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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 ranked very pro-freedom by the RLC. While he's still a Statist, he seems to have a lightly more freedom oriented strategy for the Senate.
The provisions for the Internet being taken over by the UN or any political body will likely bifurcate the Net into multiple separate networks still interconnected but ready to dissolve from those that censor or regulate the information more than the billions of users want.
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.
My Internet doesn't need DNS as it is set up today. E-mail is dependent on DNS for now, but a combination of BitTorrent and LDAP will shut that need off if DNS gets ripped apart.
There are three reasons for government control of DNS:
1. Censorship
2. Regulation/licensing of certain speech (campaign, medical, educational?)
3. Profit!!! (for the cronies who sell domain names)
There is zero need for any regulation. The Internet could be usurped by any big business but isn't. The ultimate proof of anarchy in action. Companies that try to control the users are beaten by those that provide open access. Companies that want to break free from the global structure will anger their users who want access to anyone else. Verizon could separate their phone network completely but its in their best interest to communicate with their competition.
The UN just wants monopoly power through force and coercion. The private corporations want to be #1 but have to constantly compete with others.
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.
So his plan is to abolish the RIAA?
Seriously, the US government has been trying to erode protections for online privacy and information access for years, why does he think the UN would be any more dangerous?
We can't stop other countries from setting up their own root servers if they want to, except militarily. Are we really going to go to war to stop them (sadly, in this administration, this is not quite a rhetorical question)?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Norm Coleman? Is that the same Norm Coleman that got bitch-slapped by George Galloway?
You're using her as bait, Master!
You know, I work in IT, have a moderate grasp of how the world network operates. Why exactyl is the UN so keen on forcibly taking over the management of the internet? A. We invented it, we set up the first networks, and were only later linked with other countries B. It doesn't appear to be broken, why fix it? Can someone explain this to me?
Raging in an online forum won't do anything for the world around you. To see change, you must take action.
You would rather China have a say in the administration of the internet?
Agile Artisans
Since when did Canada run the UN?
I guess you missed the bit of the UN being a global [often waste of breath] effort.
You'd be surprised to learn that while the US started the net it's other nations that carry it to where it is today.
You think all that routing, networking and software you use was invented in the US? Oh, ok.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
...the internet, but the United Nations is a worthless waste of space and resources. It should not be allowed the remotest of control over the internet. I would be much happier with an organization set up independent of the UN that actually knows what they're doing.
--------
This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
What gives you the right to forbid China from having a say in the administration of the Internet?
Consider first that France demanded that eBay remove auctions of historical WWII Nazi items from their site.
Consider next that Germany outlawed Wolfenstein 3D because it contained various symbols of the WWII Nazi regime, despite the game hardly being sympathetic to the Nazis.
If there's a country that stands for defending freedom of speech, it sure isn't either of them. Perish the day when we can't even register domain names like "naziscansuckmyballs.com" because Europe is too afraid to deal with the realities of its own history.
Time for the internet to declare it's independance!
...with tongue lightly planted in cheek...
Let's have a Boston DNS party!
Tell the US & UN to get stuffed!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
That controlling the root DNS actually allows any control over the internet at all. DNS is no tthe internet. It's a naming mechanism. That's all.
It is so nice to see so many Americans voice their opinion here and really show how little they know about the UN.
A few thoughts:
The US wants to keep control for purely financial reasons. They want to gouge other countries for access, and allow the big telecoms to maintain their control on the flow of information at asinine prices.
Or, they want to keep control for moral reasons. Remember, Alberto "Gonzo" Gonzales has started his Porn Squad (not to attack only kiddie porn sites, but consenting adult sites as well) in some sort of twisted moral crusade. Well, there is a buttload of porn on the net, isn't there. If we keep control, he can stamp it out...
Another reason could be "National Security," though I'm pretty sure they already spend an asinine amount of money to keep sensitive stuff off of the 'Net to begin with. The Internet is no longer a super-secret Pentagon project, and has been publicly available for over a decade. I remember reading somewhere that works of the Government are in the Public Domain. Dunno if that applys to just images and text, or to secret, non-military projects like the Internet (again, now that it's been made public, not prior).
I say we share control with the world at large. Except with the French. The French are too weird. And most certainly not with the UN, corrupt an organisation as that is. It should be a seperate, international consortium with equal power for all countries involved. There shouldn't be one "regulator," and especially not the United States.
But that's just me, and I don't count...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
There's no harm in letting them have a say in it.
After all they won't control it. They can suggest ideas, yes, but they would then be voted on and all the other countries would have to agree too.
For once I agree with the US taking a unilateral action against the world community, or at least the UN. I think laws and policies need to be informed by global actions. I also think most need to pass the global test". but just as Mr. Kerry preceded his global test statement with "I will never cede America's security to any institution or any other country", I believe that the UN should be kept away from things like root DNS servers, and any internet policy decisions. Arguments between members of the UN are much worse than any usenet flame war.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
cough, cough, GTA:SA ...
American censorship is no better.
As for the nazi stuff, maybe it's not good to celebrate a regime that murdered millions. And keep in mind that stuff is LOCAL. As in, you can sell the game, just not there. So really your point has no bearing on the general theme of running the the internet.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
A quick note for the few of you interested in Norm Coleman beyond the usual dKos drivel that infects slashdot. Norm Coleman is a freshman senator from Minnesota (he defeated Mondale) who has quickly become the leading UN watchdog in the senate. He is the guy who is driving a lot of the Oil for Food investigation, and actually called out Kofi Anan because of the conflict of interest between Kofi Anan's son and the Oil for Food program.
He is a up and rising star in the RNC. Keep a eye on him, he will be running for president sooner or later.
How exactly is a non-binding resolution supposed to protect anything from anyone?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
That's fud and simply untrue, no matter how many times people repeat it.
/. falsely reported, but on the contrary the EU is right now trying to find a solution that both sides, the US, that doesn't want to give up control and other nations, the don't want the control in the hands of the US, could live with.
What is happening is that several countries (not the UN) don't want to live with a situation anymore in which only one nation, the US, controls critical parts of their infrastructure. I don't know why such a sentiment should come as a surprise to anybody, I think it's pretty normal and inevitable.
And in case this comes up again:
It's not the EU pushing this, as
Finally, I'm sure we will be treated to about 100 posts whining about how the US invented the internet and the world was so unfair. This is of course utterly laughable, as it simply does not matter who invented what, or how would you react to the Chinese demanding you stop using paper, or, omg, firearms, because they invented the stuff?
But if you want to play this little game anyway, please keep in mind that the world wide web, or rather the technologies necessary for it, were invented in Europe.
It may be local censorship but if they control the internet their local standards will be forced upon the internet. Americas standards are much easier then some European countries standards.
