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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."
There's still the possibility of an alternate internet. The US can't enforce rules online.
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.
DNS *is* only a small part of what the Internet is, however it is one of the most important services that exists on it. Most everything is located and connections established by resolving a DNS name to an IP. Email depends upon DNS almost completely, for example. Without DNS, we're thrown back to the days where you had to maintain and copy around massive tables for everything, so that you know what the IP of the mail exchange is, what the web server IP is, etc.
Even things like Microsoft's Active Directory require a DNS infrastructure to work, though it doesn't need the global DNS that we're talking about.
In this case, you can pretty much consider it to be "the internet", since, while IP and associated routing will still work fine, most services will not.
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?
Yeah, America is the world's great respector of human sexuality - we'd never pass things like DOMAs.
Where'd you get that notion from?
Yeah, America would never try to pass legislation regulating good taste on the Internet - nothing like the Communications Decency Act or the Child Online Protection Act
Again, where'd you get that notion from?
Yes, we're a heck of a lot better than, say, China. However, we're not talking about giving China the freedom to censor the internet. We're not talking about giving anyone the freedom to censor the internet; this has nothing to do with new protocols or a global firewall. It's about who controls ICANN. Since ICANN doesn't take part in those things, such topics are irrelevant to the debate over who controls it. This conversation is about DNS and registrar accreditation.
"He's a god; it'll take more than one shot." â" Lady Eboshi, Mononoke Hime
"In this case, the US is meddling in the affairs of everyone else by controlling the name servers that everyone uses."
Not really. The root servers, bind itself, in fact, were developed in the United States and were under the control of US organizations from their inception. It's not the US meddling in the affairs of others here. It's others wanting to meddle in the affairs of the internet as a whole and the US telling them "No."
As others have pointed out before in this argument, there is nothing whatsoever stopping other countries from setting up their own root servers and forcing their population to use them. It will proabably break things, and no one else will use them, but there's no real reason they can't.
The trouble is that Governments, all governments (US included) feel the need to have some kind of control. Getting everyone to agree on just how to use that control is an exercise in futility. Would China do a better job with the root servers? France? The UK? Zimbabwe?
Probably not.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
[sigh] Invention does not automatically mean control. Deal with it.
And as another poster pointed out, large portions of what we think of now as "the 'net" are not of US origin. Here's an idea: lay aside the jingoism for a moment and realize that the internet, in all its messy totality, is now something that belongs to the world, and sooner or later we're going to have to deal with that fact.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
That might have been a good post. If you actually gave a reason for any of it.
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?
Of course, you're right about the US not being some kind of perfection. It's a good system that has been twisted around. It barely resembles the original framework, at this point.
The problem you get with the way that the UN or the EU is talking about doing it, is that you would have an even *bigger* beauracracy in charge of it. You *would* have countries like China or Iran or Cuba that took up as chair of the DNS committee. You'd have a technical resource directly controlled by a "government" with no actual authority. It's one thing to set standards on an international level, but quite another to have things like this controlled by something like the UN.
The US shouldn't be running DNS, nor should the EU or the UN. Right now, the US doesn't really run it, but they have influence. If it was in the UN, then lots of people accountable to none of us would have influence, and quite a few of them are nearly diametrically opposed to free speech, or even freedom in general.
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.
"In this case, the US is meddling in the affairs of everyone else by controlling the name servers that everyone uses."
The United States never forced any other nation to use our name servers, nor did the United States ever force those nations to connect themselves to our WAN. When other nations connected to the internet they did so voluntarily, and if they don't like the way our government chooses to manage our WAN, those nations are just as free to stop using ours - for that matter, they're free to just set up their own name servers connected to our WAN.
What it really comes down to is that decades after the US had the internet working, the rest of the world still couldn't pull off something similar. UN can't even agree that it should make some sort of serious effort to stop genocide in Africa, the damage all those corrupt diplomats would do to the internet if put in charge is unthinkable. Perhaps if those whiners in the EU could get their own constitution ratified by the member states the US would have a good reason to care about Europe's desire to have more control over the internet, but right now there's no evidence that letting other nations have more control over the internet would do anything but ruin it.
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.
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!"
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.
... 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.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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
Well, the reason I was sighing was because the "we built it, we own it" argument has been discredited so many times, so thoroughly, that I get tired of seeing it come up in every single discussion of the issue. I don't think it's pompous to be wearied by people repeating things that they should know simply aren't true.
... wait for it ... the right thing to do. Most Americans, and most non-Americans, will never know or care who runs the DNS; for those of us Americans who do, we can walk around with the warm fuzzy satisfaction of knowing our country Did The Right Thing. Call me a naive idealist, but I like that feeling.
Anyway.
Your question, "how is it in our interests to act like we don't own it?", is more complex and more interesting, I think. My answer is this: first, that the US has an extraordinary amount of international ill-will right now (mostly for reasons that have nothing to do with the internet, of course) and that trying to reduce that is a good idea; second, that as international trade depends increasingly on internet communications, it's in everyone's interest to see that it runs smoothly, and the closed, autocratic way ICANN does business is not conducive to this goal; and third, that it's
As I said in another post, this doesn't mean that I think we should immediately give it away to the first alternative that comes along. I think a centralized UN office, for instance, would be unlikely to make things any better than they are now, and might make things considerably worse. However, an independent body established by treaty like the ITU or UPU would probably be the best long-term solution, and I have the feeling that's where we'll eventually end up.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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."
If you have to resort to comparing the USA to Iran in order to get a favourable comparison, it should be quite obvious that the Internet isn't safe in USA hands.
From TFA: Any network requires some centralized control in order to function.
This statement is just plain wrong. P2P has shown that.
P2P has shown no such thing. P2P breaks spectacularly when you don't have centralized control over things like addressing and naming. About the best you could hope for is an abitration protocol that would attempt to resolve conflicts - which in essence will boil down to "trust one source more than any other". This ends up being centralized control:
Multiple DNS servers? That functionality is there in case your primary DNS doesn't answer. Wonderful if you've only ever got one entry for an entity. What happens when 2 high level (think: root) DNS servers have a conflict? DNS isn't designed to deal with this, because IT'LL NEVER ASK BOTH. You'll only ever get the first response. This is the problem.
maybe you just specify an extra level of TLD to determine which root servers you use
You mean, like "I'm in the US, so I'll use the US root server"? That's what TLDs do in the first place! Root servers exist solely to tell you which DNS servers to use below them. Another level above them would serve no purpose whatsoever.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
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.
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
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)
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?
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.