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The Letter That Won US Internet Control
K-boy writes "Pushing my own scoop, but I think it's a valuable piece of Net history, I have come into possession of the vital letter sent by Condoleezza Rice to the EU over Internet governance. And posted it on the Web.
The letter is pretty stern but you should also read it bearing in mind that letters of this type are not only very rare but they are always written in very, very soft diplomatic language. This was not.
The result of the letter was that the EU dropped its plan for an inter-governmental oversight body for the Internet and we have ended up with the status quo (ICANN, US government control).
The letter was never meant for publication."
Surely, at most, the control can only be over the root NS. If it's anything else, the UK citizens can always instruct their DNS cache to only respond on *.uk... Problems may occour for mirror sites of course.
Why UNIX?
I don't see any hard comments in the letter. It's just like another soft-diplomatic letter to me. Is the submitter trying to get up a flamewar? no, not on /.
Way to go.
The alarming thing, though, I guess, is that this is considered "strong language" in diplomatic circles. It strikes me as direct, but quite tactful.
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
>> We believe that ICANN is dedicated to achieving broad representation of global Internet communities and to developing policy through consensus-based processes.
I am all for the ICANN doing its business. Heck, I would hate to have some big government manage the Internet. HOWEVER, I also do wish that the current administration would keep its grubby paws off the Internet as well! I am referring to the hoopla regarding the xxx domains!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I think that the poster just hyped it. Further, I notice that the letter was co-signed by Condi. I'd bet anything that she was just asked if it would be okay for her name to go along with Guiterrez's, but that the letter actually originated in his office. The poster focused on the Rice angle because that seems more exciting than a letter from the Secretary of Commerce. Hype, hype, hype.
What are the chances that Condoleezza Rice actually has any clue what the "authoritative root zone file" is?
I get the feeling that the head honchos at ICANN basically ran out of decent arguments for maintaining control ("erm, we just like the power buzz!") and just went for big political guns. I mean really, like there's a good excuse for keeping control other than potential political blackmail.
The Net was created by the US government, a whole bunch of US, Asian and Europeans built the hardware running it and a British guy invented the Web. Doesn't look like multicultural involvement has made it terribly unstable. I think China's Great Firewall is an excellent example of what happens when one government has too much control.
Call me cynical...
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
ICANN is not a US government organization. It just happens to be on US soil (just like the UN).
.xxx tld, that the US made the decision. They just happened to agree that its unenforcable and stupid.
ICANN encourages government representation, which includes any country. They even have meetings all across the world, there's no excuse for these concerned countries not to participate.
People seem to think that because ICANN agreed with the US on the
http://illhostit.com/ - Webhosting
Maybe because we invented the damn thing!
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
That's not entirely true. It could quite well be non-classified but privileged information, and so passing it on (and, certainly, publishing it) would be a violation of the Official Secrets Act.
James F.
The letter appears plausible. However, I could find nothing to indicate how the poster came into possession of the letter. Under those circumstancs, I am not ready to accept it as genuine.
Let's assume this letter is legitimate and that the Register is right. The language is not strong per se, but the controversial points are 1)directed against the EU position, 2)specifically unilateral (no "coalition" babble) and 3)the EU position is criticized explicitly.
All three of these are typically mediated in diplomacy through indirection. You don't want to trap yourself, because words are your best tool (unless you are willing to make physical threats or change associations). It's convention that most of diplomacy is filler content designed to continue a relationship along the status quo. Redefining a relationship or asserting a new position are all actions with finality. That is usually reserved for when such actions are necessary.
For example, you would normally speak directly against a general position and not directly mention your opponent's position as their position. Neither would you speak from your position as solely your position (the U.S., Iran, North Korea, and China are exceptions) - you would express a general opinion developed from some previous consensus, like a document, or some rhetorical one. Finally, you would not crticize the opponents position, but suggest considerations and alternatives. Labeling an opponent's position with negative terminology and then contrasting that with your positive position is generally viewed as "strong."
I like the letter. Rice has a point.
.xxx fiasco has shown ICANN is very much under the thumb of the US government and can't seem to make decisions (especially decisions that are contrary to the ideology of the admininistration or its Christian fundamentalist base) without an 'a-OK' from them. Thats wrong.
