US Control of Internet Remains an Issue

Hugh Pickens writes "A UN-sponsored Internet conference ended with little progress on the issue of US control over the domain name system run by ICANN, a California-based nonprofit over which the US. government retains veto power. By controlling the core systems, the United States indirectly influences the way much of the world uses the Internet. As the conference drew to a close, the Russian representative, Konstantin Novoderejhkin, called on the United Nations secretary-general to create a working group to develop ''practical steps'' for moving Internet governance ''under the control of the international community.'' The United States insists that the existing arrangements ensure the Internet's stability and there's little indication that the US government and ICANN plan to cede their roles over domain names anytime soon. ''I think (there are) a small number of countries that are very agitated and almost don't care what the facts are,'' said Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, who stepped down as ICANN's chairman earlier this month. ''It's a very small vocal group bothered by this issue. ICANN has existed for eight years and done a great job with its plans for internationalization.'' With no concrete recommendations for action, the only certainty going forward is that any resentment about the American influence will only grow as more users from the developing world come online, changing the face of the global network. The next forum will held next year in New Delhi, India."

Comments

Not really an issue

[Xaositecte]

Many are quick to point out the question "Why does the United States deserve to control the internet?"

This quickly spins into a ridiculous flame war consisting of something along the lines of "We invented it" - (A claim contested by swedish apoligists), or some kind of line about how Libya is in charge of the UN council on human rights, whatever that has to do with it.

These points, and many other historical arguements, are irrelevant. The only issue here is that the United States currently has control, and is being presented with no good (or even clear) reason why it should give that control up.

Re:Not really an issue

[foobsr]

The only issue here is that the United States currently has control, and is being presented with no good (or even clear) reason why it should give that control up.

Maybe one can find a majority that does not like it ( http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm ).

CC.

Re:Not really an issue

[Xaositecte]

a Majority that is fully capable of forming their own infrastructure, and telling the United States to Sod off.

Re:Not really an issue

[Professor_UNIX]

What exactly is the US "controlling" anyway? They decide who is responsible for the content going into the root DNS servers and who assigns IP addresses, but that's about it. Nobody really HAS to use our DNS root structure, but everyone that has tried to setup an alternative one has failed miserably. Logically someone *should* be responsible for at least allocating IP addresses so they are globally unique or else you're going to have a ton of problems... but who is anyone really complaining about the way the ARIN/APNIC/RIPE arrangement is working? It seems to be handing out IP address space pretty efficiently.

Re:Not really an issue

[Shakrai]

or some kind of line about how Libya is in charge of the UN council on human rights, whatever that has to do with it

It has to do with the respectability of that institution in the eyes of a lot of people. To a lot of people the UN hasn't done anything morally just since the intervention in the Korean War. Many of us are leery of ceding control over anything to an organization that comes off as quite hypocritical in many areas (the human rights council being one of them).

Now I'm not looking for a flame-fest over the pros and cons of the UN. Just trying to explain the viewpoints of a lot of people. Personally, I also think this is a manufactured crisis, because I have yet to see anything that ICANN or the United States has done to the internet that harmed the interests of the rest of the world. And please don't throw '.xxx' out there as your example, as there are many legitimate reasons not to setup yet another TLD and I'd hardly think that a disagreement over porn of all things should be something to get nation-states upset about.

Re:Not really an issue

[ILuvRamen]

what do you mean irrelevant? Yes we invented it. We should be suing every other country for copyright infringement except that we sold them the technology to make a profit. So that means it's still our technology and we can do whatever we want with it. If other countries are so mad about that, why don't they make their own private DNS network?

Re:Not really an issue

[Red Flayer]

Maybe one can find a majority that does not like it ( http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm ).

So?

I mean, not to be callous, but just because something is unpopular doesn't mean it's a bad thing.

I believe that a big reason a lot of people don't want the US in control is because that's the status quo, and people find reasons to dislike the status quo, deservedly or not. Another reason is the general ill will that exists towards the US government worldwide. Yes, there are concerns about network neutrality, and there are concerns about the US abusing its position.

However, when the time comes that the US implements policy that damages the internet in a meaningful way, then we'll see alternatives used. It's how the internet works.

For now, the status quo is fine. Why do we waste so much energy trying to fix something that works?

Re:Not really an issue

[Shakrai]

a Majority that is fully capable of forming their own infrastructure, and telling the United States to Sod off.

Go for it. No one is stopping you.

Re:Not really an issue

[Grimbleton]

You know, the Japanese came up with ramen....

Re:Not really an issue

[mordors9]

You must not get out much. America bashing is always one of the more popular sports in much of the world. We know how China would run it, the Saudis just gave some woman 200 lashes for being raped (I know you are going to say it is more complicated than that) so I can imagine their idea on the free flow of ideas. But still the Yanks are the worst you know.

Re:Not really an issue

[hanssprudel]

To qute Ayn Rand about the UN:

"I do not sanction the grotesque pretense of an organization allegedly devoted to world peace and human rights, which includes Soviet Russia, the worst aggressor and bloodiest butcher in history, as one of its members. The notion of protecting rights, with Soviet Russia among the protectors, is an insult to the concept of rights and to the intelligence of any man who is asked to endorse or sanction such an organization. I do not believe that an individual should cooperate with criminals, and, for all the same reasons, I do not believe that free countries should cooperate with dictatorships."

Change out "Soviet Russia" for "PRC" (and to a growing extent Putin's Russia) and this still holds today.

I'm not American, don't get to vote for American laws, and I dislike, nay detest, many, many, policies of the American government. But I would rather have important elements of the Internet under the control of a single democracy than under an organisation that gives equal voice to completely undemocratic regimes of terror.

Re:Not really an issue

[N3WBI3]

A a majority of everyone not in the US thinks the US should cede control? thats a reason? If ew were to propose that everyone in the world give 90% their income to the people of China and India there would likely be a majority of the world population in favor of it, fortunately we dont live in a world where a simple majority can deprive an entity of controlling their own property.

Re:Not really an issue

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I think the number one reason to keep US in "control" of the internet is domestic stability. This is why a lot of foreign countries keep there money here in the US. The fact that we are democratic takes a back seat to stable.

Face it, other than some stupid name resolution, what REAL control does the US have over the internet?

If it's infrastructure, then this can be fixed by the foreign countries laying more cable...

Re:Not really an issue

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Note to self: /s/There/Their.

Need more coffee...

Re:Not really an issue

[Shakrai]

fortunately we dont live in a world where a simple majority can deprive an entity of controlling their own property.

We would if the people that think the General Assembly should be the Governing body for the World had their way.

Re:Not really an issue

[N3WBI3]

It's a question of principle really. If there's an organization like UN (that means United Nations for those who don't know /sarcasm off) that could be a more neutral regulator, why leave it to one single nation?

1) I dont consider the UN 'neutral' consisting of a body of every nation does not mean they do not have a strong agenda

2) irregardless of their 'neutrality' the US built the internet put in all the investment and should benefit by control

3) There has yet to be a compelling reason presented other than 'Its not fair'. Nobody has been significantly damaged by US control.

But then again, taking into account how little US takes UN into account (well, not US, but the present administration) this doesn't surprise me a single bit.

Dont just peg it on Bush, many Americans (Anywhere between 20-40 percent) see the UN for what it is, a body a bureaucrats originally chartered, in spirit, with preventing war through a place of negotiation who have decided to ever justify their existance by meddling in every aspect of member (and non member) nations policy.

So, with that said, let them keep the control, and let the rest keep fighting for their principles and not only oil like some.

LOL I love this, how noble to have gotten rich raping the world and the worlds resources (Europe) and act so condescending to the US less than a 90 years after it all started to fall apart.

Re:Not really an issue

[passthecrackpipe]

there are many legitimate reasons not to setup yet another TLD Are there? Please enlighten me. I understand that the present system of TLD's was designed to be freely added to whenever required, without much fuss. However, allowing this to happen would make the domain name business a rather less valuable proposition, so this concept was quickly killed off. what I can see from where I am standing is that everything is run by a decidedly closed shop, with only pretenses to openness, and the whole thing happily handed over to a multi-billion dollar business with interests to protect (and those interests are not likely to be ours).

I am no big fan of the whole UN idea, I shudder at the thought of DNS becoming even *more* bureaucratic, but the current arrangements don't fill me with much confidence either. The whole US thing doesn't really mean much to me - but ICANN come across as a bunch of bastards looking for justification to keep on breathing, and Verisign are even worse.

My view here is that the only thing that is manufactured is the requirement for a limit on the amount of TLD's. You mention porn and .xxx as the only reasons people should be upset, but that is both a red herring as well as a non sequitur. The issue goes deeper then .xxx

Re:Not really an issue

[Silver Sloth]

Whether you want to or not, in an increasingly interconnected world, you have to deal with regimes that do things you disagree with. I, for example, have to deal with a regime that tollerates the death penalty for juveniles, and, please, that's not meant to be flame bait, I'm just pointing out that there are different views.

Ok, so there are two basic ways in which you can deal with these regimes, talk to them or bomb them back to the dark ages. The PRC may not be a paragon of virtue but they're a great deal better than they were. Why? Because they value the trade they get. And if you want the situation to improve to talk to them, and you keep talking to them.

Re:Not really an issue

[PinkyDead]

You are correct in everything, except in saying that there is only one issue. There are two issues, firstly, the obvious point that you make, which is absolutely correct.

The second issue is that the rest of the world always has the nuclear option to split the DNS system and provide their own. Would the US allow (1) short term global chaos followed by (2) an Internet where they had absolutely not control or had to petition for a minority role? Simple answer, they can't afford to.

I'm not saying that such an outcome is a foregone conclusion - but what it does mean is that the possession being 9/10ths of the law argument is not enough, and that the US cannot just say 'We have and we're keeping it'. They must compromise.

Re:Not really an issue

[Shakrai]

what I can see from where I am standing is that everything is run by a decidedly closed shop, with only pretenses to openness, and the whole thing happily handed over to a multi-billion dollar business with interests to protect

Agreed. ICANN sucks donkey balls. But how does that relate to the United States? The argument isn't "ICANN sucks", the argument is "We can't trust the United States". How the hell do you expect Americans to respond to that?

Are there? Please enlighten me. I understand that the present system of TLD's was designed to be freely added to whenever required, without much fuss

Let me qualify what I said. There are no reasons to add more English language TLDs. What the hell is the point of .info, .museum, .name, blah blah blah? Not that many people are using them. All they do is send more money to the pockets of ICANN and the domain registers because trademark holders feel like they have to register in every single TLD to protect themselves. We didn't need more TLDs to allow more businesses to flourish. eBay seemed to become pretty big without the benefit of 'auctions.com'.

Note that I qualified it with "English language TLDs". I have no problem with adding TLDs for other languages, as they have been under served by the existing arrangement.

ou mention porn and .xxx as the only reasons people should be upset, but that is both a red herring as well as a non sequitur. The issue goes deeper then .xxx

The issue that I see is that the US isn't very popular right now and somebody manufactured a crisis to that affect. You want to change the way ICANN operates? Where do I sign up? You want to bash the United States and say we can't trustworthy and the UN (*shudder*) should control it? Now we have a problem.....

Re:Not really an issue

[halivar]

What has any of that got to do with the internet?

Re:Not really an issue

[TheRaven64]

And when you click on a link in a search engine, it contains a hostname. When you send an email, your address book contains a mapping from people to username / hostname pairs, and the hostname forms a to-many mapping to MX records identifying hosts. Or do you think every time a company adds a backup mail exchange they should somehow contact everyone who has their email address in their address book and let them know? Just because you don't enter the hostname manually doesn't mean it's not important to how you access the information.

Re:Not really an issue

[Mr. Underbridge]

or some kind of line about how Libya is in charge of the UN council on human rights, whatever that has to do with it.

Not to degrade into that selfsame flame war, but here's the explanation on that: There is no way in hell the US should be willing to cede control of something as important as the internet to any organization that would put Libya in charge of human rights. It would be akin to walking over and handing the keys to your Porsche to some guy staggering out of a bar. You'd be an idiot.

Oh, and you forgot Syria on the security council.

Re:Not really an issue

[Threni]

> the Saudis just gave some woman 200 lashes for being raped (I know you are going to say it is more complicated than that)

Sure - she'd have got 300 lashes but she apologized.

Re:Not really an issue

[Red Flayer]

Your niggerdom truly knows no bounds.

Hey, good to see that it's still much easier to be a racist prick when you're hiding behind the equivalent of a white sheet, AC. Why not post that under your username?

Re:Not really an issue

[smittyoneeach]

It's about feelings, you insensitive clod!
Given a perceived difference between two groups, A and B, where A is nominally superior, B can either:

• Set about coming up with a superior solution, as in, say cel phone technologies,
• Go on and on, in the fashion of the baby with the full diaper.

One hopes that IPv6 mill eventually somewhat mitigate the latter squaking.
Fa{ir|re} is what you pay to ride a bus.

Re:Not really an issue

[dave420]

So the fact the US is a non-democratic nation that creates undemocratic regimes of terror doesn't figure into your thinking?

Re:Not really an issue

[zerocool^]

Agreed. I love America, but I recognize our many flaws, and am quick to point them out, in order to facilitate the making of a better America. But, come on. For starters, this is one of the few international projects that we've gotten almost completely right! Secondly, as a sys-admin, I (and many others on slashdot) will be first to tell you: "If it ain't broke, and the new model doesn't add any needed functionality, don't fix it".

I'm pretty sure this is just bitching about America because it's cool to kick the guy when he's down. If you're going to bitch about America, take a look at our foreign policy, our unilateral support for Israel on the UN security council, our plummeting currency valuation, our mixed-bag relations with China, our disappearing middle-class and rapidly-growing-richer upper class, or the state of our healthcare and education services. Leave ICANN alone.

~Wx

Re:Not really an issue

[passthecrackpipe]

ICANN sucks donkey balls. But how does that relate to the United States?...the argument is "We can't trust the United States" Well, I'm not really into this whole "US sucks/US is teh awesomeness" debate. It applies to this issues with regards to the fact that the US has veto powers over ICANN. This makes me uncomfortable, but in the same way that I would find it uncomfortable if any other single nation would have that kind of control over the web. It isn't really about the US sucking. But, to answer your question, that is how it relates to ICANN.

