, Gore invented it, Bush destroyed it; seems fair" but I'm not going to.
I think the main problem is that at any time, the US can have a veto right on what happens. Think whatever you want, but as a country, if a foreign country has that much power on my infrastructure and public service I would quite simply do whatever I can to get out of the situation. That is what is happenning here. The WORLD does not want any country having a veto power over their own service. You think most country want to policy internet you are quite missing the point. They could ALREADY simply do it without DNS control by policing to hell the ISP (if you want to sell internet connection then you have to obey the local law). They do not need control of the DNS server. They only want to make sure that even if the US suddenly want to impose policy change, then their infrastructure won't be criplled overnight or influenced...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Isn't this a classic example of 1) There not being a problem in the first place 2) Management trying to solve the problem, when it is a technical matter.
Damnit - I wanted my nick to be "WouldIPutMYRealNameOnSlashdot"
Which principle is more important: ICANN remaining a US company; or protecting free speech on the internet?
Is every solution that guarantees free speech dependent on ICANN remaining under US control?
Which principle should be safe-guarded, and which one is negotiable?
If this is really what the debate is about, I can kind of understand the EU's concerns in specific hypothetical circumstances, though I don't understand the intransigence of the US representatives.
I suspect though that this is just a dick-size war, and we'll find out later on that it's really all posturing to show a position of strength for GATT negotiations.
The world has changed and we all have become metal men.
What the hell is the problem here? Just start up their own root servers for their own roots. Just leave the existing ones as are. You know how bad that would piss off businesses in their countries if they tried to break off? They have no real option as far as obtaining control of US run root servers. Give it up. .com .net .gov = USA. Sorry.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
Instead Europe is suggesting a way of allowing countries to express their position on internet issues, though the details on how this would happen are vague.
I am sorry, but what exactly prevents countries from expressing their positions on internet issues?
If Iran or China or whoever wants to set up its own root DNS servers it can do it right now, without asking anyone. That's rather suicidal, of course, and I am all for letting them find it out the hard way...
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Interestingly enough, the most widely used application on the net was not invented by the US.
To most people the synonym of the internet is the web - not the infrastructure itself.
Then I suppose the EU would start to look a lot more like a very powerful government forcing member states to do what it wants. I suspect that wouldn't work *that* well. Now the independant countries might decide to pass those laws, and their ISPs would probably be rather upset by it. I don't see that as likely to happen.
"they are trying to maintain the current cohesion."
There is no grievance except that:
1) Iran, China et. al *do* want to censor the net. They don't like the current situation.
2) The EU is trying to be relevant here. And they'd like a way to control the internet for taxation purposes. They've stated that many times in the past.
3) The EU is teaming together with a bunch of 3rd world, tin-pot countries to "demand" something from the U.S. that we built and administer perfectly. Oh, except for giving EU taxation powers, and third-world countries censorship powers.
4) Lets fact it the EU has a fundamentally different view of free speech than the U.S. we can't reconcile it here or anywhere, so that disagreement will always be there.
5) The EU is only fooling idiots in that its trying to be an independant broker.
6) The U.S. is running the DNS servers the way they ought to be run: free from governmental control.
If China, Iran, and Brazil break away, I don't care. It doesn't affect me even a little bit. If the EU breaks away. Fantastic. CU later. Buh Bye. Sorry to see you go.
China is in the UN, which is the body demanding control of the DNS. Each part of it has their own reasons. China and Iran want it so they can stop their own citizens from reading some things. The EU wants it mainly because they want the US to not have it.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
Part of the problem is that ICANN acts as if it was a sovereign body, or at least one with UN sponsorship. How would you feel some NGO sponsored by Iraq took the .US domain down and refused to assign it to the US Federal government? The .IQ situation is just one of the cases where ICANN has acted in a seemingly-arbitrary manner when dealing with supposedly-sovereign states. ICANN is absolutely begging for an intervention.
.BIZ, .TRAVEL, .XXX, that's the horse of a different color you've heard tell about. But then again, some of us Internet alte cockers think that there was never any need for more than .COM, .EDU, .MIL, and .ORG and that those shouldn't be US-centric.
There's just no way that ICANN should be involved at all in the delegation of the country-code domains. That's a task for a globally-accepted multi-lateral bureaucracy, like the ITU or ISO. Most of those organizations get their legitimacy from the UN, and ICANN doesn't want to go there.
