Slashdot Mirror
A Monroe Doctrine for the Internet
InklingBooks writes "An article in Foreign Affairs suggests that in a tersely worded statement the United States has issued a 'Monroe Doctrine' for the Internet. The Monroe Doctrine was a unilateral declaration by the U.S. that it would not permit European powers to establish new colonies in the Western Hemisphere." From the article: "Everyone understands that the Internet is crucial for the functioning of modern economies, societies, and even governments, and everyone has an interest in seeing that it is secure and reliable. But at the same time, many governments are bothered that such a vital resource exists outside their control and, even worse, that it is under the thumb of an already dominant United States. Washington's answer to these concerns -- the Commerce Department's four terse paragraphs, released at the end of June, announcing that the United States plans to retain control of the Internet indefinitely -- was intended as a sort of Monroe Doctrine for our times. It was received abroad with just the anger one would expect, setting the stage for further controversy."
How long until we see www.we-surrender-the-internet-to-you.fr? By Monday?
Trolling is a art,
There's still the possibility of an alternate internet. The US can't enforce rules online.
A Marilyn Manson Doctrine?
Ewwwww......
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
... I feel the internet is rather save in us hands. At least better than in that of Cuba and Iran. And even in Eurpean countries, some politicians don't always understand that freedom is always the freedom of different opinions (or sexual preferences and tastes).
Fleur de Sel
Do they mean 'internet' or 'world-wide-web'?
Its my understanding that all this is over root DNS servers, which are only a small part of what the internet is and does.
Of course its the part that everyone's grandmother uses, so articles like these refer to 'the internet'...
grr.
The Monroe Doctrine essentially told European powers to say out of the affairs of the Americas. In this case, the US is meddling in the affairs of everyone else by controlling the name servers that everyone uses.
Perhaps the "World Domination Doctrine" would be a more apt name.
People need a clue of they're going to be given power.
The US has no control over the internet, they can mess with it and poke it a little but nothing more. The internet is an extreme communist network. You need to work together so everything works. If someone stops doing their share they get cut off and end up having to rejoin and work twice as hard or they die. It's that simple.
No one controls the Internet, no one ever will. Anyone who tries to will lose far more than I wish to even guess at.
I like muppets.
The control thing is kinda silly. If the root servers become unstable due to government interference, people will use alternative servers. It happened before. There is often a technical solution for government stupidity. Even if the poweres that be don't want it...
Either each country should control its own domain, e.g. co.kr, co.br, etc. and those that cannot/do not want to; have the UN or something else control it
or
if a world wide web without countries is required, then a world wide body should govern it democratically
Why is the current administration so frightened of democracy ?
The rest of the Americas weren't too happy with the idea of the Americans appointing themselves the stewards of the W. hemisphere. I doubt that the world will be any happier with this. On the other hand, the US was a rising power then, but is now in decline, and the world may be more annoyed or even amused than angry.
"No nation ever existed without some sense of national destiny or purpose.
Manifest Destiny -- a phrase used by leaders and politicians in the 1840s to explain continental expansion by the United States -- revitalized a sense of "mission" or national destiny for Americans.
The people of the United States felt it was their mission to extend the "boundaries of freedom" to others by imparting their idealism and belief in democratic institutions to those who were capable of self-government. It excluded those people who were perceived as being incapable of self-government, such as Native American people and those of non-European origin."
Hmmmm... Iraq? The Intrawebs? What's next? Oh yeah, the moon. Let's install a giant frickin' laser on the moon and then we can hold the rest of the world hostage.
Mmmwwwuuuuuuhhahahhhhaahhaahaa...
"Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing - and it was everything that I thought it could be."
We invented, we govern it. Simple. If they want to
create their own version and write the bridges, they
can go ahead, but it was our tax dollars (DARPA) that
developed it in the first place.
Now, there are more than a few decisions our gov't
has made and continues to make that I *strongly*
disagree with, but that's for another conversation.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
American can control the '1's and the rest of the world can control the '0's. France gets the occasional '2.'
Putting aside what's right and wrong, if you can bare with me, anti-hegemonic-US rhetoric will not change the fact that we were here first. We cannot be compelled to give this up unless other countries start arming their nukes. And as an American, I'm gonna go ahead and say, Why should we? Then I'd follow that with a "sticks and stones" line.
Well, I guess we can just wish the web goodbye since it was created by people at CERN (Center for European Nuclear Research). I think other bits and portions of the net were created by others as well so your argument doesn't fly.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
Seriously can everyone just grow the fuck up, otherwise this will end badly. The US needs to hand over some control of the root servers and Europe needs to trust the US a little more - this shared responsibility can only be a good thing for international relationships.
----
I think it's pretty ridiculous to argue that the governance of the Internet should remain in the hands of any one government, even the US. There are those who would say especially the US. Most of the counter-arguments go something like this: "What, you want Cuba running the Internet?" No, I don't. But I think it's really small-minded, not to mention willfully blind, to think that the US has a monopoly on goodness and freedom. The Internet is global, and no one nation should have a chokehold over a global system. If it were any other nation, the US government would be on the side of those calling for it to surrender control to an international body.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
the US DoC actually has a good point, though. the governments crying for control of the net are not trying to replace ICANN (and maybe fix administrative corruption), they're trying to replace the DoC's control of ICANN. it's about wresting control from the united states, and giving it to the big beaurocracy. this will neither enhance efficiency of adopting beneficial change, nor aid the cause of the private individual. it would give a few more governments a crack at censoring what is said online. personally, i think it would lead to total ossification of the net as it now stands, and as technology marched onwards, a parallel replacement would have to be implemented to affect any real change.
The U.S. built the DNS system, paid for it, and maintained it since the beginning.
People clamoring for control is spooky, since they haven't stated any real grievances.
I suspect its certain EU countries looking to be considered relevant and they think that if they have a hand in governance of the Internet that makes them equal to the U.S. in some respect.
It reminds me of the 13 year old kid who wants to smoke so they look "all grown up".
Ok, as I understand the situation, the entire argument is over who controls the root DNS servers. If another country want's "control" of the "internet", all they have to do is set up they're own servers and require that ISPs in that country use they're servers.
There is absolutely no sense in having a government of any country in charge of the root DNS servers. Given the nature of the "internet" it's almost completely out from under the control of any government anyway. The control is entirely in the hands of the communications industry anyway.
This shows how clueless politicians are when they talk about "control of the internet". The technology is available to everyone. Any country can setup a network based on TCP/IP technology, could setup their own root servers, and regulate ISPs in their country to use those root servers for their DNS's. Several countries could even get together and create a completely alternate network cut off from "the one true internet" as well. There exist all manners of segregating the current network, just look at the great firewall of China.
.com etc., domain names. I realize that some countries' domains are probably not under their control, and that seems unnecessary.
.com.nn domain in every country code (nn) - in many cases this is already done.
.com domain holder the option to move their domain name under the country code of their choice. In cases where there are conflicting names, give it to the first of the two who registered it.
.com domain, the same with other non-country code domains.
.com. I guess it just means that the root servers should be segregated by country. Would that be so bad?
All this is about is who controls the main
If we really wanted to fix the whole issue without trying to figure out whose dick is bigger, you go to something like this:
1) Make sure every country code is managed only by that country, and give them control of all root servers for that country.
2) Create a
3) Give every
4) Blow away the
Then, every country has their own little "piece" of the internet, so to speak, and can regulate it into oblivion if they like.
Come to think of it, as long as countries have control of their country code root servers (if such a thing exists), then we're practically there. There's no reason why the US can't keep control of
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
"Everyone understands that the Internet is crucial for the functioning of modern economies, societies, and even governments, and everyone has an interest in seeing that it is secure and reliable."
The Internet has been in wide-spread use for about 10 years. It isn't crucial and if disappeared tomorrow, economies, societies, and governments would be able to function quite nicely without it.
Having said that, I don't think the US should have too much control over it unless they intend to disconnect the US portion from the rest of the world.
When other countries, IOs, or NGOs complain about the US 'stranglehold' on the Internet, I always see it as someone complaining about a problem that doesn't exist. First off, the Internet functions regardless of who controls the root servers, and if (for some strange reason) the US government did do something foolish, others are free to use different servers.
Regardless, I'm trying to see it from their point of view. Can someone provide specific previous actions which could be used in the argument against continued US 'control' of the registry?
Wouldn't the opposite be more appropriate (not the france bit)? America getting 0s and the rest of the world getting the 1s, that way they can use extended characters (both ASCII, and Unicode)?
Clones are people two.
This makes a great topic for furious discussions and in the end isn't really that much of an issue - after all, the worst they can do is refuse usage of root servers and not allocate IP addresses. I have 2 computers here, I can make a perfectly functional internet. The technology is there, and it's open, so while some central control over standards and roots etc is nice to have, abuse of it will not end the world.
What I feel more uncomfortable about is carriers not playing fair. I expect bandwith providers to start tailoring their offerings to only work with content they approve of or promote - eg a broadband provider preferring his own VOIP service over competition services or his own digital TV access over the one from others. How long till 'internet access' means a big fat pipe to my provider, and a little trickle to the rest of the world, instead of the universal 'do as you please' open network we enjoy today? Unlike root servers, I cannot self provide my bandwith.
My (monopolist) cable provider bugs me with his ridiculously priced VOIP access. I currently use competition, but I expect them any day now to throttle access to the competition's IP block by just enough to not make it work anymore....
I interviewed Vint Cerf, who yesterday coincidentally was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, about U.S. control of the Net earlier in the week.
I'm going to create my own internet, with blackjack! And hookers!
The Internet should remain as is... If some country doesn't like it then go make your own internet and stop bothering us. I encourage them to disconnect themselves from the rest of us and take control of their own area.
...we can expect a Vichy Doctrine from the French?
From TFA: Any network requires some centralized control in order to function.
This statement is just plain wrong. P2P has shown that. What TFA probably means to say is "Every big network I can think of requires some centralized control"
And I think this assumption is at the core of the controversy here. If there has to be a single unique owner of something, then yes, you're going to see fighting over who that gets to be. But why does there have to be?
First of all, it's only DNS. Any TCP/IP stack that is correctly implemented can accept multiple DNS servers. It's part of the redundancy built into the system. The worst case scenario from this whole issue would be that Europe establishes its own version of ICANN, with its own root DNS servers. People will still want to communicate with eachother, so those servers will cross-pollinate entries. Some way to handle collisions will be invented - maybe you just specify an extra level of TLD to determine which root servers you use. Maybe there'll be arbitration. What I'm saying here is that the world will go on. It's only DNS.
So I guess that, aside from political blustering on both sides of the pond, I just don't see enough controversy here to warrant the media circus it's causing.
