Lessig on Internet Governance

tcd004 writes "Should the United Nations control the Internet? That's the subject of a heated debate slated to take place at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis later this month. The European Union is pressing for a U.N. role in governing the Internet, which is currently in the hands of a U.S. nonprofit. Lawrence Lessig breaks down the debate and offers his views. An interesting point: in order to participate in Summit-related events Lessig had to promise not to talk about intellectual property." From the article: "What people are afraid of is that there will be a split within the single hierarchical system which would result in two different populations of the dot-com domain name system existing out there. Then there would be a real conflict. My view is that if in fact there is a separation like that, there are a lot of incentives for these two separate roots to figure out a way to coexist. There would be lots of anger [when] you realize that you're not getting the IBM.com you expected. But there's no reason why you couldn't have multiple root systems."

Comments

The UN is too indecisive

[9mm Censor]

I think UN control of anything technological will fail. They take far too long to make up their minds, so any technological standards that need to be implemented will be agreed upon when they are obsolete.

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[KitesWorld]

Aye, but that might be a good thing in this context.

What we're talking about is control of the TLD's, correct? Well, the US government has already intervened with ICANN's operation of that by vetoing the addition of a .xxx TLD. In theory, there's nothing to stop them exerting greater pressure on other matters, which could result in overseas sites or tld's that the US administration doesn't like simply dissapearing.

Sure, the UN might not get anything done - but that works both ways. They may not advance the tld file - but they're not likely to start ripping it apart either. And even if they did, by the time they got around to it we'd have probably moved on to some other root system anyway.

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[Anonymous Coward]

I think UN control of anything technological will fail.

Yeah. If you want an example, if it weren't for the ITU then the phone system would have been quite succesful instead of the total failure it has been.

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[JohnnyNoSPAM]

Exactly. Having things the way they are keeps a lot of the international politics out of the picture. Granted, there are those throughout the world who do not like that the non-profit company happens to be in the U.S., but standards would degrade and become ridiculous if left to an organization who would politicize every aspect of the Internet control. Besides, getting U.N. members even to so much as agree as to the time of day is a challenge in and of itself :-P

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[flyinwhitey]

How is this insightful? The ITU existed BEFORE the UN was even an idea.

If the ITU is a success, it is in spite of the UN, not because of it.

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[RexRhino]

Except that telephony is an easily controlled and tracked technology that all central governments aprove of.

Part of the problem that most governments have with the Internet, is that people who connect are anonymous, there is no central way to block access, there is no simple way to carry out spying and survailence. Most countries openly admit that they want to make it easier to block sites, track users, charge taxes etc. They want to make the Internet a carefully government controlled technology LIKE the telephone, television, radio.

U.N. control of the Internet will work effectivly if you want the Internet to be a highly controlled system like telephone... but it will not work if you want the Internet to continue in it's present state of Anarchy.

How you feel about U.N. control of the Internet usually falls in how you feel about government control of the Internet: Thos who want more censorship and control tend to favor U.N. control... those who want less censorship and control tend to be sceptical about the U.N.

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[Risen888]

Besides, getting U.N. members even to so much as agree as to the time of day is a challenge

Well, see, there's this system called "time zones," and with the delegates being from different countries and all, I suppose that makes sense.

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[Pinkoir]

I think UN control of anything technological will fail. They take far too long to make up their minds, so any technological standards that need to be implemented will be agreed upon when they are obsolete

This isn't true. Take the example of high-tech automobile headlamps. The UN body responsible for global headlamp regulations (GRE) is very close to finishing rules that will allow for LED headlamps. NHTSA, which does the same thing in the US has completely given up on making _any_ LED regulations for the forseable future because it's so hard to get safety related stuff through congress. In this case the UN is far ahead of the US in technical rule-making and you can see evidence of this in the relative technology contents of a typical American vehicle and a typical European vehicle.

-Pinkoir

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this insightful? The ITU existed BEFORE the UN was even an idea.

If the ITU is a success, it is in spite of the UN, not because of it.

For Christ's sake, it's hardly a secret that the ITU is the part of the UN that's seeking to extend its role to include the internet. When people talk about the UN in this context they mean the ITU.

The record of the ITU is precisely what's under discussion, whether "in spite of the UN" or not.

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[Anonymous Coward]

How you feel about U.N. control of the Internet usually falls in how you feel about government control of the Internet: Thos who want more censorship and control tend to favor U.N. control... those who want less censorship and control tend to be sceptical about the U.N.

But it's been the US govt that has been the spoiler for several developments so far (.xxx). There's going to be SOME control no matter what (the root servers have to live somewhere). The point is that the rest of the world... doesn't really trust the US.

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[Live_in_Dayton]

"Other governments also have been applying pressure to ICANN in a last-minute bid to head off .xxx." http://news.com.com/Bush+administration+objects+to +.xxx+domains/2100-1028_3-5833764.html

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[RexRhino]

It is not that "the rest of the world doesn't trust the U.S.", it is more that that governments can rely on knee-jerk anti-Americanism and petty nationalism to remove any critical thought on the issue. If you give people FUD like "The U.S. controls the Internet", which isn't true, most people will be caught up in petty nationalism and won't pay attention to the rest of the issue: the drive by countries to exercise greater control over the Internet, allowing for easier site blocking, stopping anonymity, and more centralized control.

The U.N. just passed a resolution with almost unanimous support endorsing mass censorship, cultural "reeducation" centers for immigrants and minorities as well as mass deportation on non-nationals, banning foriegn news and media, and a whole slew of other repressive policies, in the name of "protecting national cultures from the negative effects of globalism". When such backwards, repressive, and possibly racist policies gets almost total support from the U.N., I don't think it is that the world doesn't trust the U.S. to control the internet (as in the U.S. will control the Internet badly), but they don't trust the U.S. to control the Internet (as in they don't trust that the U.S. will control the Internet).

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[Breakfast Pants]

Wow, you simultaneously picked out his joke and made a fool of yourself.

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[cryptochrome]

Are these bastards the same ones that allowed the fucking mercedes behind me to blind me with their piercing blue beams? DIE MOTHERFUCKERS!

When LED headlights are ready for market I'm sure the auto industry lobbyists will see to it they are approved.

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[HAMgeek]

I personally can't think of a single thing the U.N. has done that turned out good. The only things that even come close are actually accomplished by U.S. troops wearing blue hats.

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[Castar]

Besides, getting U.N. members even to so much as agree as to the time of day is a challenge in and of itself :-P

Isn't this a good sign for maintaining the Internet status quo? There's no way the UN could have a successful vote on a major Internet policy change. That sounds a lot more stable to me than ICANN (especially after the whole Verisign fiasco).

I don't think it necessarily needs to happen, but I don't think it would lead to the downfall of the Internet if the UN took over.

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[$lashdot]

You don't make any sense. You say the UN is not finished with its new regulations, and then cite current European cars as evidence as the UN being far ahead. What do current models have to do with rules for future models? I guess you guys need better lights, since your automobile emissions standards have lagged behind the US for decades.

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[Anonymous Coward]

"For Christ's sake..."

Oh please, let's not bring religion into this. It's bad enough that we're talking politics... ;-]

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[a.d.trick]

Having studied the UN and the way it works, as well as being part of a model UN club; I really don't think we want have the UN in control of the DNS. While their slow and careful nature may be a good thing, I don't think this kind of thing is appropriate for the UN:

1. The UN is inefficient. I really don't think that the DNS is that big of an issue. As long as the US isn't abusing things too much it is better for them to keep control of it than form some new council full of people that get payed way to much to sit around and eat peanuts.
2. The UN is full of politians. Enough said.

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[Anonymous Coward]

You are aware that the UN can't get it's shit together largely because of the US veto power, aren't you?

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[Pinkoir]

When LED headlights are ready for market I'm sure the auto industry lobbyists will see to it they are approved.

IAAAIL (sort of) and the way things are going it ain't gonna happen. LED headlamps are legal in the US right now but only in a crippled form where the whole thing has to be sealed up and replaced as a complete unit. The technology in Europe will be "freer" (but not as in beer you can be damned sure).

Oh, and European headlamps are waaaaaay less glaring in general than North American ones. Not the OEM's fault if end-users are tools who can't properly adjust their equipment

-Pinkoir

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[Pinkoir]

I refer to much greater market penetration of higher-tech products such as HID front-lighting and LED signal lighting as well as the adoption of advanced systems such as AFS and bend lighting. And for what it's worth I'm not European; I personally prefer the macho NA headlamp beam-pattern to the wussy don't-hurt-anybody-else European one but there is no doubt in my mind that the NA regulatory system is falling behind the rest of the world in this area.

-Pinkoir

Re:The UN is too indecisive

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oh, and European headlamps are waaaaaay less glaring in general than North American ones."

True, but not where it really matters.

The problem with many European headlights isn't straight on glare, in which case they are far less glaring, but on angle, such as going over a crest or when coming around bends. They are absolutely blinding to vehicles in the other lane, even to vehicles they are behind on the highway but in the other lane.

North American headlights tend to be more glaring because of the popularity of pickup trucks and SUVs, which sit higher. Manufacturers are usually sit the lights higher as well.

The reason that the European automakers lights are worse is that, while annoying, when traveling straight, the safety of maintaining your travel isn't as difficult--a vehicle travels straight easier without driver intervention (due to human factors (sense of direction, perception holding the steering wheel as you were) as well as basic physics (rotational momentum of the tires, vehicle's vector-speed/velocity)). Compare that to coming around a bend where the driver is concentration on the lane of travel and control of the vehicle then losing sight of everything because of getting blinded by the oppositing vehicle's headlight (hitting them at an angle).

"Not the OEM's fault if end-users are tools who can't properly adjust their equipment"

That's BS. Most users don't adjust their headlights, and the vehicles are brand-new models. Highly unlikely the dealer, the owner, or anyone else has adjusted those headlights from where they were at the factory. At the very least, models within Mercedes, BMW, and Volvo all have this issue.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Internet Success

[augustz]

The internet succeeded because of the lack of regulation. This was a tradeoff. The incredible value of not having to sign contracts to do everything, be able to innovate much more freely etc. The downside, piracy, websites that spew hate and all the rest.

I'm just curious if some group on the UN level asserts much stronger control over the net, it is such an obvious place to control things, could see a ton of impacts. Connect with WTO as a natural partner in the fight and voila.

Re:Internet Success

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what you are talking about...I signed a contract for my home ISP connection. I signed an even longer contract for my work ISP connection. My work's ISP signed an even fatter contract with their ISP.

So...you are totally uninformed and your opinion is thus worthless. Please don't take this to mean you are worthless, just your opinion.

Re:Internet Success

[IdleTime]

Regulation? I'm not sure what you are hinting at. There is a LOT of regulations for the Internet, it's just that you don't think about them as long a you can browse to your favorite pr0n site.

But this is NOT about regulations, it's about who is controlling the TLD's. At the moment USA is more or less doing it, but I can't see anything written anywhere that states this is the one and only true solution and I'm sure that all Americans would have screamed loud and very clear if the situation was reversed.

Please, dont make this to a USA v World because nothing gives USA any rights to decide for the rest of the world, not even on the Internet of which the majority of users and cabling is OUTSIDE USA.

No single country should control TLD's and other issues impacting all users of Internet. I don't understand why this is difficult to grasp.

Re:Internet Success

[krgallagher]

"The downside, piracy, websites that spew hate and all the rest. I'm just curious if some group on the UN level asserts much stronger control over the net, it is such an obvious place to control things, could see a ton of impacts."

This is probably flame bait, but, considering how little control the UN has over its member nations and operatives, I suspect that the Internet under UN control would have more piracy, websites that spew hate and all the rest, not less.

Re:Internet Success

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, we'll share the internet with the world for free, so long as they do the same with oil. I mean no single country should control that, right?

Re:Internet Success

[JohnnyNoSPAM]

"...nothing gives USA any rights to decide for the rest of the world, not even on the Internet of which the majority of users and cabling is OUTSIDE USA"

the Internet was developed in the U.S. originally by the U.S. Armed Forces. Americans thought of it first, developed it, and shared the technology. If other countries don't like that, then they are free to develop thier own world wide network.

Re:Internet Success

[1001011010110101]

Dont forget that most of the worldwide infrastructure of the network was payed by the rest of the world, not by the US. And that's more than pocket change.

Re:Internet Success

[JohnnyNoSPAM]

That means they more or less have an infrastructure to be able to develop their own world network and protocols. Like I said, they are free to develop their own technology and share it.

Re:Internet Success

[estebanf]

typical /.er advocate for free as beer, free unlimited access to information and avoidance of coorporate domination.... But for lot of guys like you seems ok that usa CONTROLS the root servers. don't you see the irony here?????.

Let me try to make this clear. I DON'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT WHO INVENTED THE FIRST INTERNET VERSION. These days the internet is vital as air, so nobody should have CONTROL of it. It's truly obvious that any decision regarding root servers should be taken in a recognized entity like UN.

Re:Internet Success

[smoker2]

the Internet was developed in the U.S. originally by the U.S. Armed Forces. Americans thought of it first, developed it, and shared the technology. If other countries don't like that, then they are free to develop thier own world wide network.

Ugg called, he wants his wheel back .

Re:Internet Success

[JohnnyNoSPAM]

Let me try to make this clear. ANY COUNTRY IS FREE TO DEVELOP AND DEPLOY THEIR OWN TECHNOLOGY. They are free to develop their own world network and protocols and share them with whomever they please.

Have a nice day:)

Re:Internet Success

[gb506]

These days the internet is vital as air, so nobody should have CONTROL of it. It's truly obvious that any decision regarding root servers should be taken in a recognized entity like UN.

Vital, huh? Maybe you and your non-US brethren should have pondered the consequences of allowing the Internet to become "vital" to you when you knew all along that you and your non-US brethren didn't control it. Now that you've become addicted to it, the US has to give some grubby, corrupt, half-witted nutjobs from Albania, Zimbabwe, and El Salvador the control? Give me a flippin' break.

Re:Internet Success

[IdleTime]

Wow... Which state do you come from?

Oil is shared and some of the oil producing countries are organozed into something you probably never have heard of, it's called The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries or OPEC , see www.opec.org. No single country control access to oil, besides oil is localized. USA should not have anything to say over oil production in lets say Venezuela unless both countries are members of an organization like OPEC in which case BOTH have to follow what is decided by the organization. bad example but oh so typical.

Re:Internet Success

[JohnnyNoSPAM]

Marx called, he wants know why his system doesn't work.

:-P

Re:Internet Success

[Xaositecte]

-Someone- is going to have control

The UN is an unacceptable agency to hold control.

