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Will the U.S. Lose Control of the Internet?
MattSparkes writes "The first UN-sponsored Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting is taking place next week in Athens, which aims to 'contribute to a better understanding of how the internet can be used to its full potential.' It is likely that several countries will object to the US monopoly on Internet governance, as they did at the last meeting, where the US cited fears of a loss of freedom of speech as the reason for retaining power. Other topics to be discussed include online security, access for non-English users and spam."
Do you care?
So long as there is a McDonalds and KFC in every city of the world, what does it matter? You are 0wn3d
With things in the US going the way they are, I think the freedom of speech argument is moot. This seems to be more about maintaining control then preserving freedom. I'm guessing there will be tons of arguments on both sides, but in the end we will pressure them into leaving control right where it is now. .xxx domain.
Personally I believe that the internet would be better served by the release of control, and I can't site any better evidence for this then the whole debate over the
DeviantArt Page
NSFWthat several countries will whine and whine and whine about not having Internet infrastructure and intead of investing thier own resources in building out their own infrastructure will guilt and bludgeon the rest of the world into paying for it.
At least the U.N. would try to keep things fair for everyone.
If the U.S. keeps control, eventually the corporatocracy will kill off everything.
Why break it ?
I don't see the US stopping China censoring their Internet access or even controlling the names in the .cn-domain.
The US sometimes try to enforce their laws outside the US, but this is definitively not an internet phenomena.
A
the freedom of speech will gain a lot.
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
They blocked the .xxx domain, which is unfortunate, but it was part of a stupid concept to begin with.
Just imagine what China, Iran, etc. would do with control?
The US started the internet and everyone joined our network. So it's totally understandable if the US retains "control". The only reason I would actually be unhappy with an international commission or department taking control is that it would just mean another level of bureaucracy to cut through whenever you wanted to do something.
Mod me up, mod me down, do your worst you modding clown.
Will the U.S. lose control of the Internet? One can hope.
I don't know where this insane notion came from that the U.S. is capable of governing the Internet any better than the world community at large. In case you haven't been watching the news, we can barely govern ourselves right now.
The U.S. has a fine history of coming up with a really nifty idea and developing it to the point that it's useful, and then totally screwing it up to the point that someone else has to come in dominate the market in that particular field. Witness the auto industry. Or computer chip manufacturing. Or cell phones. Or videogames. Or more recently, programming.
Also, if I were another country, I'd be mad as hell that certain parts of my industry are completely and utterly under the control of another country. Witness what's been going on with Spamhaus. Also, check out how our own leaders react when someone like, oh I don't know, Sadam Hussein starts threatening to impact the availability of our oil resources.
So go ahead and mod me a troll or baiter of the flame if you have to, but it doesn't change that it's only a matter of time before the rest of the world stands up to the big bad U.S. and says, "Enough." And frankly, speaking as an American, even I think that that's a good thing.
You can't have power and control without responsibility. The USA has demonstrated,
in so many ways, that it lacks the adult responsibility to govern itself never mind
the planets communication resources.
In reality all the *talk* about the USA controlling the net is puff and bluster, they
have no such control. But, the day the USA is officially told "Hands Off!" won't be a
day too soon, if only because it will be humbling to the arrogant USA and put it back
in its place.
Online security, access for non-English users and spam? Yeah, right. Other topics to be discussed include spying on the US, countering United Nations efforts, hacking for military secrets, laundering money, limiting access to information (such as news, especially from the West), and whitewashing history ("June 4th Incident, 1989? Never heard of it!".)
I'am sure the recent Spamhaus legal debacle will bring to light the threat that US governance to the Internet has brought to everyone who runs a
Freedom of Speech is a red herring as when someone can have their domain taken away (or the threat of) just because a US court says so is chilling and should be a wake up call to all businesses who trade outside the US
It's too bad others might have a problem with it, but the US invented the Internet, and successfully guided its development without any problems for years. There's no rational reason for continuing to do business as usual, since nobody has a better alternative.
I, for one, do not want the UN taking over. It's already an asylum being run by the inmates.
Bottom line, the only argument for taking away control from the US because they don't like that we have the ball, and nothing else.
The internet was paid for by my tax dollars, and giving it away would be dumber than giving away the Panama Canal. If France wants to run the internet then they can build their own. I don't know how fast a transport protocol based on wine and cheese will do in reality though.
this is one of those great subjects which will likely spiral downwards into "the US hijacked by evil corporate interests and only talks about freedom of speech etc so it doesnt have to practice it" vs. "we invented the fucking internet anyway so fuck the rest of the world - fuck yeah!" (no prizes for guessing which side I'm on). However, what it really comes down to in the end seems to me to be: does the fact that the whole world uses one communication infrastructure benefit the US in the same way as everyone else? If so then the US needs to cooperate or the rest of the world needs to threaten cut them off by setting up their own DNSs etc.
p.s. I have a new acronym - IANAEOTI (i am not an expert on the internet) but....
everything, mostly because we insist on too much control of everything.
The tighter you squeeze the more slips twixt the digits..
We're losing control of EVERYTHING. We just don't know it yet.
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
Does anyone believe that if Al Gore were president 2000-2004 (and maybe still), that there would be any significant global anxiety about US governance of the Internet, compared with the terror Bush has spread since being installed in the office?
BTW, here's some poison for the trolls who will insist on repeating the Republican lie that Gore claimed to have invented the Internet, when he simply took some credit for the work he did in government to ensure its inventors succeeded. Compare that to the guy who understands the Internet as well as he understands Camus.
--
make install -not war
This kind of issue highlights the importance of "soft power". For those of you who have never heard the phase, it basically means the power you get from people trusting you, and from having moral authority.
As you might have guessed, it is out of favour with the current administration, who prefer military "hard power". Previously, the USA could have said to the rest of the world "trust us to manage the Internet" and much of the world would have gone "ummm, ok!". Now the USA has lost much of its soft power, it makes it much harder, and "hard power" doesn't work well in this kind of situation!
The UN which allows human rights abuses of the highest order to be involved in its human rights commission or the US which at least still has the 1st amendment and other rights on paper? Here's a thought for non-Americans who care about freedom of speech. You are probably a real minority. You want more, not less, American governance of the internet. The ideal solution for you would be total governance of the Internet by American jurisprudence. We have significantly higher standards for free speech rights than the rest of the world and when a foreigner comes to America, they even have officially all of the rights of a citizen WRT the courts. And those of you who want to bring up the MCA or other Bushisms, STFU. That has no relevance here. No court in America is going to allow Bush to hold you as an enemy combatant for suing him over Internet policy.
My government sucks. I'll be the first to say that about the US government, but it sucks a lot less than the EU, China or the UN.
And it is insightful wisdoms like this that show why the internet couldn't possibly govern itself. It'd be pretty hard to get anything done with half of it's denizens screaming "teh fags!" and "joo sux0rs!"
:)
n00bs
My rantings, only longer and with better spelling..
access for non-English
Read: Requirements for language translations on web-sites.
online security
Lets have people register to run a web-site! That way we can track things better and "protect" children! And no more defending the Nazis if you want to after the French and Germans get into this.
spam
No more sending email unless it's through state-approved servers.
Yeah, this is gonna be great... We're from the government, and we're here to help!
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
The US controlling the Internet's infrastructure may be bad in many ways, but the UN controlling it will be dramatically worse. We're talking an easy order of magnitude more corruption and graft, and an order of magnitude less competence. If the UN gains control over more Internet infrastructure we will all suffer.
Ruling by UN means voting by more than 1 country about it's future. It's fair - internet is not only used in US. At the same time I can see a lot of problems because of that. What is going to happen if they can't agree on something? Like .xxx domains? Some countries will apply it and some will ban it. How can it be productive solution?
And don't forget that UN is kind of EU-centric. EU is already over policed with all crazy laws. The only thing we need is to have some new ones applied for Internet.
BTW: I'm European. That doesn't stop me to say things that I belive are right only because they're agains Europe. Hear me States!
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
The internet is not what it was 5 or 10 years ago. It has become a matter of many countries, so it is completely logical that control should pass to a group of countries instead of one. I suppose the US will refuse again to relinquish control, but it is only a matter of time until they have to succumb to the pressure.
It is also a matter of honesty and democracy to allow others a reasonable amount of control. Here in Europe, we learned that this is the best way - the US, being a continent and a declining super-power, has to learn this lesson also.
less is more
...if that "enough" declaration involves some WMD. There has never been any advance in weaponry that wasn't eventually used extensively in warfare. Time scales differ, but not the use.
And right now there are two massive armadas assembling, one in the pacific, the other in the persian gulf and the med, although the mainstreeam news is *incredibly* quiet about it. One has to monitor the defense sites and political blogs to see what is going on. There are also a lot of anecdotal reports about quite a bit of military aerial traffic in the skies, all leaving the US.
Interesting times. I hope everyone has made some preparations for "social strife" and "temporary down time" of huge parts of the infrastructure. I know I have. I read history plus look at current events, so it seems prudent to do so.
The internet worked because NO government controlled it. We are heading to a future where every government gets to impose its own version of morality and do-goodery. The world's special interests will all get their way and there will be nothing left. Time to move on and find our new Wild West frontier. The internet will become a planned, zoned, well manicured suburb. GAME OVER MAN.
I can envision the comments already. Rednecks spouting their crap while moronic hippies spew their BS, both of them thinking they're somehow "right". .com as a first choice and everything else as sub-standard.
You know what, if a country wants to do as they please with their part of the internet, all they have to do is update a couple of DNS servers. As simple as that. In fact, I'm already looking into using an alternative DNS root.
NO debating is needed. NO decision needs to be taken. All those who want a non-USA-regulated net have to do is START using the internet the way they like, simply disregarding USA rules. And, well, be ready to be cut off from any USA network, if the USA were so inclined. What's that you say, your citizens won't like it? Tough luck buddy, that's the price of freedom. It goes both ways.
On a side note, maybe it's time we did away with non-national TLDs. But that can only be done when people stop treating
Global warming is a cube.
I for one hope the US and its Ministry of Truth keeps control. I'd hate to see obsolete information or the lies of the enemies propogated throughout the news sites I frequent. /sarcasm
That isn't part of American policy. It's more like, march hard, carry a big stick, and use it because we have it.
The lesson that no one in our Government has learned is that if you use hard-power too much, folks become used to it, resentful, and they lose the fear associated with the threat of the use of such power.
For example, the world has seen the US use its conventional military power. They have seen that it's not such a big deal. As a result, N. Korea is thumbing their noses at us and so is Iran. They see that the big American tiger is old and slow, stretched too thin, and has little friends.
The world sees now that we're not as terrifying as they thought. And as a result, the two-bit dictators and failed states around the world are now going to be "pushing it".
Yes, I sincerely think this would not have happened under Gore.
What is there in the Internet to govern anyway?
If the sole issue is "what name points at what IP address in the most common DNS system" then who cares?
It's only when you get out of the technical realm and into the craziness of taxes, "legal" versus "illegal" sequences of numbers to send across the lines, and similar oddities, does a question of "governance" even come into the picture.
My take is: just have a central body for managing the DNS namespace (which is not "hardware enforced" anyway) and that's it. I honestly don't understand what the huge issue is, other than the fact that for many people it's too easy to get food and shelter so they sit around and create other things about which to fight.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Since when?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Should the US have control of the Internet?
Given the anti-democratic, anti-civil rights bent of the current administration, our position as beneficent administrators of this most public forum is suspect at best.
It seems likely that everyone in this world would sleep easier if there was oversight by third parties not directly controlled by the US government and it's intelligence community.
"Trust, but verify"
I dont want the internet under ANY controlling authority, especially not a govt. one .. seeing as how worldwide govts are more and more into information control and take a suspicion based "better safe than sorry" approach. But that aint gonna happen. Governments worlwide have devolved (or evolved in most cases) to be (democratic or not) a bunch of people getting together to tell others how to act and what they shouldn't be curious about or learn. They dont care about human lives, they dont care about truth, or right and wrong. They only care about their damn machine surviving and to hell with any redundant little people who the brake pads of their smoky old decripit engines. So now all these countries are going to sit around figuring out they own crummy ways to regulate and control what "their" people are doing on the internet.
I say fuck 'em. Fuck 'em all. Want my internet? Take it. Take it. And shove it up your ass sideways.
-Silence Dogood
PS> No, you fools, I'm not an anarchist. But thanks for the offer.
the US doesn't *own* the "internet", we are just using mirrors of their DNS servers and we can very well stop doing so in a day or two.
For all of its recent political evils, the US has done surprisingly little meddling with the internet. The standards are still based on non-governmental organizations, there is no effective taxation, anonymity is still possible, etc etc. The internet of today doesn't appear to be run significantly differently than the internet of 10 years ago.
What possible motivation could there be for other governments to want to seize "control" away from the current scheme?
Because they're not happy with the above.
So one should surmise that an internet under new management would feature
- easier support for taxation
- technology "standards" created by government bodies
- less baked-in anonymity
As pissed off as I am with the current US political climate, do you know what government I trust even less than my own?
All of them
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
But the sentiment is real. You're and the other cheese eating surrender monkeys are why.
Political Science
by Randy Newman
No one likes us-I don't know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let's drop the big one and see what happens
We give them money-but are they grateful?
No, they're spiteful and they're hateful
They don't respect us-so let's surprise them
We'll drop the big one and pulverize them
Asia's crowded and Europe's too old
Africa is far too hot
And Canada's too cold
And South America stole our name
Let's drop the big one
There'll be no one left to blame us
We'll save Australia
Don't wanna hurt no kangaroo
We'll build an All American amusement park there
They got surfin', too
Boom goes London and boom Paree
More room for you and more room for me
And every city the whole world round
Will just be another American town
Oh, how peaceful it will be
We'll set everybody free
You'll wear a Japanese kimono
And there'll be Italian shoes for me
They all hate us anyhow
So let's drop the big one now
Let's drop the big one now
Each nation already controls their own domains, nobody's stopping them from setting up their own root DNS servers, nobody's complaining about centralized assignment of MAC addresses, so what the heck is the problem?
If the Internet split into two or more parts that would be a "good thing" - competition is the source of all evolution.
Clear, Dark Skies
slipping in human rights, becoming totalitarian... whatever.
NO other country in the world has a more absolute view on Freedom of Speech. Not France, not Germany, not even the UK. Reasonable people may disagree on whether that's the right position for a society. But for he who controls the domain registry, it most certainly is the best position to take.
And what is the alternative anyway? The UN votes on which domains get to stay online? We have countries take turns with holding the "Presidency of the Internet" the same way the EU passes the torch from country to country? Or even better, we have an unelected international bureaucracy that decides by committee who gets to have freedom of speech and who doesn't?
How about if it isn't broke don't fix it?
As corrupt and stupid as US politicians are, they're bush-league amateurs compared to UN diplomats. The UN is the single most corrupt organization on the planet, and I have no intention of ever letting them have control of anything without putting up the most resistance that I possibly can. I have no love for US politics, but I detest world politics. Can you imagine the security council having say over censorship on the internet?
What is the idea of the new "tags" of Slashdot? I thought they were like keywords for finding related posts. This post has "hopefully" and "yes"? They are like an answer to the topic's question. :P
That have no actual power.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
Come up with a constitution governing it, and a way of amending that constitution (but a fairly long and involved process so it's not amended willy-nilly). Have a legislative branch and a judicial branch. You can even have an internet "security council" with veto power over proposed changes. Then have every nation that wants in on the governance sign the constitution.
You can include things like freedom of expression and spam control, just spell it out in the document. Then the U.S. can relinquish control of the internet and still know that its concerns are being addressed.
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
You mean like wistle blowing poor security practices to the TSA and getting your house ramsacked at 2:00 am by
the FBI? You mean like that freedom of speech?
Uh what was the problem they are trying to solve again?
.co.uk, or could even have used a registrar in Europe.
The US has control over the parts of the Internet that's within the USA. And that's fair enough.
Other than that, it doesn't really have control nor should it ( with the exception of political and military "influence" of course, and the fact that much of the popular sites are in the USA).
Same for the rest of the countries.
If the countries really don't like it they form groups and set up their own root name servers and tell ICANN to get lost. Same for the other stuff - routing, IP allocation etc. The problem is it might splinter the Internet - but it's not as if network administrators have never ever blocked parts of the Internet they didn't like.
So if the USA makes a crappy enough decision or allows something stupid to be done(e.g. verisign's wildcard DNS stuff), network and sys admins around the world could decide to change things.
Thus, tell me again, what is the problem those people are trying to solve, and how is their solution not worse than the "problem"?
People like Spamhaus could shift to
If the US starts threatening economic sanctions or military action, well they do that all the time anyway, and it's nothing to do with the Internet needing any special treatment.
Hopefully...
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
Large group of other countries : Hey US, We want you to give us control over the internet because we want to know you don't have control over the internet, even though you kinda created it...
US-Govt : Hold on.. let me check here.. oh yeah... go DAIF.
Large group of other countries : But But But... Freedom of the internet.. we should have as much control as you do!
US-Govt : Then go make your own.. and oh yeah.. DIAF.
Geez, one thing the US has done reasonably right and the international community wants to kick us in the mansack over it. sheesh.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
That some people will complain about the huge monopoly say, Microsoft has, and will actively seek alternatives and provide suggestions, but when it comes to the monopoly the US has on the Internet those same people will vehemently defend the US's "right" to maintain near complete control. Now, is this because these people are just patriotic Americans that because they have hold of one of the world's most important assest, just cannot stand the thought of letting go? Or because they just really believe that this monopoly is a good thing? In which case, how is it? Especially considering the vast contributions made to the Internet & the technology from other countries. IMHO the US hasn't done a bad job to date, but considering the value and importance the Internet infrastructure has become to the world as whole, one country shouldn't have near complete control, when the Internet wouldn't be what it has become today without the input and development from others. The US citizens claim to believe in democracy and freedom of speech, thus I feel it's time this dictatorship came to an end.
"where the US cited fears of a loss of freedom of speech as the reason for retaining power."
Because we're doing such a bang-up job protecting speech in the US now!
The US, complaining about the loss of freedom of speech...really? Anyone else sense the irony there?
This signature has Super Cow Powers
I think it would be awesome if the UN took over.
Why you ask? Well I'll tell you
I would like the UN to take over is because I think the Internet should be regulated by an entity that really could be disbanded at anytime. Can we say League of Nations?
I mean it's not like two nations make up 40% of the UN's funding (*ahem I'm looking at you US and Japan*)
Wait... maybe that's not a good idea.
I can clearly see both sides of this debate, as a US citizen I say we shouldn't give an inch (go with the devil you know as they say). But, I can also see that if I weren't a US citizen I would want more global control, and to that I say "we made it, neener neener neener!"
"access for non-English users "
Um, access you got. Want content? You got Unicode.
Want everything translated into some languages other than English? Sure. Start the movement.
Want *ME* to translate my pages into something other than English? Not Happening. I Don't Care.
Blame Canada.
-rick
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
. . . Not in the way envious foreigners mean "control". Would you like "control" by Austria, where Holocaust denial lands you in jail? Or France, which forbids Ebay auctions of Nazi memorabilia? Need I mention China? Remember, when European socialists talk about "control", you're hearing people who think that the right to go shopping on Sunday is a privilege to be granted at the government's discretion.
If you really think that, you're a fool.
There might be a few countries that would do a better (by which I mean 'freer') job of internet governance. But it's a very, very short list. Many European governments are even more censorious than the United States; say the wrong thing about the Holocaust in Germany, and you can end up in prison. Perhaps some of the Northern European countries (particularly Sweden) would be good stewards, as they seem to have been doing a good job of not knuckling under to corporate interests so far, but I wonder what they'd do if the pressure of the world was put upon them.
There are a lot of countries, on the other hand, that would be far, far worse stewards of the Internet than the U.S. has been. Countries like Iran, China, or even Turkey, all have significantly more barriers to free speech than the U.S. does. Plenty of other countries have non-secular governments that don't hesitate (or even see a problem) introducing religious dogma into political decision-making. Would you really want a Sharia court having a say in domain-name disputes? I wouldn't.
The U.N.'s regulatory bodies have had success managing basically uncontroversial issues where a mutual need for coordination is clear (for instance, the radio spectrum), and there is a lot of delegation to national authorities. With the internet, none of this would be the case. The nature of the network prohibits much meaningful delegation to lower levels of authority; it's not like radio spectrum, where every country can just arbitrarily decide what the standards will be for content that is broadcasted to their own citizenry. Either regulations are universal, or they don't exist at all (or you fragment the network behind national firewalls in order to produce spheres of influence that can be independently regulated -- but at that point, it would barely be the Internet anymore). There would be a variety of controversial issues (do we prohibit child pornography? If so, what's the standard for "child"? How about 'hate speech'?), and that's only if everyone actually agreed that regulation was necessary at all, which is unlikely in itself.
I can understand some people's frustration with the United States. But it's foolish to think that the U.N. would do much better; at least the U.S. has a large stake in making sure the Internet survives as a medium, so that there's a self-interested brake on any politically-motivated changes that might destroy the net completely. To put control in the hands of a governmental body that includes many countries that could care less about Internet governance, and would just use it as a political football in the negotiation of other disputes, would be jumping out of the frying pan and into a very hot fire.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It only serves to encourage another US vs. the world comment-war.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
As much as I distrust the current administration, I think it's probably best for everyone if the U.S. keeps control of the internet, and this is why:
A Dutch forum-friend of mine once remarked that if the principles of The Enlightenment are Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, that the United States puts the weight on Liberty while Europe puts more weight on Equality. (No one, he says, seems to care about Fraternity.)
The United States reveres the freedom of speech much more than European countries, who tend to crack down on unpopular speech that disturbs the peace (or the "Equality") such as Germany's crackdown on anything, pro or con, having to do with Nazis. So far, we've kept the internet in more or less a state of social anarchy. And this is during our current *conservative* phase. Europe might be better at social welfare for this reason, (and that's nothing to sneeze at,) but it's also a reason why internet administration is better left to the generally libertarian United States.
Hopefully the "pendulum" analogy of American politics will hold true, and we'll eventually go back to revering social freedoms in general. Or if it spirals downward, I suppose you guys could always create a European splinternet.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
where the tubes will go then, and where will they be filled?
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
Access for non-English actually means something entirely different from what you think. Right now DNS names are restricted to ASCII characters. If you live in China, Japan, Russia, or any of a number of other places, you can't use your own alphabet to get to a website. Even if the entire site is in your native language, you still have to use English to get there.
/.???
There's something called IDN (Internationalized Domain Names) that is an effort to change that by allowing DNS to use Unicode characters. That way you could have native language DNS names.
How would you like it if you had to type in something in Chinese to get to
CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
At least up to now, even if the UN is corrupt, they do not ship people in other country for torture, do not hold them indefinitly without judgement, do not invad any other country. Face it, the UN is corrupt, but the UN is a bunch of nation together. more often than not, it change nothing and leave everything in status quo. OTOH the US is a single nation, and as we saw in the last 12 years, can turn to less democreatic and less freedom. And we might not even have seen the bottom. True US is way better than many country on the democratic side, but better a bunch of people wishing for status quo, than one good guy which can turn very bad indeed.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I find it hilarious the way americans think they invented and run the internet.
God Be Gone
"I mean it's not like two nations make up 40% of the UN's funding (*ahem I'm looking at you US and Japan*)"
Well, then pay up sucker! You're a bit behind with the payments! (*ahem I'm looking at you US*)
Taking the sole power from the US would definitely be a good thing, I can't see how freedom of speech would be compromised if any other country had power over the internet. Am I missing something or is the US just making excuses as usual?
The internet is out of control already. The question of who assigns domain names is not really relevant. The USA will control routing within its sphere of influence, including Space. Time Warner, Sprint, MCI, etc. will still own their infrastructure, and they will lease capacity for a profit, regardless of who claims to be in charge. If there is a demand for a service, it will be provided. The decisions regarding rights, privileges and penalties will be decided on legal structures of International Law, possibly a model akin to Maritime Law. Standards are continually being developed whereby entities communicate with each other. If one part is deficient, another part will grow to meet the demand.
The Internet is an interconnection of networks. New networks will appear to meet new, unforseen needs, and in the face of oppression, they will be more clever than previously conceived. So, the question is whether we allow the US Government to cede rights guaranteed us in our Constitution. Cooperation, yes, but NO to any attempt to deprive us of our freedoms. These are the issues of "control" that need to be better defined.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
"Can you imagine the security council having say over censorship on the internet?" Sure, it's easy to imagine how things would be. In that case there wouldn't be any censorship of the Internet at all, since the security council members will never be able agree on a [new] definition of "censorship".
If there are any "Bush zombies" hanging around here, it's obvious they are greatly outnumbered by the rabid Bush-haters like you, who bring up Bush at every turn.
Nobody brings up Bush in unrelated stories faster than you.
12000 comments? Get a fucking life. You seem to reload slashdot all day to bash Bush in every story, and you're angered by troll mods?
The UN, if given control, will probably have an Internet governing council. This council, aside from running the technical aspects of the Internet with the UN's usual bureaucratic incompetence, will be comprised of a rotating set of members. It is these members that will be responsible for policies, such as freedom of speech.
The UN Commission on Human Rights counted among its members Cuba, China and Saudi Arabia. After much criticism over the membership of such countries where mass violation of human rights is policy, it was replaced with the Human Rights Council, which includes in its membership -- you guessed it -- Cuba, China and Saudi Arabia.
The UN apparently believes in using the fox to guard the hen house. Does anybody really want Cuba and China to have a say in our freedom of speech?
If we want to preserve freedom of speech (or the press), the USA would be one of the worst countries to control it (USA ranked 47th in freedom of the press, lower than the Dominican Republic and tied with Botswana!). Really, it should be one of the countries that scored in the top 5 for freedom of the press, like Finland or Icelend or somebody like that.
Did they say freedom of speech? That's pretty funny. Given the US' track record in that area, and current rating, that would be a pretty funny argument to make. Not that the UN or some new UN group would do any better. Maybe we should designate some small, relatively free country like Iceland to be in charge. No wait, then dubya would declare that Iceland is part of the axis of evil and for them to reliquish their internets tubes.
Go build your own Internet.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
My response: go make your own internet and run it as you please; connect it with the rest of the world as you see fit. It works for China, so you can do it too. Next time, you should come up with the internet before we do. And go learn English if you really want to use the resources on the internet that are in English.
Well in response to to someone's post about what makes the US more capable than another country to be "in charge" of the internet, my response would be "experience and ownership."
Exactly what is the problem that needs to be solved here? Maybe I should expand the number of sites I visit on a daily basis, but I don't think I've ever been blocked from visiting anything that I wanted to look at. Hell, I don't think I've ever even been blocked from things I DIDN'T want to look at. I fail to see why the current management needs to be ousted or even given this much bullshit in it's general course of business.
I'd like to know where this would lead? I'm assuming that it's really the commercial aspect of the internet they are after control over. Perhaps a UN mandated internet tax of some sort, or even better, an online commerce tax mandated by the UN. Certainly we can't say that the Academic aspects of the internet are wholly owned by the US Government, as it's (unless i'm mistaken) pretty much a multi-naitonal group of researcheres and universities sharing information, who could just go ahead and build their own network anyways.
At best, this is just another attempt by a useless neutered organization to grab at power (and money/tax revenue) it dosn't have. At worst, it's a consortium of poorer and/or angry countries picking on the US for all that we have. It kinda makes me think of those arguments where people say "The United States has xx% of the resources but only has x% of the population," and then proceed to ramble about how it's not fair, and we owe it to the world to be their resource providers for free.
Get real. Build your own network or shut up and be thankful we let you be a part of ours.
Whoever is in charge of the Internet will try to enforce their own version of "morality" upon us all.
Right now, the US is refusing to allow ".xxx" domains, and is banning online gambling, the alternatives would be equally unpaletable.
More usefully we would have a system where the "speech" is 100% free on the part of the author, but the system would be enclosed such that any part of the net could refuse or block certain data. China does not want it? Fine. The US doesn't want it? Fine. The UK wants to prosecute someone publishing something from their soil. Fine, the framework needs to develop sure, but banning everything down to the "least-common morality" is going to make the 'net a very quiet place.
Okay pie-in-the sky I agree, but while speech should be free, I reserve the right to wear earplugs. Personally I think that ".xxx" domains would more easily allow us to filter porn from minors, and how does online gambling differ from insuring your car on line:
1) "I bet that the next card is an Ace, here is my credit card number".
vs.
2) "I bet I won't have a car crash in the next year, here is my credit card number."
Ho hum. Governments... Pah!
Enjoy Y2K? Roll-on Year 2037!
if you think "international" control of the internet won't quickly lead to balkanization and the loss of freedom of speech and information.
I am an internationalist on many issues, but not this one. Not yet, not when so many governments have proven to abuse censorship power whenever it's given to them.
+++ATH0
As far as i know the US invented the internet when it ran lines between government agencies's an Educational institutions oh about 40-50 years ago this started an spiraled outward from there. So IMO why should we be forced to no longer control something we invented?
"We Invented It, We Get To Do What We Want... It's too bad others might have a problem with it, but the US invented the Internet, and successfully guided its development without any problems for years. There's no rational reason for continuing to do business as usual, since nobody has a better alternative. I, for one, do not want the UN taking over. It's already an asylum being run by the inmates. Bottom line, the only argument for taking away control from the US because they don't like that we have the ball, and nothing else."
Sun Microsystems fully appreciates and supports your amazingly perfect logic.
...I guess my question would be why does any country have to govern the internet? The internet being what it is I find it kinda hard to believe that any one country could or should have control.
Russia, and other similarly "free" regimes... Be careful, what you wish for, Illiberals.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I guess I just don't understand the howling about this. What are we actually losing control of? It's not like Indonesia is going to drop by the front door and demand we packup a root server and hand it over?
I'm not sure that there should be any centeralized control over the structure of the internet. I think it would end up being a better system if everybody was able to extend it in every direction and didn't have to ask permission.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
It's ironic how anyone who frequents Slashdot can say it's a good thing for a less choice. The whole Windows/Mac OS, locked-down source code programs versus Open Source should make everyone want to be able to modify or control anything to do with control over anything to do with Internet.
He should get some credit. At least that is what these two "bozos" say.
Besides, only Gore understands the Internets are a series of highways. Not tubes, buy highways. You put your information on the dump truck where it is carried to its destination.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I think the reaction from kids (or most people) to that would be a big 'yuck'. What sort of damage do you think will happen to them? If they see a picture of someone eating poop, do you really think your kids are going to want to try that? I doubt it.
Yes, I beleive that if Gore were president, governments would still pose serious risks to people. Look at the recent Spamhaus case, where a judge ordered a domain registrar to take away Spamhous' domain, not due to squatting or spamming or violation, but simply due to Spamhous publishing opinions about who is a spammer. Look at some of the laws that were passed (and signed by president Clinton) in the 1990s, such as DMCA and COPA.
Did these things have anything to do with Bush? Is there even a shred of evidence that Gore would have vetoed COPA or DMCA, or that Gore would have brought about changes to prevent courts from bullying domain registrars? Did Gore ever run on a platform of reducing government power or decentralizing internet authorities? That's ludicrous. I'm not Bush fan, but Gore (or any other recent major-party politician) posed no less of a threat.
I just listed what would make someone less of a threat. Show me a politian who says they're going to make government smaller and less capable. Show me the one who says they're going to remove the internet from the influence of the US (and every other) government. That's the only one I might trust.
As long as people keep voting to expand government power to solve the problems of today, they're voting to expand government power to create the problems of tomorrow. That's what makes it so fun to ask republicans what they think of all the power they are handing to President Hillary -- when you put it that way, most republicans squirm because know they're doing something wrong and self-defeating. I guess they think they can get all these new laws repealed in 2009. Yeah, right!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
... with Nigeria as one member of the security council !
To have a kid who is gay or into kinky sex
or
To have a kid who is a skinhead and beats up gay kids
Your aversion to sexual images and lack of concern to hate speech makes me suspect you would be more embarrased to have a gay child than a murderer.
And you are 0wn3d because they are. No one makes country X have those fast-food places, they are there because, I think the point is, you are 0wn3d/wish you were an american, and so forth. Those are huge chains, not your neighborhood iranian deli, and "100% american".
"where the US cited fears of a loss of freedom of speech as the reason for retaining power."
Oddly enough, this is also the reason other countries were objecting to the US monopoly...
Not that it's up to me, but I think whatever party can guarantee in the most absolute terms, with the greatest accountability, should have control over whatever infrastructure needs to be in control of a government agency.
In particular, I'd endorse any group which:
(*) Will not discriminate (thereby censoring) on the basis of fear of explicit sexuality (Looking at you, USA).
(*) Will not discriminate (thereby censoring) on the basis of unpopular political or social views (Racism, nationalism (including the worst sort of Nazism), fascism, anarchism, communism - insert yours here) (Looking at you, Germany, China, some others). I can decide for myself what's offensive, dangerous, or bunk. Don't want any government making that decision for me. Don't really want anyone involved in governing any aspect of the internet who doesn't understand why it's a paradox to use authoritarian tactics and policies to prevent authoritarianism. I don't need authoritarian tactics to be used to protect myself from cults, either (China - Falun Gong). And I sure as hell don't need any governmental organization, should this (god forbid) happen, telling me not to read something like Al Jazeera. If your own population can't resist going all screwy in the head because it is exposed to certain kinds of expression, you are *not qualified* for this job, as a country.
(*) Will not discriminate (thereby censoring) on the basis of language or insist on any kind of language requirement. I'm all for working on better internationalization of domain names (I don't understand much about this, but I've read other posts and I'm all for domains in other character sets, to the extent this is possible, technologically).