What the hell is the point of .info, .museum, .name, blah blah blah? Not that many people are using them So? if not many people use them, that inversely means that some people use them. It obviously makes them happy, so what's the issue. as far as I care, people can go ahead and create any kind of TLD they like. The only reason it would send more money to the pockets of the financial stakeholders is because a) they have elected themselves to be financial stakeholders, and b) they manufactured a pretend shortage of names. If you are able to create any kind of TLD you like with some form of minimum support, the whole business model would fall out from under Verisign and ICANN't - APNIC, ARIN and RIPE were doing just fine without them.

Re:Not really an issue

[daem0n1x]

Oh, you mean America's BEST FRIENDS, the Saudis?

Re:Not really an issue

[Applekid]

Parent secretly +1 Interesting?

Why can't the international community create a parallel DNS system and administrate its own domains? I mean, bits are bits, right? Wouldn't just be as simple as setting your DNS servers to ones on a "WorldDNS" network that don't communicate with the US lead system?

Re:Not really an issue

[magarity]

I believe that a big reason a lot of people don't want the US in control
 
It's not "people" who don't like US control, it's "people who run oppressive governments". Look at the summary: a Russian is complaining about US control at the same time his government is busy trying to copy the Chinese filtering techniques.
 
Let's look at the Internet Usage By Region graph linked above that innocently labels by continental land masses as if all populations of the world yearn to be free from the USA's oppressive Internet policies. Compare it to the Internet Censorship worst offenders list on Wikipedia. Oh, look, apparently as a suprise to many /. readers, the USA is at the bottom of the list, mainly for laws aimed at restricting offensive materials from children that are under constant attack in the courts. No one is in Chinese or Russian courts fighting to remove censorship there because it would just get the plaintiff disappeared. And don't be fooled by the Europeans. France and Germany are #8 and #9 of the top 10 list of Internet censors.
 
Of all the major players in the world, the US has the by far best track record (not perfect, just best) of keeping the internet open.

Re:Not really an issue

[akirapill]

This is the kind of knee-jerk undisciplined quasi-religious thinking that makes me wonder why anyone takes Ayn Rand seriously anymore.

Re:Not really an issue

[daem0n1x]

I'm astonished as someone that's not an American can be so much of a sycophant as to quote a barbaric speech, worthy of the most hardcore braindead conservative radio-shouters.

If you were to cut relations with all countries guilty of crimes you would end up alone in the World. And the USA have a very, very long resume on that, too.

Re:Not really an issue

[Flambergius]

I do not believe that free countries should cooperate with dictatorships.

As a native citizen of a country that both is the oldest democracy in the world and has historically been attacked by Russia every 50 years or so, I'll tell you why you have to cooperate with dictatorships. As long as you keep talking they can't kill you.

The United Nations is far from perfect, we all know this. But it is what we got. Maybe you can afford to ignore it, and certainly Americans can, but I and my compatriots can't.

PS. I know I embellished a bit on the historical facts. Its not really every 50 years like clockwork, and a couple of times we were the ones attacking. Yes, we Finns can be that stupid.

Re:Not really an issue

[jav1231]

I disagree. The idea that the world can just turn around and forget America's segment/s is a valid one. In the long run its not in their best interest. This isn't about making the internet better, it's about resting control away from the U.S. for the pure sake of it. America not only doesn't have to play along, it shouldn't. The U.N. is simply a corrupt and impotent body and to place a large chunk of the U.S. and world's economic infrastructure in it's control is abject stupidity. The only purpose the U.N. serves is that it provides a convenient place for us to spy on leaders of other nations. Were it not for that, I'd advocate booting them out of New York. That's prime Manhattan real estate going to waste to provide a place for our enemies to pontificate idiotic ideas like this one.

Re:Not really an issue

[Intron]

There is no reason why the 13 root servers could not be administered independently. Almost all of the administration of DNS is automated, anyway. Creating new TLDs is a joke. The only thing interesting going on with DNS is how to do i18n without opening up new phishing attacks.

Re:Not really an issue

[E 99]

Yes, there are concerns about network neutrality, and there are concerns about the US abusing its position.

As opposed to the UN, which would only shut the Internet down to mitigate Global Warming, and then award itself a peace prize.

Seriously, though, who's in the UN? China, where discussion of unpleasant aspects of its history will put you in jail; Germany, where denial of unpleasant aspects of its history will put you in jail... I'd rather the Internet be in a place where, though people are just as stupid as everywhere else, they have the unqualified constitutional right to express every stupid idea they have have.

Re:Not really an issue

[background image]

First of all, I should say that I think you've got it about right that the US has done a generally good job with the internet. However, I think you might be wrong about this:

It's not "people" who don't like US control, it's "people who run oppressive governments"

I think there may be many more 'people' than you realize who worry about the degree of control the US currently exercises over the internet. It's not strictly relevant to this topic, but you may remember this poll from last year where majorities in several countries traditionally allied with the US rated the country as a serious threat to world peace.

Rightly or wrongly, I don't think you can deny that there are a lot of people on the planet who have recently become a lot less likely to simply assume US' benevolence and good intentions, and I don't see that there's any reason to think that that attitude does not apply to this subject.

Re:Not really an issue

[Shakrai]

It applies to this issues with regards to the fact that the US has veto powers over ICANN

That's a legacy of the fact that the US Government funded the initial internet backbone and encouraged the growth thereof. It's your right to suggest changing that, but I think anybody looking at it rationally can understand why the US doesn't want to give it up and why your typical American citizen could have a problem with the UN being in charge of it (since that seems to be the most popular suggestion).

Sure, the United States has an agenda on the World stage. But so does China. And Russia. And every other nation-state on the face of the Earth. Do you really want a UN type scenario where nations with the censorship record of China/Saudi Arabia/North Korea/etc have a veto over internet governance matters?

I fail to see what's so horribly wrong with the status quo that it needs to be changed, other then "it's not fair that the US has veto powers!"

So? if not many people use them, that inversely means that some people use them. It obviously makes them happy, so what's the issue. as far as I care, people can go ahead and create any kind of TLD they like

Because I don't like having to register my trademark in 50 different TLDs in order to protect it. And even if it didn't cost ANY money to register a domain name it's still a pain in the ass.

If you are able to create any kind of TLD you like with some form of minimum support, the whole business model would fall out from under Verisign and ICANN

And replace that business model with, what, exactly? The nature of the way DNS works means that at some point you are going to need some sort of authority to manage the DNS root. If that authority isn't ICANN, with all it's pros and cons, then who the hell should it be? And why are you even bringing Verislime into this? They don't control what new TLDs get created or approved. They do control the .com and .net roots, per a contract with ICANN and while I find that somewhat troubling (given some of their past actions), I fail to see how it relates to the issue at hand (the US having veto power over ICANN which controls the DNS root).

Re:Not really an issue

[Firethorn]

These points, and many other historical arguements, are irrelevant. The only issue here is that the United States currently has control, and is being presented with no good (or even clear) reason why it should give that control up.

I find a lot of parrallels between this and Europe's Galileo program(GPS Alternative).

I found figures that the program would cost 4 Billion - Whether you consider that an expensive duplication of effort or a cheap means of removal of European commercial and military dependence on a US military system is up to you.

4 Billion would be plenty of funding to set up a fairly large independent network; it'd even pay for new protocols and gateways so the system could still interface with the US.

But, at least so far, ICANN has remained neutral, so there's no real motivation for people or nations to get off their butts and spend some money to get the 'problem' fixed.

Re:Not really an issue

[KDR_11k]

The US, where showing the unpleasant parts of human anatomy gets you in jail...

Re:Not really an issue

[Opinion2k]

However, when the time comes that the US implements policy that damages the internet in a meaningful way, then we'll see alternatives used. It's how the internet works. You mean like the alternatives we'll see used when the US implements policy that damages the international financial order with their worthless dollar. 'The dollar, our currency, your problem' - US Secretary of Treasury John Connally, may 1971.

Re:Not really an issue

[KDR_11k]

So, where's your internet?

Obviously in place right now, wouldn't be easy to post on Slashdot with no internet connection. Or do you think the US laid all those lines and paid for all those routers and servers in his country? The internet is as big as it is because there's parts of it all over the world.

Re:Not really an issue

[absoluteflatness]

Need I remind you how US was before WWI and why US didn't do jack before they were attacked?

I'm pretty sure you meant to say World War II.

And what to you mean, fall apart?

The GP was talking about the history of European countries with regards to the whole colonialism/imperialism/New Imperialism thing. See, for example, the stellar political situation in the aftermath of the "scramble for Africa." The 90 year figure may be a little off, but decolonization didn't really start till about the 1950's.

But yeah, we're clearly the ones that in the last century raped the worlds resources

Also, GP was trying to place the blame on Europe for the history of lusting after the worlds resources before the last century (last time I checked, 90 years is about a century).

That being said, the history of European countries as international offenders does nothing to legitimize the practices of the United States today (or its own history of informal imperialism in South America and elsewhere).

Re:Not really an issue

[caluml]

Like anonet?

Re:Not really an issue

[Anonymuous Coward]

why unpleasant ?

Re:Not really an issue

[meatspray]

I LOLed,

IP is safe for work

Re:Not really an issue

[jandersen]

On the other hand, there aren't really many reasons why the US shouln't give the control over to an independent, international body.

It is good to see a pragmatic attitude in this matter - however, a truly pragmatic view would also include the fact that this seems to be an actual issue, even if there are no good technical or administrative reasons for changing things. The American government's stance demonstrates that they, at least, have strong reasons for not wanting to give away this control - so, they are not being pragmatic about it either.

Another fact worth considering is that it is technically easy to implement an alternative to the current root DNS servers etc; most of us could do it in a matter of a few hours if we had the HW. If that were to happen, it is possible it would hurt e-commerce, globalisation and other things - those most likely to feel the pain would be those who are most dependent on doing business on the internet. I suspect that this is mostly companies in the US. It ought to make the US more willing to consider an internationalisation of the internet governance; at least that seems to the most pragmatic view of things.

Re:Not really an issue

[dajak]

There is no property issue here. Taking "control" from the US is merely an issue of reconfiguring DNS in your own country: no goods are taken away from the US, its citizens, or its companies, and the permission of the US is not required. Neither is a democratic majority of the world population. The reason to bring this into the UN is to coordinate the operation.

What's next? The US complaining if countries X and Y decide not to trade oil to eachother anymore in US dollars, or if country Z decides not to use operating systems from a US company anymore? "Control over DNS" is not an entitlement. It's simply what happened when countries connected to the Internet and didn't fix a thing that wasn't broken. Since the US started talking about "cyber warfare" many countries started to realize that DNS as it works now is broken, at least from a military strategic point of view. It is not surprising that the countries most worried about it are exactly those that the US likes least.

Re:Not really an issue

[magarity]

but you may remember this poll from last year where majorities in several countries traditionally allied with the US rated the country as a serious threat to world peace
 
The Guardian (UK: just above US on internet censorship list (ICL hereafter)), Haaretz (Israel: 13th on ICL) , Toronto Star (Canada: 5th on ICL) should apparently be more concerned about their own countries' internet censoring than the US's. This is a typical tactic to crack down on something and point the blame or direct attention at an external cause. Reforma from Mexico, the only country not on the ICL, is frequently just complaining about the US in general.

Re:Not really an issue

[idontgno]

Oh, you mean America's MOST USEFUL FRIENDS, the Saudis?

There, fixed it for you.

The U.S.'s dealings with most of the world are purely utilitarian. Assigning moral or social significance to them is a waste of breath or ink (or electrons), and trying to be sarcastic on that basis is just shooting blanks.

Re:Not really an issue

[afroborg]

In response to your post and also your .sig at the same time...
The issue that I see is that the US isn't very popular right now and somebody manufactured a crisis to that affect. You want to change the way ICANN operates? Where do I sign up? You want to bash the United States and say we can't trustworthy and the UN (*shudder*) should control it? Now we have a problem.....

--

I want peace on Earth and good will towards men
We are the United States Government. We don't do that sort of thing

Well, I think you've summed it up right there actually.
I don't personally have any problem with ICANN being located in the USA. Why not, it's as good a place for it as any. And that's where it is now, so leave it there. The only part of the whole deal that bothers me slightly is the US government having veto power over ICANN. I don't see why a government needs to have control over DNS at all, let alone a single nation's government. IF there has to be a governing body involved as some sort of checks and balances type arrangement then one which is likely to represent everyone's interests rather than one which may have some bias would be preferable.

This (to me anyway) is not about US bashing, it's about the fact that the internet is now an international structure, and regulation of it should be a co-operative effort between everyone who's connected to it. I realise that is impossible, so who should do it? I would suggest an international council of some sort, probably not the UN, that sort of thing is not their function. To be honest I would have thought it would be more like the domain of someone like an ISO or IEC special committee.

So basically, I'm not a big fan of the US government having a controlling hand in things that affect the internet, not because I think they do a bad job of it necessarily, but because I don't believe that any one government should be in charge of it.

Re:Not really an issue

[Kadin2048]

Why can't the international community create a parallel DNS system and administrate its own domains? I mean, bits are bits, right? Wouldn't just be as simple as setting your DNS servers to ones on a "WorldDNS" network that don't communicate with the US lead system? They can. You could create a new "root" DNS server in an afternoon if you really wanted to. There's no technical reason stopping you or anyone else. Then it's a question of money to put it in a datacenter with good uptime and fast pipes and building in a lot of redundancy.

But this isn't really what the people bitching about U.S. control want. They don't really want control over the system as much as they want to take it away from the U.S. I doubt they would do anything different if they had the opportunity (assuming good faith on their part, i.e. that they wouldn't build in some sort of horrendous censorship features, which I think is a serious risk), and honestly I can't imagine they have much interest in the day-to-day operation of what's mostly an automated system.

It's just a political football, nothing more. The countries involved know that the U.S. will never give it up, so it's an easy way to score points at little to no cost.