A number of the Internet root nameservers are implemented as large numbers of clusters of machines using anycast. The C, F, I, J and K servers exist in multiple locations on different continents, using anycast announcements to provide a decentralized service. As a result most of the physical, rather than nominal, root servers are now outside the United States.
Possession is 9/10th of the law and all that...
Listen. If you want a DNS server, then put up a DNS server. Really. This is really, very stupid.
Stop being stupid.
You can put up a DNS server if you like
The US can't stop you.
Do you understand me. We can't stop you from putting up a DNS server.
So put one up.
If people use it, then you "have control of the Internet," which is also a stupid statement. Since you've equated ownership of a DNS server with control of the Internet, then I guess that this is the yard stick that we're going to use to determine when you've done it.
You're picking a fight. It's a stupid fight to pick. In a world where you should choose your battles, you've chosen the dumbest battle, ever. You seem to think that this will give you some kind of shared ownership of the Internet. It won't. It won't change a thing, except where the server resides, and that a bunch of politicians are now involved, so they can screw everything up, and make it difficult.
Why not advocate that each and every nation that wants to should setup its own TLD DNS servers?
.com names and such and what organizations are allowed to register them. But that would also be solved in this fashion. If a Korean site gave "slashdot.org" to one of their friends, then Korea could not get to "slashdot.org" ... but everyone else could.
If they want them to just forward requests to the ones in the US, that's fine.
If that nation wants to break those searches, that's fine too. The only people they'll be hurting are their own citizens. And the smarter ones will be able to re-direct the queries to other servers.
This is the biggest stupid fight about NOTHING.
The ONLY issue would be
If they can't play nice, they're only hurting their own people.
You may feel safe that YOUR "democratic" country is "responsibly ruling" over the internet. Just remember also, that your country has George W, Microsoft, SCO, the RIAA, the MPAA, the "Patriot Act" and the US Patent Office.
Enjoy your "safety".
The reason that the EU and UN keep talking such such terms is because they want to scare people in to supporting their grab of DNS. If you tell the average person the truth: "A US orginization maintins control of the text file that contains high-level domain mappings. It's a defacto standard that the DNS roots choose to listen to, but nobody forces them to do so. Also it delegates control of individual domains to the respective contries." Well, nobody will care. If however you say: "The US controls the Internet, and they can fuck up your access whenever they want!!!" People get visions of US imperalism extending to the Internet and want you to save them from it.
I expect the rehetoric to continue full force from the EU. I also expect nothing to come of it unless there are some draconian laws passed over there. Seems most DNS server operators are happy using the root-servers.net roots, and those roots are happy listening to ICANN. Since the government won't force ICANN to give control to the UN, and ICANN has no reason to, nothing will happen.
All European countries have to do is somehow mandate their country's ISPs to use some other bunch of root servers for the DNS
.COM TLD
And perhaps these "new" root servers (located in, ohhhh... Geneva, Munich, London, and uhhhh Rome) won't resolve ".us" or perhaps they redirect ".gov" to local government DNS servers...
While I always hated the faux news headline: "Imminent Death of the Internet predicted...film at 11", this scenario sounds like it might just come true and each area of the world becomes a bunch of fragmented Internets and nobody intercommunicates except MAYBE through the
I see it happening in the next ten years easy...as the US flexes its muscle and the rest of the world flexes back.
TDz.
Since they are in the US and under US law, the US's definition of "fraud" and "consumer protection" apply. Not anyone else's.
So the US does control them.
If there is a disagreement over who has what domain name, it is US law that decides the case if it goes to court.
I am not sure whether to laugh or cry at the "we invented it, therefore it's ours" posts here.
The Internet is nothing more than an agreement to interoperate between networks. The only centrally controllable resource, the DNS system, is only de facto controlled by the US government. The current DNS root servers could be abandoned by the rest of the world easily, if the US pisses them off enough.
The US can't control the Internet any more than it can control what "good music" is. It's not something that can be controlled. Any attempt to influence it simply reflects badly on the US as a country, and works against our global interests in the long term.
This doctrine being spoken of makes obvious the fact that most of the current US administration and lawmakers are still living in the (mid) 20th century.
Unfortunately, they've been holding back development of our country for years (since post world war 2, when a global war made them believe in their own moral superiority) in the name of what they believe is right. Fortunately, they'll start dying of old age in droves soon.
I just hope they don't irreconciliably damage international relations before then.
Erik
PS: Taco, for the love of all that's holy start using Kupu or FCKeditor, or something besides these damned textareas.
I guess I haven't seen a convincing argument either way.
Eventually, there will be some level of shared governance by an independent, multi-national group. The make up of that group is up in the air, will it be headed by jurists, executives, or administrators? Will we need to set up a multinational to deal with these issues, or can they be handled by an existing body like the WTO or the UN? Ultimately, this isn't an issue of the US saying "No, we won't relinquish control." If that does happen, we may see the internet fragment into many pieces.
In the mean time, anyone is free to use an alternate Root DNS or create a separate Root DNS: http://www.opennic.unrated.net/
------ Tim O'Brien
Can eat a bag of dicks!
While I can understand why America (well some American politicians) wants to hold on to the governance of the Internet I think it's about time it was handed over to a multi-nation body (maybe the UN maybe a separate entity completely).
While the Internet was largely academic and US focused it made sense for it to be run from the US but it quite simply isn't like that any more. The Internet is world wide and some non-US countries have a huge amount of money riding on the Internet. In some cases democracy itself is partially dependent on the Internet.
There is not shame in passing the Internet over to a multi-national body. In fact America could have won quite a bit of respect from the rest of the world and shown it's maturity by handing over control with little fuss and complaint. Instead America has come across as a little child that won't let anyone else play with their toy. I am sure that most of the world would have been happy with America continuing to run the Internet as long as there was a set of procedures for them to veto unwanted changes. America could have had it's cake and eaten it.
There is one thing that is certain. The Internet will not be run by America alone for much longer. One way or another at least some of the power will be removed from American hands. The choice America has to make is simply how much power they want to keep.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
www.cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys.fr?
...more?
www.beret-wearing-napoleon-complex-midgets.fr?
www.paris-is-burning.fr?
www.muslim-girls-must-not-wear-scarves.fr?
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Throughout history there has always been a country leading their sphere of influence, dominating smaller countries with their policies. China and Japan in Asia, India, Persia, and Greeks, Romans in the SE Asia, the Mediterranean, and Persian Gulf, and all of the Houses of Europe have all been regional and global players who influenced the affairs of their neighbors and colonies. So why is the US treated so differently?
I don't doubt that the US is viewed by many as a bully who should just step back and let others control their own destiny. Okay, so then what? Are you going to tell me that the everyone around the world will just arbitrarily keep the global map static? You must be smoking something.
In every power vacuum throughout human history there has been a rush by next-tier players for the top spot. If the US declines to exert its power and influence, you can bet that China will. Russia will also step up and exert its power and authority over its smaller neighbors. Don't believe me? You don't read even recent history very well.
For over a century the US has represented the dreams and fears of every country in the world. Our impulse to export freedom and democracy may be misplaced and unwelcome, but consider the alternatives that history has served up. How many powerful nations have simply taken a pass when it comes to taking over a vanquished enemy? Are Germany and Japan the sole territory of the US? What about France?
I'm not saying that every policy that the US has exported overseas is great for the people we screw with. Our policies haven't always been real helpful to the US. But considering the alternatives, who would you rather were in our shoes?
And don't forget who catches the shit for the policies of our partners. France, Russia, and Germany were selling shit to Saddam as fast as they could, but which one of these countries is the primary target of Al Quaeda in Iraq? Do you think that the absence of the US would make these fuckers disappear? Do you think any piss-ant global jihadist movement that wants attention will blow up the government buildings in Sierra Leone? Local rebels might, but global terrorists don't gain their street cred by blowing up one of the smallest and poorest nations on the face of the planet.
The fact is that if a country like the US didn't exist the rest of the world would have to invent one. Criticize the US all you like. Just be glad you aren't the ones "on point".
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
I'm going out and buying some fiber optic cable. Who's with me?
Mod Flaimbait.
As a lifelong American citizen, can I please ask my fellow compatriots: What the hell happened to compromising?
Why are we no longer the "Benevolent Superpower?" So the world wants to share in our responsiblities with the DNS system and naming conventions. Is it really so different to accomplish this with an international panel as opposed to our organizations (which even still contain many international members).
Don't tell them to build their own DNS servers and break the entire nature of freedom for the net, besides what good are they with IPv4 and the core DNS naming conventions. Adding DNS servers with gibberish for localized areas isn't going to do anything positive for the maturing of this medium.
If we divide the core DNS system using an international medium, can we not simply "cut out" any group that does not adhere to guidelines set forth by the panel? And if the "shit does hit the fan" and someone doesn't listen, we could build our own internet (we have it already) that's even better then the old one! Why not move into that realm in case of emergency?
I don't understand why we have to have total control. The US involvement in the creation of the internet led to this global phenomenon, now let's make it truly global. Besides, if it's part of the UN can you imagine the impact of an internet embargo against a nation (haven't quite worked out the details, but cool in theory)?
I'm not going to rant on GW, Iraq, Energy Conservation or anything like that, this isn't the place for it. But why is it we ask so much of the international community then crap over something like this when it comes to sharing?
If you're half as beautiful naked, you'd be 4 times as beautiful with twice as many clothes on.
Long after the United States is gone, there will still be the Internet.
Though it's also very possible we'll eventually see three internets: one controlled by multinationals and market forces, one controlled by a council of governments, and another controlled solely by individuals secretly piggybacking on the infrastructure of the other two internets.
Damn, I should write a sci-fi novel!
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
The net allows people to communicate quickly, efficiently, and unsensored. Over the centuries this has only burdened two groups, governments and religions. It could be argued that corporations are now effectively governments like the Barons of days past. It, therefore, stands to reason that the enemy of this freedom is government, religion, and corporations. Exclusion of these entities from governence means only one thing. The individuals ability to make choices will have to be its only form of order. Otherwise. It will be condemned to the desires of the rich, powerful, and zealous.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I would strongly prefer the remain under the control of USDOC bureaucrats, however flawed, than become the next ITU committee dominated by Chinese Communists and UNESCO New World Information Order types who have no interest in free speech.
sulli
RTFJ.
Yes, every body knows that Europe (Germany for exemple) don't understans different sexual preferences and tastes.
We are lucky enought that there weren't any important backbone on New Orlends and get redefined the term Surf the Internet.
No joke: As an European I want that the gobernment that I voted for is in charge of Internet, not an foreign country over what I don't have any direct nor indirect control.
