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...
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
God, what a loss to humanity that would have been.
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 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?
I'm all for nations not trusting one another, just out of simple principles of power. Or rather, to take up Reagan on his PR, "trust, but verify". The US has been cruising on trust earned in other times, by other Americans, for too long, and now chickens are coming home to roost. I welcome foreign pressure for us to clean up our act, because inadequate domestic pressure has merely propelled us to the edge of the abyss. For example, "US standards of financial reporting" now appear to include Andersen/WorldCom/Enron. We've got to rebuild that credibility
I'd like to see some "Universal Declaration of the Communications Rights of Humans" enforced with teeth by the UN. But your specific formulation has problems. Is trying people for "treasonous conspiricies" communicated over the Internet, like planning the assassination of a ruler, "censorship"? Can one nation's mailorder underwear ads be prosecuted in another nation where they're consumed? These are big, complex, globally important issues. We need the US to lead with credibility as a "fair dealer", and for diplomats to negotiate the work.
--
make install -not war
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.
Exactly. Emo-ize her while she's young, that way she'll never escape.
I can see it now. "Here's little Susie taking her first picture of herself in the bathroom. And here's Susie showing some cleavage just to get some friend invites. And here she is laying upside down on her bed, just wearing a bra. I'm so proud!"
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.
> 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.
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...
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."