Re:Not really an issue

[daem0n1x]

I already know that. But being so brazenly amoral voids any right to preach moral on others.

Re:Not really an issue

[moore.dustin]

First, I do not have to support them. Second, it is not about disagreeing with regime. A disagreement is a different of opinion on a something you agree is an issue. For example, lets say world poverty is the issue. The debate and disagreement would come over how to deal with the problem, whether it is with money or education lets say. Now, as with PRC or the former Soviet Russia, there is no disagreement on the issue of world poverty. Instead, the disagreement would be over the fundamental issue of world poverty and whether or not it is even an issue at all. See the difference?

Back to living in your so called 'interconnected world.' Globalization does not mean we must sacrifice our morals and ethics in order to be part of the world economy. The very essence of being free is our right to choose what morality is for ourselves. When you say I must act against what I believe to be right in order to do something, you are directly attacking my freedom.

Re:Not really an issue

[mooreti1]

You're kidding, right? You're generalizing an entire nation? That's very enlightened of you, A.C. Now, do you have anything to say that's relevant to ICANN having control of the domain registration? Twit.

Re:Not really an issue

[Kadin2048]

We would if the people that think the General Assembly should be the Governing body for the World had their way.

How many nuclear weapons does the General Assembly have?

Re:Not really an issue

[mooreti1]

Great. We "Yanks" love you, too. Now, do you have an opinion of why ICANN shouldn't retain control of the domain registration? Or are you simply so one dimensional that the argument "American's suck!" is all you have? Please, give me a rational, intelligent reason for changing the process that's in place with regard to domain registration and I promise you that I'll pay it sincere attention.

Re:Not really an issue

[Richard Steiner]

And how many other governments behave in a "moral" fashion?

Re:Not really an issue

[hanssprudel]

This is the kind of silly, vaccuous response that makes me wonder why you posted at all.

Re:Not really an issue

[dheltzel]

I think the UN is hoping that taking over control of the internet will make them look good, so you don't have to go back as far as you do to find something they did right. After all, it can't be that hard to control the internet, how could they possibly screw that up ?

(note for the humor impaired -- yes, I'm being sarcastic here)

Re:Not really an issue

[hanssprudel]

I call the Bush administration a lame duck which recently lost control of the countries legislator. I call the USA a democracy, for all its flaws.

Re:Not really an issue

[hanssprudel]

Ok, so there are two basic ways in which you can deal with these regimes, talk to them or bomb them back to the dark ages. You can also not give them control of the Internet's architecture. I'm not sure under which part of your false dichotomy that falls.

Re:Not really an issue

[s13g3]

Quite. Do we REALLY think that the UN member nations who want such Internet controls would even begin to take it seriously? Can we trust China to behave and not engage in serious DNS poisoning? If other nations don't like it, perhaps they should develop their own "internets" (it's made of tubes!). If they do a good job, maybe other nations will decide to join ChinaNet instead, but somehow I doubt it. Can you seriously trust even a small majority to make non-biased input on how the internet should best be run to the advantage of all involved?

Screw all this crap about what the majority wants - the majority wouldn't know what to do with it or how to do it while showing any other concern for anyone else. The U.S. developed and implemented the internet as we know it, and without our infrastructure and investment, it wouldn't exist in anywhere near the form it does today. While as a nation, the U.S. has some problems, I believe that we show a great deal more concern over privacy, security, reliability and usability for all than would any of the numerous communist or socialist nations that make up a healthy majority of the U.N. The U.S. is NOT a democracy (we're a republic, damnit, get your facts right) for a very good reason. Democracy is nothing more than mob-rule, and mob-rule doesn't ever see to the best interests of anyone but the mob (never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups). Philosophers as far back as Plato have warned against democracies and "majority rule", and there is no reason to believe that such application to the internet would be any different, since then the majority of little technologically and economically irrelevant countries that hate the U.S. because we don't pander to their BS economic and social policies would certainly set straight out to screw the U.S. (and any other countries they think they can profit from) over as quickly as possible, and I don't see any good reason why that should be allowed to happen. We're the only nation whose laws and founding ideals are consistent with the ideals that founded and continue to define the internet, and I don't see any other nation as being fit to carry on those ideals, from the people at the bottom to the governmental laws, philosophies and representatives at the top... Australia with its excessive taxes, France with it's communist sympathies, Russia with it's massive corruption, or China with their well known censorship and willingness to sponsor illegal activities, no, I think the U.S. is the only nation remotely fit to govern the 'net.

No, the Internet has done just fine, for the most part, being run when, how and by whom it is, after decades of unimaginable and unprecedented growth. Only the U.S. philosophy of freedom at all costs has kept the Internet from becoming what China has done to the internet within it's own borders, and no one is ever going to convince me that there is any good reason to change or "fix" what isn't broken, esp. when those screaming for change are only doing it out of spite. Screw political football - play by our rules or not at all... The rules were very clear when you signed up for a cross-connect in the first place; you knew who the ball belonged to when you started playing the game. Just because there are more players in the game now doesn't mean suddenly that some communist ideal should be allowed to take over and just demand that the ball's owner give it up to everyone else out of some misguided and dangerously naive sense of community. We're not the bully in the yard, we brought the ball for everyone else to play with, so long as they play by the rules. Anyone who doesn't like it can get the hell off our playing field.

Re:Not really an issue

[N3WBI3]

Or talk about how your companies made millions selling over priced materials and handy work to Europe after WWII

So your loving continent starts a world war that sucked us in, and you complain that we overcharged you when we went in to clean up the mess? Hey I guess we should have left the continent in ruin..

But yeah, we're clearly the ones that in the last century raped the worlds resources

Look at a map of Africa from 1910. That continent still has not recovered from what you did to it... Oh yea! way to remap the middle east guys (yea you sowed the seeds there as well).

And what to you mean, fall apart?

Well for one, the sun now does set on the British Empire, Africa is colony free, India is its own nation, and HK is a part of china. Given that 90 years ago Europe dominated the eastern hemisphere and now it does not things seem to have fallen apart..

Economic recession maybe?

Actually it was a world wide depression, but hey why get off that high horse youre riding to get the facts right..

Re:Not really an issue

[jujung]

The Internet censorship list, you are talking about, is based on alphabetical order!!

Re:Not really an issue

[N3WBI3]

That being said, the history of European countries as international offenders does nothing to legitimize the practices of the United States today

I never said it did, the US is sowing discord right now (as Europe has done in an unmatched way historically and is not immune from doing again) but it should be noted that:

(1) European nations went into Iraq with us,

(2) Part of the reason the US got invested in the ME in the first place (Saudi Arabia specifically) was to break the Soviet Union who were a threat to western Europe and were, for all intensive purposes, occupying easter Europe.

(3) Europe has started *2* world wars in the past 100 years

(4) Foreign occupation? Falklands anyone?

When Europeans get up on their high horse and wag their finger after having the US come in to *two* wars that they started, and help by providing a strong defensive force to western Europe during the cold war. Telling us how aweful we are after they practically made colonialism and exploitation a science is annoying.

No the US is not perfect, we can (and should) learn from Europe but you guys are not perfect either.

Re:Not really an issue

[N3WBI3]

Taking "control" from the US is merely an issue of reconfiguring DNS in your own country

And what pray tell prevents this now? are you trying to tell me the UK cant set up their own DNS infrastructure?

no goods are taken away from the US, its citizens, or its companies, and the permission of the US is not required

then have at it and stop crying to the UN about it, my word that body of bloated self important bureaucrats justifying their own existence is a joke..

The US complaining if countries X and Y decide not to trade oil to eachother anymore in US dollars, or if country Z decides not to use operating systems from a US company anymore?

Wow that slope is mighty slippery, let me counter it... When the UN controls the internet are they going to start locking out nations that dont subscribe to certain charters.. If the US for example objects to the charter on Children's rights because it nearly bans home schooling will our pipe be turned off?

Re:Not really an issue

[Arcane_Rhino]

ROFLMAO.

"We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style."

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

Re:Not really an issue

[Shakrai]

Well, I think you've summed it up right there actually.

Hehe, well yeah, but my sig isn't (to me anyway) anything more then homage to one of my favorite movies.

The only part of the whole deal that bothers me slightly is the US government having veto power over ICANN

The US Government chartered it. The veto power is a legacy of that. I would like at least one semi-trustworthy government (as much as you can use the word 'trustworthy' next to 'government') to have veto power over ICANN (or whatever replaces it), simply because I don't see any other way to ensure that end-users on the internet have a voice. Short of some sort of extra-governmental international agency whose board would be elected by the citizens of the world (hardly a realistic suggestion), I don't see how you ensure that otherwise.

IF there has to be a governing body involved as some sort of checks and balances type arrangement then one which is likely to represent everyone's interests rather than one which may have some bias would be preferable.

I would like to assume that the basic interests of American citizens (freedom of speech and expression being chief among them) align with the basic interests of everybody else in the World. If you abandon US Veto power over ICANN, what do you purpose as a replacement? You can't do it internationally without including nations whose interests don't exactly align with freedom of speech and expression. Wouldn't you agree that's one of the most important things about the internet?

I would like to thank you for the constructive argument that didn't boil down to "USA sux0r". Maybe we can salvage some productive debate out of this yet :)

Re:Not really an issue

[defaria]

Deal with is one thing - let them have control is quite another...

Re:Not really an issue

[Arcane_Rhino]

Congratulations. In all seriousness, I think you have just provided a dispassionate and accurate summary of the US for the historians. They should pay you a royalty.

I don't see too many observations about the US that do not include hyperbole and hysteria. It is refreshing.

Re:Not really an issue

[Penguinisto]

but your China & Saudi examples are red herrings...

One phrase that is relevant (and easily Google-able): "Great Firewall of China". Not so sure I'd want the same folks deciding what and how the root servers are running, y'know?

As for the rest? Just jingoism on their part, one way or the other. The thing simply runs...

IMHO, I'd have zero problems with a modification of DNS that translates readily between charsets in DNS, then simply assign root servers according to region and charset groups (e.g. Japan can run the Asian charsets, The EU (one of 'em) can handle their specific group of charsets, The US can handle the Western Hemisphere, Russia can do all the Cryllic lookups for the planet, Saudi Arabia (or perhaps Jordan) the Farsi/Arabic charsets, Israel can do the Hebrew ones, etc etc. Policy can then be decided by a committee of representatives from each region, with a rotating leader imported from a place like Iceland or something. Sort of like the UN, but with zero UN control - and keep it small, as well as transparent.

That way nobody gets their panties in a bunch. (well, almost nobody).

/P

Re:Not really an issue

[Blakey Rat]

First of all, the word "democratic" is one of those nice-sounding words that people use all the time, and the US fits the vague concept of "democratic." However, our actual government is, and always has been, a Republic. Many states are democratic, but the US government is not.

In any case, pretty much all the countries in the UN Security Council have created undemocratic regimes at one point or another. And at least the US has never (well, hardly ever) participated in colonization-- what's worse, creating an undemocratic Panama, or completely screwing up the economy of a dozen equatorial nations to get cheap cotton?

If you want to see something much closer to a true democracy, take a look at India. Their government is about as close as any government has come, I believe.

Re:Not really an issue

[Blakey Rat]

Need I remind you how US was before WWI and why US didn't do jack before they were attacked?

I'm pretty sure you meant to say World War II.

Hard to say what he meant... the US was attacked in both WWI and WWII. Remember the Lusitania? (At least the Japanese in WWII attacked a military target.) And the US culture was famously isolationist before and during most of WWI.

That being said, the history of European countries as international offenders does nothing to legitimize the practices of the United States today (or its own history of informal imperialism in South America and elsewhere).

Let's come up with a single measure of "offense points", then assign them to every nation. How many "offense points" does the US have compared to all of Europe? But oh wait, most European nations/governments have been around longer than the US, so we should come up with "offense points per decade" or some other measure. Someone total up then tell us whether the US beats out Europe or not.

Tongue-in-cheek, BTW.

Re:Not really an issue

[geminidomino]

... for all intensive purposes... "INTENTS AND PURPOSES"

Re:Not really an issue

[N3WBI3]

wow I mutilated that one... Thanks..

Re:Not really an issue

[Bill_the_Engineer]

You lost me when you tried to make a relation between pseudo-internet control...

I'm sorry, let me try one more time.

My point was not economic but political. I just used foreign reserves as an example of why the US is favored as a "host" nation. I could have used the "United Nations" as another example.

There are no revolutions, no no-confidence votes that can change the figure head, and for the time being the US hasn't interfered with the day-to-day operations of the internet. The US is stable, so why change?

The real question is why is there a push for a change? People usually don't mess with the status quo (especially when everything is working) unless they intend to impose some type of change (good or bad). So what are the intentions of the provocateurs?

Re:Not really an issue

[bug1]

"I fail to see what's so horribly wrong with the status quo that it needs to be changed, other then "it's not fair that the US has veto powers!"

So you can see one reason why its horribly wrong, how many do you need ?

Re:Not really an issue

[Cairnarvon]

China's Great Firewall is completely irrelevant, because we aren't talking about turning over control to China (or Saudi Arabia, or whoever), we're talking about turning it over to the international community. That's what GP meant when he said it was a red herring, because it is.

Re:Not really an issue

[magarity]

Yes, the subsections are alphabetized internally. The US is in the least worrisome category at the bottom.

Re:Not really an issue

[Requiem18th]

Your views are mostly correct but fatally outdated, the US is no longer a nation of "freedom at all costs" and the people that originally built and ran the Internet are no longer the ones shaping its future.

  The world can certainly make their own Internet but splitting the net in two will be to the detriment of everybody, the US included. Relaxing or sharing control over domain allocation can be preferable to forcing every American website to register an extra domain at WorldNet to do business overseas.

In other words, shut up, it can still play in your favor.

Re:Not really an issue

[das_magpie]

We know how China would run it

You're a Genius! Thats the Answer.

Re:Not really an issue

[hdparm]

I would also like to see an example of ONE internationally governed project (sanctioned by UN or UN appointed commission/body/whatever) that worked out well and reasonably fast.