I'm from Spain, the unique country that has the balls to quit from Irak. And that's is possible because USA don't controls everything nor everybody.
The Monroe Doctrine
"...a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers."
The Internet Doctrine
"...a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the Internet, by the free and independent condition which it has assumed and maintains, is henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future control by any national powers."
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Four paragraphs? That's not terse. Terse would be
All your internet are belong to us.
It's time to find another site that has actual news and guest comments and isn't 100% wrapped up in generating ad revenue.
Setup your OWN fucking root servers. Make your OWN fucking intarweb. We made ours, and it's still working for us. Just because you fucking Euros joined it, doesn't make it any less ours. That's why the fucking physical servers are inside our own fucking borders. HOLY SHIT! Yes, we actually did make the internet! Imagine that! We've also been to the moon and back!
You can make your internet, or you can fucking suck it down, bitches. Your call.
France: Just surrender now, you pussies. Get it over with so you can go back to your bottle of wine and block of cheese. Soon to be served with a god damn camel-burger, I'd wager (or, I guess that'd a Camel Royale with cheese?).
Not to make a history lesson out of this post, but go wiki The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Then research the ARPANET, and find out which country it originated in. Also make sure you find out in which nation universities like MIT, CalTech, Purdue, Stanford, University of Michigan, !insert INTERNET_CONTRIBUTING_UNIVERSITY here! are located.
Then go google Marc Andreessen and find out what he did. While you're at it, google Robert M. Metcalfe and see what he did for networks in general. How about that guy they named Moore's Law after? Pay particular attention to which country these people call home.
After you've done that little bit of background reading, see what you can find about fibreoptic networks, the telecommunications industry and how they made the Internet possible. Weren't those founding telecom companies based in the US?? Go lookup stock tickers for CSCO, SUNW, YAHOO, TWX (formerly AOL), LU, EBAY (ad nauseum). Find out which country they incorporated in first.
Finally, for bonus points, go read up on all that stuff that makes the Internet go. You know all the acronyms -- TCP/IP, DNS, SMTP, HTTP, RIP, and so forth. Make sure you look hard at the UNIX operating system and follow its roots back to when it was owned by AT&T, and focus on which country's people wrote all that software for the operating systems and protocols that make Internet communication possible.
This isn't misguided nationalism or patriotic pride. We built the damn Internet! We innovated technology in the high-tech space which makes what we have today even possible. Ergo, we control most of it. After we got it out of it's infancy and into the public space other countries started to add to what we built and made innovations and inventions of their own. But we laid the groundwork, the foundation, the framework.
So the UN can go back to its oil-for-food scandals, mismanagement of international crisis, and complete ineptitude and incompetence, and we'll get back to building the next great world-changing technologies.
The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. -- Calvin & Hobbes
... Germany announced that they control book printing indefinitely, as is widely know that since Gutenberg invented printing press there, they remain the rightful owners of that technology and all derived from there.
Why do Americans always fall back on their nukes? (I understand I'm generalizing here, but it is a fair call.)
Whatever happened to things like intelligence, logic and articulation when arguing, rather than - agree or we nuke you?
Go on, run and hide behind your nukes like a child does its mother's legs. Come back when you grow up and we'll argue later.
Pease then provide us with a better option than what we have now. The UN? Well, I guess if you don't mind domain registration costs skyrocketing so there's enough for all the high-ranking UN officials to get a cut.
I'm not sure I'm in favor of any one country controlling most aspects of the internet either. But I see no proposed alteratives that look reasonable from a technical perspective. And that's what people (especially SLashdot readers) need to concern themselves with, is how viable or desireable is any proposed change technically.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Including the US?
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Jeez, not this subject again. It's been done to death already, and puffing it up into a "Monroe Doctrine" is just so grandiose. BS. Much better to wait until after the Tunis internet governance meeting in a few weeks' time. All that putting it on Slashdot produces is a ding-dong with a whole lot of rednecks. If the subject shows anything, then it is the extent to which the present US Administration has angered even America's most moderate good friends around the world in too many ways. I guess many Americans might be surprised at this but it's happened and it's not good news.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
and I don't think I've ever seen ICANN do anything politically questionable, other than yell at Verisign when they tried to install that Sitefinder BS (which sounds warranted enough to me).
Until someone can show significant harm done by ICANN and a reasonable proposal to fix such harm, and threat of OR ELSE, I don't think much is going to change.
with our freedom of speech laws i think the world is best off leaving things with us. ya, you can complain about the bush administration or the patriot act or whatever but really as much as you might hate republicans nobody is silencing free speech. other countries however have quite a few laws that we would never even consider in the united states. most islamic based countries outlaw defamation of the koran, the government, promotion of most entertainment (in the extreme countries) - just for starters. many european countries outlaw any racist speech even going so far as to outlaw auction websites that allow the sale of any racist materials...even nazi historical items. chinese...well dont get me started on them but needless to say most of their blogs probably arent on chinese hosts. i think if the UN had control over the internet the votes for limiting free speech would far outweigh any countries like us who allow almost anything to go and then we'd be screwed. if the internet is going to be a true free speech medium of the people and for the people then this is how it needs to stay.
The people who have the ears of the governments around the world are businessowners. If the US says no, most other countries will likely have to back down for fear of ruining their business relationships built over the internet. The United States may not be the only people on the block anymore, but as one of the most powerful nations in the world, world economy would be hurt.
Why are we no longer the "Benevolent Superpower?".
We never were. We were (and are) the "Responsible Superpower" - which means sometimes doing things other people disagree with. The U.S. like them or not has a lot of power and cannot simply abidicate control to any group who asks without a good reason. And I have seen no good reasons for abdication of the power the U.S. currently holds over the internet to anyone that has asked for it. When China is complaining about someone elses control of something I just have to laugh.
Instead of "Benevolent" consider the word "Benign". That is what the U.S. has been in relation to the internet, which I don't think you could say for all governments that might come to hold similar power.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Seperate internets would be fine with me. Maybe then I won't have to put up with those fscking Chinese farmers in WoW.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, not knowing you personally, and suggest that you didn't invent shit. I know that I, personally, wasn't even old enough to pay taxes when ARPANet was brought online, so I can't really lay claim to the idea that "my tax dollars built the Internet." Have some of my tax dollars gone to it since? Sure. But so have those of lots of other countries.
Your attitude sounds like that of an armchair sports fan -- "We won!" When really it was the team who played the game and won and all you did is kick back and drink beer. It's not a helpful attitude when it comes to diplomacy. Geopolitics isn't a zero-sum game. Everybody else doesn't have to lose for America to win.
And after all, what if everybody else doesn't agree with the "we built it, we run it" rule. What do you propose we do? Take our ball and go home? "Thanks but no thanks, Europe, China, everybody ... you guys think you're smarter than everybody so we're not going to let you send us network traffic anymore." Obviously it wouldn't be a bad idea for the U.S. to be willing to capitulate a little bit.
Breakfast served all day!
As another American (not to mention North American and citizen of the USA), let me thank you for perpetuating the stereotype of Americans as ignorant and mean-spirited. If other countries decide, for whatever reason, that they'd like to use different root servers, there's nothing we can do about it. What we should do about it is to listen to their concerns and try to accommodate them, rather than allowing the Internet to fracture.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
I'm not sure about the parent, but two things give me an idea that the US is in decline are that:
1. The US government can take any citizen, lock him/her up, throw away the key, not tell anyone, do so legally... and the people (generally) don't effing care.
and
2. The US is now a debtor, not creditor, nation, with no end in sight. Heck, we borrow money from China to pay for the damage Katrina caused. Here
The culprit, in my and others' opinions, is the Federal Reserve.
...how such a brilliant post has no replies.
basically what is being said is "you create it, troubleshoot it, and manage it for 30-some-odd years and then hand over control of it."
the thing i don't understand is, there aren't any complaints about how it is being managed, only WHO manages it. nothing would really change. people just have to complain about something, and they feel they are getting screwed out of something...
I have the solution: give all control of the internet over to Canada! Nice freedom-loving liberal government, well medicated and educated. Plus, they are too damn polite to do anything nasty with that kind of power! I've never been steered wrong by a Canadian. ".ca" all the way, eh!
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
I agree. The UN is effective when it has no internal resistance. But what makes anyone think that domain name services won't meet a great deal of internal resistance? Quite a few countries have a vested interest in that level of control of the internet; with that in mind, I believe the UN to be the very last people to control DNS, or possibly followed by oppressive states.
By the way, as a Canadian, I'm disinclined to like the US because it seems to be bred into us, even though we rely on them for pretty much everything we have, and are if anything more closely related to the US than any other country, ever. That said, I can't think of a convincing reason that the USA shouldn't have control over DNS. The US is generally a freedom-loving country. It may be headed toward hemespheric hegemony and this may help it along, but who cares? The US invented the internet, and largely financed its development and implimentation. Even the most jaded French citizen has to admit that the world is a better place due to US involvement in its affairs, and the freedoms provided by the internet are an example of that.
This may be controversial, but I would like to propose that the US retain "control" of DNS much the way it has - very well. ICANN may not be the ideal solution, but it's what we have, and it isn't that bad.
On a side note, I happen to believe that the US has made the world a better place - but it could do more, and hasn't. Why that is is anyone's guess.
dan (Canadian... whatever that means)
[ think ]
But this "Governance" nonsense is mostly a smoke-screen for governments that want world-wide censorship, trying to use DNS as a level for lots of currently non-existent control. Sure, there's some US-centricness, and .gov and .mil ought to be shoved under .us, but governments that want to govern their countries' DNS space have country-code DNS with their own personal 2-letter abbreviation on it, and they can call things whatever they want under that (though if they use non-ASCII naming, there are some interoperability issues - but the big player on that issue is China, who can do their own thing just fine.) The US government does meddle a bit, first encouraging ICANN to do .xxx and then ordering them not to, but there's not that much. The problem is that China not only wants to block websites like falun-gong.cn, they also want to block falun-gong.org and falun-gong.co.uk and asian-pr0n.com.
The big policy meddlers at ICANN are the WIPO-types. ICANN really only cares about one kind of IP, and it's "Intellectual Property", not "Internet Protocol", so they do insist that all registrars require and publish lots of privacy-violating information in whois records, to make it easy for companies that want to initiate trademark lawsuits to find who they're suing (and to make sure they don't sue the registrars or registries), but that's pretty easily evaded, and country-code DNS administrations can ignore those requirements if they're big enough.
