Slashdot Mirror
Behind the Fight to Control the Internet
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "The battle over control of the Internet and ICann (previously slashdotted here and here) gets placed in broader context in the Wall Street Journal. The article explains the role of 'other nations' discomfort with the U.S. as the world's only superpower, unafraid of taking unilateral action,' a fear intensified by the U.S.'s move to halt the introduction of .xxx domains for pornography sites. In a related column, Frederick Kempe opens the floor for a debate between the diplomat leading talks for the U.S., and the former journalist from Luxembourg leading the effort to move the Internet away from U.S. control. 'Today, in a globalized world in which the Internet has become a global resource for freedom of expression and for economic exchange, this monopolistic oversight of the Internet by one government is no longer a politically tenable solution,' Viviane Reding says. Kempe also suggests ways the two sides can split the difference."
Splitting up would probably be a bad thing - I dream of the old days of one domain registrar - now you have to jump through 13 hoops to update dns servers, domains, etc... Imagine if you have to do the same for IP? no thanks...
Yea, for about the 4th time. But since the subject is so inflammatory and gets about 600 posts each time, that means more ad revenue for Slashdot (well, except from those of us who use adblockers).
You know, I was just thinking that what we really need is another one of these threads.
I'm surprised this hasn't received more mainstream coverage in the U.S. I've heard nothing from CNN, Headline News, Fox News, or MSNBC about this. I don't get CBC or BBC News here, so I don't know if they've covered it. Something with such wide-sweeping effects really should be getting an appropriate amount of attention.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
I think the danger is more to us 'Merkins forming our own splinter Internet, putting us in the same camp as other bastions of free speech like China and Saudi Arabia. The fact is that our own gummint meddled in Icann's business over .xxx and sparked this mess.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
FTA: "Icann had tentatively approved the new domain name, called .xxx, several months earlier, but at the last moment the Department of Commerce removed its support, after it said it received thousands of letters of complaint from conservative Christian groups and others."
.xxx domain? Hell, wouldn't it make it easier to block sites at work or home?
Why wouldn't these people be in favour of an
I mean, what's easier to spot as porn (domain names made up because I'm at work and cannot check for a good example):
searchmovies.com or searchmovies.xxx
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
So when's the invasion^Wliberation of Luxembourg due?
Here's a recap of the technical side of things as they are now:
.fr points to). The German DENIC for example operates 11 domain name servers which serve the .de domain from all over the world, including 2 in the USA. Only a few small countries have outsourced the task of serving their own CCTLD to an operator of their choice.
.de). Since almost two years there are more root DNS servers outside the USA than inside. These servers are paid for and administered by organizations outside the USA.
.com TLD server, then most likely an instance of the K-root-server (in Frankfurt, Germany) will (correctly) answer this question. Someone in the Netherlands gets the answer from another instance of the K-root-server in Amsterdam. People in the United Arab Emirates ask an instance of the F-root-server in Dubai. Nobody needs to be forced by law to use "other" root DNS servers. Everybody already does.
It is common for a country to host its own TLD servers (the servers which tell you what a particular domain under for example
In addition to the CCTLD servers, several countries around the world operate root DNS servers (the servers which for example tell you where to ask about
So far, the people who run these root DNS servers have agreed to serve a common "root zone file" as decided on by ICANN. You see, what many people on this forum propose, that "the rest of the world" should start running their own DNS servers and see how that goes, has been in effect for years. If someone in Germany asks for the
Absolutely the only thing which keeps the DNS from fracturing is the international agreement on a standard definition of the root zone. This agreement is crumbling and if no multilateral solution is found, DNS will become ambiguous.
When people say that users would have to be forced to use alternate servers to make changes take effect, then they clearly don't understand the situation. When they say that everybody uses the US-owned and thus US-controlled internet, then they clearly don't understand the situation. When they say that other countries lack the resources, then they clearly don't understand the situation. It is blatantly obvious that most people who "dare" the rest of the world to try the split have no idea how little stands in the way of that move, both politically and technically.
Other nations don't trust the US anymore. Including our "allies", who are taking the hits for our catastrophic invasion of Iraq - even cutting their losses by abandoning the "Coalition of the Billing" hasn't repaired the damage suffered by those who joined it at all. And the "monopoly" reference shows just how bad the US looks for letting Microsoft keep up business as usual admitting they're a huge monopoly.
--
make install -not war
Are we talking Verisign vs ICANN control or that Bush vs World thing?
From TFA: "Governments have not really understood the inner workings of the Internet," said Mr. McKnight. In the past two years, "they have gotten educated and now they want to get their hands on the levers."
This reminds me of a child just shown how to do something new. They see Dad riding a bike or working on the car and they want to try. How often are their attempts at emulating the actions of an experienced person successful? Would you really allow your child to poke around the engine compartment of your car? There is a reason why important jobs generally require years of experience...not just an education.
1. Why in many of these articles is there no consideration for the facts that:
.xxx, that the US has proven itself to be a capable caretaker of the internet and the root servers (several of which are outside of the US, albeit under ultimate control of the US)?
- The US, and the massive US military-industrial complex many despise, was essentially solely responsible for creating the internet (note: I am talking about the *internet*, not the world wide web, which itself would not have existed were it not for the internet)?
- Aside from the politics and issues surrounding
2. Why is there no consideration that other governments jockeying for position and control over DNS and the root servers could and probably will actually provide a greater chance for problems, mismanagement, miscommunication, and so on?
3. Why is there this concept floated in every one of these articles that makes it seem as if nations will have no choice but to create their "own" internets, disconnected from the "primary" internet, simply because of DNS? I'd say the stupidity and arrogance of disconnecting from the internet and making your own, whether out of principle or some perceived need to have a new top level domain, trumps any stupidity and arrogance of the internet's original creator and caretaker retaining control...
For a brief and concise summary of the issues, let's remind ourselves with this:
U.S. Principles on the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System
The United States Government intends to preserve the security and stability of the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System (DNS). Given the Internet's importance to the world's economy, it is essential that the underlying DNS of the Internet remain stable and secure. As such, the United States is committed to taking no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the DNS and will therefore maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.
Governments have legitimate interest in the management of their country code top level domains (ccTLD). The United States recognizes that governments have legitimate public policy and sovereignty concerns with respect to the management of their ccTLD. As such, the United States is committed to working with the international community to address these concerns, bearing in mind the fundamental need to ensure stability and security of the Internet's DNS.
ICANN is the appropriate technical manager of the Internet DNS. The United States continues to support the ongoing work of ICANN as the technical manager of the DNS and related technical operations and recognizes the progress it has made to date. The United States will continue to provide oversight so that ICANN maintains its focus and meets its core technical mission.
Dialogue related to Internet governance should continue in relevant multiple fora. Given the breadth of topics potentially encompassed under the rubric of Internet governance there is no one venue to appropriately address the subject in its entirety. While the United States recognizes that the current Internet system is working, we encourage an ongoing dialogue with all stakeholders around the world in the various fora as a way to facilitate discussion and to advance our shared interest in the ongoing robustness and dynamism of the Internet. In these fora, the United States will continue to support market-based approaches and private sector leadership in Internet development broadly.
From the article, the real issue seems to be the US Commerce Dept dropping support for a new XXX domain. This is perceived as causing ICANN to drop support. Any insiders with info on what happened?
I for one welcome our new .xxx overlords!
Look at all of the people on /. that don't seem to understand the precise technical details of what is going on, and reduce the argument to simplistic claims about "the US controlling the net"
/.-er doesn't really understand what is going on, can you really expect the average CNN viewer to understand?
If the average
What are they going to do? Mass packets at the border routers and run network simulations in an attempt to scare the US?
Fragment the internet? Yeah, right. Goverments cater to business interests and there's no way said business interests will sit idly while their governments screw with the business's bottom lines.
This is much ado about nothing.
Oh, and somebody needs to tell Zonk that the defintion of "slashdotted" does not mean 'previously appearing on slashdot'.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
When I think of the potential for human rights abusers like China and Iran to use the excuse that the US is somehow obligated to give up its limited control of the Internet, I shiver. I'm no Bush lover, no apologist for the US, but you know what, I wouldn't trust the UN as far as I could throw it. Not with the Internet. Doubtless guys like Robert Mugabe would end up having a say, and no amount of weak-kneed promises from UN officials is going to make a damn bit of difference.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yea i'm normally against ad blockers due to the need for some websites to be sustained via advertising revenue. But in the case of Slashdot it's about the only site now that I'm considering using one, these article flamebaits are getting rediculous. It's funny anyone even attempting to point it out is getting -1 moderation. Yes Slashdot we are catching on as much as you would like to hide that fact.
There's also a saying about too many cooks that might apply here.
Stop referring to the root DNS servers as "control of the Internet!". Absolutely anyone can set up their own DNS-servers and call them root (in fact, I set up my own DNS and redirected all ".test"-domains to another computer in the network, just to show a friend it could be done). The only reason the current root servers are considered important is because everyone use them.
The internet routes around this damage just fine. Technically nothing prevents my ISP from pointing their DNS serervs to a "free" root zone in Europe, Brazil, India, etc. Heck, I can point my home resolv.conf's at any number of "free" DNS end resolvers that I am sure will be popping up everywhere.
However, if the US gummint tries to tell my ISP which root servers to point to, or blocks DNS service from offshore, we have got a serious problem on our hands.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I'm selfish. But I suspect I could be representitive of a fair chunk of the population.
I live in New Zealand, live for computers, love my internet, games(many violent), and my credit card gets a workout on porn sites.
My concern for many of the world's events is orientated around how it might affect my internet.
However, in NZ, our tech infrastructure is near 3rd world, We rank 22 in OECD broadband surveys. We have a fibre optic cable that runs from our coast to the US west coast(Oh how I wish they'd run it to Taiwan).
All this stirring by the US worries me:
- The re-interpetation of the US 2257 porn laws, with examples of prosecutions now. - The
The only saving grace might be the fact the cable runs thru us from Australia, who are effectively, just another state of the US now. Thus they need us.
