China Prepares to Launch Alternate Internet

Netfree writes "The Chinese government has announced plans to launch an alternate Internet root system with new Chinese character domains for dot-com and dot-net. This may mean that Chinese Internet users will no longer rely on ICANN, the U.S.-backed domain name administrator, and, as one commentator notes, could be the beginning of the end of the globally interoperable Internet."

Comments

A long time coming...

[TripMaster Monkey]

Given the intransigence the U.S. has displayed in the past regarding control of TLDs, this move isn't all that surprising. It is somewhat surprising, however, that China has chosen .com and .net as two of their TLDs, virtually guaranteeing operability problems with the rest of the Internet. While this manufactured difficulty is obviously by design, the motive remains unclear. Do the Chinese wish to:

• create their own internet, by design incompatible with the rest of the world,
  
• cause as much trouble as possible for the 'other' internet, or
  
• a combination of the two?

One thing is for sure...network administrators will have an interesting time trying to reconcile the conflicting TLDs .com and .net. Perhaps the fact that the Chinese TLDs are in the Chinese character set can be used to some effect, but I'm not certain.

Wha I am certain of is this: when I'm in charge, we'll have none of this 'multiple language' crap. Everyone will speak Esperanto, or else.

Re:A long time coming...

[MonkeyOfRage]

Given the intransigence the U.S. has displayed in the past regarding control of TLDs, this move isn't all that surprising.

In principle, there isn't anything wrong with countries controlling their own TLD's. Why not? Shouldn't they have control over them? Why should they be in the hands of a private organization under the thumb of the U.S. Congress? But when I consider the likely outcomes of doing this in practice, it starts to look a little different.

Right now anyone in the world can lay out $10 and own a domain name. Anyone anywhere in the world. What happens when, say, Yemen comes into control of .ye? This is a country that routinely shuts down newspapers and jails editors that print things the ruling regime doesn't like. I don't think for an instant that they wouldn't use TLD control to do the same on the internet, and probably with even greater regularity. After all, it's easier to tap a few keys than to send police to take over a building.

There are a number of countries where I don't think you'd ever notice a difference if control over their TLD's were passed to them. There are quite a few more where you would. How many places do you imagine the process of domain aquisition would be only open to people and businesses friendly to the ruling regime? Is that a desirable scenario? I ask because in a lot of places, it's a likely one; is that a worthwhile trade for getting your TLD's under the authority of someone besides ICANN?

Wouldn't it be great if you needed to be government licenced to own a domain name? How about if the pathway to domain ownership was strewn with requisite bribes, as government functions are in many countries? Honestly, it doesn't sound so hot to me, but it will be a new reality in a number of countries. I don't think there's even a question of it. Wouldn't people in Zimbabwe be happy to wind up paying $500 or more for what costs $10 today for the satisfaction of knowing that their name wasn't provided through the auspices of ICANN? Probably not. But at least the intransigent U.S. will have finally capitulated. Victory at last!

Providing yet another outlet for institutionalized corruption is the least problem, though. The bigger problem is that, while many countries have liberal societies where the free exchange of ideas is practically an unquestioned fact of life, there are even more where the free exchange of ideas is considered a menace by the government - China's just the biggest, nowhere near the only. Iran, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and France have also all taken an active interest in establishing a controlling stake in internet governance. These are all regimes known to kill information that they don't want public - you don't believe that they wouldn't welcome gleefully the opportunity to have direct control over their own TLD's, do you? You don't wonder for the span of a heartbeat why they would, right?

I maintain that uncontrolled information flow is your only hope of knowing the world beyond the reach of your own five senses. Trying to know reality by anything less than an uncontrolled flow makes you an extension of the biases of whoever controls your information. Internalize that; regimes like North Korea know it very well. TLD control provides a means of information control to people who'd very much like to control it, and I don't want them to. Uncontrollable information is the best thing to happen to the world in the last 50 years.

Oh, but it's ICANN! The horror.

And what, exactly, are the disadvantages of keeping the current arrangement? What might any given country improve by having control over their TLD? What has been detrimental about ICANN's oversignt? I've heard lots of peevish griping about TLD control, but I'm still waiting for a reasonable answer to one of these questions. Congress hasn't once used their authority to interfere with ICANN, and TLD's continue to be freely and cheaply available to everyone in

it makes sense...