IPv4 space is another smokescreen excuse - yes, we're running out of the stuff, and there's obviously nowhere close to enough address space if every cellphone in Asia wants its own IP address. The fix is not to impose UN governance on ICANN, it's to deploy IPv6, and the Internet community has been doing a pretty good job of getting universities and other early adopters to hand in their old Class A space, but the big impact was really that HTTP1.1 and sendmail/etc. allowed one IP address to support many domain names for web and email. For a while, ICANN had ridiculous pricing policies for IPv6 space, which appeared designed to delay adoption of the addresses until technical policies had really been worked out (making multi-homing scale without totally exploding all the routing tables on all the world's routers is still a hard problem), but they seem to be backing off on that.
There were also some early WSIS issues like poor third-world countries wanting to tax the Internet to pay to have infrastructure built to their countries, which is a wrong-headed approach. For most of them, the first steps need to be getting rid of their incompetent telecom monopolies, getting rid of radio spectrum monopolies so people can build widespread wireless and satellite, and getting reliable electricity at least to the big cities, and too many of those countries either view telecom as a taxable cash cow or
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Way to go Washington! We need to make sure that we *never* lose control of the Internet.
Slashdot Moderation Guidelines: Leftist viewpoint (+4), Conservative viewpoint (-4, Troll)
"Of course the US government doens't always seem to have the benefit of all its citizens in mind most of the time, but that's a separate issue."
*A*L*L* governments don't always seem to have the benefit of all its citizens blah, blah, blah...
Naive, gullible, biased, prick.
WBTFT! (We Built The F*cking Thing)
"The internet is an extreme communist network."
Actually, a better description would be to say that the Internet is a functioning example of anarchism. Communism would run everything top-down. Anarchism is about organizing things through cooperation and decentralization. This is how the Internet more or less works. Anarchism in action.
We're gonna see the same pro/against posts that we've read in the previous articles about this subject... How many times are we gonna re-hash this... Come on.. move along...
This one dispels the myth that the US has absolutely no control over the internet:
One of the most cherished myths of cyberspace is that the Internet is totally decentralized and inherently uncontrollable. Like all myths, this one is based on a bit of truth and a heavy dose of wishful thinking. It is true that compared with the century-old telephone system, the Internet is a paragon of deregulation and decentralization. In four critical areas, however, it requires oversight and coordination in order to operate smoothly. Together, these areas constitute the "domain name system" of addresses, with which users navigate the Internet and send e-mail.
I.E. some tech in the United States is pulling switches and levers and managing and replacing computers to make sure a critical part of the internet works.
Here's a great blurb that refers to ICANN, who it reports to, and the problems it has:
As many developing countries woke to the Internet's importance, it struck them as outrageous that the Internet was essentially run by a nonprofit corporation whose 15-person board of directors was accountable to the attorney general of the state of California and under the authority of the U.S. government. Even the U.S. Congress criticized it, hauling the group into tense hearings regularly.
Basically, ICANN reports to the US government. More proof of who has power over the internet.
And here is what truly scares other countries:
Watching the United States go to war in Iraq despite global opposition, these diplomats saw ICANN as yet another example of American unilateralism. What would prevent Washington, they argued, from one day choosing, say, to knock Iran off the Internet by simply deleting its two-letter moniker, ".ir," from the domain name system? Surely the Internet ought to be managed by the international community rather than a single nation.
I mean c'mon people! This has nothing to do with the grandiose idea that the internet is free to everyone and everything is going along just and any idealistic crap. This is about other countries in the world getting scared shitless that a country which they don't trust. Good old fashioned internation diplomacy of protecting themselves.
And in this case they are protecting themselves from someone who scares them. Our president went to war in Iraq when the majority of the world thought it was a bad idea. And we elected the crackpot! Right now Bush is in South America trying to set up a free trade zone in the americas. The conference has huge protests outside slamming Bush as a whacko and denouncing the conference as something that will hurt south america. Depending on what you think of the conference, it's clear to me those people don't trust Bush.
Our voting process put him in power! The voting system of the US, with whatever flaws you think it has, put him in power! The rest of the world looks at each and every single American and now says "I don't trust Bush, and I don't trust your voting system to put someone into place I can trust." So what are they going to do? They are going to protect their own interests. Just like we claim to have done in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In this post I'm not going to go into the details of why Bush is not trusted, but sufficit to say he isn't. I will say with issues like this and others Bush has the worst foreign policy. With an attitude like this, Bush is basically saying "Fuck you all, I'm not listening." That's what he did in Iraq, and now he's doing it with the internet. Any good diplomat will tell you that you don't do that, even if you have Nuclear Weapons. The fact is we in fact have an even stronger weapon than a nuclear weapon, it's call the internet. It could destroy an economy with just a few lines of code. The world wants that weapon out of American hands.
I'm a US citizen and I'm scared for other countries that this could affect. I do support the idea, from a sympathetic viewpoint, of giving up control of the major points that
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
This Monroe Document has virtually guaranteed that the rest of the world will now not rest until control of the DNS is out of USA hands -- controlled by some multinational body.
Nice one fellas! Do you really think that you can get away with it ?
This is sheer arrogance - the sort of thing that led to the misadventure that is Iraq, look how that is starting to unravel.
Mind you - Bush hasn't bombed anyone in a while; it must be grating on him seeing all that kit lieing idle.
Ok I'll tell it once more. The centralized DNS systems stinks, there is a far better way to administrate it. Anyone with a public signature key could sign pairs of ServerName/IP and share them. Actually a peer to peer network could exchange such "trusted" pairs easily. This means anyone could become a central authority for DNS... now I don't have to trust anyone. I would probably decide to trust DNS pairs signed by Gnu, Microsoft and IBM, but I could have other choices. Providers could even decide only to sign non-porn domains for child protection etc.
\u262D = \u5350
so no more spam from hotmail.com?
that doctor has been getting on my nerves lately
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
"Washington's answer to these concerns -- the Commerce Department's four terse paragraphs, released at the end of June, announcing that the United States plans to retain control of the Internet indefinitely -- was intended as a sort of Monroe Doctrine for our times. It was received abroad with just the anger one would expect, setting the stage for further controversy."
This is the same unacceptable behavior that has always defined the Bush administration:. Arrogant self-indulgent uncompromising unilateralism. Like most of what Bush has done, it will not bring anything good to the world.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about....
If the internet dissapeared tomorrow, we'd be spending the next 10 years digging ourselves out of the biggest hole ever...
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
I do not feel the UN should be allowed to have any control over the Internet. As it is now, there's control but no authority which is how I like it. ICANN has control in so far as the roots listen to them for zone updates, but they have no authority to mandidate that. If ICANN flips out and trys to do soemthing stupid, they roots can just stop listening to them and continuing to use the old, working, root zone.
Well if the UN takes over, and starts making nations sign on via treties, then it DOES have authority, meaning it can make rules that we all have to follow. This I really don't want for two major reasons:
1) Lack of accountability. The UN does not represent people, it represents nations. Even in democratic nations, you don't elect the ambasador that represents you. Because of this, and because it represents many oppressive nations (some who have considerable sway) there's a real lack of accountability. If they decide to implement restrictive measures, who do you hold to account?
2) They want a much larger suprevisory role. It is crystal clear that the UN sees themselves doing more than just running DNS. If that was it, maybe I could get behind it, but they want to do things like tax the Internet and implement content restrictions. Fuck no. Let the nations decide that. What we in the US find acceptable may not be what someone in Iran finds acceptable. However I don't want either country telling the other what must be done.
What I want to see happen is some other orginization setup a credible set of alternative root servers. Then, approach ICANN about sharing. Like if the EU set up EU roots, talk to ICANN about giving up all domains under EU jusrsdiction to the EU authority, and then mirroring that. Then we have two seperate systems, mirroring eachother's part, that can continue should one stop working or go nuts or something.
What I do not want to see is for an unelected group with a less-than-stellar record for handling things try to take control over the Internet and force rules and regulations on it.
Remember: The UN was created as a forum for international discourse. It's fine for that, but it's not a world government and really, we don't want it to become one. A world government might not be a bad idea, but the UN sure as hell isn't a good candidate.
I'm not unwilling to compramise with other countries on DNS, but I feel a compramise is "Setup your own roots and root authority, once you've proven it's stable and working, we'll get ICANN to deligate control of some domains to you" not "Give up control of the roots (most of which are run by US companies, universities, or the government) to the UN in exchange for nothing at all and, by the way, keep paying to run the roots."
I think your jumping your guns.
History tells us that societys can work without the internet.
However the truth of the matter is that our society could well possibly go into shock from the loss of the internet. The pace at which information flows using the internet is something which can never be achieved by we mear mortals. Just ask any accountant. Think, ATM's, EFTPOS, Sharemarkets, Email, scientific data. All these things and more make use of the internet on a massive scale, and if were to dissapear well...
The teenager at the local corner store wouldnt be able to process your eftpos transaction, and when you try to get money from the atm inside the store, you wouldnt be able to. Now imagine this happening to roughly 600 million people.
Societies work on communication. The roads of the roman empire told us that, but they could not even suffice for the eventual size of the empire, and from a lack of communication, cultures grew apart, eventually splitting. Today the internet serves as the bussiness, infrmation and maybe cultural portal of the modern world.
Today, communication is severly under valued and taken for granted. If the internet were to stop tomorrow all fucking hell would break loose. Now to mention the loss of various services on the web.
Which is why the internet is made using redundancies, it cannot be shut down so long as a portion of it survives (which was DARPA's original project). But sure it can be damaged, simply nocking out data centres, backbones and DNS serves will hurt it massivly, but the insane amount of connections and people who are willing to pick up the slack just means any damage will be absorbed.
So i can see one of two things happening if you were to stop the internet as you say, and none of them is as positive as yours:
1. After the initial shock, we would return to a cira 1970's situation, maybe less.
or
2. The shock will be so great to the advanced industrialised nations that our economies will no long be able to function. Which is very very bad.
... didn't CERN read the EULA that stated, quite clearly I might add, that if they wanted to jack into the network, they were bound to the terms and controls as stated by the U.S.A.; which are likely to change without notice, etc.
If we were smart, free Swiss chocolate for everybody would have been a condition of the EULA as well.
Particularly when you're looking at a webpage.
... but it wouldn't be because your local government were being jerks. And people would end up pointing to the US servers just to keep everything straight.
.com, .org, .net (.edu, .mil, .gov) addresses and switch to .us like the rest of the world.
.com was fine, when it was just the US and a few friends. But it doesn't scale. We should take this opportunity to migrate to a system that does scale.
Clicking on http://slashdot.org/ would take you to different sites, depending upon where your resolver was pointed
I'd much rather that the US stop issuing
Using
(and we should also adopt the metric system)
(that last bit was humour related for those of you unable to detect it)
for master of the internet universe. Not just the government of Finnland, but the entire country holding public online elections on tld's and their management.
MOD PARENT UP!!!