I fear the US's attitude to that uppity free thinking(anti-nuclear) nation, New Zealand. Where the Crazy frog ring tone videos play at prime-time with his attributes non-censored.
I can hear the sound of US scissors snipping my beloved fibre optic cable.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Who's going to tell China?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...as soon as every nation on the Internet returns our investment with interest on adjusted dollars. Then, I would have no problem with it for the most part.
Omg 1nt3rn3t is SOOOO rOx beKuz sUm /. gUy said it K00! leTz bu1ld 1 2day!1!@!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There is a lot of nonsense talked about "Control of The Internet". In reality it's not that simple. There is no one organisation that controls all of the net. Different functions are carried out by different groups.
.glue) - any internet user can select these.
:-)
Address allocation (to ISPs) is carried out by Regional Internet Registries, from their allocations. For Europe, it is RIPE. ARIN controls the Americas. APNIC controls the Asia and Pacific regions. AfriNIC is Africa. LACNIC does Latin America and the Caribbean. Allocation of addresses TO those organisations (from the scarce IPv4 address pool, and the much more abundant IP v6 pool) is a different question. ISPs allocate addresses in turn to their customers. IPv4 and IPv6 can interoperate (sort of) and IPv6 is quite widely deployed in Asia, where IPv4 addresses are in short supply.
Protocols are defined by groups like the Internet Engineering Task Force and working groups - any internet user can participate, if they know what they are talking about. They are adopted by consensus among internet users (and major ISPs and vendors). To a large degree, the protocols determine how much control there can be over any given internet application (like email, or the web, or internet telephony).
Top Level Domain Names are split into Country names (generally controlled by countries, or their nominees), and Generic ones (where control is awarded by ICANN).
This depends entirely on individual ISPs and Users taking their DNS information from the base name servers (and their descendents) controlled by ICANN. There are alternatives, like OpenNIC, which administer their own root servers and top level domains, like
It's more complicated than that even
But yes, the US Dept of Commerce controls the department that awards ICANN its power. The rest of the world COULD ignore ICANN if they wanted - but they probably won't. Mostly they don't need to.
It's not THAT bad yet. And the UN could be worse... more interfering... more clueless... more corrupt...
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
> Our (US) government is not perpetual, and any system can fall. If it did, the rest of
> the world wouldn't want the internet governed by whatever restriction could come about
> in such a case.
Don't worry about the root DNS servers if the US ever completes it's slide to socialism or lurches towards a police state. Just remember that the US of A is THE number one power on this planet and the implications of that. No, if we go over to the Dark Side I can personally promise everyone that they won't be worrying about what we order ICANN to do to the root name servers; no you guys will be far too busy cowering in terror from our war machine.
Which is why I prefer the root servers stay under the Dept of Commerce. Moving it to the UN has enormous downside potential and zero upside. So long as the US remains the lone force holding the line against the Darkness and defending Truth, Justice and Western Civilization there isn't a problem leaving ICANN in charge of DNS. Should we sucumb to the Darkness, lose the will to continue holding the line or be ultimately defeated by the barbarians, it just doesn't matter anymore because the whole world will slide into a new Dark Ages anyway.
Democrat delenda est
the real problem is that .com is often seen as a .usa TLD (or is it .us?)...
.com that is out there then who would have cared? every nation is in total control under their own national domain.
if all the national us commersial sites would move to the correct domain and stop grabbing every
hmm, maybe we should just remove all those non-national TLDs? then there would not be a problem...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Let's let China run it. Then, we don't have to worry about other countries yelling at the US because it will all be censored and we would never find out >.>
-SaNo
That's GOT to produce some really rotten ping times.....unless it goes only to Hawaii.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
1) "solely responsible for creating the internet" well german more or less inveted the diesel motor. Why it is that the US do not consider that the german are sole inventor of the diesel motor ? Answer : Because once the genie is out of the bottle, and used by most economies as a "resource", you have no "special" or "natural" right anymore to control it. And german+diesel engine is not the sole example of inventsion coming from one country but then get its usage wide-spread.
.com search engine and ICANN, and the blow and settlement they got recently, and other small "incident", well it is not as clear cut.
As for your second arguement, seeing the stuff which hapenned with the
Additionally and most importantly. If the US has no intention of using its control/veto, why the hell its is so adamant into remaining in control ? I would wager that somewhere, someone in the US administration want to remain in control "just in case a switch has to be put on off".
2) as pointed by a +5 poster above , many country ALREADY have their alternate DNS server for their own domain name. Everybody asking for the control to be an international institution might just want to AVOID this problem of miscommunication. And before you serve again the old tired argument about the UN being bad, well, you know who handle the international phone communication standard ? I have a news for you : not the US neither the UK. And yet the telephone is one of such example cited in 1) above.
3) already happenned see 2).
I love this bit of political spin (and I'm American)- nothing like ignoring all those pesky countries with nukes (and armed forces big enough to "project" their power anywhere in the world.) I thought the term "superpower" really wasn't used anymore, since size doesn't really matter in a lot of ways.
It's a "white elephant" issue if I ever saw one...
Please help metamoderate.
As usual everyone keeps confusing the "Internet" with the DNS.
.EU domain. ICANN could have refused, as they did for .XXX. ICANN decides who in a country get delegated control of that TLD management function of a country.
/ 00990.html
Common Quote - We invented it, we want to keep it.
This of course is a stupid argument - the Internet is many things - WWW being the most obvious. And the Web was invented where?
Common misconception - repressive countries need to control DNS root servers to repress......not so.
Cisco and other vendors sell products that today succeed in blocking site not allowed. Most Arab countries filter the internet behind proxy servers and cisco firewalls.
The real issue at stake is that ICANN is an opaque organization that was handed control of the root file with no REAL input from ALL internet stakeholders. ICANN today holds the power to drop any country off the DNS system. The EU itself had to apply for permission to ICANN for the
The real issue is that prior to 1998, IANA had plans to open up hundreds of top level domains......which plans were then shelved with no open process by ICANN. http://www.gtld-mou.org/gtld-discuss/mail-archive
The reality? Most Americans have no idea where ICANN came from or how it works or how it is not really beneficial for them, but they invoke this maddening knee jerk blind patriotism - it's ours and we run it. Sad that they have no idea who "we" is. ICANN is not "we". ICANN is undemocratic even for Americans, and is secretive. ICANN is in bed with WIPRO and seems to have a policy that supports big business. ICANN has no idea of trademark law. in short ICANN is NOT the answer for DNS governance.
I liken the situation as such.
...because you have no clue about what you are talking about?
So seriously, get your own frakking networks and services, you Kato Kaelins. No one's asking you to stay.
They have their own networks, services, and servers. We have been charging them for permission to use them with the root list the U.S. maintains. They have had enough, the question is, what will businesses do when the US does not play ball and companies need to pay the US to register a domain on their server, and the UN to register a domain for the rest of the world? I suspect US specific companies will register there, foreign companies will register with the UN, and global companies will attempt to register both. This will further isolate the US from the rest from the world, which will suck for those of us who live here.
It does sound a bit crass, but the man has a point. If only there were a way to free it from governments entirely though...
Would .gay block lesbian sites too then? 'Cause if so I'm not interested in blocking that TLD...
The matter intensified in August, when the U.S. government asked Icann to table an initiative to add a new domain name for pornography Web sites. Icann had tentatively approved the new domain name, called .xxx, several months earlier, but at the last moment the Department of Commerce removed its support, after it said it received thousands of letters of complaint from conservative Christian groups and others.
It would mean that you know when you're going to a porn site. Also I would assume that with a porn domain, the others would be required to be free of porn. Those who want it would know where to go and those who don't won't be linked accidentally.
it really upsets me to no longer have to pay $15/y for a domain.
Jeez, not this subject again.
Today, the 2000th American soldier died for his country in Iraq (of all rotten places, fgs).
Today, it also looks as if indictments are just about to be handed down on two of the President's key aides.
And this is the news that, allegedly, preoccupies us all.
Are politicians that desperate to distract attention from far more important matters? Let's forget about brave men dying like dogs and worry about whether we'll still be able to order groceries online next Tuesday! It's enough to make you despair. Besides, that one quote in the preamble sums it up well: "Today, in a globalized world in which the Internet has become a global resource for freedom of expression and for economic exchange, this monopolistic oversight of the Internet by one government is no longer a politically tenable solution."
It's hard to know what else to say.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
What about www.wookielove.net ? So because it's a .net is makes it straight? goatse would be proud.
Nothing new to see here: just the same ridiculous posturing we've been hearing about for months now that will have absolutely no effect on the reality of who controls the root servers.
[ home ]
$500? Sure, it would go a long way toward getting rid of cybersquatters.
It would also make it harder for the average person to register a domain name. My sister and brother-in-law registered a domain for their baby girl who's now 19 months old. They upload photos and keep a log to share with family and friends. But I seriously doubt they would have registered if they had to pay $500.
FalconShould there be a Law?
These other countries who belong to the European Union are more tyrannical than the USA will ever be. They couldn't even bring themselves to mention Christ in the European constitution. In Germany, if a woman wants to keep her unemployment benefits, she has to accept a job at a brothel if it is offered to her. In schools in France, it is against the law for Muslims to wear Burkas and for Christians to wear large crosses. These other countries trample all over religious freedom, and force their own citizens into prostitution. They have no right to complain about any so-called tyranny of the USA.
You know your right - Having the U.N. run the internet is a briliant idea. I mean the U.N. does everything so well.
Then instead of these kind of fights we can all hold hands across the world and sing kum-bye-yah or whatever...
Yes, yes - fucking briliant
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
What has the UN proved that it can efficiently manage?
Why take it away from the hands that are running it efficiently?
More buracratic input will achieve what?
What problems will this proposed change solve? How will changing its control help the internet? These are the important questions. We should leave the internet as-is until we have compelling answers to these questions.
-- 2 Powerful Words: Extra Gravy
I'm against the .xxx domain, because it would interfere with my new domain, .tentaclemidgetbukkakae
never have to see accidental gay porn sites again.
.gay? they're the victims!
