Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Icann, and you can't.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Only $14.99 on Pay-Per-View. Check your local listings for details.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
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.
====
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.
But... what will all the Slashdotters do with their time? Surely you can't expect us all to... *gulp* leave our computers?
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.
...a whole new definition to the term "netslpit"...
There will be Internets after all.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
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 would require everyone in the EU to reconfigure the nameservers to point at a different set of root servers overnight. It's just not going to happen. Speaking as someone in the EU running a number of nameservers I'm not going to do this if it effects my ability to resolve domain names correctly. I might, overtime, add some additional EU nameservers if they are none disruptive but this will be a gradual process.
----
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.
They will usher the bureaucrats out to the gallows and the hole problem will be solved.
:-)
I assume by this you mean filling said holes with bureaucrats after they are finished with Project Gallows.
Happily, this may also reduce required funds for road maintenience so it's really a win-win.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Because they US can't be trusted not to destroy it.....
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 : )
I assume that it's mostly the French govt. pushing this. Perhaps they could develop their own alternative to the Internet. It could be run by the French telecom which could use telecom infrastructure and distribute some kind of network appliance to all of their customers. Oh, wait ...
[Insert pithy quote here]
Film at 11. USENET cliche by 1989. EU resolution in 2006... 2017? 2038?
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.
Why not just setup contry-controlled 'root' DNS for each country-specific suffix? Leave the incumbent com/net/gov/mil/us to the US. So instead of being configured with a list of a dozen or so root servers today, each DNS will have to know of 100+. I don't think it's a big problem.
.iq (heh, sorry, ok, i'm leaving now)
P.S. I hope Iraq has enough iq to manage
FTA:
The EU plan was applauded by states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, leading the former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt to express misgivings on his weblog: "It seems as if the European position has been hijacked by officials that have been driven by interests that should not be ours.
"We really can't have a Europe that is applauded by China and Iran and Saudi Arabia on the future governance of the internet. Even those critical of the United States must see where such a position risks taking us."
As I've said before, I'll be happy if the issue of IP address allocation is handled by the ITU. DNS should not be under the control of a central organization.
Notice that in the U.S. you are permitted to use any DNS you may like? Sure the root DNS server is Icann moderated, but you can select anything?
Anyone believe Iran (I'm 1/2 Persian) will allow that? Or China?
Or that China will permit a Taiwanese TLD in the New, UN-moderated, EU-sponsored DNS governing association?
Places like S. Arabia, China, and Iran can't wait for DNS to be controlled by the UN, because all kinds of silly nonsense happens in UN politics. Although China may have its sights set on the RoC, as of know, its insane to posit that Taiwan isn't an independant nation.
Yet the UN does not recognize it as such.....
Just my 2 cents.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
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.
If (and there is a snow balls chance in Hell the US will give up that kind of countrol) the rest of the world (!US) gets control, the US will almost ceartainly maintain control of what it has now and will simply ignore the other DNS/IP allocation systems. Companies that sell in Europe and China will be foreced to operate on both networks (IP/DNS allocation zones for lack of a better term) which is possible with some technical magic. It will hurt reliability, profit and useability.
In the end, this will be a disaster, but more so for people outside the US and companies that want to sell in multiple countries. The US internet will continue to function and I will have access ot 90% of the stuff I want/need as it lives on servers here in the US. I'd wager a couple of countries see the light either before the split or right after and rejoin us. For all its bitching, I bet Canada doesn't want Iran and China to have ANY control over anything it needs. That is what they are asking for though.
One of the other big loosers will be scientific collaberations (like those CERN runs to analyze collider data) because ALOT of their computing power is in the US.
Spell check? Why bother. That is what grammer/spelling Nazi freaks who waiste band width posting "spell right" are for.
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.
ICANN does not control IP allocation at all. IP blocks are allocated by IANA to regional internet registries (ARIN for the Americas, RIPE for Europe and APNIC for Asia to name a few). The regional registries then allocate smaller blocks to organizations in their area.
Routing is different still. No registry guarantees the IP blocks they allocate will be globally routable. Most network providers have their own criteria for determining which networks they will accept routes for.
So, as you can see, ICANN has no part in the allocation or routing of IP addresses.