However, the administration should follow what they preach. As the recent
This is really not a valid argument. First of all, you can't possibly FORCE smut vendors to use .xxx -- first, it's impossible, and second, it goes against the nature of the Internet. Secondly, please remember that the First Amendment you refer to is an AMERICAN constitutional amendment. It isn't right to bind the Internet -- undeniably an international entity now -- by American laws. Even if you were, I very much doubt that free speech would allow a blanket ban on the .xxx domain.
My question is this: granted that the .xxx domain may not solve too many problems, is there any reason to BAN it?? I'm sure a lot of websites would WANT it, and you could price it at a much higher premium than .com or .net. There are no technical issues -- the only true objection I can see is puritanism. Remember, we aren't talking about FORCING people to move over to .xxx -- such enforced censorship is ineffective and largely a waste of time. It's more likely that .xxx will become more of a "status symbol" among porn vendors and actually sell.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
This has never been done before, and never will be done. This is just a flimsy excuse generated by the UN which wants to tax and censor the internet.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
So why did they grant ".biz", ".info" etc.? And don't tell me they don't grant ".xxx" because they actually learned somthing.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Anything from the Register that can't be collaborated should be considered FABRICATED
Then you havn't exprienced a real racist country in the western world. Like a country where labour unionist stop foreigners from going to work and screams "GO HOME! GO HOME!".
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
The ".EU" situation is more complex. The two letters domains are supposed to be defined in a table managed by the UN. There are good reasons for that: Jon Postel did not want to be in the business to define what was or was nt a country. Think for example of Palestine, Macedonia or East Timor: neighboring nations threaten or stage war to prevent their recognition. Leaving it to the UN provides a good layer of isolation. The EU proponents were asking for an exemption, and the processing of that exemption was stalled for several years. AFAIK, it is finally resolved, and the domain is supposed to start operation this month.
The question of control over national domains is however a very good one. ICANN has been attempting for many years to impose policies on national domains. They tried to impose conflict resolution procedures aligned with the interests of trade mark owners. They tried to levy management fees. This is, IMHO, an unnecessary irritant.
Of course, the WSIS proponents like China or Saudi Arabia know full well that the US cannot in practice "disconnect a country from the Internet." A government could instruct its ISP to stop connecting to some parts of the Internet, but the ones actually doing that are precisely the promoters of "governance by the UN" -- a World Summit on Internet Censorship?
HOWEVER, what does concern me is growing evidence of U.S. puritanism in the decision process, like the blocking of the .xxx domain on what seems like shallow premises
It's not so much the domain name that got blocked, per se (as other posters have said, .biz and .info were no problem) but the idea of forcing "adult content providers" *cough* pornographers *cough* to use the .xxx domain and the .xxx domain only. It would make censorship easy, but how the heck would you force about 70% of the internet to move onto one domain? It got kaboshed not because of puritanism but practicality.
DATABASE WOW WOW
She's black, but why wasn't it mentioned how tall she was, or how much she weigh?
What does skin color have to do with anything exactly?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
you guys say that, but i doubt you could point out a single incident where a citizen was restrained from protesting the government.
Stepped right into the cut.
May the Maths Be with you!
Why all the fuss about the DNS root zone when the real problem with US control of the Internet is that US educational institutions like MIT and Stanford have more IPv4 address space than all of China? Fair IP allocation is what we need!
IPv6 is what we need. Look at the glass as half full, those US institution are encourage/accelerating the switch to IPv6. The hoarding IPv4 perspective is shortsighted. Reallocation does not solve the problem, it postpones the problem a little bit. Getting over IPv4 and moving to IPv6, the soon the better, those institutions are doing us all a favor. It would be interesting to know if encouraging IPv6 has factored into their internal discussions.
I don't think there's ANY country where nobody has ever in any way been punished or discouraged from exercising their free speech. Governments like control, and don't like rabble-rousers. I think it's safe to say that throughout the United States, Europe, and most of the Western world you will not be locked up simply because you are expressing beliefs that dissent from the majority. But in all of these countries, there are examples of free speech being curtailed in some way. That's life. It's always been that way, and will always be that way.
