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.'"

Comments

what drives this controversy?

[yagu]

How did this ever even become a controversy? Isn't the internet as we know it an outgrowth and result of DARPA work? And didn't the internet essentially grow from those efforts and work?

This feels like envy and jealousy, the United States created a neat and shiny toy unnoticed by the world until it "became" the internet, and now the rest of the world wants some stewardship, whether it is warranted or not (in my opinion, not).

I don't think the U.S. is the wisest and most sage about everything, but seriously, what is considered the risk here for it maintaining stewardship. It may have misstepped once or twice but empirical evidence suggests competent management (note I didn't say the "best"), and I haven't seen any contraindications to the detriment of the rest of the world.

I think some of the threats made by the U.N., et. al., in these attempts to wrest the internet from the United States are misguided, immmature, and more seriously jeapordize the cohesive internet world wide as we know it today.

(Meanwhile, has anyone peeked at the ozone hole lately?)

Re:what drives this controversy?

[Homology]

This feels like envy and jealousy, the United States created a neat and shiny toy unnoticed by the world until it "became" the internet, and now the rest of the world wants some stewardship, whether it is warranted or not (in my opinion, not).

You are aware that the present administration has totally squandered any goodwill due to the horrible 9/11 incident? The US has very little credibility with regards to human rights and international law!

Even staunch European allies of USA are deeply concerned about the present US direction. Potential enemies are scared, so they have no choice but to develop WMD to pretect themselves. Very, very bad for all of us!!!!

Re:what drives this controversy?

[Philip K Dickhead]

In Wales, we'll build our own, Cymru internet! Called HarlechNet. It'll be a finable offence to use enlish language nameservers - or to call them "nameservers", for that matter!

Re:what drives this controversy?

[TrappedByMyself]

it's a communication infrastructure that's too important to the future of humanity to be screwed with.

Ummm, which side are you arguing? It's been stable for like 50 years now, and you want to toss it into a 'rule by committee' environment?

Re:what drives this controversy?

[Bobzibub]

Um, self determination and control of commerce were, I thought, principal reasons for the US to come into being.

Other countries are in the same situation: The 'net is a major part of these country's economic infrastructure. The US having absolute control of that much economic infrastructure would give them the same willies that your fore-fathers got. It could plausibly start messing with venezuela trade for instance.

This dispute is indicitive of the divergence of interests between US and the rest of the world. The US is going it's own route in so many ways that this dispute will be par for the course.

Cheers,
-b

Re:what drives this controversy?

[Decameron81]

"How did this ever even become a controversy? Isn't the internet as we know it an outgrowth and result of DARPA work? And didn't the internet essentially grow from those efforts and work?"

No, the Internet as we know it is the result of the work of programers, engineers and other profesionals from all over the world. It may be based on DARPA's work but there's a lot in it that has nothing to do with it. Simply discarding other contributions as irrelevant to make Internet what it is today is simply an attempt to give the US more credit than they actually have.

"This feels like envy and jealousy, the United States created a neat and shiny toy unnoticed by the world until it "became" the internet, and now the rest of the world wants some stewardship, whether it is warranted or not (in my opinion, not)."

The reason why other countries want more control has nothing to do with jealousy or envy. They simply don't want to be dependent on the US in something as important as this network is. I am quite sure that if the situation was reverted, the US would be requesting the same.

What really scares me a bit is the notion some US citizens have that other democracies in the world are not as democratic than theirs. On top of that I find it quite interesting that out of all possible motivations you could have seen behind the request of other countries to have more control, you decided that the most plausible one was jelousy and envy. That kind of reasoning can lead to no good.

"I think some of the threats made by the U.N., et. al., in these attempts to wrest the internet from the United States are misguided, immmature, and more seriously jeapordize the cohesive internet world wide as we know it today."

That's completely subjective. I personally feel like the Internet is too big for the US alone.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[jadavis]

It doesn't really have anything to do with who invented it. They can "reinvent" the internet any place they want, it's not like the U.S. has some global patent.

It has everything to do with economic power. Many people in the U.S. would hardly notice if other countries started dropping off the internet, except, perhaps, for a small decrease in spam. In any other country, the internet would basically be useless without seeing U.S. sites.

I may be somewhat exaggerating, but the basic idea is that the U.S. holds all the cards (for now at least), and the other countries don't really have any recourse.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

so the US didn't abuse it's powers in places like Chile, Guatemala, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Indonesia, etc?

Get a grip, millions of people have died from these actions.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[Shihar]

would America (and by america i mean the right wing and left wing traitors to the constitution) like it if say China controlled major aspects of the internet? how about North Korea?

No, and that is kind of the point. No, the US does not want two nations famous for their censorship of the Internet to have any more control then they already do.

Oh... what is this fine gem from the UN? http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/docume nts/APCITY/UNPAN016881.pdf
Is this China asking for more control over the Internet?

And lookie here.
http://www.wgig.org/docs/WGIGREPORT.doc
The original report on Internet governance. Hrm, who signed this merry little report... China, Cuba, Egypt, Russia, and Saudi Arabia to name a few. Now, I now the US is the great Satan and all, but do you really want those nations to dictate internet governance? Me personally? I'll pass and take my chances with the nation that has seemed to have done a marvelous job keeping their hands completely off of ICANN.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[frank378]

This is pretty much the same thing I wanted to reply to the FP. Only thing I think is missing is for us to notice that what the Internet is today is far different than what it was in its infancy. It's become a valuable, viable conduit for communicating ideas, socializing and social commentary, and even a new channel for business, and more.

In my opinion, if it is going to be used by everyone, and affect everyone to varying degrees, we should probably think about letting everyone have some input. Also I think the UN might not be the best group to give more control .

Re:what drives this controversy?

[jadavis]

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.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[blincoln]

The US having absolute control of that much economic infrastructure would give them the same willies that your fore-fathers got.

Then - like the US - they should declare independence and build their own.

I hate the current US administration, and the uselessly inoffensive Democratic party is a close second. But I love my country, and this is something we made. No foreign bureaucrat has the right to decide it's not ours anymore.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[Rzso]

How did this ever even become a controversy? Isn't the internet as we know it an outgrowth and result of DARPA work? And didn't the internet essentially grow from those efforts and work?
This feels like envy and jealousy, the United States created a neat and shiny toy unnoticed by the world until it "became" the internet, and now the rest of the would wants some stewardship, whether it is warranted or not (in my opinion, not).

You're right about the origin of the Internet. But that doen't mean it belongs to the USA! I think today the Internet is becoming the part of the basic infrastructure (like water or electricity) and it belongs to all of us.

If any invention would belong only to its "original" country, nobody could use steam engines outside England, get vitamin C outside Hungary, etc. After a while inventions become international.

I don't like that US controls all of root DNS servers. But I also wouldn't like it in the hand of the EU or any other country. A fully distributed system would be a good solution. Or DNS controlled by an independent, international organization. Country independent DNS controll is our only hope to preserve the Internet as a free media.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[Carewolf]

That _is_ what they are doing. They _have_ build their own and connected it to the US network. If the US insist on maintaining control, there will be two internets. The one in the US and the one in the rest of the world. So yes, that would make the non-US one _The Internet_ and basically mean they have taken control over it.

So semantically you are full of crap.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[Red Alastor]

Correct. The Internet is, fundamentally, an invention of the United States.

Funny how you conveniently forget that the web is not an invention of the United States. Without it, nobody would have been interested in your Internet in the first place.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[LWATCDR]

"That was the UN, and a VERY long time ago. For example, Germany was split into several zones. Conflict between the US and Russia later led to the creation of the Berlin Wall. The UK and US regions merged and became West Germany, in fact it was the "closeness" of these two zones that led to most of the conflict."
Wow your view of history is odd at best. The UN had no power that the US didn't give it. The UK was still getting Lend-Lease aid for years after the war. The rest of the western Europe was in shambles and living off the Marshal plan. The US had nothing to do with the building of the Berlin wall except that it kept at least part of Berlin free. I suggest you look into the history of the Berlin Airlift.
I had no idea that Europe had done as much "revisionist" history as you seem to indicate. Your fears of the US are grounded in your own actions and history. As you said the rebuilding of after WWII was totally self interest. Yes. The US felt that free and independent nations where more in the US's self interest than slave states.
It is understandable really. The countries in the EU do not want to remember that they owe just about everything they now have to the power and honor of the US. It is upsetting so they change history. Play down the importance of post war aid, ignore the huge number of people that did nothing or helped the Nazis, and inflate the importance of their own "freedom" fighters.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[NathanBFH]

Hmmm... interesting link on global military spending. I noticed that if you take the same stat as a fraction of GDP the United States is 27th at less than 2.4% behind some real winners such as Libya, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and North Korea which spends more than 13% of it's GDP on it's military. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/mil_exp_dol_fi g_gdp

Re:what drives this controversy?