"accidental gay porn sites"? Is that where script kiddies replace a normal site's main page with goatse? how can you force all those people to take on the label of
From a cnn.com article yesterday: In an interview, Coleman said a bureaucratic body like the United Nations' International Telecommunications Union would slow innovation and extend its reach beyond the domain-name system. Countries that censor online content could use the forum to ban free expression elsewhere, he said. followed by: ICANN agreed to suspend work on a proposed .xxx domain name for sex sites after the Bush administration objected in August.
... or is it a question of politics?
What I mean is, how hard is it, really, to 'call the bluff' so to speak of the US Dept of Commerce? How hard is it to hijack DNS root servers and gTLD resgistrars? How hard would the gTLD registrars fight if someone tried to take them but promised commercial gain to the registrars? What if the commercial viability of the registration was eliminated altogether?
I can imagine a theoretical feature set of BIND 10.0 - is unicode aware, allowing native language DNS resolution (along with patches to Firefox, etc.); uses digital sigs to validate self-registration of gTLDs with the core registrar and ccTLDs with the national registrar; settles gTLD disputes automatically with a competitive decision market; uses an encrypted peering system (perhaps something like waste) to replicate zone info (including gTLDs) and query horizontally across the DNS tree; changes the DNS network from a hierarchical tree into a mesh topology without changing how DNS itself works. A DNS server network with those features seems to make this pissing contest irrelevent, and those features seem to have been implemented in other places already, so putting them into a DNS server, while non-trivial, is do-able.
Is this totally off the radar?
Calling the Internet a "global resource" makes it sounds like its just "there" for the taking, like oil, or wind power, or timber, or sand, or any other natural resource.
Except that the Internet was BUILT, by people, people with brains, originally with US Gubmint dough.
Whether you argue for or against the transfer of control, I think its significant to note that the proponents of taking it away from the US also explicitly and irrationally divorce the end from its means, this following on the heels of OTHER pro-Statist comments by folks from Luxembourg post-Katrina.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The rest of the argument is primarily governments that want to censor what happens in the rest of the world's space, with some secondary issues like allocation of the remaining IPv4 space and attempts to get other people to pay for Internet connections to underdeveloped countries that typically have telecom monopolies too inefficient to implement it themselves and too stubborn to let the private sector compete with them. ICANN doesn't really work for the US government anyway - it works for the WIPO Trademark Mafia, which is a partially overlapping set of interests, but the primary effect that has is rabid anti-privacy policies for whois registration and data access, which the governments that rant loudest about wanting "Internet Governance" generally like. China, for instance, would be really happy to know the ICBM address and cellphone number for the owners of websites like www.falungong.com.
There are a few technical issues that ICANN's been really sloppy on, which annoy "foreigners" more than Americans - primarily support for non-ASCII character sets. It's sadly overdue, and the initial proposals I've seen from Verisign are horrible botches that only work for the web and partially for email and fail badly for other protocols like telnet and ftp.
* There are some people who contend that .COM/.NET/.ORG aren't non-government space, they're leftovers of a US-centric namespace; that's historically true, but that's all the more reason that non-US governments can't complain if a US entity controls them. On the other hand, newer TLDs like .MUSEUM and .AERO are explicitly international.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
So if I'm understanding this correctly, this argument started because The Rest of the World takes exception with the US' unwillingness to recognize the global pr0n climate?
/s
...networks and services, you Kato Kaelins
How dare you trash Kato!
Well, I'm very surprised to see that all this debate revolves about the control of the DNS, while it seems to me the real problem would be the distribution and control of IP address space.
In fact anyone can setup their own toplevel domains, with or without the consent of ICANN: it suffice that enough name servers accept to cache and relay your zone definitions, which already happens if I'm not wrong.
Now, it does not go so well for the IP address space: many universities and large corporations trust A and B class networks, leaving whole countries and regions having to share modest size C networks (256 IP adresses for 10M or more people !).
While I live in a country that has its fair share of the IP address space, I would be very ready to understand that other countries, particularly developing ones, ask for more control and a fairer redistribution of the dwindling IPv4 address space, even with the advent of IPv6 (which also will have its limitation, I'm told).
Someone knowledgeable has an answer (why is the focus on DNS control rather than IP addresses control) ? Google did not help.
The US built the house. The US painted it, did the landscaping and pays for all the utilities. The US invited the Europeans and everybody else in the house and even let them live in the house and run their businesses out of the house. Now the Europeans want the house since they now get shelter and sustanance in the house. Now they stand there very angry and pronounce that the house is too important to be left to those who built it and started living in the house in the first place. And the US is supposed to take this ankle biting seriously?
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
More like the UN wants control so they can TAX people... Censor people.... etc
s /2005/10/17/dont_give_un_control_over_internet/?pa ge=1
More info here:
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/article
That's from the Liberal "Boston Globe" newspaper. No choir boys there... They hate this administration, but it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the UN being inept at doing anything correct.
"imagine a UN member with a lot of clout, and a very low regard for freedom of speech -- China, say. ICANN accredits the companies that sell domain names to Internet users like you and me. Suppose a democracy activist wants to register domain names like downwithchina.com. If China had a say in ICANN affairs, it could push to have such domain names prohibited."
That article speaks volumes, and is a HELL of a lot better written then the parent post.
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
OK so someone else wants to give .xxx or .zzyyz addresses and ICANN won't let them. So whats to stop them from forming their OWN root level DNS and letting the people vote for what they want?
.com or .gone (my inlaws cannot understand that web sites addresses do not have to end in .com). That is partially the fact that .com was what most people were introduced to first (and second and third and the hundredth time). So if someone can come up with a BETTER scheme so keep both the squatters and IP lawyers out of the DNS that is also clear to the AVERAGE users, let them. Put it out there and have some easy way of switching to THAT DNS. File with the USPO and watch ICANN go out of business and then harvest the proffit.
Lets face it. Today you are
Today is a gift. Save the receipt.
GNAA troll links.
What logic. Thanks for making such a well thought out and reasoned argument instead of just reacting emotionally and making a jackass of yourself.
Just like we have them to run the Oil for Food program. Or investigate human rights violations. Or send in peace keepers to protect large populations from being slaughtered.
I'd support the United Nations if it wasn't the nutless, useless, beauracracy that it is. Perhaps if it ENFORCED its own resolutions, more people (Americans anyways) would take it seriously.
Having the UN run DNS sounds like a frighteningly useless endeavour.
One problem is that the registries for the CC TLDs have to pay ICANN $0.20 per subdomain per year, for what ? ICANN doesn't actually provide the root servers as you say.
"Do you dream of $500 domain names? Cause that's what I paid for my first one."
To be fair you should point out that $500 is over ten years.
When the FNCAC advised the NSF in 1996 to tell its contractor NSI to begin charging for domain registration (because of the spike in registration activity caused by the Wired article about domainz) it was $50/yr for existing registrations and two years in advance for new registrations.
Need Mercedes parts ?
But what does (Bush) have to do with this issue?
1) He is "head" of US government.
2) In name of US, he and government do Many Bad Things.
3) World stops trusting the US and its motives as direct result.
4) Yup, I can't see the connection either.
Just once, try to see colors besides read white and blue and you might understand the world.
I just got modded a troll for saying Fox news lies , makes up stories and misleads people .
Dude, I'm freaking out!!
Watch "Loose Change" and then tell me again who you'd like to be in control of "teh interwebnet."
Using your logic, we should also create a .KKK domain and reward hate speach by putting its name in neon lights.
.KKK and then everyone can filter all hate with a magical browser setting...
.XXX is appropriate.
After all, we just "force" anyone wanting to discuss hateful things to use
yeah, right!
I'm guessing you have some vested interest (like a dislike of christian values) behind your belief that
For the USA. Quite clearly there are a lot of people outside the USA who think a UN-controlled internet would be good for them, or there wouldn't be anyone making a fuss about it in the first place.
Ah but who's complaining, people or governments?
FalconShould there be a Law?
I fully believe that Internic should not be an organization essentially run by the United States. The job that Internic does should essentially be turned into a Special Agency of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. There is no doubt that there are many things where a "world government" are good ideas, and this truly is one of them. There is no reason for any one country to be in charge of a worldwide technology. Just my 2 cents anyway.
http://www.denialofreality.com/
http://www.denialofreality.com/
So why don't we create a .KKK domain for the Klan. Using your logic, this would wipe out their ability to talk about hateful things on the internet, and it would keep anyone from accessing hateful material.
.KKK TLD.
But its such flawed logic even a baby can grasp the errors. First, you would be rewarding the klan by acknowledging their influence with a special
Second, it wouldn't work, because some people would purposely want to talk about hate in non-KKK TLDs (like slashdot.org). And then you are back to square one, except now, every browser in the world is set to specifically address ".KKK" and flag it and acknowledge it, and process it, and it becomes an even more "in your face" and ever-present cultural icon.
The domain namespace is pretty cluttered, maybe a higher barrier to entry would reduce the number of frivolous domains like that, and encourage people to use existing domains more effectively.
How is my neice having a domain in her name frivolous? The purpose of the internet is communications and that's exactly what her website does.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Yeah so it seems obvious there's a "We Made It So We Should Keep It! Where In The World Did You Get Idea We'd Give It To You!" argument for the US keeping it. What's wrong with it?
"Unfortunately, I fear that educating the american public about this issue"
/. crowd to wake up to this".
.COM nameservers are unless a government tells me".
Pardon the rant but I've been involved in this fiasco for 10 years now; statements like the above incite the cynic in me to retort "American public hell, it's taken 5 years just to get the
But as long as you're awake, here's the bit you've missed: It doesn't fucking matter if the US or UN does it.
Think about it. What do you get from the root zone exactly? The names of the tlds in the root and where the nameservers are for that tld.
And your happy to outsource this component of DNS nameservice to some government (like it matter one whit which one) ?
And how hard is it exactly to keep track of the nameservers for com? They do after all, change one of two nameservers every 5 years or so, so currrency is an issue, albeit NOT A HUGE ONE.
Keep saying to yourself: "I don't know where those pesky
Then primary the root for yourself, so if/when the legacy root servers fall over/split, you won't care. Or notice. Ever.