Ergo, the existing control of the United States is preferable, and logical.

Re:Internet Success

[IdleTime]

Oh another racist!

Ofcourse there is no other country or organization capable of doing a better job than USA, admitting to that would be to admit that you are brainwashed, kind of like getting an alcoholic to admit he is an alcoholic, not easy even though everyone else sees it.

Re:Internet Success

[thousandinone]

In an ideal world, yeah, nobody should be able to CONTROL it. But the reality of the situation is that it has to be under someones CONTROL , and it always WILL be under someones CONTROL . Period. No way around that. And yes, the UN CONTROLling the internet is still somebody having CONTROL . And given the UN's tendency to want to be completely diplomatic and politically correct, that CONTROL will likely take the form of censoring whatever it doesn't like. That may filter the garbage, per say, but it will also undoubtedly prevent access to much of what makes the internet enjoyable. Some people may like the idea of a utilitarian internet, but I am many others are not one of them. Regardless of whether I agree with most (or any) of America's policies, considering that the internet must be under somebodys CONTROL , I can't see it being in better hands. America has the virtue of being somewhat restricted in what it can restrict (-1 redundant) by its own constitution. The United Nations, as one example, has no such limitation on how it can excercise that CONTROL .

Re:Internet Success

[estebanf]

give me a break!.... the consensus among several nations if far better that an unilateral opinion. This is true even if some members don't share the "american dream" lifestyle.

how is different the us control and a dictatorship?.... I'm assumming everybody advocates democracy here, right?

Re:Internet Success

[l3prador]

I don't think that's really the same thing. As far as I know, other countries are perfectly able to copy the design of the internet exactly. Nobody took the exact stone wheel from "Ugg," they've just copied the design. This is other countries demanding the same rights to Ugg's one stone wheel, not simply copying his design.

Re:Internet Success

[Chris Acheson]

Why would freedom of speech and free access to information be "downsides"?

Re:Internet Success

[estebanf]

what other worldwide entity do you know?... or maybe you want the CIA to hold the control

Re:Internet Success

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you advocating an oil cartel as a better model of governance than ICANN? You may be a new breed of useful idiot.

Re:Internet Success

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, of course we want to give the root servers up to an organization responsible for such massive success stories as Rwanda, Oil for Food, peace-keeping pedophiles, world hunger, Bosnia/Kosovo, etc... How stupid of me...

Re:Internet Success

[jasonditz]

Because a lot of people make their livings censoring speech and keeping "dangerous" information out of the hands of the general public, and the internet makes them sad.

Re:Internet Success

[cayenne8]

what other worldwide entity do you know?"

Good point...there is none. In fact, the UN is not a worldwide entity designed to control anything. It is merely a forum for world wide discussion...that's what it was designed for. It rules nothing...and basically anything they've tried to do mostly has failed because none of their directives or resolutions have any 'teeth' that forces any country to really abide by them.

And, its not like their track record on previous ventures is golden. Sure, the US screws stuff up too...but, overall, its track record is better than the UN's....and if it ain't broke...why fix it?

If the US started messing with TLD's, and shutting off parts of the world, ok, then you'd have an argument on who runs them....and even then...shouldn't be the UN. That's just not what it was designed for...it is NOT for oversight of anything.

Re:Internet Success

[gb506]

Give us a good example of how the US has used the root servers maliciously and you could possibly get someone to listen. But you can't. Don't you understand the type of bureaucratic morass you'd have when every flunky from every backwater hell hole around the globe would want a say in Internet governance? That's a recipe for inaction and breakdown.

Re:Internet Success

[rs79]

"The internet succeeded because of the lack of regulation. "

If you check the history you'll see it actually succeeded in spite of government resistance to TCP/IP. This was part of a ITU(UN) sponsored agenda to foster the braindead-and-never-actually-worked OSI protocol suite with such winners as X.400 mail addresses: /dom=slash /tld=dot /name=cowboyneal /u=matrix /c=us; is that cute or what? Ironically when the ITU got involved in "Internet governance" (ie, "domains") the fellow they sent had to his credit exactly one technical publication to his name: "how to write x.400 addresses on busines cards", but I digress).

On the US side the NTIA was the nexus of all things OSI.

Fast forward to 15 years later, and these two groups - DOC/NTIA and ITU/UN are now vying for the ability to edit the IANA root zone file.

This never fails to crack me up.

The UN is not really dong this, it's the ITU working through the US as the ITU has a bad track record when it comes to the net.

The UN thing is probably a better idea. The ITU angle is a bad thing (tm). Lose that and we'll talk. That is I can see a place for a charered UN treaty organization performing technical (only!) coordination (only!) but as a peer to, not a part of or a task of the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva.

No, I do not think turning ICANN into that newco would be a very good idea.

Re:Internet Success

[budgenator]

I suspect that if OPEC told Venezuela, how much oil they can pump, they would like that about as much we like being told we can't control the gTLDs through ICANN. The problem is the Europeans and the American have a very different concept of a little thing called sovereignty, in America its a bottom up thing, in Europe its a top down thing.

Re:Internet Success

[budgenator]

The United Nations, as one example, has no such limitation on how it can excercise that CONTROL .
Actualy if the United States told the UN that they were not getting that check from us if they did such-and-such and might even have to start looking for a new home I suspect that the UN wouldn't do it. The US does a lot of heavy lifting around the world and there are few who could step-up if we decided to take a break and only do our share.

Re:Internet Success

[krygny]

"Marx called, he wants know why his system doesn't work."

Karl or Groucho?

Re:Internet Success

[the argonaut]

I think you miss the point. In this case, there is effectively ONLY ONE WHEEL, and for the internet to function properly, everybody has to share that wheel. As Lessig suggests in the article (you did RTFA, right?), perhaps it all would work out okay if the rest of the world splintered and, established their own root server, so long as the two systems were kept compatible, but I'm not as optimistic that they would, even if it would be in everybody's best interest. I think there needs to be a unified system in order to keep it all working properly, and I agree with both sides in the current debate: the UN shouldn't be running it, but neither should the US. There needs to be a separate institution like the WTO (only more open and democratic) to manage the system.

Re:Internet Success

[l3prador]

Yea, I read it... and I was referring to his splintering idea. Say, for instance, the US decides to cut the rest of the world off from its internet altogether. You can't say that there would be no value to Europe in having its own network with which to communicate with itself, or no value to the rest of the world to have a separate internet with which the rest of the world could communicate.

One Word Answer

[xmas2003]

NO!

Re:One Word Answer

[Risen888]

Um. What was the question?

Re:One Word Answer

[rs79]

No, the word is "irrelevant" not "no".

If you can get the file currently at this address: ftp://internic.net/domain/root.zone.gz then the internet will work for you no matter what the US EU or UN do. Ten years from mow that very file will still resolve 90+ % of the internet - and will as long as just one of either com or net tld servers doesnt change ip's - that could be decades. or longer. As long as 1 of 13 works, it'll get the others automagically and from there (it's been shown that) the entire DNS tree can be built form this; the subset which is the root zone even more trivially so.

The internet will actualy work for you no matter where you get this file Usenet, say. It's been available via telnet in other places for over a decade. The sky is definitly not falling. But it is raining and you might want to tighten things up a bit.

The US and the UN think the internet is under their control because they edit this file. You can always edit it yourself in a pinch. Trust me on this.

Go get your own copy of the root and put yer thinking caps on and ponder a while and make your network part of the internet that routes around government damage.

I think the internet should

[Turd Rippleton]

remain in the hands of its creator, Al Gore.

Re:I think the internet should

[Petey_Alchemist]

If Al Gore created the Internet, he only did it at the behest of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Speaking of which, does anybody else notice the alarming similarities between ethernet cables and spaghetti? Divine inspiration, derived from His Noodly Appendages, to be sure...

--Petey

Re:I think the internet should

[smashr]

I've been playing Civ4 as I am sure a lot of geeks have been of late and I noticed the icon of "The Internet" world wonder was a picture of Al Gore. I guess Sid Meiers is not without a sense of humor

Re:I think the internet should

[kisak]

Yes, I think the EU agrees on that one; it should have been in the hands of Al Gore and not the incompetent Bush who won by telling that lame joke in every stump speech in 2000 (and of course because of daddy's Supreme court).

Re:I think the internet should

[RollingThunder]

Considering the lowest score is "Dan Quayle", he most certainly has a sense of humor. :)

Simple answer to this issue

[Mr. Sketch]

Remove .com, .net, .org, all TLDs

Yep, that's right. Just get rid of the whole TLD structure and make people go to .NN where NN is the country code. Let each country control their own country code. There would be .com.NN for the old .com, .org.NN for old .org, .net.NN for old .net, etc.

Just let each country control their .NN country code and have all the additional .whatever.NN they want. So if some countries want a .xxx.NN they can have it and if they don't want it, fine.

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[Anonymous Coward]

each country already has their own TLD and maintains control over it

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[RobinH]

Hey man, you're stealing my thunder... :-)

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[RobinH]

each country already has their own TLD and maintains control over it

Well, technically, ICANN controls it all because they have the root servers, which tell your computer (or the DNS system) where the .us, .ca, .cn, etc. servers are. The country code TLDs are not root servers.

To get around it, you'd have to get rid of root servers, make the country code TLDs into root servers, and make each one maintain a manual list of the IP addresses of the other country code TLDs. Each would then have a list of 300 or more entries, but that's maintainable by a human. Then the ISPs in each country will point their DNS's to their country's TLD server.

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[Mr. Sketch]

each country already has their own TLD and maintains control over it

Yes, but the issue people have is with the TLD control (.com, .net, etc) and adding/maintaining more of these domains. So, the solution is to just remove these domains alltogether and just have the .NN country codes instead of these non-country-code TLDs.

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[Kaa]

Yep, that's right. Just get rid of the whole TLD structure and make people go to .NN where NN is the country code. Let each country control their own country code. There would be .com.NN for the old .com, .org.NN for old .org, .net.NN for old .net, etc.

That's not really getting rid of the TLD structure -- it's just that your new TLDs are country codes.

However there are a number of problems with this obvious idea. Say, I want to go to the main Perl site. Which address should I type into my browser? Is it perl.org.us? Why? Am I supposed to know who Larry Wall is and that he is an American?

This idea tends to come from registrars who would be overjoyed to have to register every trademarked company name in every .cc domain...

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[KitesWorld]

Somehow, I think google et all would be quick enough to react to the change.
www.google.co.uk, search for 'Perl', find (first match) and bookmark.

The example you've given is kind of borked in that most people don't know the url of a given website unless they
a) See it in a ad.
b) Find it in a search engine.
c) Get pointed at it by an Ad or other website.

Since all three of those mechanisms would adapt to the change, it doesn't become any easier or harder for someone to locate a website whose URL is unknown to them. And if you know the url, there's no problem in the first place. :)

Also, bear in mind that an individual countries DNS servers might re-route calls to 'something.org' to 'something.org.cc' anyway, so any impact would only likely happen if you're searching for an overseas site.

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[skelly33]

I like the idea that each country should maintain their own root server(s) and that TLD's for each country should begin with their country code. IMHO, it's a solid compromise that lets the U.S. retain control over what it sees as an indispensible national asset, and lets Brazil feel secure in knowing that no other country controls their access to the world wide web.

"Say, I want to go to the main Perl site. Which address should I type into my browser? Is it perl.org.us? Why? Am I supposed to know who Larry Wall is and that he is an American?"

I don't think this is a show-stopper. Companies that have operations in multiple countries are already faced with this problem: is it companyname.com or companyname.co.jp? Am I supposed to know that Toyota originates in Japan? A quick google.com.NN query certainly resolves that question.

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[Mr. Sketch]

Sorry about that. I guess great minds think alike :). It just seems the most obvious compromise. The fact that the internet has existed for so long without forcing country codes is kind of amazing considering it's rapid globalization.

Forcing country codes just seems like the next logical step.

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[rs79]

So if we all do it your way it will work?

If we all do it my way it'll work as well.

The goal here is to all agree which way to do it. Resricting it to country code was summarily rejected in the mid 90's. It's still a dumb idea; it's good for making up a name for a statue in a park but it's not good at naming things that move. Like people.

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[RobinH]

Forcing country codes just seems like the next logical step.

That's fine, as long as I can have another code for space (.nil?) where specific countries' laws don't apply, and I can put a satellite there and host my datahaven in the .nil TLD. :) Maybe I don't want to be forced to choose a country.

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[Mr. Sketch]

That's fine, as long as I can have another code for space (.nil?) where specific countries' laws don't apply, and I can put a satellite there and host my datahaven in the .nil TLD. :) Maybe I don't want to be forced to choose a country.

And who would maintain such a country code? Which countries would recognize such a country code? Who would regulate such a country code? It has to be done by someone and by definition that someone must exist in a country and as such must be governed by their laws.

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[damiangerous]

Say, I want to go to the main Perl site. Which address should I type into my browser?

You're supposed to type in the correct one, of course. Why are you just guessing? Typing www.somebrandname.com is a convenience that marketers have jumped on, to be sure, but it's not how things were designed to work.

Is it perl.org.us? Why? Am I supposed to know who Larry Wall is and that he is an American?

It's whatever he chooses to register. All you're "supposed to know" is how to find the information you're looking for. It's like 800 numbers. People try to get 1-800-OUR-CORP but only one person can have that number, and it may have been of significance to someone else first. You wouldn't expect to pick up the phone and dial 1-800-DRG-STOR to refill your prescription, so you shouldn't expect to type www.perl.com to get to the language site. After all, some guy named Bob Perl might have registered it first. You'd pick up a phone directory to figure out what number to call, and you'd use a search engine to see what URL to visit.

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[Shotgun]

However there are a number of problems with this obvious idea. Say, I want to go to the main Perl site. Which address should I type into my browser? Is it perl.org.us? Why? Am I supposed to know who Larry Wall is and that he is an American?

If I'm at home, and I want to get to my main server, I type:

ssh aslan

No need to type:

ssh aslan.ernest.isa-geek.org

You shouldn't have to type perl.com, or larrywall.com. Just perl or larrywall. Individual cc domains would only insure that you got the page in your own language (if one exist). Otherwise, if you don't know which country the page is in, that is what Google is for (and you would always get Google in your own language).

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[rs79]

"make the country code TLDs into root servers"

Close.

and make each one maintain a manual list of the IP addresses of the other country code TLDs. Each would then have a list of 300 or more entries, but that's maintainable by a human.

Bang! Instant 20% error because of the human factor.

People should primary the root on their own network. Problem solved. EU who?

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[Infernal Device]

Your proposal only works if 'aslan' is indeed tied to your own server, but suppose the Asian Language Society or perhaps CS Lewis fans want 'aslan' tied to their servers instead?