If it means spammers in China, Russia, or anywhere else US anti-spam laws don't apply are using a separate Internet than the US then why wait a whole month? Let's split the Internet now.
Erik http://yakko.cs.wmich.edu/~rattles
Six month's since the Internet fragmented into a thousand separate networks, companies across the globe report an astounding 600% increase in productivity on average. Said one spokeperson, "Not only have computer virus infections fallen to an all time low, we're saving over 98% of our bandwidth costs. Plus, we have so much budget left over each month from our IT operations, we're rolling out a profit sharing plan to all our employees." Numerous businesses report skyrocketing demand. For example, print media said they've seen an explosion in demand for magazines. Of course, all is not good news. Some technology companies have reported a drastic drop in demand for many of their products. "We are having a real tough quarter," said one Symantec sales manager, on condition of anonymity. Cisco also reported much less demand for it's high end networking boxes. "We can't give 'em away. I've never seen anything like it."
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
They are trying to act as brokers between this position, which is not in the interest of the EU, and the maverick US position, which flatly disclaims any notion of international coordination on these issues. Repeat after me: the EU is not trying to split the internet, they are trying to maintain the current cohesion.
They are a broker between two arguments, and should be applauded as such, rather than vilified and slandered as 'splitters' or malcontents.
'The EU does not intend to scrap Icann. It would continue in its current technical role.
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.
"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.
Rather she talked of a "model of cooperation", of an international forum to discuss the internet.'
[Taken from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4327928.stm
"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
A confederation of disgruntled DNS servers, of which OpenNIC is one, has been running an alternative namespace to ICANN for a long time now. Looks like opennic.org and opennic.net have been taken over by evil cybersquatters in the ICANN namespace -- but point to opennic.unrated.net and expand your DNS horizon...
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.
If EU/UN/!ICANN controls "Teh Intarweb" (DNS), then they can tax it. Anybody up for a "Universal Service Charge" attached to every domain name registration and lookup?
Lucky for us, this whole thing is retarded, and we'll just keep our resolvers pointed where we want while anybody else does fuck all for what we care.
I don't understand the desire to make this all EU politicized... Each country has been given its own TLD (.uk, .au, .fr, .jp, ...) doesn't the governments of these countries have DNS administration authority over those domains? They can do what they like and everyone else (sane countries that support the DNS root) can just append the appropriate suffix to those names... France want to give www.ebay.com.fr to a site talking about the evils of selling Nazi items then let them do so. If French residents want to set their DNS root to a French server they can query www.ebay.com and get what the rest of the world would call www.ebay.com.fr and if they really want to go to ww.ebay.com the French domain name server can map the global DNS Space back into .us (actually .us.fr !!!) so that www.ebay.com.us.fr = www.ebay.com.
DNS works by delegating authority over domains to domain administrators. The only special thing about the root is that we all agree on it being the root.
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
What is going to happen when the EU and a large number of countries splinter the Internet because the US refuses to release sole control of the primary DNS servers?
Sure, customers in those countries may be upset over not being able to access their favourite US-based websites, but how upset do you think the large US multinational corporations are going to be when the lose their entire overseas web customer base overnight?
I think the EU is playing it smart, betting on the fact that the buck has such powerful sway in the US that if the government doesn't agree, they will be made to in very short order when the large US corporations start pressing to get their customers back.
This is not a sig.
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"
For future Europeans who might be reading these comments on a mirror or cache, you can get to Slashdot at one of the following addresses:
http://66.35.250.150/
http://66.35.250.151/
Good. No more Russian spam clogging my inbox.
No more korean "I love you" virius's taking down US systems.
No more Chinese WOW SUPER-PLAYERS online 24/7.
No more Alkaida using the internet to coordinate terrorism.
and BEST of all, all CS/IT jobs going offshore (Tech support by some Indian Dude) will be forced to come back to the states because they can't access the US corp servers for customer support info.
WOO HOO!
*hello, mai nam es i-keed, ann I wan you to know I amm joken.*
Sounds like they are f'in themselves, while WE reap the benefits.
Let the lame leg cut itself off! No more Gout!
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.