Now
Okay then, how about free(er) speech than most of the world? Of course, there is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech, but the US is unique among the world when it comes right down to it, expecially when considering the nessisary autonomy required for the internet to work. First, you have to go a long way toward matching the the US in terms of our free speech standards. Then you have to ensure not only are they economically stable, but economically vibrant as well, as in being able to recover from 9-11 type events, te demolision of an entire city due to hurricain and STILL hold the ability to fund other countries forgien aid AND turn right around and send extra> disaster relief to places like Afganistan.
I'm not citing all this to toot the US horn, but right now the internet is based in a country with stong freedom of speech standards and an excellent economic foundation. And there are plenty of other elements that make the one of the few countries that you would actually want preciding over the net as opposed to a loose coalition of countries. Come on, do you really want the UN on the internet?
More to the point, do you really think the internet would have grown and propered the same if it had started out as a UN-like activity? Honestly, I think you're kidding yourself if you think it would have.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
As if. That would never happen. Corporations rolling out profit sharing plans to their employees when their profits increase? Get real.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
I think the important thing to note is that they did not try to make the ICANN remove their DNS entries. Instead, they used other avenues to try to shut them down. Since these other avenues would not be available to the FBI if they were trying to shut down some server in Russia, they'd have to request it through diplomatic channels and let the Russians decide on their own. Never have they simply said "take the Russian server off the DNS listings." The second they start doing things like that, the trust that the agreement of the internet is based on will begin to crumble. I am much more worried about the UN doing that than the US, because the US hasn't ever done it, even though they supposedly could.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
Sounds more like a robber holding the gun towards himself during a stickup. 'Give me control of the net or I'll shoot.'
The current system works, its not perfect, but its highly functional. In a best case scenario the European Union's solution, and others will take years to actually implement correctly. Years in which the internet does not function as smoothly as it has been. Years of headaches and frustrations to get their model working up to snuff.
But thats the best case, more then likely if they were to do this, as others have said, they will isolate their own countries from the wider network, something their citizens will not tolerate (except for perhaps Iran and others who this would be a blessing). Sadly this isn't going to cause any public outcry until it actually happened.
I think the US realizes that they're negotiating from a position of strength. I think the EU needs to come to this realization. I'm not saying they shouldn't drop their push for some reforms in ICANN and the internet as a whole, but they really shouldn't be spouting of nonsense about splitting away from the net, when its going to do them more harm then us.
I think that you're giving EU too much credit. More likely, it is throwing a tantrum about this just to make it seem like it was doing something and therefore justify its own existence.
You see, EU serves two functions for the member countries governments:
In other words, EU is not meant to do anything sensible; it is meant to do stupid things so it can take the fall when shit hits the fan. Of course for this to work it needs to have an extremely large, inefficient and vague organization so no one gets singled out, and do stupid things all the time, but nothing that could cause any real harm. This is just such an occasion.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
FUD FUD FUD, FUD, am I missing anything? Oh yeah, FUD.
That's why combative people like you ordinarily aren't allowed to represent the US in the UN. Because your "take no prisoners" approach causes more damage than it's worth. Yeah, the US just keeps getting walked on in the UN. Like when we unilaterally invaded Iraq, despite the UN charter we signed- that we wrote. I guess if you're interested in more invasions, you'll be perfectly happy with Bolton. Until they turn out like Iraq, and the way this Internet kerfuffle will likely explode in our faces. No wonder the US no longer gets the benefit of the doubt internationally: the doubt is all against us, backed by the hamfisted demands of people like you. A fortunately shrinking minority.
--
make install -not war
It's too bad that you don't trust them, but in this case it's them that hold the cards. It's not a question of, "Well, we don't trust them, so we're going to do something different," but, "We don't trust them, and there is _absolutely_ nothing we can do about it."
?=(
So it has been predicted since the Cabal (There Is No Cabal) fought the creation of the alt.* usenet hierarchy. We're still here.
It can withstand a nuclear attack, but not a bunch of beaurocreeps and adminimonsters? OK, fine, we can go back to Fidonet. At least it had no spam problem.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
How quickly people forget about the problems that are inherit with the UN. How quickly people forget about the history of the UN.
If you took out the security council, then you would find that the UN is based on a majority but a majority of what? My understanding is that there are more non democratic countries than there are democratic countries. Currently the EU seems to overlook state sponsored terrorism to help avoid any issues with internal migrant populations, this is most obvious with France.