Nope. If you read the article again you'll notice that it's not about China, but the UN.
diegoT
Oh, and how was that censored? It got its rating upped to AO, which caused stores to voluntarily drop it until the content was removed, and Rockstar to voluntarily remove the content that upped its rating. It is in no way, shape, or form government sponsored censorship. Period.
GTA:SA wasn't censored in the least.
They included AO material in a game that wasn't AO. And got busted.
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 ]
No...I prefer the old days, when the ICANN membership was voted in amongst the greatest nerds and hackers in the world. Too bad the ICANN forced the voted-in members out.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Or else you wouldn't be able to post blatant worthless material just so you'd be a first poster?
Just your everyday corporate code monkey.
explain me just one thing: why http://www.whitehouse.gov/ points to something that should be http://www.whitehouse.gov.us/ ? If aliens would like to see webpage of WHOLE earth's goverment, where would they go?
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
I'd rather live on a net where I can't talk about Nazis, than on one where puritanical hypocrits prevent me from seeing boobs!
Blar.
the power to levy taxes on domain names to pay for "universal access,"
As taken straight from the article.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
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?
Disclaimer: This is not a flame or troll, it's simply what I think
The USA seems to be becoming more and more totalitarian in the way it handles things in general. I realise this is less evident for those actually in the USA (the same way most Chinese are oblivious to the same type of government) but for all of us outsiders, your government is increasingly hostile and arrogant, even towards those it deems friends.
What we don't need is the DNS root servers being almost all controlled by this one country. Things could go seriously bad in a shockingly small space of time, and before you know it a key part of the Internet we all rely on is subject to the every whim of a crazy man (not necessarily G W Bush). And considering the Internet is now critical to many industries and governments, any kind of manipulation will be a very bad thing.
Now I'm not saying the UN should take control of this, but why can't we have a collection of countries known for their relatively free nature be in charge of this? USA could take a few servers (with it being so big), Canada could have one, UK have a few (because I'm British and biased), scatter some around France, Germany, maybe even Russia (*gasp*).
Why does this need to be a UN issue? Surely these countries could have come to an agreement with the US.
Although the best course of action would be for the major world players to set up their own root servers, provide incentives for ISPs to use those primarily. I don't know if the root servers have the main configuration files available publicly, but surely there wouldn't be an issue of syncing them to non-US root servers? After all it only benefits everyone, and if the US does turn into a total bastard (pardon my French) at least everything won't crumble and we'd still have unbiased root servers scattered about.
C17H21NO4
> What gives you the right to forbid China from having a say in the administration of the Internet?
i n_mainland_China
The despicable way[1] they currently administer it.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_
The unofficial
I really don't see the issue with this anyway. To me, it just looks like the EU wants to take away the
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
He wants the US to be 'the boss' of the internet, just like, for some reason, the US needs to be the boss of everything in order for it to be 'free', 'democratic', 'safe' etc.
I heard the debate on radio, and I assume the only reason you think that is that you agree with Hitchins' perspective. Galloway is a strange character, and you may or may not agree with him, but he's a ferocious debater. Hitchins never had a chance - he did well even to land a few hits.
It wasn't included in the game.
You can't get to it without modifying a save game. If you don't do that, you'll never run across it during the course of killing, robbing, and associated violence.
Someone else found a discarded bit, and the media threw a shitfest over it because it was SEX.
It's all stupid.
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."
and America has already started to censor the internet by veto'ing the .xxx domain. The whole point of this is that no 1 country should have the power of veto over the internet. THAT is what leads to censorship. France and Germany have every right to try and get UN resolution to forbid Nazi stuff from the internet. The great thing about a democracy, it'll never get passed unless they can also get most other countries to agree, an unlikely prospect. US has banned online gambling, and they're cracking down on online pornography. The internet can only truely be free if it is outside the control of a single government.
The universe is held together with duct tape and karma. What goes around, comes around, and gets stuck to your forehead.
By reading these comments it seems that an international body controlling the internet would consist of China, Iran, Cuba, the United States and noone else!
I find this very interesting.
Will code a sig generator for food
Yes, how true. More governments being involved always means more freedom.
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
Countries control the domains in their national TLD. When you try to get a domain in national TLD, the query first goes to the root DNS servers, which redirect it to the national TLD DNS servers. These national servers are run and controlled by the government of the country in question.
This controversy is about who controls the root servers. However, i think it's absurd. Nothing stops UN, national governments, or Joe Average from setting up new root servers, but you'd need to convince others to use those servers, and that is unlikely to be possible in anywhere but the worst of dictatorships. US has no control over DNS, beyond that everyone voluntarily agree that the US-run root servers are authoritative. This is authority by respect, and it is impossible to give away, even if US wanted to.
Given all this, could we please stop posting stories about this idiocy, it reminds me too much about that incident of a political entity trying to forbid the dangerous substance dihydromonoxide, AKA water.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Not to mention that DNS provides a nice layer of indirection. Change ISPs and you don't have to update everybody's bookmarks. And a bit of clever DNS management allows things like coral and akamai to do distributed web content delivery.
DNS isn't just an option; it's a necessity.
I care more about liberty than about democracy. If you (and a majority of your peers) decide to limit my freedom, I don't really care if you did it democratically or not. Curtailing liberty is wrong. Those who would do so should not be allowed to participate.
Funny, I just read this which is exactly the same idea. Quite the day when a libertarian links to CommonDreams to make a point. Here's another link showing that unfettered democracy is not the best idea. A majority is not right simply because it is a majority.
Constitutionally Correct
Please read through the political smoke-and-mirrors.
The aforementioned senator is doing a classic political deceit maneuvre: "if it's not us, it's the non-human enemy monsters!"
It's not that simple. The proposal they really want to combat is meant to give control over the Internet to a commitee of pretty much all countries in the world. It's not like all of a sudden dictatorships such as China will get ultimate power on-line: they will simply be members like anyone else in the commitee.
What the senator really despises is that the control over the Internet will cease to be a 100% american affair and become worldwide instead.
Yes, it would suck if China will get control over the Internet. Fortunately, it's not gonna happen either way.
Great idea Taco - keep posting it every few days!