I'm glad that porn is completely legal here. I mean, it's not like Max Hardcore just got raided, or that Red Rose Stories got seized and shutdown by the feds, despite being a not-for-profit textfile archive.
Oh, shit. Wait. Never mind.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Yep - half of the internet content is not in your language.
But don't be afraid - most of the internet content is not in mine anyway - so I adapted and learned to read and write in other languages.
Which obviously helped me a lot in getting a bigger view of the world.
Have you ever been to wikipedia? Look at the main page at http://www.wikipedia.org/ and note that there are some languages there. And some content. The German has half of the content of the English. If I sum up the other languagees that I can read I almost come to the number of English pages.
Just an example.
Mark
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.
I personally wouldn't mind having 2 internets. We could (well, probably not, but it'd be interesting) patch up the current one and make it much simpler, then build a brand new internet for all the geeks (with IPv6, so we can have our toasters on it as well). Then we could enjoy a really decent network.
Of course it's not going to happen, but it'd be pretty cool. I imagine they would run on the same layer 1 hardware, but be separated in some way. Any idea on how this would be deployed?
43rd Law of Computing:
Anything that can go wr
fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core Dumped
Al Gore gave us the Internet...and he can just as easily take it away.
Don't taunt the Gore.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Eternal Battle for the Domination of the Internet begins.
.com domain.
Random target selection: the
Value: one billion, eight hundred seventy million dollars.
Play.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
What does China have to do with anything? China is not in the EU. I'm quite sure had I made that post from the UK, or France, or the Netherlands or Germany that there would be no problem.
Sounds like you are a "True Patriot" who can't stand some constructive criticism of his nation. I love the USA and that is why I still live here. I feel it can be saved from what I see as an attack by irrational religionists.
Blar.
Meh, I don't care if they break the internet. I already have several copies of it on CD kindly provided by AOL.
"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.
I've often wanted to send a Nigerian an email that goes a little something like this:
Hello Sir/Madam,
I am writing to you in request for some assistance. My name is John Smith and I work for the US Treasury Department as a Foreign Aid Director. A few years ago there was a government plan to hold aside some money to help poorer nations in Africa, particularly Nigeria. Over the years, this fund has grown to nearly $300 Million US dollars. Unfortunately the money cannot be released due to bureaucratic red tape. It seems in order to release the money, a release tax must be paid to the US taxpayers.
The reason I come to you is that the man in charge of this fund Mike Hunt has recently died, and this account has come under my control. It is to the best of my knowledge that no one else knows about this money. All I ask is that you help me with the release tax and act as the Nigerian Foreign Aid representative. Of the $300 Million US Dollars, you will receive 25% for your assistance.
Please contact me as soon as you can, as I am worried the accountants are getting close to finding this money. If you cannot help, please forward this request to your friends.
Sincerely yours,
John Smith
Live forever, or die trying.
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
They require the www prefix: www.opennic.unrated.net.
That it was designed to fall apart and still have all the individual pieces still work independently.
You used to be right. From Red Herring:
The U.S. was responsible for 26.5 percent of the all spam trapped in Sophos' networks between April and September 2005.
Still, there is some good news: this is significantly lower than the 41.5 percent chalked up during the same period last year.
South Korea ranked No. 2 on the list with a share of 19.73 percent of all spam. Meanwhile, China ranked No. 3 with 15.7 percent. But the Middle Kingdom nearly doubled its share in the spamming market.
So the US is cutting back and other countries are surging.
www.joshferguson.org
www.root-servers.org/204.152.184.66
There's nothing forcing you to use *their* servers, yet.
Although the internet has always been about freedom of choice the fact that DNS has been under the iron fist of one entity has been a big reason the naming structure HASN'T collapsed. This is what we call a natural monopoly. It doesn't make sense to have a redundant, fail-over, heirarchichal planetwide system run by multiple independently controlled entities. It doesn't really work well for IP routing *COUGH*COGENT*COUGH* and it certainly wouldn't for DNS.
If multiple regulatory comissions in charge of multiple root structures were the ideal we would already have it. (IMHO) Still, I seriously doubt ISPs will deliberately segment their *customers* from *services* they are no doubt expecting regardless of this regulatory stupidity. SLA's/guarantees/contracts for uptime, intelligent Network Admins/Engineers and business decision makers won't let this happen anyways.
