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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."
I, for one, welcome our concern-addressing, no-binding-power-having overlords.
HA HA!!</nelson>
burn, baby, burn... karma inferno!
The IRS is the one organization that you don't want to fuck with. Remember, these are the guys who took down Al Capone.
World: We want to control the internet.
USA: No.
World: Come on!
USA: No.
World: Will you at least think about it?
USA: No.
World: If you don't we will be forced to make our own DNS systems.
USA: OK.
World: But that will break the internet.
USA: OK
World: But that would be bad.
USA: Then leave it alone.
World: OK. But we're making a committee.
USA: That's cute.
This
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?
AHH.. so the UN should be happy then!!
they can waste tons of money on useless and ineffective programs, treaties and resolutions, and atleast know that they "feel" better doing it, even if it doesn't do anything anyway.
Congrats for the UN..
US still does all the work.. and they get to sit around like the useless body they are.
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
Oh dear, conspiracy theories are gonna go for the illuminati stories again.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I suppose they mean Latin alphabet, yet Urdu and Arabic are both written in the Arabic alphabet (possibly with a few Persian-style letters more?). Anyway, I look forward to my first spam with a Chinese address. I can already see the scams: PCs without Chinese fonts that trick users into clicking on a blank link...
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Now if the rest of the world is smart, they'll get to work on setting up plan B servers to bring out on a moment's notice and distributing the info to their big ISPs in case the US suddenly goes nuts. Which has the added bonus of giving the US incentive not to go nuts, and we can all feel better about it.
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....
How much power does ICANN really have, though? Right now everybody listens to them, but I see no reason why people couldn't just set up their own organizations that performed the same functions, and use these instead. Of course, if they all moved in different directions, there would be big chaos, but as long as they all agreed with ICANN, the Internet would continue to work, right? And then, if ICANN ever took decisions that many disagreed with, people could just rely on these alternatives and bypass ICANN, right?
I know that such a movement already exists in the DNS world (see, for example, OpenNIC).
So, while I resent that one organization - worse, a corporation - has so much power over the Internet, I don't think it's as big a problem as it could be.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
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!
...perhaps you meant the commission?
What is this "it" that _you_ paid for?
Lets face it, most of the internet that exists was paid for by private companies with their own money, replenished by re-selling use of "it".
I've owned and run my own ISP which puts me a legup over you and I'm not so vain as to say that any of "it" belongs to me apart from the bit of "it" that is inside my house. It is an INTER-net.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
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.
Private Sector will probably retain control of the Internet.
From the TFA:
And it hasn't even been ratified....this is just a preliminary decision.
Have a read of this the register article about the Pakistani Ambassador who made this possible.
My pics.
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
That's a really good solution.
.xxx. (Or something else that tries to inject one country's culture into DNS, which is absolutely unacceptable -- banning any domain names containing "nazi" would be another one that I suspect a few countries might try.)
.com wildcard problem? Where *all* .com addresses always resolved...just much of the time, to a Verisign-run machine with a webserver with ads? If there is a second DNS infrastructure that can be transferred to in an instant, that would put pressure on Verisign not to abuse the DNS system.
While I think that the US has done a pretty good job so far of staying hands-off, and I don't think that many countries would do as good a job, it's not impossible that in the future they'll start to abuse their position and do things like
Second, it's great leverage against Verisign.
Remember the
Finally, IIRC, we use the ISO country codes for CCTLDs. That's probably the thing that most countries want to have input on, since it allows them to legitimize claims to country status in the public's eyes. As long as ISO codes are used, the DNS world isn't making any huge political statements -- it shoves the political burden off to ISO (who probably doesn't want that, but it produces separation of red tape and techies, which is a good thing).
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Actually, we should ask him, as the inventor of the internet, what he thinks of the whole thing.
If you really think that Europe is for some reason "less free" than the US, than I would suggest you take a look at the http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15333"> Worldwide Press Freedom Index, which lists it in a solid 44th place on the index of freedom of the press, which is mainly what you are talking about when you discuss speech on the Internet, since it is a form of press.
The US has really dipped a lot in this lately (20 places in the past year).
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.
I think the US should put the top level domain servers under international control the day after all the Middle East countries put their oil under international control. It's the same sort of idea, since the whole world has a vested interest in oil just like it does the Internet. Why shouldn't EVERYONE have a say in how it's used?