GTA:SA was voluntarily pulled from the shelves by retailers. It was not censored by the U.S. government. The main issue was the fact that the game was rated Mature rather than Adults Only. The "Hot Coffee" content indicated that it should be rated Adults Only and the company elected instead to hide the adult content.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
This is so ignorant, I don't know what part of your "arguments" I should cripple first, but I'll try. 1. Yeah France did that, so what? There are items that cannot be sold on the US Market either. If the US are too afraid that anyone can buy detailed maps of their country online they ban them as well because they are scared of terrorists. Besides - eBay is not exactly the place where i'd measure a country's free speech policies. 2. Yeah Germany banned Wolfenstein from sale in stores - which made it ever more interesting for locals. It's true that it's stupid, but fact is, that showing the swastika symbol in public has been outlawed since the second world war. And nobody here in Germany who has half a brain resents that law. We have seen enough of these symbols for some generations to come. If you care for free speech, fine: In Germany you are allowed to posess and show Swastikas in your Home anywhere you like. You can even knit yourself a blanket with swatikas and wear swastika underwear, when you go to the elections and vote the National socialist party. Former party is not outlawed here simply because of the fact, that WE HAVE FREE SPEECH HERE. It is a small minority party nevertheless. 3. As for the Europeans being "too afraid to deal with the realities of its own history" - this demonstrates about the most disturbing lack of intelligence I have come across in a million slashdot comments. Admittedly, Europe, especially Germany, has a troubled past - that much is true. But do you have any idea how much effort, education, institutionalization and last but not least money is invested to "deal with the realities" ??? I assume that you don't. Every European (at least west europeans that is) who has ever stuck his nose into a school has gotten a real good tasteful of europes past wars. Our cities are plastered with monuments (big ones, like the Stelen right next to the Reichstag in Berlin and small ones, embedded into the sidewalks, bearing the names of jewish victims of the 3rd reich) to remind us what happened every day. And now you come along and tell us that we are afraid to deal with all that??? Think again dude. Whew....what a post, you really got me going there.
Technically, GTA San Andreas has yet to be censored at all.
If GTA:SA wasn't censored, you wouldn't have to hack it to get to the sex scenes. The fact that it was self censorship is irrelevant, the result for the citizen is the same.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
DNS works and should stay the same.
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
At least in Europe children are not indoctrinated with retarded ideas such as creationism.
From the same country that brought you the monopolizing telcos
Ya know, I'm feeding the troll here and everything but I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the regulated monopoly telco system provided much more reliable service then anything that has come since (even newer technologies can't compete with POTS for uptime) and the typical Government oversight provided a lot more protection to the consumer then people think.
Billing problem with landline? Dispute the charges and they have to investigate. If they give you shit contact the PSC and the PSC will force them to cooperate. Billing problem with cell phone? Dispute the charges then watch them charge your credit card without authorization, submit EFT's right out of your checking account and start listing black marks on your credit report.
Poor credit and trying to get a landline? Provide two-months worth of basic service as a deposit (less then $20 in Verizon land) and they have to give you service. Poor credit and trying to get a cell phone? Pay insanely huge ass and out of line deposit that they aren't even required to pay interest on and don't have to give back to you after six or twelve months. In fact, the last time a friend of mine tried to get service from Verizon Wireless (the only mobile carrier here with coverage worth shit) they wanted a thousand dollar deposit.
Sure, Ma Bell got very arrogant and cocky back in the day. But I'm sick of hearing people bash POTS carriers and root for their downfall. You show me a service that even approaches the bullet-proof reliablity of POTS and then we'll talk.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Unfortunately, you can't just go by news reports. You have to look at MOTIVES behind people's actions.
1) Why does the US want to maintain control?
2) Why does the UN want to take control?
The answer to the first one is usually first given as a rather selfish "it's ours, we invented it" answer. The answer to the second can be deduced if you look at who are the biggest proponents of the UN take-over: China, Brazil, India, Russia and Saudi Arabia (Source). Once that is established, the answer to the first question changes, and rightfully so.
UNIX: A computer user is defined as a programmer. WINDOWS: A computer user is defined as a consumer.
The Project For A New American Century is an organization dedicated "...to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests." Among the members are VP Dick Cheney and his currently embattled Chief of Staff Lewis Libby, SecDef Don Rumsfled, Jeb Bush (brother of President Bush), etc. See their Statement of Principals and a list of the signers of this founding document. If you don't recognize some of the names, Google them and see where they have worked in the last five years. Paul Wolfowits, Dov Zakheim and Zalmay Khalilzad are good ones to start with. Here's a nice place to start with Zakheim. And it only gets more interesting from there ;)
In September, 2000 PNAC released a controversial document entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses, in which they argued that a "catastrophic and catalyzing event-like a new Pearl Harbor" was needed to speed up their planned re-militarization of America (see pg. 68). Earlier in this document they itemized their core principals, including 'CONTROL THE NEW "INTERNATIONAL COMMONS" OF SPACE AND "CYBERSPACE," and pave the way for the creation of a new military service - U.S. Space Forces - with the mission of space control.'(see pg. 11) On page 57 they go into more detail about how and why America must retain control of cyberspace. Controlling ICAAN is critical to this goal.
Scared yet? Remember, these are the folks that brought us the Patriot Act, forcing a vote on it after 9/11 without allowing anyone to read it, and enabling such great things as holding potential "terrorists" indefinitely without access to family or legal representation, sneak-and-peek searches, warrantless monitoring of e-mail, monitoring dissent groups without any suspicion of criminal activity by them, etc., etc.
As for Iraq, PNAC has been calling for the overthrow of Saddam since 1997 as a way to retain control of world energy supplies, critical to ensuring America's control over the world. But I think they bit off more than they could chew over there.
This group is truly scary, and they have been running our government for five years now.
WTF does any of this have to do with the "day to day operations of the net?" The day to day operations of the net are accomplished by obscure engineers toiling in relative anonymity at ISP's all across the globe. This is about editorial control (not even technical control) of the "." DNS zone file, and nothing more. This is such a non-issue technically and for the future "evolution" of the Internet that it's laughable watching all the anti-American slashbots get worked into a lather over it.
.com, .net, etc.) will be created. Right now it is ICANN under contract with the Department of Commerce. Some think it should be the UN. Honestly, I really don't know why. It's a minor thing that has nothing to do with actually controlling anything. If you don't like the US DoC controlling your root (and remember it's just the file, not the servers themselves), you already have alternatives.
Basically what this boils down to is who gets to say what new TLDs (like
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
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.
Yeah, because passing laws in the U.S. is a great way to control what other countries do, in their own countries, with their own hardware and networks that they built and paid for. Brilliant! This is just another politician trying to capitalize on the "us versus them" sentiments trying to be pushed by a number of factions in the U.S.
There is no reason why any one country should run a single point of failure for a resource vital to communications and commerce throughout the world, especially when most of the gear it is running on, paid for by, and resides in those other countries. The world has spoken, they want a democratic solution with representation for everyone. They don't want to keep paying large fees to U.S. corporations for a naming service that was free before the big corporations got involved and can be free, or nearly free again. Most of all, they don't like an increasingly aggressive and deceptive country to be able to severely damage the economy of another country at their whim. No one trusts the U.S. to be a benevolent dictator and they would be foolish if they did. It is time to remember some of those American ideals, like democracy and representation for all are far more important than the new American ideals of making money and bullying the rest of the world.
To put it simply, the internet is a global enterprise made up of hardware and software running in and paid for countries all around the world. Those countries deserve a say in how the naming scheme works and this sort of "America is superior to the rest of the world" nationalist bullshit is not only useless chest thumping, but it makes the U.S. look like even more of a vicious bully in the eyes of the world. You should be ashamed of yourself Mr. Coleman.
