How The U.S. Government Undermined the Internet

sakshale writes "The Register has an article about U.S. Government backed policy changes that have led ICANN to redelegate top level domains in such a way as to provide 'greater state-controlled censorship on the internet, reduce people's ability to use the internet to communicate freely, and leave expansion of the internet in the hands of the people least capable of doing the job'" More from the article: "At that meeting, consciously and for the first time, ICANN used a US government-provided reason to turn over Kazakhstan's internet ownership to a government owned and run association without requiring consent from the existing owners. The previous owners, KazNIC, had been created from the country's Internet community. ICANN then immediately used that 'precedent' to hand ownership of Iraq's internet over to another government-run body, without accounting for any objections that the existing owners might have."

Comments

Those bastards

[briancnorton]

How dare they obey the laws of other countries!

WTF, if the internet is in another country, the government of that country can do whatever they hell they want with it. That's how international law works. It's called respect for sovereignty.

Re:Those bastards

[Viper Daimao]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didnt we have like 10 articles a few months ago about the UN and EU mad at the US for controlling the internet, and wanted more international involvment? Now we have an article thats mad at the US for giving up control of the internet to other nations?! WTF?

Damned if you do, damned if you don't I guess.

Re:Those bastards

[Morinaga]

Don't take the author's conclusion as fact here. It wasn't the US that gave up top level domain control to those countries, it was ICANN. The causation between the US support of such policies and ICANN granting such actions has no evidence. It's probably also important to note that if the UN had such control over the Internet that they wouldn't hesitate to give those domains to said governments. All of which makes the US controlling the Internet instead of the UN made ICANN give away the TLD threory a bit hard to swallow.

Re:Those bastards

[cold fjord]

Apparently the main outrage comes from ICAAN reassigning control of the little used .iq Iraq domain from two Palestinian immiagrants living in the US, currently in jail after being convicted on a variety of charges resulting from their supporting terrorists organizations, and giving control to the Iraqi government (which just had an electionwith unexpected support). This seemed to have fairly strong support on Slashdot just a few months ago. It was viewed as a positive thing in Iraq.

I'm finding it difficult to get worked up about this.

Re:Those bastards

[h4rm0ny]

The point that the article makes is that the USA's government is turning the assignment of domain name ownership to the perogative of national governments. The author isn't getting worked up about the two Iraqi domain owners, but about the government assuming the power to withdraw a domain from people it doesn't like. Currently, domain ownership (including top level domains) is a commercial affair run by business. The US government has no right to interfere with this save that of being big and pushy.

Given that as time goes on, control of domain names will come to be a vital resource that can make or break people and companies, the author is probably right that national governments should not be able to mess them around with impunity.

Re:Those bastards

[PaxTech]

Result of the US giving control over the .kz domain to the government of Kazakhstan : "The US unilaterally made decisions over internet governance! They want to tell the whole world what to do!"

Result if the US had denied control over the .kz domain to the government of Kazakhstan : "The US refuses to allow a sovereign country to control their own TLD! They want to tell the whole world what to do!"

Re:Those bastards

[rleesBSD]

Hmmmmmm

I am all for sovereignty, because even the worst tyrant will temper his behavior a little if the "good guys" that rule the country next door make him look too much like the tyrant that he is.

But ....

I think the countries that were chosen as a "precedent" were poor examples and were meant to disparage the EU for complaining so much about U.S. control of the internet ...

This is likely why we should have seen this coming from a mile away ... err, I mean kilometer away.

Re:Those bastards

[cold fjord]

The relationship between ICANN and the US Government is more complicated than you suggest.

Given that as time goes on, control of domain names will come to be a vital resource that can make or break people and companies, the author is probably right that national governments should not be able to mess them around with impunity.

But businesses can operate them... with impunity? Without oversight? So, would you say that reassigning control of the Iraq domain from two jailed Palestinian immigrants in the United States was what... arbitrary? Unreasonable? Wouldn't it have made the US government more powerful by taking control of the .iq domain itself instead of handing it over to the Iraqi government? Why didn't it do that?