[hamilton76]

Funny how you conveniently forget that we're talking about the Internet, not the Web.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[KDR_11k]

WW2 had the US in the defense, there's a difference between defending yourself or your allies and attacking some country because you happen not to agree with their political system (official reason). Sure, there was the "we are definding ourselves from WMDs" claim but Hitler also claimed to be defending. Both the WMDs and the Nazi defense were lies and rather thinly veiled ones at that. What other countries do is essentially their business until the UN decides it's an international affair (or it crosses borders). When you hear of a CEO exploiting his workforce you don't go over and shoot him, you let the legal system handle that. There are international laws, disregarding them will obviously make the rest of the world hate you.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[A beautiful mind]

I'd like you to pay my internet bills, since i started using the internet in the mid nineties. No? I keep hearing that the USA built the internet, pays for it and invented it so they have every right to do what the fuck they arrogantly want to do. Ok. Pay my internet bills, the price of my computer, of my router, and the 20m of cat5 cables, because as you know, my computer is part of the internet too. So, I'll wait your government to contact me with a gracious offer of paying my involved costs since 1996, interests included.

What? You don't agree? Then don't claim ownership over something which you didn't pay for.

Oh, you mean you were talking about DNS servers? You know what they are? They are an agreement from historical reasons. The USA is very nice to have covered the nominal costs of running the DNS servers compared to their value, which is that people use those ip numbers as dns servers traditionally. It's like a company buying another company which had 200k users. The users are value too! Guess what, who wouldn't like to have more than 3 billion (just a wild guess) users in their control, if even the control is limited? Pretty much everyone would volunteer to pay the fish and chips costs of keeping DNS servers online for having the power that historical fact represents. So, no. You're not doing anyone a favor by maintaining those servers, since the main benefits fall in your government's hand. You don't own the root dns servers either, since they are just ip addresses, apart from the nominal costs the physical servers represent which we discussed earlier. IP adresses by convention. Just like a well known brand name. In itself, it has value. Who are the costumers? The internet users. Who owns the brand? Noone. And everyone using the internet. The owners of the physical infrastructure.

With this congress vote, I think the USA lawmakers are acting like lemmings, or like in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, burning down the bridges behind themselves. It's a gamble. You only do that sensibly if the stakes are high, when you're sure you can win, and even then no sane people would do that. Well, i've got newsflash for you all, the USA might be the #1 country in the world atm, but that is just not enough if you got the rest of the world against you. Ignoring and using pure force, well, you'll be given your own medicine soon that way and i bet you won't like it.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[Burz]

National Prisoners Per Capita.

National Executiions Per Capita. Notice where U.S. allies rank on that chart.

Now, you were saying something about black-and-white? Or was that pot-kettle-black?

-

Re:what drives this controversy?

[maxpublic]

Then the US can wall off their own little Internet, and pretend the rest of the world isn't out there.

Most of the rest of the world seems to be fine with things just the way they are. The only people who object to it are a few politicians and their brain-dead supporters. In fact, I'm willing to bet that a poll conducted pretty much anywhere in the world would indicate that the vast majority of folks don't even know this "issue" exists. The internet works just fine for them, and I doubt they could see any reason for changing things, or would even care.

It will stop all the spam from mouthbreathing Comcast users

As opposed to the mouth-breathers who use other ISPs, both in the US and Europe? It's painfully obvious to anyone with a few neurons to rub together that Europe has just as many idiots as America does; stupidity isn't a specific national trait.

The US will wall itself off more and more

Riiiight. You mean a few spoiled little brats who can't have ICANN will wall themselves off from the rest of us, to the great anger of their own citizenry (excepting the Chinese, who're already doing it). Good call, that; let's see how long the English, or Danish, or Hungarians put up with politicians grandstanding when it means they can no longer reach any of their favorite sites. That'll put an end to this crap right quick.

the UN has to come in and sort it out.

That would be a first for the UN.

Max

Re:what drives this controversy?

[AbraCadaver]

I'm a US Citizen, and I don't despise anyone. Is there a memo I didn't get?

Re:what drives this controversy?

[nmb3000]

Thanks for post those interesting documents. Some excerpts for those scared of PDF and DOCs:

From the first one (China):

Our government is planning to make new relevant policies and legislations, and making its
efforts toward carrying out more practical and effective ways by using its legislative power
and jurisdiction to create a healthy, stable and sustainable developing net atmosphere.

What kind of legislation? Blocking sites with the word "democracy" in it? China's apparent desire to make the Internet "healthy" is a joke.

To sum up, Internet governance is a system engineering, which need to construct an integrated
system via the efforts from various layers of management in the whole human society. It needs
the participations and support from all the people to protect Internet ethics and develop
Internet civilization. Only in this way, could the Internet information society serve human
being on economic, social, cultural and other aspects.

What in the world? I've got a shiny nickel for anyone that really understands that. "Internet eithics" indeed. This paper contains absolutely nothing of any value. How applicable to the UN.

The second document is almost as good. You can sum it up with the following:

1) Wah wah wah. The US has control over the DNS root servers.
2) It costs a lot to build an infrastructure.
3) Spam is bad.
4) IPv6 is good.
5) Too much English on the Internet
6) The Internet will break any second if the UN doesn't step in.

I have yet to see a valid argument for the UN control of the root DNS servers. Documents such as these are a perfect example of using a lot of words and not saying anything at all.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[ScrewMaster]

Uh ... when did Europe become a single nation? You have a bunch of corrupt, irrational overlords that you deliberately put in power (and I've still not heard a good reason as to why) but you're still a pretty fractious bunch. Not a single nation by any means, so saying that the EU outproduced the US is rather unfair. Kind of like me saying that Mexico, Canada and the United States displaced Germany or France or whoever.. What you're really saying (and this doesn't sound as good from the European perspective) is that it took the combined economic power of the entire European Union to displace the United States. Even now, not one of you could hold a candle to California's economic output, much less the whole country. All I'm saying is, compare apples to oranges.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[gedhrel]

A handful of soldiers? You're talking about institutionalised abuse sanctioned by Rumsfeld. But that misses the point; the question is not, "what is worse?" - I think, rather, that you should be asking: if the US holds itself up as the yardstick of freedom and democracy for the whole world, should we not expect higher standards of behaviour? The country is essentially a Christian one. You might ask yourself "what would Jesus do?"

As to blowing up crowds of people: Falujah.

My views, too, are leftist: liberal, to be precise - but over here, that's not an insult :-) And I don't think the world is black-and-white. I simply offer a reason why people might be concerned about Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, the recent reports from Afghanistan, etc.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[Zerth]

Hate to say it, but the internet was a much nicer place before the Europeans cluttered it up with http.

Less visually impressive, but nicer.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[glesga_kiss]

but like much of the world, your charicatures of U.S. behavior show a recently rising anti-American bias.

A side-effect of your actions, sorry.

But you dismiss Iraq as "unwise" and make allusions to oil, without even considering the fact that what we're doing there - toppling a brutal dictator in order to install a democratic system

No, if that were the case, I'd agree with the intention but not the method. Assuming democracy was the intent, you've still killed more Iraqi civilians than Saddam did. The country is now going to fall apart, and we get to watch it from our armchairs. Capturing Saddam was actually bad, it turns out. Many in Iraq were fearful that you'd pull out*, and Saddam would return to power. With him out of the way, the more agressive groups that he surpressed were free to start attacking collatition troops. Whatever happens, Saddam is gone. Removing him ironically is going to be the thing that destroyes the country.

* in the first Gulf War, we dropped leaflets that said rise up against Saddam and we'll support you. Many did, however we stopped once we restored the Kuwait dictators to power. Those who stood up were massacred. Many were fearful this would happen again.