I'm sure that most countries would disagree with "The American Way" being the only alternative to communism. How about the British way? Or Australian way? French? German?
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
And what gives the government the right to decide what is obscene? The first ammendment doesn't say "except obscene speech".
Beyond that- what is obscene to me is porn to the next guy. The government has no right to make that decision, at *ANY* level of government.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
It was, however, shipped on the game disk. To use a ridiculous example to put it in perspective, what if kiddie porn was put into a game, locked out, and then shipped around with a E rating? What if this could be unlocked very easily with a game cheat device (I recall the PS2 versions could unlock it with a game cheat device, correct me if I am wrong)? Its not a simple black and white line of "its in the game" or "its not in the game." It was shipped with the game, and very easily unlocked, sort of a gray area.
As far as the fuss over sex... please. There has been a lot of fuss over GTA since it was launched. The sex was just more ammo to continue firing the volleys. You make it sound like everyone was ok with the game until sex was put in, which is blatently untrue. And even then, more people were upset with the fact that it seemed that Rockstar hid this content, and misled the ESRB. Not entirely accurate, but that was the perception.
To say that modders added the content (instead of unlocking it) and everyone got upset about it only because it was sex is a strawman, and blatantly incorrect.
The U.S. Military Invented the Internet... therefore the U.S. should have control over it.
;) )
The Chinese invented guns, therefore the Chinese should have control over them.
You can say it about anything. The fact of the matter is that the internet has evolved because its global. The internet as it is isn't the same as it was when it was a US thing. Many countries depend on it heavily for their economy as the US does, and don't want the root DNS servers hosted by one government. Imagine the next president, lets call him Joe, decides that country X is in some way evil (terror threat? It'd work with the american public) the US could cut off DNS record access to that country, so no domain names would resolve. or they could intentionally fudge them up and send them redirecting to wrong places. Imagine waking up, going to your computer, opening Firefox, and your homepage is now a site telling you that your countries dns access has been halted for war measures. Every domain you try now resolves to this page.
Would this ever happen? Unlikely, but it's still a bad thing for any country other than the US (and Canada... unless the softwood lumber dispute gets out of hand
It's not a matter of the UN having control, its the world, not just the US. Personally I don't want China, North Korea or any other country with a crazy government having root DNS servers, but hell if every country got one (or one per certain amount of capita) then thats decentralized enough for everyones sake.
The downside? China or some country using that power to block their citizens access to certain domains (well, at least stopping them from resolving correctly) As long as their are enough other root dns servers that can just ban getting their stuff sync'd from china then its not bad for the rest of the world, but it's another tool that China/etc can use against it's people which isn't cool.
Concider American Scientoligists censoring Google for linking to sites about Xenu.
Concider MPAA censoring 2600 magazine for posting links to DeCSS.
How about the use of the DMCA to pull down information off the net because it is "Copyrighted"
Perhpas I am mistaken but I seem to rember many articles here about of censorship occuring in the US on the internet.
I don't belive our record is clean.
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).
bring back Jon Postel and IANA... he did it all practically for free instead of the huge financial wasteland that is ICANN and Verisign.
So, I'm probably too late for anyone to notice, but I'll post anyways.
It is completely unnecessary for a change of hands or the root servers to take place. The mechanisms are already there for any country to effectively free itself from the evil grasp of the U.S. At least this is true if the motivating factor truly is a fear of the U.S. crippling other economies by use of it's control of DNS servers.
Any country could simply keep up daily clones of the root servers. They could then legislate that ISPs and Universities use these clones exclusively. The clones could even directly reference the actual rootservers until such a time as access to those root servers is denied, at which point it could failover to it's own database.
This prevents the scenario where the U.S. messes with your country by breaking the rootservers. If we decided to split you at least have a relatively up to date domain name service structure and you go from there.
(I also think it's mostly not concious that this is (part of) the reason, and its also drillied into many from a young age that sex is bad/naughty/dirty/sinfull/embarrasing so people accept it without thinking bout it)
watch "the money masters" on google video
I can agree entirely that what is obscene to me is porn to the next guy, but there must be a line somewhere. For example, are actual snuff films porn or obscene? What about porn depicting an adult having sex with a three year old child? Not that I claim to know where we should draw the line, but the definition of obscene can not be entirely relativistic.
Which was my point. We don't have that kind of censorship in the US. The person I was responding to claimed that we did, referrencing GTA.
You're ignorant. "Nazi" is not a banned word. Discussion of Nazism is not illegal. Glorification of the Third Reich is illegal. Goose stepping is illegal.
And Wolfenstein 3D, In which the character escapes from a Nazi prison, was illegal - not because shooting make-believe Nazis is "glorifying the Third Reich", but because you saw some swastikas while doing so.
As an American I don't really agree with these policies, either, but perhaps the Germans themselves are in a better position to judge the necessity of such laws.
Perhaps it's exactly the opposite. The Germans may be in a better position to appreciate the obvious necessity of avoiding totalitarian governments, but when it comes to the less obvious questions of *how* to avoid them, I'd trust the answers from a culture that has so far succeeded more than from one that has failed. There is very little risk of a new resurgence of Nazi power, and that risk is *increased* by giving neo-Nazis a sense of persecution to rally around. There is a greater risk of a resurgence of totalitarianism, and that risk is also increased by training the public to accept and even defend government restrictions on political speech.
Every time the subject comes to the front-page, the thread is aflame with uninformed, knee-jerk, and often plain stupid posts.
Half of the people posting here don't even have a basic grasp of how the internet works.
And, no, the internet is not the US. Sever the international links, and then you'll have a US-owned internet. Oh boy, you've lost access to the pirate bay. Hey, you can't get some crypto packages anymore! Please. That's the whole point of the internet.
If the world starts using different root-servers, that's it. They'll talk to the US-only roots to maintain connectivity, and the Us-only roots will talk to the new roots for the very same reason. And if they don't, why, just add them to your own setup.
There. No one was harmed.
Sharing the IP-space will be a bit harder; but that would be a good excuse to move to ipv6 faster.
But short of invading the world, there's little the US can do about it.
I can't see what the fuss is about. Really. Get on with your lack of life.
Burning karma like ther's no tomorrow
In my opinion, Scientology is a cult you should avoid.
It's very easy to answer that. It was created with US tax money. It was created for Americans and Europe to protect themselves from attack. it's been funded by the ton load and we paid for it. So at the end of the day, we own it. I'm writing to my senator and demanding that we don't loose it.
Worst case situation is that the rest of the world breaks off from the USA. I would guess that would last about 18 hours. then they would all come back.
Big industry needs us right now, so we still have the leverage.
Onepoint
if you see me, smile and say hello.
I hate to feed flamebait... but
"You think all that routing, networking and software you use was invented in the US? Oh, ok."