If the other parts of the world want control of it they should have invented it first ;-)
Kim Jong Il: Hans Brix? Oh no! Oh, herro. Great to see you again, Hans!
Hans Blix: Mr. Il, I was supposed to be allowed to inspect your palace today, but your guards won't let me enter certain areas.
Kim Jong Il: Hans, Hans, Hans! We've been frew this a dozen times. I don't have any weapons of mass destwuction, OK Hans?
Hans Blix: Then let me look around, so I can ease the UN's collective mind. I'm sorry, but the UN must be firm with you. Let me in, or else.
Kim Jong Il: Or else what?
Hans Blix: Or else we will be very angry with you... and we will write you a letter, telling you how angry we are.
Kim Jong Il: OK, Hans. I'll show you. Stand to your reft.
Hans Blix: [Moves to the left]
Kim Jong Il: A rittle more.
Hans Blix: [Moves to the left again]
Kim Jong Il: Good.
[Opens up trap, Hans falls in]
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.
with blackjack and hookers.. ..or just with it's own trusted DNS Root servers..
I suspect IP space will be the problem.
There are some four billion possible IP numbers. Of these, some 2.4 billion have been allocated. Of those, some 1.3 billion are allocated to organisations in the United States.
The EU has a little less than twice the population of the United States. India and China each have over four times the population of the United States.
Can you see the upcoming problem, people?
Either we reform the system so that IP space is more evenly allocated, or we go to IPv6. Four billion is not going to be enough once China and India really start getting wired. Once IP space gets scarce it gets valuable, and that's when the US government will think of export tariffs on IP space, and other governments will think about splitting the internet.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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.
As a UKian, I'm quite pleased that the UN has decided it cannot stick its nose in where it doesn't belong. I think the USians have every right to maintain control of ICANN. It's their gosh-darned system, ain't it (largely)? They made it - they run it (quite well, all things considered) - I think a modicum of gratitude and respect is merited for this. (Please don't mod me down - I'm actually being very honest!)
It's a good job the USA has a patent for the internet or someone else could make it cheaper and better
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
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.
It'll be great! Kinda of like the UN!
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Canada could host Internet!
We are free in Canada!
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
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
UN: "Please stop breaking into the DNS servers." ...months later...
...months later...
Hacker: "Ok."
UN: "You have broken in again, please cease and desist or we will be forced to write a resolution."
Hacker: "Ok"
UN: "This is the third time you have broken in; please see the updated resolution stating our resolve to enforce the previous resolution. We are going to send you a nasty letter, you know."
Hacker: "Why don't you secure the server?"
UN: "Resolution UN1231-123-122.1 to upgrade security has passed. We are ok."
Hacker: "No you're not, the server is still open."
UN: "But we have a resolution."
Hacker: "um...."
UN: "Don't push us or we'll send in the men in blue."
Hacker: "The Smurfs?"
UN: "Mind you, our security force is top-notch, they have cans of mace and can insult your mother."
Hacker: "right..."
Hacker: "Do you want some Pay-Pal dollars?"
... 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.
Fair point.
Do you pay your HTTP royalties to Europe on a per-request basis, or have you gone for an annual fee basis?
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Damned US imperialists!
Funny how that flamebaiting garbage get's an insightful mod. Think a similar post that had said "Take that you whining pieces of Eurotrash" would have gotten modded up? Fat chance in hell.
And yes, this post of mine is completely offtopic and will probably get modded down. Oh well! Hope the champ who modded up the parent pays for it in M2.
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.
So does this mean that the Internet isn't going to fall apart now, like the U.N. was predicting?
Or more precisely, the Internet isn't going to break like the UN threatened to do. Of course, such a move would have carried little (if any) weight. US netizens would continue about thier business, mostly oblivious to the loss of the rest of the world (except for email, that would be a pain) 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.)
That's assuming, of course, that the member countries actually had any way of shutting things down. They have control over their domains, but the machines are still handled by ICANN. Attempting to sieze those machines would have meant police or military escalation. And even then, they still couldn't break much. They would then need every DNS server to redirect to a new root server controlled by the UN. (Since it's doubtful that the UN could gain access to the primary root servers.) They could redirect the IP address, but then things would get even dicer for them, and increase the yelling and screaming from the populace.