The intent to attack Iraq predates 9-11. It has NOTHING to do with defending yourselfs in any way. Nor was it done for the Iraqi people. Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. The USA economy is 100% reliant on this oil, changes to the price affect everything. Now, peak oil dictates that the "easy" oil is running out, and the price will rise as more adventurous oil reserves are tapped. This price rise would topple an already faltering economy.

With Saddam in power, Iraq's oil was off the map, unavailable to US markets. With him gone, it's flowing freely. Billions upon billions of dollars have been made. Companies with representation in The Project For a New American Century (official website) (e.g. Harliburton/Cheeny) have gotten wholely rich from this. The US is in a far stronger strategic position WRT to access to oil. Don't forget, much of the worlds oil belongs to Saudi (9-11) and Venesuala (socialist). Your "enemies". The US now has direct influnce on the price of oil, as well as having private access to vast quantities.

It WAS NOT done for the Iraqi people, and it saddens me that people believe that. It proves that propaganda and nationalistic tendencies are not a thing of the past.

What do you think of Afghanistan? Should we have left the Taliban in charge there?

Well, you were quite happy to deal with them for many years. For example, in 1997 a Taleban delegation visited Texas for talks on a huge deal to build a pipeline through the country. It was only after that deal went to an Argentinian group that we suddenly started hearing about the evil Taleban. We have always been at war with the Taleban.

Is toppling an oligarchy that made women wear sacks and prevented them from getting an education just another indicator of our aggression?

Only when it happens after big business says so. By the way, the people involved in that 1997 deal have moved on. They are in the Whitehouse now. The pipeline's coming along nicely.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[BrokenHalo]

What drives this controversy?

This (from TFA):

"Turning the Internet over to countries with problematic human-rights records, muted free-speech laws, and questionable taxation practices will prevent the Internet from remaining the thriving medium it has become today," said California Republican Rep. John Doolittle in a statement.

If anybody fails to see the irony there, I can't help.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[bbc]

"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.

Re:what drives this controversy?

[mjtg]

In any other country, the internet would basically be useless without seeing U.S. sites.

What complete and utter bullshit. Obviously, this comment was written by some kind of ignorant, arrogant American who thinks that the whole world revolves around his/her country. I can't remember when I last read a sentence that was so ... so ... what's the word ? Arrogant ? Stupid ? Narrow-minded ? Ignorant ? Stereotypically-American ?

Right now I'm browsing this US website called slashdot.org. A few minutes ago, I was looking at a couple of sites here in Australia for a birthday present for my wife. In a little while, I'll probably browse over to the BBC website to check out the news, then maybe send emails to friends in South America and central Europe.

Internet useless without US sites ? Well, it would be a shame to see all US sites disappear, I'd miss some of them. But I wouldn't miss them any more than if, say, all the sites in the UK were to disappear, or Germany, or whatever.

Americans may spend 99.99% of the time they are on the Internet visiting American websites, but - I hope this doesn't come as too much of a blow to your pride - people in the rest of the world (you know, us 95% of the earth's population who live outside your country) probably don't spend more than 10-20% of the time we are on the web viewing sites in the US.

If all Americans think the same way as this one (who I see was modded "5 - Insightful"), then its pretty obvious why they can't figure out why 95% of the world doesn't want a global resource to be controlled by 5%.

(BTW, I'm not anti-American, some of my best friends are Americans, but gee I wish you guys could widen your horizons realise that there is a world beyond your borders, full of people who are pretty much the same as you.)

Re:what drives this controversy?

[Zemran]

You certainly come across as anti-American,

What is this 'anti-American' tag that some Americans try to apply to anyone that argues with them? Sounds pretty paranoid.

I agree with what he said, in that /. is the only site I would miss if the US was cut adrift but given the amount of xenophobic rants that I have to wade through I would not miss it that much. The US sites too often forget that readers may not live in the US so anyone that wants a global view or market, even if they live in the US, will tend to look elsewhere.

Up until your last paragraph I supported your response to his post but I get so bored with that 'anyone that is against me must be a racist' b.s. I was even glad that you quoted 'invented' as it was a multi-national project which many of my old collegues worked on at the Royal Military College of Science in the UK. It does get tedious listening to so many Americans claim so many things that were never really theirs.

Time to begin

[technoextreme]

Obligatory slashdot argument about which countries have the best freedoms.

Re:Time to begin

[janoc]

And equally rabid American comments from people who forgot to realize that civilized world doesn't end at Pacific or Atlantic shores of the U.S.

I really do wonder what people want to achieve by this pissing contest of insulting each other. The original network may have been developed by DARPA and U.S. universities, but internet in today's sense would not exists and have the importance that it has without the international participation. Compare that with the original closed networks of e.g. AOL or Bitnet or Compuserve (if you even remember what it was like). However the governance of the network is still (mainly for historical reasons) in the hands of one country, even though others are contributing at least an equal or even larger share than U.S (remember, internet is not only the English-speaking part hosted in the U.S.). This is the problem.

The fundamental issue is that the internet as we know it may stop to exist because of political decision. It is not an attempt to usurp control from the U.S., however ICANN was source of too many controversies in the past and especially the non-American networks were always getting the short end of the stick - guess why. It is used as a club to stifle the competition by the large American network operators, e.g. Verizon. Why would they allow somebody else to operate a root nameserver? They could lose the very profitable monopoly for doing this. Of course that they would block any attempt at doing so through ICANN or lobbying in Congress.

Add a fundamentalist administration which pulls out strawmen such as China or North Korea being able to control internet and in the name of democracy the basic democratic principle of fairness gets trampled. This "patriotic" flag-waving has of course nothing to do with the real issues, but it gets presented as a reason why not to do anything to change status quo (and upset the profitable business of the large telcos).

great

[Anonymous Coward]

if there is anything stupider than the (EU + UN)'s ignorant attempt to take over the existing DNS root, it just might be the US's attempt to maintain control of it.

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.

Re:great

[Tinik]

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.

Re:great

[Xarius]

Geeks constitute a very small minority in todays internet. If we started using something else, no one would care. Mum still goes to ebay.com, Dad still uses google.com, granny still goes to blogspot to post about her latest cross-stitch.

It's the plebs that make up the majority of users, and have the majority of power over decisions like this now.

If what you said is true, then everyone would be running Linux on AMD. Not Windows on Intel.

Yours was just another post attempting to make geeks seem more powerful than they really are. Which is not very.

Re:great

[Jeffrey Baker]

You mean, like the DNS system we already have? The one operated by dozens of independent parties all over the world?

I agree, it is neat.

Political?

[wlan0]

You know something's wrong when they have to bring Congress into this.

Re:Political?

[ScentCone]

You know something's wrong when they have to bring Congress into this.

But that's exactly the way to preface a controversial and important action. You know, so that later, there won't be any whining. You know, like how Congress saw all the same intelligence, and then voted for the action in Afghanistan and Iraq. That way, no one can complain about it only being the executive branch that... oh, wait. Never mind, people will whine no matter what we (with or without congressional activity) do about DNS authority. Since we're going to hear it anyway, we might as well take the opportunity to solidify our position on the matter, and make sure that at least most of the pieces of the 'net that we care about continue to function. Without some UN sub-committee, chaired this week by the technical experts from The Sudan, deciding that Allah doesn't the ".com" TLD should be used by women, etc.

In a shock move...

[Anonymous Coward]

The US backs the US.

-RadioElectric

why the double standard toward globalization?

[Anonymous Coward]

why is it that the administration wants control over the Internet. But when it comes to trade and the economy they want to "liberalize" it and actually give up control.

Re:why the double standard toward globalization?

[Shihar]

The US has already taken the 'liberalized' approach to the Internet. The US handed it off to a not-for-profit company to manage it under some strict 'keep your damn hands off' guidelines.

This stupid battle over "control" of the Internet is at best the EU and UN trying to compare dick sizes with the US to see who is the bigger man, and at worst an attempt by some UN nations to exercise higher levels of taxation and censorship on the Internet. Chances are it is probably a little bit of both.

Personally, I am not interested in who has the bigger cock, and I am even less interested in the UN's attempting to tax and censor the Internet. ICANN has done a fine job running things as they are and has had a strictly hands off policy. Things should remain as they are until ICANN does something wrong.

U.S. Lawmakers Support U.S. Control Of $WHATEVER

[Wesley Felter]

Film at 11! Is there really any news here?