Need Mercedes parts ?
So lets say Joe Lieberman and other liberals next want to regulate VIOLENCE. So they architect a .GUN TLD.
.GUN TLD for all violence-related content? Will they support purging of anything violent from .COM and .ORG to move to .GUN? Will they make the video game makers and movie makers use .GUN so they can be filtered by concerned parents?
.IFC for discussions of Infanticide
.MUR for pictures of Murder
.NEC for necrophilia movies? You know, for filtering?
Will all the sychophants on slashdot stand behind a
Will slashdot then announce its support for
Will slashdot then announce its support for
Will slashdot children screaming in the message boards demand a
America - "But it's my toy, YOU CAN'T PLAY WITH IT!" Personally i'm sooo sick of hearing about this, and i'm sure many other people are aswell. Honestly, what does America have to loose by giving other countries a peice of the pie? It's not like our economy will be destroyed simply because of no revenue from DNS registration, Bush is a greater threat to the economy anyway. I see two things happening, one - America refuses to relinquish control and foreign powers form an alternate DNS system, resulting in a fractured internet (and/or patent infringement lawsuits). Or two - America gives control and subsequently deploys internet2 just to be different/stubborn. Either way there's going to be a fracturing of the internet, or America will end up nuking every foreign server and pc in existence.
Sure if you pay Canada for the discovery of insulin. Germany for the car. China for gunpowder...
I'm hoping we get the .NEC domain going through very soon also. You know, for the Necrophiliacs out there.
.NEC.
.XXX people to host Necrophilia, because some people might just want .XXX but not .NEC. So we need 2 TLDs. 1 for regular .XXX, and one for Necrophilia... .NEC
.NEC!!!"
I hate using google and constantly worrying if I will see Necrophilia, so it just makes sense to confine the content to
It would not be fair to force the
Now can I get a big slashdot "WHOOOOOA
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And now I have $15 registrations (yes, I like my registrar; no, I won't switch to save a couple bucks) and a nice web interface to my domains' data. Add a nameserver? 5 clicks and wait for the upstream server to reload. Yeah, I miss NSI alright.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I have a dentist appointment for a root canal!
I agree... and the puritans are undoubtedly against a .MUR domain for pictures of murder... I mean, fuck them, those fundie bastards...
.MUR so that people who legally want to display pictures of murder have their own place..
.MUR!" .MUR's time has come!
I want
And it will be SO MUCH SAFER for all the kids and shit...
But goddam Pat Roberson is standing in our way on this one...
Can I get a big slashdot "WHOOOOOA
That's a great idea!
While we are at it, let's create a .goatse TLD, that way I don't ever again accidentally see another goatse picture.
Come think of it, we should just create TLDs for anything that anyone might consider offensive, it would make the Internet a wonderful place where you can only get inoffensive things. Just think of it, all you would have to do is block: .spam, .drugs, .abortion, .warez, .botnet, .republican, .msie-exploits, .music...
What's to stop people from ignoring these new TLDs and just continue with their paid for domain names, you say? We would create laws that make it illegal to post goatse pictures at any site that is not .goatse, of course. These types of laws have worked wonderfully in the past, especially in locations where U.S. law does not apply.
(This post not intended for the sarcastically-impaired).
-Mike
Schrödinger's cat is not amused—maybe.
If any repressive government, such as China, North Korea (or Jebusland) wants to force its ISPs to then use those DNS roots, that will effectively "end" the "US' control of the internets."
Yeah, right.
Though there are a lot of servers outside the US, they are still run by US companies, universities, and the government. There are only two roots, K and M, not run by a US intrest. Have a look at the offical site http://www.root-servers.org/ (which isn't responding right now for some reason) if you want to know what the roots are, who runs them, and so on. You discover that a number of roots have systems all over the world, like F, which has 8 locations in the US, and about 25 outside. However, except K and M, you discover the controlling entity is a US intrest, in F's case it's ISC, the BIND guys, based in Delaware.
Also geographic location doesn't necessitate the use of a given server. Ideally, you use the server that's closest to you network-wise and try down the list if it doesn't respond. In reality there are many DNS servers that just go and ask A for all the answers.
So while the US certianly doesn't have absolute control over DNS, that's an impossibility, US intrests have a large majority controlling stake.
Using your logic, we should also create a .KKK domain.
.KKK TLD.
.KKK is there to protect them. All the browsers will know of the .KKK and will automagically keep kids from seeing hate.
.COM, because traffic cops will be unleashed to write them BIG TICKETS in case they do.
.KKK will not be glorified in **ANY** way, of course, their symbol .KKK will become even more ubiquitous, but thats a small price to pay for such superb safety, right?
That way, anyone wanting to talk about hate, post pictures of hate, make hateful references, threats, or general disdain can easily be forced to do so in a
And parents, will be able to keep their kids safe from ever facing hate, because
And no-one on the internet will dare to post hate in
Oh, and the
Well, I think that even if the EU gets to control the Internet, it doesn't have the necessary skills to run it and keep the freedom (of speech) the Internet has now, so it should just back off and solve its internal problems first.
Using your wonderful logic, we should also create a new .KKK domain. There's no reason to object to it!!! LOL, because I SAY SO! ROFL
.KKK, anyone wanting to talk about hate, post pictures of hate, make hateful references, threats, or general disdain can easily be forced to do so in a .KKK TLD. Right? Just like .XXX.
.KKK is there to protect them. All the browsers will know of the .KKK and will automagically keep kids from seeing hate. .KKK is the parents friend.
.COM, or .ORG (like slashdot.org) because traffic cops will be unleashed to write them BIG TICKETS in case they do.
.KKK will not be glorified in **ANY** way, of course, their symbol .KKK will become even more ubiquitous, but thats a small price to pay for such superb safety, right?
With
And parents, will be able to keep their kids safe from ever reading hate, from ever seeing hate online, because
And no one on the internet will dare to post hate in
Oh, and the
This fight over the control of the DNS system really is part of a greater problem that the US has.. This week, UNESCO adopted a convention on cultural diversity, which basicly excludes "cultural industries" and "cultural products" from free trade agreements. Of the 150 countries that voted on it, 148 voted in favor, 2 voted against (the USA and Israel). Its interesting to note that this convention was not spearheaded by Iran or China.. but by France, Canada and the UK, the USA's closest allies.
Be careful, the world can live without US control!
"I can hear the sound of US scissors snipping my beloved fibre optic cable."
That is precisely what all the fear-mongering politicians are trying to accomplish. They are trying to make you believe that the big bad US is going to take you Internet away, or restrict it, and the only way to maintain freedom is to hand it over to the UN.
Congradulations, you got suckered by the rhetoric.
The truth of the matter is this is about DNS and DNS only. That's all. As it stands, a US non-profit maintains control of the root zone for DNS. The root zone specificies who's in charge of a given TLD. Now the only reason they have control is because of the root servers that choose to listen to them. Nobody makes the roots listen to them, and indeed there are other roots that don't. However these particular roots are the ones that basically all DNS servers use by default. Nothing stops you from changing this, but it's how it's setup.
Well this defacto system works well. Everyone is pretty happy with ICANN, they deligate the administration of country domains to those countries' governments. In fact until they were forced to deal with WIPO rules, peopel were pretty happy with domain name dispute resolution. Because people are happy and it works well, it continues on as the de facto major DNS on the net. Some peopel choose to use other roots, which usually mirror the ICANN zone, but most people just use the ICANN roots.
The issue here is that the UN thinks that ICANN should hand over control of the zone file. They think they should be able to decide how it works. They aren't offering to create their own systems or anything, they want control, not responsiblity. The US is saying no, we like it how it is, we are not going to order ICANN to give up the root file (which is the only way they would).
So please, don't give in to the fear mongering. POliticians want to spin this as evil US big-brother type control over the Internet to blindly get support without understanding the issues. This is about DNS. So consider:
We know how DNS works now and it seems to work pretty well. In fact, the biggest complaint people have (dispute resolution) only came up AFTER international compliance was demanded. Do you think the UN will do a better job? Do you think they'll make a system that works better? If not, then you shouldn't be supporting this.
In the US it used to be "Black man bad White man Good" but now Americans have to pretend that they love each other. People have a burning desire to hate something and usualy those who lack in intellegence brims with hate and prejudice ......about something.
.......blah blah corruption.
........ BING (light bulb illuminates) ICANN is corrupt.
......two legs baaaaaad"
Now they hate the UN. They have not idea what the UN is. They have no idea what the UN does.
They once saw a news headline that said UN
Were one as stupid as this one could say - Enron = corruption. Enron was US corporation. ICANN is US corporation. Thus
lets all bleat together "Four legs goooooood
So lets say Joe Lieberman and other liberals next want to regulate VIOLENCE. So they architect a .GUN TLD.
This has nothing to do with regulation. This is about commerce and accurate discovery of information. I strongly support the creation of a .xxx domain, but I also oppose legislation forcing companies to host all porn there. I believe most websites selling porn would be happy to voluntarily move to a .xxx domain so their customers can find them and so they can be easily filtered by schools, etc. that porn vendors don't want wasting their bandwidth anyway.
Likewise if someone wanted to create a .gun domain for websites relating to guns and selling guns and gun accessories, I don't have any objection. Legislating that all gun sales sites and sites discussing guns have to be hosted within that tld, however, would be violation of free speech and I would strongly oppose it. Hospitals have been demanding a .med for years and many have enabled an alternate root, just so they can easily find other hospitals and medical networks. As for your other tld examples, they are inane and I don't even understand what the point is you are trying to make. Do you even have a point?
Exactly... I know those christian fundies won't like my .NEC domain idea either..
.NEC domain.
.NEC makes sense. We can keep kids safe by forcing all .NEC fans into one happy community. We can also make filtering a snap, and the arguments against .NEC will disappear! But those fundies know it, so they will stand in the way of .NEC AT EVERY TURN.
.XXX or .KKK. Some Necrophiliacs might be disgusted by living pr0n, and want to filter .XXX while still having access to their .NEC content. So we need to think of their rights too... These are people, dammit! Have compassion!