What happens if 'aslan' is trademarked in one country, but not in another?

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[RobinH]

I know, a PIRATE SHIP!!! :)

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you find what you are looking for when the "phone book" is of no help?

Do a search for companyA in google.
Get back:
companyA.co.us
companyA.co.eu

1) Assume these are the same company.
      - if this is a truly global company:
              - what / where do I register?
              - do I need 2 different domains?

2) Assume these are different companies
      - why do I have to remember where the companies are located?
      - what do you do about name collisions?

3) Assume someone else is "piggy-backing" off of the company name on another domain / country, not to mention malicious behavior. How do you tell the correct site without time-consuming investigation?

Seriously, what are the benefits of this system?
It is a lot of hassle for no gain in my opinion and only leads to more confusion.

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[Anonymous Coward]

only only havent the current system avoids this how? oh, i get it CompanyA gets company.com and companyB gets companyb.net... yeah no confusion there

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[damiangerous]

How do you find what you are looking for when the "phone book" is of no help?

Are you seriously proposing that typing "www.somerandomcompany" is a better and more reliable option for locating a given company's website than a search engine? All of your other situations already exist today, and certainly wouldn't be made worse.

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[Sloppy]

Say, I want to go to the main Perl site. Which address should I type into my browser?

http://www.google.com.us/

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[Horus1664]

However there are a number of problems with this obvious idea. Say, I want to go to the main Perl site. Which address should I type into my browser? Is it perl.org.us? Why? Am I supposed to know who Larry Wall is and that he is an American?

There may be some problems with this idea but this isn't one of them. It just happens in the case of Perl that the TLD version of the name/domain is the one you want to see, or the 'main' site. Why is that necessarily true ?

The internet will eventually either be run by an international body (which may or may not be a good thing) or else the developing technology nations like China (Pacific Rim) and India will establish rival networks with possible 'border' connectivity issues and probably content-language differences. What we know as the internet today may well become a portion of a truly global network that caters primarily for English speakers. This could put many of us in the West at a disadvantage since while many Asians and Indians learn English not so many of us learn the various Asian or Indian languages.

I have a feeling the influence of the US over worldwide communications will mirror their prevailing economic power, which is currently declining relative to other economic blocks.

Re:Simple answer to this issue

[Shotgun]

Actually take a look at how DNS works and all your questions will be answered.

No Ux for any value of x please.

[craznar]

I doubt having a bunch of arguing governments would be any better than having one incompetent government in charge.

In my opinion what is needed is three corporate based committees (US, EU, JP/Asia for example) each 'in control' of a portion of the internet roots.

Any disputes could then be resolved via a 3 way 'vote'.

Two things need to be avoided at all costs.
1. US government control (either direct or inferred)
2. A root split

Re:No Ux for any value of x please.

[garcia]

From the beginning, people have talked about building an Internet that wouldn't depend upon the TLD hierarchy. It doesn't mean there would be two or three Internets, but that you would have a domain name system that wouldn't depend upon hierarchical naming. As long as there's coordination across hierarchies about ownership of domain names, you wouldn't necessarily produce any destructive results. One could query a hierarchy for the answer to the question "Who owns Lessig.com?" and then ask another hierarchy if we don't get an answer from the first one. So it is possible for different systems to evolve that would allow the Europeans to control one part and the Americans to control another without destroying the ability of the Internet to continue to function the way it does now.

Well of course that's the way it works (and likely would work regardless off government INTERFERENCE) which is why none of this shit matters. The issue that the EU has with the Internet being "handled" via a US non-profit is only problem with authority and control.

The EU wants to have its hands in everything instead of leaving it the fuck alone.

So, if they end up getting their wish and fracture the Internet, some work around will be created to bypass their bullshit control issue and everything will function as always. If not, because they somehow thwart reconnection attempts, then we'll all be fucked over because of jealousy, greed, and stupidity.

Sounds more American controlled than ever, doesn't it?

Re:No Ux for any value of x please.

[phlamingo]

Two things need to be avoided at all costs. 1. US government control (either direct or inferred)

1. The nonprofit organiztion that controls internet domains is based in the USA. I therefore infer that the US Government is in control.

Re:No Ux for any value of x please.

[craznar]

". The nonprofit organiztion that controls internet domains is based in the USA. I therefore infer that the US Government is in control."

As in - yes, the US Government could pass a law telling that organisation to kick all Chinese IP addresses off the face of the DNS.

That means - it has control, that is currently chooses not to exercise it is a separate issue.

Why does this make a difference?

[CrackedButter]

Why does it make a difference when a lot of websites are localised anyway? I

Re:Why does this make a difference?

[craznar]

blah.com.au might look up in a local DNS ... but before that it had to look up au in a root.

If there is two roots - which one do I look up.

Re:Why does this make a difference?

[ScentCone]

Why does it make a difference when a lot of websites are localised anyway?

It's not about where the web sites themselves are (or are hosted). It's about what IP address you're pointed to when you type in "www.ibm.com" or any other address that depends on DNS to get you where you're going. Let's say that the Chinese government suddenly decides that they don't like how often Google comes up with information about human rights (well, they already have said that - but work with me here). If they controlled how .COM domains were resolved, they could point traffic to some other Google-looking destination totally under their control. Or worse, they could do that with messaging, banking, or other traffic. In a situation where something like the UN security council plays a role in these things, you might end up not getting your new .COM domain name registered until someone at the UN decides it's OK for you to have that domain name. And if, as they have now, China or another large presence doesn't like some aspect of new domain registrations, they might act to block them.

That's why.

Re:Why does this make a difference?

[sp3tt]

I for one don't want countries like China, North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran to have anything to say about my internet. Oh yes, they want to control it. We should never let them do it.

The root according to Lessig

[Red Flayer]

Is that Europeans don't trust the US, and see a place to take a stand. To paraphrase, in '98 they didn't trust ICANN, but didn't distrust the US. Now, they don't trust ICANN or the US.

Lessig also points out that this is likely a direct result of American foreign policy over the past 5 years.

It's beginning to make sense to me... taking a stand against the US on an issue without severe economic impact. Testing the waters before taking a stand on issues with greater impact, like trade or fishing rights.

Or maybe GWB wants to destroy the internet because Al Gore really did invent the internet.

Re:The root according to Lessig

[Prophet of Nixon]

Don't forget that Al Gore also invented the environment!

And has ridden the mighty moon worm!

Re:The root according to Lessig

[flyinwhitey]

But what happens when their "stand" fails and they look like fools?

Does anyone honestly think big businesses will allow such a valuable resource as the internet to be bungled by governments?

Re:The root according to Lessig

[servognome]

It's beginning to make sense to me... taking a stand against the US on an issue without severe economic impact. Testing the waters before taking a stand on issues with greater impact, like trade or fishing rights.

I think the reason is because the internet does have greater economic impact. It was fine for the US to run things as long as the EU had little to lose, but now as Europe has become more dependent on the internet, the stakes are higher and the fear from the EU is that the US has unilateral authority to damage their economies. On the flip side the US is afraid of giving up control because then some international organization will have the ability to damage the US economy.

Re:The root according to Lessig

[kisak]

On the flip side the US is afraid of giving up control because then some international organization will have the ability to damage the US economy.

That is a stupid comment. How exactly will international organizations have the ability to damage the US economy when the UN makes sure that no country has too much power over the internet? Remember, the US will as always be the biggest player on the UN scene.

And why should the EU accept that the US controlles a major part of their infrastructure?

Re:The root according to Lessig

[servognome]

How exactly will international organizations have the ability to damage the US economy when the UN makes sure that no country has too much power over the internet?

Something small like requiring all US based sites to use .US, which means business need to spend large amounts of money to change all their advertising, business cards, etc. There are alot of small changes that can have major impact on existing systems.

And why should the EU accept that the US controlles a major part of their infrastructure?

I never said they should. Just explaining why each side is turning this into pissing contest. There's big money at stake, and everybody wants some sort of control.

Re:The root according to Lessig

[the argonaut]

It's good thing then that the internet was a military innovation.

Having two "Root" Systems is an oxymoron.

[Dareth]

A shared parent would be required for the two "Root" systems to interoperate. That parent would then be a single "Root". Then you are right back to where you started.

Re:Having two "Root" Systems is an oxymoron.

[KitesWorld]

you can differentiate between roots by using a different protocol to access them. For instance, instead of http://slashdot.org/, I might find that via another root by using eunet://slashdot.org.us or uk://slashdot.us or something.

Remember that the internet is a network of networks - in theory, multiple root systems would be little different to having two machines with two different operating systems sharing infomation on a lan. Just much, much bigger.

Re:Having two "Root" Systems is an oxymoron.

[Mr. Sketch]

A shared parent would be required for the two "Root" systems to interoperate. That parent would then be a single "Root". Then you are right back to where you started.

Not necessarily. If each country had their own 'root' server for it's .NN country code and there were no true TLDs. Each country would just set up their root servers to forward to every other countries 'root' server. This would yield a more P2P type system where each country just 'peers' to the other countries, but maintains control of their own .NN country code without a need for the OTRSFTI (One True Root Server For The Internet).

Re:Having two "Root" Systems is an oxymoron.

[smoker2]

Exactly, I think thats almost exactly what I said the last time this "story" came up. Each country only has to keep a list of other nations root servers and forward requests. Unless they actively block access to other roots then there is no real difference to the way it is now.

Re:Having two "Root" Systems is an oxymoron.

[rs79]

"A shared parent would be required for the two "Root" systems to interoperate. That parent would then be a single "Root". Then you are right back to where you started"

Depends how you think of it. If you think of it more as "where the guy with .com exchanged information with the guy with .net" you'd be a bit closer to right.

The root zone is very simple. It's a collection of TLD pointers. That is, NS records that point to the sets of nameservers for the various top level domains.

Just FYI, there about 8 different root server networks that I know of. Most have been around 5 years, some 10.

Re:Having two "Root" Systems is an oxymoron.

[Dareth]

One of the computers on the lan gets to be the master browser. Control is always somewhere. Do we want country by country, or worse here in the US, state by state, control of the internet?

That might be enough to bring back the BBS model, only private intranets.

World sure has changed since I had to slurp my way onto the web.

No, the UN doesn't want to take over the Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

No, really, no matter how often /. repeats this bullshit, it doesn't make it truer.

Nobody is talking or thinking about or suggesting that the UN should control the internet.

Really, I'm getting tired of /. continually distorting the truth just to incite a stupid flamewar.

Re:If it ain't broke....

[craznar]

Well - it is broke.

How would the US feel if China or the EU could turn off www.whitehouse.gov by passing a law ?

Like it or hate it - the internet is now a critical bit of planetary infrastructure.

It needs fixing - but NOT through UN involvement.

NOT currently in the hands of a US nonprofit

[fuzzy12345]

I can't agree that the the 'net's naming/numbering system is currently in the hands of a US non-profit. While ostensibly true, Verisign seems to have de-facto control, as illustrated by the recent "we promise to stop suing your ass into penury if you extend our .com monopoly until 2012" ( http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/25/19 19243&tid=95&tid=123 ) fiasco.

Pointing to a non-profit with broad representation (oh, wait, less broad than it used to be, isn't it?) on the board looks like a PR whitewash once we realize how easily the organization gets bullied around by financial stakeholders - it doesn't have a war chest or a strong organization behind it. Since the US government supports the status quo, I'm left with little option than to believe that Uncle Sam likes the way Verisign is currently running things. I'm not comforted.

Re:NOT currently in the hands of a US nonprofit

[Red Flayer]

"I'm left with little option than to believe that Uncle Sam likes the way Verisign is currently running things. I'm not comforted."

Especially since the US Dept of Commerce has stated miltiple times that it reserves the right to veto any action by ICANN. Regardless of how many times they have or haven't exerted that power, as long as ICANN is in control, the US Govt is in control.

Lessig: It's not ICANN...

[rsborg]

From what I read into his comments, he seems to say that the EU has a minor problem with ICANN but a major problem with the fact that ICANN is controlled by a US administration that it does not trust.

Trust is a hard thing to maintain, it took years for the US to get the world to trust it, and now it's all going away. I don't expect much to happen w/r/t this issue today, but the future might hold something much more diverse/complex than today's internet... because the "borderless" nature of the internet wasn't compatible with the differing views on intellectual property of the nations of the world.

Stop issuing .com!

[khasim]

Those TLD's were great back at the beginning.

But now, all new sites should be *.*.cc (slashdot.org.us).

The ONLY issue here is the .com, .org, .net (.edu, .mil, .gov) addresses.

Who cares? If the other countries don't want the US to control the .com addresses, they don't have to use them. They can setup their own root servers and manage them. Their ISP's can point to those servers and everyone in that country can bitch at their local government if they don't like it.

Country codes are far more scalable than .com, anyway.

Re:Stop issuing .com!

[SCHecklerX]

Country codes are far more scalable than .com, anyway.

Not really. International companies, for example. I already get annoyed at there being an entire domain for every friggin' movie that comes out (hey, what's wrong with http://entertainment.company.com/movie????). With country codes, a company would have to register a domain for every country they have a presence in. Stupid.

Re:Stop issuing .com!

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that as if only US companies use .com or something. Country codes were something of an afterthought in DNS, I guess.

I don't see why it has to be a point of nationalistic pride over who controls what.

Re:Stop issuing .com!

[shadowbolt]

The Internet is supposed to transcend location. Making TLDs dependent on country of origin sort of negates that nice aspect of the network.

Re:Stop issuing .com!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would a company have to register in every country they do business. You could go to mycompany.us from anywhere in the world. If they want to setup mycompany.yourcountry they could, but it's certainly not a requirement. This would allow each country to control their own space rather nicely.

The UN is just trying a power grab. They presently don't have any "real" control over anyone, this would give them that. Next they'll make demands in return for their "service" and next thing you know they'd be an actual world government gradually sucking power away from the member countries. Don't hand it over.

Re:Stop issuing .com!

[budgenator]

if a company truely has a global scope and a physical presence in multiple countries a .com is approprate so why not just
http://us.example.com/ http://uk.example.com/ http://fr.example.com/ ect? I think its pathetic that "Ginnies home made mulled cider" finds it easier to register a .com than a .ca.

What is the internet.

[Bomarrow1]

How do you define the internet? A network of computers? So then my LAN is an internet. or is it the domain names. Im sure I could set up a dns server inside my lan. so if I added enough computers would that make it the internet.
From what I understand this is about domain names. I guess if the worst comes to the worst we could all just use ip adresses. Even if they change im sure we could link gateways between them like my router.
So what is the internet? Untill we know how can we argue who owns it.

enough already.