Internet is free for anyone to use. Everybody is also entitled to implement alternative infrastructure and use those tubes as they are pleased.

I feel that I need to point out that I am not an American.

Re:Not really an issue

[dajak]

When the UN controls the internet are they going to start locking out nations that dont subscribe to certain charters

Right. The UN is hardly known for its tough sanctions. Anything along these lines would have to pass through the security council, and the US is in it, as well as its major rivals. The rest of the world is better off avoiding the security council if they want to gang up on the US. Handing over "control" of the Internet to the UN is the most effective way of making sure it will never be put to effective use as an instrument of power politics.

But of course the reality is that countries can take this "control" away from the UN as easily as they can take it from the US. The Internet depends on voluntary cooperation. What really gives you a bargaining position is infrastructure and content, and the US has been losing market share in that area, and will lose even more in the future, simply because the rest of the world is catching up.

Re:Not really an issue

[sumdumass]

But being so brazenly amoral voids any right to preach moral on others.

How would you figure? The parent that smokes is still morally right in telling his 10 year old kid not to smoke. Or am I missing something and he shouldn't be saying anything to his kid now?

Should a woman who became a mother at age 14 be telling her 13 and 14 year old children not to have sex with just anyone till they are older and/or use birth control plus a condom?

People who are amoral or amoral in certain dealings push morals all the time. I don't see what makes this any different.

Re:Not really an issue

[treeves]

But to the extent that they would lose access to the US market, they will not want to do that, which is why they'd rather wrest control of the existing one away from the US, while leaving it intact.

Re:Not really an issue

[daem0n1x]

First of all, they can tell whatever they want, they have already given the worst example, and that will prevail. Any child psychologist will tell you that.

Second, I find it very funny that you used this analogy. The USA, a country which is 200 years old, treating millennium-old nations as children. Great!

Re:Not really an issue

[Penguinisto]

Fair enough - now what is this "international committee" comprised of? IF it's anything like the UN, trust me - you don't want it.

/P

Re:Not really an issue

[toriver]

1) The U.N.'s biggest problem is the post-WW2 anachronism called the Securoty Council with its vetoing permanent mebers - including the U.S.

2) Well, built parts of it, but we are in commercial-internet era now, with world-wide corporations running the infrastructure. Just because cars were invented in Germany does not mean Germany gets to tell the World how cars should be made now does it?

3) No, but that's because that "control" (of root servers) can easily be taken away.

meddling in every aspect of member (and non member) nations policy.

You mean like invading a sovereign state on false premises? Nope that was the U.S. and whatever bitches they could whip into following them there.

Re:Not really an issue

[toriver]

Yeah, after all since Germany invented cars they get to decide the world's car production. And since Italy invented radio they get to decide broadcast spectrums around the world.

Oh, wait they fucking DONT.

Re:Not really an issue

[toriver]

The same reason Norway, Japan and Iceland will not cede control of their whaling to a body with land-locked countries with absolutely zero whaling history, I guess...?

Re:Not really an issue

[sumdumass]

Don't read more into it then just an example. There are more examples that could have been used but that is the ones I felt would make the case at the time.

First of all, they can tell whatever they want, they have already given the worst example, and that will prevail. Any child psychologist will tell you that.

Sure. And these child psychologist will pump your kid full of ridilin or whatever drug of the month is because they don't listen. These are the same people writing books that have raised a generation of selfish assholes and brats. I guess what I'm getting at here is that we should take what they say with a grain of salt. Because people learn from their experiences and are more wiser because of it. The 13 year old mother consulting her kids has a hole lot more validity in what she says they someone like you who may not have got any until they were out of high school.

Second, I find it very funny that you used this analogy. The USA, a country which is 200 years old, treating millennium-old nations as children. Great!

so are you saying that the millennium-old nations that machine guns students in the middle of a courtyard and runs over them with a tank because they are talking out against the government is somehow more legit then a 200 year old country saying that is completely wrong? I can see why you find it funny. You must be as fucked in the head as the idea you just passed. Maybe your the result of all those child psychologist. I don't know. But there is something wrong with you from where I am standing.

Re:Not really an issue

[sumdumass]

More like they are wanting to jack up the fees and keep a portion of it. This about how many domains are out there. Currently ICANN and the registrars keep the money to fund their operations. But ad a $20 government fee to each domain each year and look at all the billions of dollars you can rake in.

It is the only thing I can think of. I got this from a conversation the other day with a south American user who thought the US government got the $20-$30 for registration and DNS hosting.

It was the only argument he was making for a switch. I haven't really seen any other actual arguments other then we don't like the US. So it wouldn't surprise me if this isn't the entire reasoning behind it. I'm willing to be that if we demanded the books to stay open to us, demanded that all finds raised from the Internet went to administrating it, and that we alway had a vote in anything being done with it, the UN and all these other countries would refuse to take control under those conditions.

Re:Not really an issue

[sumdumass]

Please do me a favor and explain how that is either horrible or wrong.
Thank you in advance.

Re:Not really an issue

[HanzoSpam]

Maybe one can find a majority that does not like it ( http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm ).

Then I suggest the United States tells Those Who Don't Like to go fuck themselves with a cream-cheese dildo.

Look, the damn thing was designed and built largely at the expense of the US taxpayer. If others want to make use of it, fine. But the fact that other countries find it a valuable resource doesn't mean the United States owes them the time of day.

They knew what our policies were when they started using it. If they've decided they no longer wish to abide by those policies, fine. Then get the fuck off of it, and don't let the door hit ya where the Good Lord splits ya!

Re:Not really an issue

[rtb61]

Here is a simple one, the plain .com .net .org .gov .mil .edu etc were all orginally defined by ICANN as international domains and in blatant egotistical move the current US administration usurped them as US domains instead of using .us. They was done in bad taste especially with the inference of .gov being a world government or .mil being the world military.

So now you have a push to shift the DNS system to an international basis especially as the current US administration has also stated that they would take unilateral action against other countries domains in political disputes.

So a new international DNS system will happen, get over it, there will be no rush, it will take about five to ten years. Politics, control of internal domain naming, and different languages will all help to force the shift.

Excessive privatization will also help drive the change, could you imagine ICANN being auctioned off to the highest bidder and being controlled by someone like M$ (competitors domain requests will point to M$)or even google (every domain request tracked for targeted marketing).

Re:Not really an issue

[N3WBI3]

Eastern Europe _WAS_ URSS for most part.

If by 'for the most part' you mean under the thumb of the USSR (like the checks in 67') than sure yea what the heck...

And never in a million years would they go that far as thinking to start moving to western Europe.

LOL Its sad when a Yank learns more from recent European history than a European does... This 'never in a million years' argument was the one used while appeasing Germany in the years leading up to the War 'If we let him keep parts of the Czechoslovakia and maybe a bit of poland never in a million years will he invade France and attack England.

This is the same Soviet, expansionist republic that invaded half of eastern Europe and many nations in peoples in Asia.

You do know that US was the reason why UK is there since 1833 right?

LOL yea its our fault you wont give a nation in the western hemisphere back their land...

Re:Not really an issue

[argiedot]

Exactly. So the UK being just above the US is not any indication of its propensity to censor relative to the US. Actually, I looked again and both Canada and Israel are also in the same category, so it appears that their position is irrelevant to your argument beyond the point that they're under the same category.

Surely censorship should be opposed everywhere, they can oppose censorship in their own country as well as in another.

Re:Not really an issue

[s13g3]

Uh, someone mod parent flamebait, as well as ignorant.

My views are not what is fatally outdated, it is your poor, overly cynical philosophies and lack of motivational ethics that are fatally flawed and incredibly dangerous; I can but hope that you don't pass such nonsense on to your children, having them think that this nation should be some kind of mob-rule democracy who should just give everything up to any majority just because they said "I want, gimme."

The people who built the internet still have a big role in its design going forward, and I don't know where you're from, but AFAIC, "freedom at all costs" is still MY ideal and the ideal this nation was founded on. If you don't like it, go to China; me, I'll be happy to fight tooth and nail for those beliefs while you're busy trying to sell my country out to the communists and socialists and those bunch of corrupt bastards at the UN... Do you REALLY think that a governing body that would appoint a nation like Libya to the head of it's human rights council would have any problem putting China or Russia in control of a body to monitor internet usage? Seriously, China as a nation and as a matter of foreign policy ALREADY proves daily that it cannot behave and is more than willing to engage in shady and underhanded (not to mention illegal) practices on the internet for their own gain, and certainly cannot be trusted to have any hand in running the internet. No, they can either play fair and accept the game as it is, or they can have their own internet and GTFO of ours - we don't need them regardless, and if Yahoo!'s stock dips a few points, well, good for them they get what they deserve for being in China's pocket, looking the other way while they play dirty pool.

As my prior post said, we brought the ball for EVERYONE to play with, fairly, by the rules as we established them. If you don't like it, go get your own ball and your own playing field and write your own damn rules. If the rest of the world somehow pulls together and creates a better, freer, safer internet, then the U.S. will lose out, and we will wind up joining WorldNet, but somehow I don't see that having a snowball's chance in a volcano of actually happening. Do you actually believe that the other nations of the world can be trusted to play fair? If so, you're a naive globalist leftist or another America basher who is just mad because we have the gall to be better off than other people and not give away everything we own - the fruits of our own hard labor - just because you feel you somehow deserve a piece of everyone else's pie without having to actually do anything to earn it. Especially when the fact of the matter is that we STILL give away more money in charitable donations both as a nation and as individuals to more people for more causes than anyone else. In fact, I'd be willing to bet (but am too lazy to google) that we as a nation give away more every year in international aid than does all of the UN combined, but still people bitch and moan about greedy America.

No, I will NOT shut up. Unlike pretty much every other nation in the world, I have a nigh unlimited right to free speech here in the U.S., and it's a continuing willingness to fight for freedom at all costs, especially my freedom of speech and freedom to possess firearms that gives me and my nation the ability to protect itself from tyranny both from without and from within that makes this nation great. For people like you who think "shut up, it can still play in your favor" is a viable model to work by, why don't you go live in China for a while, and see how well that works out in your favor when the death-wagon (read: mobile execution center) comes to your door because you viewed a website that expressed an opinion that their government doesn't like. The tree of liberty must occasionally be watered with the blood of both patriots and tyrants alike, and whether I water it with my own blood, ink, or pixels on a screen, I am happy to fight for the right ideals, and not just blindly accept some cynical view that "things aren't what they once were, so I should just accept what they are now."

Australia

[p3anut]

It would certainly be nice for Australia to have some part of the infrastructure here. Everything on the net we use seems to come from the states :(

Re:Australia

[Shakrai]

It would certainly be nice for Australia to have some part of the infrastructure here

Uhh, what do you think you are using to connect to the internet? Tin-cans with string run all the way back to the US and plugged into our infrastructure?

Define infrastructure? Because there's an internet backbone in Australia. There's also at least three DNS root servers in Australia. What's the problem here?

Re:Australia

[McDutchie]

It would certainly be nice for Australia to have some part of the infrastructure here.

But you do, in fact.

Everything on the net we use seems to come from the states :(

Content is not infrastructure.

Re:Australia

[p3anut]

Semantics :P Try 200 ping to anything outside of the country.

Re:Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

It would certainly be nice for Australia to have some part of the infrastructure here

...

Define infrastructure? ... What's the problem here?

Infrastructure = WoW servers.

They're extremely unhappy that they don't have any Oceanic WoW servers and they just won't STFU about it.

Re:Australia

[Shakrai]

Try 200 ping to anything outside of the country.

Then bitch to your telecom companies and/or Government until they upgrade their links to the rest of the world. This has nothing to do with ICANN's control over the DNS root.

Re:Australia

[Firethorn]

I'm no expert, but Dan of Dan's Data has mentioned some of the internet issues in Australia.

Do to the ways the ISPs charge, it's often cheaper to host your sites in the USA than to have the servers in Australia.

Re:Australia

[PHAEDRU5]

IIRC, Gavin King is Australian, and he gave us Hibernate.

Re:Australia

[colesw]

Do to the ways the ISPs charge, it's often cheaper to host your sites in the USA than to have the servers in Australia. Welcome to Canada!

Re:Australia

[Shakrai]

Do to the ways the ISPs charge, it's often cheaper to host your sites in the USA than to have the servers in Australia.

How is that the fault of US control over ICANN though?

If Aussie internet sucks that bad (and by all accounts it does) then they should be petitioning their Government and/or telecom carriers to build more links to the rest of the World.

Re:Australia

[Firethorn]

I was merely responding to one poster's comment. Off topic, I know.

If Aussie internet sucks that bad (and by all accounts it does) then they should be petitioning their Government and/or telecom carriers to build more links to the rest of the World.

Actually, they seem to have pretty good links to the rest of the world, it's internally that they have issues. Like a pattern of bandwidth charging that discourages server placement in their own country/continent.

I mean, yes, the weakening dollar will encourage this sort of stuff, but generally speaking hosting in a country shouldn't be so expensive that going to the other side of the planet is cheaper and provides better reliability. And these problems predate the fall of the US dollar.

Re:Australia

[Shakrai]

Like a pattern of bandwidth charging that discourages server placement in their own country

I wonder if that's a legacy of when it was actually expensive to get bandwidth to down under or if it's monopolistic providers screwing their customers? I've heard from many people that the broadband situation in Australia makes the US look downright advanced and friendly.

Re:Australia

[Firethorn]

monopolistic providers screwing their customers?

From Dan's comments, this is the situation, compounded by old regulations from back when data traffic was unusual and expensive. The telecom company is of course raking in huge profits from the situation; so has no interest in improving it.

Re:Australia

[Nazlfrag]

Actually, this would be a terrible idea, as Australia has one of the most heavy handed censorship campaigns in the western world. Here's an excerpt from the OpenNet Initiative:

Australia maintains some of the most restrictive Internet policies of any Western nation, while its neighbor, New Zealand, is less rigorous in its Internet regulation. Without any explicit protection of free speech in the constitution,1 the Australian government has used its "communications power" delineated in the constitution to regulate the availability of offensive content,2 endowing a government entity with the power to issue take-down notices for Internet content hosted within the country. A number of state and territorial governments in Australia have also passed legislation making the distribution of offensive material a criminal offense, as the constitution does not afford that power to the national government.3

The Australian government also promotes and finances an "opt-in" filtering program, in which Internet users voluntarily accept filtering software that blocks offensive content hosted outside of the country. At present there are no plans for a countrywide Internet service provider (ISP)-level filtering regime, though Australia's handling of hate speech, copyright, defamation, and security signal the government's desire to increase the scope of its Internet regulation.

