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Lawmakers Support U.S. Control Of The Internet
TechScam writes "A new resolution was introduced in Congress that aims to backup the Bush administration over retaining U.S. control of the Internet's core infrastructure. From the article: 'The resolution, introduced by two Republicans and one Democrat, aims to line up Congress firmly behind the Bush administration as it heads for a showdown with much of the rest of the world over control of the global computer network.'"
Don't be ridiculous. China will have absolutely no control of the Internet. As for China being the "next" empire. That is dubious, according to the CIA 15 year report, it will be the EU that will become the next superpower, economically, and militarily.
This is why this is issue is so significant. The US does not want to the EU to have anymore power than it does now. This classic showdown highlights US foreign policy. The US will win because of simple facts. The sheer amount of Tier 1 ISP's as US companies, Akamai is a US company, the ICANN is still in the US. And many major websites are US owned.
The EU can poison all the DNS servers they want. It will hurt them more than the US because the simple fact is that more Europeans do business with US companies than American's doing business with European companies.
what we need is to get some momentum behind a decent decentralized DNS-type system. there have been various proposals out there for a while, but there was never a strong reason to try switching... until now.
Agreed. What most of the world doesn't understand is that the internet, the real internet, is not controlled by any goverment or agency. It's controlled by us, the geeks and nerds of the computer world! The DNS system only continues to work so long as we continue to use it. If we all start using a different system to find our pron, the companies of the world will follow us to keep our buisness. Then the rest of the world will follow them.We don't have to keep DNS around. There are other ways of finding information on the internet. If we put our heads together and came up with a replacement, then used it, we can put this whole messy business, and any future similar problems, to rest.
You're talking about the moral justification, not the actual reason. If the E.U. or the U.N. wanted to, they could easily fabricate some moral justification for taking over the internet. But they would then run into the actual reasons that the U.S. has control:
(1) The U.S. has a unified language
(2) The U.S. is an economic powerhouse, especially on the internet
The moral justification is orthogonal to the actual reason. It happens that they point at the same country this time.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
"Correct. The Internet is, fundamentally, an invention of the United States."
Nowadays when you post here, you must take into account that there is an editor called Zonk who barely has enough braincells to keep breathing. He continuously gets tiny things wrong, such as "is this at all interesting?" and "what is this story about?".
The story is not about control of the internet, it is about control of one small internet service, and a fairly insignificant one at that, called DNS. Invented by one Paul Mockapetris, who I assume was an American. I don't know how that should mean that the USA should control my DNS servers, but I guess some justification could be made up.
Anyway, I hope this all blows up in our governments' faces: I have always disliked the way the DNS was controlled, and I will be glad when we need to start thinking of alternatives, and much more diverse naming systems will emerge. Several ones that will not be governed my grey men in grey suits.