Stop This "Control The Internet" Nonsens

[Anonymous Coward]

Having the US keeping the root DNS servers doesn't equate to meaning they "control the internet". Exactly what can the US do that will so harm non-Americans in using the Internet? They can setup their own DNS at any time.

This "control of the Internet" is just inflammatory rhetoric to drive the US vs. the world posts. If you stop the hyperbole, it's obvious this issue isn't going to really affect Internet users much.

Zonk, stop baiting for pagehits on this topic. Your motives are so clear, it's sickening.

Re:Stop This "Control The Internet" Nonsens

[Anonymous Coward]

Having the US keeping the root DNS servers doesn't equate to meaning they "control the internet". Exactly what can the US do that will so harm non-Americans in using the Internet? They can setup their own DNS at any time.

What sort of harm could they do to non-Americans? Forgetting for a moment that fragmenting of the DNS system would harm us all lets take a look at a recent post about Estonia using online voting in their latest election as an example. If you read this article you'll see that their government has moved much of their infrastructure online. Imagine what could happen to a country like Estonia if someone pulled their root server plug. Sure, they could set up their own DNS, but that would take time and when much of the civil infrastructure has been moved to the Internet time is a luxury you don't really have. Then of course there are the commercial concerns. Banking, airlines, telecommunications, pretty much everything has become dependant on the Internet... and Estonia is just one example. Major infrastructure is moving online in almost every country. Use IP addresses you say? Quick, without looking it up, what's the IP address of your bank's web server?

Controlling the root servers gives the US a mighty big stick to weild should it ever be tempted to do so and the current administration's handling of foreign affairs hasn't exactly instilled the international community with confidence. Even long-time allies are right to be concerned, after all if the US isn't going to weild its big stick why is it so anxious to hang on to it?

Lawmakers?

[shine-shine]

Shouldn't that read "U.S. Lawmakers Support U.S. Control Of The Internet" ?

Global Control of the NETWORK!!

[Jormundgard]

It's phrases like "control of the global computer network" that make this whole issue so stupid.

Define "control".

[khasim]

Really, no one is talking about taking the Internet away from the US.

What is in question is what nation/organization should have the final say over the domain assignments, creation and so forth.

Because the US is still in control, we do not have the .xxx TLD, nor will we for many years.

Re:Define "control".

[Wyatt Earp]

Well if the UN Security Council for example controls it, you think China, France, UK and Russia will be more in favor of a xxx TLD? Or lets say Iran, China, US, UK, Tunisia, Thailand and Cuba are deciding, you think it'll happen then?

The nation/organization that should have final say at this point, is the one that does have the final say right now.

Why UN control is a BAD idea

[Rob_Ogilvie]

One reason why businesses are alarmed is the lengthy list of suggestions that have been advanced by nations participating in the U.N. process. Those include new mandates for "consumer protection," the power to tax domain names to pay for "universal access," and folding the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) into a U.N. agency. The United Nations has previously suggested creating an international tax bureaucracy and once floated the idea of taxing e-mail, saying in a report that a 1 cent tax on 100 messages would be "negligible."

(from news.com)

Yeah, let's pay a little extra to give each of the Billion people in Africa a laptop with wireless Internet access. And who uses the Internet the most? It's the US, is it not? So we'd be forced in to yet another form of foreign aid. Lovely.

We *did* invent the damned thing... it is ours, there's no good reason to give it away!

Re:Why UN control is a BAD idea

[LordEd]

And who uses the Internet the most?

Greetings and love to you in the name of the most high God, from my beloved country Nigeria. I am sorry and I solicit your permission into your privacy. I am Barrister Richard Okoya, lawyer to the late Ibrahim Abacha eldest son of the late former head of state of Nigeria late General Sani Abacha.

My former client late Ibrahim Abacha died in a plane crash in the year 1994. Upon the death of my former client and unknown to the family that is currently under house arrest and undergoing prosecution in the hands of the present administration as a result of human right violation and looting of the country's treasury by the late head of state General Sani Abacha.

Before the death of my client he had deposited the deed to the world wide Internet in a secret safe deposit box, and I am the only authority to this property which he was to transfer out of the country few days after he died in a plane crash.

In order to sell the deed, I must transfer it along with other valuable property to another country. As a sign of good faith, I will transfer a suitably large amount of money to an account of your choice in order for you to make security arrangements.

With this information I will immediately commence all necessary documentation for a successful shipment of the trunk box and money to your country of choice as all the modalities have already been worked out by me. I will also give you full details of this whole transaction which I have already perfected in due course.

Please note that you are to treat this with utmost confidentiality willing or not willing to assist me in this transaction as nobody knows about this deed and I am still an active lawyer in this country.

Remain blessed in the name of GOD.
Yours faithfully Barrister Richard Okoya

Re:Why UN control is a BAD idea

[mah!]

We *did* invent the damned thing... it is ours, there's no good reason to give it away!

OK, so let's follow your logic this way:

• you (?) invented the DNS, so you keep control over it.
• somebody else invented the Web elsewhere, so you'll have NO control over it.

It seems that we have a deal.

I don't get it

[BortQ]

When they say "control of the internet" are they just talking about the root DNS servers? There's nothing the US can do to stop other countries from designating some root DNS servers of their own, right? The only issue is whether or not they will share data with the current root servers. I'm not sure on the details, but all the root servers share data with each other now.I don't see the problem with more root servers being put up. Even if one of them didn't resolve some addresses based on nefarious ideas the other root servers would still be available for people to use.

Re:I don't get it

[Jeffrey Baker]

They aren't even talking about the root servers. They are only talking about the root zone file, a file of plain text. The USA doesn't control the root servers, and neither does any other single nation or organization. The root servers use the ICANN root zone out of sheer practicality. For anyone to claim that the US controls the Internet is to understand both the technology and the fundamental nature of power.

So when "journalists" say "the Internet's core infrastructure" they really mean a few lines of ASCII text. And when I say "journalists" I really mean "bunch of asshats".

Re:I want to see what China thinks about this

[michaelzhao]

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.

A Non-US Opinion

[NewbieV]

Quoting from a recent editorial in The Ecomonist:

America has offered olive branches to its critics. This summer, it acknowledged that other countries have sovereignty over their national addresses, and said it would never disrupt the system (ie, kick France's .fr address offline). And, at the meeting last week in Geneva, it supported the idea of a forum in which all governments can discuss these matters in an "evolutionary process". That sounds like an excellent scheme: just as startling as the speed of technological development is the slowness of decision-making in international forums. If this move works, it should succeed in parking the issue harmlessly for many years.

Re:A Non-US Opinion

[malsdavis]

I agree entirely.

The whole issue seems a bit pointlessly theoretical now, however it would be naive to think the issue won't arise in the distant future (i.e. sometime over the next 50 years). Particularly in the case of emerging superpower like China and the EU.

I think the U.S. lawmakers are missing the point of the technology and of international politics entirely. There is nothing the U.S. can do to stop these Countries/Unions just using there own alternate servers/protocols which would in the long run be bad for everyone.

Such fragmentation is in a sense the one flaw with the internet which could destroy it as the international network we currently know. Just like other international treaties, internet control should therefor be handed to the U.N. so that no country can shout 'Foul play' at the U.S. and try and split the internet up which is surely the most likely scenario (over the distant future) with the current setup.

Re:A Non-US Opinion

[malsdavis]

If this is the case, why do they need permission?

This is the very point, they don't need permission!
But if countries like China setup their own systems without the "permission" of the U.S. it is unlikely that the competing systems will interact the way they do now. With the example above of .tw domains, it would be bad for taiwan and the entire world if half the internet (i.e. the west) see one set of .tw domains and the other (the middle and far east for example) see another set.

"How does handing control over to the U.N. prevent this problem?"

It may not be a failsafe, utopian solution but the U.N. has maintained peace among the world's most powerful nations/unions for 60 years now. Historically that is pretty much unheard of. The U.N. has for decades been dealing with far more contentious issues than root server control and so should be quite equipped for the task of overlooking ICANN.

Re: A Non-US Opinion

[sparre]

If USA hadn't kicked a whole country's DNS off-line before, the promise in the Economist might be credible. But since but ".dk" has been taken off-line once by USA for not paying for the domain, I don't really trust such a promise.