Re:Australia

[McDutchie]

Then bitch to your telecom companies and/or Government until they upgrade their links to the rest of the world. This has nothing to do with ICANN's control over the DNS root.

You can upgrade the links all you want, but you can't upgrade physics. The speed of light will always ensure that intercontinental ping times don't get much faster than what grandparent is experiencing.

obligatory

[Xochi77]

I, for one, welcome our Internet controlling Seppo Overlords...

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Meoward]

I'd prefer Groucho, Chico, or Harpo overlords myself.

Professor Wagstaff: Welcome to the new ICANN, administered by the firm of Flywheel, Overlord, and Flywheel! My assistant will show your place, my dear, which is something I've been meaning to do myself for some time.

Assistant: Honnnk!

Esther Dyson: Professor! Well, I never!

Professor Wagstaff: And you probably never will, either..

Internet is USA property now

[Slashidiot]

As a European, I do feel there is a need to do something with this issue. Not to be disrespectful, but I don't think that USA are the best people for the job. Just look at all the problems they have now (packet shaping, net neutrality, etc...). And as a spanish speaker, I feel that it has taken faaar too long to get the "ñ" in domain names. And we only have one funny letter!

Why don't we give the governance of internet stuff to somebody like Switzerland? They look like they could do a good job, they have the money and good reasons to do a good job on worldwide internationalization of internet.

A bit more seriously, I think that something that has grown as important as this, should be in the hands of the UN, as any strange move can have significant effects worldwide.

Re:Internet is USA property now

[Slashidiot]

Ok, maybe not the UN, maybe this deserves the creation of a truly new intenational organization, that was not my point. And why that animosity against the UN? I mean, I know they are not perfect, but it's hard to be perfect when there is such a big group of interests. Believe me, I know it's hard, I work for a EU institution, and many times trying your best is not enough by far...

Re:Internet is USA property now

[Shakrai]

As a European, I do feel there is a need to do something with this issue

Why, what's the problem with the current arrangement other then European mistrust of the United States?

Just look at all the problems they have now (packet shaping, net neutrality, etc...)

Disputes over packet shaping on the individual ISP level lead you to think that ICANN can't govern the root DNS servers effectively? Your kidding, right? And traffic shaping is hardly unique to the United States.

I feel that it has taken faaar too long to get the "ñ" in domain names

And you think the technical obstacles would have been overcome faster by adding more bureaucracy to the process?

Why don't we give the governance of internet stuff to somebody like Switzerland? They look like they could do a good job, they have the money and good reasons to do a good job on worldwide internationalization of internet.

Because Swiss neutrality is slowly being erased in favor of closer ties to the EU? And why the Swiss? Why not Iceland? Why not Mongolia? Why not New Zealand?

bit more seriously, I think that something that has grown as important as this, should be in the hands of the UN

Yes, because more will solve everything!

Re:Internet is USA property now

[Smidge204]

Is there a clear technical reason why "control over the internet" should be handed over to the "International Community" ?

It issues you cite: "packet shaping, net neutrality, etc..." are all end-user (ISP level) issues. They do not effect the backbones and international communications at all. Furthermore, there is still no legislation at all regarding these issues (though the packet shaping/tampering thing is currently being "worked on")

Putting things into the hands of the UN is a horrible idea, simply because the UN has basically failed to do anything noteworthy since it's formation - unless they screwed something up, anyway. Do you honestly think that putting control into the hands of the "international community" will magically resolve all the political issues?

Also, my understanding is that international domain names are largely a TECHNICAL problem, not so much a political one. Putting the UN in charge will very likely not solve it. If their track record is anything to go by, they will likely force the issue and mess everything up. Let's not get politicians involved any more than they already are, yes?

Right now, the bulk of the argument in favor of the shift is essentially anti-American sentiment. Every country is free to build their own national internet and connect it to the global network... then they will have total control over the part that effects their country.
=Smidge=

Re:Internet is USA property now

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting the ñ in .es domain names has nothing to do with ICANN. Go talk to the people at .es (for reference, .de already has support for some IDN). BTW, according to their web site they are nearly ready to use it.

Re:Internet is USA property now

[canuck57]

As a European, I do feel there is a need to do something with this issue. Not to be disrespectful, but I don't think that USA are the best people for the job.

Mindless drivel. Euros are just out of joint because they didn't invent the internet but use it like heroin addict. And your governments foster this rhetoric as to them this is far too open and standardized for their liking. They would rather see government controls, like France for example on encryption. None of why governments want shared control has anything to do with benefiting the internet at all. It is about controlling you and most countries are too inept at managing what they have. Your country has a top level .iso, use it.

The internet works because it is open, standardized and a packet is a packet in China, France or in the USA. The USA has done a good job, or you would not be using it. It is doubtful the UN would do better as if Internet development was left to the UN we might get it in the year 13756.

The UN should be more concerned about:

• Dictators who buy yachts, guns, planes while their people starve.
• Countries with out of control population growths living in self induced poverty
• Getting a solution to Iraq/Afghanistan
• International law and terrorists, making smaller countries comply
• Making the UN more constructive and productive so we don't think they are an expensive ineffective joke

Re:Internet is USA property now

[Slashidiot]

Ok, ok, let me make myself a bit clearer. The big problem with this is that something as big as the government to the root DNS servers should not be on the hands of ANY country, as it is something that can have an effect on all economies worldwide. It's not a technical reason, it's an economic and strategic reason.

It's not that the EU does not trust the US as Shakrai says. Imagine it the other way round. Imagine that the French "ruled the web". I guess americans would not feel safe, knowing that if Mr. Sarkozi decides to tamper with it, they would have big economic losses. Therefore, this is a power that should be shared, I don't care if it's the UN or who, I just mean that it is wrong that a single country controls the thing.

About my citing of net neutrality, etc, that was just an example of the problems that the US has with technological-etical problems. Don't take it badly, but sometimes the US government is just not able to handle some things gracefully...

Re:Internet is USA property now

[file terminator]

And as a spanish speaker, I feel that it has taken faaar too long to get the "ñ" in domain names. And we only have one funny letter!

As another European speaking several languages that have multiple "funny letters" in them, let me say that I think that putting those funny letters in URLs are a stupid idea. Most people have keyboards that are capable of easily producing letters a-z and digits 0-9, or generally speaking, most of the US-ASCII character set. Fewer people have keyboards that easily will produce 'å', for instance. Do you really think Joe Sixpack in the States is going to enjoy figuring out how to type "www.åkea.com" in his browser when he wants to buy new furniture? Forget Joe Sixpack, how would you like to type in the name of some Asian company in their local language when you want some Asian export game that otherwise would not be available to you? (For the exercise, assume that you can't Google for the URL.)

And for what, really? So that we nerds can pat ourselves on the back? So that Motörhead's manager finally can give the band the Internet presence they deserve? So that people can stop feeling "oppressed" and now get to use their favorite oddball characters in URLs, rather than approximations that are easily produced? Do you really think that having 'ñ' and 'å' available as URL characters will enhance usability for the end user, rather than just giving cyber-squatters a larger set of domain names to hijack?

Personally, I see little use in increasing the character space allowed in URLs (but not in documents, obviously), and I don't see what putting 'ñ' into domain names really has to do with US control of the Internet anyway.

Re:Internet is USA property now

[stoolpigeon]

They are worse than not perfect. They actively encourage and engage in real harm in almost every endeavor they undertake.

Re:Internet is USA property now

[darthflo]

And as a spanish speaker, I feel that it has taken faaar too long to get the "ñ" in domain names.

I disagree on that one. Written language (I speak german and french, so äöü and àèéêîôç are kinda common to me) may sometimes rely on "funny" letters, but using them in domain names is hugely impractical for everybody with the wrong keyboard layout (and it tends to make stuff harder to find). The internet is, by it's nature, an international idea and to preserve this international accessibility, it might just be a good idea to stick to the lowest common denominator.

Re:Internet is USA property now

[Slashidiot]

Well, precisely I did feel the necessity of having a ñ in my domain. Actually, not in my domain, but my mom's.

She has a shop, you know? It's just a local shop, has nothing to do with nothing outside spain. Actually, my mother only speaks spanish, so she does not want to hear anything from people who cannot write in spanish.

Her shop (the local small shop) has an ñ in it's name. It was created before the net was there, so at the moment, the problem of getting her shop on the net didn't even cross her mind. Also, if you just change the ñ and put a n instead, the name sounds funny. It sounds like "lots of white hairs", literally. It's a fabric shop, the original name makes a lot of sense, but "lots of white hairs" is definately bad marketing.

So she had her shop's website with a totally different name, up until now, when people will finally find her shop. Only spanish people, of course, but that's what she wants.

Re:Internet is USA property now

[Smidge204]

Geographic location os root name servers worldwide

The US does not "Rule the web" in the sense that it could actively prevent another country from doing whatever it wants. It just so happens that ICANN - the recognized authority that regulates certain aspects of the internet - can (but never has) be prevented from acting by the US government on a case-by-case basis.

The US President can veto an act of Congress. That is a far cry from saying he controls Congress.

Also, the solution to the problem is amazingly simple: Don't recognize ICANN as the authority! Make your own authority to govern the part of the internet you control, and/or literally make your own internet and connect it to the global network. In that situation, the only way ICANN can do anything is to cut access to it... which would be a trick, because that requires cutting access to you and every other country you're connected to. It's doubtful that will happen.

All this ignoring the fact that ICANN holds public assemblies all over the world proportedly for the purpose of getting everyone involved.

I guess the crux of my argument is "if it ain't broke don't fix it." When someone can actually demonstrate that the system is broken to the point where making the process MORE political would improve things, I'll gladly reconsider my opinion.
=Smidge=

Re:Internet is USA property now

[Jeff DeMaagd]

"Getting a solution to Iraq/Afghanistan"

The long term solution to that being finding ways to reign in the US. Iraq wouldn't be the problem it is now if the US just left them alone. Sure, Saddam is evil, but there were no serious WMD development programs, and certainly no nuclear programs. For an administration that claimed to be certain to having known where those programs were, they haven't been able to find them.

And not being in Iraq would have meant not having diverted away the necessary support needed in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I think the US leadership needs to be taught that it can't use the UN as an institution of convenience and to be ignored when the results aren't desirable to them.

Re:Internet is USA property now

[proud american]

> And as a spanish speaker, I feel that it has taken faaar too long to get the "ñ" in domain names. And we only have one funny letter!

Thats exactly why this can't be given to an international political body. They will just turn it into an unusable mess. I'm a Greek speaker, should Greek letters and accents be in domain names?

Re:Internet is USA property now

[file terminator]

Well, fine. But isn't this making a big deal out of nothing? I have friends that have been assigned usernames that... well, let's just say that they didn't turn out well. They were made from picking N letters from the first name and up to 8-N letters from the surname to produce a unique name; the users themselves had no say in the matter. A username that reads "neutered" in the local language is kind of annoying. My own surname, once you drop the umlauts, comes out quite differently, unfortunately. But you learn to roll with these things. Most of the people I deal with are, hmm, mature enough not to go "OMG, UR NAME!! ROTFLMAO!!!1" and I would imagine that most people your mother deals with are, too. People tend to realize that domain name is not equivalent with an actual name.

And as you say, if this is the sort of thing that keeps you awake at night, the website can easily be run under a different domain name than the shop, and the shop's name featured prominently on the pages themselves. This is by no means a solution that is useful only to circumvent special characters in URLs; there can easily be two (or more) Spanish (for instance) shops (or whatever) sharing the same name, but evidently, only one will be able to use that name, letter by letter, in a domain.

And you know, even if you and your mother think that "it's just a local little shop," once it has a Web presence, it isn't exclusively local anymore.

There might also be some potential customer---say, someone visiting Spain---who speaks the language, but still cannot naturally produce it on his (or her) computer (more of an issue with 'å' than with 'ñ', but you know what I mean).

How about mobile devices that only with difficulty produce special characters?

And how do plan to deal with the situation, should it occur, when someone registers the same domain name as yours, except with a 'n' rather than a 'ñ'?

Re:Internet is USA property now

[file terminator]

So true.

My brother got a computer recently (well, "recently" as I see it) and of course wants the entire shebang, but has no background knowledge to go on and (of course) is too stubborn to read up on the matter, or go to some beginners' course in computers, and so on. And I don't have the time to "babysit" him through basic use of a computer (although I will say that he seems like a very quick learner of the things I have talked him through). So I set his browser homepage to Google, and told him that he could search for different things on the Web by typing in a few words there. It's only later that I realize that the distinction between what is "my computer" and "my application" and "the Web" was left unexplained. I don't really know how he pictures "THE WEB" and, realizing that he doesn't really need to know, or is interested to know, I gave him a very cursory explanation that he didn't need and left it at that. Google might just as well be "the way you get on the Web" for him.

Quick aside for the "Linux is not ready for the desktop" crowd: Neither is Windows.

Re:Internet is USA property now

[OS24Ever]

Right now the packet shaping is happening at a consumer level, not at a backbone level. just because jim bob the file sharer in New York City gets his cable company to shape the local traffic so they don't have to buy a bigger link to their cable network.

L3, and all the backbone providers aren't shaping crap.

That being said, the UN handles the phones don't they? Somehow that's worked.

While yeah, I do get a littly snippy when my tax money was used to create the internet, at what point does it go from an interesting curiosity to a global information network? I'm sure the same thing happened to people with the telephony infrastructure when that started rolling out and they were dropping cables across the ocean floor in the mid 20th century.

Re:Internet is USA property now

[Firethorn]

but it's hard to be perfect when there is such a big group of interests

The amount of corruption in the UN makes even the most corrupt areas of the USA look legit.

They're also ineffectual, there have been a number of times where the blue helmets have at least allowed genocidal slaughters to continue. For example, blocking the side being killed from arming themselves, but not engaging(or not being allowed to engage) the killers.

I wouldn't mind so much if it was just a place for diplomats and leaders of countries to come and talk to settle differences peacefully, but it tries to be a world government.

Re:Internet is USA property now

[SuperDuck]

A bit more seriously, I think that something that has grown as important as this, should be in the hands of the UN, as any strange move can have significant effects worldwide.

As the conference drew to a close, the Russian representative, Konstantin Novoderejhkin, called on the United Nations secretary-general to create a working group to develop ''practical steps'' for moving Internet governance ''under the control of the international community.'' So a conference calling on the Secretary-General to create a working group to develop practical steps for moving governance to the international community, doesn't sound like a whole bunch of strange moves?

The UN is no more adept at managing the Internet than it is managing Walmart or Airbus. It is a political organization, not a technical or commercial one.

As other posters have already mentioned, ICANN is well on its way to "international"-izing its focus. Without compelling and well-thought-out reasons why as to this control should shift (with the infrastructure and experience and dollars to match), why should it change?

(And I'm Canadian, for the record.) :P

Re:Internet is USA property now

[VJ42]

The UN should be more concerned about:

Getting a solution to Iraq/Afghanistan

First, why mix the two, they have absolutely nothing to do with each other; and why is it a UN problem? I don't recall either conflict being UN sanctioned.

International law and terrorists, making smaller countries comply

It can only do that when the larger countries start to lead by example. The UN only has the power of it's member nations, when the nations on the security council starts playing politics with the rule of law. It's the USA that consistently uses it's veto to block resolutions against Israel, why be surprised if the Russians and\or Chinese do the same in respect of Iran? Both stances are purely political, and should have no place in a hypothetical ideal UN.

Making the UN more constructive and productive so we don't think they are an expensive ineffective joke

It was the US that withheld it's UN dues for many years (I don't know if it is still the case), and the US who is one of the smallest contributers to UN peacekeeping missions, so complaining about the expense rings hollow.

Re:Internet is USA property now

[Jedi Alec]

Why don't we give the governance of internet stuff to somebody like Switzerland? They look like they could do a good job, they have the money and good reasons to do a good job on worldwide internationalization of internet.

Who, those crazy CERN folks that invented it? Are you nuts? What do they know?

Re:Internet is USA property now

[magarity]

International law and terrorists, making smaller countries comply
 
Like making an international law in the first place? There are no international laws; only international treaties. (Outside of the EU) there is no international legislature with the ability to pass binding laws.

Re:Internet is USA property now

[Kadin2048]

There is no such thing as having a local presence on the Internet. The Internet is global, practically by definition.

The root of your, or your mother's, problem is less one of Internet URLs than of there not being any "local networks" that she chould use besides the Internet. Really, she doesn't need the Internet. What she really needs is some sort of purely national network, which might not be accessible to the rest of the world. That way, she wouldn't have to worry about catering to the lowest-common denominator of input devices.

But such a network doesn't exist; the Internet killed most of them. And in general, I think this is viewed almost universally as a Good Thing. It means that small shops can play in the once-rarefied air of global commerce, it means we can have a discussion on a site like Slashdot that includes people from all over the world, and it means anyone can get local news from virtually anywhere else, if they want to. Personally, I think it's the most significant achievement of the latter 20th century.

But the cost of this, the price you pay for being able to bring up Slashdot in Spain or Ultima Hora in the U.S., is that everyone has to basically agree on a common input device in order to be able to access everyone else's pages. For historical reasons, everyone in the world can input ASCII, and so that's the lingua franca of the Internet.

Purely local operations who really don't want a global network, but who get it anyway, are perhaps the only "downside" of the Internet; they'd probably be better served with something like Minitel. But overall, it's a very small cost for the global network we now have.

Re:Internet is USA property now

[Stephen Ma]

They actively encourage and engage in real harm in almost every endeavor they undertake.

That is only true if you define "harm" as "impediment to dictators and militarily aggressive countries".

Re:Internet is USA property now

[Stephen Ma]

The amount of corruption in the UN makes even the most corrupt areas of the USA look legit.

Total nonsense. The UN cannot even begin to approach the level of corruption that is now rotting the USA. Enron alone has cost the world more than the UN's total budget for the last quarter of a century. And even Enron looks tiny and inoffensive compared to the obscene gluttony of certain companies favored by Bush in the current Iraq war.

I think you have no idea how small an organization the UN is. Their annual budget is approximately $4 billion in 2007 dollars; compare this to New York City's $60 billion a year. The world keeps the UN on a very tight leash.

Re:Internet is USA property now

[algoa456]

You have to be kidding - the very last organization in the world that should get its hands on the Internet is the UN. It is corrupt, squanders other peoples money, is fraught with special interest groups (often the head of a group or team at the UN hires his or her cronies from the old country) and in many areas is basically incompetent. It is a fact that people are hired on their skin colour and non-Western bona fides in many situations - there are many instances where the best man for the job - a white American male - is overlooked because of the deep anti-Americanism that permeates the organization. Why you may wonder do I say these things - because I worked as part of it (in Africa) for 5 years. So back to the Internet. For all America's faults at least it is democratic and so groups can influence the direction of the Internet and have some input into its direction as it evolves. Under the UN and many other countries there is no guarantee that the openess will continue. I should add that I am not American.

Re:Internet is USA property now

[falconwolf]

As a European, I do feel there is a need to do something with this issue. Not to be disrespectful, but I don't think that USA are the best people for the job. Just look at all the problems they have now (packet shaping, net neutrality, etc...). And as a spanish speaker, I feel that it has taken faaar too long to get the "ñ" in domain names. And we only have one funny letter!

SO setup your own DNS.

You only have the "ñ"? I don't know if you have the Umlaut, it's mostly used by Germanic languages, but what about other Diacritic marks or accents?

A bit more seriously, I think that something that has grown as important as this, should be in the hands of the UN, as any strange move can have significant effects worldwide.

Anything as important as the internet shouldn't be in the hands of ANY politician or bureaucrat!

Falcon

The economy is the only thing I worry about.

[RandoX]

I'm going to start requiring my traffic to be sent in Euro packets. These American packets don't hold their value across long ping times.

International community? oh yea despots & tyr

[Austrosearch]

I personally do not believe there is really going to be any improvement by handing the reigns over to "The International Community", because that community is not truly representing humanity, they only claim to. I personally have to be grateful that Mr. Bush has not given the Internet already to Newscorp. That said it appears that the gift The US Department of defense gave to humanity is currently held by the best of all possible stewards. I believe that the most vocal chorus against the US veto role over the DNS Root servers comes specifically from political communities (Regional Government Administrations) that have absolutely no cultural track record of respecting freedom of speech and thought. I'd say that we really do not have much of a choice, if they give the Net to the UN the net will no longer exist as it came into being, which is the voice of humanity's ability to communicate with it's self.

Gee Just what I predicted

[Sycraft-fu]

In the last thread (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=356717&cid=21311105) when this came up I said rather than sit down and discuss what could be done, they'd just bitch. Well there you go. No talk about solutions to the problem of US control like, you know, actually setting up non-US groups to do this stuff, just whining that the US should "give up control."

To me this seems similar to a bunch of kids whining that the kid who owns a really nice toy that he shares and lets them all play with should "give up control" of it to the rest of them.

This is especially true since any sort of ceremonious handing over of control would do nothing to the reality of the situation. Sure the US could, in theory, tell ICANN they answer to the UN now (though there are limits to what they can legally make a private entity do). However it wouldn't change who really has ultimate control if everything remained in the US. If the government wanted to, they could still force ICANN to do what they said since, well, they have the guns.

It would be the same thing as if you used a server in my house. Let's say it was my hardware, hosted on my net connection, but I let you use it as you pleased. However you didn't have root to it, I maintained it for you. You demand that since it is your server, I "give up control" to you in the form of root. I do that. Ok great, but I didn't really give up anything. Why? I still physically and legally control the computer. So at some point in the future I decide I don't like what you are doing I tell you to stop, you say no. I just go and unplug the server and change the configuration offline. The "control" you had was an illusion, I was still ultimately in charge because I maintained physical control and legal ownership.

Hence for a real system that isn't US controlled, it requires other countries to set up their own services. Setup your own entity like ICANN, set up root servers that operate under it. Initially, have it just devoted to mirroring ICANN's zone file (there are some small DNS projects like this). However once you've got an established system that works well with good infrastructure backing it, then maybe you approach ICANN about splitting the zone. You take the TLDs relevant to your part of the world, they keep the rest, and you swap zone information. You might find they are quite open to something like that.

Now if that was done in a number of places all over the world, you'd end up with a real robust DNS system that nobody really controlled. If any of the top level entities flipped out, the others could just stop accepting updates from them and their roots would continue to work fine. There wouldn't be any way for a single group to mess up the Internet.

That's what I want to see, something where there really isn't ANY country in charge. However what all these idiots want to see is something where the US just pretends to give up control, we still have something the US retains ultimate control over, except that the day-to-day decisions become run by the UN and are incredibly bureaucratic.

Re:Gee Just what I predicted

[BobMcD]

To me this seems similar to a bunch of kids whining that the kid who owns a really nice toy that he shares and lets them all play with should "give up control" of it to the rest of them. This is a little harsh, but entirely true, I'd think.

Imagine, if you will, that the US said, 'fine, you can have ICANN.' And walked away. The 'world' gets control and is happy. Then the US goes about setting up a separate infrastructure to host its own content. Imagine that somehow all US content is migrated to this new infrastructure. What happens? Is there a great-big split in the internet? Do the networks never touch because of DNS issues?

Or would the world, wanting access to the US content, eventually partner up with the new system?

If you, as an unhappy member of a foreign nation, feel your content is valuable enough to build an infrastructure to support it, please do so. If the rest of the world agrees, I am absolutely certain that the necessary changes will be made.

But to insist that others abandon a system that works, and works quite well, for pretty much everyone else is just plain hubris.

Is this wrong? If so, why?

Re:Gee Just what I predicted

[BgJonson79]

It's not wrong. It's just that nobody ever likes the guy on top. Why do you think so many people hate the Yankees and Patriots? Some of us like to coat our jealousy in socialist doublespeak, but that's all it really ever is: you have something I want and I'm too stupid and/or lazy to get it myself.

Or my oppressed masses may find out how good a democratic style gov't really is, and I'll have to work for a living.

Re:Gee Just what I predicted

[dnormant]

No sir. I do not hate the Patriots.

Re:Gee Just what I predicted

[BgJonson79]

Me, neither, but I live in NH. Lots of other people can't stand them. Especially if that Pats steamrolled their team.

Time for a heart bypass?

[CarpetShark]

The internet is designed to survive nuclear attack. There ARE no core systems. Surely if everyone else wanted to wrest control away from the US govt., all they would need to do would be setup a new system providing the same facilities, and then route traffic there instead.

Re:Time for a heart bypass?

[Ephemeriis]

The internet is designed to survive nuclear attack. There ARE no core systems.

That was the original idea... Back when it was a relatively small system. These days there are a lot of core systems. DNS isn't nearly as distributed as it should be. Someone could definitely take out root DNS servers with a few well-placed nukes. The Internet isn't as interconnected as it used to be either. Most traffic passes through a few specific backbone providers, which could also be taken out with some well-placed nukes. I'm not saying the Internet is going to fall over tomorrow, or that it would be easy to shut it all down...but it's become far more centralized than was ever intended.

Surely if everyone else wanted to wrest control away from the US govt., all they would need to do would be setup a new system providing the same facilities, and then route traffic there instead.

You could certainly set up your own DNS servers...but that doesn't really get you very far since the rest of the world is still using ICANN's root servers. You can register anything you want on your own DNS server... I could point google.com to one of my own servers... And it would screw up everyone in my office... But the rest of the world would never notice.

Re:Time for a heart bypass?

[photon317]

1) There are core systems and networks that make the network more vulnerable to physical attack than was originally planned. I'm hopeful that going forward, in the best interests of low latency and high bandwidth, we'll see more and more of the giant backbone providers doing mesh-like interconnects with each other all across their respective networks, instead of thinking in terms of discrete exchange points.

2) "Routing traffic" isn't the issue. European traffic already stays in Europe (etc). This is an issue regarding who controls the policies that control the root nameservers. In other words, who decides how domain-name disputes are settled, what the rules are for top-level domains, and what the rules and regulations are for domain registrars. Already most countries are served by locally-controlled top-level registrars underneath ICANN. Unfortunately for the whiners, if you want a coherent worldwide domain name system, someone has to set the policies, and it's us. The UN's ability to govern anything is a joke, much less govern technical policy affecting the Internet. It should stay in the US where it belongs.

Re:Time for a heart bypass?

[CarpetShark]

You could certainly set up your own DNS servers...but that doesn't really get you very far since the rest of the world is still using ICANN's root servers.

No, I was thinking more of setting up new root servers, and everyone else agreeing to boycott ICANN, and route traffic to/from the new servers instead. I mean, **if** ICANN wasn't wanted, it could be ignored.

Don't fix what isn't broken

[RaigetheFury]

There's a huge movement toward decentralization in technology. Some people like to apply that to everything including groups. The Internet by design is a free space. ICANN follows that basic principle religiously.

Take a look at every other world wide organizations and you'll see why this is a bad idea. It's moving the decision making ability away from competent individuals that believe in freedom of the internet to people who don't know what they are doing, who are easily swayed by buzz words and controlled more by politics than logic.

ICANN has done an excellent job. It continues to do that job incredibly well. Don't fix what isn't broken. Evaluate it, suggest reasonable fixes, and move on.

The last thing in the world we need is some politician directly controlling the internet. I'm referring more to countries that don't believe in freedom of speech that hold a tight grip on it's populace (See China, Chad, Zimbabwe... etc).

This is a political battle from a small group of power hungry individuals. If there was truly a problem with the current way things are, everyone would be calling for a change. That's not the case

Re:Don't fix what isn't broken

[TheJasper]

Actually the internet was designed to be decentralised so that you could blow up large bits and have it keep on working.

I am wondering how you think centralising power will be better for freedom of the internet. Fact is every country in the world is trying to plug the tubes or at least read everything going in and out. I am all for decentralisation because then even if there are idiots who mess up one part, at least it's only that one part. In fact, that is really the way the internets are run.

Icann is usefull for now, but they don't control the internet any more than I do (well, maybe a little more than I do). I say leave things as they are, if we don't like it we'll take our net some other place. Ok, easier said then done, but not imposible or improbable. The biggest obstacle is nobody wants the hassle such a move would entail. If it happened, however, all the big companies would make sure you get access to both becuase they aren't about to pass up a market for any reason.

UN Hahaha

[canuck57]

I can't help but think it would be better off in the US as non-profit than the UN. The UN is political, not a technical organization. So any changes they made would be driven from a political source with ulterior motives. Think, if they messed up commerce because of poor decisions they could argue 18 months about it before making a decision.

And besides, there is nothing stopping any country from doing their own thing provided they are willing to pay for it them selves and not hide behind the UN. Last I checked every country does have their own 2 letter ISO code country assignments. I am not aware of any who are denied access to .com, net etc.

It must have been a slow day at the UN. As if the UN had their way, one must remember it is stacked with mostly poor countries with most of the votes. Why should these countries with the least to lose have more control? Most can't even manage their own .iso.

Re:UN Hahaha

[dave420]

Fuck yeah! Why stop there? Poor people shouldn't get to vote in anything, because as you said - they have the least to lose! Votes for the rich!

Re:UN Hahaha

[Blakey Rat]

I love the UN. They reside in an American city, taking tons of funds from American taxpayers (look up on how long it's been since they paid the lease in that beautiful center they have!), and then spend all their time griping at the US. It's so crazy.

Re:UN Hahaha

[toriver]

The UN is political, not a technical organization.

But it has technical sub-organizations, like ITU, which would do the actual job. To think that the U.N. assembly would be doing the job is like thinking that the U.S. Congress does the job of the ICANN...

Re:International community? oh yea despots & t

[Slashidiot]

Well, I would say that the most vocal chorus comes mainly from other big powers of the world (like Europe, like China...) that think that it's a bit unfair the US is fully controlling a part of their economy as important as the net. Nowadays, the net is a hugely important asset of most of the developed economies in the world. It is hard to believe that the US ahs the keys to it.

Something similar happens with GPS. Now, at least in europe, there are many important things that rely on GPS signal to work. The truth is that the US has the power to turn that off, without previous notice. Obviously, at some point, the EU decides that enough is enough, so we are building our own GPS equivalent, Galileo, pouring billions into it, just so we don't depend on Mr. Bush not to do anything stupid.

Re:International community? oh yea despots & t

[Notquitecajun]

You've hit where I believe is the core matter - yeah, there may be issues with big corporations and the internet, but those issues may not go away with someone else in control AND there would be some SERIOUS freedom of speech and access issues with even some moderate European powers in charge of the 'net.

Re:First come, first served

[Anonymous Coward]

And you do know what happens to kids who try to bully others around don't you? They end up working at a 7/11 just to be able to pay their electricity bills, while having a second job to pay for their rented room, while the other boys end up as chairmans of a company. But wait... we already do play with others and little to you, and we already pay for many of your bills (ironic isn't it? Your international debt). Don't mind me, but pointing the obvious, US threathened closing GPS whenever they felt like, Galileu was born. You have to understand one thing about the rest of the world in comparison to US: US has what we call a "dick problem" (or in psicological terms: inferiority complex). They need to feel superior in order to feel equal to all the rest. And since we know better , we let them be, building their big houses, big cars, big everything, and using them to our advantage. Things like internet, international space station (in this case if it wasn't for the US saying "everyone else was retarded and that if you want things done you have to do it yourself" they wouldn't have ended with most of the costs on their side as it is now), the megalomaniac particle accelerator so you could be on par with CERN (that CERN was going to take advantage of, but since it wasn't built, CERN had to spend money to build the new one). Need I say more? I don't mind you being the dominant whatever as long as you behave.

So make your own!

[Chicken04GTO]

So make your own DNS and your own interwebs and go forth and be happy.
Americans dont trust the international community to do anything right except bitch about Americans.

If you dont like it, no one is gonna stop you from going your own way. Make your own.
Just stop complaining about it.

Re:It was presented with good arguments

[Shakrai]

, we invaded two countries on a whim

Uhh, two of them on a whim? I'm pretty sure we had good reasons for going into Afghanistan. Do you think that China or Russia wouldn't have done the same thing if 3,000 of their citizens were killed? Did you forget that NATO invoked it's collective self-defence clause? Afghanistan was hardly invaded on a 'whim' and you lose creditability by saying so.

and the world doesn't trust someone as crazy as the US with that power

WHAT POWER??? Everybody keeps talking about this "power" that the US has over the internet. Control of the DNS root != control of the internet. And if the US attempted to do anything unsavory with the DNS root it wouldn't take that long for everybody else to setup their own DNS root within their own borders.

In fact, if you want to look at control over the internet, I'd look to the fact that so much of the Internet backbone is based in the United States. It was pointed out awhile ago that packets from Japan to Europe usually (always?) travel though the United States, mainly because nobody has bothered to make the effort to build long haul links across Asia. Maybe the rest of the world should be investing all of this effort into building those links and adding more redundancy to the internet instead of worrying about the "control" that the US has over the DNS root?

We'll sell it to you for...

[mcwop]

$500 billion dollars.

I dont see any issues with it

[unity100]

It works well. There are no problems with it. I dont want boards that can be clogged by china, russia, iran, libya or other crappy countries at the helm of internet.

and im no american. im turkish.

Re:It was presented with good arguments

[passthecrackpipe]

nobody has bothered to make the effort to build long haul links across Asia Surely, by nobody you obviously mean FLAG Telecom? Don't be a wiseass if you don't know it all.

Start with the ccTLDs

[network23]

Start with regulating the ccTLDs. Today nobody cares about unethical principes by ccTLD owners, take a look at Nunames that revokes good .nu domains just for fun and/or to resell them later at a higher price. ICANN and IANA couldn't care less. Such unethical behaviour can ruin the trust in the domain name system.

Internationalization is harder than EUisation

[billstewart]

It's fairly easy to get the Domain Name System to work for the main European languages - just allow 8-bit characters in the names using ISO-Latin-1. But real internationalization is harder - you not only have to deal with UTF-8 or other character sets, you also need to deal with right-to-left languages, and you have to deal with domain names that could have mixed character sets used for name-squatting. Or you can take the Punycode approach, which is way too ugly for anybody to want to deploy it unless they're Verisign making money by selling the names.

There are political issues on this between Verisign and ICANN, and unfortunately ICANN does not seem highly motivated. But (last time I looked, which is a few years ago) Verisign really wanted to push Punycode solutions, and was trying to deploy internationalization using the same mechanisms they were using to hijack DNS requests for non-existent domains to point them to their advertising web pages (which were very annoying if you were using some protocol other than HTTP: TCP:80.)

And of course there's not only the US Trademark Mafia trying to push domain name policy, but the US don't-trade-with-our-enemies people, and the Chinese government-censorship mafia, and various other governments that want to use this as an excuse for control or censorship.

Re:It was presented with good arguments

[Shakrai]

Surely, by nobody you obviously mean FLAG Telecom?

I fail to see how your links to maps of submarine cables disproves my statement that nobody has bothered to build long haul links across Asia and in any case, I was basing it off the discussion the other day (in a diff story) where quite a few people posted traceroutes from Asia -> Europe that went through the United States for some reason.

Don't be a wiseass if you don't know it all.

If they do have those links, then why the fuck is all that traffic going though the United States? Do they need help setting up BGP or something? (there, now I'm being a wiseass ;)

In any case, my original point is still quite valid -- people worrying about the DNS root are missing the point. If I was you I'd be more concerned about the fact that so much of the World's internet and telecom traffic passes through the United States and I'd be taking steps to fix this problem. As an added bonus, any steps taken towards this end also have the benefit of adding redundancy to the networks in question and that's a win-win for everybody (American or otherwise).

Nice (crack) pipe dream

[Chas]

IF they set up "some hardware", then "everybody" will switch over.

Yep. Everyone will automatically switch over to an unproven provider, right off the bat.

ARE YOU NUCKING FUTS?

If they want to do this, they need to start small, prove they can be stable, take on more responsibility, then eventually, when they prove they can handle their portion of the load, assume authority over PORTIONS of it.

What you're suggesting is akin to some kid on a cablemodem setting up a Linux box and then telling everyone they should move off Akamai and on to his "uber boxen".

Where would it go?

[IBBoard]

Never mind the fact that people don't trust ICANN to be in charge of things* then that implies they want it to be moved to some other central location.

If we put it under NATO or UN control or something then where do the main authoritative servers get put? The UN doesn't own any territory, which means it would have to put it in the territory or a member state. Either that or they put it somewhere completely neutral (middle of the sea?) at which point the connection is terrible.

So, while it might be good to have it under less potentially influenced control, where would it all physically go?

* which, TBH, if the US Government have a veto on them then I don't really, but that's not important

Woosh!

[Xaositecte]

I love it when people reply snarkily to my snarky replies.

Hint: I'm American.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Very Small Vocal Group

[handy_vandal]

"It's a very small vocal group bothered by this issue."
- Vint Cerf

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead

-kgj

Re:International community? oh yea despots & t

[Austrosearch]

Freeloaders of the world unite and learn to take care of themselves?

Solutions

[BlueParrot]

Step1: Implement ipv6 , that pretty much ends the issue with regards to who assigns ip addresses, because there will be enough for everbody, making it a moot point.

Step2: Register domain names under your country code. ICANN has more or less promised not to fuck around with countries TLDs, and quite frankly they wouldn't be that stupid. If you happen to be a major international company that MUST have a .com address, then the cost will probably be lower than your accounting errors anyway, and if the name is taken just sue them under trademark violations ( because you DID trademark your company, right ? )

The problem with non-latin characters is technical, not merely political, and moving to a UN organisation won't make the technical issues go away. You would have to come up with something which doesn't break existing implementations, but is simulataneously sufficient enough that you won't have to revamp it again in ten years time. When somebody comes up with a working implementation for this that won't break thinsg across the globe, and if ICANN rejects it on political reasons, then one could start discussing it.

Of course, it would help if the US government would just stay the fuck out of ICANN decisions. .xxx was rejected on technical grounds, but it certainly didn't help ICANN or its credibility to have some asshats try to have it rejected on "moral" grounds and what not. Yea it gets a bit tiresome, but you can blame you know who...

Re:Solutions

[wiredlogic]

The problem with non-latin characters is technical, not merely political, and moving to a UN organisation won't make the technical issues go away. You would have to come up with something which doesn't break existing implementations, but is simulataneously sufficient enough that you won't have to revamp it again in ten years time. When somebody comes up with a working implementation for this that won't break thinsg across the globe, and if ICANN rejects it on political reasons, then one could start discussing it.

This has already been done in the form of RFC3492 punycode . The biggest problem with using Unicode for domain names is that is makes phishing attacks to bogus sites harder to detect because of the large number of similar looking characters in the system. Current browsers take some steps to mitigate this problem but they all do it in different ways. The main problem now is not technical but the human tendency for greed and dishonesty.

Re:Solutions

[anticypher]

I wrote a much longer post further down the list, and made care to not mention the v6 word anywhere in it. Sure, IPv6 will help, and adoption is inevitable, but IPv4 is not going away just because the free pool will be used up in two years. What is going to happen from 2011 onwards is longer and longer delays from asking for more IPv4 address space, and finally getting it.

Can your internet business wait for 2 to 3 years before getting more legit IPv4 space? Of course, IPv6 allocations will happen almost instantaneously, a properly justified request takes about a week to fulfill.

The subject worrying the IGF, and discussed to death at every Network Operator Group and RIR meeting in the last year, is the anarchy that will occur if the IANA/ICANN can't master allocations and provide a secure way of authenticating the reverse DNS structure. Once companies get desperate for IPv4 space and don't want to wait a year or two, they'll start hijacking prefixes. As soon as that happens, de-aggregation and routing table pollution will occur on a massive scale.

Which of the dozen ISPs announcing slashdot's netblock is the correct one? Will your ISP know which AS is the correct one to put in their forwarding tables, and will every carrier between you and slashdot make the same good choice? If not, you can't get to slashdot no matter how hard you try.

The solution is called DNSSEC, and will be integral to cryptographically certifying the routing tables (both v4 and v6) so that network hijacking doesn't propagate far. The down side to having a cryptographic hierarchy of certificates is that someone, somewhere, must hold the root certificate. Without one central controlling authority, each region could have its own certificate authority, and claim ownership of other region's networks.

The smooth transfer of internet traffic all around the world only works now because of a trust system. There are few, rather feeble, technical systems in place to prevent routing table pollution, such as bogon lists. When, or if, DNSSEC is widely adopted, it will have to be out of the hands of groups shown to be hostile or incompetent. This means no US government, no UN, ITU or WTO or ICANN. None of them will be trusted, and the only solution at this point is to find a trustworthy alternative.

it would help if the US government would just stay the fuck out of ICANN decisions. .xxx was rejected on technical grounds

ICANN rejected .xxx officially on three different occasions claiming technical problems. The third application was as clean and technically correct as all the other TLD applications at the time, all of which were accepted. ICANN rejected .xxx because of direct pressure by the US government, which itself regularly yields to a very tiny but vocal minority of religious fanatics. ICANN has candidly admitted on many occasions that it will in all situations act on behalf of american interests, no matter what the damage to the internet.

What worries most countries is what will happen if the ICANN turns over control of address re-allocation to a private, for profit, company. Expect a situation like with NetSol/Verisign, where everyone has to pay yearly rental fees which will be exorbitant, and there will be no competition allowed by the US government. That's what the IGF, and everyone else working on the internet today is worried about. If a private US company starts charging billions of dollars per year in rent, the internet will fracture into several non-communicative pieces, but at least IPv6 will minimize address space collisions so all the non-US controlled parts will continue to interoperate.

the AC

In other news...