In the end the UN did the right thing. They stopped throwing a hissy fit and let sleeping dogs lie in exchange for a token method of voicing their opinions on DNS allocation. Did it buy them much in actual authority? No. However, they now have a central method for disseminating any complaints to the public. (i.e. Rueters: "UNCANN, released a press release today [criticizing/congratulating] the latest moves by ICANN.")
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...This is one Brit who is more than happy that the US is still in charge. They built it, they run it well and the EU would only mire it in bureaucracy.
Radio on your iPod
For all the people on this post saying "The UN" or "The World" wants this, that is not true.
I'm an Australian, living in London. I find the idea of the UN running this very scary. An indepedent american body is far preferable.
The UN have a very chequered history. Seldom do they stand up for the Big Issues. Take as an example the decision to withdraw UN troops from Sinai in 1967 on the wishes of Assad. Take whatever view of the subsequent war you want, but the UN caved in to the demand to remove peacekeepers.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
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".
Dear US,
Please find enclosed an invoice for the following developments:
payment terms: 28 days.
Warm regards,
Europe
Awwww you poor baby communists (China), socialists (in Canada and the EU), and thug dictators (in Africa and the Middle East). Looks like you're going to have to find some other way to censor, oppress, propagandize, and brain wash your people. So sorry for you.
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!
Stop! or I'll yell Stop again!
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Al Gore. Because according to "Dubya" he invented it!
I don't really understand why the American public looks down at the UN.
...in a bid to limit Saddam's power, and save hundreds of thousands of innocent lives
Most Americans don't like the idea of a huge corrupt overpowered beauracracy that seems to do nothing but hold month long conferences at 5 star hotels to discuss the idea of having a conference to set the guidelines for a meeting.
The UN is a cesspool of ineptitude and it, at the very least, needs an enema of biblical proportions.
Or maybe we find it curious as to why countries like Libya should be appointed to head the UN Human Rights commission? Or why the only UN employee that has been fired for the Oil for Food scandal was just rehired so he could receive his full retirement benefits! That poor corrupt bastard was going to have to get a new job but now he can retire and live comfortably with money paid by you and me.
Or how the wonderful former head of the U.N. oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, had a mysterious $160,000 deposit into one of his accounts. When asked where it came from, he stated his aunt had just given it to him as a gift. But before they could ask the aunt in question, she miraculously fell down an elevator shaft. I mean, for fucks sake, that's a scene straight out of a f'en movie.
They were against the use of force without convincing evidence. Turns out they were right.
About the WMDs? Perhaps, yes.
Over the years it has done a great job in many places.
Where and when? Korea? That war is still going on and you've got the worlds most insane dictator running half of it. Sending strongly worded letters don't count, nor does trying to pass resolutions condemning Israel.
Yes, they tried to, and failed. Saddam made billions during that time period in kickbacks and illegal oil deals. The only thing the sanctions hurt were the Iraqi people.
It's not perfect, of course, but it's always ready to take on the dirty jobs that no one else wants.
What would those be exactly? I think you're confusing the UN with NATO and/or the US.
You're absolutely wrong. The first thing we learned in Army basic training was our chain of command. Guess who was right up there in it? A certain guy named "Rumsfeld"... wonder who he could be!
The capper is that they ship people off to get tortured for them in client states under a program of 'extraordinary rendition' because both International law and US law says that torture is illegal ... but they still really want to do it, anyway. Their own Senate tries to curb that nasty behaviour but the President threatens to veto their attempt and the Vice President works around the clock to get exemptions for the CIA. I guess there is too much of an investment in those gulags to give up without a fight.
The Project for the New American Century, indeed! I just wonder what kind of century it will be ...
I'll tolerate anything except intolerance.
The Secretary of Defense has all the power the President has delegated to him. He is in the chain of command directly below the Commander-in-Chief.