I'm all for international oversight, but I am very wary of what will happen. Just look take a look at recent events at IWC (International Whaling Commision), Japan and other pro whaling countries paid for votes. They even got countries to join up, while providing the fee for joining as well as prommising aid to the countries, implication is that they will vote with Japan. It's a wonder that commercial whaling has begun again!
International control of the internet will end up being the same. At the best we could hope for the addition of protocols so that places like China can control what is accessable easier, and the removal of anonymity.
I for one will not welcome our new international internet overlords.
I should note that when i mention non democratic countries, i include countries that are considered to be democratic but by their size and average wealth, are easily brought by promises of foriegn investment and aid. When those plus non-democratic countries are put against those who are democratic with the freedom to do what they beleive... well the future doesn't look bright... just veery dark.
"When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." - Sherlock Holmes
Those cultural assumptions only pinpoint the US as the target, not the source.
"This is considered plagiarism."
It's not that spammers think everyone has a credit card, but they are only interested in those holding a credit card.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
... because ...
If we apply that old Watergate adage, "Follow the money", and examine the financial implications of this, we quickly see that multinational corporations are the ones whose oxe gets gored.
What will happen to Wal-Mart (or any of a bazillion other companies) if they cannot easily communicate over the internet between Arkansas and China? How will Apple ship iPods in a timely manner, given the very close connections between the Apple Web Store and the manufacturing plants in China?
There's an incredible amount of money riding on the continued smooth operation and openness of the internet. Globalization depends upon it.
Maybe Kim Jung Il will be able to live without the commerce managed over the internet, but the list of countries that are so isolated as to be able to get by is a very short one.
The internet will continue unchanged, due to its dual nature, the other side being globalization. As soon as anything upsets the rivers of money flowing around the world via the internet, the true rulers of this small blue orb, the multinationals, will stomp it to death and return things to their previously smooth operation. Not even China dares disrupt the flow of commerce. One might say that China has the most to lose by tinkering with the internet. If the Euros would shut their collective pie-hole and think for just a second, they would see the reality of the situation as well.
I'm not too sure what they are complaining about, but isn't this what IPV6 is supposed to fix? Actually, ICANN is already a non-profit, non-government entity (they won the contract to control everything a while back). So, the real question is what is the EU planning that they want to reinstate political control over the internet?
I say let em "split off" and I can guarantee that within a weeks time, the companies that do business with the US will be asking (demanding) to be put back on the US network. Not only that, but imagine all of the services that would be unavailable to those countries outside of the US...Wikipedia, Google, Microsoft, Slashdot, Electronic Arts...I understand that some of these have geographically located server farms to make access easier from different parts of the world, but without access to the "home" US servers, these systems will not be updated and bug fixes like those from Microsoft would be unable to make it to countries outside of the US...
However, what I would advocate is that the US should setup our own system. We would build our own root service. It would be a redundant version of what Iran ran. Then, if Iran wents nuts and did something against US intrests, we could simply not accept that change to our system or, if need be, completely break away.
.com). However, for that to happen, other nations need to make their own credible root systems. The answer isn't that the US should give up control ove rthe one they've made, but that other nations (or multi-nation groups) should make their own. Have the EU setup a root authority that mirrors ICANN and have K (the only European run root) start listening to that. Then setup some more European roots. Talk to the BIND people to get it to localize so when in Europe it prefers the EU roots, and when in the US is prefers the US roots (maybe by IP space checks).
Personally I think it would be ideal to have multiple root authorities. Have one per country, or maybe one per region. They can then administer regional domains, and they can all vote on new generics (like
Then, once this credible mirror system is running, talk to the US about peering. Say "Look, we think that our roots are as capable as yours, and we'd like to have control of the domains that relate to that such as our contries' domains. You keep your stuff and we mirror that, however we'll take the European stuff and you mirror it." My bet? The US would be totally fine with that. Then we have two peer root authorities. Hopefully more people would then start doing the same thing.
That would also allow each nation or area to have a root that conforms to their values. They can block domains if they don't like them. Of course people can always go use the roots from other countries, unless they do some Great Firewall of China thing, but it would solve the majority of the bitching.
But that's not what these nations want. They want UN control over DNS, and more than DNS, so they can force other nations to implement their restrictions for them. They don't like a free and open Internet.
...You're not allowed to take over the world. Yes, we're aware that you'd like to, just like any other political body on the planet these days. That in itself makes no difference."
Seriously, I'm detecting a note of desperation, here. The EU/UN know very well that the majority don't want them to get their grubby paws on the Internet, and I suspect that in the quiet of their own minds, they also know that there are valid reasons for that. It's basically the EU software patent case all over again.