[CDPatten]

How many times are we going to discuss this topic? I mean I get posting it again IF there were some new/significant developments, but there aren't. Enough already.

Yet we see nothing about Riots in France, International Lawsuits against Apple over the IPod, Sony announcing no X-Box live-style servers, Meryl Lynch's analysis on how MUCH the PS3 is going to cost Sony, and the list goes on and on and on. There is some NEW news, its just we are getting it on Slashdot.

Does anyone else feel this way? About seeing this post again, and not getting to see other news that is worthy of discussion?

Re:enough already.

[cryptochrome]

Basically all the time. Furthermore, if you subscribe to the MAKE blog and WIRED news you'll find 90% of the interesting techie stuff is covered there before slashdot anyway.

Re:enough already.

[Red Flayer]

"Does anyone else feel this way? About seeing this post again, and not getting to see other news that is worthy of discussion?"

Yes. Except Lessig provides additional insight (maybe) in this article. And, of course, there has been a meta-article about your concern:

Why we should discuss internet governance.

Also, it's been a little while since it's been discussed, and today's post counts are a little low. Guaranteed to get some lengthy threads going here....

Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[cryptochrome]

Any Internet governance system that gives up the current free and open nature of the internet (courtesy USA) in favor of a body that may contemplate censorship for any reason is unacceptable. In the case of the UN, the behavior of numerous member states with regard to regulating internet use has been unacceptable (including but not limited to France, Germany, and especially China), and therefore the UN cannot be trusted with this duty either.

If the UN ever adopts a satisfactory doctrine of human rights (including freedom of speech) AND enforces it amongst its member states on pain of expulsion, then I might reconsider. But as is realpolitik, not principles (never mind humanist ones), rules the day at the UN.

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[Anonymous Coward]

United Nations mentality in a nutshell: "It's America's/Israel's fault I gas my own people and starve political dissidents in the country that I rule with an iron fist!", always spoken by some fat syphillitic socialist. That, or Dutch troops LOLing over dead Srebrenicans.

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[Anonymous Coward]

Any Internet governance system that gives up the current free and open nature of the internet (courtesy USA) in favor of a body that may contemplate censorship for any reason is unacceptable.

You and I must have different definitions of the terms "free and open" and "censorship". If the DNS hiearchy is so "free and open", how come the Bush administration blocked creation of the .xxx TLD? Since when is that not censorship? How come Google were forced to remove links from their search engine temporarily, courtesy of the DMCA? How come 2600 are forbidden from linking to certain things?

Oh, I forgot, "free and open" is synonymous with "American" and "censorship" is synonymous with "the rest of the world" in your poor, deluded nation. How about you educate yourself before spouting such newspeak propaganda?

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[kevinbr]

This is not about Internet Governance. It is about how the DNS root file and TLD's are managed. ICANN is not free and open. CAn you elect a member to the role of director? No.

When ICANN has SOME elected directors why did one of those elected directors have to sue to see finacial information regarding ICANN.?

Why was the TLD .xxx refused? By what OPEN process?

Why would you or I have to pay ICANN 50K to only APPLY to run a Top Level Domain.

Why has ICANN released so few TLD's over the years since 1998 when before 1998 IANA was poised to allow hundreds of new TLD's.

Why do you think the UN is a monlitic organization, where in fact UN organization such as the ITU have functioned as PART of the UN and the international phone system and standards?

Has China via the ITU ever caused problems with phone numbers of political organization in the US?

Are you aware that it would be doubtful that CHina or any country would have veto over the ussuing of a TLD, even though today the US has de facto vetoed a new TLD (.xxx).

What has enforcement of human rights got to do with an open process to manage the TLD root file?

Have you any clue how ICANN actually works?

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[dgatwood]

Like the U.S. governance has been free and open? The right wing zealots don't want a .xxx because "Oh horror, everyone would know where to find porn." (Despite the fact that this would make it far easier to avoid accidental exposure to kids.)

Or how about the abusive enforcement of trademarks against people on the 'net who are not even doing COMMERCE, much less doing so in a confusing way? For example, randomhouse.org, various lawsuits over [company name]sucks.com, etc. I'm sure you can think of many domains whose freedom of speech has been squashed under the current internet governance.

The U.S. hasn't been great on human rights, either---internment camps during WWII, Guantanamo Bay, prisoner abuse in Iraq, frequent reports of secret American torture locations in eastern Europe, etc. And the U.S. maintains strong relations with other countries who have repeatedly violated basic human rights, including China, several countries in the Persian Gulf, Singapore, and so on. The U.S. government may be better than some countries in terms of its human rights record, but it is by no means the paragon of virtue that you make it out to be.

The reality of the matter is, as long as it is possible or practical for government to interfere in the freedom grantedd to us by the Internet, they will try to do so. The U.S. government is no different, and anybody who says otherwise has been living under a rock for at least the last five years.

We need to design a replacement for the domain name system based on a combination of DNS service discovery and in-browser filters. You give your site a name, and if there are multiple sites with the same name, you see a browser-generated disambiguation page that allows you to filter the request further. Is that Ace (hardware) or Ace (playing cards)?

The notion of static DNS is so last century.

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[flyinwhitey]

"If the DNS hiearchy is so "free and open", how come the Bush administration blocked creation of the .xxx TLD? Since when is that not censorship?"

Since every bit of content that would have been available on a .xxx is still available.

You need to look up censorship, because you cleary have an incorrect idea as to the meaning of the word.

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[Billosaur]

I am a great supporter of the United Nations, though not in its current sorry state. I believe that eventually, if we're going to right all the wrongs and clean up our home, it's going to require global government with backbone and teeth. It's not something I'm going to see in my lifetime and perhaps it won't occur for a century or more, but I do believe it will occur

The UN is not a true governing body; while its members meet to discuss topics of global import and it has the resources/capacity to deal with events on the world stage, it has never been given the necessary power by its member states to actually bring about true change. UN Peacekeepers have become something of a joke, while the US shoulders the brunt of peacekeeping duties throughout the world. It provides a necessary forum for world conflict resolution, but has no way to enforce mandates that it passes down (e.g. telling North Korea to suspend its nuclear program, condemning Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and demanding that Saddam leave, cessation of genocide in [enter your favorite Balkan/African country here], etc.)

To simply hand the UN the keys to the castle, i.e. control of the Internet and its workings, when they have shown an inability to handle even the simplest task (remember the Oil-for-Food program?) is a case of hiring an alcoholic to run your brewery -- he might do a good job, when he's not passed out on the floor.

For now, the country that brought the world the Internet needs to keep control. We won't be ready to hand over that control until such time as the UN can force countries to shape up and ensure freedom of access for all people.

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[X_Bones]

Like lots of other people discussing control of the internet, you're confusing the UN with its member states. Just because China or North Korea are able to submit any kind of censorship resolution they want doesn't mean it automatically becomes binding for the whole world. With a majority vote needed to pass most resolutions, and a two-thirds majority needed to pass issues that the General Assembly considers "important", do you really think any such resolution would pass?

The UN gaining control of the internet is a good thing. Countries who continue limiting access to their citizens will face sanctions, and your right to privacy becomes safe (or, at least, a bit safer) from private corporations and the American government. I don't have a problem with that.

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[cryptochrome]

With a majority vote needed to pass most resolutions, and a two-thirds majority needed to pass issues that the General Assembly considers "important", do you really think any such resolution would pass?

Can you prove that it won't? I have a lot more confidence that the the 1st amendment will remain intact than I do that the UN members will support free speech with a majority for every issue that comes up for a vote.

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[Anonymous Coward]

Like lots of other people discussing control of the internet, you're confusing the UN with its member states. Just because China or North Korea are able to submit any kind of censorship resolution they want doesn't mean it automatically becomes binding for the whole world.

No. The UN as a body already advocates censorship of "hate speech", which they define rather broadly. Free speech reserved only for ideas the government finds acceptable isn't free speech at all, although I'm sure such restrictions resonate well with the "ends justify the means", social engineering types around here.

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[cryptochrome]

The .xxx issue isn't over yet, for precisely the reasons you mentioned. For the record, I've never agreed with top-level domain system because difference between them was so murky that most people would just register all of them (which used to be .com, .net, and .org but now includes more) to prevent confusion, with the specific and enforced exceptions of .edu, .mil, .gov, and the country codes. The ethics of [company name]sucks.com situations were murky to begin with, because they DO use trademarked names, and as such is a legitimate legal issue. The human right I specifically refer to is free speech, which AFAIK the USA was the first to legally protect, and has done so longer an better than any other country in the world, particularly with regards to political speech, notwithstanding the few smaller nations that probably are better than we are about it today. And if you consider the US to be so bad and to have abused it so thoroughly, how can you or anyone else possibly even imply that the (unprincipled by design) UN would be a better choice with a straight face?

We need to design a replacement for the domain name system -snip-
What you described are search engines, in particular Google. People have been saying that with Google as good as it is now who needs bookmarks/domain names/etc. They're full of crap. I use bookmarks and type domain names directly all the time, as do most people. Also, when you abandon static domain names, you are putting sites at high risk for spoofing.

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[cryptochrome]

I don't really care who runs the TLDs, as long as they don't run them in a fashion that interferes with the free speech of those who use them. I don't see how hundreds of TLDs are a good thing - in fact i think it's not! That would just means businesses would waste even MORE money registering redundant TLD names.

I've addressed most of your issues in other replies, but let me say here that people/governments attach very little meaning to sequences of numbers, but a hell of a lot of meaning sequences of letters. So your argument about phone numbers is worthless.

Try this: ask the Chinese government if they would like to prohibit the number 82.138.229.78
Then ask them if they would like to prohibit the sequence of letters www.freetibet.org.

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[cryptochrome]

Since every bit of content that would have been available on a .xxx is still available.

So, where is the censorship again? The debate over .xxx isn't even over. And IIRC, its main point was to create a TLD ghetto for porn anyway.

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[kevinbr]

China today with the help of companies like Cisco firewalls access and runs web access though filters. They care not about names or IP numbers, They filter what they want, as does many nations today.

They have NO NEED to use DNS to block free speech. They block free speech today. And we with American routers and hardware help them.

DNS and free speech is a red herring.

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[cryptochrome]

They block free speech today
in China.

That may be all they can get away with now, but what makes you think they would stop there if they could exert influence over the name system in other countries? There'd be no .tw domain for starters, I'll tell you that.

Cisco and the rest's complicity in China's censorship program is indeed disgraceful and should be punished, but off topic.

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[dgatwood]

The [foo]sucks.com domain names actually are not trademark violations. They fail to meet the criteria for an actual trademark violation in two ways: 1. they do not represent use of a mark in commerce. 2. they do not create confusion. No one can legitimately say that they went to paypalsucks.com and expected to log into their paypal account or to find information presented by paypal.

I'm not advocating the U.N. taking over internet governance. Hence, I'm not suggesting that the U.N. would be a better choice than the U.S. I don't consider the U.S. to "be so bad and to have abused [free spech] so thoroughly," either. You're putting words in my mouth. What I said was that the U.S. might be better than average, but it isn't perfect, and thus we need a domain name system that protects against abuse as part of its design.

What you described are search engines, in particular Google. People have been saying that with Google as good as it is now who needs bookmarks/domain names/etc. They're full of crap. I use bookmarks and type domain names directly all the time, as do most people. Also, when you abandon static domain names, you are putting sites at high risk for spoofing.

Nope. Not even close. Google isn't beyond manipuation, either. What I'm proposing is a combination of trust-based identity verification on a broad scale, coupled with a wide-area service discovery methodology. That means that you provide your DNS info and advertise to the world that you are there. Someone searches for you by issuing a query saying "I'm looking for Ace". All the sites that answer to that name respond.

Coupled with (ideally transparent, non-profit) international groups providing reliable identity verification for commerce websites, spoofing remains largely a non-issue, but censorship, predatory page ranking, and various other problems also become largely a non-issue at the same time. Ideally, this should be combined with a web of trust model and user-selectable trust level filtering to make it substantially harder to do DNS-SD spamming.

There are loads of technical issues that would have to be worked out before such an architecture would be practical, both in terms of preventing abuse that already exists and in terms of avoiding introducing new avenues for abuse. That said, while DNS went a long way towards making the Internet manageable, there is still plenty of room for improvement, and we should start working on new DNS schemes -now-, before some crisis puts the 'net on the spot and someone ends up coming up with a flawed last-minute workaround.

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[Anonymous Coward]

So if censoring domains isn't censorship, then how could UN control of the DNS hierarchy result in censorship? You can't have it both ways.

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[Liam Slider]

Especially considering the U.N's membership.

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[Anonymous Coward]

The UN is not a true governing body; while its members meet to discuss topics of global import and it has the resources/capacity to deal with events on the world stage, it has never been given the necessary power by its member states to actually bring about true change.

Irrelevant. It has the power to manage international telecommunications; look at the ITU for an example.

To simply hand the UN the keys to the castle, i.e. control of the Internet and its workings, when they have shown an inability to handle even the simplest task (remember the Oil-for-Food program?)

Yes, I remember Oil-for-food. The USA was complicit in all the seedy stuff.

"The United States (government) was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated UN sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing UN sanctions. On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales."

Nevertheless, there is an obvious flaw in your argument. You are claiming that they are not capable of managing an international telecommunications resource, when the whole world knows differently. How do you explain the fact that they run the international telephone system without China censoring your phone calls?

Re:Objection to UN control in a nutshell

[brpr]

That may be all they can get away with now, but what makes you think they would stop there if they could exert influence over the name system in other countries?

Becuase censorship can't be effected via DNS, you twit.

"...rumors on the internets"

[Anonymous Coward]

GWB Might have been onto something there...

Slashdot Timeline

[karvind]

Behind the Fight to Control the Internet

Lawmakers Support U.S. Control Of The Internet

Senator Wants to Keep U.N. Away From the Internet

EU Claims Internet Could Fall Apart Next Month

Internet Power Struggle Reaching Climax

EU, UN to Wrestle Internet Control From US

U.S. Insists On Keeping Control Of Internet

Why Talk About Internet Governance?

Behind the Fight to Control the Internet

And I wonder if we didn't discuss it enough ?

Keep the USA in control

[Anonymous Coward]

Leave things as they are. Let the USA control the Internet. If the EU (through the UN) gets involved you know for sure Internet usage will be more restricted and taxed as well. And no, I am not an American, I live in Europe.

I think slashdot posters should...

[Dster76]

..avoid making tired, old, jokes, that turn them into mindless lackeys of political hacks.

This is over and done with. Can we please read this before making these jokes? Or maybe not make them at all? Or mod them down whenever they occur?

