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."
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?
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
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.
I dream of the old days of one domain registrar
Do you dream of $500 domain names? Cause that's what I paid for my first one.
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.
Yes but then you'd have to explain the concept of DNS to the unwashed masses. People don't really care how the technology works just that it does.
If there is a split, I'm sure there will be some complex solution we techies will have to come up with that can act as a band-aid between the two "root domains." People will give a collective yawn and go back to their porn.
Unfortunately, I fear that educating the american public about this issue would garner a response that would only foster the opinions held by other nations for supporting a division of control. Let the news give a little "now you know..." segment before hand, and everyone would be screaming that 'We made it, we should keep it!' which doesn't really make us look any better the rest of the world.
Please don't correct me with a torch because I honestly don't know where I stand on the issue. I see downsides to dividing control, but I can also conceive of the problems if america would ever be reduced to a police state in the future. 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.
The masses are sadly uninformed about a lot of issues that are important to them because a lot of people lack the underlying knowledge about the subject to make a solid argument.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
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.
$500? Sure, it would go a long way toward getting rid of cybersquatters.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
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.
the US has proven itself to be a capable caretaker of the internet
You can't seriously be suggesting ICANN are doing a good job, can you? It's an undemocratic monumental, expensive, indecisive, grindingly slow moving organisation that does nothing at all about cybersquatters and adds new TLDs purely so you have to buy more versions of your existing domain every time they want a bit more cash?
Moving to an international system would make no difference whatsoever to the daily functioning of the net, all that would change is that ICANN would be replaced by something else - and I find it hard to imagine that it could be replaced by anything worse.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
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
$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?
I grant the US has done a wonderful job getting us to where we are so far, but the US has also started to be confining against the very beast it's created, and not for good reasons. I'm not sure if I'm in for some international committee to replace the US control, but I do think we need a change because this sort of thing shouldn't happen. Additional, although it's certainally a nightmare senerio, if the US gov did decide to go wacko, having such a global network so heavily under that 1 government's control isn't such a hot idea.
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.
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
While I don't want to see a new government organization or the UN to take control of the internet or DNS, there is a problem as it is now. ICANN had all but approved the .XXX domain but because a few Christian groups complained to the Commerce Department it forced the ICANN to drop the domain. That's neither open, democratic, nor a free market.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm not quite sure how to react when I read things like this.
First of all, the US isn't going to disconnect New Zealand from the internet or cut anyone's fiber.
Second, the "reinterpretation" of the laws is designed to make sure that porn performers are of legal age. Period. If you have problems with that and think they should be able to be younger than 18, or that porn sites shouldn't be able to produce records that indicate that they ARE over 18, then we probably won't see eye to eye on this. No matter how fringe or uncommon it is, anything else would allow child pornographers to operate more easily and/or go unpunished.
Third, "anti-nuclear" isn't necessarily a good thing. Since I'm assuming by the rest of your message that you're probably against things that gobble up and/or destroy the earth's natural resources, it might serve you to consider that nuclear power is one of the BEST options we collectively have for the future, and being "anti-nuclear" just for the sake of it is probably one of the most patently absurd, ridiculous, and ignorant positions you can take.
Just as soon as they discover oil there.
- 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)?
The UK was responsible for creation of the telephone, not the Internet, which itself would not have existed were it not for the telephone.
Your point?
Should the UK have the ultimate say in how phone numbers are dished out?
C17H21NO4
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.
It's more like this:
.fr will now be known as .cheeseeatingsurrendermonkeys!"
The US cleared a patch of land and built a house and a road. Others came along, used the same idea to clear their own patches of land and build houses next to the road (and built other roads).
The US says, "We were here first so we get to name all the houses".
Everyone else says, "No thanks - we'd prefer to pick our own names".
The US says, "HaHa! Just for that,
As a person, I'm not that comfortable with the USA having veto power. Why? Because of .XXX. It frightens me that a small group of religous right in the USA could cause something the rest of the globe agrees upon to be almost halted.
I see many bad trends in your government, and hardly regard them as the beacon of truth and justice many americans seem to think they are. Additionally, I don't see why the USA deserves such veto power. The internet would not be an international network without the cooperation of all parties involved. Therefore, there is no reason for any one of those countries to have sole veto power over TLDs.
The UN also lets the US sit on any commision - yet the US has more prisoners behind bars that Libya. The US executes more people than most other nations. The US allows torture......yada yada.
