Slashdot Mirror
US Keeps Control of the Internet
Adam Schumacher writes "As a result of a a deal reached late Tuesday, the US and ICANN will maintain control over the Internet's core systems. A new body will be created to provide international oversight, which will, of course, have no binding authority."
The United States built the thing, and it's not asking for control of all the stuff Europe built.
Le français vous intéresse?
...to serve the internet? China?
What other nation of the world could guarantee the free speech implicit to the internet, as sites like slashdot are testament to?
I'm just waiting for all the stories in the American media with headlines such as: "We saved the internet", "Internet kept out of hands of cheese eating surrender monkeys!", etc etc
Seriously, this whole debate was decided by the pressure from big American IT firms and also the furore in the American press about this whole issue. Anyone less well informed than the average geek would think the rest of the world was planning to take the internet, rape it, tie some bricks to its legs and row it over the bridge with the way the press has dealt with this topic.
Another five years till this comes up again.. i'm hoping for a more democratic contest next time.
The US owns the hardware, has all the control, and is expected not to abuse the power. And there's no one that's more powerful that can tell them what to do.
I don't get it.
Some of that content will be wrong, inflamatory, misguided, illegal, and/or offensive, but having that open forum means that a lot of good will show up, too.
antipaucity
Ok, so please make 398 Norwegian crowns payable to my account by the end of every the month for the next five years. Thanks.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
I don't know how to feel about the US keeping control. It's not that I care about the countries involved, but I'm afraid if the control were moved out of the US, where freedom of speech is much more voraciously protected than other countries (like Europe countries), that the PC police will go around and simply stop pointing at domains that some factions making up the international group does not approve of. Probably in the guise of protecting the people or some such.
It may sound paranoid, but the stories of how the unelected EU parliament tries to lord over every mundane aspect of life and of how they tried to widen their scope ever more really gives me second, third, and fourth thoughts about this issue.
I know that how the U.N. might be a more apt analogy in this case, but that just even more shivers down my spine.
I love how the world's diplomats "agreed late Tuesday to leave the United States in charge of the Internet's addressing system...." As if they had a choice. That's the UN for ya....
For a moment I even thought - yeah, politicians are such @$#$%%^ that they can screw up absolutely everything.
But somehow we finished good - until next time.
I think in this situation we have lession, brothers - we (and I don't care about the OS, about software, about what care you drive or what your beliefs on global warming are) should spread the world that INTERNET should not be controled by NO politics. Repeat after, me - NO poltics. It is media - as paper, TV, radio. It is necessary for people. It is no more just sex.com or check out lyrics for that Britney song. It is for job, for communication with other dear ones. It is essental for many to survive (yeah, I am not afraid to say that).
So let's send big message - each one of us - to our "dear" politics - please DON'T F#$% WITH IT. Seriously.
Thanks for your attention.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
World: We want equal partnership in the Internet
USA: No, it's all ours
World: Ok, we want the US to follow UN directives and not invade countries at a whim
USA: No, can't tell me what to do, I'll invade whatever country I want
World: Ok, we want the US to honour free trade agreements, just like you expect us to
USA: No, I'll break free trade agreements whenever it suits me
World: Ok, we want the US to stop polluting our part of the world
USA: No, I don't give a crap about you, I'll shit on your lawn and piss on your door
World: You know, you really are a jerk
USA: Shutup or I'll beat you up
World: ...
The newly formed oversight committee is to say.
Thus far, the US has had a pretty much hands-off approach to running the internet. That's been great, guys. However, the internet is getting larger and larger and more and more important to the economies and to the security of all nations. The potential power that comes from running the internet is getting greater. The day may come when the US government starts to abuse its position here - for instance, how about imposing export tariffs on domain names, or on IP space?
Hence the oversight committee. If, five years down the line, the US has been naughty, then it's time to seriously think about splitting the internet. But if they've continued to behave as they generally have in the past, then all is well. The committee won't have power as such over the running of the internet, but if it isn't kept happy then the next round of negotiations might not go so smoothly.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
The Slashdot crowd really intrigues me. On one hand we're adamantly against operating monopolistic tendencies in one regard (Microsoft with Windows and other software ventures), yet we cheer when another one is formed (US having control over the internet).
If there's a difference in philosphy here then can someone please point it out to me? I can't be the only one befuddled by the difference of opinion between the two issues around here.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Actually, we should ask him, as the inventor of the internet, what he thinks of the whole thing.