Re:I think slashdot posters should...

[Turd Rippleton]

Listen Chips, my little quip was modded funny so obviously *some* people still find it humorous. Please troll somewhere else if you're having a bad day.

Re:I think slashdot posters should...

[Dster76]

wow - I hope *those* people find something better to do. Trolling - is that, in part, searching around looking for places you can insert one liners? Keep it up.

Re:I think slashdot posters should...

[Turd Rippleton]

Trolling involves insulting, or in your case, condescending remarks by an individual who cannot come up with something informative, interesting or funny. Since my post has been officially ranked 'Funny', that precludes me from being a troll. However, you sir, are a troll. Keep it up.

Re:I think slashdot posters should...

[Dster76]

Since my post has been officially ranked 'Funny', that precludes me from being a troll.

From Wikipedia:

"Various users have different motivations for trolling. A common factor to most of them is the desire to draw attention to the troll. Inflammatory, sarcastic, disruptive or humorous content is posted, meant to draw other users into engaging the troll in a fruitless confrontation."

Yes, I can see how you helped the discussion on internet governance.

From wiki also: "Do not feed the trolls".

Shouldn't have. Will be last post on the matter.

in other news...

[TinBromide]

I for one welcome our new ineffectual internet overlords.

Name space collisions

[craznar]

Great idea except how do we resolve namespace collisions ?

Then we could have companies buying the root.Us names as well ?

Microsoft would then become Microsoft.Us ?

Google.Us ?

Mmmmmm ?

Re:Name space collisions

[Mr. Sketch]

There would be no company.us, they would be company.com.us.

There would be a First Right of Refusal setup so people with company.com would have first dibs on company.com.us and would have the right to revoke the company.com.us from someone else who may have registered it first. Ideally, the transition would be transparent and all the existing .com would be moved to .com.us since that's what it normally means.

Re:Name space collisions

[Anonymous Coward]

Allyourbasearebelongto.us

Re:Name space collisions

[KitesWorld]

.co, not .com. Commercial sites are normally .co.cc

Otherwise, valid point.

Re:Name space collisions

[craznar]

Ok - so company.com and company.com.au have to fight it out over ownership.

Name space collisions aren't an issue, when one name space is relatively 'empty' as in the .US name space.

As for there wouldn't be a microsoft.us .... have a chat to amazon.ca :)

Re:Name space collisions

[BridgeBum]

That depends on the country. The UK uses co.uk, Australia uses com.au. Canada frequently just uses .ca without level 2 names (co, com, etc.) More reasons why 'simply get rid of the TLDs' is not so simple.

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure glad this issue isn't being blown out of proportion

IPV6... Again

[RradRegor]

Many have made the suggestion of using the country codes, and letting each country assign its own addresses to its own names within those codes. But there's an underlying limitation to that strategy, which is a shortage of 4-byte IP addresses to go with those names. Who decides how many of these addresses each country gets?

The technical answer, I think, is we need more addresses, so each enitity of control can have its own reserved range. IPV6 could solve the problem nicely, but we need a strategy for making the transition smoothly. Getting everyone to agree on that strategy is a problem.

Re:If it ain't broke....

[wgaryhas]

So, how is it broke?

Re:Attention Apple/OSS/*NIX Fags!

[Anonymous Coward]

sure, and we'll take all our apache servers with us. Let's see, that leaves you with 20% of the internet, and plenty of bandwidth for all your worms, botnets, and trojaned hosts left over.

If it ain't broke...

[NerdBuster]

Thus far, the US has actually done a great job. There is no need to change things around unless a solid case can be made.

gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/

"nuclear option"?

[sczimme]

FP: The EU and several countries say that their "nuclear option" would be to set up a rival ICANN, resulting in two standards for the Internet.

Homer^W Dubya: "Nuke-u-ler. It's pronounced nuke-u-ler."

From TFA

[Hatta]

FP: The EU and several countries say that their "nuclear option" would be to set up a rival ICANN, resulting in two standards for the Internet. Do you think that's a realistic scenario?

Is anyone else bothered by the use of the term "nuclear option"? The threat from nuclear weapons is extremely serious, and throwing this term around only legitimizes the real "nuclear option"

Re:From TFA

[DigiShaman]

It's a political term for "trump card" or "Ace". It's the last stand if you will that either makes it or breaks the deal.

Re:From TFA

[Hatta]

It's a political term for "trump card" or "Ace". It's the last stand if you will that either makes it or breaks the deal.

Yes, I understand that. And that use applies that it's acceptable to use the nuclear option. "trump card" would be great. But this just dilutes the shock that people should feel when we talk about the real "nuclear option"

Just call me Larry from now on.

[Russ Nelson]

But there's no reason why you couldn't have multiple root systems.

And there's no reason (except for the confusion it would cause) why we can't ALL be called Larry Lessig.
-larry

Of Course You Can Have Multiple Root Systems

[Anonymous Coward]

But there's no reason why you couldn't have multiple root systems.

Of course yes when it comes right down to it, there's no one pointing a gun at my head or writing laws forcing me to point to DNS servers that point to DNS servers that all ending up someway or other pointing back to the root DNS servers stored in.... gods know where.

I can, and am free if I so choose, to point to DNS servers that are not connected to the root servers. Of course then slashdot.org could take me off on a whirlwind tour of a shady snuff movie site, but this is what I signed up to when I left the (somewhat effeciently) managed root DNS servers.

Now if a law gets past in the EU telling me I have to point my DNS to this "new" root server, then, given the extreme dependance of just about every net based program on my computer, the percentage of which increases daily, I can expect, for some time, extreme annoyance as essentially, nothing net based works. I can expect this irritation to continue until everyone in the EU sorts themselves out and things start working again. At least in the EU "subinternet".

Now you may say, "That why the DNS servers should stay under current (US) managment". However, consider this.

Let's say I live in a EU country. Let's pick one at random. Saayy... France. Let's say that France, for whatever reason, becomes involved in quite a nasty dispute with the US for whatever reason. Wine sales, say. Or France bans Holloywood movies.

Further assume that as a result of this, some smart alec in the DoC or on Capitol Hill, takes a patriotic stance and disconnects the French, and quite possibly EU DNS servers from the root servers. It's a fairly simple operation. Now, unless the French cave in, there will be no correct DNS for messers in France, and they'll be stuck with whatever demands the US would seek to impose before they can browse happily again.

Now I'm not French, or in France, so this doesn't bother me as such. But I will put you a middle case.

Supposing there was a website called, say, saddamhadnoweapons.org, or something. Suppose again, that the current US administration, takes exception to this sites content in some way. Now legally, it's unlikely that the administartion can force the DoC to take the address off the DNS servers for americans. But here's the thing? Could they force the site to not resolve for DNS servers not in the US? Mightn't this be legal?

Come to think of it, wouldn't they be doing this already for "sensitive" sites like military ones at some address?

The assumption is wrong...

[zappepcs]

In the world of politics, the assumption that there is nothing stopping the world from having two sets of root DNS servers is DEAD WRONG. There *IS* something that stops that. If there were two sets, then the politicians who are struggling to get more power would have achieved nothing. The mere fact that they argue they want more security or control of the destiny of their Internet based economies is not supportive of their actions. What they desire is control, and the power that it brings. If they wanted to secure the operation of 'their' Internets, they could have done so long ago. The fact that they want a single set of root servers *AND* want control of them is nothing less than proof that they are greedy power-mongering asshats!

Its not about the USA or ICAAN, its about power and money, nothing more, nothing less. For that reason alone, I say that they shall not have the control. It shouldn't be given to them, the UN, the EU or anyone else... its doing just fine with ICAAN. Let them argue... pfft! They won't set up extra root servers because it would defeat their purpose....

Re:The assumption is wrong...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

What they desire is control, and the power that it brings. If they wanted to secure the operation of 'their' Internets, they could have done so long ago. The fact that they want a single set of root servers *AND* want control of them is nothing less than proof that they are greedy power-mongering asshats!

You're an idiot. The value of the DNS system is that it is accepted by nearly everyone. Without that it is worth little to the US or anyone else. As for the "UN" wanting power over the internet, you're way off. No one wants control, they just want no one (especially not the US) to have control. A UN committee making decisions on the DNS root is akin to making sure no one can do anything radical with it. So many different factions result in mostly inaction with the occasional benefit that is very obvious and most everyone can agree on. That means no real censorship, or sanctions using DNS.

If I were considering investing another few billion dollars into a technology I've already dumped billions into, I might also talk to a few peers and question the guarantees for that system's uptime and reliability. I might further object to some radical party having their finger on the "off" button. I can't believe all the anthropomorphizing of the U.N and all the U.S. nationalist, isolationist bullshit I hear on this topic from clueless morons. How about taking a few minutes and actually learning more about the U.N. than the latest 60 second blurb on some scandal involving a dozen individuals and how about looking at things from the perspective of someone else, just this once. Man, it makes one ashamed to be from the U.S. these days. No wonder the US embassy tells everyone to claim to be Canadian when abroad.

Re:The assumption is wrong...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

And just maybe they should have thought of that before sinking the $$$ into the 'net, since after all it is connected to those nasty bastards in the USA.

Why? Their investment in the net is just fine, it is the agreement between all the nations interconnected networks to use the same "phone book" that is in question. The deal is, no one trusts the U.S. to be the one making entries in that book, and everyone has a copy. Now they have said, we're using a different copy as the authoritative one, which is chosen by everyone, not just you. It's called "democracy." The US, however, does not seem to fond of democracy and refuses to talk tot he rest of the world. That affects me, since I live in the US.

Tell me again why looking out for your own interests isn't a good thing?

Tell me again why it is better to break a toy than share it with your sibling. US==spoiled_brat.

Oh yeah, because you're a sensitive emasculated girly-man

Why is it people who use such phrases always piss in their pants when they actually come to face to face with someone like me?

Were the root servers manipulated during Gulf War II? Were they manipulated after 9/11? Didn't think so.

Ahh yes, the "something hasn't happened so it never will" argument. Take a look at all the abuse of the DNS system to date, from letting religious extremists nix new TLDs to reassigning .com to irresponsible criminals. ICANN is not exactly a poster child for doing the right thing.

I don't see why we should give them the time of day, let alone control of the root servers.

You act as if the US has a choice. The decision was made, now it is a matter of if the US still wants to be on the same internet as the rest of the world, or if they will move towards isolationism because of some politician's ego and so they can have an "us against them" speaking point for more nationalist campaigning.

I still maintain that we should still act in our own best interest regardless of other's opinions.

So breaking the US's compatibility with the rest of the world to get the votes of uninformed right-wing hate mongers is in the best interests of the US? Why is that again?

Leave. And no, I'm not joking.

Screw you. I'm staying. Maybe you haven't heard about it, but political free speech is still ostensibly my right. Why don't you leave, or die, or something.

Economic warfare is where it's at in the 21st century, and there's no way in hell we should risk part of our infrastructure to appease what is largely a bunch of European whining. China is coming up strong and fast and we need every advantage we can lay hands on. Being nice at the end of the day simply isn't going to cut it.

Fucking brilliant! That's not the only kind of warfare likely and guess what, alienating all our allies and going it alone is about as brain-dead as you can get. Maybe if look up the word "arrogance" you'll find some good examples of why it isn't the best official policy for a government. Making people hate the US by trying to bully them is not good for the US long-term. It is only good for politicians who like a fearful populace and need something for the citizens to fear.

We seriously need a root server split just to get over this, otherwise there will be no resolution to everybody's (as in the countries involved) satisfaction. Economic impact? Sure, it'll be nasty at first, until a cottage industry of DNS proxies make their appearance.

Do tell, how does the US having communication problems with the rest of the world benefit the US, long term? Should we move to an incompatible phone system, postal system, and time keeping method too? Isolationism. Why don't you take a look at what happens to empires that become isolationist. I'll give you a hint, it has to do with being a few centuries behind the rest of the world.

Re:The assumption is wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it people who use such phrases always piss in their pants when they actually come to face to face with someone like me?

After serving with some pretty grizzly dudes on active duty and growing up in a shithole, I don't think so.

I'm not going to get into a pissing contest about this and this was not really a barb about your supposed badassedness; I was making a point since you resorted to an ad-hom directed to the parent.

Screw you. I'm staying. Maybe you haven't heard about it, but political free speech is still ostensibly my right. Why don't you leave, or die, or something.

No such luck. Get ready to lose the presidency again in '08 to those you despise. The Republicans who come in after Bush will distance themselves from the war and the U.S. public will vote them in again with their terminally short collective memory, and I'll be there laughing. I'm an atheist isolationist who plays both sides of the aisle: take care of people at home with the dems and fuck everybody else with the repubs.

Fucking brilliant! That's not the only kind of warfare likely and guess what, alienating all our allies and going it alone is about as brain-dead as you can get.

I don't think you understand, after the demise of the cold war we really haven't had any allies. Why in the hell the Brits were dumb enough to go into Iraq with us I don't know, but the war is economic and it is every country for itself. I savor the U.S. withdrawal from the U.N., even if it takes decades.

I'll give you a hint, it has to do with being a few centuries behind the rest of the world.

Sure, if you deal in absolutes as is nearly the case in Afghanistan. I don't advocate complete withdrawal, hence the possiblity of hooking to "other" DNS servers.

Who cares what they debate?

[flyinwhitey]

All the debate in the world won't change the single most important underlying fact, the US in the form of ICANN currently controls a tremendously valuable resource that they do not want to give up.

If they plan to debate, it should be on what kind of compensation they plan to offer in exchange for a piece.

Re:If it ain't broke....

[RexRhino]

If the U.S. shut out Chinese websites, all China would have to do is set up their own internal DNS server to server their government sites (I suspect this is what they probably do already for government sites), and there is no way the U.S. could restrict access.

And China and EU CAN shut off www.whitehouse.gov, at least to their own citizens, by passing a law. They would just have to reconfigure their DNS servers. I suspect that they do this already, although not with www.whitehouse.gov.

Cheap Labour

[TheSimkin]

Maybe it should all be moved to somewhere like Taiwan so we can take advantage of the cheap labour and have even cheaper domain name registrations! $1 for 50 domains. Think how great that would be!

There's a simple solution

[Colin Smith]

Create a .un TLD and allow the United Nations to manage that. Problem solved.

Root DNS Servers

[Anonymous Coward]

Just get everyone to use the U.S.'s DNS Servers... roflz

Show the U.N. they aint shit...

Of course...

[Create an Account]

The ITU was founded in the 1880s, over half a century before the UN was created. They already had their procedures, traditions, and policies cemented in place before they became associated with the UN. ICANN is less than 10 years old, and dealing with rapidly evolving technologies. Expecting them to experience as seamless a transition to UN control as the ITU did is a little naive.