Routing and networking... goes back to the packet switched networks in ARPANET, ALOHANET in the 70's. Or perhaps you are refering to the TCP/IP stack we use today. Oops, you lose there again - Windows makes use (at least when it was first becoming network aware) largely of the Berkeley IP stack from over there in California. *BSD obviously uses this stack. Other operatin g systems do as well, directly, or in translation. What has come around since then has been similar to the advances in automobile engines in the past 50 years... bolt-ons that may offer some improvement, are nice to have, but not necessary in the least. Who needs anything more than telnet ftp, usenet and gopher? The intarweb addition by CERN was nice, but "has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move".
"Other nations that carry it to where it is today."
I agree that the useful stuff comes from places other than the US. Who can deny the catchiness of the Yatta craze? SSH is awesome. Countless other things as well.
The UN did not make the internet, it was a project of US military, handed over to private industry. The US has not abused its ability to manage the internet namespace to date. Given its track record, I cannot say the same would have happened had it been in the hands of the UN. I am not saying the UN would not be reliable - that is the topic of a whole different discussion. I am saying that up until now, there has been no reason to change. If it is not broken, do not go give it to someone else to frell.
Having to choose between a one-party US Government and the UN is like having to choose which testicle to cut off with a rusty knife.
This is ridiculous. Norm Coleman is an isolationist control freak and he must be stopped. The U.S. government should have absolutely no role in governing the internet. The internet is a public, global medium--perhaps just the push we need to work toward some global unity. The continued influence of the U.S. on the internet is what is dangerous, wrong, and already leading to a considerable amount of censorship.
Norm Coleman never fails to entirely embarrass both the state of Minnesota and the entire United States of America (not that he needs much help with the latter). And his antics never fail to appear on Slashdot, either, further demonstrating Minnesotans' complete incompetence when it comes to electing political leaders. First we thought Jesse Ventura was as bad as it could get, but we were so wrong. I am surely ashamed to be a Minnesotan today, and cannot wait for the day when I can get an EU residency permit, but until then, I hope people will remember that Minnesota USED to be a decent place, a leader in fact of the shamefully small progressive movement in this country. We're not all bad, and if we work together, we can kick the scum that have invaded MN back to the south where they belong.
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.
Lets say you have a neighbor who just moved into a newly built home next to yours. The first weekend out, they're in the yard trying to start a garden and want to water in some plants. Sadly, the outside faucets weren't hooked up, so they poke their head over the fence and ask you if they could run your hose over to their yard just so they could get their garden watered a little bit. You, being the nice guy you are, let them use your hose and water... you're on a well so it's not costing you much of anything.... There is nothing saying other countries can't go and start their own DNS servers. They can provide their own service, there's no obligation on the part of the US to hand over its root servers to anyone else.
Your analogy is fatally flawed. First, there is not one well, but a dozen well systems we (the U.S.) control. Second, nearly half of those well systems and more than half of the actual, physical wells are not in our yard, but those of our neighbors. Third, this is not about two neighbors, but one guy who runs the "well access system" for all the wells both on his land and other peoples land, for everyone in town. Fourth, the neighbors paid to drill those wells on their properties and paid for all the plumbing. Fifth, we (the U.S.) have our little cousins charging money every year for entries in this control system. Sixth, The guy running this control system is a violent psycho who breaks the town ordinances, beats people up, and has been caught outright lying in town meetings over and over again. This guy also has running feuds with about half of town (it's a pretty rough town).
What the U.N. nations are likely to do is just what you suggest, start their own naming service and switch over all the wells and well systems on their own property. And here is where your analogy completely collapses, because while the value of wells is supplying a resource, the value of the internet is in the connections themselves. It is a transport mechanism, not a commodity. What our dear congress critter is proposing is legislation that says all those neighbors can't do what they want with their wells, which they will promptly ignore. It might go so far as to threaten sanctions or poisoning of the existing system if other countries try to switch, which is also useless.
I see no "control" being exerted over the Internet here. What do they fear?
They fear that they will have to keep paying money to use their own networks and they fear that the U.S. will shut off or redirect DNS service to foreign countries. They fear being economically and socially dependent upon a resource that they have paid to develop and pay to maintain, while that resource can be shut off by the U.S., whom they do not trust. For that matter, I thought the U.S. was supposed to be about representation for all and democracy. What is democratic about one country making decisions for the world without giving them any sort of representation? The U.S. should be championing this move to distributed DNS in many countries with redundancy against a single (political) attack. Instead they are claiming to know better than the world, and that they should be able to make decisions for everyone. It is sad how broken, nationalist, and adversarial American ideals have become.
Actually, countries like China and Syria have mad it quite clear that their goals are to restructure the internet such that it is easier to track users, servers can be licenced and tracked, internet services can be taxed, it is easier to block sites, etc.
.uk .us. country extension, and with IP6 to give each country a huge block of IPs it controls). It would solve the problem of the U.S. "control" of the internet, and wouldn't require giving massive power to the U.N., and technologically wouldn't be that different than what exists now.
The whole "They just want to control a critical part of their infrastructure" arguement doesn't come from China, Syria, North Korea, or Cuba, it comes from apologists in the West in order to justify what is clearly an attemt to destroy the free internet as it operates now.
It would be extremly easy to implement a system where no one entity controls the internet (have each country be responsible for there own
This has nothing to do with countries worried about U.S. control of critical parts of their infrastructure (because all those countries have 100% control of their own infrastructure right now!), this is about wanting to end the era of the free, wild, and completly unregulated internet. It is about making the internet an easily controlable medium, like television, radio, and telephone. It is embarrasing for Western politicians to admit that their views on censorship, taxation, and internal survalence of their population is virtually identical to that of China, North Korea, Cuba, etc. So you spread some FUD about the U.S. being in control of their critical infrastructure (which it isn't, and even if it was the problem could be solved without the U.N.), and hope that knee jerk anti-Americanism will blind people to the real authoritarian goal.
Possession of child porn is largely a crime.
What Rockstar did is not.
It's not "grey," Rockstar discarded something stupid, it was found and Hillary rode it like a horse.
To say that modders added the content (instead of unlocking it) and everyone got upset about it only because it was sex is a strawman, and blatantly incorrect.
Not once did I say that. But then your argument is built on a farce so I guess I could ignore that. They -only- got fussy cause it was SEX. There's never been THIS much of a shitfest over GTA before.
Celebrate a regime? We're talking about a game where your whole mission is to kill nazis and their mythical secret weapons of war. If that's a celebration it explains why people intentionally go out on holidays and drink alcohol to "get trashed".
Let's face it, the Nazi thing is something that happened. Germany had no choice after WWII but to impose a kind of self-revulsion any time the Nazi thing ever came up. The only way to not have the whole world hate them forever was to hate themselves even more. This kind of self-loathing may have been diplomatically necessary at some point (though clearly every world power has at some point gotten carried away with war) but I am of the opinion that it is intrinsically harmful in that it is a sincere self-effacement and if you tell yourself something for long enough, you will believe it.