I must disagree. I am no diplomat and have no experience in international affairs. I have been around the corporate world for awhile though, and the language used here would be considered pretty strong there. The letter says that the key to the success of the internet is the lack of government control. It then directly criticizes the EU's position saying that it would exert government control. If this was an internal issue to a company it would be like saying "hey what you are proposing will be disastorous for us." That is a very strong assertion. Even in the corporate world you would only see an examination of the opposing position, without even directly saying who is supporting this position. You would then just see some statements about how your position holds some advantages over the opposing position. Thus no direct criticism of the opposing position and correlation betwen the opposing position and the people proposing it.
Others have noted grammatical errors highly unlikely in a diplomatic letter.
Even without those errors - Where is the proof that this is real?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Since when are human rights respected in Guantanamo?
Either could be transcription errors; it was probably on paper when received. Possibly also if the letter was drafted in London they may use British spelling, at least for communication with the British govt. Diplomats are supposed ot be sensitive to nuances like that; though that level of cultural sensitivity seems unlikely with the current administration.
i would much rather have the united states in control than some beurocratic UN organization that's been proven it has members that can be bought.
granted, the US can be bought, too
Priceless.
You can't take the sky from me...
Jack Straw is British, so you'd expect someone writing to him to use the British spelling of his title. It's an extension of the same principle that an American English "user" might write to the President of France in French.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
bullshit -- they said the same things about .info and .biz, and yet they popped up magically on the Internet. my point is on discerning the difference between introducing .info and .biz, and introducing .xxx. there is no technical difference.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
The issue was not control of the WWW. It was control of DNS, which is a mechanism of the Internet at large. Yes, DNS affects the WWW. It also affects IRC, FTP, and every other type of service that is accessed via the Internet.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Why should a letter like this even be privileged information after it has been issued?
This administration has gone crazy for secrecy, classifying more documents than any previous administartion. We shouldn't roll over and accept that a letter like this should be anything but completely public.
I like to think of governments as particularly firmly established and powerful insurance companies.
Basically, a government collects insurance premiums (taxes), pays its employees and executives (senior government officials) with both money and perks, enacts programs to help prevent the need to pay out on claims (e.g. law enforcement, safety departments, education to hopefully provide employable skills, etc.), and pays out to victims of certain types of misfortune (either directly in the form of monetary aid or with other support paid for with tax money.)
As you point out, though, the difference between a government and, say Lloyd's of London or Allstate or whoever is that governments can compel the purchase of their products with armed force. (Don't believe me? Try refusing to pay your taxes...)
The only real differences between different governments are how quickly the guns come out when they want to offer a new "product" ("Democratic" governments are kind of like public companies in that the shareholders often get to vote on new programs [though all kinds of shenanigans can be performed by government authorities to sway the vote or work around a vote that doesn't go the way they want] first, and are then asked more or less politely to participate a few times before the guns come out. Despotic governments break out the guns as part of the planning of the new "product"), what kinds of situations they cover (e.g. degree of health-care provided, how much education is subsidized, etc) and how well they cover them, and what proportion of the premiums gets skimmed off to pay for the salaries, bonuses, and perks of the government officials and employees.
Or so I like to think.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
What? The history of the Internet's growth was based on private-sector investment? Intergovernmental structure would be a burden? As everybody on Slashdot knows, this is a complete rewrite of history. From the late 1960s and before even that, up until the mid-1990s when NSFnet began handing things over to corporate America, the Internet was funded by, invested in, and overseen by the US government. There was absolutely no private-sector investment, just government funds sent to the private sector. The government paid for decades of R&D to create the Internet, and oversaw its creation. Now she is trying to claim that the Internet was created by private sector investment, and that government oversight would just cramp what she says the private-sector investment created. And of course, neither she nor Bush has any intentions of removing government oversight from the Internet. What a joke!
Out of curosity, since when would an American English user use the British English spelling?
As evidenced by the fact that it's capitalized, it's an official title. You don't "correct" the spelling of someone's title. That's be like "correcting" the spelling of their name.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I'm worried that I'm feeding a troll here, but I'll take your post at face value.