But Necrophiliacs have rights too... and you can't pretend they don't exist just by "denying" the creation of a
Everything about
Necrophilia is a specialty, so it would be unfair to ask them to use
Dear me, I don't think it would be the US economy that suffers more. Remember the trade balance! On the world economic stage the United States is far more often a consumer than a producer.
The commercial part of the Internet is largely used for reaching customers, yes? And the largest and wealthiest concentration of customers, that every company with a website in the world would like to reach is in the United States. That is, it's way more important to Toyota, Inc. that Americans reach www.toyota.com correctly than it is important to Ford that Japanese reach www.ford.com correctly.
There's a good reason the US can throw its weight around with import tariffs. The market in the US is so large that access to it can make or break an international producer. The same is not true about a US producer, since he has direct access to the enormous domestic market. Same thing with 'net access, I'm afraid. In this silly game the US holds four aces. I'm not saying this makes their position right, just that in a real showdown the official UN-sponsored "international" DNS system seems likely to go the way of the official UN-sponsored "international" language (French), namely it would end up being used by UN bureaucrats and governments only.
OK, well I think it goes without saying that we also want a .PEE TLD for all the urine fetish people out there...
.PEE is another one of my great inventions (Thank you, Thank you... *takes bow*) .PEE will offer a place for any type of urine interest group. Sexual or Unsexual. Because the needs of the urine people are not in sync with .XXX. Some of the .PEE fans will be disgusted by what goes on in .XXX and still want to filter that.
.PEE proposal are CHRISTIAN FUNDIES. And you don't even have to take them seriously...
I mean, we want 1) easy filtering 2) protection of kids 3) a voluntary system
So
The only people who would possibly object to my
Can I go out with you?
Realizing that you're a huge troll I still think you need a reply since most people will believe your "facts".
No, Germans don't have to accept jobs at brothels. The case you're refering to was actually a matter of the right to post the jobs on the lists of the public employment agency.
You don't know squat about the European Union - it's not responsible for religious freedoms, that's actually a matter of national sovereignty. We also have the common European Human Rights Convention maintained by the Council of Europe organization - which is not associated with the EU.
In France it's illegal to use the 'hijab' covering one's hair [in school] not the tentlike 'burka'. And being a just nation of equal rights no other religion is given preference - so no religious symbol is allowed *in school* if it's deemed excessive and provocative. In fact religion is considered so private they're not allowed to collect statistics on the subject. On the other hand the government of France funds national Christian, Jewish and Muslim organizations.
The European Human Rights convention and it's additional protocols (optional) give European citizens [regardless of European Union membership] a far greater catalogue of civil rights than any U.S. American citizen will ever have. Your attack on France is quite ironic considering the French constitution is based upon the ideals of the American revolution. Don't forget that the British are also European Union members - do you consider them any less free?
No, I believe most European view the US a bastion of brainwashed religious fanatics fighting to create their own version of the Iranian Islamic Republic. It's fun to watch Americans criticize other nations for lack of freedoms - when in fact the only freedom you have left is the right to shout your support for your current regime. In more and more ways your nation is becoming more and more alike what your nation opposes. "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety". - I would say you're well on your way to loosing all of them. But then again nobody notices until it's too late.
The European Union constitution was not approved and as such the matter of including references to Christianity has not been settled. I guess you don't know as much as you thought you did?
I hate the UN. Why? Because it is trying to usurp national sovereignty.
You may support a world government but I do not. The UN has long been trying to
ban guns and create a world tax to support itself.
The UN was set up solely as a place where nations could discuss their problems.
It was not supposed to have "authority" to do anything. I have enough problems
with my elected officals, who supposedly represent the interests of american
citizens. I do not want another layer of unelected idiots deciding what is best
for me and my family, and taxing me for the privilege.
As much as I detest BUSH and Bolton, I am glad bolton is there. Hopefully he
will screw up the US presence there so much that the UN decides to find another
host country. (I doubt it but one can always hope)
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Yeah, those freaking fundies...
.PEE TLD also. Because people who have urine fetishes have rights. But no, the fundies will block it because they are more concerned with making PEE fetishes illegal, rather than easy to block.
.PEE people in with .XXX. .PEE people might find intercourse to be a disgusting act, and need to filter it accordingly. So support the rights of the fellow freaks. Support .PEE right now on slashdot.
.PEE.
.PEE TLD. Only fundies would stand in the way of this idea. And they don't need to be taken seriously anyway.
I'm sure they will be opposed to my idea of a
And its not fair to lump all
Oppose fundie control of your mind. Free your mind with
This will also keep kids safe from accidentally seeing pictures of PEE. It makes sense from every aspect to have a
Which is the reason why ONE SINGLE country should NOT be in control of internet domains.
.XXX domain would seem like heaven by comparison.
So the answer is to put it into the hands of a bunch of squabbling nationalist factions? I have the feeling the days of sinking the
(For those who don't get the pun, the title is a parody of "Almost Heaven, West Virginia" sung by John Denver.)
You posted 6 variations on this exact same comment so far. Three of them have been replied to, one has been modded up and none have been modded down.
What's your problem? Are you so insecure that you need to repeat yourself again and again? The biggest enemy of the argument you are trying to forward is you.
We did. They are called patents and the manufacturers got to charge money for it.
Well, except for the whole gunpowder thing, but europe has to pay first.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
I think you should reconsider that statement - after all I think the EU nations run their parts well enough - it's not all run from the US you know?
If other nations wish to have control of their own internet, then let them simply create their own internet.
China has done this, so why can't the EU?
It is our internet, we created it, and we will continue to control it, it's really that simple!
If you don't like us controlling our own information infratsructure, that is not our problem. You should simply make your own, pour some tea, and stfu. =)
Why don't you EU and UN nations who have such a problem with this, do a little bit of your own creative/innovative work, rather than whine about it like a bunch of bitches!
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Thats how POWERFUL the .MUR idea is...
.MUR.
.MUR on slashdot. If you don't, you are a fundie.
.MUR idea right now.
.KKK, .PEE, .GUN, .NEC (Necrophilia), and other hot new TLDS. Again, only fundies would oppose these TLDs. And fundies do not count, so they can be rejected.
People with a MURDER fetish have rights... and we need to keep kids safe RIGHT NOW.
Stop the fundies who oppose my idea of
Support
We have a chance to clean up the internet, we have a chance to protect kids, we have a chance to stop fundie intervention, but only if you get behind this
Also see my posts on
Support my TLDs! Make the internet safe for kids again! Stop the fundies!
The best coverage of the issue I've seen so far is from Foreign Affairs:
6 02/kenneth-neil-cukier/who-will-control-the-intern et.html
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101facomment84
They place it in perspective, but also point out the nations who are shouting the loudest are also the least free. Overall, a good read.
Hey, this topic has appeared on slashdot 6 times now, and the idiot mods keep repeating it. So STFU...
.KKK very soon now (I can sense these things). That will be a monumental movement of topics and postings. You are worried about 6 posts? Wait until we have 6 trillion posts to put under .KKK. And another 6 trillion to put under .XXX.
.XXX but not .KKK?!! Are you half fundie or something? C'mon....
I'm building consensus on a revolutionary idea that will transform all TLDs. Beleive me, its *WORTH* 6 posts. For the safety of kids from hate speech, 6 posts is nothing.
Hell, we'll be moving all hateful discussions to
This will be such a small price to pay for the sake of our kids. I'm surprised you aren't fawning over my revolutionary idea right now!
Whats the matter, you like
I have read lots of post in this thread and several other slashdot threads where people, say that US should own/control the Internet because they did most of the technological work in creating it.
I think this argument is ludicrous, because over the course of humanity, people in different parts of the world, have made different inventions, the Chinese invented gunpowder and paper, does that means they should control everything related to that? The Indians are credited for inventing 0, and the decimal system, so should they be allowed to assert control of most of Mathematics?
Technologies and science should not be owned by a nation or a group of people, rather they should belong to humanity in general. When as a scientist, one publishes a technological paper in some journal, she is donating her knowledge or discovery to humanity, and she should not then lament that she is not able to exploit the fruits of her discovery.
All said, this doesn't mean that US should cease control of the Internet, rather there are other legitimate arguments which should be raised.
Creativity uninhibited www.kreeti.com
It is an irony that when countries want to drive their own agenda and strenghten their sovereinty in the internet, the country that does those same things the most will start to oppose them.. USA people are just idiots when it comes to relationships, because they don't expect to be treated badly when they themselves treat others badly.
> a fear intensified by the U.S.'s move to halt the .xxx domains for pornography sites.
> introduction of
whoa Whoa WHOA WHOA!!!! WHOA!!!!
The US has done this?
I hereby officially reverse my position. I now support ripping control away from the United States.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I'm still in favour of relegating porn to a .xxx domain.
As a sys admin, it will make my job much easier to filter out that kind of crap.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
> ICANN had all but approved the .XXX domain but because a few Christian groups complained...
.xxx was THE most stupid idea to come down the pike in a decade. So I really don't care who finally managed to get it put on hold, so long as it NEVER, EVER goes live as a tld. It would literally be the end of the Internet as we have known it.
.xxx would be banned universally yet all objectionable (read as not fit for a five year old) content would be forced to .xxx to avoid lawsuits. No, let us instead create .kids and lock the kiddies browswer to only go there.
Good for them, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
In a single stroke it would transform the Internet from a free and open instuition into one that was mandated by law to be child safe.
Democrat delenda est
...invented gunpowder, so it's theirs forever. I expect you American rednecks to hand over your weapons to your local Chinese government official as soon as possible.
In light of the White House's request that the Onion cease the use of the Presidential Seal (public domain since it's the taxpayer's seal), we need this availability moreso now than ever. No president or politician is going to get a 100% approval rating and even those with high marks have always been parodied and satired and Constitution willing, always will be. Political satire needs to happen and let's face it, we ALL need to take ourselves A LOT less seriously. The era of PCness needs to go away. If you don't like someone's ideas or beliefs you should feel free to express your dissention without fear of repercussions.