[AxemRed]

Controlling the backbones will make the "internet" a lot easier for them to censor.

Or....

[tdeuces]

"As one commentator notes, could be the beginning of the end of the globally interoperable Internet".

Or it could mean the rest of the world will continue to be interoperable while China becomes even more isolated.

I guess

[Orclover]

I guess google's bending over backwards to censor the web searching just wasnt good enough, maybe some of the citizens figured out how to use lycos. Nothing they can do about that but recreate the internet in thier own immage. But without porn...will it really be the internet?

Re:I guess

[rovingeyes]

But without porn...will it really be the internet?

I take it that you are not in to Chinese porn.

Very simple

[Brunellus]

The idea is user-friendliness and connectivity, but on the terms of the Chinese Communist Party

Chinese-encoded TLDs will make it easier for an increasingly-wired Chinese people to use the internet. It will also make it much easier for the Party to control exactly what happens on Chinese-language domains.

In an earlier age, Mao said that the Party must be in control of the gun. Now, the Party must be in control of the network. The effect is the same.

sigh

[eobanb]

I can't help but view this as the fault of the US. Think about it. ICANN, a US organisation, has done little to cater to the wishes of China, even though they're a large (and growing) presence on the internet. I may not agree with some of the views of the Chinese government, but if they want Chinese TLDs, they should have them.

ICANN needs to get off their high horse immediately.

Re:sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't help but view this as the fault of the US. Think about it. ICANN, a US organisation, has done little to cater to the wishes of China, even though they're a large (and growing) presence on the internet.

China's wishes are irrelevant. Like most countries, ICANN gave control of .cn to the Chinese government to manage as they see fit. I have no clue if China is doing a good job of managing .cn. But it's up to them.

I may not agree with some of the views of the Chinese government, but if they want Chinese TLDs, they should have them.

There are workarounds like punycode to register domain names with non-ascii characters. They work pretty well. If a Chinese company wants to register a .com name, no one is stopping them. The rules for .com registration, ownership & transfer are pretty clear. Pay around $8 per year and there you go.

As a sovereign nation, China can do as they wish within their borders. But if you expect anyone outside China to accept China's DNS servers as authoritative for .com (or .net, .us, .ca, .uk, etc.), I think you're wrong.

The only real complaint China has is how many IPv4 addresses they have.

Re:sigh

[IAmTheDave]

I can't help but view this as the fault of the US. Think about it.

Not at all. China wants full and complete control of the internet and how it gives information to it's users. If ICANN had made chinese-character-encoded TLDs available, the Chinese government would have chosen a different method of control.

Make no mistake - this is an isolationary tactic, taking back control of what I'm sure the Chinese government sees as rightfully theirs. If ICANN does not exist in China and is not beholden to Chinese authority, then China does not have enough control and will shun ICANN, no matter how "cooperative" they may be.

Re:sigh

[Kaa]

I can't help but view this as the fault of the US

LOL. You're funny.

It's pretty clear the Chinese government wants its own "internet" which it can control and which it can keep separate from the rest of the world. It's a control freaks' power trip.

I may not agree with some of the views of the Chinese government, but if they want Chinese TLDs, they should have them.

What do you think the .cn TLD is?

Re:sigh

[posterlogo]

I honestly did think the ICANN's position was a little inflexible, until I saw this. I have to say, with ICANN in the hands of an international body, all it would do is draw even more countries into arguments with each other. Atleast this way, it's every country vs. ICANN, so to speak. Imagine if there were an international body, that China could lobby heavily on, to interfere with the internet interests of Taiwan? Does anyone think that couldn't possibly happen. I think ICANN as a US subsidiary actually would protect the interests of weaker and less developed nations. That is not really the debate here, I think, however. It seems when dealing with the Chinese government's stance on the internet, there is little ICANN or anyone else could have done to satisfy the communist (read: totalitarian) government. This should not surprise anyone, and the "blame" should not be placed on ICANN or the US. This is simply another way of controlling the population, limiting their access to the outside world, and at worst, a trick to infringe on the trademarks and copyrights of western businesses (try typing microsoft.com from a browser in china when this is all said and done with).