And the article at http://news.com.com/Political+bloggers+jailed%2C+d etained/2100-1028_3-5933917.html?tag=nefd.top/ is yet another perfect example of why there are many other countries who should not have a voice in controling the internet.
As a US citizen I will be among the first to admit we're not perfect. Our current Presidink is a perfect example of mistakes we make. But to my knowledge we don't throw bloggers in jail for criticizing the government.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
In a word- No
The kind of control the other nations wants is control of content. Already the Chinese put up firewalls
and the french ban things they dont like could you imagine if these countries got control of the internet?
You see the nations behind this China, France, Cuba, Syria, South Africa, Brazil. With the exception of Brazil all of these nations are the epitomy of either tyranny or Politically correct ideologies.
While I would prefer an affirmative statement in favor of freedom of speech, I will settle for benign neglect.
Which is how it currently is. There is NO controlling authority of the Internet. At all. Certian people, groups, and governments have control over PARTS of it, but there is nobody making overall laws. There are defacto standards, and DNS is one of them. You don't have to use the root-servers.net roots, there are others, OpenNIC is the biggest I can think of. However everyone does, for the most part, mainly because most DNS is BIND, and BIND's list of roots are the root-servers.net roots. Those all listen to ICANN. They don't have to, though I imagine if they didn't they'd lose their root-servers.net domain, but they all do.
/. linked to by the telecommunications head, who happens to be China's former minister of telecomunications, he sees the UN in a much greater supervisory capacity of the Internet.
The nice thing is that there isn't any government exerting power over this. Even the US government had a very limited amount they could do. In theory, they could make ICANN do something, though ICANN could (and would) challenge it in court and probably win. However if they did, the roots could stop listening to ICANN and just use the old root zone. K and M, being the two controled by non-US intrests, would be espically immune (the rest are run by US companies, universities, or the government).
Frankly this is how I want it to stay, not necessiarlly ICANN controlled, but non-governmental. I don't want governments getting together and deciding to pass laws over the whole Internet. Countries can do what they want with the peice of the Internet within their borders, but I don't want them trying to force that on the rest of the world. This is precisely what they want with the UN. Read the peice
Really what needs to happen is just more redundancy in DNS. Get more non-US roots out there, perhaps even ones under a different authority that mirrors the ICANN zone. That way the seperate authority can approve any updates for those roots. If ICANN flips out, they can maintain their copy, and peopel can just use those roots instead.
This is not an issue of the US running the net and telling everyone how it's going to be, and an issue of not letting anyone get in that position.
This should have been from the all your internet are belong to us dept.
Facts:
1) The "internet" was built and funded primarily by the US
2) Most members of the UN are in arears on their membership financial responsibilities to offset the cost of operations
3) Get over it
All your IP are belong to us.
It amuses me how many Slashdot users hate the US so much that they have to make up things that the US -MIGHT- do to "prove" why the EU or the UN should have a say over the Internet.
"blah blah blah US censor this censor that tax this tax that"
I'd rather stick with an organization that hasn't PUBLICALLY made noises about taxing and censoring the net for the most part, as opposed to the UN and the EU, which have. This is a matter of public record. Feel free to look it up if you don't believe me.
Seriously, you people complaining the US might use the Internet to put economic pressure on countries are so full of shit. The US didn't even chop off Iraq's internet when they invaded-- what makes you think they'd do it to gain a trade advantage with some pissant South American country?
I actually do have an admiration for France...
I just felt like stirring vous up a bit.
Merci beaucoup, for Lafayette, Miss Liberty, Montreal, and New Orleans.
Still don't like snails.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
... I would say that the freedom of different opinion, sexual preferences and tastes is much better understood in Europe than it is in the US. US did approve some laws to limit the freedoms of its citizens because of terrorism, a similar project was rejected in the European Parliament some days ago. I would mention that same-sex marriages are already allowed in several European countries, such as Spain and the Netherlands. In the Netherlands even marijuana is legal! I would say Europeans are more open-minded than Americans. Control over the Internet should be passed to an international body, such as the United Nations.
One man, one word.
Nothing new here. Just /. fanning the flames of nationalism once again to drive page hits. One thing this particular iteration presents us with, though, is examples of all the possible ways to misspell "bureaucracy". I've counted four different "creative" spellings in the comments already!
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Yes, trying to unplug from the internet and make their own would be silly at the moment.
:(
What if they went to IPv6 and we (US) don't. What exactly happens then?
Hell we already don't know how cold they are or how fast they drive....at least they taught us when we thought we would be metric 25 years ago, now they hardly even bother
So we can expect the US taking half of the mexican internet domains????
If you want it so bad, come and take it.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
ATMs etc were working long before "The Internet" was being used for that purpose. In fact, in the old days electronic transactions were far more secure since most unauthorized persons couldn't get physical access to the network.
What happens to the .tw country TLD? China, will try (and succeed) in getting Taiwan's country TLD nullified, and no one will be able to stop them. The UN does not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country, and so far the US was able to deflect China's concern by saying that ICANN (a private entity) controls this, not US.
" Yeah, America is the world's great respector of human sexuality - we'd never pass things like DOMAs."
Look, if you can find things like Tubgirl on the internet (and no, I ain't posting a link), you ain't got a whole lot of room to bitch about how the US handles sexuality on the internet. And what's the favorite slashdot spammed website? Something to do with goats? Yeah, the US is REALLY cracking down hard, isn't it?
Please. With as much control and enforcement as you credit the government with, it's simply AMAZING how these and countless porn sites still not simply exist, but thrive. Sure some are based off shore, but the world according to the paranoid United States of the Empire says we can shut them down with a snap of the fingers, regardless of where they're based.
Give it a rest already. The facts don't support this level of conspiracy theory paranoia.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
"You obviously have no idea what you are talking about...."
So obvious that you didn't bore us with an argument to support your position.
I'm not trying to be condesending, but I didn't argue simply because I didn't NEED to.
The internet has claws in everything from major financial situations to education to national defense.
I'm not saying a world without the internet is possible, as history proves that to us. More or less what I am trying to say is.. the internet is like a drug which creates a physical dependence. Adjusting to the world without the internet (now) would be akin to quitting heroin cold turkey. Not impossible, but undeniably hard.
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
For those of you unfamiliar with the "Monroe Doctrine", here is another handy analogy to a better well known event in history:
America = Rome
Internet = "Barbarian"
Anyway, talking about control of the DNS in "we own the Internet" terms is misleading at best (more like "retarded"). DNS is the system through with pretty text names get mapped to IP addresses. Big. Fucking. Deal.
Even if every single solitary DNS server on the face of the planet was destroyed tomorrow, the Internet would recover (and it wouldn't even take that long). No, it wouldn't be very much fun, but it wouldn't be the end of the world either. A couple million nerds with nothing better to do and the exact same problem to solve tend to get shit done.
A distributed DNS system sure would be nice though, make this problem go away and let the fascists swing their monkey dicks at each other over something else.
Because we let anyone into our club. You don't want to be in the club, fine. You don't like the way the club is run, YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM. Take your ball and go home. You won't be missed.
Never mind that surrendering control to an organization like the UN might actually require a constitutional amendment. The UN doesn't believe in free speech as a whole, double especially if it's political. And while treaties do have the force of law, and internet governance by external bodies WOULD have to be handled via treaty, those are still subbordinate to the Constitution. So, in short, fuck you. Fuck you in your ass, with a giant (spikey) evil robot fucking machine (.com).
It's just much better to let every nation decide for itself what is right for it. Whether it's giant chinese firewalls, a culture of cameraphones pointed at school girls with loose socks, or the continual war over how much is enough freedom that's raged for nearly a quarter of a millenium in the United States, or just build their own seperate national networks and seeing how many international parties want to connect to it, and the clever ways that those third parties might devise and wish to employ to solve whatever problems may arise.
If you're not a US citizen you don't get a say in US policy, domestic or otherwise. Deal. Perhaps you can take comfort in the fact that outside of economic and strategic considerations, we never think about you.
Can't it? Then what happened with .xxx domain?
"It's safe with the US because the US can't/won't exercise control over it" is an argument based on flawed premises. The US can and it has.
Thank God the US didnt giving in.
The US department of commerce want control of the internet to remain in the US. The only way for that to happen is for there to be cooperation (both ways). If one side or the other gets all grabby and says 'we will tell you what to do and you will like it', then (in a very very short time), multiple sites could pop up when you type "www.whatever". "Pressing" other contries to do what it wants, will find the US with an internet that stops at it's borders. A USnet and nothing more. For the internet to be international, there must be international cooperation. Unilateral declarations will lead to a unilateral internet. In order to make friends, you have to be friendly. There are mirrored root servers all over the world. Most of the primary root servers are in the US. All of them have two or three backups in other countries. Splitting the USnet from the internet could happen like that (insert sound of snapping fingers here). The US certainly didn't pay for the foreign internet infrastructure, nor does it maintain it. Goodwill has so-far been the only reason for the US to maintain control up till now. That could change with the simple flipping of a switch.
Have we, the people of the US, not made it clear what our "value-add" is in the global internet commerce arena? (Or Global Commerce of any type?)
We're the CONSUMERS!
We have the highest per capita income, and spend to excess all over the place. We are the reason that most of you enjoy a trade surplus. When we are out of money, we will continue to buy things by borrowing still more money.
If you build your own DNS system, cutting yourselves off from US consumers, you'll only me limiting the amount of revenue that we can pump into your economies. Sure, you've banded under the umbrella of the EU, and you've streamlined your ability to buy and sell among yourselves, but divorcing yourselves from the spending power of American consumers makes bad business sense.
Ultimately, what Europe and the rest of the world are going to do about this "problem" is drop it, and mosey on to the next percieved crisis with their tail between their legs. If I'm wrong, I'll eat my hat (which will not be a hat that I've purchased from a European-owned business via their web portal, apparently).
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
"Communism is a top down approach to control where a central authority dictates what everyone does."
/sarcasim
I was under the impression that communisim was a democracy where everyone wants the same thing, the notion of leaders becomes redundant, control of the status-quo gets handed to a sociopathic admin. This notion was also based on the idea that democracy is a system where everyone has an equal but differing voice.
Turns out that extreme governments at both ends of the political spectrum look like totalitarianism and democracy is a reality show where big bussiness takes the place of big brother.
We need a king of the world, he should be called Bob, Marley is dead so Geldof will have to do.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The US built the internet. It was never said that other countries would share in the control at anytime. Why is it so surprising that the US would like to retain control of its own creation? Would you give control of your child to another family?
I suspect you're fairly young and have a great interest in technology. Thus the consequences seem more dire to you than to those who have lived longer under a pre-Internet society and have no special interest.
