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VeriSign To Control .com Domain Until 2012
DIY News wrote to mention a Reuters article reporting that VeriSign will control the .com domain until 2012, according to an agreement with ICANN. From the article: "The agreement settles a long-running dispute between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, and the most powerful company under its jurisdiction. The settlement comes at a time when ICANN is under attack from China, Iran and other countries that want more direct control over the domain-name system that guides traffic around the Internet."
Coincidence? Yeah, probably, but you should call Art Bell just in case.
Verisign has been known to go around policy: who authorised .root? ICANN is known to be undemocratic and hold meetings in places where people can't access them. Could some non-profit organisation take over .com and make the internet fair again?
God forbid we should run the Internet in a way that displeases such an open and information-friendly group of countries.
The ICANN and VeriSign dispute about the content of the root domain name servers makes about as much sense as a dispute between Fred and Joe over which of them can park their car in Bob's driveway.
What contractual or legal obligations exist between ICANN, VeriSign, or any of the registrars and the owners of the traditionally accepted root domain name servers? Just how do ICANN or VeriSign intend to force the owners of the root DNS systems to sync their databases to the registrar's if they decide to cut out the middle man? What contractual or legal obligations requires ISPs to resolve DNS queries using the traditionally accepted root DNSs?
I'd sure like to know what these missing links are. Seems to me they are fundamental....
Bah, you fell for it. There are lots of countries-- including democratic nations of Europe-- who would like to see the 'net under a more global control. It's not a US-only club anymore, after all, and hasn't been for a long time. The poster evidently wanted to stir up specific emotions by explicitly listing China and Iran.
What's everyone say now? ICANN President Paul Twomey said the settlement shows that issues involving the domain-name system are best resolved within ICANN, rather than through an international bureaucratic body. Am I missing something? Big US corporation uses threat of long, expensive US litigation to bend ICANN to its will? ICANN claims that this proves the system works, sure -- what else could they say and maintain a shred of self-respect?
But now y'all have to chose your evil: VeriSign and litigation lawyers, or the UN? Bwahahahaha!
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
suppressing our people
Stop doing business with them, then talk about how evil they are.
You can't take the sky from me...
Well, that part of the article was FUD at its best, and you're the perfect example of a naive Slashdot reader who took the bait and fell for it, so to speak.
For one, not all the world's Iran and China; admittedly those are dictatorships that you probably don't want having a say in how the Internet is governed, but the majority of the world's countries is not like that. Furthermore, the proposition wasn't that individual countries control the Internet; rather, it was suggested that an international body responsible for this be created. Kind of like the ITU, for example - which is not exactly a prime example of the devastating influence that countries like China and Iran would have, is it?
And don't even think about playing the "free speech" card - that coming from a country where an accidentally-exposed nipple on TV causes a major outrage and where the FBI goes after and tries to shut down porn websites is just ironic. If you want the USA to keep control of the Internet, at least be honest enough to admit that you like to feel that you're in power, that you have control, and that you're better than the rest of the world.
And now I'll most likely get modded down to oblivion for saying this, probably - again by people who otherwise constantly talk about free speech. Isn't it ironic...
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Does ANYONE have those?
Ive currently heard (and you will get my comments on the arguments in non-italic) .xxx domain, and not to forget: what's going on with the iraqi domain? r net_domain/?
The US doesn't mess with how its run
false: we have the whole mess with the
Well, since the current owners are in US custody (!??) its in limbo: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/30/iraq_inte
Transferring power will lead to greater Cencorship
Oh, cencorship as in preventing media to display coffins of dead soldiers? Or showing a nipple on tv? Banning Al Jazeera from reporting from iraq? Or pictures from abu ghraib? (where the public - thats us, folks - have the right to know what is actually going on).
No, my dear friends - it's time to 'fess up, and admit that there are plenty of countries - participating in the UN, as a matter of fact - that does the whole "Freedom of speech"-thing better than the US.
The UN is corrupt
Arguably the UN has had its share of scandals - it's no suprise since any political body draws the attention of people out for personal gain. This is solved by actively participating, and demanding increased opaquity of how the UN (or any political body - the US for example) is run. I won't even go into the whole Haliburton, Bush AWOL, Saudi connection, Campain Contributions and Florida vote scandals.
Historically the internet came from the US - so it should remain in US control
This one is plain dumb. Just because something is historical, doesn't mean that it neccessarily is good today.
The US runs it better (technically)0 9-14?lang=en
Not really. Ever heard of pharming? Im going to do a littel flag-waiving myself, and point out that right now Sweden is on the track to implement DNS-SEC, for examplehttp://www.nic.se/english/nyheter/pr/2005-
To keep internet democratic, the US should be in control
It IS a issue of democracy. The US has to hand over the power to a international democratic body, any other action is per definition UN-Democratic (no pun intended). I'm sorry, but arguing anything else is just moot.
It's the US responsibility to participate and to try to affect the outcome of voting on these issues in the UN. That, my friends, is how democracy is supposed to work.(and I shouldn't have to point out what democracy actually is)
I'm scared of that the rest of the world won't put the US intrests first.
Well, should they? Honestly?
The rest of the world is not, I repeat NOT, by definition Evil. Remember, North Korea, China (as is the US) are a part of the rest of the world. There are enough good countries to balance out the "bad" ones ("bad" as in the _US sense of the word).
Ok, I'll probably be modded down for this post, but before bringing out the flamethrowers, I'm actually intrested in hearing good arguments for keeping it in US control.
Regards ...
"If it can be thought up, there exists at least one person trying to make it happen for real" - Phil
Why not the EU or any other number of countries that don't have despotic governments?
.com anyway.
Because frankly the EU doesn't have any legitimate complaints. There's nothing the EU has tried to do that that ICANN has stopped them from doing. The same can't be said for Iran and China, who have tried extremely hard to eliminate the existence of subversive web sites. ICANN impedes their ability to do this.
There are two big issues Europe is really worried about. Firstly, Europe wants to eliminate the IETF, because it embarrassed the ITU in designing the Internet when they could not. The fluke of the Internet de facto standards doesn't fit well with Europe-based organizations like the ITU and ISO, who would rather control those standards. Secondly, European politicians probably want to cash in on the current "Americans/Bush sucks" attitude felt by an overwhelming portion of the world, so they're using this time to their advantage.
Not to say that the US and US politicians wouldn't do the same thing in these circumstances, but the idea that there's something remotely noble about this sudden, global anti-ICANN movement is absurd. There is no reason to believe the ITU or whoever else gets control of domains wouldn't give VeriSign (or someone worse) control of
Mentioning China and Iran seems like a lame attempt at scaremongering
It can both be scare-mongering and a very legitimate concern.
Just because it's done through DNS now doesn't mean it's the only way it can be done.
~Ilyanep
To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.