/Jacob

PS: No, the countries do not pay for their domains.

Doing Without the UN's Vaunted Integrity

[Nova Express]

How will we ever do without the UN's vaunted, impeccable integrity running the Internet? You know, that vaunted UN integrity displayed by their flawless management of Iraq's oil for food program. Or the great work they've done defending defenseless Africans in their care. Or the work of the UN Human Rights commission. Or their work preventing genocide in Sudan and Rwanda.

How can we possibly be safe without the UN controlling the Internet?

Re:Doing Without the UN's Vaunted Integrity

[sfurious]

Slightly off-topic, but I still don't understand the US take on the UN. I mean, they are aware that they are part of it, yes?

The UN has made plenty of mistakes, I accept that. However, break the name down: "United Nations". It isn't an us and them thing, it's us and *us*. No, that doesn't mean that you'll agree with everything the rest of the UN says, or that the rest of the UN will agree with you. But current behavious looks approximately like the state of California deciding that the US government isn't worth paying any attention to.

Each UN member should feel free to disagree with the rest of the UN, and to reflect that in policy. I don't believe the UN has ever been about denying the sovereignty of its constituent nations. But for don't forget that each UN member, in conjunction with the rest *is* the UN, until they make a decision to leave.

Re:Doing Without the UN's Vaunted Integrity

[Rayonic]

How will we ever do without the US's vaunted, impeccable integrity running the Internet? You know, the vaunted US integrity displayed by their invasion of a sovereign country under false pretences? Or the great work they've done in helping combating racial poverty in their communities? Or the work of their high ranking politicians? Or their work in preventing the spread of fatal disease in Africa?

Wait, so...

• The U.S. resumed the Gulf War, after the decade-long ceasefire was repeatedly broken.
• Some people constantly look for racism where none exists.
• A politician is going to trial instead of bribing his way out of it.
• Abortion has nothing to do with stopping AIDS, so record-breaking anti-AIDS funding shouldn't go towards it.

Add that to the fact that the U.S. has been running the Internet's DNS since its inception, and you're both petty and wrong.

What a surprise!

[whathappenedtomonday]

Lawmakers Support U.S. Control Of The Internet

Of course they do, they are U.S. lawmakers. Ask a different Government for different results. D'oh!

No new arguments here, just another "We want it all and We deserve it" statement. Not very helpful.

Black hole calling the kettle black

[palfrey]

Quoting the article: Turning the Internet over to countries with problematic human-rights records, muted free-speech laws, and questionable taxation practices

• problematic human-rights records
• muted free-speech laws
• questionable taxation practices

I think you've already got a full set there.

It's about policing thought

[wheelbarrow]

Remember that the UN is the global organization that allows Libya to be a key voting member of the UN Human Rights Commission. The US is far more tolerant of dissent and free expression of ideas than most of the nations that make up the UN. As an individual who values freedom, I feel safer with the US in control.

Re:I want to see what China thinks about this

[Dogtanian]

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.

Poison is a pretty emotive word, and I'm not convinced it applies here. Unless you see everything in black-and-white with yourself as the fearless defender of God's own American values against the heathen Socialist cheese-eating Europeans.

My guess is that in the short term the US will win this one, simply because it isn't currently worth the hassle to set up an alternative DNS system.

However, I expect that behind the scenes- or away from the present "controversy"- if the US maintains its current position, then other countries will make moves to create their own root DNS server system anyway. This will almost certainly mirror the existing root servers, and be used in conjunction with them.

Only if US control grows too great will they fully switch over to use of "their" root servers and stop mirroring. In short, people will be migrated to the "new" systems with no noticable effect on their use of the Internet, whilst allowing government X (rightly or wrongly) to control the servers better.

Personally, I think that this story is way overdone. There was nothing to stop this happening before, and if places like China felt like doing it for reasons of repression, they'd have done it anyway. That's not to mention the vagueness of the reporting; the BBC basically said "The Interweb is going to split/break", and didn't go into more detail.

WWTBLD?

[Slashdiddly]

No really - what would Tim Berners Lee do?

Let the sanctions commence...

[oliverthered]

If the rest of the world ganged up on the US in the form of heavy trade sanctions it may result in the US being a little less bigheaded about... well... everything.

Re:Let the sanctions commence...

[killjoe]

You don't have to wait for that. You could simply stop buying US made products. That would get the message across. Imagine the phone calls the CEO of coke and nike would make to the president if their overseas sales fell off by 20% or more. You can bet your ass the US govt would behave differently after getting spanked by their corporate masters.

So just reach for the localy made soda instead of coke and locally made shoes instead of nike. You will be helping your local companies grow and you will be helping to get US policy changed.

It's not that hard people, how you spend your money is more important then how you vote or how you protest.

How surprising!

[A.K.A_Magnet]

New flash! US lawmakers want to keep US Internet control...! As do US administration and government! And for all those "ARPA is American", well, the Web is European. I wonder where the Internet would be today without the Web as we know it (there would be some kind of replacement, for sure, but would it be open and free? And maybe it would just have appeared).

Get your facts straight. The Internet is an international progress and profits to everyone. I haven't participated a "DNS control" topic yet, but I'm posting now since I find it really childish that American slashdotters are so reluctant to ONLY let countries manage their own ccTLD, and let ITU manage the gTLD (for the better interest of everyone, since for now the Bush administration is completely corrupted by VeriSign for .com and .net TLDs.. And we all remember the dreadly wildcard).

The ITU managing root DNS servers doesn't mean that the U.N will get to decide everything and that Chinese will have a say. And even if they did, why not? The U.N. privilegdes democratic thoughts, e.g Free Software (FOSS) is recognized by UNESCO, an U.N. branch? ITU has already managed discussions on IPv6 and is a very prominent actor in the world of networking and communication.

All in all, the US letting the U.N. manage the Internet won't change what we love in the Internet, but it will prevent bad political choices (e.g VeriSign having gTLDs that are supposedly ran as Public Service), and it is just the way it should be. And stop those redundants "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". It's not about fixing it, it's about making things equal. The Internet was made by all (maybe not by country still in development who couldn't possibily help, but does it mean we should say fuck to Africa when it wants to have some input in the future of our great *HUMAN* network?). Oh, forget it, Slashdotters are sometimes so conservative I don't know why I'm posting. Certainly going to burn some karma and getting tons of replies of how wrong I am and how we should just cut the transatlantic optic fibers so we won't bother each others anymore. Sorry, but I enjoy the American Internet. And I enjoy the European Internet. And without those peerings, it would feel like cold war. Think about it: Back in 1991, Linux would have had to be sent to the US by traditionnal mail (yeah, it was developped in Finland). Now that would have been bad for all of us, wouldn't it?

I don't care much about the issue. The US have not managed the root DNS servers too badly, except for the VeriSign crap (but the .org is now managed by SPI, a great German ISP really "for the public interest"). So now let's get a big hug ;) And hope nothing bad happens, I'd hate not to be able to read Slashdot, and for sure, everyone here would miss my INSIGHT ;) (HAHAHAHA).

Re:How surprising!

[grimJester]

All in all, the US letting the U.N. manage the Internet won't change what we love in the Internet, but it will prevent bad political choices (e.g VeriSign having gTLDs that are supposedly ran as Public Service), and it is just the way it should be.

It will prevent unilateral political choices, but as every Slashdotter should know by now "managing" the Internet is not possible. Only the DNS system can be controlled by a central authority. Censorship only works if every single country in the world agrees to crack down on ISPs hosting the stuff to censor. This will only work with child porn and (hopefully) spam.

Erm, vs. the rest of the world??

[LadyLucky]

I'm from New Zealand. The UN no more represents me or my opinion than it represents the US and its opinion. The rest of the world is far from united behind this UN resolution. I for one think the US has done a fine job and I would much rather it be controlled in the US than in some wholly undemocratic institution where repressive governments would get a say in governance.

DNS is NOT the Internet!

[Saggi]

The discussion is in regards to the root of the DNS. This is NOT the Internet! The Internet is composed of many technologies, where the DNS is only a minor one.

The most fundamental is the wire! This is not made by the US, but mostly telecompanies around the world. But also some WIFI and other free networks has been build.

The core technology is based on the TCP/IP. This is like telephone numbers. These are distributed all over the world as we speak and it would be close to impossible to break this up.