There is one thing that could slaughter this... And that would be for China to do the equivilant: "iptables -A FORWARD -p udp --DPORT 53 -j BLOCK" on their "great firewall" network. If they blocked DNS at their perimeter and only provided the *New* rootservers as alternatives things would certainly break. Then again, maybe it'd be good for the rest of the world's spam filters if China dropped off the map.
The whole situation stinks of personal motives. Whoever proposed this was surely green, in regard to the internet, or with envy. It doesn't make sense to do so for the greater good of the internet as a whole. But that doesn't mean there couldn't be potential for certain individuals to profit greatly in the event of a major shift.
To stem any argument that I am doing this out of pure selfish models or that "if it isn't broke, don't fix it", I am doing this for the children. And the children's children - all the way to infinity. So while everyone else wants to get control for material reasons, I am doing it for the children. I am THINKING about the children.
So please everyone, be the first to welcome me as your new internets owning, children remembering, overlord.
Did I mention when I control the internets EVERYONEs posts will be 'first posts?
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.
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
I think you need to back that statement up with a source.
http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/index.lasso
Count the number of times "United States" shows up in that list, relative to other countries.
For those who didn't get that, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
+Pete
Score:-1, Funny
Perhaps then I (in Germany) would never again have to see all that spam from the US to the US (can be identified by US cultural assumptions like "everyone has a credit card",...)
Linux is not Windows
You can safely ignore it. The EU can't dismiss ICANN and it can't 'break' the Internet for US users, or anyone else that chooses to ignore this nonsense.
You have a file with a list of root servers. Europe can't make you change it in any way. Europe can't shut down the servers in that list.
They could monkey around with networks that exist within their sovereign control. For example; they could mandate that their ISPs block access to ICANN root servers in favor of their own. Unless the new servers were somehow capable of emulating the content of ICANN servers almost perfectly (in which case ICANN is effectively still in control,) this won't happen because their own subjects would revolt. The same is true for practically anything else they consider attempting; if the EU mob wakes up one morning and the Internet is broke, the EU mob will un-break it rapidly.
Perhaps the ultimate solution is to create resolvers that can handle alternative collections of root servers. Assign weights to each collection and attempt resolution starting with the highest weighted set. Obviously you'll want ICANN servers at the top, and any others you choose to include after. Iran or China can then establish all the roots they want and you can include or exclude them as necessary.
As far as whether any of the EU's concerns have a basis is reality, here is all you need to know:Wave 'hi' to Hamas, resolving via US DOC funded ICANN roots.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
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."
?=(
I don't understand this comment. Do you mean that there are places where people don't have credit cards? How do you pay for the gasoline for your SUVs?
The fact is that it has done a DAMN good job thus far managing DNS, and despite some hiccups, the First Admendment is still in affect here. Freedom of speech must be absolute short of causing immediate physical threat to people like shouting FIRE in the theater. The only way not to start down the slippery slope of censorship, especially when it's as easy as changing a DNS entry, is to not take that first step.
And who exactly is it that wants control of DNS? France, so they can shut down Nazi websites and threaten E-Bay into removing WWII memorabilia listings? China, so they can be absolutely sure that their population is ignorant of anything the Glorious People's Revolution doesn't want them to know about (like say, Tinamannen Square or the Great Leap Backwards)? Iran and Saudi Arabia, so they can block out the evil west and keep their people from finding out that all Westerners are not, in fact, evil blood-crazed monsters who want to destroy them? Cuba and North Korea, so they can block the websites of the Evil Capitalist Exploiters of the Common Man?
In other words, politicians whose agenda involves using DNS to censor the Internet and pervert it into nothing more than a state-controlled interactive TV. Say what you will, but so far the United States has done a remarkably good, fair, and unbiased job of handling DNS. Those who want to take control hate the fact that it's been fair and unbiased because they want to use it against their 'opponents.'
Dear North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, France, China, Russia and co: Leave your meatspace BS in meatspace. I refuse to let your petty bureaucratic empire-building destroy the greatest medium of information exchange ever to exist.