I feel a great disturbance in the force...

[voice_of_all_reason]

As if millions of MMORPG gold farmers cried out in terror, and were suddenly silences...

Bad for China's economy

[G4from128k]

This move puts Chinese companies at a competitive disadvantage -- how can they connect to foreign suppliers, distributors, and customers? Will western companies continue to outsource to China if the country puts up too many obstacles to free communication?

Re:Bad for China's economy

[glenrm]

Will western companies continue to outsource to China if the country puts up too many obstacles to free communication?
Not if it changes the economic to a great degree. Not only that but what if I can't find your company in the first place, let us say that I search Google for custom manufacturing and I only find places in Japan, the US, and India, but not China. Big problem. The government in China must ride the Tiger, if they stop it will attack them...

Re:A long time coming...Not that problem

[Nom du Keyboard]

It is somewhat surprising, however, that China has chosen .com and .net as two of their TLDs, virtually guaranteeing operability problems with the rest of the Internet.

Should not be a problem as long as their names include even one Chinese character, since I'm not aware that ICANN is even capable of assigning such names otherwise. At least I have yet to hear about any such names.

Strikes me that what they're trying to do is even further cut themselves off from undesired Western influences. They may well succeed -- for a while.

no more spam?

[aphaenogaster]

This could be great, if china closes itself off from the rest of the net, my firewalls will give an audible sigh of relief. Now only if eastern europe would follow suit.

Re:no more spam?

[CynicalGuy]

That's what I was thinking too. Good riddance!. If anyone from the Chinese government is reading this, can you PLEASE take Korea with you? My mail server will thank you!

Of course not

[Sycraft-fu]

All root systems are totally optional. You don't need to use DNS at all to use the Internet, and if you do use DNS, you are free to use your own that is tied to no roots and assign domains to IPs as you see fit. The ICANN roots are simply the defacto standard. It's a system that nearly everyone uses to provide DNS that's accessable to everyone else. There are other root services, OpenNIC for example, they just aren't used all that much.

This is all much ado about nothing, as it always has been with these DNS debates. Other countries are free to create a non-ICANN root system and that system can be compatible or not compatible. If they choose, they can register only non-ICANN TLDs, and provide access to ICANN TLDs by mirroring ICANN's root file. They can also choose to provide alternate, incompatible registrations of ICANN TLDs.

Wether any of this has any effect depends on if any DNS servers add their roots to the list of roots they check. If most DNS servers never check them, they'll be irrelivant. If most do, they'll be relivant.

Within the borders of China, of course, the government can mandidate people use it, but on a global scale it's up to the people who write DNS servers, and ultimately individual sysamdins. If you admin a DNS server, you determine which roots, if any, it chooses to use.

Re:Of course not

[ErikZ]

You don't need to use DNS at all to use the Internet, and if you do use DNS, you are free to use your own that is tied to no roots and assign domains to IPs as you see fit.

And in other news, The Chinese government has banned the use of foriegn root servers. Violators may be enrolled in the the state "Organ Donor" farm program.

DNS != Internet, and DNS hierarchy

[billstewart]

This doesn't end the globally interoperable Internet - as long as IP packets go end-to-end, it's still just fine. Depending on exactly how they've implemented this, it may be cleanly interoperable with the rest of DNS (except that the Global Roots have to get around to including China's extra CC_TLDs), or it may be interoperable for anybody using a compatible Chinese character-set handler client (which shouldn't be a big problem, since the reason for Chinese-Character CCTLDs is to include Chinese-character content). On the other hand, it could be implemented in a way that horribly breaks any 7-bit-ASCII DNS client. It shouldn't do that - DNS is hierarchical, so the worst it should do is botch lookups to the section because the DNS server's responding in Unicode and the client doesn't understand them.

Issue of Control

[Nkwe]

If China wanted to control what their citizens could see and do on the Internet they could 1) set up their own DNS, and 2) Prohibit DNS traffic from leaving or entering the country. While technically savvy folks could navigate by solely IP or make partnerships with someone outside of China to get DNS information over non-standard ports, restricting use of DNS would be a highly effective control.