In regards to who made the Internet, it was based on some ideas made by the US army many years ago. But the net was not build by the US. It was mostly universities who had local networks that over time got connected to each other, slowly building the Internet. It is not the US who went to every country and implemented it locally. If the rest of the world disconnect from the US, US will be alone.

The most common feature of the Internet; the World Wide Web, was not an invention from US at all. It started in CERN, and was made to provide scientific results out to a large audience.

So what is the fuss about? If the DNS goes offline (or I chose to use my own), all I need to do is to find the IP's I'm looking for. Well that's what I did before the DNS was invented. And there is no one who can prevent me from distributing my own phonebook (DNS) today, ignoring the US root.

So control of the Internet? It's a joke! The Internet is extremely difficult to control. Anyone who thinks its possible doesn't live in the real world. They are probably more political orientated than having technically knowledge.

The Internet is fundamentally a collection of networks that various people, regions and countries has decided to connect together.

Re:DNS is NOT the Internet!

[killjoe]

"The discussion is in regards to the root of the DNS. This is NOT the Internet! The Internet is composed of many technologies, where the DNS is only a minor one."

How sure are you that your senator understands the difference? Maybe they are indeed advocating controlling the internet and not just the DNS servers.

Bush is irrelevant

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Bush won't backdown. I predeict the US is going to win this battle

The thing is, whether Bush backs down or not is irrelevant. Despite the views apparently held in the White House and among a disturbingly large proportion of US citizens, the US has no authority over anyone outside its own borders. If the rest of the world wants to run its own alternative DNS system, then realistically there is pretty much jack the US can do about it, and if it tries to play the isolation/fragmentation game, it's going to miss the rest of the world a lot more than the rest of the world misses it. The only constructive thing the US administration can do is try to talk/bribe them out of it diplomatically and/or hope they decide that it's not really a good idea after all and drop it.

Personally, I have mixed opinions on this one. On general principles I think the US should be forced to relinquish absolute control, particularly since it has demonstrated a willingness to abuse the position by effectively vetoing the .xxx TLD. However, I maintain a healthy scepticism about the UN, which lots of US-based people seem to assume is the only option on the table here despite at least four serious proposals having come out of the EU already.

Ok, but we get to take back all engines

[PontifexPrimus]

Man, whenever I hear stupid drivel like this I'd like to remind the poster that the Otto internal combustion engine, the Diesel motor and the Wankel engine all were invented by German engineers, funded by German money and patented in Germany. So please, do stop using them, then you're allowed to complain.
Or better yet, force the designers to include remote control kill-switches that allow the German government to shut down each one. Don't worry, we'd never abuse that.

Are you behind the London Hilton?

[NigelJohnstone]

"The UN no more represents me or my opinion than it represents the US and its opinion. The rest of the world is far from united behind this UN resolution. I for one think the US has done a fine job and I would much rather it be controlled in the US than in some wholly undemocratic institution where repressive governments would get a say in governance."

UN ITU is just a meeting place for government technical people. If they don't meet there under the UN, they'll meet at the London Hilton, or the Savoy but whereever they meet and whoever books the meeting room, it will be the same governments and the same technical people. It's not a *UN* resolution or *UN* control, since a UN is just a bunch of governments in a meeting.

You might not like some of the Governments sitting at the meeting table, but they're just one voice each in a big table, and some of them feel the same way about you!
That system works in all other telecoms, including the wires that carry the internet, so why wouldn't it work for DNS?

US blocking .xxx TLD, but not .xxx.${cc}

[The Monster]

Because the US is still in control, we do not have the .xxx TLD, nor will we for many years.

And yet, via the ccTLD mechanism, we have federated control of domains to every nation on earth, including some with policies we don't much like.

So, for example, if those wonderful bastions of free speech, the French, wanted to, they could make an .xxx.fr domain. Whatever interference is exerted by USGOV to prevent .xxx, there also must be hundreds of other countries preventing .xxx.$(cc) as well.

I personally oppose .xxx, but not for the reason you might expect. I think people (including my own brother) who demand that the Internet be made safe for the Precious Children<tm>, perhaps by ghettoizing 'adult content', have it backwards. The Internet was built by and for adults, and the presumption should be that a site is for adults unless otherwise specified. I'm all in favor of .kids or other mechanisms to 'whitelist' G-rated content, but want no part of a system that requires consenting adults to do anything to keep kids out. That's their parents' job.

Re:US blocking .xxx TLD, but not .xxx.${cc}

[rs79]

"While a good idea, you have to remember that the folks lobbying for an .xxx domain are doing so precisely so they can tell the rest of us how to think, and speak, and act. "

An intersting hypothesis, but factually incorrect.

DNS is just a way to find computers on the network. it is not a mind control protocol. If you think otherwise, raise my arm.

The creation of a new network resource does nor force anybody to do anything. Presumably some people will want to buy .xxx names and appreciate the option.

What exactly is wrong with that? Choices are good, no? In other words, should we listen to YOU instead of THEM? Or are we all grown ups that can decide and act for ourselves, making choices as we se fit?

Re:US blocking .xxx TLD, but not .xxx.${cc}

[Conanymous Award]

You might also want to know what you are talking about.

Separation of religion and state is very strict in France, maybe even stricter than in the US. In both countries this derives from the time of enlightenment and the respective revolutions in these countries.

And I'm sure you know enough of recent history to understand why the Germans are a bit sensitive about hate speech and ideologies like Nazism. I wouldn't like to hear the screaming and whining if Germany suddenly started to ignore the problem called Nazism (which, unfortunately, is alive and well all over the world).

Sure, both of these examples are extreme cases, but perfectly understandable when you know where these nations are coming from. It's not like Europe is on the verge of collapsing into some dark age where free speech is suppressed. I'm starting to get really tired of Americans who cling onto their naive worldview where the only place with freedom is the US of A. Heck, you have your own restrictions, we have our own. In some cases you have more freedom, in some cases we Europeans are freer. Big deal, I can assure you both you and I would feel quite free in both places.

Nor should we.

[Jetson]

Because the US is still in control, we do not have the .xxx TLD, nor will we for many years.

Nor should we. Every country in the world has been assigned a 2-letter top domain, and we should be using them. Rather than creating new 3-letter TLDs we should be adding ".us" to the current ones. Those ".com"s that are not in the USA probably already have a matching address in their own country's TLD anyway. Sometimes it redirects to the .com (microsoft.ca redirects to microsoft.com/canada) and sometimes the redirection works the other way (google.com redirects to google.ca if you try to connect from Canada).

Once the whole world isn't fighting over the same TLD there won't be any call for the USA to give up control because it would only control the ".us" domain anyway.

This fight is about who gets to profit from issuing and owning "vanity plates".

Re:Nor should we.

[TheRaven64]

Once the whole world isn't fighting over the same TLD there won't be any call for the USA to give up control because it would only control the ".us" domain anyway.

Except, as the status quo stands, the government of the USA[1] controls the servers that decide which server has the authority to handle requests for country code domains. Why should the US government decide who handles requests to .uk (for example)? In theory, there is nothing stopping them from deciding that France should have backed them in the Iraq war, pointing the .fr SOA record at their own server, and redirecting all traffic for .gov.fr IPs via their own service. The current administration probably wouldn't do that. The next probably wouldn't either. What about the one after that? Or the one after that?

In my estimation, this entire `problem' could be significantly reduced if every DNS entry contained an embedded signature, allowing the entire chain to be verified back to the original root entry. This would allow anyone to run a root server, as long as they kept it in sync with the official root entries, and allow anyone who trusts ICANN[3] to trust the results. Of course, Verisign would hate this, since it would make signed SSL certificates worthless - you could just embed the key in the DNS record, signed with the private key associated with the public key in your SOA record.

[1] Previously they had agreed to hand over complete control to ICANN - hardly my favourite organisation, but at least one which pretends to be international and impartial - an agreement that they recently stated they no longer intended to honour, which sparked this whole debate.

[2] Possibly not the best example of a trustworthy organisation.

Re: .xxx TLD...?

[Afaflix]

You really don't get it.
The "smut" is already on the web ... under .com
if you have all the smut under .xxx it is much easier to filter stuff out.
lets assume .xxx comes to be; many of the companies that provide that kind of smut will use the .xxx because then they are easy to find.
easy to find means dollars
the entities(liraries, schools, families) that DON'T want that smut on their computer screen can easily filter that out and sowith protect the innocent eyes of those they want to.

cheers

Re:Free spech...