What you hate is that you believe that the US deserves some special pantheon to sit astride the world.
The UN is a place where ALL nations meet. Many European countries abhor the state killing in the US yet still enter into dialogue with the US at the UN.
That you select certain anomolies in the nature of world bodies that suit your prejudices says nothing of note about who is best positioned to govern the Internet DNS system.
You have made a false and stupid choice - it is not the US or China. The issue is that ICANN ganed control of aspects of goverence that impact other soverign nations and they did so with not debate nor input at the time from those affected.
That the decision was made does not change the fact that it is up for debate now and you ( lover of freedom? ) cannot stop this debate.
it is certain among those who have taken the time to inform themselves that the ICANN is NOT the best organization to manage a GLOBAL resource.
You clearly have little time to inform yourself. Tell us something that we don't know and yet is also true. Your fear of the UN is noted but not justified.
The US, and the massive US military-industrial complex many despise, was essentially solely responsible for creating the internet
And we gave deadly gas to Saddam Hussein, what does this have to do with deciding the proper governance of root servers?
Aside from the politics and issues surrounding .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)?
I think a lot of people disagree. Aside from the .xxx tld, they have given control of .com to very unscrupulous people who intentionally violated their agreement and broke routing worldwide for profit. They just gave control of .com to that same company for another 7 years with no competitive bidding and no public discourse. They have consistently failed to implement the hundreds of tld recommendations from IANA over the last decade. They are not democratically elected, have no representatives from most of the large players that actually run the internet, and have no transparent processes. The changed their own charter and removed all democratically elected members. They have consistently gouged companies around the world for "yet another" registration as they start yet another .com TLD clone for profit. They have done nothing about cyber-squatters or respecting international trademarks. That is not exactly capable care taking.
As to the root servers, most of them (physical machines) are located, paid for, and maintained by foreign companies and reside outside the U.S.
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?
Because by distributing responsibility you need a majority of countries to agree before they can really mess things up, as opposed to just the US, which is already messing things up and is likely to do so more in the future.
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...
The root server list is simply an agreed upon standard, decided by the U.S. and incompatible with other standards, more or less by definition. If the whole world agrees to move the standard in one direction, not chosen by the US, and the US disagrees, who is it that is being arrogant and stupid?
To put it another way, if you were the minister of technology in the Iraq, Russia, or Chile would you recommend that your government invest billions in and build a technological infrastructure for all communications within and outside your country upon which your economy is dependent, if you knew a political shift in Washington could completely cripple that architecture? Would you not feel safer if it required a majority of countries to agree to cripple your infrastructure and if you were given the opportunity to have representation when decisions were made?
Would you feel the same way if the U.S. was investing in this architecture, but Poland was the one making all the decisions and running the root list. Would you think it would be fair to pay Poland for a listing so theirs can connect to you on your network with your hardware using their network and their hardware? I'm serious, if Poland were running the root servers would you advocate that they remain in control or would you prefer the U.N. run the root server system?
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.
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?
> Just remember, for every person that agrees with you, there are another two that would
> tell you that one of the several rising-star countries could take our place and we
> would become like China was a few decades ago.
No they couldn't take our place. If China rises to supplant the US then we get the new Dark Age I was referring to. They don't even pretend to be a Free Society as Western Civilization understands the word, so their rise would herald the fall of civilization as we understand it.
Perhaps India could safely assume the mantle of Guardian of the Civilization in another 25-50 years but there really isn't any other viable candidates at the moment. If we cease our current protective role the two alternatives are barbarian hordes from the Middle East or China or worse, our own iron legions unleashed across the globe depending on which bad turn we take.
> George Bush has, by himself, already given enough of the UN reason to doubt our future.
Oh boo hoo. I don't doubt the UN, I know them to be a corrupt and morally bankrupt instituition worthy only of being torn down and replaced with something less disfunctional by design.
As for Europe, I understand fully why they hate us so. Because to do otherwise would be to face a very uncomfortable Truth. That we ARE the lone defender of civilization manning the ramparts against the hordes of darkness and that they couldn't help us even if they woke up and smelled the coffee because they long ago surrendered both their military capacity to do so and the moral authority to even try.
Democrat delenda est
> 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
Those outside the US tend to view the US as a single country, strange in many of its habits and with a track record of dangerous mistimed interference. They recognise its problems, as well as what it can do well, and are quite happy for it to be 'one-of-the-crowd', but with no special position. Recent events have shown it currently cannot be trusted, and they therefore are preparing to take back some of the reins of power it currently holds.