Now that it has control, the Iraqi government can run its TLD itself, hand it over it a business or committee, or whatever it wants. And now the Iraqi people will have a say, certainly more than they would have had before the reassignment.

Governments are involved because the internet is important to countries, commerce, education, and more. It isn't just a hang-out for geeks, email, and porn.

As to the source of the outrage, here is how the article ends:

And so a method was devised by Washington and ICANN to ensure that the rules could be bent. And so they have been. As a result no one single soul is better off, and governments have been given control over the internet by the backdoor. Now you know.

So, nobody in Iraq was better off because the democratically elected Iraqi government now controls Iraq's domain instead of two jailed men in the United States? Right...

Of course the even-handed manner in the Register article is further shown in this paragraph:

Control of Iraq's domain was far more complicated however. The .iq domain was registered instead to two brothers living in the US. The Elashi brothers and other members of their family at the time were also in US jail awaiting trial for funding terrorists - which in the end amounted to shipping computer parts to Libya and Syria and for which they all received hefty sentences.

Notice how the convictions for providing financial support for Hamas are left out?

As to censorship, you can always get a domain name in another TLD.

Lessons of history - Finland's access to internet

[UR30]

I remember how in the beginning of 1990 Finland had some issues in having faster connections to internet. Some people in the US thought that the Finns were only goint to download software, not contribute to the net. Then came Linux, which was first distributed from the Finnish server at nic.funet.fi, and there was more traffic to the US than to Finland. Afterwards we did have quite fast net connections overseas.

So...

[TrappedByMyself]

ICANN is making sure that TLDs for countries are controlled by the governments of those countries?
And what is wrong with this? Isn't this how it's supposed to be?

Nice use of the word nuclear, by the way. Its good to see that propaganda is alive and well.

Since When Is the Register Become a "News" Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Register has about as much credibility as a news source as this administration has on free expression. These buffoons still think Andrew Orlowski is a journalist.

But setting aside the Bush administration's shoddy record, it is somewhat contradictory that the article first criticizes the US Gov't for maintaining too much Internet control, and then criticizes it for inducing ICANN to forfeit Internet control over to non-US entities.

While I'm not a supporter of this administration, it seems they can't win either way.

make up your minds

[Anonymous Coward]

Can greedy, private corporations be trusted with the Net? Can corrupt, evil governments be trusted with the Net? You guys bitch about ICANN then you bitch about InterNIC. Make up your minds. Someone has to control it - the Internet can't be this free-for-all tech orgy or it will collapse.

Re:Who wants to eat crow?

[naasking]

I know we need DNS today -- links, bookmarks, advertising, all that.

Bookmarks and links are a technology which actually eliminate the need for DNS[1]. If you could pass bookmarks and links around in a user-friendly manner, why would you need a global namespace like DNS? The links could simply be IP addresses, or preferably, a cryptographic identifier [2],[6]. Finding an entity with an introduction occurs via a e-mail, links on the web, etc. Search engines are used for finding an entity without an introduction (like the Yellow pages) [3],[4].

All the technologies to replace DNS exist today. They aren't quite as easy to use as DNS, given that software hasn't been designed to use them in this fashion, but the DNS is an unnecessary, vulnerable, centralized system, even today.

The technologies I've pointed out further solve the phishing problem, enable secure introduction, and decentralized secure computation.

[1] http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/petnames/IntroPetNa mes.html (Petnames are a sort-of local DNS directory)
[2] http://yurl.net/ (a YURL redirectory is pretty much like DNS, except that anyone can set one up)
[3] http://www.eros-os.org/pipermail/cap-talk/2005-Feb ruary/002891.html
[4] http://www.eros-os.org/pipermail/cap-talk/2005-Feb ruary/003079.html
[5] http://petname.mozdev.org/

Re:Here is the evidence for you

[K-boy]

Oops. I actually meant this letter: http://www.iana.org/cctld/af/razeeq-letter-13aug02 .pdf.

Although I think the first letter is suspicious enough in itself.

Kieren

Re:Bigger picture

[DaveV1.0]

So, basically, you are using a discussion on a technical matter whose outcome was decided by a non-U.S. body, but whose outcome may have been influenced by a "statement of principle" made by the U.S. months ago, stating the U.S. believed countries should have majority control over their own networks as a stump for your political beliefs and distain for the current U.S. government.