[McSmithster]

I think your missing a huge point. The UN does not seem to care about what China does but yet the Americans drop a bomb on the wrong house and the world freaks out. There are some serious double standards when it comes to America.

  -Iraq commits genocide, barely makes the news.
  -US soldier kills innocent people by accident; whole world hears about it and screams at the US.
  -China censors its Internet; UN does nothing nor says anything.
  -US invades a country for invalid reasons and people flip out; they have good reason too.
  - However, France has hundreds to thousands of troops in the Middle East for even less reasons then the US; barely even heard about.
  -France was almost charged with genocide, and is the reason why they stopped their nuclear testing; barely makes the news.
  - Women stoned to death in Iran because it is believed she cheated on her husband; not a single word of it reaches anybody.
  - US troops die in a bombing and the whole world tells the US, "hey thats what you get"
  - China imprisons/kills someone who attempts free speech on the Internet; no one even knows his name.

No country in innocent. Countries all across Europe and Asia do evil things everyday. The difference is that those countries will imprison reporters who say anything about it. In America, the government doesn't do that and when they do the public freak out on them. See the difference. Europe has done just as many horrific things as the US you just never hear about them. Socialism is a wonderful thing no?? Your country could be killing hundreds of innocents right now and no one would no. The US does it and the whole world knows. That seems a bit unfair, no?

Don't be so effing arrogant.

[iworm]

So, let's apply the US logic:

- Television standards should be controlled by the Scottish Parliament.
- Postage regulations are controlled by the British parliament.
- Ballooning is controlled by the French (even in the US!)
- ...and so on.

Stop being so fucking paranoid about the Internet. So DARPA funded it years ago. Big fricking deal. We've moved on since then. Get over it and deal with it.

But it says in this here bible ...

[FishandChips]

There are plenty of ways out of this other than a "showdown". And the fact that it should even be seen as coming to a showdown is a sad comment on the Bush administration's grasp of foreign policy, considering all the other far more important issues troubling the USA and the world. Some ways to take the heat out of the issue were mentioned in the article in the Economist.

In any case, you can't have it both ways. If the internet is just another utility as many proponents claim, then it is about as interesting as gas, plumbing or electricity. By this argument, moving some aspects of internet regulation to an international body isn't remotely controversial and not much different to the international postal and telephone agreements that have been in force for years. These work well and so unremarkably that no one gives them a second thought. Why should the internet be any different? No one is suggesting that the internet be given away or placed in the hands of a cosmic villain.

On the other hand, if the internet is a some kind of special case and qualitatively different by an order of magnitude from simple utilities, they let's hear some reasoned argument from the US establishment instead of jingoism (and a lot less hype from the big IT companies about a global inforamtion economy).

Alas, it looks as if this is developing in a way all too typical of the current Administration. We begin with intransigence and hostility. This gives way to bad-tempered haggling which eventually results in a sour US withdrawal from its position. Eventually there is a compromise. Everyone is left feeling crap and the US, most likely, is left with less than it would have achieved had it been a little more thoughtful and subtle in the first place.

Some form of international settlement for the regulation of the internet is absolutely inevitable, imho. Unless you are a flat-earther, the only next question is how best to achieve this. Unfortunately it looks as if the US Administration is settling for flag-waiving. I don't think this has yet been backed up with fire-breathing quotations from the bible, but it probably will be. It ain't gonna fly.

Re: .xxx TLD...?

[KarmaMB84]

Who is going to force all those porn sites to go to .xxx? If there's no enforcement then the .xxx domains will just have a second .com address pointing to their IP so they won't be filterable by domain anymore.

Re: .xxx TLD...?

[maxpublic]

if you have all the smut under .xxx it is much easier to filter stuff out.

And what exactly are you going to do. Force everyone who serves up porn to move the .xxx domain, under penalty of law? If so, then who gets to decide what's porn? The U.S. religious right? Iran? Me?

The .xxx domain solves nothing, and serves only as a potential tool to oppress others - especially the owners of sites which aren't pornographic, but which certain religious groups would like to classify as such in order to drive them off the 'mainstream'.

Max

Freedom or Permission?

[serutan]

Maybe a better place to begin a discussion would be the question of which governments have the most control over their citizens. When someone's in position to take away your "freedom" whenever they want, then it isn't freedom anymore, it's permission.

Re: .xxx TLD...?

[stwrtpj]

The real reason that the US government asked for postponement of the .xxx domain is because some lawmaker realized at the last minute that instituting a .xxx domain specifically for adult content effectively legitimizes it. It would give defense lawyers for those accused of violating "obscenity" laws new ammunition, allowing them to claim that the government effectively gave its blessing to adult content by granting this domain for that use. By preventing this from happening, the government eliminates this potential defense.

fear of the other

[Dot_Killer]

Some times I sit back and think do these conservative or Republican or ultra-patriotic Americans believe the crap they say in the vain of never saying anything against US policy.

"Turning the Internet over to countries with problematic human-rights records, muted free-speech laws, and questionable taxation practices will prevent the Internet from remaining the thriving medium it has become today"

The US has one of the most REGRESSIVE tax systems in the developed world, tax cuts to the wealthy with giveaways to companies that do not pay taxes while public programs get cut like HUD. Plus I guess we can forget the whole firehoses and attack dogs thing since that was in the past, no human-rights issues there. Prisons for profit filled up with minorities as street-sweeping by the police, yadda yadda.
And for free-speech, in the US it isn't free and it has already been bought by those who own all the major media outlets.

We don't want to turn over internet speech over to the Chinese but do we want to turn it over to the US Christian Right. They exchange the idea of censoring ideas from the west for censoring sexual material. I'm sure the very moral people can make that choice easily but have we put them in charge of our speech.

If the people who actually built the internet we making the decisions of its future I would be OK with that, but I cannot turn it over to politicians or companies that have bought up all the votes to do whatever they want.

Who is complaining then?

[stock]

For Europe RIPE always has functioned ok, sofar. Ditto for Asia's APNIC the America's have been covered by ARIN . These three bodies have made the Internet what it is today. The only one complaining seems to be the White House itself. Why would that be ? Because today press organizations still can publish stories like these ? :

"Waiting For The Valerie Plame Wilson Grand Jury: The Big Question Is Whether Dick Cheney Was a Target"

"2 Brits nabbed with $3 trillion in fake US fed notes"

Robert

Re:Please...

[Decameron81]

"The core of the internet and it's underlying technology was largely developed in the United States. Even most of the hardware is created by U.S. based companies. Other than infrastructure, other nations did little to "create" the internet - although you could argue that the infrastructure is the internet - but then we wouldn't be arguing about the US keeping control of it, would we?

In any event, if there was a flaw with the current system, or it was broken for other nations, I could understand such action. But as it currently stands, their sole reasoning for wanting control is because 1) America "controls" it (despite it ICANN being an international group) and 2) The Bush administration doesn't like .xxx or .sex TLDs (note that not liking them is NOT the same as saying you can't have them). If France, Germany, or England was running it as well as it's being run right now, *I* wouldn't care. China, or say, North Korea, running it would be another story entirerly."

The point is that who created it is not in discussion here. We are talking about the Internet as a whole. And DNS is a big part of that. You are afraid of other countries controlling the internet just as much as the rest of the world is afraid of the US doing so, with the difference that the US would not have anyone to tell them not to do it, while the rest of the world would take care of regulating each other in that respect.

The question is: will the US take into account my rights as a foreinger when they make their decisions? Or would they promptly ignore them if my rights collided with the rights of some american or with the government? Is freedom only important when US citizens are involved: why shouldn't the rest of the world be free to choose wether they want an .xxx domain or not?

Seriously, this is not about making decisions for Americans. We don't care about censoring you... we don't want you to censor us. IMO we have the tools to bring forward a decentralized DNS system in which each government has the right to filter what they don't want for their citizens, while not having any power at all when it comes to other countries. How can this be bad for you?

After all the US government is not sovereign where I live, so why should I live by their rules.

Just sit down for a second and think about it. You even agree with what I'm saying to some extent when you declare that you don't want other governments messing with what you do online. Guess what: we don't want that either.