Re:Of course...

[Anonymous Coward]

They already had their procedures, traditions, and policies cemented in place before they became associated with the UN. ICANN is less than 10 years old, and dealing with rapidly evolving technologies. Expecting them to experience as seamless a transition to UN control as the ITU did is a little naive.

Are you on drugs? Nobody is sugegsting that ICANN becomes part of the UN. The US can disband or keep ICANN as it sees fit. It is of no worth to anyone. It's transfer of control over the root to ITU that's being proposed.

Vint Cerf and Karl Auerbach

[Dotnaught]

I interviewed Dr. Vint Cerf and Karl Auerbach about Internet goverance and alternate roots recently. Not surprisingly, Cerf wasn't a fan of alternate roots. Auerbach, however, has some provocative things to say on the subject.

What an Insult

[KodeJockey]

Let's not forget that the United States is the major financier of the United Nations efforts. Doens't it figure that the rest of the world wants control of another technical innovation that is in the US's hands? Why don't they just ask China about it as they've seem to made of with the past 15 years worth of US Naval weapons technology. Shit, why don't we just become part of China so we don't have to listen to the bitching anymore?

Re:What an Insult

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets look at who finances the UN:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations#Financ ing

25-22 % of the money comes from the US
19,5% from Japan
9,82% from germany (EU)
6,5% from france (EU)
5,57% from the UK (EU)
5,09% from Italy (EU)
2,57% from Canada
2,53% from spain (EU)

so the EU countries pay more than the US.
its 29,5% (just the 5 big EU countries) vs. 25%-22%

so please stop bitching arround hom much the poor US has to pay for the UN...

P.S. the last i was checking you guys still use the Telefon. Please hand the control of the telefon back to the UK, ohh and stop using electricity, rockets etc.. because we invested most of the money to develop them..

see. This argument isn't really sane.

Re:And you thought the Oil fod Food Scandal was ba

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently the U.N. had modeled itself after the United States system.

Nothing to be gained, much might be lost

[fortinbras47]

I see nothing to be gained from this proposal and much to be lost. For all its problems, ICANN has worked reasonably well, and I see handing the reins of the Internet over to the UN to be fraught with danger.

The US (compared with other countries) has a history of a hands off approach to regulation. Even though ICANN operates at some level under US law, the US government has kept its hands off and let industry and academia do its thing. Other governments simply don't have this approach. Other govenrments will try to assert more direct control, and because governments are slow and dumb, they'll do something to screw it up.

I don't know what would immediatly would happen, but there is a great potential for mischief if China, Iran, and other governments that practice censorship had partial control of Internet governance. They could try to write censorship controls more directly into technical standards, deny dns service to groups they dislike etc... The people who run these dictatorships are not dumb and could come up with mischievious stuff that no one has ever imagined.

To be honest, I'm slightly worried even about the other Western democracies. France banned the sale of Nazi material on Yahoo. People have brought llibel lawsuits in Australia against United States newspapers because of material published on web servers in America. I'm MUCH less worried about them to be sure... but they still don't have the US 1st amendment.

Re:Nothing to be gained, much might be lost

[Mentorix]

To be honest, I'm slightly worried even about the other Western democracies. France banned the sale of Nazi material on Yahoo. People have brought llibel lawsuits in Australia against United States newspapers because of material published on web servers in America. I'm MUCH less worried about them to be sure... but they still don't have the US 1st amendment.

The USA blocks free speech as much as any other western democracy. Your 1st amandment is nothing special amongst western democracies and embedded into pretty much all of their constitutions. You might want to try reading up before spouting ignorance and making a run for your misplaced moral highground.

Re:Nothing to be gained, much might be lost

[KitesWorld]

To be fair, the US government has already opposed the .xxx tld on political grounds, and the Commerce Department has gone on record as saying that they have the 'final say' on anything ICANN does.

With that in mind, saying that the US doesn't exert direct control is kind of misleading.

Another issue here is funding. ICANN tries to bill other countries for their domain names in order to support itself, yet many countries are unwilling to pay (for example, South Africa has refused to pay what it deems an 'arbitrary tax'). As a result, ICANN is suffering from financial problems - Allocating an oversight body a budget from the UN would be a cinch since everyone wants to keep their respective networks operating.

Re:Nothing to be gained, much might be lost

[fortinbras47]

Care to give an example where free speech has been blocked?

Re:Nothing to be gained, much might be lost

[bhima]

Check out Reporters Without Borders: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporters_Without_Bor ders

Don't look for the US in the top ten or even the top 25, it's 44th (within the US) and 139th (within Iraq). If you have look at the rankings for the last 10 years you'll see that the US has been abandoning freedom of speech for a while now.

Re:If it ain't broke....

[rs79]

It's broken.

It was stolen by intellectual property attornies working for primarily three letter multinationals, mostly US based. They outspent everybody and captured the root zone via the DoC. You have no idea of tens if not hundred by now of millions or dolars they spent to do this.

Just out of curiosity why the gag order on Lessig about IP rights? Cough.

If you primary the root zone for yourself, this governance quesiton is not an issue.

Re:If it ain't broke....

[flyinwhitey]

"Well - it is broke.

How would the US feel if China or the EU could turn off www.whitehouse.gov by passing a law ?"

What does that have to do with the internet? That's a broken government thing, not a broken internet thing.

And if you think that fixing the internet by involving MORE governments is a good idea, especially when those governments will keep the internet "broken" and be able to "shut off www.whatevertheywant.com" in EXACTLY THE SAME MANNER AS THE US CAN NOW, then I can't really see how it's been fixed.

And the best part? Censorship is codified into the standards for the UN's version of the internet. How come you never bother to bring that up?

The UN

[TheRecklessWanderer]

The UN is a great institution, but it has several problems. The first is that a country has to sign the treaty (ratify) before it can even be asked to comply with the treaty. The second is that the UN has got to be the biggest beuroacracy in the world. Everyone has to play nice and compromise to get what they want. While this isn't a bad thing, it will stop the speed and the fluidity that makes the internet what it is today. I am not saying that the Americans should have control over the Internet, but it certainly shouldn't be the UN.

Vote with your nameserver

[rs79]

"And I wonder if we didn't discuss it enough ?"

Indeed. Too much talk, not enough action.

Primary the root for yourself. Take it away from the US and the UN and put your self in the drivers seat you lazy sod.

A better '?' is: Can the internet -be- controlled?

[OmgTEHMATRICKS]

To which, if you have even the slightest clue about the nature of the internet, the answer is no. The internet is a fluid superentity, a collection of connections, designed from the get go to withstand global thermonuclear war. It can't be controlled. Even if you did something to the DNS servers, new forms of the internet would sprout out from the people and prosper.

This fight to 'control' the internet is so silly, you could almost make a sitcom out of it.

The premise in the article is way off.

[Mentorix]

The question isn't "Should the United Nations control the Internet?" but "Should the USA control the Internet?".

It should come as no surprise that nobody wants the USA to control the internet except for some groups in the USA itself. By phrasing the question in a way where you can start summing up all the negatives about the UN trying to control it you are forgetting that there's a whole bunch of other negatives involved by keeping the root name servers under control of some (non-profit) corpation in the USA.

How can anyone expect the rest of the world to keep the USA in control of something as essential for 1st world economies as the internet. With a press of the button the USA could disable a large part of the economy in every first world country they choose, nobody is going to take that chance. The discussion is pointless in my opinion. To the international community there's no convincing reason whatsoever to keep control in one country. The only solution is to put in under control of an international body, the UN is a possibility, maybe a seperate organization is better.

If the USA does not relinquish it's grip on the root nameservers OR another satisfactory solution is found, it's a very very very high probability that alternate roots will come up. In the end it is a national security issue for anyone taking the time to research the ramifications.

Re:The premise in the article is way off.

[YrWrstNtmr]

With a press of the button the USA could disable a large part of the economy in every first world country they choose, nobody is going to take that chance.

And because in this global economy, everything is so interrelated, they would disable theirs as well.

Re:The premise in the article is way off.

[Shihar]

How can anyone expect the rest of the world to keep the USA in control of something as essential for 1st world economies as the internet. With a press of the button the USA could disable a large part of the economy in every first world country they choose, nobody is going to take that chance.

That simply is not true. While the US technically owns the servers, about half of them are located off of US soil. I imagine if the US cut off Britian, Britian would promptly nationalize their server. More to the point, if the US really wanted to harm someone's economy, screwing with the Internet is just a cool party trick compared to sanctions or an actual embargo.

All of that said, the US has shown that it is unwilling to use ICAAN do anything of that nature. Cuba, North Korea, and Iran all have Internet access that is restricted only by their own respective governments. The US cutting off a nation would result in the world quickly setting up their own servers and creating a de facto standard.

People really blow the control the US has out of proportion. The only control the US has is the fact that everyone has agreed collectively to point at US servers. The rest of the world could point to someone else's servers if they wanted to. People have not done this already because they don't want to be cut off from the US administered Internet due to conflicting messages from the two different servers. You could set up your own server at home right now. No US government storm troopers would crash through your window. The only reason why it wouldn't work is because no one would bother pointing at your server.

The US isn't doing anything. It is just flatly refusing change how they administer the Internet within the US. The US points to its own servers. It just so happens that everyone else wants to be on the same network as the US. This isn't the UN trying to save the Internet from the US. This is the UN demanding that the US stop using its own servers on its own soil and the US flatly refusing. No one is stopping any other nation from setting up their own servers, the US ISPs just won't point to them.

Think of it like a party. The Fred is the US and is throwing a party. The some people at the party want to move the party to some other location. Fred isn't stopping anyone from leaving their party, he just refusing to end his party. Anyone can leave at any time, but no one wants to go unless everyone (Fred included) comes. Fred has made it clear that he is going to keep on partying in his own house and that everyone can either stay or leave, but that he isn't going anywhere. No one wants to leave unless Fred goes too.

Re:The premise in the article is way off.

[Mentorix]

Nobody said it is very hard to nationalize the root dns server, it's that nobody will wait until they are forced to do so. Either something useful comes out of the next meeting or the ball will start rolling and a lot of nations will start taking the necesary precautions. Basically the USA is given a choice, either give up direct control of the root zonefile and share it through an international body and for 99% of internet users nothing will change, or countries will start taking up their own root servers and millions of users will be confronted with road-blocks and detours to get where they want to be. Everyone would prefer if things stay as they are now with one widely recognized root dns system, but if that system stays under the control of just one nation it is doomed to fail. You want the internet to stay as it is? Share control. You want the internet to fall apart in small segments each controlled by their own root servers? Fine, keep it as it is and it will happen in the coming years.

Re:The premise in the article is way off.

[Shihar]

You want the internet to stay as it is? Share control. You want the internet to fall apart in small segments each controlled by their own root servers? Fine, keep it as it is and it will happen in the coming years.

You are right that this is the threat, but this is not a threat to the Americans, which are of course the American government's primary concern. Fragmentation for Americans is going to result in a few site bounces but no real headaches in the US. The real pain is for non-Americans. Personally, I think this is all a bluff. The US doesn't really have much to lose. Most Americans would barely notice if a few non-American websites started acting up. The US has the lions share of the content, and if that content is suddenly inaccessible to other nations, they are going to notice.

There is no credible reason for the US to change where they are pointing their own internal servers, which is what this battle is really over. I doubt irrational national pride and paranoia that the US is suddenly going to block the EU becauase it kicked over a few dictators is going to stand up to the reality that if the US doesn't want to change where it is pointing its own internal serves, it doesn't have to.

Personally, I am happy that US ISPs will remain pointed at US servers. If other nations want to be on the same network, they are more then welcome to. If they don't, they are welcome to try their luck pointing at their own servers. The US is 1/4 of the world's economy. Who is threatening who by breaking away from the network? You better believe that the world will notice if 1/4 of the world's economy is suddenly inaccessible from their nation.

Re:The premise in the article is way off.

[Mentorix]

Whether it is a threat to the USA or its economy (or any of the other big economies) remains to be seen, frankly, if things happen gradually there shouldn't be a big problem at all for any of the worlds big economies. I might be off here but as I understood it the EU economy is bigger then that of the USA, so there's certainly some pressure on the USA to share control. I'm not so sure about where the most content on the internet is concentrated. If you're talking about the english speaking part of the net you might be surprised how much of it comes from porn servers located in Amsterdam. For spanish and chinese sites, I'm pretty sure most of it is not coming from the USA.

Personally, I'd prefer if things stay as they are now but it seems evident that the situation is not sustainable with growing dependencies on how the internet works for pretty much all countries. Whats going to be interesting is on what level the segmentation will take place and to what degree that will paint a picture of the rising geopolitical blocks in the near future.

Right, and because of that

[Sycraft-fu]

They can do what they want with it. However that still doesn't give them the right to tell the US waht they have to do with their part of it. You can exert control over the part of the Internet you own, but don't presume you have a right to force others to do as you want them to. Thus the answer for those unhappy with the US root system is "make your own" not "the US should give their's up". Remember the roots DNS is largely a US operation. All but two roots are operated and paid for by either us private companies, univerisites or the government, and ICANN itself is a US entity.

I would actually very much like to see an alternate root system. Make it compatible or incompatible with ICANN, doesn't matter, but setup a large scale, credible ICANN alternative, then let people choose. I would say the best way would be to mirror the ICANN space, and then extend it, while of course allowing ICANN to mirror your extensions. I think it would work well to have a number of cooperative roots, each which mirror everything, but are only authoritive for a part of it. Then, if one of the root system had problems, they others could keep mirronring their last current version of their zone so nothing went down.

However it isn't right to demand that the US give up their DNS systems. The "but everyone uses it" argument isn't compelling. Everyone uses Google too, that doesn't mean that they should be forced to give themselves up to the UN.

Re:Right, and because of that

[robertjw]

However it isn't right to demand that the US give up their DNS systems. The "but everyone uses it" argument isn't compelling. Everyone uses Google too, that doesn't mean that they should be forced to give themselves up to the UN.

Exactly, if the EU wasn't a bunch of damn commies we wouldn't be having this discussion!

Absolutely Insane

[fortinbras47]

So basically the European argument is:
1) We hate George Bush
2) We hate the Iraq war
=> France and China should control the Internet.

That above argument seems fairly crazy to me.
I think you can dislike George Bush without wanting the Chinese government to read your e-mail.

Re:If it ain't broke....

[kisak]

... it's broken. Why else do you think the EU wants to fix it?

Re:Why does the UN want control?