It's not bad, but there's plenty that could be improved. Ask yourself why:
- the original protocols haven't evolved to keep up with use, resulting in many pseudo-standards and a lot of edge cases that don't work
- spam is rendering things like e-mail and Usenet less usable by the day
- identity theft and large scale fraud are being perpetrated on a wide scale, thanks largely to inherently difficult-to-secure protocols
- similar protocols allow DDoS attacks that can cripple an organisation or even cause it to fail, on the whim of some 14-year-old Russian cracker
- dubious web sites are distributing at best accidentally unhelpful and at worst deliberately damaging information on subjects regulated in the real world, such as medicine, law or finances
- there is little international co-operation on anything but the most serious crimes; they might get the occasional child porn sicko, but minor yet still hurtful defamation takes place all the time, because with effective anonymity comes the freedom to say whatever you like and damn the consequences
- the much-cited architectural robustness in the face of disruption isn't really that robust at all
- the US government does meddle pretty directly with the development of the systems, even though the rest of us don't necessarily share its supporters' Christian right beliefs
and so the list goes on.Little of this is directly related to the technical issue at hand, of course, but I think there are plenty of reasons the Internet as it's evolved isn't as good as it could be if we were making the decisions today with what we now know.
The problem isn't pride, it's that the US government has demonstrated repeatedly that it doesn't give a shit about the international community's views on issues as fundamental as going to war or the health of the planet, and it's willing to make any sacrifices it deems necessary to further its own business and economic interests. This is why the EU, amongst others, would be more than happy for the US government not to have direct control over any aspect of a fundamental technology on which they rely. It's the same reason we're developing an independent GPS-style satellite network, and collaborating on EU-wide defence agreements and technology, and making up our own minds on going to war for oil, and countless other things.
Oh, for goodness' sake, quit with the "we created it" crap already. Sure, the US paid the majority (but by no means all) of the very early money several decades ago, and did a lot (but by no means all) of the very early research. The US is not responsible for all of the work even going back that far, and it certainly isn't responsible for many of the advances that have given the Internet most of the success it's had over the past decade or so.
However, the fact that you apparently don't know that (or choose to ignore/disbelieve it) is an excellent example of why the rest of us don't want you guys in charge any more.
IIRC, there was nothing in the original proposals that specified that the UN would be involved in running the Internet instead of ICANN (though as screwed up organisations go, ICANN are one of the few to really give the UN a run for their money). The important point was simply that it would be something under multilateral control, not a talking shop for the US government.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The US doesn't really "control" the Internet; instead, other nations choose to use the same conventions as the US--for now. If the US screws up on governance, the rest of the world can create its own system. Furthermore, the transition to such a system could be done fairly quickly and with backwards compatibility.
It is my belief that the UN is hopelessly corrupt and that the UN exists to create programs that move money through itself so that money can be stolen, all while claiming to be an international body whose mandate is to better the world.
I challenge you to list anything of consequence the UN has accomplished. And if you can, I can list genocides and wars the UN has done nothing about when its charter is "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind" or how many blatantly repressive governments sit on its human rights council when its charter is "to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small" ? The UN has no credibility. I know things have been bad here in the US lately. But for as bad as it is, the UN is far far worse, and I dont want those jackasses screwing up the internet.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
> Hmm, call me naive, but I would think that "free speech" is an all-or-nothing concept: It's either available everywhere, universally and without restriction, or it simply isn't "free speech."
So what's your position on the whole "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre issue?
> If there are restrictions on the software that only allow it to be "free" in certain circumstances...
You mean restrictions like "You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty?" Absolute freedom from restrictions means that any for-profit company could do whatever they wanted with any open-source software and no one could say the first thing about it.
> My personal opinion (for what it's worth) is that the US pushes the concept of "free speech" a hell of a lot more then it actually practices it.
And my personal opinion is that if the government keeps you from saying something, it's almost 99% certain that you can walk two blocks and say it all you want. In all the examples given, not once were people kept from expressing their opinions unless they did it while lying on the sidewalk and obstructing traffic.
Shall we agree to respectfully disagree?
> Why should a letter like this even be privileged information
> after it has been issued?
>
> This administration has gone crazy for secrecy, classifying
> more documents than any previous administartion.
If you think that the Clinton administration was any less
"secret" in their dealings, then you are very naive.