The Internet as we know it is not really necessary to the operation of financial institutions, education, and national defense. In fact one could argue that the Internet has made financial transactions more vunerable, and has been more of a distraction to students than a research tool.
For the love of sanity, PLEASE mod parent up! I'd do it myself, but I killed the rest of my points this morning. :(
I've found that nurturing one's Zen nature is vital to dealing with technology. Violence is pretty damn useful too.
Let's be honest about what the Europeans, Iran, China, and Cuba (the folks wanting their own UN-controlled internet) are up to:
1. TAXES on Internet transactions (such as France's Chirac has proposed).
2. CONTROL of information Governments don't like, such as Iran and China suppressing Democracy activist internet traffic, even in other countries, and Europeans stopping political discussions (even in other countries) when the topic is things they don't like.
Currently, the US runs the Internet root level domain servers as a market. It does not impose user fees for example to access Amazon or IMDB; and it does not impose bans on accessing information about Falun Gong, Tibet, or Democracy and human rights activists such as China and Iran do in their countries.
If you feel comfortable about paying $0.25 to $3.00 every time you go to Amazon or IMDB to some unelected UN body that then distributes money to cronies; feel free to endorse the UN and European attempt to hijack the current structure of root DNS servers from ICANN. If you are happy with China, Cuba, and Iraq determining what you can and cannot read, say, or do on the Internet, then go ahead and endorse their attempt to wrest root DNS from the US.
The current system is not broken. It doesn't suck money from users to corrupt UN cronies (see: Oil-for-Food and Kofi Annan's corrupt family and friends raking off millions) and European insiders. It doesn't impose the Mullahs from Iran views (guarantee they will take away your porn folks). If you want those things to happen, back the reflexive anti-American sentiment of the UN/Euros and various third world autocrats.
DNS is over 20 years old. The Net has obviously changed radically in those 20 years. I'm not saying throw all the ideas in DNS out the window, but either we, the geeks, work out an alternative in the spirit of RFCs, or some patent-wielding corporation or UN bozo committee will do it.
...
Heck, just imagine a system where people didn't have to think "www.some-name-hope-you-hyphoned-it.com" when looking up an address, and instead can use a more human-friendly system. I mean, I know it is fun watching the non-geeks suffer under concepts we find second-nature, but
Look at IP vs. IPv6; times change; requirements change.
Any experts who are up to date with stuff like:
http://www.dns.net/dnsrd/rfc/
want to comment on what is underway? (Yes I did peek around Google a bit.)
I reposted this from a reply, since I feel it is something people should understand.
.ir for its own residents. So what? China already blocks all kinds of things. An EU naming authority will block ALL manner of things (Nazi websites, for one. But there are plenty of other registrations that are no-go in the EU). That's fine; each organization can manipulate its own registration scheme, at will.
Repeat after me:
"Anyone can setup their own DNS server at _any_ time".
Say that 3 times.
Sure, if you setup your own DNS server at home, you probably won't have a lot of adoption. But the EU has a great deal more reach than you, and shouldn't have any problem convincing Europeans to use their DNS. Cuba, China, and Iran will have even less.
The answer is simple, and has little (read _nothing_) to do with ICANN, or IANA. Whenever it wants, the EU can setup its own naming authority. As long as they don't change the way IP addresses are assigned, it breaks _nothing_.
The U.S. blocks
Rather than having one, universal, flat global system, poorly managed by a central authority which will be unable to satisfy the contradictory demands of the various governments of the world, a fragmented _DNS_ system makes much more sense.
You, and most other people, are misunderstanding what is going on.
Imagine, once upon a time, when the USPTO was established, that other governments, instead of developing their own patent organizations, simply followed U.S. standards. We had a unified world wide patent system, based upon U.S. law. Then, other nations became pissed off about this, because they felt that the U.S. would use the unified patent system to the detriment of those nations.
As such, they demand that the U.S. relinquish control of the USPTO, and turn it into the UNPTO, which would be government through the U.N. China, Iran, and Cuba, in particular, would like to see some patents invalidated, so they push hard for this.
Does it make any sense? No.
What makes _much_ more sense is that each government established its own patent authority, and then various governments negotiated bi and multi-lateral agreements regarding the governance of patents.
The internet should work _exactly_ the same way. As long as the IP address space doesn't get fragmented (and with IPv6, theres NO reason for that to happen), "control" of the DNS system is a non-issue. In fact, I think the world would be a better place with a fragmented DNS system. Why? Because barring laws in unfree countries (which have their own firewalls anyway (read China)), if you don't like your DNS, you can simply point your system at another one.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Even after several people have provided the obvious arguments against your position, you fail to grasp very basic points. Insulting the parent poster implying that his stance is the result of youth puts you in a very poor light, especially since you're so obviously wrong.
The Internet as we know it is not really necessary to the operation of financial institutions, education, and national defense.
It weren't back then. It is now. What about this don't you understand? Let me take some other examples that would fly with your reasoning:
* Guns aren't necessary to the operation of national defense, as demonstrated by the fact that a couple of hundred of years ago they didn't exist, and yet national defense worked fine.
* Computers aren't necessary to the operation of financial institutions. After all, financial institutions have existed for hundreds of years and worked perfectly fine without computers well into the 50s. Thus, if all computers stopped working tomorrow, financial institutions would have no trouble.
See how ridiculous it looks?
In fact one could argue that the Internet has made financial transactions more vunerable, and has been more of a distraction to students than a research tool.
Sure, but that's a completely different thing. Whether Internet has been beneficial to anything has little relation to whether we rely on it or not. It's perfectly possible to rely on a technology which you were better without. Happens all the time, but that doesn't mean you can go back.
I could write a thousand word post about the immense havoc that immediately would ensure if the Internet disappeared, but what's the use? If you really don't get it, you never will. Just as you complained about the parent poster presumably being young, maybe your problem is the opposite -- you're too old to realize just how much things have changed since you were young.
The Monroe Doctrine was not the demand to GET THE HELL OUT, that it is portrayed as here. The Monroe Doctrine was also an agreement on our part to keep out of Europe. It should not be used for comparison in this case, because it was not nearly as offensive.
1. what has US sponsorship of DNS servers done negatively to the internet? (no, the .xxx debacle doesnt count as a real problem)
2. before everyone spits out plattitudes about international goodwill, teamwork, superpower benevolence, the greatness of the UN, and other such pleasantries, ask yourself; "who is complaining about ICANN?" when you see the nations raising objections, it becomes clear what the motivation is.
and dont kid yourself, the US will never get any appreciation for sharing anything. giving up ICANN will bring US NO good will at all.
dont give DNS to UN! The UN is a sad fantasy (sudan is a member of the human rights council and oil for food ($$$) was the best thing that happened to saddam)
Is there *anything* that the UN has not fucked up?
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
Not to in anyway support US domination of the internet but didn't the US establish the internet then it expanded from there? If so isn't it like foreign governments now wanting some control of that infastructure? We built the roads and we let others use them and expand on them but now they want a vote in setting traffic laws. Overly simplified but essentially the case. I definately don't want foreign governments setting limitations on the US internet. It may sound rediculous but I could easily see China gaining enough power in 20 years to demand that the internet be regulated and offensive information restricted world wide as they do in China now. They could easily have the economic power to push the issue in 20 years. The presidents need to be set now and freedom be made fundemental or it's days are numbered. Foreign governments need to have access but just because the rest of the world finds it useful doesn't mean that the US has to automatically give away control. Say the US had been able to build a passage through the US instead of the Panama canal and it happened say twenty years ago. Well the rest of the world sees a major economic advantage and want some control of that Canal. Should they be allowed to control it? It's not that different. The argument is the internet lacks borders but that's not entirely true. The servers are in a country and the US was the country that established it. Obviously the rest of the world could establish a seperate internet but I'd say it was doomed to failure. The more reasonable stance is address individual concerns directly. The US needs to be more open. The obvious example on that was the boneheaded descision to not allow a .XXX address. You can't get rid of porn so why not give it a home that is easily blocked? Unfortunately for the puritan faction they would loose a lot of their ground to complain. The truth being that it's not only kids that they want to restrict access to but to everyone. Control is always about controlling some one else's behavior since you already control your own.
Compare it to Global Positioning...works well for everyone in the world, but is under US control. Would you really rather have a country like North Korea or China (which BTW censors internet content) in control?
"The tighter you clench your first, the more star systems will slip between your fingers."
Wow, that's like uh, a totally different system than what we have now.
(Disclaimer I am from the US that served with UK, France, and other non-US forces in an Arabic country far from home to all of us).
While the current US president may not be the President of choice for the rest of the world (and for the US perhaps); I have to ask...
When has the US government ever messed with the internet that restricted your rights to access it?
sitefinder.com comes to mind, but that was not the US government doing it was a company and they were "bitch slapped" (maybe a little late) for doing it.
I have to ask has the US GOVERNMENT done anything to hurt your countries growth/access to the internet?
When I hear about the UN wanting control over the internet (EU, China, Saudi, Iran etc) I have to wonder about the intentions of these countries.
IMO the UN is the last place we want to oversee the internet. Show me one thing that the UN has accomplished over the last 5 years?
Show me the growth of the internet in the same 5 years.
While the US is not perfect I think the US government has done a pretty good job staying out of the internet picture.
I would be very afraid if the Internet controlling body in the UN was headed by China or Iran for example.
Once you place the internet in the hands of a body consisting of nations fighting for control all hell will break loose and nothing will good will come of it?
I can understand the other "free" governments concerns over the US controlling the root servers (that is what the fight is about) so other nations may become a body on that UN board and start to control the internet in a way that suits that body?
From my perspective the US has never tried to that. Until they do "if it is not broke don't fix it...if it can be improved improve it.
The UN being a controlling body is not an improvement since all nations will attempt to control the internet "settings" to fit the policy of the government.
The US has done a more or less good job of letting the information be free.
If you can't see how that helped preserve even the Japanese, then indeed you are beyond reach of humanity.
At least I had the decency to mod down my own offtopic post.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It sure is smart to take oil under the table and give a dictator gobs of money to build larger palaces to torture people in! You sure do have to be a mastermind for that kind of work, yessir.
And the French sure are smart to let the muslim underclass keep a cheery fire of burnt cars going for six days straight. Why stop a bunch of people who have a good mob on?
I think the world could do without that particular brand of genius, but I guess that's just me.
As with most macroeconomic fiscal policies, weakening the dollar carries a counterbalancing price. Remember that an expensive dollar reflects a desire by foreigners to invest in America and to buy our products.