Screw you guys

[Daetrin]

I'm going to go build my own internet! With blackjack! And hookers!

In fact, forget the internet!

Re:Bad for China's economy-western-centric view

[UnanimousCoward]

...how can they connect to foreign suppliers, distributors, and customers?

You should be asking the question the other way around:

How can foreign suppliers, distributors, and customers connect to them?

Clearly, China has made a calculated decision that these parties need China more than China needs them, and that steps will be taken to accommodate the problem...

Communism is not communism

[Zerbs]

The problem is that the term communism is used to justify a totalitarian government. True communist philosophy didn't envision an all powerfull government controlling every aspect of its people's lives. Instead of the working class rising up to overthrow the oppressive aristocracy, a new aristocracy came along and said "oh by the way, you're going to be communist now", and slapped the word People's in front of everything.

Re:Very simple: China is simply going to win...

[Pii]

Maybe I'm missing something... I thought I had a pretty firm grasp on how DNS works.

If China creates it's own ROOT servers, which contain forwarding information for the .{chinese-character-for-com} namespace, and another forwarder for .com (in english) namespace, aren't we talking about two distinct and seperate namespaces?

How does this break anything? It doesn't as far as I'm concerned. Someone tell me different, and if I get a bunch of doublespeak, I'll just call Cricket. (I'm dead serious.)

Perhaps more importantly, if the Chinese decided to sever their connectivity to the outside world (and with the Great Firewall, they've had that ability all along), how does this hurt the rest of the world?

China is a manufacturer, and an exporter. Insulating themselves from the global buyers hurts them, not us. We'll just have to get our paper drink umbrellas (and other cheaply made consumable crap) from someplace else. Wal-mart will be harmed a little while they forge new relationships with Taiwan, the Phillipines, Korea, and Maylasia... Barely a blip on the radar.

Annoying implementation

[billstewart]

(Summary of the English Version from original article.)

Creating their own Chinese-character TLDs for .cn and creating Chinese-character version of .mil.cn are fine, and creating Chinese-character versions of .com.cn etc. would be fine. Creating a Chinese-character version of .com is annoying, because it's in more direct conflict, and risks causing trouble to anybody with an internationalized DNS resolver.

I think you all misunderstood something

[amadeoh]

If you can read Chinese, the original article suggests there will still be Latin-based URIs, and they will be used in tandem with the new, Chinese-based URIs. I think it should be interpreted as an alternative provided for those who don't understand English.

The original article (in Chinese) is here: http://news.xinhuanet.com/ec/2006-02/25/content_42 25973.htm

Did anyone actually read the first link?

[code65536]

I read both links, and I have to say that it's very cryptic. I think something got lost in the translation, but here is what *I* think they were saying...

They are creating new TLDs to supplement .com and .net. The new TLDs will be composed of Chinese characters, so instead of blah.com, you'll have blah.[X][X] where [X] represents a Chinese character. If this is all that they are doing--creating new non-ASCII TLDs--then there wouldn't be much in the way of conflict with the existing .com and .net structure.

But as I said, the language is confusing at best and I'm not sure if this is what they are really intending.

Re:Worst. Idea. Ever.

[B2382F29]

And on the other hand you have a lot of not so computer-literate chinese who enter chinese characters via a kind of touchpad and don't know latin characters. How the fuck are they supposed to insert [$LATIN_CHARACTER] in a URL? Not everything in the world revolves around some silly 26 character set.

Re:manual DNS

[pe1chl]

Maybe you should ask yourself how many American people have set a different DNS server, or have installed an alternative application for a common task (say, a webbrowser, a wordprocessor) against "the mainstream".

Sure, some geeks may do this. But (certainly after some time) the vast majority of users just has the system configured "as it is supposed to be" (or as it comes by default).

Re:Very simple: China is simply going to win...

[glesga_kiss]

I think the point is that if China create their own DNS, they will filter other DNS requests at The Great Firewall. This will likely be outgoing only; I'm sure other countries will be able to query the Chinese system.