This was more an exercise of some countries wanting to exercise content control rather than just technical control. Many people point to the .xxx domain as an example of US interference. I would like to point out that it was a good idea that the .xxx domain got nixed since the very idea promotes censorship. If governments can partition content that it finds objectionable into subdomains, that action aids censorship.
As the majority of people here know, this debate was not about who controls the Internet, but which countries have authority over the body that controls the central DNS servers.
Frankly, I couldn't care one bit where ICANN is based, just so long as politicians bloody stay away from it! If you don't understand it, then it might not be a good idea screw about with it, especially when all of the experts are telling you not to. How hard is this concept to grasp?
To its credit, the US has been quite good about not fucking things up... so far. However, I rather fear that the political fuss over the xxx domain may be the tip of a rather ugly iceburg.
If the other parts of the world want control of it they should have invented it first ;-)
I know how these "internationalists" work. First they'll form this forum or committee or whatever, that has non-binding powers. But once the committee is up and running, they'll never shut it down, and in a decade or so they'll find some excuse to start beating their drums to give it more oversight capability.
Someone needs to put their foot down firmly. While people are free to form whatever little "international internet gossip" knitting circle that they want, the message should be put out that this group will have even less insight to internet governance than the public at large, and all communications from this body will be treated as less than spam.
Do not grant the slightest bit of recognition or credibility to this thing.
Per Merriam-Webster . . . To bind means to constipate...
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
IP allocation by country.
USA: 1.3 billion. UK: 254 million. Japan: 141 million. China: 72 million.
Something is going to have to change here.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Furthermore the parliament cannot propose laws, so it's really not in the position to "lord over mundane aspects of life". Maybe you're thinking of the Council of Ministers or (most probably) the Commission? The commissioners are appointed by the member states, so maybe that's what you were referrring to. Even then:
That's part of the problem. We did listen to everyone else. We believed the French and German intel that also claimed that Saddam had WMDs. The difference was that we acted on the same, shared bad intel.
But the slashdot moderation process creates effective censorship
No it doesn't, you can always adjust your display preferences and read absolutely everything.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I haven't been following the debate much, but this problem with the alphabet is rather annoying for any non-English language. Most latin languages use accents, therefore it's not even a question of "latin" alphabet, but a "us-ascii" limitation.
...). It just sounds stupid, those languages make no sense in the us-ascii alphabet, and often people transliterate in ways which only they understand (well, anyway, from my perspective as a foreigner).
:-)
Another note, is that from personal experience, I really get annoyed from transliterating words of languages using the Cyrillic alphabet (ex: Russian, Bulgarian, Macedonian,
Another issue, is that I have seen some domains advertised using Cyrillic letters, but ".com" at the end. Now that's even more confusing, especially for non-technical people (and the fact that you have to continuously switch your keyboard layout). Imho, the TLD for those countries should also be available in Cyrillic.
Just my 0.02$ -- sure, there will always be spam problems, but this is about connecting people and making sure the Internet is accessible no matter where they are.
Ahead of the summit, rights watchdogs say, both Tunisian and foreign reporters have been harassed and beaten. Reporters Without Borders says its secretary-general, Robert Menard, has been banned from attending.
These people are obviously qualified to run the Internet. Pity they won't get the chance.
Go somewhere random
It wouldn't break anything really... for example if france decided to have their own root, putting all the US domains under .US (which is one scenario) nothing would break really (you might have some trouble with absolute CNAMEs but most such records are relative so wouldn't be affected).
If countries decided to have their own root and didn't actually change the heirarchy at all - merely added to it (a new.net scenario) nothing would break *at all*.
The day may come when the US government starts to abuse its position here - for instance, how about imposing export tariffs on domain names, or on IP space?
Tariffs and censorship are precisely why there is opposition to the UN exerting control over the internet. The nations that compose the UN have demonstrably less support for free exchange of information, and the UN has already made noises about taxing data transfer on the internet to raise money for their own ends. Given that set of facts, I prefer the status quo.
Those of us who live in countries that are heading the same way as the USA are trying to work out some way of avoiding it, and consider that more important than who controls the root DNS servers - if the USA really tries to screw around with that then there will be some incentive to fix it, but at the moment there isn't really.