Outcomes of an artificially weaker dollar:
Most obviously, higher interest rates. Since we borrow so much from abroad, weakening the dollar does lower the cost of repaying those debts. But it also means that foreign lenders (like Japan, China, and Russia) will start demanding higher interest rates in order to lend to us, driving up the overall borrowing cost, and hurting investment, home building, car purchases, consumer spending, and everything else.
The "petrodollar" - the fact that OPEC accepts only dollars for oil - would mean that gas would become "cheaper" for everyone else, or more likely, the same price for everyone else, but more expensive for Americans. We are a very fuel-dependent economy.
While it becomes easier for American exporters to sell products abroad (since they're cheaper for foreigners), it also becomes more expensive for American businesses and consumers to import. American businesses and consumers do depend on affordable imports to support their lifestyles and their bottom lines. It must be remembered that we like to import a LOT of stuff (more than we export), and we do live in a truly global economy.
Devaluing the dollar "worked" once, with the Plaza Accords, but only because Japan essentially agreed to eat the cost. Japan also arguably has suffered a very long recession (15+ years) as a result. I doubt Japan or China will be willing to take that kind of a hit for us now.
The chaos that would surely happen if the UN were to control the IP adn DNS roots and allocations would be interesting. And not in a good way. Think of a UN resolution to require UN membership to get an allocation... Or abide by this treaty of face being cut off.
The US is a pretty graceful steward of these services (that our tax dollars paid to develop) and we have a state interest in their smooth administration. So much so that registrations that used to cost $100 for two years are now under $7 (usd) per year. And I can register a domain through my favorite Teutonic registrar. You know the clown one. And while I pay a high price to get IP allocations from our local authority (non-profit my butt! Any justified allocation should cost the same then, and no charge for changes to the record. It is not different than domain registrations.), the controlling authority also allocates IP space as requested (and justified) for the other regional concerns. Without a profit motive. I send more money overseas for registrations to help profits for the "clown" (they are great by the way, we resell them here at our ISP) than most any other single line item in some months, save our backbone connection charges.
And any country that feels the US has too much control, hire me as a consultant. I'll show you how to set up your national infrastructure so the US control can be ripped away in moments to form your own isolated nationalistic infrastructure. And recommend technical regulations to support that infrastructure so that access to such critical items is virtually forced (and how to actually force it if they like). Of course if the non-US/US-haters fragment the Internet we'll be back to the days of gateways like gateway.dec.com or other neccessary evils of the past. Don't get me started on the use of '::' to separate nodenames to force routing!
By the way, if DECnet Phase IV and V had won over IP this argument would be moot. No addressspace issues either.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
U.S. doesn't control the Internet!!! The U.S. controls it's own root DNS servers, which others countries have chosen to use as their root DNS servers as well because of historical reasons. The U.S. has absolutly no control over the Internet outside of the U.S.! None. Ziltch. Nada. At any time any country can choose not to use the U.S. root servers and to use their own (actually, most DO use their own).
NO ONE CONTROLS THE INTERNET!!! Which is the big problem with most governments... most governments want to carefully censor, control, tax, and carry out detailed survailence on it's population, which it cannot do with the current decentralized system. So you spread some FUD about "America controlling the Internet", let the anti-American hate patrol take up the issue, and rebuild the Internet as the top-down state controlled media like television or radio!
Shame on you people! Willing to detroy the first truly decentralized, bottom up, egalitarian, truly free medium the world has ever seen, just to promote hate and fear.
Centralized systems of government control the internet.
So send both mounties over in a canoe with a swarm of mosquitoes for escort to teach us a lesson.
Now I understand why the Quebecois want out. I used to think they were the nut cases.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I think a few million (or more than a few million) women in both countries have a big difference of opinion with what you've said. Not to mention all the attacks are in Iraq now and not in the U.S., exactly what the U.S. wanted. Even if you disagree with creating democracies in the middle east as a good long term strategy if nothing else forcing terrorists to attack other muslims instead of the US has been a huge tactical victory. If you dislike the deaths in Iraq at least console yourself that they are far less than there would have been under Saddam, and are not genocidal in nature anymore (would the world really have been a better place when all the Kurds were dead? I think not).
Great Britons troubles were sadly caused by it's ignoring a large and dissatisfied muslim (or faux muslim) underclass, 10% of whom supported the tube bombings. I doubt you saw 10% of the muslim population in the U.S. supported 9/11.
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
North America ranks #3 after Asia and Europe in terms of internet usage. (not # packets but number of people) Plus unlike Asia, pretty much peaked. Unless you count fridges and toasters.
Cheers,
-b
Hi Europe. We love you. Call us if the Germans start acting up again.
If you want to be xenophobes and issue ultimatums, perhaps this may help those of us who don't like being held to ransom:
http://european.de.orsn.net/rootzone.php
IPv6 root servers, too. Rather nice.
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
The big mistake you have made is thinking WE need to communicate with THEM. Who suffers most if India or China get really cut off from communications with America? Hint - look at which way the money flows. All that outsourced work stops taking place and India/China get no checks... U.S. companies just shrug and either outsource to some country that still is on the same network as us, or simply hires local talent and sucks up the cost (sidenote: Then find they save billions of dollars by not wasting time trying to communicate across continents and using far fewer raw numbers of people; but I digress).
For that reason it hardly matters if China and/or India break off into a separate network. Companies will find some way to communicate with each other; money dictates it be so and that's what makes the world go round. A lot of companies already have their own dedicated fiber and they would simply tunnel the U.S. internet where it needed to go overseas.
Also, how do you think the citizens of all those countries would like being suddenly cut off from all U.S. sites? I don't think they would take it well. Not at all. Considering only what governments want to do is not realistic when it differs substantially enough from what people WANT to do. Even in China. After all, China has to keep its nose clean for the Olympics (shutting itself off the net would certainly mean bye-bye olympics).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your analogy is correct in substance, but your description of both sides was wrong - both bears and the U.S. are very quick indeed to respond when provoked. How long did it take after 9/11 before we were in Afghanistan in full force? October 8th, that's pretty damn quick to move so many people and so much equipment.
I'm not sure what if anything that changes about the other aspects of your argument - I just wanted to point out that anyone relying on the U.S. being always slow to react is doomed to disappointment.
I don't think an internet split would rile nearly so many (especially not inside the U.S. apart from people used to playing poker hosted on offshore sites). So probably we'd just ignore countries trying to forge their own way with a separate internet. instead of doing anything as silly as going to war over it. I'm afraid you'll not see an Operation Router anytime soon...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
why not give the internet its own national status in the UN, so that no one country has the power to govern it, but rather allows it to operate under its own internal set of regulations?
a pipe dream? sure. possible? why not.
The EU proposal is a compromise, the US and the UN are at loggerheads over this. There are a number of third & developing world governments including Russia, China & India threaterning to form a break away internets with national DNS infrastructures because the are unhappy with the abuses of the US government with regard to ICANN favouring the US political hedgomony. The EU proposal's is a _compromise_ to make the DNS infrastucture trans-national, to keep it as an inter-net and avoid it breaking up into dozens of national-nets.
I suggest you and the moderators who made this +5 insightfull do some more background reading.
http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ie=UTF
Who cares if the government is bothered? If its people are bothered, then they have to do something. Who are the government to get bothered? The government are to do the will of the people, not have a will of their own.
How the hell did they get this interpretation of the press release? Am I missing something? The intro uses rather heavily charged language that doesn't seem to be supported by the article or the release.
As far as I can tell, the release reaffirms 4 key points the US has stated before:
1-immediate changes to the status quo are premature; the article even notes that this is likely the best option for the short term.
2-individual nations have a right to manage their own domains; stability is a concern for determining the best way to do this.
3-ICANN is still in charge, and ICANN still operates under the same mandate as when it was set up.
4-the US is willing to talk about these issues and others in various venues, including but not limited to the UN. The only reservations the US notes is that it ain't broke, let's not break it.
Hardly seems like a declaration of cyberwar to me; the implication that this indicates that the Internet is a US only playground is overbroad to the point of sillyness. Discussions are open. The US is only stating that immediate, precipitate change is not going to get US cooperation, and that since US cooperation is necessary for immediate change, it's time to slow down and talk things over.
At least that's how I read it.
-------------
The Release Text:
Domain Names:
U.S. Principles on the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System
The United States Government intends to preserve the security and stability of the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System (DNS). Given the Internet's importance to the world's economy, it is essential that the underlying DNS of the Internet remain stable and secure. As such, the United States is committed to taking no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the DNS and will therefore maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.
Governments have legitimate interest in the management of their country code top level domains (ccTLD). The United States recognizes that governments have legitimate public policy and sovereignty concerns with respect to the management of their ccTLD. As such, the United States is committed to working with the international community to address these concerns, bearing in mind the fundamental need to ensure stability and security of the Internet's DNS.
ICANN is the appropriate technical manager of the Internet DNS. The United States continues to support the ongoing work of ICANN as the technical manager of the DNS and related technical operations and recognizes the progress it has made to date. The United States will continue to provide oversight so that ICANN maintains its focus and meets its core technical mission.
Dialogue related to Internet governance should continue in relevant multiple fora. Given the breadth of topics potentially encompassed under the rubric of Internet governance there is no one venue to appropriately address the subject in its entirety. While the United States recognizes that the current Internet system is working, we encourage an ongoing dialogue with all stakeholders around the world in the various fora as a way to facilitate discussion and to advance our shared interest in the ongoing robustness and dynamism of the Internet. In these fora, the United States will continue to support market-based approaches and private sector leadership in Internet development broadly.
... is where every third Jack makes a crap definition of well defined concepts, uses it to smear organizations he does not agree with and believes this is logical or consistent.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"Insulting the parent poster implying that his stance is the result of youth puts you in a very poor light, especially since you're so obviously wrong"
..."
There was no insult involved, just the observation that it's difficult for those that haven't lived under different conditions to imagine what it was like. It was true for your parents, it's true for you, and it will be true for your children.
"Guns aren't necessary to the operation of national defense
"Computers aren't necessary to the operation of financial institutions"
Thanks for the straw arguments.
"I could write a thousand word post about the immense havoc that immediately would ensure if the Internet disappeared, but what's the use?"
Hey, if you don't want to write a thousand words, why bother writing any, right?
"you're too old to realize just how much things have changed since you were young"
What happened to your concern about insults? It's not an insult to suggest that someone who didn't live through a particular era might not understand it, it is an insult to suggest that someone who is older has been asleep for the last decade.
Your whole post was a little odd as I was in no way saying all communications were only done by internet, and generally seemed to agree with every point I was making - indeed your pointing out so many other forms of communication exist only bolsters my point that China splitting off into its own internet would not be a huge deal as some are making it out to be.