You may have missed the whole "U.N." thing. While united nations is something of an oxymoron, the UN likes to make usually toothless mandates that define things supposedly equally for all countries. How would you like ending up not being able to buy Nazi shit on ebay in Amerikkka because Germany ended up too powerful on the U.N. Internet Council?
Ultimately, there is no reason whatsoever why the U.N. needs to be involved with the internet at all. The whole idea of the internet is that it is peer to peer, so there is no need for a central worldwide governing body, and frankly there is little need for any governing body aside from for doling out IPs. The internet may have started in government but it is privatized today and for the most part, working fine.
If there is a problem it is that there are a few organizations which are entirely too powerful in the system. The continuing proliferation of internet-connected devices and the ongoing uptake of the internet by basically everyone on the planet (some places far more slowly than others of course) will lead us to a world in which it is practical to use alternate name resolution systems and so on. The larger the market, the more niches are created... So the 'net can become a far more abuse-resistant organism than it is today, and the need for [probably corrupt] overseers will decrease with time, not increase.
The more bureaucracies you involve in a system, the more inefficient it will become. Handing the 'net to the U.N. is a bad idea.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And right on schedule the litany of comments citing freedoms and accomplishments of the past while ignoring the erosion of freedoms and lack of prosperity of the present. The world sees that the USA is becoming a corrupt and unpredictable monopolistic elitist bully and they don't want to just lay back and be rolled over. When the economy US collapses from over dependence on foreign everything and corruption and it becomes too expensive to run those DNS servers that everyone depends on how can you fault the UN countries from trying to have a little insurance?
> The ESRB is a board set up by the game industry itself. It is self-policing. The government has no involvement in it
First off, the content industry learned long ago if they don't self-police then the government will step in and police them. This is why you have stuff like the Comics Code Authority, TV ratings, warning stickers on music, etc.
Now these ratings systems are used and abused by retailers. Many stores simply wont sell games rated violent to people under 18 for the very same fear. Other companies abuse this leverage. For instance Walmart sells so many magazines, it can dictate content such as what goes on the cover. Many publishers submit their covers to Walmart first to make sure the Walmart moralists are happy with it. Not to mention editing of tracks on music.
So, its really disingenious to say that the US lacks censorship because its not done by the government per se. Also, I would like to remind some of the posters here that the FCC does censor content over public airwaves, usually to the wishes of religious moralists. Also state and municipal governments pull books from libraries all the time due to trivial complaints and lately some states have been working hard to erase other "threatening" ideas like biological evolution.
The European criticism is a strong one, but like someone said all censorship is local. These are the countries that are still healing from the horrors of WWII, which to me is a much more compelling reason to limit access to something than the American "Jesus told me he doesn't like it" culture-war bullshit reasons. Also, I'd like to mention that finding a copy of Mein Kampf isn't hard to do in Europe, but libraries in my own town have pulled books for "homosexual" or "anti-family" content.
Also, the US is no more pro-speech on the internet than any other country and all the bills that barely failed to pass as laws to censor the crap out of the internet should give Americans pause about censorship. I don't care if the Germans are "worse," it shouldnt be happening period. Now toss in Utah's big porn control law which is still in effect and you've obviously got real unresolved censorship issues.
Videogames are still new media and the "We'll censor ourselves" approach has worked pretty well, but its still a hot-button issue and people like Jack Thompson and his millions of followers (or at least people who agree with him) are a strong influence in American culture and possibly law. Expect further tightening of "self-censoring" and retailers refusing to sell to minors for more trivial reasons.
"At least in Europe children are not indoctrinated with retarded ideas such as creationism."
At least in America, children are taught to respect others' beliefs, even if they don't make sense.
Phony interview? So sez the Dems. Even the LA Times can't come up with a sentence to incriminate the administration without making a fairly grandiose assumption on context. Note the brackets around "question" in this article, when "answer" or even "topic" would have been more accurate:
f g-bush14oct14,0,7903715.story?coll=la-home-headlin es
4 866.php
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-
Also note that the article indicates that the soldiers didn't ask the questions - they answered them. The "coaching" was so that the soldiers knew which other soldier was best suited to answer particular questions. The soldiers would then know whom to hand the microphone to next, based on the question that was asked. They weren't told how to answer.
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-117
Nevertheless, the Democrats and Jon Stewart spout kneejerk nonsense as to what was going on, and all the Bush haters out there take it as gospel truth.
Bwahahaha....
Saddam's Iraq was a U.N. member, while Taiwan wasn't (and isn't)
Say that part again, about how U.N. membership is available to all peace loving states?
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I understand the concerns that the other countries have about US control of DNS - in theory. But come on guys, sell us on this idea in practice. How would UN/EU/etc control of DNS improve the system we have now, either technically, administratively, or in any other way? Are there any documented common issues of any kind with the current structure? Isn't there a great potential that such a change would just make things worse?
Another thing, the folks saying "OMG teh internet will splinter!!1!one" should realize that 99% of Americans wouldn't even notice if the rest of the world dropped off the Internet. I was wondering to myself, what sites would I miss if this theoretical splintering of the internet took place, and I could only think of the BBC and some European rally (car racing) sites that I visit. This makes the parties that want this have a really weak bargaining position. And before you dismiss me as an ignorant American, I should tell you I was born and raised in another country.
Okay fine, you keep tcp/ip, then we europeans keep http and www thank you very much.
Those games aren't banned. What happens is they are restricted to people of ages 18 and over.
They are also not allowed to be displayed in places where kids could see them, they can only be sold to adults, this also eliminates any mail order.
That is not censorship. Censorship would remove those games from the market entirely. This just restricts access to minors, similar to your AO rating.
Besides, do you have any idea how LONG it takes for this "censorship" to kick in? It can be months, because they only look at these things once someone complains to them, then they have to look at it. They don't just go out on their own to find and get rid of those games.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Only because, at the monment, they don't have the power to do it outside their borders too.
If you really think that would occur, you truly are paranoid.
First, they would only be once voice, we're not talking about "giving the internet to the Chinese." Geez, talk about overblowing things.
Second, really, will this international body actually be able to enforce things in sovereign states? With the current status quo, has the USA been able to mandate "you shall not censor" to other countries with it's current control over the internet? Nope. Why on earth would that power change?
What this comes down to is Americans not wanting to give up their dominante world position, the idea of actually sharing control with any other country scares the shit out of them. Democracy on a world scale, what a concept.
Or did you miss George's statement that he believed it should be taught as well?
1 school district would be funny.
2 would be funny.
20 school districts and it stops being funny and is really a reflection of our national ignorance of science.