I'm all for the US controlling the net, but it needs to be it's guardian and NOT it's policeman.
What's your point? If people find an ecomonic need to create a .pee TLD, fine let them. I'm not interested in that stuff, I'll never visit those sites, so it doesn't bother me in the slightest. My question to you is, why do the mere proposal of these domains bother you so much? Are you afraid that if they exist and are easy too easy to find, you'll go on some sort of uncontrolled "fetish porn" download binge across the internet? If that's the case, I should remind you that laws aren't created for those without self control.
I complained about .XXX too, but only because it was the single dumbest TLD they'd ever advanced (ever worse than .museum and .jobs, and that's saying a lot). My opposition had absolutely zero to do with moral issues - did anyone really think it'd cause more porn on the 'net? - and every bit to do with how completely and utterly unmanageable the scheme was.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
FTA: "There has been a misconception -- and a helpful one -- among many government bureaucrats that the Internet is a non-geographic phenomenon," said Mr. Zittrain. "But it can be reworked to correspond to national jurisdictions and boundaries." Damn damn damn. This is exactly what made t'interweb great, and it's all gonna go to hell. And what has allowed this state of affairs to continue? Well, to put it plainly, hippy-geekery. For years, the only people to have any real understanding and input into the architecture of the internet since its original incarnations have been those of the open-source, weirdy-beardy persuasion (crass generalisation, but you get the picture). So which of these turn-coat bastards went and explained the whole thing to government party-line whores? How did they manage to develop a sufficient understanding of it all to be able to engineer a monumental cock-up like the one we're now expecting? This is one of those rare occasions where the original knowledge and ownership of a fantastic new technological, cultural phenomenon was in the hands of the RIGHT people (i.e. "left" people), and now governments and corporations are trying to wrestle it away from its owners in order to serve their own ideals. Instead of the other way around. Damn!
Meta will eat itself
My point? My point is that you have no standards... if you are willing to go along with .PEE and .MUR and .XXX then why even have hierarchical domains? Why not MAKE EVERY SITE A TLD!?!??!
.XXX is a special interest group just as .KKK and .PEE would be and you know it.
.XXX based solely on its POPULARITY then you must also accept a .GOD TLD, because sheer numbers say just as many people are into .GOD as into .XXX. And you must also accept a .NYC because, hey, New York is big, and lots of people would like a .NYC TLD. ad infinium
What, we can't make every site a TLD?!! Then we must evaluate the merits of TLDs that are proposed and only some will win out.
Therefore, special interest groups get a thumbs down, no matter who they are.
If you want
while {its_not_working()}
fuck_with_it();
the net works. leave it alone.
Lemon curry?
Hell, so when the US invents a new widely adopted system does it mean we have to give away its administration? grow up please
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
b 5KqdDAEwCfYdsW
.....not anonymous or a coward!
Hash: SHA1
Just to pick up on the nuclear power thing.....
The situation in NZ is that a substantial amount of our power is hydroelectric. There is some geo-thermal and some fossil fuel and some wind.
We refine Aluminium. I'm guessing that the big majority of that product goes into the manufacturing industry of other countries. We'd be better off turning that off before buggering about with fission reactors. Now that we've got this far I'd rather look at fusion. No rush though.
Increasing energy demands put increasing demands on rivers and lakes - this causes environmental damage. Educated NZers are aware of this kind of thing and are not blind detractors of all things nuclear.
Slightly different than the power supply issue is that ships from some navies (like the US) cannot enter our waters because they may not carry reactors and they are not prepared to declare this. I'm sure an exception would be made in a serious world war. A lot of us are quite happy that you guys can't take your ships over here.
The "rest of the world" is pretty sick of American imperialism. You shouldn't have Bush and his cronies representing you abroad like we shouldn't have Winston Peters. Its easy to see why a lot of people around the world would rather the US would just go away. US foreign policy looks quite like puritanism.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQFDX0W1JyEIPdvIoRQRAjVXAJ4isNkaSVA/HAeHNyv6D
Y3jsUtTOUX3CCMSalELauOs=
=tiUp
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Key id DBC8A114
Well not really.
m
The UN is fine institution that just has a few minor black eyes recently. It would be a great thing for the Internet to come under UN control (which it should be under considering the Internets international flavour). The Interent wouldn't fall apart under any more than W3.org is a "failure".
Most of the controversy here is coming from a few flag wavers who are trying to make themselves feel good about the mess in Iraq-- by attacking anything remotely foreign. To them, I suggest they take their flags and brains out of their asses and listen to piece of advice from someone.
"I think one of the things that has learned is that non-compliance with international demands will yield to isolation."
GB (today) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4373964.st
~ ho ho ho
The .xxx flap is because some people said they want all the pr0n sites shoved into a separate section and then other people said they don't like having a separate section for that.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
OK, we've established that you're probably not a conservative.
We could require any pr0nographic content be posted to a .xxx domain and that would make it super easy for parents to set filters on web-browsers.
And now you say that you want a government official to decide whether any given site contains pornography.
What the hell?
Listen, kid, there are plenty of things that offend one group or another. Creating a government bureaucracy to segregate each of those categories into its own little net.ghetto for convenient censorship is not the solution.
It's ironic that so many liberals are quick to attack Republicans for a perceived pro-censorship stance, but are even quicker to call for their own pet forms. Remember, freedom of speech wasn't meant to allow Grandma to share her apple pie recipe.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
You probably also believe that if we allow gay marriage it's only a matter of time before we have people married to children, dogs, or in groups of 10. Am I right? And your logical ancestors argued against giving slaves their freedom because next we'd be giving horses their freedom and asking them to vote for president.
This is the "slippery slope" fallacy. Look it up and think about your logic.
You think that if we allow an "xxx" domain, next we'll have a "mur" domain for murder fetishists? Sure, if suddenly all of society as we know it disappears and is replaced by a completely different one in which murder is okay.
Whereas sex is a fairly accepted part of life. Kind of a requirement, actually. Laws on what's legal in pornography are NOT only in the direction of more permissiveness -- there have also been plenty of laws and legal actions to prevent unwilling participation, protecting the actors who get involved from abuse, etc..
I'd really like to see how you imagine necrophilia will somehow take off -- that's miles away from any kind of activity between consenting adults, and fairly universally condemned.
If you want to make this kind of argument you have to give evidence for each step -- you can't assume that one movement in a given direction will result in continued movement in that direction.
Sure, it's possible for governments to run their own roots and try to force their subjects to use them, but they've already got Country-Code TLDs that they can do anything they want under. The problem is that China not only wants to ban Falungong.org.cn, but they also want to ban Falungong.org.uk and Falungong.org, so they want to get "Governance" over the whole Internet, not just their own space.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Some of the champions of .XXX domains posting here are a near perfect illustration of why Nazi Germany flooded occupied Eastern Europe with porn. It's the intellectual equivalent of crack cocaine. Get obsessed with it, and you can't think about anything else.
--Mike Perry, Seattle, Editor: Dachau Liberated
Umm, God already has his own TLD on the non-ICANN free DNS system, but I digress.
.xxx is for special intrest groups, just like .biz, .aero and .pro TLD's that are currently under ICANN's charter. If you are going to pick on special interests, and if you really don't have a political/religious agenda, why single out .xxx?
You're right
- Puritans who wanted pr0n exiled to a separate domain hoping they could ban it from the rest of the net. I think there were some Congresscritters in this camp, but it may just have been other politicians.
- Greedy domain name sellers who wanted to make a buck selling names there. Some of these included various alternate-root vendors selling dodgy service to suckers.
ICANN worked on the project at its usual snail-like speed, slowed down further because they really only get one or two chances to sell a domain this potentially lucrative (they could sellBill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The Chinese hardliners in the Red party are the main force behind the push to relieve the U.S. of its control of the internet so that they themselves can regulate it more severely. This was never about freedom of expression as Redding would like you to believe. Also, keep in mind the other big proponent here is Iran, who heavily censors movies, television, news, books, and other forms of media; banned titles include Herbie, Narnia, Austin Powers, and even the Lord of the Rings.
I can't imagine Chinese merchants being in favor of this due to the fact that they have a lot to lose if the the world and the U.S. each split off and host their own private Internet. The U.S. is the #1 consumer of goods in the world, many of which are produced in China. I don't think that the Chinese will understand what a poor decision they've made until it starts to affect their pocketbooks.
If they could, the hardline communists and radical islamists would shut down slashdot and other forms of media that promote free thinking all over the world.
While the US Religious Right and US Feminist Left are certainly two of the main interest groups pushing for Internet Governance and DNS Censorship, one of the other big Pro-Censorship groups are the Chinese government, who use Stopping Pr0n as their main excuse for regulating and controlling all the parts of the Internet they can get their hands on. They aren't religious (quite the opposite), but they're really hung up on it nonetheless, because it's socially inappropriate behaviour and Not Nice. Of course they're also interested in stopping Falun Gong and student movements and anything else outside their control (though the Great Firewall of China doesn't appear to block any outbound spam or inbound requests to spammer websites.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I complained about .XXX too, but only because it was the single dumbest TLD they'd ever advanced (ever worse than .museum and .jobs, and that's saying a lot). My opposition had absolutely zero to do with moral issues - did anyone really think it'd cause more porn on the 'net? - and every bit to do with how completely and utterly unmanageable the scheme was.
No more unmanageable as other domains such as .info, .nom or .name, and .org. It's just one more domain. If it's about being unmanageable then why not have just one tld?
FalconShould there be a Law?
Exactly, .biz, .aero, .pro, all hogwash...
.AERO like they promote .XXX.
.AERO as being "stupid, unworkable" they are not called a fundie...
But you don't see slashdotters RABBIDLY PROMOTING
And when somebody calls out
So this is where the idiotic discussion comes in...
