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Senator Wants to Keep U.N. Away From the Internet
Martin Boleman writes "ZDNet reports that Sen. Norm Coleman, a Republican from Minnesota, said his nonbinding resolution would protect the Internet from a takeover by the United Nations that's scheduled to be discussed at a summit in Tunisia next month. "The Internet is likely to face a grave threat, If we fail to respond appropriately, we risk the freedom and enterprise fostered by this informational marvel and end up sacrificing access to information, privacy and protection of intellectual property we have all depended on." he said in a statement."
Norm Coleman? Is that the same Norm Coleman that got bitch-slapped by George Galloway?
You're using her as bait, Master!
Norm Coleman is my Senator, and I must say that I have been pleased with his approach to consumer rights and technology in general. He's also a supporter of HR 1201, the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act of 2005 . While people may disagree with him, I definitely think that he's making an attempt to look out for the best interests of technological advancement with his constituents in mind, and not a corporate pocketbook.
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Seriously, is DNS control even necessary? My 'utopian' internet future doesn't see much need for DNS. Bit-torrent doesn't need it, Google lets me find information anywhere without needing to remember domain names, and portable bookmarks make my life simple.
Are you kidding?
- Most BT torrents reference trackers by domain name. Of course this could change, but existing torrents would break instantly if DNS went down.
- Google links pages by domain names when they have them. They might be able to reindex everything by IP address, but it would certianly be nontrivial. Also, I'll bet you load Google via its google.com domain name and not by its IP address.
- I'd also wager that over 95% of your bookmarks link domain names instead of IP addresses. Expect every one of them to break if DNS were to suddenly disappear.
DNS will never go away simply because business don't want to put raw, hard to remember IP addresses on advertisements when they can put www.mcdonalds.com instead.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Plus every website using NameVirtualHost or equivalent to share the same IP with other websites would become inaccessible, whether you know the IP or not.
Beside for finding a server IP dns names can be usefull for a lot of stuffs :
...of course if one day the IPv6 rolls in, it'll be easier to have multiple IPs assigned to a single server (one for each website).
..of course with IPv6 this may become less a problem.
- providing load balancing.
By the fact they can point to different IP each time.
You can have a single domain name like "wikipedia.org" or "google.*" or "pool.ntp.org" pointing to numerous servers accross the globe and thus distibute the load.
Old way (providing a list of mirrors) requires the server the contains the mirror list to be able to sustain connextion from ALL users. And adds a cumbersome step to the process.
- server co-sharing.
A server is usually referred by a single IP addresse.
Assigning multiple name to the same server enables you to have different websites depending on used servername.
Most of the cheap server solution uses this.
- dynamic IP
dynip.org and such. (see problems with load-balancing vs. on-line lists above)
- DNS used for everything else, including kitchen sink.
DNS are also used for listing Spammers,
listing botnets and other black-lists,
listing E164 number to VoIP maps,
what ever else.
DNS are often used as convenient lists, with standart interface.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
the dmca also PROTECTS consumers... by limiting our access to our data and our devices. the clear skies initiative PROTECTS the environment... by making government inspections into private self-inspections. the no child left behind PROTECTS our children... by creating a hole in the education budget with an unfunded mandate. the patriot act PROTECTS our precious freedom... by ripping holes in the constitution. operation iraqi freedom PROTECTS iraqis... by bombing them. Why is it that whenever I hear the 'pubs talk about PROTECTING something, I start to worry about whatever it is they want to PROTECT? Perhaps PROTECT is actually some kind of acronym equivalent to "Drop your pants and grab your ankles." The Orwellian-ness of it all is excitingly terrifying. But, yes, by all means, let's PROTECT the internet. Is anyone thinking that maybe the gov't will start PROTECTING us from the terrorist content on the internet, the same way China does for their citizens?
Technically, GTA San Andreas has yet to be censored at all. It's still for sale. The issue was that it was rated improperly by the (volunteer) ratings board, and it had to be re-rated before it could hit store shelves again. No censorship there.
"Me? Lady, I'm your worst nightmare -- a pumpkin with a gun."
My 'utopian' internet future doesn't see much need for DNS. Bit-torrent doesn't need it, Google lets me find information anywhere without needing to remember domain names, and portable bookmarks make my life simple.
DNS makes the Internet easy to use. How many external IP addresses can you recite from memory? When we moveto IPV6 addresses, will you remember an address like "2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334/64"?
Google DOES make use of DNS names-- it's in the search result. If you rely too much on Google to browse the web, you are giving up some control to rely on a centralized power. I'd be willing to bet that all of your bookmarks use DNS names as well.
In the time before DNS, people STILL didn't want to remember all those long IP addresses, and usually stored a name/IP map as a host file on the local machine. And there was much confusion when the host files fell out of sync, and thus a centralized name service was created to deal with this confusion.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
The ESRB is a board set up by the game industry itself. It is self-policing. The government has no involvement in it, besides a couple of states (not national government), passing some laws that merely enforce the ratings at the retail level (where in most states it is voluntary).
And banning children from certain innapropriate content, while consenting adults can freely play that content (and companies can freely publish that content) hardly constitutes censorship. That would be like saying that laws stating a 14 year old cant have sex with a 30 year old violate the 14 year old's rights (whereas most developed countries have statutory rape laws, and consider them a good thing).
You give it away for free.
Protocols maybe, but the US did NOT give 'the Internet' away for free to other countries. On the contrary, other countries have all paid huge amounts of money to install their own network infrastructure in their own countries (and in fact the US charges money for connecting to the US's portions of the Internet - it's a purely for profit enterprise not a charity). I'm sorry, but if I paid to create a network, I damn well have the right to say how it's run and who controls it. Same goes for any country.
Sadly, that is about the extent of his "good guy" behavior. He is a political opportunist of the worst kind, and it makes me sad for the Republican party if this type of guy represents the new generation (Not that the current one has done much for the party).