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?
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
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.
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
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.
> 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