If that's really your argument, you're doing a very bad job of promoting it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you want .XXX based solely on its POPULARITY then you must also accept a .GOD TLD, because sheer numbers say just as many people are into .GOD as into .XXX. And you must also accept a .NYC because, hey, New York is big, and lots of people would like a .NYC TLD. ad infinium[sic]
If there is enough interest in a .pee domain and enough traffic to that site to warrant it, I'm fine with it. The same goes for .kkk and .god. New York city already has a lower level domain and they seem to being doing just fine with it. Popularity is sort of like democracy no? If most people want it then it should be created, ala the will of the people, or have you come up with a better method of decision making? Perhaps a dictatorship where you make all the decisions for everyone else and decide which domains are too icky and which are acceptable? What the world is demanding is representation and a world body to make these decisions, rather than one country deciding for the whole world. Your religious and sexual hang-ups are no concern of mine, just don't try to enforce them on the majority who disagrees with you. You might want to talk to a shrink about them too.
Well, when you are in a shithole, do as the trolls do, right?
If I wanted to make intelligent postings, I would go to FreeRepublic
Enjoy...
What the hell are "cultural industries" and "cultural products"? Does this mean you Yankees have to give us back Tim Hortons and William Shatner?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And conversely, you have no standards.
.KKK domain, again, as long as its popular.
If, hypothetically, 45 year old men having sex with 12 year olds was popular (Denmark scenario), you would have no problem with it, because the majority of the people are in favor...
You are fine with promoting a
NICE!!
I thought extraterritoriality only applied to embassies and consulates and such, not to Internet hosts. That is, if a server is in another country, isn't it entirely subject to the laws of that country? Which means, I hazard, that any "controlling" US business interest can exert only so much "control" as the host country feels like allowing? Am I missing something here?
I mean, there's this odd recurring question I've seen of: "What happens if the US government turns Evil?" Well, in that case, what's to stop the countries in which these servers are actually located from seizing the servers and operating them as they see fit? In fact, seeing as how the entire DNS system is just basically a large collection of text files appropriate distributed, I don't see why, if the US government turns Evil, the rest of the world can't just reprogram the whole DNS shebang in about 10-20 days, tops. Problem solved! Or am I missing something again?
Ah yes, the FreeRepublic. Now that I know you're a freeper, I'm surprised that you're against .kkk as the FR would definitely find a lot of like-minded friends under that particular domain.
We already have tons of pornography sites, we might as well separate them from other content.
We could require any pr0nographic content be posted to a
I just don't get this whole
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I have seen a large number of "Carl Bialik from the WSJ" articles recently.
This time, two articles from the WSJ are included.
He does not even use the term slashdotted correctly in his submission, thinking it means "discussed on Slashdot", rather than the right meaning.
This is just like the Roland Piquepaille case. When will the Slashdot editors confront the accusations, and lay the matter to rest: either they fess up and disclose that there is a deal, or come out and say that there is isn't one.
The editors are becoming less and less responsive to their audience as time passes.
The only time in recent memory was Scuttlemonkey responding with non-convincing answers on editorializing, defending not changing the slanted wording of a sumbitter. This is not good.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
This is a good argument against TLDs altogether.
.org?
;)
For instance, how many websites are genuinely hosted in the Caymen Islands? Does Slashdot really deserve its
But it can still be useful to go to google.co.uk rather than google.com.
Anyway, the KKK will cease to exist when everyone is brown-skinned (presumably to be replaced by some other means of hating one another). But porn is somewhat longer-lived than that
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Screw the foreigners. Most of them live in a police state. England doesn't let "give Ireland back to the Irish" play on the radio. France is a joke with a government controlled media. Freedom was invented in America. The rest of the world needs to start thinking like us! We have 5% of the population and use 25% of the resources!!! Kick out your dictators and rise up against tiny cars that drive on the wrong side of the road, rise up against sky high taxes, rise up against Godless hippies and join America by creating your own copy where you live. Remember, the power comes from the people to the government - not the other way around!!! America was the first to solve world problems with nukes and I hope we never forget how to. ClaudeVMS
I agreed with this until I got the the "Godless hippies" part. I don't know of any Godless hippies, though I do know some hippies and consider myself one. As for me, I'm agnostic, "a" without and "gnosys" knowledge. I am without knowledge of the existence of any supreme diety, soul, or spirit. I used to believe but lost my beliefs after an accident. Now, I'm jealous of those who have faith.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Governments can be pretty creative about how they use the law. You could pass a law "just in case" and suspend its application, or apply it selectively, when the company in question did or did not do what you wanted. Or you could not bother to pass a law at all, but just issue a few emergency decrees. Or El Presidente could just order the Special Ops guys to apply the necessary persuasion to the necessary people some moonless night.
That's the nice thing about government. Since it's force-based, you don't need anyone's consent, and you don't need to follow anybody's rules. You aren't restricted by what people, even lots of people, think is reasonable. You can just tell anyone within your borders exactly what to do and when, on pain of jail or a bullet. It's very effective.
So I just don't see how, realistically speaking, any machine in country X is anything other than, ultimately, under the complete control of country X. Country X may certainly find it wise or lucrative to allow some degree of control by Foo, Inc., located in Country Y. But that's a choice, not a necessity.
That what I admired most about President Clinton, he realy didn't do anything, so he realy didn't fuck anything up. And as an added bonus, he keep a lot of people focused on lewinski so they didn't fuck to much up as well. I rather suspect that the UN running the internet gTLDs might actualy be a good thing, they rarely get anything done as well; so the if it ain't broke don't fix-it principal applies
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I mean, go up to your search terms, add that to the list and search again. All geocities.com sites will be removed from the results.
Unless you're talking about using "NOT" in the search string when searching I don't know what you mean.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If, hypothetically, sites featuring 45 year olds having sex with under aged kids were popular (and hypothetically legal and had economic value), it would not affect me since I am not personally interested in that sort of thing and would never visit those sites. The same goes for sites devoted to pictures of Star Trek characters having sex with one another. I don't really see what you are getting at. What kind of standards are you looking for? Do I need to a "sex is bad" wing-nut like you to have standards?
ICANN's 2004-05 budget-increase-and-mission-creep proposals included such a tax, and they have tried to make that a condition of changing the assignment of certain domains, but it was not universally popular (to put it mildly) with the international community of registrars.
Why did ICANN need the money? The Reg has an article about those proposals.
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
GET THE FUCK OFF MY INTERNETS!!1 and the lameness filter can suck on my hairy sweat covered balls.
You can't seriously suggest that the UN is doing a good job, can you? It's an undemocratic (every country, regardless of population, gets the same vote, and only certain countries on the security council?) monumental, expensive (how much does it cost and where are the benefits today?), indecisive (well, at least we're united in the fact that we hate Israel), grindingly slow moving organisation (ask the people of Rwanda - they'd agree).
Turn it around and take a closer look at what you're saying, that's all I'd argue.
.....With .KKK, anyone wanting to talk about hate, post pictures of hate.....
.NERD or .GEEK domain. Nerdy posts about obscure topics like Linux, SQL, open source and all the other stuff here should not be on a .COM domain which is supposed to be for commercial things like buying and selling stuff, including porn.
Slash-dot and every other technical site should be required to a special
All theory is gray
So we should also take away Google's library of information and give it to the UN. In fact, I think it's only fair that any directory involving infrastructure in multiple countries should be UN-run.
Get your head out of your ass. The root list that the US maintains (as you put it) is the property of the US, and by extension, property of the citizens of the US. This list constitutes alot of work, information, and as a result, power. I can't think of a single reason we have for wanting to give it away.
I dare you to walk into the YellowPages office and suggest that they donate their database of clients, addresses, and phone-numbers to some independant consortium made up of representatives of the various companies that are listed within. They will laugh at you. They make alot of money off of this valuble asset, and building it from the ground up is a huge barrier to entry into the market.
Once again... my translation of the UN argument: "Gimme Gimme Gimme! I want one!!"
The appropriate US response: "Fuck you. Go sit in the corner."
Each country has it's own network. Countries can 'subscribe' to each others network using a monetary principle of some sort. For the USA, the monetary principle would be intranet-subscription traded for cheap labor. China and Japan could fuck like crazy and give babies to the U.S. corporations to raise as labour-slaves for SUV factories that would be sold back to China as well as California and Wisconsin. If the US decides to cut-off access to the chinese Intranet, *yoink* no more cheap labour. Similar things could be done with other countries based on what their values are.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Clearly the .xxx domain is essential to not accidentally stumbling across sites full of offensive pornography.
I mean there's no way one could tell that a URL such a www.gaymenhavingbuttseks.com or www.fudgepackingbuttpirateturdburglars.com is going to lead you to a site that features man on man action instead of the pro-Kerry site you were looking for.
So what if porn site get
The UN is well known to be anti-USA. Is this just knee-jerk whining about anything the USA has or does? Or does the UN have any real point what-so-ever?
"Whats the matter, you like .XXX but not .KKK?!! Are you half fundie or something?"
Wow, straw men and insults. I bow to your rethorical prowess, master.
Now, where did I leave these meta-mod thingies...
Is the very existance of xxx offensive?
Why not put the porn in one place? The porn is there anyway, you may as well control it.
Frankly, I don't know if a
Anyway, I doubt that 40% of the internet is kkk.
It's funny. I've heard many people here tell us "why the Christians want this."
.xxx domain and think it a reasonable thing for ICANN to add given the nature of the Internet, but I'm curious as to why people think it's necessary to villify any group they disagree with by impugning their motives and giving absolutely no reference to anything the other group might have actually said at any given time..
But none of the people offering explanations were Christian.
For the record, I see the value of an
I'd say so. Did you happen to read this part of the sentence: "and only certain countries on the security council?"
Yes, I'm obviously arguing for US elitism and that only the world's wealthy countries should be heard when I'm complaining about the very exclusive security council. That must be what I'm saying.
So that a competing company can register their .com domain? Mmm, no, something tells me that all the porn companies will simply keep their .com domains and there will be a race to register a similar .xxx domain, and the only ones who will come out ahead for all of this will be the registrars who get to charge the same companies for another domain.
"On the other hand, if everyone set up their own root servers DNS would break. There HAS to be top-level root servers in order for DNS to work properly. If everyone didn't use the same root servers, dns would be ambiguous and thus worthless."
.COM exists and 2) What nameservers serve up .COM.
.com"... it tells you!