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
These are not single hosts ... here for example is f.root-servers.net :
AKL1 Auckland, New Zealand IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
AMS1 Amsterdam, The Netherlands IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
BCN1 Barcelona, Spain IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
BNE1 Brisbane, Australia IPv4 Local Node
CDG1 Paris, France IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
CGK1 Jakarta, Indonesia IPv4 Local Node
DXB1 Dubai, UAE IPv4 Local Node
GRU1 São Paulo, Brazil IPv4 Local Node
HKG1 Hong Kong, China IPv4 Local Node
JNB1 Johannesburg, South Africa IPv4 Local Node
KIX1 Osaka, Japan IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
LAX1 Los Angeles, CA, USA IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
LCY1 London, UK IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
LIS1 Lisbon, Portugal IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
LGA1 New York, NY, USA IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
MAA1 Chennai, India IPv4 Local Node
MAD1 Madrid, Spain IPv4 Local Node
MTY1 Monterrey, Mexico IPv4 Local Node
MUC1 Munich, Germany IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
NBO1 Nairobi, Kenya IPv4 Local Node
PAO1 Palo Alto, CA, USA IPv4 and IPv6 Global Node
PEK1 Beijing, China IPv4 Local Node
PRG1 Prague, Czech Republic IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
ROM1 Rome, Italy IPv4 Local Node
SEL1 Seoul, Korea IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
SFO2 San Francisco, CA, USA IPv4 and IPv6 Global Node
SIN1 Singapore IPv4 Local Node
SJC1 San Jose, CA, USA IPv4 Local Node
SVO1 Moscow, Russia IPv4 Local Node
TLV1 Tel Aviv, Israel IPv4 Local Node
TPE1 Taipei, Taiwan IPv4 Local Node
YOW1 Ottawa, ON, Canada IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
YYZ1 Toronto, ON, Canada IPv4 Local Node
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.
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.
In 1998 I was in the office of the CTO of the company than ran the A-root. At the time they were not getting along with ICANN. They wanted to sell domain names in any tld they could and didn't see anybody else being able to handle running a 30+ M name com zone file. Other than that they didn't care what happens.
.com nameservers are then you are vulnerbale to games like this. Administration of a net of network numbers so we can find computers on the network is not supposed to leak into the political layers of the TCP/IP stack. Mercifully there's a software patch for this.
The goverment, IBM and ICANN were exerting pressure on them to sign an agreement with ICANN which placed them under ICANN's aegis. Up to this point they had nothing to do with them.
It was feared NSI would "go rouge" and I guess it's ok to say now that there were root servers at NSI that did not carry just the legacy root. Only a handfull of people knew about these but they were a beautiful thing to run dig or dnsq against.
If there was no accord reached with ICANN and NSI was effectivly out of the business it built then one scanario was they'd just keep going and ignore the USG and ICANN and expand the root zone. They owned the IP's the root servers ran on in more than enough cases.
I asked what would happen if they did this before a fallout with ICANN occurred and was told the a.root would be declared a national security resource and the Army would simply come in and run it so don't even think that. Since this CTO used to be in Army intel. I figured he had a good understanding of this. IBM coerced NSI to sign with ICANN (at the famous secret meeting nobody can talk about because of an IBM NDA) and this stuff was all dropped very quickly.
But the lesson is there: the DNS is whatever the US wants it to be, period.
If you rely on somebody else to tell you where the
Primary the root instead http://cr.yp.to/dnsroot.html
Need Mercedes parts ?
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
While there are a few sorts of orders that are reserved to the President, the SecDef can, in fact, order the military to just about anything, without having to so much as notify the President after the fact. If you doubt this, I can send you about a million DoD Instructions signed by... not even Rumsfeld. Subcabinet officials sign them pretty routinely.
I'm a commander in the Naval Reserve, and hence, a lot lower on the totem pole than any of the bigwigs mentioned here. And yet, when I was assigned to a ship (not so many years ago), I had weapons release authority - meaning I could shoot at any targets I felt were a threat to the ship. Didn't even have to ask the captain.
The idea that no one but the President can order the military to do anything is ridiculous. He'd never sleep. The SecDef is part of the National Command Authority, and can (and does) direct the military to do things all the time.
Sean
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.
If what I said could be construed as "hate speach" then what does it make what you said?
It's not hate speech per say. It's the typical "I hate America so I'm going to run my mouth without any figures to back it up" bullshit that I've come to expect from too many people on the Internet.
What is it with so many Americans and their over-sensitivity and complete inability to take critiscm or tolerate people who think differently? It's almost like insecurity. Pretty pathetic from the most powerful nation on the planet.
And there you go again. Given a chance to defend your arguments about half of the deaths in the 20th century being caused by the United States you resort to bashing us. I have no problem tolerating people who think differently then I do. I do have a serious problem with people who run their mouths about something without anything to back it up.
And it's funny you should accuse Americans of insecurity when the French are so insecure about their culture that they tried to rename "e-mail" because they didn't want an English word in their language. Care to venture a guess as to how many words in American English came from other languages and cultures?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.