The latest issue of The Economist had an interesting article on this. A couple key quotes:
"The EU proposal, announced by Britain, which currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, was intended as a compromise between the UN supporters and America. It would create a new organisation to set policies over distributing routing numbers, creating new domains and the like. Because of its role as chair, Britain, usually America's closest ally on internet issues, had to stay neutral and could not beat back calls by Denmark, France, Spain and the Netherlands for greater government influence over the internet. After the announcement, Brazilian and Iranian delegates rushed to congratulate British officials, whose faces dropped when they realised the EU policy was being lauded by America's loudest opponents."
"However, the disingenuousness of the position was made clear during the meeting last month in Geneva. Some countries demanded that groups representing business and public-interest causes be thrown out of the room when governments drafted documents for the summit in November. In one instance, delegates from China and Brazil actually pounded on tables to drown out a speaker from industry."
"The good news from the UN meetings is that governments increasingly understand the importance of technology to society. The bad news is that the internet risks becoming suffocated in their embrace."
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
A Tale of Three Brothers
Bob was a happy-go-lucky guy. He was built rather large, but had a boyish charm that all the girls loved. Bob had his own farm which was on the opposite side of a lake from the farms of his brothers, Pierre and Wolfgang.
Pierre and Wolfgang were older than Bob and a bit less work-oriented. While Bob was out plowing his fields, Pierre would nap. While Bob was harvesting his crop, Wolfgang was either drinking beer or racing his Mercedes down the highway trying to pick up girls. Because of their bad habits, their crops often withered in the fields, but if they came up short of cash or food, Bob would row across the lake and bring his brothers whatever they needed.
Sometimes Pierre and Wolfgang would get into terrible fights and Bob would row across the lake, split them apart, force them to make up, and then dutifully clean up the mess the fight had made. Then he’d make sure they were comfortable and fed, and row back to his farm on his side of the lake.
One day after plowing, Bob invented the internet. It helped him run his farm better and was mighty entertaining in the evenings. Bob organized his internet so things were nice and manageable, and all of his addresses and servers worked properly.
Bob wanted to share his new invention with his brothers, so he strung cables across the lake to his brothers’ houses, and told them what to do to get on his system. He added more servers to his basement just to handle the expected load and paid the electricity bills all by himself.
Pierre and Wolfgang started happily using Bob’s internet and even added their own websites after Bob showed them how to do it.
During this time, Wolfgang and Pierre started getting along a little better and would even visit each other in the evenings and have a glass of wine together. However, the animosity they had harbored all their lives was just below the surface and sometimes after drinking together they would start to direct that animosity towards Bob, since he wasn’t there and fighting among themselves wasn’t fun anymore.
They had come to resent the fact that Bob did so much for them. It made them feel stupid and lazy and less like men. They began to criticize the way Bob dressed, walked, talked, etc., and after all “mama always did love him more than us”.
Because of all the ill feelings they were building up inside them themselves, they began to fear that Bob would get wind of it. At most times, their drunken tirades against him were drowned out by the wind, but sometimes on a clear cold night their voices would carry across the lake and they were sure Bob had heard some of the bitter things they had said.
In the meantime, Pierre and Wolfgang had become very fond of their time on the internet. They became afraid that Bob would grow angry with them and cut them off or restrict their access.
Neither older brother had the time or money to invent their own internet, so they sat one night by the fire and came up with a plan to steal Bob’s internet. “How do we get his servers out of the basement?” asked Pierre. “We don’t” replied Wolfgang. “Those servers are too heavy and they use too much electricity”. “We have to figure out a way to leave them there so that we control them and he still pays for the upkeep”.
“I have an idea” said Pierre. “Father always liked us the best and he lives next door to Bob. If he tells Bob to give him the servers, Bob will have to do it because he will not be able to disobey Father”.
“Yes” replied Wolfgang “and Father can order him to sign over his basement to us, so that we may come and go as we please”. “ I bet Bob won’t be so happy-go-lucky now. And if he refuses to dress like us, and think like us, and talk like us.......well...... we can cut off his internet access until he does!”. “That’ll bring the big oa
...opening your web browser will result in seeing this message:
The internet is over.
Thank you for playing.
A winner has been declared! Congratulations to:
The Star Wars Kid
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.