Those people who live in countries which respect freedom and the rights of the individual (assuming that such a place exists) are keeping very, very quiet about it, in case immigration suddenly becomes overwhelmed.
In Wales we seem to have sensible politicians at the moment (unusual, I know) - my MEP campaigned strongly against software patents. Unfortunately they are subordinate to the idiots in London. Maybe we adopt Jasper Fforde's idea, and become The People's Republic of Wales...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
HAHAHAHAHA!
I like how Germany passed the EU constitution so overwhelmingly through it's parliament while it's people had similiar ambivalence toward it as the French did. I mean, it was not only off by public opinion by a few percent - but the vote of 569 to 23.
I wonder if it went to referendum, how overwhelmingly it would have passed. Or not.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4539393.stm
We can trust our democratically elected officials for nothing. It's not surprising when the vote in most democracies gets reduced to that of the South Park election parody - Douche vs. Turd.
... with this issue is that it seems like there is some sort of systematic slander campaign in the US press to make the UN look bad. This thing has gone so far that now every time when someone mentions anything related to the UN, the most vocal part of the crowd will yell things about food for oil program and how the UN is The Great Evil. I don't know, how common this negative attitude is overall, but it's clear that the age-old attitude against the UN is raising its head again.
It has been interesting to see, how surprisingly many will state that the UN is same as the EU, which it isn't, and how ignorant the general population can sometimes be. (To these people I would recommend to take a quick look to the world history and how things have built up.) All this however is (at least in my opinion) a clear sing of some sort of anti-EU attitude that is growing in the USA and this can turn into something bigger and worse in the future. It looks like that the USA would really like to cut all connections to the outside world and start living in the isolation. This is especially sad, because there seems to be more and more issues nowadays that require international co-operation between countries. So, all this anti-EU and anti-UN crap I have seen lately is doing nothing good to anyone.
Personally, I don't care how is controlling the Internet as long as it is kept free and functional for everyone. Things have been working pretty decently so far, so why to change anything. But what I care is this ignorant mentality, which seems to color news stories related to EU or UN.
Finally, as far as I know, the UN is not a "nation". It doesn't have a nationality. This seems to be a thing that most people tend to forget. Also, I have understood that the UN does not have a single body or single agenda, which it is trying to pursue. The UN was designed to be a democratic organisation with different sub-organisations, which try to improve this world we are living in. Yes, sometimes some individuals might have some selfish motives, but in the general, the UN was meant to be something completely different what American people seems to think.
OK, now I stop this ranting. Sorry if my opinions hurt somebody. And sorry about my bad English. It just pisses me off to see this black and white thinking I've seen lately when reading news and forum postings.
This committee will now start its work and lay down a precedence on how the different countries can cooperate and make international agreements when it comes to how to run the internet effectively. Again, with the blessing of most UN nation as always is important when forming working international law. Of course, much precedence is already made by ICANN, but many countries were not particularly impressed with how ICANN has been run. This committee will make start making suggestions to ICANN how to change its course on certain issues. And in some years down the line, ICANN will again have to justify its existence, and the UN will by then have a working system to take over if this committee does its work properly (and ICANN doesn't).
I guess this can be seen as the first step to get rid of ICANN, or a chance for ICANN to reform. Whatever spin you like to put on it. It is at any rate a good thing that an agreement has been reached.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
Do the US vote who gets to be Secretary of State? Defence? DHS ? Didn't think so.
SecDef has absolutely no power over American citizens or American Armed Forces. He doesn't even have the authority to tell a private in the Army to drive him somewhere. He certainly can't launch nuclear weapons. What he can do is relay the President's orders to the Armed Forces, act as the second voice of approval in a nuclear launch (two-man system), and advise the President on matters relating to defense.
In the American system of Government that's what the cabinet does. It advises the President. The only cabinet member that you could make a case for needing to be an elected official would be the Attorney General. And there would be disadvantages of having him elected as well -- he could be open to political pressure -- which is the reason why we don't elect Federal judges and they have lifetime appointments. Of course having him appointed by the President is a conflict as well (if he needs to investigate the Executive Branch) -- but that's what Special Prosecutors and Grand Juries are for.
Nobody said it was a perfect system but it seems to have worked well enough for the last 200 years :)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The siblings are missing something here. This only makes sense if you abandon the philosophy upon which the internet is built. The founding principle of openness is just as important as the fundamental technology.
