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."

Comments

To preempt some of the more useless comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a recap of the technical side of things as they are now:

It is common for a country to host its own TLD servers (the servers which tell you what a particular domain under for example .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.

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 .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.

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 .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.

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.