You had no measure, implied or otherwise. I chose mine.

I am a veteran of the U.S. Navy. I was in the first Gulf war. I saw the burning oil fields, the mines, and the Scud missles.

You mention a small subset of the population, yet do not state who they are. Who is this subset? The poor, the military, who? The poor and middle class are implied by the next line, but they are not a small subset of the population.

If you wish to discuss unambiguous results, perhaps we should talk about why the U.S. didn't disarm the populace, as happened after WWII.

If you wish to discuss national purpose and commitment, perhaps we should discuss why those opposed to the President and the war wish to abandon the commitment the U.S. government has to the people of Iraq and Afganistan and these same.

If you wish to discuss competent leadership, perhaps we should discuss why the U.S. should give overbearing weight to the opinion of countries who have lucrative oil contracts with the regime we oppose. Or maybe we should discuss how the leadership of the U.N. allowed kickbacks and bribery. We could discuss how certain quarters claim there was no right to go in to Iraq and depose Hussein, even though he was, and had been, in direct contradiction of the terms of peace set out for the first Gulf War. Or maybe we should talk about people who claim the U.S. didn't give the U.N. weapon inspectors enough time when they had more than 10 years.

I wonder if the reporting on the government were as intense during the cold was as it is now, would you still think things were "more stable". I wonder if it would be possible for a President today to have regular three way sex romps with two secretaries in the white house pool, as JFK did. If that was not known until just recently, what else was not known?

Re:Bigger picture

[cold fjord]

Whatever your politics, you have to admit that the world's perception of the United States and it's government hasn't changed this drastically since World War II.

Opinion of the United States has waxed and waned since WW2. Viet Nam and the deployment of Pershing & cruise missiles in Europe weren't any more popular. If you judge by protests, they were less popular. More Europeans will come to see the light as the Islamists continue attacking Europeans in Europe. It is amazing how quickly that clears the mind.

Even our strongest allies no longer trust our good intentions.

NATO is in Afghanistan.

And today in Iraq:

Coalition forces in Iraq now number fewer than 23,000 from 24 countries, down from about 50,000 from 38 countries in 2003.

I'm not sure that counts as alone and mistrusted.

Most historians agree that the Cuban Missile Crisis would have resulted in the Global Thermonuclear War if Kennedy has listened to LeMay and invaded Cuba. Damn Massachusetts liberals.

The Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs, and then Viet Nam? Imagine if we had a President doing that sort of thing today. Would you be praising him, or cursing him?

I'm looking around, and I don't see a new FDR, JFK, or Eisenhower waiting in the wings.

Collin Powel could have been another Eisenhower, unfortunately, many on the left would find a black moderate Republican president intollerable. JF Kerry would probably have been president if he had been another JF Kennedy. Since he wasn't, Americans elected a Harvard MBA, former fighter pilot, and governor as president. Oddly enough, JF Kennedy is more similar to GWB in terms of foreign and domestic policy than to JF Kerry.

We've now been fighting the War on Terrorism longer than we fought WWII, how do you think the results stack up?

We joined WW2 long after it was in progress. (Almost 4.5 years) We joined this war at the beginning. Consider this to be 1941. We still have at least 4 years to go. We poured enormous resources into WW2. This war is being fought practically on a shoe string budget in comparison. I think we are doing fine.

There is some cause for concern since some Americans are actively working to undermine the war effort. What is especially troubling is that it is over a question of policy with a strong legal basis supporting it, as noted by former Clinton Associate Attorney General John Schmidt, and a long history. Why now? Just to undermine the President?

Interesting Idea

[Weezul]

Here is an interesting idea: Start a new system of DNS & add support to all the open source browsers. But, unlike DNS, don't restrict yourself to blah.blah.com, just allow any string at all, but enclose them in quotes. i.e.

http://imap./"joes butt"."Fuck you mama"/

would be a valid name. You would still respect ICANN's opinion on TLDs without whitespace or funny characters, but you start lessening your own TLDs with whitespace & funny characters.

Jeff