You've got a canary in a cage, suspended from a ceiling, with a cat sitting on the floor watching the canary. Every so often the cat will continue to try and leap for the cage in an effort to eat the canary, but if the cat gets whacked upside the head with a broom often enough, although it will need to be done numerous times, the cat will eventually get the message...that it's not getting the canary, and it's only going to cause itself continued pain and suffering by continuing to try.
Same deal here. The EU needs to be told repeatedly that in terms of them getting governance of the Internet, we hear them knocking, but they ain't coming in. We might have to do it ten, fifteen, or twenty times, but eventually they'll get the message.
It may be fun to think of the UN as some crazy foreign power ... but the USA is one of the original founding members of the UN (Britain, China, France, Russia & the USA).
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
Leave it to the UN to screw up something that works.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
"Ok, and what is Joe Blow American going to do when he can't buy his latest model Nokia cell phone over the internet because the DNS is misrouted?"
.com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov?
Can you explain how that would happen?
On a social level, nobody in the U.S. buys cell phones directly from Nokia. Perhaps "nobody" is too strong. Almost nobody.
On a practical level, if I go to www.nokia.com, where precisely do you think you're sent? What servers are authoritative for
But lets look at this on a more practical level. If I go to www.amazon.com, I don't really care where some root server in France points. Its irrelevant to me. And sure, the EU could really fracture things by taking existing TLD's pointing them to some other which disagrees with the U.S. servers, but so what? If some ISP in Ireland wants to point "slashdot.org" to some other place, I suspect its the people in Ireland that lose out.
With the Internet being founded in U.S., the founding institutions would still be here and would be largely unaffected by the EU move. The infrastructure is here. Its one thing we didn't outsource.
Finally, the EU is a "talking" organization. They have no authority beyond a a little in few countries in europe and absolutely none outside it. So my reaction is that (a) the EU would never do anything like what they're threatening (b) They will likely debate in brussels for about 5 years (c) on the offchance they actually do something, it will have zero impact on the U.S. and will simply hurt people with ISPs too dumb to point to the actual root servers controlled by ICANN.
I think you'll find both conservatives and liberals speaking with one voice on this issue in the U.S. And that, my friend, is probably the most impressive thing the EU has done this year.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Should be called Imminent Domain (no pun intended), if they take it away, and the US wants it, just like if your house sites on land that they need to build on, they will just take it because they need it.
We can't let the ICANN fall into the hands of terrorists, this is a national security issue.
We don't want any of this
google.com -> alqueda.com
yahoo.com -> jihad.com
Can't you see why the US needs to control this?
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
However, it seems very stupid to destroy .com just to prove a point.
What point exactly? That <sarcasm>american are selfish arrogants who think they are the only ones to have commerce and government and therefore merits a .com and .gov?</sarcasm>. Or that those .com, .net and .org tld are not used for their original purposes anymore? Shouldn't americans uses its own medicine and start using the .us tld? I personnally see things like atari.com going to the global internationalized version of their site (choosing country, etc), and then redirecting to www.atari.us. More meaningful if you ask me.
Main problem is, because everyone can buy any Domain name, business cannot own them even if it's in their own rights. So now www.atari.us, even though there's no other atari than the one known, isn't owned by atari itself because some little advertisement byproduct seller got their hands on it first. IANAL, but isn't it a part of what trademarks were made for?
Of Code And Men
The EU has no practical interest in causing a separation of the Internet. I do think that the DNS should be decentralized, but not run by governments. This isn't the GovNet, it's the Internet. We are all the "owners" of it. But the EU won't let the Internet fail. It would be suicide for them. With a stronger US dollar, the EU makes more profit on exports to the US. Businesses would shit if the EU tried to do this. Besides, the organization is so backwards that it can't even ratify a Constitution in three prominet countries (France, Brussels, and the Netherlands). The EU is really a joke. If Europeans really can come together under a Franco-German dominated alliance and not begin killing each other or brawl like guests on a Jerry Springer episode, then maybe the EU would work. As of now (and forever) it is just weak and powerless. As long as Germany and France don't hold to their own strict rules, the EU will just be a wastebasket of free trade blocs. This threat is completely unfounded and is a typical European threat. They can't really think that the rest of the world will fall for that. We'd be just as good without a European Union. In a global world, they have no choice but to submit.
Do Europeans think it is a good idea to fork the root servers?