"As for other nations not being as democratic as the United States, that is in a sense true. Other nations certainly don't enjoy the freedoms that American's enjoy (despite their continued non-sensical bitching about the Patriot Act)."

Care to explain this to me? Seriously, I fail to see what makes a US citizen "more free" than I am, but it seems like you know better... so I guess you can give me some examples that clearly demonstrate your point.

What the rest of the world wants.

[chris_sawtell]

What the rest of the world wants is for dear, doddery, old Uncle Sam to nurture his delinquent creatation and put it back on the rails by:-

1. Stopping spivs stealing TLDs from small, and naive states.
2. Stopping spivs hoarding domain names thus creating a very expensive market for what should be an administration-cost only resource.
3. Stopping organisations hoarding many millions of unused IP numbers.
4. Stopping the registration of Out-of-Country servers and email addresses.
5. Stopping the largest supplier of software foisting insecure by default machines on innocent customers who then use them on the 'Net, thus allowing the creation of million machine bot-nets to be used for criminal purposes.
6. Stopping the broadcasting of billions of spam messages which are mostly used for criminal purposes.
7. Controlling the veritable flood of revolting, depraved, and offensive images and film clips.

Once the addressing of these issues has at least been attempted by the US Government and its co-conspirator the ICANN, the rest of the world might agree that the Internet is being properly administered. Until that time, so sorry Uncle Sam, but you are a failing parent.

Strongly put maybe, but as far as the rest of the world is concerned that's what the issues are all about. In a word, shared Sovereignty over what has become an internationally shared resource.

Actually, the web is also a US invention...

[msauve]

...if the claim is based on the nationality of the originator, Ted Nelson. I believe he was associated with Brown University at the time.

http://www.xanadu.com/

Tim Berners-Lee's HTML (which not coincidentally uses Ted's term "hypertext") implemented a small subset of Ted's vision. It was of course based on SGML, the offspring of GML, which was also created by a US national, Charles Goldfarb.

http://www.sgmlsource.com/history/roots .htm

Europeans miss the point

[obeseotron]

For all the things that you or I may hold against the US government, its administration of the Internet can't be one of them. The only thing we need from whoever controls the internet is for it to 1. not break and 2. not be censored. Until the US screws up either of these things I don't see how giving control to the UN will help things. I'm not some arrogant American who thinks that we're the only country on earth that respects freedom of speech, I wouldn't object to giving Europeans, Indians, Japanese or Brazillians or any other reasonable democracy a greater say. In case you guys missed it, 2/5 of the security council (don't anyone dare call Vlad Putin's Russia a democracy) and a very sizeable chunk of the general assembly are NOT democracies and have nothing approaching the same regard for free speech.

Re:Free spech...

[i_am_not_a_bomba]

I live in Australia and have heard of most of the things on that list through our mainstream media.

I hardly think you can blame Europe or whatever for your own countries ignorant & impotent media coverage of the world.

Not to mention that for the last 40 years the American propoganda machine (hollywood & media) have been screaming to the western world that America is the 'leader of the free world' the 'freest and fairest country in the world' and 'better than your countries', etc ,etc (of course before the internet most of the people i know thought that was just a fabricated attitude and the actual citizens of America would be more pragmatic about their position in the world, fuck were we wrong). So when the self proclaimed leader, the 'god of all countries', starts doing fucked up shit, then yeah people will talk about it.

Btw nice tactic associating the idea of press cencorship with socialism and European countries without actually saying it, learn that from your current political administration? The press is just as free to report on the government in France as it is in Australia, the US, New Zealand, the UK, Germany, Sweden and most of the other western coutries in the world.

It saddens me that you actually seem to believe the words you speak, the pooor US gets bullied so much in the big bad world, boohoo. Seriously, can't you see why the things are the way they are? If someone continually carries on about how they are the greatest person in the world, better than everyone else and makes disturbingly ignorant arguments about other people and why he is better than them, normal people will think that person is a wanker. See what i'm getting at? That person is the US for the last 40 years.

This line is probably the best:

"your country could be killing hundreds of innocents right now and no one would no"

You mean no one in the US right, because the US media wont give it air time? Please dont take this the wrong way but get it through your thick bloody head that there is people outside the US that *will* know, and that it's not other countries fault if *your* insipid whorish media won't give world news more air time.

Your entire argument is that because *you* don't hear about world issues that means every other country must be living under some jackboot of oppression. I should feel annoyed at such stupidity, but i've come to accept it as just typical American IgnoranceTM.

Re:Please...

[arminw]

....why shouldn't the rest of the world be free to choose wether they want an .xxx domain or not.....

Can anybody here on /. tell me that the US has mandated that China, Brazil or any other country can't set up a server system that allows for a .XXX or .YYY or any other domain for thier respective countries?

Re: .xxx TLD...?

[rs79]

"The real reason that the US government asked for postponement of the .xxx domain is because some lawmaker realized at the last minute that instituting a .xxx domain specifically for adult content effectively legitimizes it."

Nonsense. Cark Rove needed to get a religious group off his back by doing them a favour. Rather than delve into the stem cell issue or any of the other thorny problems on their shopping list, he glanced at their "stop .xxx" request, he made a phone call, and .xxx was stalled.

The whitehouse doesn't legitimize porn, the supremes do.

And it doesn't legitimize porn, it migtates it away from .com. Follow the money there boys and girls.

This is why it's bad to use the legacy root servers. Consider this: say in once scenario eveybody primaried the root zone for themselves; everybody was their own root server, that is they declare themselves authoritative for the "." root zone. Now their comnputer knows where all the tld servers are and can find the .com servers easily, and it caches them. (The root zone doesn't change very much at all) and so on and so forth. Notice there's no latency while you query the root servers to find where the nameservers for .com or .us are. This information is local to you now.

Under this scenario, how would the US government block a tld it didn't like? It can not. Nor can any government.

Under the current scenario, if thew USG shut off the legacy root servers (which it *can do* and no argument to the contrary changes this fact) the internet goes away, worldwide.

Before DNS was invented, everybody downloaded the "hosts.txt" file and your computer in that day knew the names and addresses of all the other computers on the network.

When DNS was invented, the notion of your own compter doing your own nameservice was absurd - about 5 guys worldwide had working nameserver code, so it was a great convenience that DARPA ran a half dozen nameservers that resolved the root and everythings else. And it was great that the NSF paid for these servers, deployed at the most robust points around the network. Through 20 years of sheer laziness and lack of innovation (with a good measure of subterfuge, graft and greed thrown in) we still, for some reason not well understood by me, rely on those 13 IP addresses for all names. Biz-zarre. It's *convenient*.

But, as a citizen of a country not the US I think now the convenience of the US controlled root servers is somewhat diminished.

Re:HAhahahahahaha

[IgnoramusMaximus]

They claim its only for energy, and they must be telling the truth, seeing how they sit on the worlds second largest oil supply.

Perhaps they know something about the state of their oil reserves that you don't. Perhaps they feel that in the upcoming peak oil scenario their best bet is to a) have alternate sources of energy for themselves as to make maximum use of exportable black gold, b) have nukes to defend themselves from the inevietable, desperate attempts at grabbing that oil by the addicted and suffering from severe withdrawal effects, junkie Western countries and China to boot, c) are afraid of their Israeli and US enemies who have both nukes and have been proven beyond any doubt to be regional aggressors, complete with use of the utterly prepostrous, Hitler-like excuse of "pre-emption". Not to mention the past history of US encouragement of Saddam's war on Iran and to begin with, CIA's destruction of the democratic government of Iran and replacement of thereof with the Shah. Just you ponder this wee, little, and quite incomplete list before you start calling people Jackasses, you uninformed troglodyte.

Re: .KKK TLD...?

[Afaflix]

yes
keep them where you can see them
instead of make them hide .. so you can pretend it's all not happening

Only a matter of time

[Horus1664]

While I do understand the US reticence to permit the UN to 'control' aspects of the Internet, particularly as the UN does not come across as particularly efficient/pro-active/effective, it is surely inevitable that either a global body is created to administer dispute resolution etc or one day the network will fracture.

When China, India etc become fully connected and their economies overtake that of the US, which they inevitably will, probably within our lifetimes, they will have little need to allow the US to control such a key resource.

I hope that a middle way can be found before then otherwise I can imagine rival networks emerging.