.com zone and use it as a local, not network resource. That speeds things up a bit in some cases. But you need some seriously significant machine resources to do this.
Not really. Let's look at the simplest case; the analogy holds for all other domains.
For you and I to have sync'd up root zones free of a central controlling authority is for us to agree that 2)
How tough is that? Keep in mind if you ask any nameserver "where are the nameservers for
Some people download the
Now, the goog has the resources to cache the entire domain tree, from "." down to your latest subdomain, and Jim Fleming has speculated that they hired ex ICANN CEO Darth Cerf to head up Googles brand of DNS when the split comes, while others speculate they hired him to prove Google hires old people to fix the Brian Reid lawsuit. They could both be right I guess.
Anyway, we've become very lazy and complacent with regards to DNS; we have the same config now that was in use 20 years ago: "lets just use the US run servers to get the root zone data".
Hey, let's not.
Need Mercedes parts ?
It can be both. In fact many socialist countries are police states. Far left wing or far right wing governments are extremes and either can be a police state. That's how they stay in power.
Too lazy to create a sig...
That is total nonsense!
I too live in New Zealand, and believe that it is essential for us to be Nuclear Free for these reasons:- Putting nuclear reactors for power genetation, in a country which is both on an active fault-line between a pair of tectonic plates, and more or less wholly dependent on food exports and tourism is just total stupidity. The consequencies to our economic wellbeing if a reactor got damaged by an earthquake are simply that NZ would cease to exist as somewhere for the four million of us to live.
- Nuclear reactors make plutonium. The population as a whole does not want to give any government the means to make the fuel component for totally immoral & obscene weapons of mass destruction.
- There are plenty of other energy sources: 2000+ years of lignite and coal; more hydro; sunshine - lots of it; tides - the rip through Cook Strait is about 10 knots at full flow; wind - NZ is one of the windiest inhabitated place on Earth.
- The posession of WMDs does not produce "Peace". Look how the US has been in a state of "War" to varying degrees for the last 60 years, in fact since the the inception of the Nuclear Age.
Now you know the very good reasons why NZ is non-nuclear, and will probably continue to be for a very long time irrespective of the shade of the governing party.Yes, I realize that Toyota USA is chartered in the US, and Ford Japan is in Japan. Why does the legal ownership change the analysis? It's still the case that the design and leadership of Toyota is in Japan, but they have huge numbers of customers in the US, and the design and leadership of Ford is in the US, but they have a comparatively small number of customers in Japan. Hence the general fact remains it's more important for a Japanese manufacturer to make sure his American consumers can find him on the 'net than vice-versa. (If you don't want to think in terms of retail customers browsing the Web, substitute mid-level managers needing e-mail contact with the head office.) You have only to look at the trade balance to see this, anyway.
Yes, I realize companies would readily find a way around any disruption of DNS service. Of course they would. Far too much money is at stake! But I suggest this only supports my original argument. Because, guess which companies are going to be eager to fix the inability of which customers to reach them? That would be foreign companies looking to reach US customers. Not the reverse. Trade balance again.
http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.ht
It's still frivolous, no matter how you mince words.
It's you who's "mincing words", er changing their meanings and/or using them incorrectly.
falconShould there be a Law?
You may want to read Al Franken's book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. It actually has some insight as to what Clinton actually accomplished during his presidency... although I can almost guarantee that if you like George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Ann Coulter, Bob O'Rielly, or Sean Hannity, you will hate this book.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
And conversely, you have no standards. If, hypothetically, 45 year old men having sex with 12 year olds was popular (Denmark scenario), you would have no problem with it, because the majority of the people are in favor.
Instead of standards I have ethical beliefs. You see I don't have sex with children and I don't steal office supplies. This is because I don't particularly want to have sex with children and even if I did, I would find it unethical to put someone who is not mature enough to handle the situation in that situation. I support enforcing this belief upon others, because it is protecting the rights of children, not because I find it unethical though. Talking about having sex with children, drawing pictures of it, etc. do not infringe upon anyone else's rights and I don't support trying to legally restrain people from so doing. A pedophiles rights end the minute they try to infringe upon those of a child. My rights end the minute I try to restrain the free speech of a pedophile.
You are fine with promoting a .KKK domain, again, as long as its popular.
The minute the KKK does something to violate someone else's rights I'm fully in favor of stopping them, whether they are in the majority or the minority. If, however, there is enough interest and traffic to justify creating a .kkk domain, then I am not opposed to it. That is because no matter how much I disagree with their ideas and principals, it is not worth sacrificing my own. My disapproval and rights end when I try to take away their right to free speech. There is a great quote, "I may hate what you say, but I'll die to protect your right to say it." Shouldn't you have learned all of this in your 5th grade civics class?
Yeah but it was the U.S. that attempted to block the .xxx domain extension right?
The U.N. should not be given any control over the internet. The solution is to boot the fundamentalist puritans who are desparately trying to restrict our liberties and legislate morality out of the U.S. Then there should be no issue with the U.S. controlling the internet.
Sure you can set up your own root servers. Peachy for you and me. But what happens when 100 other people set up their own as well. Then we've got 102 completely different slashdot.org pages. Now how do you get to the right one without switching your dns settings around like a mad man?
Please excuse me for being retarded. I was born that way.
You're nothing; like me.
I just don't get this whole .xxx thing. I mean just who decides what sites would have to go there?
That is obvious, the web publisher who is registering a domain, decides that .xxx is appropriate for his or her content. Much as most ISPs choose to host a .net address and hospitals would like to have the .med domain so they can be easily found, porn vendors would like a .xxx domain to help people find them and to reduce traffic to their site from people not looking for porn and unlikely to spend money there. It is basically impossible to pass effective laws requiring sites with porn to host there, since you'd have to pass and enforce that law in every country in order to make it have any meaning. This also means if schools want to filter .xxx it is good for them, which reduces the cost and annoyance to porn sites. It further means that a law passed to force hosting in .xxx and restrict customers from using it in any way will backfire, since it will then motivate porn hosting to move back to .com, etc.
A .kids or whatever domain is a good idea too, with a company to certify the domain sales, but .xxx is just like any other TLD. It is nice for commerce and great for filtering and finding what you want, but useless for censorship.
The root list that the US maintains (as you put it) is the property of the US, and by extension, property of the citizens of the US. This list constitutes alot of work, information, and as a result, power. I can't think of a single reason we have for wanting to give it away.
How about this, the work is only valuable if everyone agrees to keep using it. They don't. Only 2 nations in the whole UN voted to keep using it, including the US. The list is not very long and did not take a lot of work. It is less than a thousand entries if I recall correctly and everyone has a copy. The issue here is that they are no longer going to agree to use the changes the US makes to it and are going to use the changes they make. Their is no reason for them not to and a lot of reasons for them to do so.
dare you to walk into the YellowPages office and suggest that they donate their database of clients, addresses, and phone-numbers to some independant consortium made up of representatives of the various companies that are listed within. They will laugh at you.
This isn't a database of clients etc., this is analogous to the list of area codes, which is something a UN committee already governs. Take your uninformed nationalist rhetoric and sit on it. If I was running a foreign country and had an investment of billions in networking gear, infrastructure, and personnel I'd sure as hell move to a standard not controlled by the US as soon as humanly possible. If you can't understand why the world would not want to be at the US's mercy for their internet lookups and that the US is being a spoiled brat about power and trust shifting away from them, then you are completely clueless. It is happening, the only real question is will the US play ball or cry like a baby and go home, damaging its ability to communicate with the rest of the world in the process.
So you understand fully why other countries would want to use their own (or one not controlled by the US) for reasons of power.
Yet you fail to understand why the US would not want to give up that very same power. There's no motivation to do so.
Take your halfway informed and yet braindead kumbaiya rhetoric and... well do something with it that dosen't make you sound so damn stupid.
Yet you fail to understand why the US would not want to give up that very same power. There's no motivation to do so.
You fail to understand, there is nothing stopping the UN from going their own way and they have voted to do so, although they have not hashed out the specifics. This leaves the US in the situation of do we A) keep running our own server and make all companies register each domain twice if they want to do business in the US and try to figure out a way to resolve conflicting domains with the rest of the world, or B) cooperate with the rest of the world and avoid these issues, while not looking like a cartoon villain. Lots of countries have chosen a policy of nationalism and isolationism, but it almost inevitably ends badly. Believe it or not the majority of people are more interested in reaching local hosts and services than they are in reaching ones in the US and most of the customers and most markets are not in the U.S. If the US tries to bully on this issue it will cause problems for everyone, but mostly for US citizens and IT people. The motivation for the US is to keep the internet running smoothly for its citizens and commercial entities. Here's what the headlines may read in the U.S., "UN Takeover Breaks the Internet." Here is what you will read in newspapers in the rest of the world, "US Refusal to Comply with UN Directives Causes Internet Outages for US Citizens and Web Sites" or something similar.
Here's how I feel about ICANN in a nutshell. If they sucked, they'd feel better. Before you mod me as a Troll, here's why I say that.
:)
1) ICANN is a consortium of CORPORATIONS.
2) ICANN IS NOT RUN BY THE US GOVERMENT or any other group that's actually responsible to the public.
3) ICANN is an independent beast that our goverment created and lost control of.
4) ICANN has rejected, excluded, and then finally terminated the "at-large" members.
5) ICANN operates in a very obscure fashion with many of the members having secretive meetings and leaving other members out of the meetings. Don't take my word for it - www.cavebear.com. Karl "The Cavebear" was one of the ICANN at large members.
6) ICANN has consistently made decisions that are in the best interest of the corporations the various members of the board are drawn from. They have yet to buck their corporate overlords in favor of "the people". The history on this is long and arcane, so I won't site it here, but if you care to read, it's widely available on line.
7) ICANN has started a new datamaing that will be able to look to see where you go and what you look at on line. Great - the FBI wants universities to play BB, and now ICANN is getting in on the act.
8) ICANN has jacked the prices on domain names, AGAIN. You'll recall my earlier comment about corporate overlords...
Now that you have 8 good reasons why ICANN blows, perhaps I won't get another Troll mod
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank