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.

it makes sense...

[AxemRed]

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

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

[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.

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?

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...

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.

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.