As do I. Unfortunately, the ITU can't seem to even keep a web site accessible (http://www.itu.int/ so how could they possibly be put in charge of administering DNS? The gory details on the upcoming conference should be available at http://www.itu.int/wsis -- at least that's the reference from the UN home page. I'd love to see just exactly what's being proposed before I decide whether it could be useful. I would hope that other /. participants would like to know the details before they shoot their mouths (fingers?) off. Doh! I forgot where I was, didn't I?
RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
Norm Coleman was the asshole mayor of Saint Paul who broke campaign promises right and left and spent all his time trying to raise taxes to buy free stadiums for our local sports teams, because everyone knows people with annual salaries in the 7-figure range need a lot of help from people who are hoping to break the $25k line.
Norm Coleman lost a gubernatorial race to a pro wrestler, and this reflected a clear and considered rational choice by the electorate.
I am not surprised to see him spouting random propaganda that he thinks will get him votes.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I just love AC's who don't even bother to check their facts - guess he wanted his flamebait ratings to stick...
From wikipedia on Tim Berners-Lee:
"After leaving CERN in 1980 to work at John Poole's Image Computer Systems Ltd, he returned in 1984 as a fellow. By 1989, CERN's internet site was the largest in Europe, and Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to marry hypertext and internet. In his words, "I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and -- ta-da! -- the World Wide Web" [1]. He used similar ideas to those underlying the Enquire system to create the World Wide Web, for which he designed and built the first browser (called WorldWideWeb and developed on NeXTSTEP) and the first web server simply called httpd (which was short for HyperText Transfer Protocol daemon)."
From wikipedia on web-browsers:
"Tim Berners-Lee, who pioneered the use of hypertext for sharing information, created the first web browser, named WorldWideWeb, in 1990 and introduced it to colleagues at CERN in March 1991. Since then the development of web browsers has been inseparably intertwined with the development of the web itself."
Hypertext and the hyertext to tcp/dns connection was made at cern, that he later made the w3c in massachussets is a totally different story.
Of course, trolling AC's don't care about facts....
I'm pretty well connected on both sides of the pond (born in Europe, living in the US for quite a few years now) and if I were to make a comparison, it's currently the US which worries me from a freedom standpoint - it's on the verge of falling under a disguised theocratic dictatorship promoting ideas recovered from the history's garbage can.
Do you want an organization that puts North Korea on the Human Rights committee to control the root DNS servers?
Want China, Iran, and every little dictatorship to have an equal say as to how it is run as the members of the EU, the US, Canada, and Australia? Anybody want to bet that the majority of countries want an Internet free of censorship?
A political power grab by the EU to look active while really wanting nothing to change.
The US will say no. The EU will say look how mean they are. Everything goes back to normal.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
So what to stop the U.N. from using the internet as a way to control other countries?
Lets swap the N with an S there, and maybe you might see the problem that other countries have.
The role the US plays isn't anything a court cannot fix if the powers are ever abused.
Whose courts? And why should US courts have any say over what happens in other nations?
What would the main benefit of letting the UN or EU control it over the US?
Here's whats really going on. The US probably, as a part of trade talks or talks over military matters, mentioned to various groups, including the EU (forget the UN, thats an arena, not an entity, its like blaming the whitehouse lawn for the actions of Bush), that their internet is looking mighty fragile, and whoops, wouldn't it be a shame if someone accidentally knocked it over, as a leverage tool. So, after going away and pondering their options, aforementioned governments tell the US to go hump a pineapple, and set up their own redundant system. That they are doing it publicly (no need to) should tell any observer all they need to know about what's really going on.
Don't think you get to see every power struggle displayed on the evening news. 99% of what counts is never seen, but may be readily deduced.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
It's certainly not the life or death struggle over DNS (OMG! China will censor my blog!) that people have been portraying it, as the ccTLD's and gTLD's will continue to be run entirely by their appropriate registrars.
.xxx gTLD - and that's directions to the ccTLD's. Currently, the US department of commerce can tell ICANN who gets to host ccTLD's. So any country's entire DNS system - for example, the .iq domain for iraq - can be arbitrarily turned off or assigned to a new registrar. And there's nothing that country can do about it. Haiti had to wait 2 years to get its domain assigned to the registrar of its choice, for example.
.com and .net domains, and ICANN did virtually nothing about it?
There is one other big issue than the creation of say, the
That's what this big argument is really about - why should the US government, or a fairly unaccountable company like ICANN have the right to determine which registrar, if any, gets to run a country's DNS? So far the US government hasn't abused this power *that* much - but it could.
Nor is ICANN entirely trusted either - remember the fiasco when verisign decided to start domain squatting with it's search engine on all unassigned
The problem with the alternative roots is that software makers like microsoft only support the 'official' ICANN system out of the box. With very few people technicially capable of adding alternative roots, and even fewer knowing why they'd need or want to, ICANN and the DoC effective has the rest of the world over a barrel. And they want to get off it.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
cliffs for people who dont want to read ...
1. america invents internet
2. america shares its new toy
3. eurotrash want the toy
4.
5. profit?
lose != loose
For example. In the second meeting of this body that wants to govern the Internet, Brazil had this to say; http://www.wgig.org/docs/Brazil.pdf
Madame Chair,
Allow me to focus our discussion on internet governance beyond Principles and towards practical matters that our citizens are in need. Our citizens are demanding cheaper access. This could be translated here by:
a) lower internet interconnection costs;
b) affordable hardware;
c) free and open source software;
c) regional administration of the root server system;
d) national administration of courty code top level domains (ccTLSs);
I'm sure there's a joke in there regarding reasons c & c but the whole flavor of the language is interesting. What even half of that has to do with a hands off administrative control I have no idea. This governing body is somehow going to make all this happen?
The EU reps had this to say; http://www.wgig.org/docs/EU-PrepCom.doc
As we have had the opportunity to state before, the EU believes that the WGIG should concentrate on the stable and secure functioning of the Internet, by addressing issues related to:
The organisation and administration of naming and numbering, including the operation of the root server system;
The internationalisation of Internet Governance, taking into account public interest concerns and participation of developing countries in the governance structures;
The stability, dependability and robustness of the Internet, including the impact of spam.
Spam? Well, that sounds to me like this new governing body wants to control content (which is evidenced elsewhere by UN reps, this is really no revelation but few people seem to see it or wish to look for the motivations behind this move). If all they want to do is sing Kumbaya and peacefully administer some DNS server then why, pray tell would they have anything to do with spam control? What's spam to Brazil, yet information to another? The great thing about the Internet is what makes the Internet a bad place at the same time, freedom. The examples of UN reps citing issues OTHER than DNS administration are numerous and distrubing. They want to actively participate in governing a rich and wonderfully free form of communication and trade. It's time that some government officials here in US started asking themselves why. We need more libitarian thinkers like Coleman and I don't care which side of the political isle they come from.