(*) Will not attempt to levy taxes on any individual, except as is necessary to fund, non-profit, the physical maintenance of root servers and so on (Looking at you, governments of the world, some more than others).
(*) Will not attempt to discriminate (thereby censoring) on the basis of religion, for or against. Falun Gong, radical hate-filled Wahhabist (whatever term you use for the cult wing of Islam) rants against my own country, the USA - I'll make my own decision on what to read and what I think about it.
(*) Will not attempt intellectual property voodoo or otherwise exercise power over websites with controversial (in some governments) approach to intellectual property. These questions and issues - piracy and so on - need to be dealt with outside of the realm of DNS, domain ownership, and so on.
Any group which can guarantee *not* to do any of these gets my vote.
Domain names need to be *cheap*, *registered without discrimination or censorship concerns*, and every domain owner must have a reasonable set of rights that ensure that domain's accessibility by all locations on the globe. Frankly, just because this is so fundamental to freedom of speech, I don't even think domain names should be taxed - anywhere on the globe.
I'm tired of these pissing contests about which government is least bad. All governments are bad. The one which is most powerful and offensive today, will eventually fade as all empires do, and another will take its place. It's not enough to simply resist certain governments, *today*. There are no governments in the world, nor in history, that couldn't use more shackles, more limits, more checks - there are no politicians or political enforcers who couldn't stand to live in more fear and paranoia of the citizens they claim to represent.
If I can get iron-clad guarantees, enforceability, accountability, and so on, I will support whatever organization or entity guarantees me maximal rights.
But I am unwilling (such that my opinion matters at all) to subject such a system to so-called "democracy" or the means by which one party shoves its sensibilities down the throat of others (I am sorry, but I do not give a shit whatsoever about France's language issues, Germany's bizarre issues with neo-Nazism and free expression, or my own govern
In the last few years, the EU has tried to censor the net as best as they could. We know that 1/6th of the word's population (China) wouldn't object ot a massively censored internet. Throw in crazy radical muslim nations (Iran, etc.) and you've got one hell of a internet organizational mess (kinda like the UN, thank god for veto powers or else you know there'd probably tons of utterly ridiculous propositions passed on top of a few good ones that were unfortunately vetoed).
Hmmm... Pie...
The reason why people prefer centralized authorities is because they are more effective. For instance you could have either all 50 states outlaw something or just have a federal law outlaw something. Even if the states and feds outlaw the same thing with the states you'll get 50 different versions of the law with varying penalties. Its stupid. I understand the whole "states rights thing" but many times it just ends up allowing loopholes for criminals to pick one state over the other to commit their crimes. Seriously though, I get the whole anti-federalist argument. The only problem with that argument is it really breaks down when the country balloons to 300 million people. If you want to be vigiliant about states rights and their soverignty then you've also got to put in more EFFORT. And by their votes and actions delegating power to the Federal Government the people have spoken loudly and clearly that they have better things to do with their time than impliment in their state the 50th version of some law that could have been handled more simply with a federal law.
Separately there's also the issue of association. I as an American in any part of the country am associated with Americans in every other part of the country. Some states may feel its their right to chose a path that sets them up to basically consistently perform worse than the rest of the country and become the backwater region of the nation but that doesn't mean the rest of the country is happy about it or wishes to allow it to happen. States like Alabama, Mississippi, Kansas, Oaklahoma and Louisianna are already bad enough as they are. There's no need to allow them to get even worse under the mantra of "states rights." If folks are THAT intent on maintaining third world conditions in a first world nation lets just give them a carribean island and let them name it "BackwardsFuckistan" or "HeadInTheSandLand" or "WeLikeBeingAssBackwardsLand".
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
There'll be plenty of censorship... The UN will say tons and tons needs to be censored.... Nothing will ever actually get censored mind you but there will be lots and lots of paper decrees saying what needs to be censored.
How exactly is the government squeezing it's grip on the internet? They don't really do a whole lot other then govern how it's handled here in the U.S. and make sure no laws are broken. I guess we do run most (but not all) DNS root servers but I'm not sure how that makes us a powerhouse. There are other root servers and it's not like we are using them in any power play or ransoms.
Hmmm... Pie...
What an absurd concept!
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Would you be willing to exclude the following countries from having any say about internet governance (since they seem to be unable to play nice in that regard):
Turkey
Greece
China
Germany
UAE
(a bunch of southeast asian, south american and african countries I can't remember which are most egregious)
Basically we're talking about the G8... minus China. That's not the UN.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Your ISPs are going to cache the MX records in your respective countries. That email will never cause a single packet to cross an ocean (let alone outside the respective countries and intervening territory).
You fail at internet. Please turn in your license.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The US DOES NOT control the internet and the internet is not entirely web-based either! First of all, there are two main regulatory bodies: IANA and ICANN. IANA manages IPs and has sub-organizations, notably the Number Resource Organization which is an international body composed of Regional Internet Registries (RIR). For the most part, ICANN has been managed by the University of Southern California (ooo look liberals here!) under a Department of Commerce contract. Not to mention, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is an international organization/group open to anyone during the early 1990s. So despite the necessary funding, the US Govt has thankfully kept it's hands out of the pot. So what it seems to me is that all this talk is a bunch of talk by a bunch of blowhards who want to satisfy an uninformed constiuency.
A company in California can sue anybody for any reason no matter who is in control of domain names on the internet. Of course, you have the right to countersue (and/or in California, receive SLAPP compensation) for such a frivolous lawsuit.
.coms are handed out has next to nothing to do with anything about who sues you for content on your website.
Who gets to control how
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Cripes, the EU can't even agree on a Constitution. ...making them perfect at preserving the status quo and not introducing any new freedom restricting measures.
The UN is the most useless organization on the planet. It's a way for the little countries to feel important, and a way for the corrupt head of the UN to funnel money, jobs, and power to his family members, friends, and others.
The US invented and built the internet. If you think we intend to let some nobodies from East Bumfuck have a say in how to run it, you've got another thing coming. You want to have your own internet? Fine, go ahead. You want to connect to the US? You play by our rules.
I've had it up to here with China hosting every spammer in the world. It wouldn't bother me a bit to block all of China from the US. I have no reason to view web pages or download anything from China. Blocking it wouldn't stop me at all. And for those US businesses that do, fine, let them buy a proxy somewhere else, and use that to get to their subcontractors in China.
Why do all these other countries want to have a say in the internet governance? What are they going to gain that they haven't got already? They have domains, they have IP addresses. They have as much access as they can pay for... do they need additional domains? For what? I can't think of one good reason.
Tell these blowhards to go home. They want to run the show, they can invent their own internet.
by all means, run it in a country where the offending party does not have a presence.
The US can't stop allofmp3.ru, for example. They try to pressure credit card companies into not supporting them, but they can't block access to it.
So what the hell are you talking about? How will that be any different if the UN had control?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I think you are right in that promiscuity is a legit concern. Teenage pregnancies and STDs are not good things. That being said, I think children are going to get a lot more sexual ideas from watching TV (anytime) and from popular culture.
.xxx and .com? Certainly. Will most of them? Probably not.
I dispute that the nastiness you see on the web is going to inspire most children, even those without a supportive upbringing. Most kids with even marginal empathy are also not in that much danger if they read hate site, but hate sites are written for an audience that is feeling misunderstood and outcast (a phase teens do go through).
I am not advocating banning any sort of website. I simply believe the XXX site would make it easier for parents to filter out a lot of questionable content. Would sites register on
The US doesn't control the Internet and hasn't since it became global. Or, going back a bit further, since multi-nationals picked up the medium.
Now, the US can exert direct control over the physical and data layer of that part of the net they can get their hands on, mostly on soverign ground and any country they invade. They could institute a filter policy similar to China's, or rip everyone's lines out. That's control, I tell ya.
They can also put pressure on other countries (and I include multinationals here) to try and extend the scope of power. Treaties and 'alignment' of laws across jurisdictions and laws multi's that desire to do business in the country go a long way here. But in the end, whoever is willing to exert the most force to secure the physical layer has control and largely that control resides in the governments of every individual country on the net.
EU solcialism.
How is a court going to review your imprisonment if they never know about it? The removal of habeus corpus is all about the removal of oversight - if you are deemed an unlawful enemy combatant by a tribunal or by the President, you will disappear. No court will have any power or knowledge to uphold or deny your imprisonment.
MCA2006 has relevance because it indicates that people in power in the US will abuse their powers if its people will let them, and with the internet that means that the whole world will feel the effects in their ability to access information. Of course, since the US is ill trusted by our allies at the moment, they really didn't need this to mistrust us anyway.
The will to power is present everywhere, and there isn't a reason to expect that the UN will be any better at avoiding its seduction. They haven't shown themselves to be trustworthy in protecting the rights they propose to safeguard nor do they necessarily have the will to stand up for those rights when it is unpopular, so it doesn't seem like they constitute a better choice to run the internet.
Will the US special intrest an dgov is bad enough, an international committee will be exponentially worse. Thats the nature of commitee and "diplomacy."
god, we can only hope...
As a preface, I, as of yet, do not have a specific opinion on US vs UN governorship over the Internet.
To say that if decisions controlling the internet were made by a UN body would somehow make things worse is typical political bi-polar thinking. "Everything's perfect now, obviously. So if we give it to someone else, it will obviously be worse." Could things get worse? Maybe, but they could get better. You simply can't make that assertion without making a well founded logical argument with reasonable facts.
Now, idealistically, a process that has it's roots in a democratic system and overseen by a stable, minimally corrupt UN would be a good thing. The UN isn't perfect, because it's made up of representatives from selfish countries. Well, how does that differ from the US, because it's made up of representatives from one selfish country? Being in the US, I can say the internet is working okay now, but I worry about it's future with tiered internet access being pushed on a government body proven time and again to be corrupt and full of corporate shills. Also, being in the US, I have no knowledge of the problems other companies run into. Because I can't seem to find a good article describing the issues other countries have with the way the US runs the internet, I can't make a judgement here, but neither can someone spreading Russia and China FUD.
Also, to say Russia and China would have a say is stupid on two levels. One, they already do have a say. China pushes companies to censor content on the internet constantly. They have control over the content in the domain. Two, the major push for taking control of the internet out of US hands is being done by European powers in the EU, which doesn't include Russia! China and Russia are happy at the moment to "stay the course." What if the new UN government body, if it comes into existance, says that in order to be on the internet you cannot censor and you cannot influence or coerce companies to censor? That would be bad for China if the penalty was having their TLD turned off. Suddenly China would no longer be so economically attractive to international investors if it wasn't connected to the same internet.
Let's have a discussion of the facts for once and stay in the 21st century. One red scare was enough.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Let's be clear. This is not going to happen. Full stop. Because of its structure, the UN is wholly incapable of any action that does not have the unanimous support (defined as lack of opposition) of the US, the UK, France, Russia, and China. Consider the interests of these 5 parties, and now you see why the UN does nothing that has any actual teeth. Surrendering the oversight of ICANN to any foreign body runs counter to US interests. Therefore, it will not happen.
It may not be just, but it is fair, and that is more important.
So that's something to look forward to.
.com domains must be regulated by the courts of the state of Virginia, US according to US decision. Why? Because they get to look after the .com root.
NOTE: the
So if you were first but a US company gives itself the same name and (tm) in the US only, your company is out of luck.
Also note what happened with Spamhaus.
Are these good reasons to stay with US control of the internet?
it's a lot like the international community demanding we hand over control of our international airlines. After all, look at all those European, Asian, and African people who have to use them to fly into the US!
No?
The US internet is run by private companies for profit, just as the airlines are. Other countries already have their own physical infrastructure set up, and if they chose to could easily set up their own DNS roots and alienate the US if they wanted to badly enough. Heck, all it would take is for the EU to band together, form their own DNS and IP addressing, block the US, and get Japan on their internet. There, now the US is no longer in control of your internet.
It may not be a perfect analogy, but it's not that far off either.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Has ICANN done a good job up to now?
Your answer will answer the question on where or not America should keep control of the internet.
IMHO, I think ICANN has done an alright job. And America does have better infrastructure to maintain the internet.
\
after all, it's just a goddamned piece of paper.
eventually
Like shit, the US have control of the internet. No-one does.
You can't stop the signal.
When spam first started arising and my mailbox started filling up with unsolicited pornography, there were no spam filters and I was left to deal with it the best I could. I would track down through ARIN and the InterNIC who owned the addresses that were either hosting the spam mail server or hosting the spam web page. While many administrators would quickly take action to stop the spammers, I began to notice a pattern in China and Russia of particular blocks of addresses that were the source of the spam. The administrators for these blocks of addresses would not reply to my inquiries. Basically the spammers owned these blocks and since they were in China it was up to APNIC (The Chinese counterpart to ARIN) to do something about it. They always referred me to the administrator for the address block. Catch 22! Besides the fact that the UN is corrupt and should be defunded anyway, we sure don't want them to be in charge of the internet. The fact that it is China pushing for this makes it doubly suspicious. ~AR
This old myth again.. Yes, the US did invent the basic Internet. However a European, Tim Berners-Lee, invented the Web while working at a research institute in Europe (CERN). So what part do you insist on keeping? Because if its this old argument again - Europe keeps the Web - the US can keep the Newsgroups and FTP :)
For the life of me, I can't think of a single decent thing the UN's done recently. The ineffectiveness and corruption start right at the top. And the UN wants to givern the internet? I am gobsmacked.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
The conversation shouldn't be about USA vs. World, eventhough that's what everyone wants it to be. The conversation should be about what ICANN is/n't doing right or wrong. ICANN might exist in the US, but it has done a damn good job staying independent of the US Gov. and weighing needs and benefits of the DNS infrastructure. Multi-national and foreign corps get access to the top level. I live in the US and registered my domain with a German company. Root servers are spread out all over the globe. Send some ICANN reps to the forum. Have anyone who has a grievance to an ICANN meeting, maybe open the board up to more people. I haven't seen any argument that ICANN is broken or inneffective just because it exists in the USA, only whiny political posturing.
There's no such thing as control of the internet. There is only "the will to control".
Er Galvão Abbott - IT Consultant and Developer
I always find it strange, when people who are intimately associated with the Internet, allow the word "internet" to appear in place of "Internet".
;)
The lowercase word is NOT "the Internet". An internet can be any two connected networks, whereas the Internet is the vast collection of networks we know and loathe.
This is an important distinction I believe.
Call me pedant, and mod me down if you wish - but it won't change the fact semantics matter.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
The premise of this post is totally wrong, but there's plenty of reason why you should check out the IGF. The IGF has been designed to be about all the issues that we as Internet users actually care about - spam, security, privacy etc - and to *avoid* the ongoing arguments about the US government and ICANN. I know because I'm sat here in Athens. There's some great discussion going on about freedom of expression, Google and China, bloggers being arrested, new solutions to spam. It is all being webcast and whatever you think, you are all going to read what I write, and I will not read your responses!
Splintering DNS and having each country that disagrees with the US is a crazy notion. One thing that has made the internet so accessible is that it *isn't* splintered.
.xxx is a good idea and so sets up its own DNS that allows for the registration of .xxx domains, all is well and good. But then next year a change in US government decides that .xxx isn't such a bad idea. However as there has NEVER been a .xxx in their minds (i.e. they don't see the splinter as legitimate) they start registering domains that ARE ALREADY REGISTERED in the splinter.
.xxx to deny its legitimacy, but what if the splintered .xxx hasn't really taken off and there's only two or three hundred domains? Chances are that ICANN would (a) decide to ignore it as it is too small to bother with or (b) require RE-registration along with a fee for those in the .xxx domain. (Even if it HAD taken off, option b is still likely to happen)
.xxx, they pass the technical requirements, can show that it's generic enough that it's worth the DB space on the root servers and they have the ability to follow the One Rule themselves, then grant them the management of .xxx.
If the rest of the world thinks that
Sure, maybe it's unlikely coz you have a huge list of existing
While I disagree with US control over DNS, I'd rather that than a splintered internet. Whoever controls it, however, needs to follow the One Rule: The granting or denial of domain names should only EVER be a technical decision. If you have some company that is willing to be the registrant for
I always imagined that the Internet was founded on the experiment of having a standards-based networking (as much as TCP/IP is considered the only "real" standard) of many, many different localised networks.
What form can governance take when it comes to a virtual construct such as this?
I tell you, it comes down to what's made available. If the government has a problem with one part of the Internet, they can rule that the regional network relays should block it. It's not very different from IT policy in our own corporations; they can enforce what we see on the 'Net if they really want to. It's no mystery that DNS/routing can be modified to make targeted sites seem non-existent, or block specific IP addresses.
When you get down to it, any nation that claims to "control" the Internet is only speaking of what it will allow for its own constituency.
Will the US lose control of the internet? If you ask me, we already have. I believe it happened right around 1992. (Thanks, Al!)
Wonderful, ain't it?