[kevinbr]

Get control of the internet? Get a grip! This a simple issue about the TLD ( IANA function ) governance being held by an opaque unilateral organization that is neither responsve to Americans nor to the rest of the world.

How your fevered brain can jump from this legitimate dispute into the UN taxing the internet is quite amazing!

The ITU manages issue and standards for the international phone system and is part of the UN. Phone systems for voice traffic throw off HUGE amounts of cash. Yet we see no issues regarding corruption in this area.

Could it possibly be that corruption is a human trait not a trait exclusive to the UN?

Was Enron corrupt? Can I infer Enron was American Enron was corrupt thus all America is corrupt?

The DNS system has nothing to do with the actual infrstructure that runs the internet.......routers, fiber lines etc etc.

Are you merely insane or just terminaly ill informed and limited in your reasoning powers that your prejudices overwhelm your sense of reason and logic?

ICANN SUCKED FROM THE START! You have no idea how ICANN works or how it came into being, nor do you seem to have a grasp of the UN function or human nature.......but you post and expect? What? Mod points? Fame? Profit?

Whichever one you want..

[hackwrench]

Personally, I think DNS should be handled by P2P. There can be central people that each have their own core database for people to go to. People then can map those entries into their own namespace. Don't like where a Domain name goes to? You can make your own personal entry point to wherever you want. Different social groups can have their own databases that point to different core databases as authoritative. It would be like a comunal HOSTS file in some instances. If I'm a fan of Microsoft, I can let Microsoft decide where all my Linux related DN's resolve to. If I'm a fan of Linux, I can let Linus decide where all my Microsoft related DN's resolve to. If I'm neutral, then I let Microsoft resolve my Microsoft related domains and let Linus resolve my Linux related domains. It isn't as hard to do as people make it out to be.

The stench of corruption is overwhelming.

[Wolfbone]

"in order to participate in Summit-related events Lessig had to promise not to talk about intellectual property."

Dear Doctor Jones,

The committee of the WHO invites you to open the World Summit on Global Health Policy with a brief speech. Please don't talk about Malaria, AIDS or other minor diseases.

Dear Senator Bloggs,

The Board is pleased to offer you the opportunity to open the World Summit on National and International Security. We request that you do not bring up irrelevant matters such as war and terrorism.

Dear Professor Smith,

The organisers are pleased to offer you the opportunity to present the opening address at the World Summit on Climate Change. We ask only that you avoid subjects not directly relevant - such as greenhouse gases, temperatures and sea levels.

Re:The stench of corruption is overwhelming.

[Viper Daimao]

Let's not forget where this event is being held.

Re:The stench of corruption is overwhelming.

[Alsee]

Dear ESR,
You may attend the summit under the condition you agree not to talk.

-

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not like the programmers among us would not solve any issues reguarding multiple roots or any other situation that came out of this.

The US is an unstable and power hungry beast. It obviously should not control the internet. No single country should control it. Each government should have its own setup, and then come up with an agreement of how to tie their setups together.

Whatever happens, I pray the other leaders of the world do not allow the US to continue their monopoly. Surely a country that elects GWB, and that allows GWB to remain in office after this whole Iraq murder spree, should not be given governence over something so critical to the people.

Re:Who cares?

[pl1ght]

LOL.... Your jealousy of our great country just spews from your post.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you have to be jealous of?

We control the bottom line!

[InsaneProcessor]

We invented it. We created it. We will manage it.

If you want any control, create your own. We don't care.
br
The Internet is mine, keep your crap out!

Re:We control the bottom line!

[toQDuj]

Why are you talking like you are part of a group? Where is your group? Rally up the troops dear. Please provide a reference to "we".

B.

Apples and Oranges

[Jeff Molby]

There's no doubt that the US Congress is no speed demon, but as far as I know, there are very few, if any, issues before ICANN that require congressional approval. They're fairly autonomous, so there decision-making process is most certainly faster than any political body. The only valid question is whether or not ICANN truly acts in the best interest of the entire world. I personally don't know enough about the situation to have an opinion on that.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[kisak]

There are also very few, if any, issues before the new UN led "ICANN" that will require approval of the full UN assembly where all the world states meet. So what is your point?

Re:Apples and Oranges

[Jeff Molby]

I didn't have one. :) 9mm_Censor made the original argument. I was just refuting one of the responses to his statement.

Re:A better '?' is: Can the internet -be- controll

[Billosaur]

To which, if you have even the slightest clue about the nature of the internet, the answer is no. The internet is a fluid superentity, a collection of connections, designed from the get go to withstand global thermonuclear war. It can't be controlled. Even if you did something to the DNS servers, new forms of the internet would sprout out from the people and prosper.

Control of anything so sizeable and amorphous as the Internet is an illusion.

When you think about it, networking has reached the level of individual machines within a home being linked, protected (hopefully) from the outside world by firewall, and linked to other ad hoc networks by the Internet. The "information superhighway" cliché is less apt than the analogy of the Roman roads. The Roman Empire expanded, building roads to allow the dissemination of goods and information more rapidly. It also built fortifications to protect those roads. Eventually, Rome outgrew its network and lost control. And we all know what happened next.

But while the Empire vanished, its works did not, and the people left behind in the remains continued about their business. And so the built their towns up, towns became cities, and very soon their were new empires.

The Internet will continue to grow, reach some maximum threshhold, perhaps collapse, and then the pieces will be picked up and something new will emerge. Life goes on.

Levels of Responsibility

[DanThuMan]

There are far to many levels of responsibility and for the average global citizen they don't know or care who is responsible for what.

Group memberships are forced upon us all by nature and society. Quite often people overlook the fact that they share the same planet with 7 billion other people, in order to reserve the right to be a member of a smaller grouping. Whether that be the United Nations, a continental union or trade group, a country, a state or province, a county, a region, a city, a neighbourhood, a block, a house, a family, a private club, a company, an organization, a religion. These are all just different arrangements we have made with others to try and regulate commonalities amongst our existence. The reason none of these organizations ever work, is probably because none of us are distinct member of any of them and thus our own interests become conflicted at some point.

You want a solution, which seems impossible, but will have to happen eventually or in some manner or another otherwise our conflicts will be the end of us. Then we all have to suck it up, pick a fundamental set of rules we can all agree with, and go with it.

Someone has to "control" the internet. If not the UN, then how about some sort of open source monitoring system where the user community and market demand controls and regulates the nomenclature and oversight of the internet.

My 2 pennies.

Leave it with the Yanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm English and certainly not pro American. But IMHO America is way ahead of Europe when comes to free speech. Besides having that freedom enshrined in its constitution, US courts have consistently ruled that this freedom goes beyond just speech and encompasses almost any form of expression.

There's talk in the UK about a bill to ban hate speech. The French have prohibited the sale of Nazi memorabilia on ebay. I can see a situation in the UK where someone is sued for libel and has his domain confiscated by the state via the EU via the UN. This is less likely to happen in the US.

I say, leave DNS with the Yanks and their First Amendment.

censorship and taxes

[zogger]

Correct on censorship and don't forget taxes. The UN REALLY wants the ability to start imposing global taxes on this or that. Give them control of a major part of the net, you'll see taxes and even more corruption, and this time with a body that has NO directly elected members by any "global citizen".

Bad idea. Normally, I think the US fed gov is sort of out to lunch in most matters, but *not* in this instance. The UN can go do something else with their spare time. The address system is working perfectly fine the way it is.

Re:Why does the UN want control?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up liberal. The UN wants to control our MINDS! If we let them be involved in TLD administration, they will invade america and install a new british KING! DO you want that, punk, do ya?

The DNS is by voluntary participation

[aphor]

Please remember that this is the oldest and most stable global electronic democracy alive. The regional and national governments are jealous of the trust people place in the new world democracy, and they want to usurp from it.

What Lessig doesn't say and all of the rest of these ninnies don't seem to know is that the DNS is a 100% voluntary participation system. Alternative root DNS clusters HAVE been set up in the past. Most people just blindly take the DNS servers suggested by their ISPs, but the ISPs, and the corporate network admins could add a new set of root servers at any time.

The operators of the root DNS servers could opt to ignore ICANN and any other body, or they could do something in between and resolve the conflict in a creative way over which neither the ICANN nor the EU has any control. We all vote for the root-zone operators when we set up our resolvers to point to them, and we grant a proxy to our ISPs and companies when we let them do it for us.

For discussion: on what does this DNS democracy depend?

ccTLDs like .cn vs. root and .com DNS control

[billstewart]

Country code DNS spaces let China control any of their own namespace - but they'd also like to control .tw and sometimes .com (e.g. censor falun-gong.com)

Controlling the root DNS servers is mostly a silly issue - except for adding new global TLDs, the only thing going on at that layer is ICANN trying to extort money and whois-privacy-violation from the ccTLD operators in return for agreeing not to disconnect them, plus a few rare disputes over control of ccTLD registries (typically governments or their monopoly telcos wanting to take over previously privately-run ccTLDs such as .za, or occasional problems with US enemies like .iq.)

Control over .com is the interesting space - The only IP that ICANN ever cared about was "Intellectual Property", not "Internet Protocol", and the WIPO-types pretty much control the agenda there. It's highly unlikely that .EU will be able to take over .com, though they could run a .com.eu if they wanted.

Re:Why does the UN want control?

[kevinbr]

Our minds? Is there two minds in this discussion or just an echo chamber or ignorant rants that echo endlessly in a hollow shell?

I doubt the UN could find your mind much less control it.

It just will not work...

[terryfunk]

not only that but let them split off from the rest of the net. Fact is, the Internet for all it's faults work remarkably well.

Besides, there is no incentive for the US to give it up, it just won't happen. The US invented it, the US can maintain and manage it. Let those that want it start their own.

The UN is a remarkably mis-managed, wasteful and corrupt organization full of 3rd world dictators. To turn this over to them would be IMHO a disaster.

Textbook case of FUD

[blibbler]

This isn't a case of moving control of the TLDs from a completely independent body to China, North Korea or Iran. It is a matter of moving control from a US controlled organization to a truely independent organization. As said in a previous discussion, it would be ludicrous to suggest that UNICEF is controlled by china to deny food to children.

ICANN has done a pretty good job, but the recent .xxx controversy shows that it is not independent from US influence. It is not too much of a stretch to foresee there is a great potential conflict with US foreign policy. Consider the situation where Chinese seat at the UN was held by Taiwan (ROC) until 1971 despite the PRC taking over the entire mainland in 1949. In 1971 the PRC was acknowledged as being the rightful holder of the Chinese seat on the UN over the objections of the US. It is not unreasonable to imaging that if control of the .cn TLD was in dispute, the US might pressure ICANN to refuse to transfer control to the PRC. Even now, although most of Afghanistan is controlled by the Taliban, the .af country code is assigned to the US supported government.
It is certainly true that ROC is a lot nicer than the PRC, but that is besides the point. It is also true that the official UN view of geo-politics is not always completely accurate, but it is closer to the global understanding than the US's.

Re:Textbook case of FUD

[kevinbr]

This is off topic but I registred a domain name for an Afghan government department at the Ministry of Communications. The worst technical part was climbing to the top floor of the building with no elevator, and then taking 45 minutes and 7 staff to accept the 20 dollar payment at the Central Bank. ( 7 stamps and 7 sheets of carbon and typewriter)

They had no budget so I paid for it myself.

However you exagerate a bit about the Taliban control. But there is a real issue about redelegation of cc TLD's. I was in the UAE when IANA redlegated the .ae domain to a private corporation merely on a request with no request from the government. The ruler at the time had no idea of the implications.

ICANN continues to make arbitrary decisions that are opaque and worrisome.

No Need for a Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Lawrence Lessig: "My view is that if in fact there is a separation like that, there are a lot of incentives for these two separate roots to figure out a way to coexist."

Unfortunately, there is also a lot of incentitive for some of the nations that are behind this in a big way--China, North Korea, Iran and some Arab states--to use either a UN-dominated Internet or separate roots to crush dissent and the flow of ideas. To remain a medium of free speech, the Internet not only needs to stay out of the clutches of the UN, measures need to be taken to ensure that nations that try to spin off separate root servers to censor political speech pay a price. And to do that, we need to resist the idea of an easy coexistence. We don't want to repeat the mistakes of those in the 1980s who thought Soviet totalitarianism would coexist forever alongside Western democracies. Nor should we forget that it was in many cases the very same countries (meaning the weasly part of Europe) who thought the Iron Curtain was permanent, who're now working to make it easier to add an Iron Curtain to the Internet.

As I heard an international legal scholar remark on C-Span on Sunday, the U.S. stands virtually alone in its strong defense of free speech, preferring to deal with nasty ideas in ways that do not involve censorship. In Europe and Canada, free speech is much more restricted, a legacy of paternalistic monarchies where publishers were licensed and the media state-controlled or regulated. And in the U.K. and Germany, harsh libel laws further restrict criticism of powerful people. If you're accused of libel in the U.K., you're assumed to be guilty until you prove your innocence. Recently, one historian and her publisher had to spend months in court defending a few pages in a scholarly book that were critical of a 'revisionist' Nazi historian. They won, but it cost them millions in legal expenses. Here, that sort of lawsuit would get nowhere.

When I worked in electronics, we had an unwritten rule, "If is isn't broke, don't fix it." Like a lot of others posting here, I think the Internet isn't broke and doesn't need major fixes. Instead, we need to focus on keeping what we have.

--Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle

Re:No Need for a Fix

[toQDuj]

On the other hand, you can be arrested for opposing the current US government publicly. That kind of speech is only allowed in "free speech zones" google it and see. Where is your free speech now? in "ZONES" ??

B.

ICANN doesn't control that either

[billstewart]

ICANN really only cares about one thing, which is trademark enforcement of domain names. They've got a bit of control over cybersquatting kinds of issues, and that might be run differently under a UN bureaucracy, and they insist that every registrar collect lots of detail about domain name registrants and publish it in whois, which makes trademark enforcement lawsuits easier but might violate many European privacy laws, and UN control could try and enforce that on more ccTLDs than ICANN has been able to, but it's unlikely they'd make much change there.

The rest of it doesn't really matter. Google can find pirate software just as easily whether it's www.pirate-software-example.com or yarrrrr.co.jm or http://big-hosting-example.com/pirate-software/for sale.htm. UN control could theoretically let China close down sites that it doesn't like, such as falun-gong.com or possibly all of .tw, but it's unlikely.

The main change UN control could make is that ICANN has been dragging its feet on non-7-bit-ASCII internationalized character sets for DNS, which would be resolved in some manner relatively quickly (at least for China.) To cut ICANN some slack, one reason they haven't done much is that most of the proposed solutions are technically bad, except the proposals from Verisign/NetworkSolutions which are highly connected politically and technically suck even worse.

