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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."

5 of 1,149 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Statist Musical Chairs by SteveAyre · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  2. DNS is also use full for other stuff by DrYak · · Score: 4, Informative

    Beside for finding a server IP dns names can be usefull for a lot of stuffs :

    - 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. ...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).

    - dynamic IP
    dynip.org and such. (see problems with load-balancing vs. on-line lists above) ..of course with IPv6 this may become less a problem.

    - 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 ]
  3. Re:Norm Coleman? by ctid · · Score: 4, Informative

    I would call that a comprehensive misunderstanding of the debate. I agree far more with Hitchens than with Galloway, but Galloway won the debate hands down. It wasn't even close, nor could it ever have been. Hitchens is a different kind of person than Galloway and Galloway has decades of experience of thinking and debating on his feet. Had they done a debate-by-newspaper-column, the outcome might well have been different.

    --
    Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
  4. Re:But who forced the ratings system onto the game by Rycross · · Score: 4, Informative

    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).

  5. Re:No, the UN doesn't want to take over the Intern by dustmite · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.