However I think you are ignoring how widespread IP technology really is, for example in call centers - you said:
Again, an erroneous assumption that the Internet is necessary for outsourcing, and a change in its nature (or even its entire removal) will therefore close everything down. Do you actually know what the biggest single outsourcing industry in India is? Call centers. These have loads of people with telephones who answer calls from other people with telephones instead of using the line to send IP packets.
The reality is that all of those call centers are using VOIP on their end and it's all IP that's carrying that voice traffic to and from the US. There's no way call center outsourcing would be economically viable using traditional circuit-switched phone networks, not to mention that advanced features that VOIP allows enabling data to be sent with the call improving call duration (the all-important metric for most call centers).
Also, a few random things:
The first sensible thing you've said. However, what makes you think they'd bother tunneling to the US Internet,
It's not they tunneling to us, it's a company operating there tunneling back to here.
So people in the US want to have their property seized by corrupt politicos serving large corporate interests, and the DMCA, and a system that lets people patent farting, and copyrights than never expire, and all those other things that Americans regularly bitch about on Slashdot?
Of those things ONLY eminent domain has enjoyed a popular backlash. And you know what is happening there? A myriad of local state laws to prevent abuse. Just as I said, if people REALLY do not like something they will fight it. Which is why growing abuses of the DMCA are to be desired because only when a significant portion of people grow mad enough will things change. The EFF has done a remarkable job as-is blocking things like the broadcast flag when it's not even a blip on the public radar.
You really have no idea how the IOL selects Olympic venues, do you?
Well that point is irrelevant since they have already been selected. If I were more flippant I would make some comment about how while you may know more about what the committee does you've not paid attention to what they've done.
Political backlash from other countries (especially the U.S.) could be enough to derail the selection of China as host country though, if they start seeming overly militaristic.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Thanks for the straw arguments.
They are perfectly fine analogies. If there's a flaw, why don't you point it out instead of dismissing them off hand as "straw"?
What happened to your concern about insults? It's not an insult to suggest that someone who didn't live through a particular era might not understand it, it is an insult to suggest that someone who is older has been asleep for the last decade.
They're on the same level, really. Just as you made a "general observation" about how "young people" experience the world, I made one about old people, one which resonates well with how many old people react to new technology. But this is irrelevant. The insult is not in the observation itself, but in you insinuating that the parent poster was part of the group (in your case, young people) who had not formed an accurate perception of reality, rather than simply not agreeing with your position.
Hey, if you don't want to write a thousand words, why bother writing any, right?
I did, as have others, and you just summarily dismiss them without even spending a minute's thought. You have presented absolutely zero evidence in favor of your position, only vague allusions to "it worked before" which are completely irrelevant, as several people have already pointed out. Yet you remain convinced about a proposition that's ridiculous even on the face of it. There's no point in arguing with a person like you. Goodbye.
"They are perfectly fine analogies. If there's a flaw, why don't you point it out instead of dismissing them off hand as "straw"?"
Sure. First of all we are talking about a decade of financial transactions over the Internet (at the most). Not 50 years, not hundreds of years, but only 10 years. In addition while connecting all the networks together provides some value, that value is not remotely comparable to the difference between doing calculations by hand vs. with a computer. There are also real-time use of computers that simply could not be done by hand at all. The difference between pre-Internet financial transaction capability and post-Internet financial transaction capablitity is negligable by comparison.
"Just as you made a "general observation" about how "young people" experience the world, I made one about old people, one which resonates well with how many old people react to new technology."
What you actually said "you're too old to realize just how much things have changed since you were young" which is not a comment on how old people react to new technology. But hey, don't let facts get in your way.
"You have presented absolutely zero evidence in favor of your position, only vague allusions to "it worked before" which are completely irrelevant, as several people have already pointed out."
So you don't think that "it worked before without it" is relevant to a discussion on the effects of removing something. Then what, pray tell, could possibly be relevant?
woosh!
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Face it, the root servers are what Microsoft ships in their hints file.
The UN is more than a "forum for international discourse". It's also an umbrella for a number of functional and distinctly non-political international organizations. A good example is the ITU, another is the UPU. You never think about it, but you _can_ call any country on the phone or send snail mail there, and these systems are coordinated/governed by organizations that (AFAIK) never makes headlines. My guess is some think the Internet should be governed like this, and I can't see why not. It does sound a bit weird that a company would do this instead.
UN organizational chart
ITU
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Just in case you didn't know the Industrial Revolution started in Britain. The first train - Robert Louis Stevenson (Scotland), The first steam engine - Savery (England, ok it may have been the Italians too), the physics to make it work - Newton (England). For this reason I think your assertion is BS. We brought manufacturing to India - oh and English too, which seems to have been some use to them.
On the rest of your post, I think Canada is a fine country. You do well by being on the border of the richest nation in the world. And unless you intend to trade with Kamchatka or Greenland, I don't think you've got many options :)
Well, in his most recent address to the American public our Prime Minister expressed his interest in making India and China our major trading partners.
There's this thing where the Americans violated the Free Trade Agreement that is supposed to be so good for us, we respect it enough that we allow them to sell gasoline with known cancer-causing octane-boosting additives that were outlawed in Canada, and even paid them damages for the time they were unable to go to market, yet the US don't respect it at all. The've stolen from us to the tune of billions of dollars during this softwood lumber fiasco.
We DON'T benefit from being next to the richest nation on earth. We suffer from it. Another example? The recent Mad Cow fiasco. The US cut us off from their market much longer than was necessary at the prompting of US lobby groups working for the US beef industry. The end result? We built our own meat processing plants rather than shipping it across the border, increased our jobs, wealth, infrastructure and profits. This is the good that happens to a sector when they are cut off from the US market.
Oh, and since you don't appear to know your own history, the West India Company went into India, flooded the market with cheap goods and cheap prices at a loss until the manufacturing in India went under, and put them in a vicious cycle of economic dependency that was only broken when Ghandi and his buddies took the power back. This wasn't just a co-incidence or an incidental tactic, it was the West India Company's mandate that they do this to further the British Empire. This is what the US has done and continues to do to Canada. You won't find any shortage of Canadians who think that we need the US and that our relationship with them is good for us, but that's partly because most of them don't understand the bigger picture, and partly because we're already in the hole and digging out hurts.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Call it stupidnet. Yea, I know but shot-in-the-foot-net is a bit long winded.
Indeed. But those packets require network infrastructure, not DNS. So the location of DNS root servers, who gets to administer them, etc., has no relevance to call center outsourcing as long as both sides have an IP address.
I'm still going to have to disagree with you on that I think. The way VOIP calls are routed depends very much on DNS being alive and well, generally the people putting the call centers together do not have an accumulator stateside they send everything through as they can just have calls route directly to the center. The whole point of outsourcing a call center is to not have to deal with the phone network stuff. Also of course as I noted there's a lot of data associated with the calls, which usually means lookups back from databases in the U.S. which would require further use of a DNS that could find those servers. And if China is cutting themselves off our network then chinese IP addresses cannot be used when talking to the U.S. as presumably they'd do thier own allocation.
But that was my point. China has been selected despite the fact that they continue to abuse human rights in a large number of ways, have been occupying Tibet by force for decades against the manifest wishes of its populace, etc. So the IOC doesn't care how a country behaves towards its own people or anyone else as long as the right palms get greased.
Absuing thier own people is way different that causing ills for others outside the country though. At least as far as international politics goes, nations mostly look the other way and so that's why it doesn't really come up with things like Olympic selection - not to mention that China has not had any high-profile human rights abuses recently (nothing on the level of Tienamen).
There was a considerable US backlash against the 1980 Moscow Olympics. They even boycotted the games, but it made absolutely no difference -- they went ahead as planned, despite the fact that the Soviet Union had begun its invasion of Afghanistan almost a year earlier.
Well, that's a pretty good point and probably the best indicator that even some high level antics by the Chinese might not be enough to stop them from hosting the games now. However the games are a lot further out, at that time with the Olympics only a year away making another selection was not really practical. I believe China had the 2008 games which is a fair amount of time for some other country to ramp up.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The EU and the UN can kiss my hairy ass! Don't like it? Then get off my internet.
ITYM "intranet".
Come on guys, I know a LOT of us suffer from rectal-cranial inversion (Read: Head up your ass), but lets stop bitching and arguing about this and SOLVE THE PROBLEM. Granted, I think its kind of stupid myself that the globe thinks we should turn over our stuff, but then again, who knows. Why don't they just make their own freakin' stuff and stop trying to take ours? They might as well try telling us we should get rid of our guns too. I can see them trying to tell that to someone in Oklahoma or Texas! I personally have several. But, if they think we should give them our stuff, then I wonder what they'd say if we demanded the money we spent to rebuild their sorry butts after WWII. We did rebuild like half of freakin' Europe and probably Japan too, went rediculously in debt (even though it wasn't as bad as it is now) to do it, and then they complain about us trying to keep something together. Just like a car, they can build their own! I'd like to know how much we've spent helping all of these people who are screaming at us for "controling" the Internet, while our own people are dying of hunger and can't read. I don't have that problem, and I don't make much money at my job, but I do try to give something when I can, even if its not a lot. They say it only costs a couple dollars a day to feed/cloth someone at the Salvation Army. We complain about not having any money and being poor, but we spend $1.39 for a bottle of water at QuikTrip. Anyone who is sitting here reading this (myself included) can't imagine what those people live like. We should be ashamed of ourselves, and so should the people yelling at us. Lets get this out of the way and concentrate on something bigger, like trying to help the homeless guy you pass on your way to work every day. It doesn't take much, but it can change someones life.
And, forgive me again for being far OT, but I saw something on here (in a different area, obviously) about people trying to "self-identify", and a guy talking to a woman who said she was German-American but spoke no German. People were talking about always wanting to be ID'd with something else. I'm a mutt, no 2 ways about it. Irish, Scotch, German, Cherokee, and I don't know what else. I'm not Irish-American, I'm not German-American (though I do speak it a LITTLE), I'm an _AMERICAN_ and damn proud of it! I'm not saying I agree with GW and everyone in D.C. with what they do, but I'm proud to be an American, and if you aren't, then PLEASE go somewhere else, or start writing your reps, senators, and everyone else. IMHO, you have no right to complain unless you vote and/or try to make a difference in some other way.
BTW, do us all a favor. Stop complaining about our soldiers fighting the war. They don't like it either, they just do what they are told. Pray, or whatever it is you do, that as many as can will come back home in one piece. And go grab the next old man or old lady you see with a WWII/'NAM/ECT. VET hat on and shake their hand or hug them and tel them you appreciate their willingness to lay their lives on the line to defend our country and our freedom, since so many seem to have lost what it means to respect someone who's done that for them. I've never served, and I don't ant to, but I thank all of you who have from the bottom of my heart.