Where these two viewpoints clash is in who can make things happen as they see fit. As others have pointed out, the change to a UN control function requires no US agreement. From the 'world is US' perspective, they are creating a small offshoot, nothing to worry about. From the 'real world' perspective they will essentially partition off the US from the rest of the world, allowing it to diverge from the real internet under its own steam.
In the end the real impact is in how any change separates and isolates the US, if only in a small way. Combine this with the inherent US viewpoint of CONUS and its just one more step along the line towards a point where the world takes action against the US to prevent it undertaking some action it attempts, because the 'real world' cannot accept it crossing a line. When you take into account the US is essentially in debt to that world, if becomes akin to the bank manager withdrawing your credit because of your 'strange' behaviour - its very swift, very destructive, and causes a significant shock to the psyche. Here's hoping that the US realises its in its interest to reach a compromise on this issue, akin to the one the EU is attempting to broker. It will be easier to reach a UN hosted solution where no one country can censor free speech/tax commerce if the US plays its part; rather than acting as a young child, unable to recognise others as complete independent entities.
...everyone would be screaming that 'We made it, we should keep it!' which doesn't really make us look any better the rest of the world.
Given that the rest of the world seems to be screaming that "you made it, we want it, now hand it over!", I'm not sure who we'd be looking good for, I'm not sure they'd appreciate it, and I'm not sure looking good would end up being a pointful exercise in any way. Certainly not so pointful as to be a worthwhile exchange for giving up control of the Internet to, say, China.
Have any of these other countries come forward with a mass of investment, know-how, and thorough plans for working with us to make the Internet better? If so, then by all means let them share the authority along with the responsibility. If not, then what are they trying to pull? You don't get concessions just by demanding them. You're supposed to actually make a compelling case that the concessions are in the conceder's best interest. Wake me up when the EU gets to that stage, and I'll take their demands seriously. Until then, they're just children playing astronaut and throwing a tantrum because NASA won't let them actually go into space.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
If we're going to have multilateral control of DNS, then at least everyone who has control should have to sign an Internet Bill of Rights...
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.
- 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)?
I think that this statement (repeated every time an article of this sort comes up) should be modded flamebait. You are posting something that is largely orthogonal to the discussion, whether you are doing this deliberately or not.
Several points:
1. The internet comprises of two main elements: the protocols and the networks that run those protcols.
2. The US government is responsible for developing the protocols and in some cases the infrastructure inside the US. Following that, more US infrastructure has been added by US companies.
3. Other countries have paid for their own infrastructure.
So to claim that the "US military-industrial complex" is "solely responsible for creating the internet" is incorrect. You can however claim that the US government developed the protocols.
Now while we will be forever grateful to the US for developing these protocols, it doesn't necessarily follow that they must have control of DNS.
meh
It's not war or invasion that other nations are likely to be concerned about. Blowing things up is only the final option of a long chain of ways the USA can influence other nations... and the USA is already well known for using it's influence in one area to force other governments to do things they don't want to do in other areas.
eg. The Australian government recently sent troops to Iraq not because it believed in supporting the war, or because most Australians particularly believed in supporting the war. It sent troops primarily because the United States Federal Government informed it that the chances of a Free Trade deal with the biggest economy in the world would go through the floor if it didn't. This action would hurt the US a tiny bit and it hurts Australia a lot. The economic implications of this being what they were, the Australian government decided to sell themselves out.
If the US decides to attack another country, cutting off DNS will probably only cause a minor effect compared with everything else going on. In peace time, though, it's very influential. Most developed countries rely heavily on the Internet, and DNS is an integral part of it. The USA will obviously try to protect what control it presently has. It has no down-side for the US (apart from continued bad publicity), and all disadvantages are shouldered by other nations. That doesn't automatically make it a fair arrangement, any more than (for instance) the US's declaration that it doesn't recognise other countries' claims on Antarctica but reserves the rights to make and defend its own claims.
It shouldn't be a surprise that many governments don't like seeing the USA in control of yet another part of their economy and wellbeing. The USA's economic influence over other nations means that the world has overblown drug legislation, the world has overblown copyright legislation, the world has all sorts of idiotic laws, and all because it suits the USA. It's not really a wonder that the world wants to separate its economic reliance on the USA as much as possible.