There is one huge advantage in this for them; The Great Firewall turns from being a blacklist to a whitelist. Instead of blocking sites based on reports or automatic scanning of content, allowed sites would have to be enabled on the Chinese DNS system. Their DNS would know to delegate to the global DNS system for those domains, meaning transparent connectivity to the remainder of the internet. Where permitted.

The rest of the world could mess with this by replacing web links with IPs. However that isn't going to happen unless DNS gets really broken. BUT....in world politics, showing face is important. Depending on a foreign power for DNS isn't appealing to most countries, especially when the current maintainer has been acting a little differently lately. Europe has made requests to be more involved in the management of the system, largely for the same reason.

I often defend China on the intarwebs. It's an amazing culture going back 3,000 years. Unfortunately some people like Mao made some really bad calls with regard to the betterment of their population. This is only recent history. The Chinese are a strong nation and it is generally agreed upon that as a nation they are going to become increasingly a larger player in world affairs. Like the US of old, they are very insular. This is changing as a result of the world changing via technologies such as the internet and increasing world trade and commericialisation. China has special economic zones that are essentially capitalist. They cannot censor the internet, it's simply not possible to a) monitor it all or b) stay ahead of disident techniques. This war will have many casualties in terms of students getting locked up and the like, but I honestly do believe that the Chinese people of 2016 will be very different to the current ones. The whole totalatarism thing is played out over there. It's our turn now.

Re:Very simple: China is simply going to win...

[Elixon]

"We'll just have to get our paper drink umbrellas (and other cheaply made consumable crap) from someplace else. Wal-mart will be harmed a little while they forge new relationships with Taiwan, the Philippines, Korea, and Malaysia..."

I'm afraid that your paper drink umbrellas may cost twice as much because Taiwan and Philippines will double the prices because of the increased demand... I'm afraid that you will need to pay twice as much for your Nike shoes, ThinkPad, mobile phone, t-shirts, pants, slippers, watches... and I think that even your new car "made in USA" will be twice as expensive because all the technology (and other inputs) used for the car production costs twice as much... and... and... ("twice as much" is just exaggeration ;-)

Maybe it will end up that Americans will find out that it is cheaper to produce paper drink umbrellas (and other cheaply made consumable crap) in USA and you will have a chance to be employed (if yes, you will be the other lucky half that have a job in USA).

My advice is that you should maybe buy extra paper umbrellas ASAP and have a nice evening with your friends while discussing the "globalization" phenomena and interconnection of global economy where nobody can stay aside and simply watch while having paper drink umbrellas...

Believe me, I wish you the wealth for the rest of your life... because it will be a sign that the global economy is stable - for me and for you. The Black Thursday crash of the Exchange was reflected in Europe a years later... Believe me, you will personally feel any global instability or tension just in hours or days when it happens - this is the drawback of the communication speed...

Sure, this will (hopefully) never happen. Let's hope that this is a sci-fi. I didn't study the economy but I'm sure the opinion that there is always other "cheap labor" waiting to work for less money and that USA can stay safely aside by simply switching the trade routes from China to Malaysia, it is really... hmm, not wise.

I'm not fighting against USA or China; I simply think that we are on the same boat. If China goes down so the USA and Europe... But I'm sure, that this time it is not the case :-) I think that this conflict will be "solved" to satisfy all and it will teach us that China, USA and anybody else have the right to preserve maximum sovereignty while keeping the global stability because the boat becoming to be too small and unstable.

Re:Imperialism

[Analogue Kid]

There is no technological reason
Chinese (and other languages) cannot be used in URLs, including TLDs. Unfortuantely, ICANN doesn't really see offering the internet to non-Latin character set languages as important. ICANN only gave China, .cn. The US on the other hand has .com, .net, .org, .mil, .edu, .gov, etc...

Another problem is that ICANN gave the majority of the IPV4 addresses to the US. Huge countries such as China were left with nearly nothing. When given only one TLD, allotted only a small fraction of the IP addresses that the US gets, and being forced to write URLs in a foreign language, it's only natural that China would design a more rational replacement.

Regardless of what language was used for ARPANET, there is no good reason not to support all major languages now.