How much hubub has been raised around China trying to sensor its part of the internet? Perhaps not enough, but the paradigm you suggest would allow a state such as China to choose not to make any peering agreements and flood the local "intronet" with its own propaganda. It would become just another state run news outlet.
useless sig advice - Read Nabokov.
And the UN was acting on the same intelligence. There is a big misconception in the US that the UN hasn't been punishing Saddam. The truth is that it has been doing that for years, ever since the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, through economic sanctions, in a bid to limit Saddam's power, and save hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. Most of the world wasn't against the US in punishing Saddam. They were against the use of force without convincing evidence. Turns out they were right.
I don't really understand why the American public looks down at the UN. Probably because they don't understand its role. Over the years it has done a great job in many places. It's not perfect, of course, but it's always ready to take on the dirty jobs that no one else wants.
That's pretty much what you have now, except that traffic between networks is pretty much equal in both directions. You saw what unequal traffic levels do with the Level 3/Cogent thing last month. Things like that would only become more common if you had countries getting in pissing contests; it's a lot harder to change countries than change Tier 1 providers.
And the obligatory "Yay free markets!".
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
how the unelected EU parliament tries to lord over every mundane aspect of life
Yeah, I'm sure glad the American government doesn't try to do stuff like that.
- is what I'd say if I hadn't read a newspaper in 50 years and was completely ignorant of things like "digital rights management" or "the USA PATRIOT Act".
It must be nice to live in a cave... on Mars... with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears.
That's because the US didn't really suffer all that much because of the nazis. Yes, they lost quite a few soldiers; but Europe was reduced to smoking ruins and half of it was occupied by Soviet empire. Germany still hasn't recovered completely; the eastern half still suffers the results of the communistic dictatorship era, a direct result of nazism.
But put on a T-shirt saying "Osama rules !", go stand next to where the World Trade Center used to be, and start giving Al-Qaida recruitment leaflets to everyone passing by. Let's see how long you'll walk free.
Once you've been arrested for being a potential terrorist, you can reflect on how Al-Qaida is to Americans pretty much what Nazi Party is to Europe, with about 10 000 -fold difference in deaths caused by them - in material destruction the difference is simply uncomparable; Al-Qaida destroyed two scyscrapers, World War II reduced most major cities of Europe to rubble.
The point here is that Americans, at least in this respect, are no more or less free than Europeans; the USA simply has a different boogeyman.
Actually, didn't you revolve so that you wouldn't need to pay taxes to England ? And now you pay them to Washington instead. The more things change ;)...
A nonexistent state can not curtail anyones freedoms, so this is hardly surprising.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The USA government may love to regulate things into bureacratic ineffiency, but they still don't do it as badly as the rest of the world! Here's to a (somewhat) free Internet!
Once you've been arrested for being a potential terrorist
Actually, merely wearing a t-shirt that says "Osama Rules" would not get you arrested for being a terrorist. It certainly wouldn't get you convicted for anything. And before you throw out the name Jose Padilla or anybody like that, I'd like to point out that there's a huge difference between wearing a t-shirt (arguably free speech) and planning a dirty bomb attack. Not that I wouldn't agree with you that he is being unfairly held without trial.
Wearing such a t-shirt at ground zero would likely paint a giant bull's-eye on your back and get the shit beaten out of you. In fact wearing such a t-shirt anywhere in New York City would probably ensure that you got an ass-whooping. But that's just fine -- free speech doesn't mean you get to escape the consequences of your speech. It only means that you get to say it in the first place. And I rather suspect if I wore a Nazi armband to certain places in Europe that I would get the shit beaten out of me too :)
Passing out the recruitment leaflets could be another matter. That would probably be considered supporting a terrorist organization. But you were passing out leaflets telling Al Qaida's side of the story (infidels in the Holy Land, Israel, etc, etc) you wouldn't be breaking any laws. Think I can pass out leaflets in some European countries telling Hitler's side of the story?
The point here is that Americans, at least in this respect, are no more or less free than Europeans; the USA simply has a different boogeyman.
I disagree. I think I've made my point in the paragraphs above :)
Actually, didn't you revolve so that you wouldn't need to pay taxes to England ? And now you pay them to Washington instead. The more things change ;)...
Actually it wasn't the fact that we were being taxed by the UK. It was the fact that we were being taxed by them and no representation in Parliment. Leading to the rallying cry of "No Taxation without Representation".
