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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.'"
Icann, and you can't.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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
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.
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
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
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
It's defensive maneuvering, in anticipation of the US exerting greater control.
Cuo Bono? Who knows, for now. But as cyberwar becomes a reality, and access to the internet becomes evermore an economic necessity, the EU is not happy with one nation having too much control over teh internets.
Would any nation willing cede control of its highways to another nation? I think not.
So, to answer your question of who benefits:
Potentially, any nation that is not the US. Any company doing internet business within any country not in the US. The politicians, who gain a better public image by standing up to the unpopular US.
If you're looking for corporate profits, I'm sure there are some companies that stand to make some cash. Enough to create a diplomatic crisis? Doubt it.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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.
In some countries, the problem IS that the US "isn't the least bit restrictive". Remember, there are some countries out there that don't have Freedom of Speech, Religion, Protest, Anonymity or many other things. Think of the Great Fire Wall of China for starters. Then there are those that also want to eliminate all the porn on the internet. So yes, I'd say it is about "control", or lack there of.
Someone's going to make bank off this. Politicians are puppets not puppetmasters. Who profits? Follow the money.
Only is some places are Politicians puppets, not all. Tell me Castro is a puppet, or that Stalin was one as well. Money isn't the end all of everything, "power" is. It's just that in some places, money can give power. At best, the only company I can think of to make some money off of this is Cisco, selling more hardware, but probably not as some countries are looking at implementing their own standards that are incompatible with what everyone else uses. Those who provide filtering technologies and fire walls stand to lose a great deal. No nead to filter if the nets are physically seperate. Those are just the major players I can think of.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
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.
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.
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.
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?
Meh, I don't care if they break the internet. I already have several copies of it on CD kindly provided by AOL.
Brazil, responding to ICANN's approval of .xxx domains: "For those that are still wondering what Triple-X means, let's be specific, Mr. Chairman. They are talking about pornography. These are things that go very deep in our values in many of our countries. In my country, Brazil, we are very worried about this kind of decision-making process where they simply decide upon creating such new top-level generic domain names."
This is an officially prepared statement from Brazil's UN rep during a summit about Internet control. This isn't an off the cuff remark by a public official looking for some political points on a TV show somewhere. With that said, take a look at some of these justifcations for wresting control of the internet from ICANN. The key words are "values", "my country" and an over all naive approach to pornography in that a domain name would encourage porn rather than provide a mechanism to limit it to audiences that want it. Right now, you can find anything on the Internet. Anything from forums on Quilting, twins in latex to political freedom for Taiwan sites. This isn't about fear of the US controlling the Internet for some diabolical purpose, it's about other countries implementing some sort of content control.
Also, don't believe for a second that these countries see this as some public service. There's money to be had. UN administration taxes for the win!
"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.
You really ahven't been following your government recently, have you? Have a look at the new FBI stance on porn; it's considered a higher priority than finding terrorists. I kid you not, go google; you'll find some enlightening statement from the new head honcho's.
Also, while you're at it, google for 'free speech zones', as pertaining to protesters in the US.
No matter what the supremes have done in the past (and there is none, with the new appointee(s)), you're losing it in the US. Just ask the guy who was against the Iraq war in a red state; just because it's not written into the law but enforced by your neighbours (who'll beat you up for wearing anti-bush t-shirts), it's still censorship.
"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."
No, it's not obvious. What is obvious is that it's a power grab. 'Why' is open to speculation, but I'd say 'because they don't want a bullying, uni-lateraly acting, militaristic, way-too-opertunistic and aggressive nation headed by an illiterate imbecile to make decisions and exert undue influence on a system which by now is quite important to nation's economies' is much more likely than your, quite mistaken, belief that Europe is living in censorship.
Which is kind of odd, when you live in a nation which fines people up to half a million for saying 'fuck' on radio, and a nation cries out in uproar when a breast is kinda-sorta-not-really shown on tv during of all things a football match.
However, if by cencorship, you mean 'looking at intelligent design and deciding we don't want 'magic' taught in science classes'...well, then you're right.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
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
The FBI considers the obsenity task force to be a high priority.
In my opinion this is a mistake, but please look up the difference between porn and obsenity. You can start here here
Obsenity by definition is neither porn nor protected speech.
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.
This only proves that the USA has a better record on the subject compared to China - which hardly anyone disputes. His point, however, was that the USA is certainly not the "most free" country in that respect either.
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?
...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
That's exactly the point. As obscenity is defined in the US, it depends on the local community where it is provided, how this works on the Internet isn't entirely clear. But I would say that on average, the threshold in Europe is a bit higher than in the US, especially since the TheoCons have gained more influence.
There is one example listed in the Wikipedia article, another one is of the guy who runs nowthatsfuckedup.com. He has just been arrested for obscenity. Interestingly, his site also shows images provided by soldiers in Iraq in exchange for free access, some of which put a somewhat unfavourable light on war.
The current US administration has a history of acting unilaterally, and that of course raises some doubts if it is sensible to let them be in control of what the world has become dependent on. I realise the US has a high standard for free-speech, but it isn't unlimited, either. There's also the issue with the US' weird obsession with patents and strange understanding of copyright, which could have unpredictable consequences.
So, instead of leaving one country in control, it would be good to give control to one international body that guarantees the Internet can not be affected by individual countries' decisions. That body doesn't have to be the UN, but could be something completely new. Maybe it would even be an opportunity to get a "no-censorship rule" into its charta, since the US is still in the position to make demands that have to be met in order for them to let go of control without making much fuzz about it. That would also act as a safeguard against future changes of the US' stand on this.
... 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.
Because no matter how much we pay lip service to the idea that our values are for us and their values are for them, we don't really believe it. Deep down inside, we believe that everyone should agree with us, unless they're stupid or evil.
This is the general case. In some specific cases, we're willing to overlook the wrong values of others, but in other specific cases we're not.
(The "we" is applicable to anybody.)
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.
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.
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.