Your link shows the ACLU maintaining the distinction between, on one hand, free speech relating to an illegal act and, on the other hand, the act itself (and the horrible outcome). I understand that their position is that once this distinction is lost, the right to free speech itself is significantly eroded. The ACLU said regarding this case "Under the First Amendment, there are no illegal ideas. Those who commit illegal acts can be punished for wrongful conduct, but the expression of even offensive ideas is protected by our constitution."
Given that this case was reported in 2000, perhaps you could let us know what the court decided?
The world has changed and we all have become metal men.
You must remember, we don't assume that everyone has a credit card. We assume that every poor sap that believes everything he reads in a spam email has a credit card.
Video Production Support
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.
That reminds me of a documentary on american dogs: some have their cemetary, their family doctors (with weekly visits), their own manicurists, special trainers to keep them in good shape, and birth/death certificate with special social numbers... want me to tell about majordomes and houses (bigger than my dad's) as well as their own catholic church?
Bye-bye, Google, Yahoo! and Lycos. Bye-bye, Ebay. Bye-bye Slashdot.
Last time I tried, google.ch, yahoo.be, Lycos.fr, ebay.it worked very well. And they probably can live without slashdot. And kernel.org wouldn't be missed either, because they have their own vanilla kernel mirrors.
Plus, let's not forget that if the EU built their own Internet, that would mean that they wouldn't be able to access the rest of the world's Internet - unless they connected to our Internet.
I don't see your point, a cable being naught but a cable. They could certainly well connect to asia and africa without being connected to US (filtering if that's what's taken).
Otherwise I could register netraven5000.com on the US Internet, and someone in Europe could register it on the EU Internet.
RTFA.
Thanks for trying. Please come again.
Of Code And Men
This could be the best thing that happened to the internet. With no more Eurotrash suggesting how inferior the American government is and practicing their english skills by denouncing George Bush on random forums, we'll have that much more time to spend inventing things for Europeans to liberalize. It's a win win situation!
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
"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
And you can.... just as soon as we annex whatever country it is you live in.
THE EUROPEANS (who are the chief architects of this potential schism) are doing exactly what they were doing when they began construction of their own GPS system even though it is completely redundant.
THIS is occurring for exactly the same reasons as Americans like to argue "makes sense".
NATIONAL SECURITY.
You can't discuss what is going on with ICANN without considering the larger global politics first.
The US generally does a good job of maintaining free speech on the Internet. However, leaving primary control of ICAAN to the US obviously puts other nations national security at risk. Apparently it seems America has no problem dismissing international input so the world now (rightly) lives in fear of who the US might pro-actively invade next (Syria, Iran? Why not try North Korea? Oh wait they can defend themselves). It 80 plus years of Soviet power taught the world anything-- it is that freedom cannot be imposed. It must be a volutary decision to work. American did not invent freedom nor did American impose freedom on Russians by "winning" the cold war. (The Russians would have nuked them if they had tried.)
They simply chose freedom because they saw their system sucked.
However America seems to think everything it does is "right" which is clearly not the case. Had the US stopped at Afghanistan then this may have been a non-issue but America chose to alienate the rest of the world by unilaterally invading you-know-who.
Our governments (including the US) appear set on creating a new cold war. However this time it seems like it may be the US versus the rest of the world as they represent the invaders. Ironically this from a nation that used to have high moral ideals and helped found the United Nations. Incidentally FDR coined the word "United Nations" because he believed it was a great idea to resolve disputes with international legitimacy even though the world was filled with Nazi's and Stalinists at the time.
It isn't the first time America has tried to go it alone. Check out what happened the last time some of your citizens suggested isolationism was a good idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First
America is a pretty nice country but not as nice as it used to be. Don't blame all the citizens for their distorted image of reality though. There is serious manipulation going on with the mass media that is distorting truth similar to what the Chinese do-- but with different people at the controls. For instance all 170+ Fox news outlets came out in favor of war in Iraq-- this despite the fact a healthy percentage of your population disagreed. In other words-- the main media is currently heavily controlled by powerful business factions that let Americans see what they want them to see while playing violins and waving flags to manipulate emotions.