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
USA: Do as we say.
UN: Sorry, the rest of the world doesn't agree.
USA: You must do as we say.
UN: But really, the rest of the world doesn't agree.
USA: You are running out of time. You must do what we say, and do it now.
UN: You are irritating the rest of the world. They want something else. You should respect that.
USA: The fact that you don't take your responsibility to do as we say, proves you irrelevant because of your disrespect for freedom and democracy.
UN: Still, the vast majority is against your proposal.
USA, puts fingers in ears: DOASWESAYDOASWESAYDOASWESAYDOASWESAY NOW YOU FORCED US TO START BOMBING TO DEFEND THE FREE WORLD. THE FREE WORLD, THE FREE WORLD, THE FREEEEEEEEEEEE WORLD. WE ARE THE FREEEEEEEE WORLD, NOONE IS FREE ONLY WE ARE FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE, THE FREEEEEEE WORLD, THE FREEEEEEE WORLD [...]
Trust me, I work for the government.
Usually I'm not for the U.S. having special treatment (equal treatment under law), but I'll make an exception for the Internet. It works, it aint broke, it's internationally very libre and practically gratis. Everyone is also free to explore variations, fixes, improvements, etc. but this should be tested by techies and not bureaucrats.
I'm sure we'll eventually truly integrate Unicode in URIs but since ASCII and the Latin alphabet are at the heart of the C-like languages, *NIX, and Microsoft, it will never go away in computers. Unless of course we have to convert to alien computer technology.
This discussion should clear the different issues. For me, there is at least two things: DN allocation and DN requests. The first one required some kind of centralization, to avoid dupes. Each country is free to manage its own name space. Some international organizations could also get its own, like .eu today. We could have .un for example (i don't know if .un is already attributed). IMHO, generic domains, being international, should be moved to the UN or to the .us domain, to make it clear for every one. .com.us or .com.un), no central root servers
OTOH, the second one should not be centralized. There is no reason for having root servers. Replicating the DNS database is something quite easy so we should have root servers at least in each country (plus some additional ones). Additionaly every one should be allowed to use the root servers they want. Shutting down the us servers would have no effect on users. Massive changes would be detected and stopped. Limited changes would still be possible but at soon they're detected, people would be able to switch to a more 'reliable' root server.
Summary: no generic domain (.com ->
Million Dollar Screenshot
Most Americans don't like the idea of a huge corrupt overpowered beauracracy that seems to do nothing
At least we don't like corrupt FOREIGN beauracracies... Homegrown ones are just fine.
Make no mistake, there were huge issues at stake here. Claiming that who has authority in the system is irrelevant is a case of cynical naivete. Cynical, because you're assuming that any system will be equally corrupt. Naive, because you underestimate how bad it can really get.
Last time I checked I had the right to be a neo-Nazi and try to convert others to my viewpoint in the United States. Last time I checked I still had the right to wear religious clothing to public school in the United States.
Last time I checked you were not allowed to burn the US Flag, though.
I can burn any flag I like.
My point is that Europe and US are largely similarly free. The difference is in the details.
People left Europe and came over to North America for religious freedom even before there was a United States of America.
That is true. Likewise, some people left the US to come to Europe during the McCarthy era for their political freedoms. Both Europe and the US have moved on since.
There are many people in Guantanamo Bay who have been a victim of essentially exactly what you are claiming will not happen. They have been held for several years without trial and have been subject to torture. So your talk about free speech is just bullshit.
Nice troll, and good results so far in the modding anyway... The idea is that no one country should have "control over the internet" in ways that don't include oversight by others. "Transparency" is the usual jargon. Nobody, including us, has had it.
I've corresponded with some friends in Ireland and France over this one, and it's not like they haven't ever read the word "Carnivore" in a news item, you know? You'd like my friends to trust us because you wave a flag and think rosy thoughts about how we're founded on principles of liberty, or something? While all three branches of the federal government are in the hands of a party whose authoritarian leanings couldn't be more clear?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I always love to hear that argument. I love it because it broadens the definition of "free speech" so much as to render it utterly meaningless. By that definition, ALL human beings in all times, all places, and under all regimes had "free speech." Hell even Jews in Nazi Germany could "say it in the first place." Of course, they would be carted away to "worker camps" about 5 minutes after they said it, but hey, you can't escape the consequences of your speech.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I completely disagree with your concept that being beaten to death does not take away your freedom of speech. In fact I can't think of a worse punishment than that for something you might say. Hell, if freedom of speech means getting a chance to say what you want to say then you always have that.