The Internet is clearly no longer the baby of the U.S. With the entire world using it, and depending on it, the rest of the world has a *moral right* to participate in its governance.
To deny this moral right is to declare some sort of American preeminence that doesn't exist. The U.S. is but a nation amongst nations now, and we need to back down from the imperialistic rhetoric. It's high-time to start being a good player in the world. And handing over the Internet would make a great beginning.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
And the web was created by an Englishman paid for by EU grants. So we own the web and you'll have to give it back. Also, we own Boolean logic, if we take that back then the USA has to go back to early-19th century technology - so you'd better be nice or your internet will just disappear altogether.
BTW, the Arabs "own" enough of math to send us all back to dark ages - we'd better be nice to them from now on I think.
--paulj
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
So, if the US invented it they "own" it?
The Web was invented in Switzerland by a Belgian with a French name and a Londoner. Uninstall your browser and go back using Gopher and Archie.
Gunpowder was invented in China long ago and intended for recreational purpose only. The inventor could never envision its usage for anything else than making children happy, and uncivilised westerners use it today to maim them. Please return your firearms to the PRC. Do keep Charlton Heston.
Ships were invented in Greece to find a golden fleece. They were to be a means of transport and exploration, not military platforms. Please return the Nimitz to Athens.
The Latin alphabet was supposed to be used for Latin and derived languages exclusively. It was developed by legitimate scribes with Etrurian sublicenses, and never intended to be used by barbarians that cannot even write. ("write", for example, should be spelt "VRAJT"). Please send all your keyboards and typewriters back to Italy.
Bread was invended in Egypt as a tasty way of eating flour. It was never meant to be used in (bleargh) Big Macs. Send all your McDonalds to Cairo (though they will probably answer "thanks, but... let's just say like we took them, right?")
The Statue of Liberty was built in France to honour the values of Freedom, Equality and Fraternity, together with friendship between France and the US. It was not meant to symbolise a nation that claims to have saved France in the world wars (in the first the US entered only for one year, in the second they did not enter until attacked), calling the French "surrendering cheese-eating monkeys" (the "eating" remark, coming from an American, is really offensive) while never had a military occupation on their soil since the Brits left, and screwed all the statue was meant to represent by invading a defenseless country with bunches of black sticky liquid, and installing their puppet regime like Hapsburg Austria used to (ok, no sticky liquids back then). Unmount and shove it in a place the French will be all too happy to illustrate.
Cars were invented in Germany to visit the countryside in the weekend, not to be a penis supersizer. Please transfer of GM and Ford motor companies to Mannheim. Not sure whether they want the Humvees. Bikes go to Karlsruhe.
Circumcision was invented by people who had little water and lived in the desert. It was not meant as a way to prevent masturbation, and whoever thought for a second to cut a baby's willy because he might do "dirty things" with it in 15 years' time was a complete psycho. The idea was hygiene! Return to Israel your... oh never mind.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
It boils down to control. If you weren't in control of this vast world-wide communications network... wouldn't you want to be?
I say if they want their own DNS then they should start their own. Maybe one day when it's more popular/used than ours we'll beg to switch over and use theirs. In the meantime, they're welcome to play on our court, but at the end of the day the basketball is still ours.
My personal translation of the arguments I hear from the UN: "gimme gimme gimme!"
Translation of the ideal US rebuttal: "fuck you. go stand in the corner"
we paid for it
No you did not. "You" paid for the US portion only. The network infrastructure in, say, Sweden was paid for by the Swedish people. The network infrastructure in Australia was paid for by Aussies. The network infrastructure in Japan was paid for by the Japanese. Likewise for every single country. In fact, not only did the US not pay anything towards the network infrastructure of other countries, the US is paid by all other countries to interconnect with the US portion. It's a for-profit thing: Other countries have been paying the US large amounts of money for a long time for interconnectivity in mostly skewed arrangments.
You are right about one thing: The country that paid for a network gets to control that network. But guess what, that means other countries should be controlling their own networks. You are extremely wrong if you think that the US paid for anything but their own segment of the Internet, the Internet was not "made by the US and then given away", honestly, what a childish view.
Because it's his Internet you want to alter. And mine, and lots of other peoples too.
Yeah, and shit, you'd almost think they all deserve a say in how it's run. And, come to think of it, most of them live outside the US, so what we need is some kind of international body in which representatives from everywhere can get together and hash things out. A group of nations, united....
If they can't even prevent their site from being slashdotted, I sincerely doubt they can handle the acre-sized server farm that ICANN uses for, oh, about a billion connections?
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
The ignorance of some people in regard to this is amazing. The internet was created, developed, and funded right here in the United States. Period. Look up the history of it. I'm not going into it here. Just because other nations chose to JOIN our network, doesn't mean that anyone outside the US is entitled to any control over it. Most PC's in the world run MS Windows, so using some peoples logic on this, should we take away control of windows from Microsoft (all joking aside here.) and let the UN put together an international group of programers to manage and develop future versions because so many people in the world use and rely on windows? Since so many people in the world use windows that means that no one corporation should control it right? It's a global thing. With this kind of logic all products and services that reach out globally should be turned over to the UN immediatly. All of this stems from anti-US setiment. It's amazing how much other countries will bash us, talk shit on us, and the minute some disaster or some idiot who thinks he should rule the world invades your country, who do you go to? the UN right?...and just who do think the UN calls on when it's time do the hard work? When it's time to send in troops or send money or aid? Yeah, say what you want assholes, but you know it's true. France wouldn't even exist if it weren't for us.
>> the Arabs "own" enough of math to send us all back to dark ages
>> Boolean logic
both are public domain
as for the englishman, he should have patent his Ideas
if you see me, smile and say hello.
Recall that the internet flourished under the adminstration of a moderate Democrat -- the very Clinton you deride for getting a blowjob (which is something you've never had the pleasure of getting).
As for your rants about "morality," well, let's see -- tell me again about those weapons of mass destruction?
I'm lookin' forward to seeing Rove and Cheney frogmarched to jail. DeLay is guilty. Your boys are all goin' down. It'll be fun watchin' them be somebody's bitch.
follow the money...
the U.N wants to impose a "user" tax, and God knows what else...
this is a money grab...
if it ain't broke, don't fix it...why would we want to cede control of a major economic force in our country to outside control..this isn't about "arrrogance" or "totalitarian" control of the internet by the U.S., this is plain old self-interest. Anyone who argues pursuing "self-interest" is somehow bad is just plain crazy....
the U.N crowd is pursuing it's own self-interest...a taxable "international" endeavor that will generate funds for a bloated organization, whose administrators appear answerable to no one.
for those who loathe the U.S., at least we have a system where the politicians can get voted out of office....many of the members of the U.N. have despots, dictators, or "elected-for-life" leaders...you may believe the U.S. has a rotten political system, but rest assured, just about every other political system out there is worse....