There is no question that America is the single most powerful nation on the Earth. However there already exist nations on earth where the citizens are freer, safer, and live longer. Furthermore China is set to surpass everyone economically within the next couple of decades with the option (at their discretion) to dominate militarily as well. Chinese citizens may not be free but it seems likely they will be rich.
The cold war is over but Americans still compare the rest of the world to that of failed third world nations. I can assure you that citizens of the first world nations have all the amenities you have and many of their average folk are starting to have even more. I've been through Western Europe and a number of US states to validate that most other nations don't have nearly as many trailer parks or slums like America. And despite all the gibberish about superior freedoms---they seem to be freer as their governments don't nearly spy on or arrest their citizens with nearly the frequency of the America state.
Putting aside th
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.
.com) they all have to go to a common server to process the transaction: Again that's run by ICANN's contractor.
That doesn't work. The joker gets played when you try to "go on from there".
The first time the ICANN and the UN separately assign "new-domain.com" to different customers, both new customers are broken.
When they assign the same block of IP numbers to two different customers they break, not just the namespace, but the routing tables. At that point the ISPs MUST cut the net apart (in at least that IP range) to insure packets get through.
And heaven help innovation if they both assign, say, the same new port number to different services or the same new protocol number to different protocols. B-(
The point of the ICANN is NOT to run the root servers.
The point is that certain identifiers on the internet ("Assigned Names and Numbers") must be unique. (The root servers just publish their decisions on the domain namespace.)
Assigning unique identifiers pretty much requires a singular authority to make the indivisible transactions. A hierarchy has been established so some of the large, busy namespaces can be divvied up into chunks that can be administered separately. But somebody has to administer the bottom-layer chunk and right now that's whatever contractor is deligated by ICANN (Network Solutions Inc.). And while multiple registrars are allowed to hand out names in some chunks of the namespace (such as
Even if you tried to solve this distributed update problem with something like a byzantine generals algorithm, somebody has to decide who are the members of the authoritative set of byzantine generals. Oops! Back to square one.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.
This is about nothing if not battling the American arrogance.
This part is absolutely correct. Whether we're talking about forking the root servers, negotiating peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, or removing Saddam Hussein, the primary European concern is battling American arrogance.
I understand why Europeans feel this way. When you encounter somebody who is wildly successful and totally full of himself, it is only natural to want to knock him down a peg.
The question is, what price is Europe willing to pay for this?
Do Europeans think it is a good idea to fork the root servers?
Do Europeans think it was a good idea for Chirac to encourage Arafat to walk away from the Paris accords in 2000?
Do Europeans think that Iraq deserves Saddam Hussein?
Do Europeans think that a strong PRC without human rights reforms is a good thing?
For a great many Europeans the answer to all of these questions is a firm NON.
The European response in each case is that those Arrogant Selfish Americans are acting as if they own the World, the Internet, or the Middle East. "We don't disagree with their goal, just the way they go about it."
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.
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.
Europeans Beware!!!
If Europe keeps on fighting America, Europe will eventually start winning some battles.
You may fork the Internet.
You may destroy American efforts at peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
You may prevent the United States from attacking the next Saddam Hussein (can you say Kim Jong Il?).
You may create a dominant PRC that doesn't have any reason to care about human rights.
Europe has to decide which European values can be sacrificed on the altar of sticking it to the Americans, and which European values must be upheld, even if it means tolerating American Hubris.
I know this much:
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.
Phones - Johann Philipp Reis, Germany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Reis
Cars - Gottlieb Daimler, Germany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottlieb_Daimler
The use and control of electricity - Alessandro Volta, Italy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Volta
e=mc2 - Albert Einstein. Germany/Switzerland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_einstein
Food not spoiling (refridgeration) - Linde, Germany (among others, also many inventors from the U.S.). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerators
Planes - Clement Ader, France. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Ader ; Karl Jatho, Germany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroplane
Dan.
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?
>The US has the largest econonmy in the world by far
"By far"?
List of countries by GDP.
I don't think "by far" means what you think it means.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Perhaps I'm missing your point. The link you provided shows the US with 1/4 of the world's GDP, closely followed by an unranked European Union, presumably because the EU is a collection of 25 countries. The next closest, Japan, has a little less than half our GDP.
Was the parent poster wrong?
--trb
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.