If you fear for your safety simply because of what you're saying or what you want to say, then sorry my friend, but you don't have freedom of speech on that topic.
Wearing a t-shirt that says "Osama rocks!" can be seen as exactly the same thing. After all you are supporting Osama by doing that.
Only if you agree first that being killed is not a way to restrict your freedom of speech. I think otherwise because I definately would refrain from saying those things if my life was at risk.
diegoT
Last time I checked you were not allowed to burn the US Flag, though.
You didn't check very well, did you?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
while the rest of the world screams bloody murder at their stupid governments because they can't reach many of the sites they use daily. (Slashot being an example of this.)
You wrongly assume that the "rest of the world" eagerly read things on USA web sites.
First, as you undoubtly know, english is not spoken by everyone. Actually, Chinese and Hindi would be a better target language.
Second, there is many similar sites in many countries, which you probably do not know because you'd preferrably read american web sites first.
Third, what "sites" are used "daily" by, say the average people outside of USA? EBay, Amazon, Google, Yahoo, definitly not slashdot. All those big players have portals in other countries. So aside from technical documentation, research papers, american web sites are not so important to the "rest of the world". And you can bet the aformentionned sites or people would make sure the InternetS would both be reachable from where they are. That's how the internet started: exchanging research papers, results and such.
So, no, our american overlords are not so omnipotent that the rest of the world cannot live without them.
Chinese and Hindi might reach a lot of people, but they'd all be clustered in one place. English can reach people in all the continents, not just one.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The thing that bugs me most about this is where was Europe's computer industry while ours was building Apple ][s and IBM PCs? Where was European and Japanese companies when we were developing DOS, CPM, Windows, MacOS, Xerox PARC? Why is Japan running computers with Microsoft's OS? Where the hell was Sony and Mitsubishi when all of this was being developed? Were they even trying to create their own technologies?
It kind of reminds me of the airliner thing. France and England got pissed that all the airliners were coming from the US, McDonnell Douglass and Boeing, and so decided to create their own aerospace company from scratch. But where was the British and French aerospace industry? Surely they have fighters built there, right? Why couldn't they build airliners?
Basically, if these countries had been half as progressive as the US was, they'd *already have* control of the Internet because they would have been there setting up DNS with us in the first place. It just bothers me. If you miss the boat, you can't swim out to catch it.
Comment of the year
Where was European and Japanese companies when we were developing DOS, CPM, Windows, MacOS, Xerox PARC?
I wouldn't be much of a Slashdotter if I didn't point out that you forgot Unix. Which of course was created by Bell Labs. An American outfit :)
Basically, if these countries had been half as progressive as the US was, they'd *already have* control of the Internet because they would have been there setting up DNS with us in the first place. It just bothers me. If you miss the boat, you can't swim out to catch it.
You don't have much of a reason to be progressive/innovative when you have a 35 hour workweek and can't get fired or laid off.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The main goal for UN is to formulate and shape international law, and in this day and age with the rapid rise in international trade and travel, the UN has become more and more important. As I point out, international law is not formulated in some parliament in a days vote, but takes long time to establish and set into practice. But when some principles of international law have become practice, it is also a long process to change it again. This is why the UN process is so powerful and so important for all countries to play a part in. The way to play a part is of course by having good diplomates and good allies. (The lack of diplomatic abilities is one area where the Bush team will hurt US interests on the longest time scale, for these reasons).
Take as an example the International Criminal Court which now starting to make indicements. Its history goes back to the court cases against people from the third reich in 1946 (and also international courts before), and it has been a very slow process to make it into a permanent court in charge of cases of genocide etc. But this slow process is what you get when you need to build a system which most of the UN nations will respect and abide by. You might think that ICC will not matter to you, but the fact is that international law and court verdicts by this court will have direct influence on the laws in the country you live in. For instance, there are several verdicts in the supreme court in the US where the ruling is based on what the judges see as international law. The ICC took a long time to make, but its rulings will also have a long lasting effect.
It is naive to think that the slow pace of the UN system is a sign of weakness. It is just a sign of the process, not of a bureacracy that is not effect.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---