What concerns me is the day that any, one World Power attempts to physically take control of the Internet; one m-f'in hu-gi-normous undertaking, to be sure. Should that day come, that is the day I take to arms. I'd kill for that freedom. I'd die for that freedom. No shit. It's a bigger freedom than any one of us, because it is about the potential hidden in all of us that blossoms when we come together.
===When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts.
When you have the law on your side, argue the law.
When you have neither, holler. —Al Gore
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
Why should the US keep control of the internet tubes? It's been close to 30 years since the DOD started it. Nobody noticed it's now a world-wide network?
China's not expansionistic? Tell that to Tibetans and Formosans.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Granted, America has been at the forefront of technology - with much help from the rest of the world. The space program with German scientists is a good example. And granted that Tim Berners-Lee created a protocol, an application and so on. Why did the US give Europeans access? Because cooperation of this kind breeds innovation. Would it have happened anyway? Please consider the French Minitel.
;) He probably arrived on the Mayflower..
The network itself is no longer in American hands - what part of that network is owned by the US today? Very little. In Europe and the rest of the world its owned by national and private companies. It would be impractical to restrict or demand that the world stop using this technology now anyway.
I believe the issue is mostly one of the West versus the Rest - why would the democractic nations want to surrender any control to the likes of China, Iran or even Russia? Yes, I love freedom of speech too! In fact my countrys embassy burned in Syria because of a silly cartoon! The ITU has worked very well for decades now - you dont see China restricting your phonecalls? People confuse the issue of UN control with the General Assembly chaos and other programs (Oil For Food). I dont care much for the UN - but I believe the ITU functions well enough.
Now for some Wikipedia quotes:
The telephone:
The identity of the inventor of the electric telephone remains in dispute. Antonio Meucci, Johann Philipp Reis, Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray, amongst others, have all been credited with the invention.
Electricity
Though Benjamin Franklin's famous "invention" of electricity by flying a kite in a thunderstorm turned out to be more fiction than fact, his theories on the relationship between lightning and static electricity sparked the interest of later scientists whose work provided the basis for modern electrical technology. Most notably these include Luigi Galvani, Alessandro Volta, Michael Faraday, André-Marie Ampère, and Georg Simon Ohm. No to mention such giants of electrical engineering as Nikola Tesla, Samuel Morse, Antonio Meucci, Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, Werner von Siemens, Charles Steinmetz, and Alexander Graham Bell.
The Transistor
The first patents for the transistor principle were registered in Germany in 1928 by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld. In 1934 German physicist Dr. Oskar Heil patented the field-effect transistor. It is not clear whether either design was ever built, and this is generally considered unlikely. The first practical point-contact transistor was built at Bell Labs.
Aviation
Currently, the Wright brothers feat is officially recognized by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) as being the first controlled, powered, sustained flight involving a heavier-than-air vehicle, using mechanically unassisted takeoff. Nevertheless, the Wright brothers' claim to this aviation "first" has been subject to counter-claims by various parties. Much controversy persists around the many competing claims of early aviators.
Light
Obviously God was an American!
We are precisely speaking about domain names, specifically the role of ICANN.
And there is no way in hell you could set up an Internet court. There are too many flavors of law to cover and too many non-internet specific laws and issues in play; you might as well have a global court system. And that DEFINITELY isn't happening.
You know, it'd be trivial to set up a parallel set of root DNSs if the UN believes that ICANN can't be relied upon. Look at OpenNIC... and that's supported by donations.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Since DNS is the "brain" of the Internet, and the US controls the brain, the US controls the Internet. Not to say that other countries don't control thier own sections of the internet to a certain extent, but they don't hold the root DNS.
If these other countries don't want the US controlling the root DNS servers then they can create their own. Nothing is stoppng them, the US isn't holding a gun their head saying they will use the DNS servers the US controls.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Of course the Web would be very little worth without the actual network - however is it unique or impossible to duplicate or even improve? First of all consider Tim Berners-Lee role in inventing the World Wide Web. He is certainly a Major player - and again he is not American. Dont forget all the other contributors is what I am saying.
:D
I agree with you on the whole never-ending debate - we could go on and on. The UN was created by the US. Today it should probably be reformed anyway. The issue is not with the chaos of the General Assembly and the impractical nature of the organization. The ITU has worked very well for international telephone communcations - and I believe something like the ITU would work for the Internet as well.
The European Union has the right to regulate its market all it wants. If Microsoft is convicted in court and accepts this verdict so be it. Any company wishing to sell products in the EU market has to obey European regulations and laws. This is no different from the US market. Why should it be any different? This is all a game anyway between the big players (MS and governments).
I do not want Microsoft to leave Europe entirely - but we do have the European creation "Linux" in case you forgot. And I love my Macs! No problem there. The US ingenuity has always been a product of the great variety of influences and not least the people arriving there from all over the world. And notably scientists from Europe..
The really interesting point here is not that of a US-EU trade conflict at all - this is about Western democracies opposed to countries like Iran, China, Saudi-Arabia etc. We should realize that the US and EU most of all - agree - on the important questions in life. Democracy, freedom of speech, religion and thought. We should unite and form a new and equal union of TRULY democratic nations - and leave the UN to die. But we would still need an international organization to regulate the Internet.
I think, sadly, that you're pretty close to the mark with that, but, as I always do with my posts here, I have to bring up historical references. We were in a worse place 50+ years ago with McCarthyism. It was worse still further back during the first world war. My grandmother, born here but of German-born parents, Americanized her name in response to all the anti-German feelings of the time.
I'll it even further back in history, to Benjamin Franklin. He wanted to bar Germans from immigrating to the US.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The Internet is fantastic. It is a monument to freedom of information. It transcends law and can be different in different countries. It's flexible, so China censor their little corner of the Internet (despite statements that they do no such thing), while the US can let just about anything go. All countries can have access to it on their terms.
Please don't impose the US on the Internet. It's the last place I can feel truly free.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I just listed what would make someone less of a threat. Show me a politian who says they're going to make government smaller and less capable. Show me the one who says they're going to remove the internet from the influence of the US (and every other) government. That's the only one I might trust.
You mean like Libertarians? Because the Libertarian Party wants to reduce the size and power of government they get my support.
FalconShould there be a Law?
No thanks. I'd rather actually have a *say* in the matter. At least with the UN, my country gets a voice. With the US I get what the US thinks is best for me.
If you, er your country wants a voice in how the interent is run then your country can build and install it's own DNS servers and other infrastructure. Nobody is stopping it. You can have all the say you want to then.
FalconShould there be a Law?
In other words, you have no evidence, there are any difficulties... Maybe, you should take my word for it? Someone's who can read Ukrainian and Russian, and converses regularly with friends abroad?
What FUD? That Russia kills overly critical reporters, and sues overly outspoken businesmen into bancruptcy? Or that China has political prisoners and blocks access to certain political sites? Or that they both threaten neighbors with military force?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
And the strange thing is that people are so adminant to give US constitutional protections to people it doesn't apply to. Nothing in the constitution applies to foreignors or non citizens unless a law says it does. The constitution applies only to citizens and it's interactions with it's own governments.
Can you show where in the Constitution of the USA it says rights only apply to US citizens? No you can't, because they apply to everyone in the US. Even Thomas Jefferson defended a couple of British soldiers in court believing they had the same rights.
FalconShould there be a Law?
To control the Internet is to control the free flow of information for which every company, government, and organization around the world wants badly. Recognize it and fight against it - it may be your last true "right".
-MerkX
It is also a matter of honesty and democracy to allow others a reasonable amount of control. Here in Europe, we learned that this is the best way - the US, being a continent and a declining super-power, has to learn this lesson also.
If you want control of the internet then build your own. I don't want anyone controlling mine.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The people & government of the United States of America developed the internet (ARPANET) which was a way the defense department could keep information saved in case of a nuclear attack from the "peace loving people of the USSR". The internet developed from that! If the U.N (useless nations) gets control of the internet, YOUR freedoms will be squashed. We (USA) developed the net, if those that don't like the way it is run don't like it, screw you and build your own. If it is better, then you'll have a great following. Leave governance of the net to the USA. It's our party, and we'll run it how we see fit. Bug off!
According to memory and Wikipedia a node in London was added in 1973 through a sat link via Norway. The network has always been international in nature. What would the DARPAnet have become without it? Well Tim Berners-Lee would not have created the WWW without the CERN institute being connected. It just goes to prove that the initial network might have been fully American and US funded at one time - but for the last 40 years it has been a shared project. I speaks well of the international cooperative aspect of the project - or at least for the democratic nations included.
