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EU Claims Internet Could Fall Apart Next Month

Posted by Zonk on from the seems-a-little-sky-is-falling dept.

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.'"

7 of 1,401 comments (clear)

  1. Fall Apart? by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  2. Just to be clear by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The European commission is warning that if a deal cannot be reached at a meeting in Tunisia next month the internet will split apart.

    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.

  3. A few questions by mykdavies · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  4. Re:What of pornography? by jandrese · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer that the reason behind this EU and UN grab for internet power is in order to suppress speech they disagree with. If not that, then why bother?
    You don't think it's possible that these guys are just jealous that they don't control it and want it just because they don't have it?

    Besides, most people are reasonably happy with ICANN. I wish they were going after Verisign and the root certs instead, those are the real bastards.
    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
  5. Poli-ticks == multiple bloodsuckers by JohnQPublic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    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 .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.

  6. Re:What of pornography? by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Seems to me it's more an issue of the rest of the world not trusting the US to act honourably in perpetuity. As a lot of the international economy now depends on the internet in one way or another, other countries don't want the US to be in full control of deciding who goes where/knows what on the internet. Imagine, if you will, that Iran controlled the root servers. Would people in the US trust them? Now recall that there are laws on the books in the US which allow various Federal agencies to access/modify data on the ICANN servers and forbid them from notifying anyone about it. See why the EU is worried?

    However, this is all academic. It's easy enough to set up your own root servers and just peer into the ICANN ones, append all .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .etc entries found there with .us, and go from there. Anyone outside the US then just uses slashdot.org.us instead of slashdot.org, and life goes on as normal. Just like with telephone country codes.

  7. Re:Free(er) Speech by kaffiene · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Jesus christ, plenty of the world has equal or better free speech laws than the US - New Zealand, Australia, most of Europe.

    Here in NZ, we didn't require the Black Eyed Peas to rename their song "Don't Phunk With my Heart", we don't have a corronary when a breast is exposed on TV (I mean, for fuck's sake!). We have adverts using sware words and lewd humour that wouldn't be played in the US. Actually, the Black Eyed Peas were complaining how conservative the US is in comparison to places like NZ when they were here recently.

    You Americans are so blinded by your own hype you think the entire rest of the world is some 3rd world dictatorship. Grow up, actually LOOK at the rest of the world and realise it doesn't match your cardboard cutout preconceptions. The average US slashbot view of the rest of the world is laughably naive.