Is there a reason why we *should* have them?

[mi]

But there's no reason why you couldn't have multiple root systems.

What about the reasons, why we should have them? What exactly is the problem, that we are trying to solve here?

Re:Is there a reason why we *should* have them?

[toQDuj]

Yes, we should have them, because there are a lot of people in favor of it. And isn't the Internet supposed to be a democracy? As in: even non-US residents get to vote?
I am reminded of the lyrics from Pink Floyd: "Share it fairly, but don't take a slice of my pie!" They seem eerily approopriate.
I mean, it's not like you actually maintain the infrastructure. I don't see people from the US laying down the fiber in our country, replacing switches or providing broadband to our homes. Yes, some people thought up components of the internet over there, but they also did that over here, at CERN, for instance. It's not yours, it is not mine.

B.

Re:Is there a reason why we *should* have them?

[mi]

And isn't the Internet supposed to be a democracy? No. I don't even understand, where such supposition can possibly come from.

I don't see people from the US laying down the fiber in our country, replacing switches or providing broadband to our homes.

Do you see them forcing you to connect to anything? Perhaps, they are twisting your ISP's arms into downloading the one and only named.root?

Re:Is there a reason why we *should* have them?

[toQDuj]

qoute:
      Do you see them forcing you to connect to anything? Perhaps, they are twisting your ISP's arms into downloading the one and only named.root?
end quote.

Yes. They are forcing me to use the internet to access university resources and for other vital communication services. And yes, they are twisting arms to have us download the one and only named.root for if there would be more, there'd be confusion. All that is being asked is a say in the matter of filling named.root. We all benefit from a well functioning internet, and therefore want to create a democratic voice.
Otherwise we'd be just like users of proprietary software, subject to every whim and fancy of the CEO.
Come to think of it, it is all about open-source'ing named.root.

B.

Re:Is there a reason why we *should* have them?

[mi]

They are forcing me to use the internet to access university resources and for other vital communication services.

Where are the University and these other "vital" services located? In your country, subject to your country's laws... US is not forcing you to do anything. Making something very attractive can not be considered "forcing" you to use it.

We appreciate your growing interest in the Internet, but you'll have to continue using it on the original terms -- ours.

Come to think of it, it is all about open-source'ing named.root.

It was "open-sourced" from day one. Anybody is welcome to use their own version.

well,

[Run4yourlives]

As others have stated, the internet is working pretty well under the US's lead, so why fix it.

Then again, the US is the same country whose government, in all seriousness, renamed the french fry to "freedom fry" because somebody disagreed with them.

Perhaps the EU has a valid point?

Ideally

[cryptochrome]

You would just go to "perl", instead of having to guess at "perl.com", "perl.org", "perl.net". Like "coke" or "pepsi" or "kfc". The biggest problem with TLDs today is that they are murky and therefore require redundant registration, with the exception of country codes, .mil, .gov, and .edu. Of course, all this is built on the much bigger problem of trademarked words being applied by different companies in different contexts (Apple Computer and Apple Music, for instance), and the inevitable conflicts that arise when their businesses suddenly intersect. Indeed, internet domains are pretty much the be-all, end-all of these intersections, because every company wants to use their trademark/colloquial name as their domain name.

Maybe we should start all over and assign petitioners speakable but meaningless made up words, and let them rebrand themselves with their totally exclusive name.

Re:Ideally

[Humm]

> Maybe we should start all over and assign petitioners speakable
> but meaningless made up words, and let them rebrand themselves
> with their totally exclusive name.

well, it worked for google ;)

Simpler answer to this issue

[Damek]

Remove all domains entirely and operate soley on IP addresses.

Google/Yahoo/MSNSearch/Altavitsa/AskJeeves all become the new arbiters of where to find things on the net. Best of all, net users themselves get to decide which of these services to use.

Need to go to FedEx's site? Can't remember their IP address? Just Google it. Use the I Feel Lucky if you want to save time and know it'll be the top hit.

Need to find IBM's site? Ask Jeeves if you don't know the IP.

I already do this anyway, pretty much, just typing stuff into my Firefox or Safari address bar and letting Google take me to the site. Why not remove the extra DNS layer and let Google/Yahoo et al. perform that service?

Re:Simpler answer to this issue

[Mr. Sketch]

Remove all domains entirely and operate soley on IP addresses.

So how do you refer to sites in the case of multiple domains hosted on a single IP address?

Re:Simpler answer to this issue

[Damek]

Why not just point to the directory containing the site? Or the port containing the resource? Who cares? It's not where the information is located that matters, it's what the information is. The search engines will connect the dots between information seeker and information location.

Dumb idea? Fine, that's why I don't make the decisions!

Nah

[Anonymous Coward]

It's done a rubbish job, the worst thing is that ICANN awarded Verisign a .COM extension ignoring the Sitefinder debacle and that Verisign was suing it to control the DNS. Then it awarded the .NET extension BECAUSE of the SiteFinder debacle, settling the lawsuit. US isn't in charge, ICANN is sort of in charge, but only if Verisign agrees, the real powers in Verisign.

What is this "we" shit?

[Chris Acheson]

Dear Slashbots: You do not control anything. Have a nice day.

Re:The UN is too indecisive - not like the US!

[rs79]

"Exactly. Having things the way they are keeps a lot of the international politics out of the picture."

Boy does it ever. The Bush adminstration just nixed the last tld that was supposed to go intot the legacy root.

So instead we get US federal politics. Whoo hoo!

Headlamps? shift+1

[Z34107]

The UN body responsible for global headlamp regulations...

Wait... The United Nations regulates headlamps? Why? It might make sense for the European Union to regulate this a little... (no driver-blinding strobe lights, etc.) ...but the fact that such a body even exists in the UN is proof of why they should have no control over root servers.

Re:If it ain't broke....

[toQDuj]

Right.

How about actually ADVANCING this discussion instead of mindlessly shouting that which has been said over and over just to be modded "insightful", shall we?
Now, everyone please lay off the "if it ain't broke don't fix it argument". The fact that people complain means that it's broken. QED.

B.

In the land of fairy tales...

[Anonymous Coward]

IP4 = IP6(0.0.IP4)
Every other country the first number is their international dial code.
Problem solved, ICANN no longer needed, closes office and stop demanding $15 million a year in funding.
IANA ceases to exist and no longer demands $5 a year to hand out a few numbers.
And they all lived happily ever after...

No .xxx is a GOOD thing.

[Macgruder]

While at first I thought ICANN screwed up by not approving .xxx, I got to thinking and realized that it was a good thing, for exactly the reasons the UN wants to admin TLDs... .xxx is another TLD and whatever is allowed there would be based on US rules and morals, which are quite different than say what's allowed in Japan or Brazil.

It would be better to have a .xxx.us or .xxx.br or .xxx.jp so each country can set the appropriate standards.

This is horse****

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reasonable thing is to handle the control to EU. After all that is where www was born.

I sense a disturbence in the Internet...

[halivar]

... like a million Chinese dissenters all crying out at once, and then silenced forever.

Re:If it ain't broke....

[Z34107]

... it's broken

Wait... you got to slashdot AND made a post... and other than taxes in your home country and the fees you pay to your ISP, you pay nothing for the privilege.

So, is the EU going to stop you from posting on slashdot again, or were you kidding about "fixing" this problem? XD

P.S., I wanted this moderated as flamebait AND insightful

Re:If it ain't broke....

[Macgruder]

"The fact that people complain means that it's broken. QED."

Un, no. That people complain means that they THINK it's broken. It's up to said people to explain how and why they think it's broken.

Do you want Iran to issue domain names?

[tjstork]

Or how about Syria? Geez, even China is censoring everything. For all the other faults of the USA, we're pretty good about letting people have their say, even under this administration. How many other countries let their people write what is written about Bush or Clinton for their own leaders?

Ten minutes after...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the UN gains control of the root servers, there will be a global tax instituted by the UN to pay for Internet access for citizens of "less developed" nations.

"Developed" nations will have a choice: Pay or be cut off from the Internet.

Look for the money raised from that tax to be used with all the ethics and efficiency of the Oil for Food program.

Re:If it ain't broke....

[toQDuj]

You speak in truths. However, picking nits, I could say that broken is an overly broad and indefinite term.
I think we can in all fairness say that the governance of the DNS servers by the ICANN functions, but is expected to fail due to discontent members on the internet requesting a more fair and democratic governance method than the one currently in place, with the term "democratic" implying equal rights to non-US residents. It cannot be that people from China cannot have their say. Everyone should be allowed to speak and exert an equal influence on the decision making process. I think that that is the fear of the US government. They have some control over the media and thus over the people in their own country (c.q. agglomerate), but they have little to no control over that of different countries.

B.

(p.s. see, now we're TALKING!)

Re:If it ain't broke....

[budgenator]

The fact that people complain means that it's broken no I'd say it means that they are afraid of the Bush boogieman. Nobody has ever explained why they want to rest the control of the gTLD names and numbers from ICANN and the US other than its the US. Bush is going to be gone in a couple years, America is going into a period of isolation, we do that after every war. Instead of worrying about who is controlling the internet, worry about what's going to happen when the EU gets its turn to be the lightning rod for a while.

lllllllll

[geekcomputing]

1st off the UN is evil. 2nd the USA created the internet ... thus we own it.

Re:If it ain't broke....

[Macgruder]

But ICANN already has a mechanism where they can already receive input from other governments and agencies.

After all is said and done, after taking input and having discussions, some agency will have to say 'This is the way that it will be'.

Why is it so important that it be taken away from ICANN (which does a fairly good job) and given to another body (like ITU) and risk having the whole thing collapse and/or become mired in international politics?

It's not that I'm pro-US, but I've not seen any compeling reason to take it away from ICANN and turn it over to a UN body. There seems to be no technological reason, which leaves politics... and this is an area that I'm adament stays politics-free.

Another article by Lessig on Internet Control

[AutopsyReport]

Here's another article by Lessig from 1998 on Internet regulation/control, which, aside from the poor writing style, is a good article. So if you were questioning the history of Lessig, at least there's some proof he's been active in the field of Internet regulation and governance for several years.

Laws of Cyberspace

Oh, yes, the 3rd cousin of a remote relative of...

[Anonymous Coward]

my sister's husband's brother-in-law should be running the internet...from his taxi in...

What difference does it make?

[hoppo]

It's a moot point. How is control of an asset that has been developed almost solely by and for US use suddenly up for grabs?

Pure Energy

[SeaFox]

"Should the United Nations control the Internet? That's the subject of a heated debate slated to take place at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis later this month."

So I guess they will get the chance to know what the others are thinking and talk about what's on their minds? :-)

Re:The UN is too indecisive - not like the US!

[Dwonis]

It's not like the TLD was a good idea to begin with.

Re:The UN is too indecisive - not like the US!

[rs79]

"It's not like the TLD was a good idea to begin with."

Whether that's true or not doesn't matter; the interent is ruled by consensus, not truth. Never confuse truth for consensus.

At any rate, icann measured community consensus and .xxx was to be deploted, period.

Parent missed huged point

[woolio]

Capitol Hill, takes a patriotic stance and disconnects the French

Ahem. There little the US can to do prevent the French from accessing our DNS records.... Let's say the US erects a China-line firewall to prevent all of France from connecting to *ANY* US-based DNS server.

Guess what? Large ISPs in France can just sync to a neighboring country's DNS servers, (which eventually have connectivity to the US root servers). Or Neighboring countries could setup a mirror of a US root server and allow anyone to use it.

Or without government cooperation, somebody in france can just buy a Virtual-Private-Host account located somewhere in the US for $20/month to tunnel and/or replicate a US root server...

The internet was designed to handle link failures... Disconnecting a country (without physically taking our their equipment) is not that easy.

Then say goodbye to .tw

[molo]

Then, thanks to China's influence in the UN, the .tw TLD would disappear from the root servers. Reference similar bullshit about "Taiwan, province of China" and the fact that Taiwan has no UN seat.

What a mess. Screw the UN. (Screw ICANN and Verisign too, but really, screw the UN)

-molo

Re:If it ain't broke....

[rs79]

""The fact that people complain means that it's broken. QED."

Un, no. That people complain means that they THINK it's broken. It's up to said people to explain how and why they think it's broken."

How much time ya got? Pull up a chair.

In a nutshell, in 1996 Jon Postel came up with a plan after months of fiddling with, and paying attention to the mailing lists on the topic and work in progress in this area and it was agreed 500 new tlds were needed as an adjunct to the 300 or so already defined (although a much smaller number were actually deployed back then).

The grey haired guys from the socities that start with "I" and thge Intellectual property goons (with a measure of ITU interference and EU governmental back deals) derailed any chance the communy itself had and drafted a secret deal that led to stronger rights for trademark owners in cyberspace than in meatspace and a system for creating new tlds so constipated it's only shat out a handful absolute winners like .museum and .pro while .web sits, ever waiting in the wings where it has since 1997.

That's how I think it's broken. If you think this is the way identifiers should be coordinated on the TCP/IP network then I would cordially invite you to devolve to Fidonet.

Plus, the USG was supposed to have given ICANN control over the root zone, istead the current administration gets to play net.god and not congress or (the) state (department); BUT - the DoC is not the correct agency to be dealing in the international policy arena! It served american business interests and if you follow the money for the last 10 years you can see that all worked out wuite well.

Imagine if a German or English compnay had .com instead.

why change a winning team or plan?

[stock]

The current outfits got the internet where it is today, so just roll along and double your mileage:) Just don't allow congress pundits to change or introduce laws on Internet issues.

Robert

Re:If it ain't broke....

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's broken.

It was stolen by intellectual property attornies working for primarily three letter multinationals, mostly US based."

True, but you conveniently forgot to note that the enforcement body that pushed ICANN into abiding by those rules was WIPO, which was a UN regulatory body.

iow, the cause of the reason you think it's broken ultimately stemmed from the UN getting its grubby fingers in where it had not before. That international corporations are manipulating it is the EXACT reason why ICANN should not be handed over; such events would occur more commonly and with a greater sense of control.

The fact that those are overwhelmingly US controlled is simply direct correlation, not causal, given most multinational corporations are US centric given economic history and the US's was, until recent memory, the largest potential customer base in the world (and still largest in terms of economic buying power).

iow, if you believe your comments were reflective of the underlying desire for DNS takeover or breakup, the UN undermined ICANN and now uses the results of that undermining action as reason and cause for further breakdown of ICANN. Quite similar to companies (MS) or industries (health care) putting out crap products or services then demanding litigation protection or increased legal protections against a new class of criminals their negligance helped propagate (e.g. virus writers or spyware on Windows).