The question of the telephone is a very good example of this:
As you yourself said with regards to the transistor the patent is interesting but the actual inventor more so: "Alexander Graham Bell was the first to patent the telephone."
To quote the Library of Congress: " Attributing the true inventor or inventors to a specific invention can be tricky business. Often credit goes to the inventor of the most practical or best working invention rather than to the original inventor(s). This happens to be the case of the invention of the telephone! "
The House of Representatives passed a Resolution on June 11, 2002, honoring Meucci's contributions and work. A European scientist that emigrated to the US
Ultimately this does not matter as long as humanity enjoys the fruits of their labours. It is all a matter of national pride and vanity. Something we should all try to rise above. As friends Europeans and Americans should certainly try our best to cooperate to reach common goals - and agree to disagree on other points.
I beg to differ on this point and I have two issues that need resolution:
The question of legal jurisdiction and sovereignty
When the US legal apparatus takes aim at legal entities in foreign jurisdictions attempting to apply US legislation on sovereign countries. This could not happen under ITU control.
David Linhardt, owner/operator of a Chicago-based bulk email outfit e360 Insight LLC that was listed by Spamhaus for sending spam to Spamhaus users, filed a lawsuit in an Illinois court with no jurisdiction over the United Kingdom and obtained a default judgement ordering Spamhaus in the United Kingdom to pay Linhardt damages, to remove evidence of Linhardt's spamming from Spamhaus' ROKSO database and to cease blocking Linhardt's spam sent to Spamhaus users. Link
And the matter of language and culture
Today it is not very well adapted to international users needs in terms of domain names and non-ASCII characters used in European languages and Asian alphabets.
In other words, you have no evidence, there are any difficulties... Maybe, you should take my word for it? Someone's who can read Ukrainian and Russian, and converses regularly with friends abroad?
My point is that I have no evidence, and you haven't provided any evidence. So at the beginning of this discussion there is no evidence. And the lack of evidence supports my point that we have no idea what might happen, and that your comment it's just an emotional plea over the issue. But then again it's beside the point because you've taken my comment out of context and of course dodged all the important points in my post.
And one should never take someone elses word for it. I'm a skeptic. I'd ask you to debate it but that point is neither in debate nor is it central to the issue.
What FUD? That Russia kills overly critical reporters, and sues overly outspoken businesmen into bancruptcy? Or that China has political prisoners and blocks access to certain political sites? Or that they both threaten neighbors with military force?
You took my comment out of context, and what's worse you completely misinterpreted my comment.
My points:
1) China and Russia don't give a shit how the internet is run right now, because they can censor, kill, bully or do whatever the hell they want right now. All those things do happen regardless of the very existence of the internet, much less who controls it. The internet is about total freedom, and with that also comes people, organizations, and regimes, which exploit that. Evidence suggests China and Russia like things just fine. As I said, nations of the EU are behind the push to make the internet regulated by an international body. Russia and China aren't part of that.
2) The EU nations have a gripe over the internet. They want a stake, they want a say, and they don't trust the US. Most of the information I have surrounding the reasons for this are sketchy and I made a point to say that why the EU wants this is unclear, except that the US acts like the school yard bully and doesn't like to share it's toys, and the EU is worried one day they will stop sharing. What needs to be made most clear is what they want and how they want to do it. One has no proof if giving control to a UN body would be bad or good. And that's the key. I did NOT say give control to China/Russia, which is what your emotional plea is saying. I said UN body, which is a different animal all together, and it's what the EU has been calling for.
3) Your FUD is the emotional plea that if this happened, somehow Russia and China would subvert the internet would collapse or something. I seriously doubt that. Like I said, everything seems to point to the fact that Russia and China like the internet the way it is. They can control the traffic within their servers just the way they want to. You basically in order to make a point, made the jump that a UN body governing will make the internet something it's not right now. You don't know that, so your plea is simply an emotional plea against change. It's a hyperbole, and exaggeration. It could be true but I doubt it.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Any country that tries to take control of the Internet from the USA will be three inches high and glow in the dark!!!!
Take that eurotrash!!!!
Europe, Japan and China could do that very easily. We would not end up with a Internet of course. I believe we all still want one, right? In reality you are discussing the history, intellectual property rights and the patents behind the network - when the US government is worried about censorship, regulations and jurisdiction.
I will of course grant you that the US did create the network - however the real question should be what [part of the physical network] did you pay for? Most people on
Why shouldnt the world simply decide to set up a new regime of root servers under their control? Hardly a great feat. The US would simply be left out of the loop. Most people would not miss it either - local content is what the masses want. The US would of course suffer from a decrease in economic activity and innovation. The Chinese are already constructing their ChinaNet - making it impossible for foreign companies to offer products and services.
Are we talking about the same congress that passed the insane laws that he made up? And the same courts that found no problems with his violations of things like the Geneva Convention? And the same people that re-elected him?
Yes, the same Supreme Court that told Bush he couldn't hold people at Gitmo indefinitely without charging them. The same with Jose Padilla. Unfortunately congress has been rubber stamping what he gives them. And though I don't have the stats more than half of the people who voted in 2004 voted for an opponent of his, unfortunately most elgible voters didn't vote. My vote was for Michael Badnarik.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Please stop mixing these up. They have subtle but important differences.
Table-ized A.I.
though i don't live in the us or even an american, my take is they just let the us take control. after all, they invented the internet. for those people who are discontented, just create your own dns entries, ip address allocations, as allocations to be separate from control of the us.
though the actions of the us through icann may be questionable at times, i don't seem to find any difference if let say the un will be managing it. it will not stop china from censoring content. as far as resources (ip and as) are concerned, the us started with the wasteful class based allocation that improved to cidr. requesting blocks from registries such as apnic are not much of a problem (you just have to justify it.)
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
You — advocating a change — need to present evidence, that the change is needed. I don't. It is called "burden of proof". Look it up...
I could not do that, even if I tried (I did not) — because you did not provide any context. You are doing it now — kinda...
Why are you so patient with EU's unreasonable (you admit, their reasons are "unclear") wants, and so angry at US, who is apprehensive about others (unreasonably) wanting to codify the sharing of the toys, which US has so far volunteerly shared anyway? You call US a "school yard bully" — what does that make EU? A "school yard loser"? Your whole "bully" analogy would've made sense, if we robed someone (EU?) of the toys, but we did not — Internet is our toy to begin with.
You know this, but still defend EU's requests, which they make for reasons unclear — and criticize America over its reluctance to give up its own "toys". Would one be correct calling you a Euro-phile anti-American?
Directly to China/Russia (which nobody is talking about, fortunately) or to UN is irrelevant. What matters, is that China/Russia (along with France and Germany) will have more control and say over Internet, than they do now. That is what I don't want to see happening — not by iota. That is what my original subject-line said, BTW...
The increase in their control over it — and the increase will happen — is a bad thing in itself. One does not need to be "emotional" to understand this...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
No. No DNS lookup you'll ever do will recurse all the way to a root server, or even your local mirror (you do know that root-servers.net has many subdomains and mirrors in your region, right?) Your ISP's DNS server will be pulling updates from gtld-domain.XX.YY, referenced from it's root-server.net mirror, to populate its cache for XX.YY domains.
Most ISPs are configued to seldom recurse on lookup miss, instead to simply allow the normal replication to occur and to do batch transfers from authoritative sources at non-peak times.
For recently accessed domains, no UDP DNS packet would ever leave your ISP's or even your office/school's network. That's how its supposed to work.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I'm not a Dixie Chicks, but I think I have a point here !
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
I see your point and the distinction is a valid point - I did make a mistake in reading "control" into it. Of course the US is entitled to feel strongly about a project it gave life to :)
When I claimed China was building their own "ChinaNet" I was of course only putting a subjective label on their efforts at regulating, censoring and policing their own population. I just want to point out that this is of course just my view on their efforts and that they in no way have made this a matter of public record. Like many technologies the world uses the Chinese are actively working to co-opt and lock non-Chinese out of their domestic market. I believe this fits into their greater scheme of things, perhaps a bit sinister but the evidence speaks for itself in the form of the following: their own DVD format, cellphone protocols, CPUs, computer operating systems (based on Linux) and of course network routers designed to isolate "their" Internet..
The Chinese have actively pirated, reverse engineered and disregarded patents for quite some time in efforts aimed at developing China and enabling their economy to actively compete with the Western world on every level including developing technologies - not just producing them any longer. I believe China is seeking to "catch up" and restore their national pride. They rightly belong amongst the worlds greatest nations they just do not seem to be willing to wait for long.