Most of the root servers are outside US. What other coutries want is just a system where one stupid president cannot shut off the whole (or part of) internet in his fight agains "terrorism".
Do Europeans think that Iraq deserves Saddam Hussein?
Maybe we should let the Iraq-people decide ?
You cannot believe that US attacked Iraq because of Iraqians' human rights ?
It was NOT because of terrorism or WMD, it was NOT because of human rights, it was because of controlling oil reserves.
Do Europeans think that a strong PRC without human rights reforms is a good thing?
You say that the US was/is preventing it somehow ?
For a great many Europeans the answer to all of these questions is a firm NON.
You and Your fellow Americans always think You know everything. Youre wrong.
We have acted arrogantly, as if we own the world. Its an arrogance that comes in part from a history of looking back on the consequences of our past arrogance and being satisfied with the results.
Your history is actually very short.
Not least of these results is the Strong, Free and Democratic Europe which hates our guts and which would not exist (twice over) were it not for the American desire to remake the world to conform to American values.
Now don't forget that the american civilization would not exist without european immigrants.
If Europe keeps on fighting America, Europe will eventually start winning some battles.
I heard there were some other parties around this table too...
You may destroy American efforts at peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
You must be joking. It is the US which has kept the war between Israeli and palestinians going. Without US support Israeli would have agreed to a Palestinian nation long ago, and that would have soothed the area.
You may prevent the United States from attacking the next Saddam Hussein (can you say Kim Jong Il?).
You think that US is entitled to attack Korea ?
You may create a dominant PRC that doesn't have any reason to care about human rights.
Again, do You really think the US is somehow helping the chinese human rights ?
How ?
If European leaders think that setting up their own root servers or sabotaging a diplomatic accord here or there will cure the Americans of their Arrogance and end American Unilateralism, they fundamentally misunderstand America and the American Spirit.
We have seen that it is "the American Spirit" which allows a coutry to start a war without a reason. Before Bush it was latest done by Hitler and Stalin.
Few Americans know that attacking Iraq was not accepted in ANY other country. Even UK officially supported, the majority of people were against.
Excuse me.
The US and its private companies built and paid for the Internet. Billions were spent on research and development. We've been at it for over 40 years.
The European countries and its private companies built and paid for the US. Billions were spent on development, people, ships, technology, etc. We've been at it for over 500 years.
Essentially, we stole half the world's resources and shipped them to the US. Can we now have them back?
Impressive. I don't think I've ever seen such a one-sided view put so eloquently.
Do Americans think it is a good idea that their government can exercise control over the DNS (even if they haven't done so so far)?
Do Americans think it is a good idea for their government to fund an army that keeps a system of apartheid alive using unlawful violence in illegally occupied territories?
Seriously, I call bullshit on this one the most. It's American money more than anything that's preventing peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Do Americans think that Iraq deserves al-Zarqawi? No? Then why did they allow him in, by removing Saddam in such a braindead way?
Do Americans think the same? Wherever did you get the idea that the US does more about human rights in China than the EU?
Erm, for your information, a great many Europeans don't speak French.
Really, you write pretty well, your thinking is a lot less up to scratch though. Learn to look beyond your local propaganda.
You're right. We have acted arrogantly, as if we own the world. Its an arrogance that comes in part from a history of looking back on the consequences of our past arrogance and being satisfied with the results.
Thats just scary. Satisfied with Vietnam and Korea? Satisfied with Iran? (if America and Britain hadn't installed the Shah over the more democratic government there would have been no Islamic revolution). How about backing brutal regimes like Pinochet or these days Uzbekistan? Hey they may be brutal dictatorships that kill there own people but at least that stops them being socialist/Islamic.
Deciding to join WWII (even if it was late and only after being attacked) only buys so much gratitude. Everyone is very grateful but it was 60 years and you can't expect people to just keep on being grateful and ignoring what happened afterward. America has proved it is happy to screw over other countries when it suits is purpose, and its refusal to join international efforts like Kyoto treaty or the International Criminal Court make people wary.
Not that the the Europeans countries were any better back when they were the main powers, worse probably because they had empires, but I don't think many modern Europeans would be 'satisfied' with, say, the way Africa was carved up.
Nor do I think America arrogance would be "cured" by anything other than when another country (or block) overtakes them economically and maybe militarily. It would be stupid of European politicians to do something to disadvantage Europe just to stick it to the Americans, but its equally stupid for American politicians to unnecessarily antagonise Europeans.
In the case of the Internet, is it possible for other countries to control copies of the roots such that the US could not turn them off, but that wouldn't impact people in the US, or the US control of their own copies. Seems there is room for reasonable compromise here but both sides are being arrogant.
Most of the root servers are outside US. What other coutries want is just a system where one stupid president cannot shut off the whole (or part of) internet in his fight agains "terrorism"
Even if George Bush desperately wanted to immediately shut off the Internet, he couldn't do it. The reason why America created the Internet in the first place was (according to the funders) to create a network that would be robust in the face of nuclear attack. I doubt very much that the present incarnation of the internet achieves this, but I am confident that the Internet as it exists today is robust even if attacked by a whole swarm of pointy eared Texans.
solman: Do Europeans think that Iraq deserves Saddam Hussein?
Maybe we should let the Iraq-people decide?
I think that's what we are doing. The people they elected are virtually unanimous in their sentiment that Saddam Hussein should be executed. I am unaware of any representatives who are in favor of letting him out of prison and approving a constitution that restores his dictatorial powers. Do you believe that there is popular Iraqi support for returning him to power?
You cannot believe that US attacked Iraq because of Iraqians' human rights?
Saddam Hussein's human rights record was derterminative in our decision to invade him. By this I mean that were 2003 Iraq a functioning Democracy that respected human rights, it is an absolute certainty that we would not have invaded Iraq.
Instead, Iraq had one of the most oppressive governments in history. Political opponents were universally tortured and killed. Professional women whose only crime was not being traditional enough were rounded up and beheaded in public by black robed fanatics. People were killed in the middle of the street, and the population was so fearful of the regime that they could be depended on not to openly react to it according to PBS (not exactly a pro-Bush organization). All this from a guy who gassed his own people, came within a year of developing nuclear weapons, and who had absolutely no qualms about invading his neighbors whenever it suited him. It is hard to think of a dictator against whom the use of force was more justified.
It was NOT because of terrorism or WMD, it was NOT because of human rights, it was because of controlling oil reserves.
This is ridiculous. Show me _one_ barrel of oil that the US misappropriated from the Iraqi people since the invasion. Leading up to the war, I suppose that it was reasonable for apprehensive Europeans to believe that the US was doing this for a profit. Now that well over two years have passed and we've taken none of the Iraqi oil for ourselves and we've poured hundreds of billions of dollars into Iraq, this is slander. If you believe that there was ever an angle that would have allowed the US to make a profit off of Iraq, you are divorced from reality. At the very least, if there is any basis at all to this accusation, you should be able to show me the money.
The only profit from Operation Iraqi Freedom is the increased Freedom experienced by millions of Iraqis.
I'm going to ignore most of your comments since they are low content, but let me address this last one:
Few Americans know that attacking Iraq was not accepted in ANY other country.
You haven't met many Americans, have you? Many, if not most Americans know this. We just don't care. In Planet Earth 2005, the US is the only country with the effective ability to discipline a rouge nation. With this power comes responsibility.
We did not use this power in Rwanda when Koffi Annan told the UN troops to sit idly by while 1M were killed. We did not use this power on Iraq in 1998 (when Clinton contemplated an attack after they kicked out the inspectors) and an additonal 700,000 were killed. Finally, in 2003 we did something. Every year between 2003 and who-knows-when, betwen 100,000 and 200,000 innocent people will NOT be killed because we chose to act.
Even if the whole wo
Choice of a DNS root server is not a question that a market gets to decide. Sovereign states do have quite enough legislative and regulatory powers to compel IPS and other DNS users operating within their boarders to use which ever root server the state wants them to use. This is the case now and this will be the case in the future, difference is or might be that unlike now (when everybody uses ICANN's root servers) in the future different states (or more specifically IPS in different states) might use different root servers.
Economically, there is not a single country that the US would be more dependent on than that country is dependent on the US. China might an exception, but the EU certainly in not. However, the US much, much more dependent on the rest of world than the rest of the world is dependent on the US.
In a limited economic war, which the splitting of the Internet essentially would be, the US will lose to the rest of the world. *IF* the rest of the world, or at least most of it, can hold their line and use "the UNInternet" root server, there's not much the US can do but to comply.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
According to that list, the US has a GDP of 11,667,515 million US dollars while the next closest country (Japan) has a GDP of 4,623,398 million US dollars. Coming in third, we have Germany at 2,714,418 US dollars. So, yea, I'm going to say the by far is accurate.
I was not touched there by an angel.