[Culture20]

USA, Russia, China pressure the UN to force OPEC to give up their control of Oil to a wider international body.
Russia, Canada, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway pressure the UN to force equatorial countries to give up their control of warm winters.
China, and other heavily industrial countries pressure the UN to force the pacific ocean to give up control of clean air.

America Bends Over Again

[usul294]

America in that past 20 years has constantly been making policy based on trying to be a good guy, and that just pisses people off because that's such a holier than thou attitude about things. If American policy was "If you want the internet, Russians/European Union folks, do something about it besides whining", it would make people upset in the short run, but if this was always policy, our true allies (not-Russia) would be happier because they benefited more. To quote Thucydides: "The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must." No state maintains a status of power when it is willing to surrender authority to other states.

It remains an issue?

[nurb432]

Not for everyone.

Mod parent up.

[Kludge]

The truth is that anybody can set up their own DNS servers and populate them with whatever names they want to.

I think it is telling that all these other countries have not gotten together and actually done so. If many other countries united and put together their own DNS system, lots of people would use it. They probably can't even agree and work together.

Re:Mod parent up.

[Kadin2048]

The truth is that anybody can set up their own DNS servers and populate them with whatever names they want to.

I think it is telling that all these other countries have not gotten together and actually done so. If many other countries united and put together their own DNS system, lots of people would use it. They probably can't even agree and work together. I think I agree with your general point, but I'm not even sure that "If many other countries united and put together their own DNS system, lots of people would use it" is true.

I doubt that most people know about or care about the DNS system. The Internet works. That's all that matters. Whether it's run by the U.S. or the Chinese or the Brain Slugs, people are going to use whatever system gets them the content they want to see most efficiently and easily.

The whining nations should feel free to set up an alternative root DNS network and see if they can actually make it compelling enough to get a majority of Internet users to switch. Even if they could get over their internal bickering and implement such a network, I have doubts that they'd really improve on the current system enough to draw users to it.

But they're free to try. At the very least it'd be a cool make-work project for a bunch of engineers somewhere.

Re:Mod parent up.

[Frosty Piss]

They probably can't even agree and work together.

This is why DNS should be put under the control of the UN, a solid organization know for organizational prowess.

Re:International community? oh yea despots & t

[Austrosearch]

I feel your gratitude now go unplug your Ethernet, or say whatever you like?!?!?!

Makes me sick

[spungo]

If these turrist nations don't like the US running the intarwebs, then maybe the US should just take it back. In yer face, Johnny Foreigner! Seriously, though -- unless there's a genuine problem with the way it is being currently administered, leave it the hell alone. Mostly it seems like these countries are moaning because the US more or less gave the system to the world at no cost, and the fact is that this apparent gesture of techie altruism goes against their desire to paint the West as a evil incarnate. (ps -- I am not an American, but I've seen one on TV).

Re:Just fucking do it already

[TheJasper]

Do we have issues?

so europe has the little brother syndorme? I don't really know what that is supposed to mean, but it seems to me that the U.S. is the little brother here. Anyway, Europeans (and the rest of the world) might gripe about the U.S. but the U.S. is giving them plenty of reason to. There was a time when everyone here loved the U.S.. Stop resting on your laurels, stop playing the bully and stop answering complaints with complaints.

Americans can be just as arrogant as Europeans and both love to point fingers at everywhere but themselves. Let's face it, the U.S. is the new Europe. Soon another country will achieve dominance and who cares? For most people the difference is only in whose name is in the paper.

Just for the record, I am dutch but I grew up in the states. I love the U.S. and I love the Netherlands. Both places, however, seem to have solipsism as their primary religion.

Dude...Rand?

[Joe the Lesser]

That lady was crazy, and misunderstood how human society works. We effect everyone, and everyone effects us, you can't shut yourself in a box and pretend you're alone.

Re:First come, first served

[Edgyboy]

Hmm, I obviously wasn't clear - I don't think that the current setup is fair or good, and I don't condole it or support it. But that doesn't change the facts.
Now, USA is in a position of control - there are no reasons (once again, I don't think that's a good thing) to give it up. UN is powerless in many more urgent issues; just look at the recent protests in Burma. I don't see any way in which it, or any other multinational organization could intervene to solve this problem.

Thanks for that...

[PinkyDead]

The UN should be more concerned about:

        * Dictators who buy yachts, guns, planes while their people starve.
        * Countries with out of control population growths living in self induced poverty
        * Getting a solution to Iraq/Afghanistan
        * International law and terrorists, making smaller countries comply
        * Making the UN more constructive and productive so we don't think they are an expensive ineffective joke I have always wondered why the UN is located in the US. Now I get it. It's so simple when you think about it, put the potential solution to your problems next to the cause of your problems. Genius.

Re:It was presented with good arguments

[will_die]

You people always thinking about Afghanistan and Iraq, he already pointed out Bush then the goes back and starts mentioning stuff from the 90s(CIA, torture, small rooms ,etc) so based on that he must be thinking of Kosovo and Bosnia.

sed 's/US/UN/g'

[backwardMechanic]

Reading through this whole thread, there is clearly a vast gap between the American and non-American understanding of the problem (or non-problem, depending on your point of view). Here's a simple trick to help you understand the non-American viewpoint. Everywhere you read US, replace it with UN. Ignoring the detail of the arguments, the horror you feel at putting the UN in charge seems pretty similar to the horror I have of keeping the US in charge. Clearer now?

Re:sed 's/US/UN/g'

[Smidge204]

Here's the thing you keep missing, though: The "US" is not "in charge."

ICANN, the primary (but not the only) body that regulates the internet structure and growth, Just happens to be based in the United States. Only 4 out of the 15 Directors on the board are American. The US Government does not control ICANN any more than the President controls the Congress.

Putting it in the hands of the UN would likely INCREASE the amount of American political tinkering, and definately increase the political tinkering overall. As it stands the whole operation is run by people who actually know what they're doing... why are you so keen to turn it into what is guaranteed to be a festering do-nothing bureaucracy?
=Smidge=

Interesting parallel - GPS control?

[Bearhouse]

I'm not sure that we need the Russians etc. to make sure that the Internet works.

I'm a European, so no Bush fanboi, and I'm ashamed to say that we've got nothing better to propose. The EU, the UN? Hmmm...

I offer the only parallel I can think of, (a free, global system, originally developed by - and for - the military), namely GPS.

GPS is great - period. I travel all around the world, and my cheap GPS receiver always tells me where I am. Thanks to the Internet, I can even get maps/sat pics of 'forbidden' or 'unmapped' places beforehand, and find my way.

Russia's GLONASS and the EU's Galileo are not operational, (think 2010 earliest). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_navigation_system)

The Internet works pretty well too. Except when I travel to....guess where! China, the UAE, Saudi Arabia....in places that have shitty oppressive regimes, esssentially.

So, tell me everyone, who do you want 'in charge' of the Internet?

Not really at all...

[C10H14N2]

The real issue is that the U.S. actually has very little control. The rest of the world could do whatever the hell they want with it and there's not much we could do about it.

Re:ICANN to UN control...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Africa? Go to the Sudan or Ethiopia or Egypt and proclaim that Mohammed was a goat raping homosexual. Or go to Germany and proclaim that Hitler was the best thing that ever happened for the Fatherland. Or go to France and proclaim we should exterminate all the stinking Jews. Or go to Canada and proclaim that your morl beliefs say that gays shouldn't be married.

Then write back from your prison cell about the evils of censorship and the lack of free speech in the US...

IPv4 cost, DNSSEC, & control of root servers

[anticypher]

I have been talking quite a bit with an economist who was in Rio all this week at the IGF. His take is more of watching what the economic situation will be when artificial, monopoly based, scarcity is introduced into the system. I can't wait to hear his take on the brazillian brawl this week.

Specifically, what happens to IPv4 address allocation when there is no longer any freely available netblocks. (Pay special attention to pages 27&29, and watch the accompanying video). New allocations will come from returned address pools, so a queuing system will have to be implemented at the RIR level. Starting up a new ISP, or expanding your customer base and need more address space after 2010, and your request will go into a FIFO queue.

Now, economists see two distinct futures for a market based on scarcity. One is where cooperation and fairness ensure that everyone gets along, which is the current internet model, and the other is known as the "University of Chicago School of Free Market Uber Alles^W^W^W^WEconomics" government enforced monopoly, where a few select companies are allowed to charge whatever the market will bear with no real competition or alternatives. Maybe a US government sanctioned company called IPbay will become the sole broker to trade netblocks.

In the first scenario, the internet continues to function as it does now, companies needing new addresses will have longer and longer waits and will have to adjust their business plans accordingly. Into a system like this, where address space could be traded, stolen, pirated or worse, RIRs have no real powers to stop it falling into total anarchy. Except, the IETB, IANA, the RIRs, have a new tool in their arsenal to combat anarchy, called DNSSEC.

In the second scenario, one, or a very few, private companies based in the US, of course, take over the entire market for buying and selling IPv4 address space. Want to keep that nice /16 you are using? It will cost you $BIGNUM/month in rental fees, or we give it to someone else. Those controlling companies will also use DNSSEC to control who has the right to announce a prefix.

For router engineers, those who work with BGP and AS numbers on a regular basis, things have been pretty quiet until now. A few bogon filters, and you just generally believe whatever gets fed to you. The internet is mostly "best effort" and if some traffic doesn't reach it's goal, there isn't much that can be done beyond some simple tuning. There is some routing data in the routing registries, but it's rarely up to date and the accuracy depends on whatever random person did the update.

But in a few years, when companies start to get desperate for IPv4 address space NOW!, and can't wait for a proper allocation, they'll steal or buy a prefix. Companies with a large allocation not completely used will renumber internally, and sell the right to announce half their prefix to they highest bidder. Or companies will just find part of an unused block and announce it. Total anarchy! The most conservative estimates for 2012 with rampant de-aggregation and without DNSSEC is that the routing table will exceed 2,000,000 prefixes. Not much routing equipment out there today will be able to cope with that.

With DNSSEC, there will be cryptographically signed certificates [pdf warning]for every allocation from an RIR[quicktime warning]. When you build your routing table in BGP, you will verify every prefix for origin and valid neighbors based on certificates stored in the RIR whois/routing registry. This will prevent the anarchy part of stealing a prefix and announcing it in the wrong AS. This wil

ah the horror of it all!

[deesine]

I'll just repeat what many others have already said: don't fix what isn't broke. Do you have a TECHNICAL reason for wanting to change the current situation? Is there some problem that gets fixed once we move ICANN under UN influence?

Re:ah the horror of it all!

[backwardMechanic]

Nope, no technical problem at all. Technically it works fine, and I assume technically it would work just the same whoever is controlling it. But surely the question is all about politics?

Re:ah the horror of it all!

[deesine]

"But surely the question is all about politics?"

Probably the best reason not to give this issue any energy.

Re:First come, first served

[Nursie]

Nice example, but if you were really a consultant of any worth your communication skills (grammar, spelling) would be a lot better. They'd have to be.

And no, not all "bullies" go on to be losers in life, many end up as very successful CEOs.

Rather, take power away from WIPO

[ishmalius]

That is the organization that is consciously manipulating the assignment of names, not the U.S. When an IP-enforcement organization has more power than individuals, then something is wrong with the system.

GPS

[tm2b]

I offer the only parallel I can think of, (a free, global system, originally developed by - and for - the military), namely GPS.

The US military, at that. But be careful - note that the US military funds, maintains, and retains control of the GPS network and in theory could shut it off or reduce its resolution any time they like. It was actually Ronald Reagan, beloved throughout the world, who opened the system up.

Over time that's less and less likely because of the number of civilian systems inside the US that depend upon GPS, but if someone is the kind of person who wrings their hands over ICANN control of DNS, they're probably not going to be happy with the US military controlling the GPS.

Re:GPS

[Bearhouse]

Yeah, I know who contols GPS. True about Ronnie, may the old boy rest in peace.
But it was Clinton - if I recall correctly - that made it posible to get good-quality signals...

I don't think it's a bad thing that the military can turn off the GPS signal if they suspect the bad guys are using it. While we're busy being offtopic, I believe that commercially available GPS devices are also limited in altitude and speed, so they can't be integrated into naughty people's missles, planes and so forth...

The problem with US control...

[rtechie]

Many people here are asking why the "international community" is so opposed to US control of the internet through ICANN. The main reason is because they are concerned that the US will promote it's own commercial interests on the internet above those of other players. In effect, that control over the internet will give the US a competitive business advantage. And it does. ICANN clearly favors the US and US business interests.

Re:The problem with US control...

[toriver]

Then it is a WTO issue isn't it?

It will be a moot point anyway, since in a hundred years time China will kome knockin' with a stack of American I.O.U.s and say "we own your sorry asses now". Then China will be in charge, as long as they are patient enough... :)

Re:The problem with US control...

[rtechie]

It will be a moot point anyway, since in a hundred years time China will kome knockin' with a stack of American I.O.U.s and say "we own your sorry asses now". Holding a lease is only worthwhile if you're in a position to enforce it. China isn't. They need our investment capital, technology resources, and trade. The Chinese government is far less stable than most people seem to think. They WILL forgive the debts owed by the US or the US will break them up and appoint puppet regional governments.

Re:HAHAHAH!!!

[Blakey Rat]

America has been paying lip service to being the good guy whilst screwing with other countries' regimes, selling arms into unstable areas, invading and destabilising all sorts of places and all the whole preaching to the rest of the world about "freedom", "justice" and the "American Way", which it makes clear by its actions it doesn't believe in and only applies to US citizens.

That explains why we removed dictatorships in Afghanistan and Iraq, because we don't think "freedom" should apply to the people who lived there. Good thinking. Oh wait, what's the standard liberal response, we did it for access to oil? Go ahead, I'll wait. You can even use one of those cute liberal nicknames, like Chimpy McHalliburton.

Re:ICANN to UN control...

[henni16]

Or be a highschool freshman in the US and scribble a drawing critical of the president.
Better move to a "free speech zone" to do that.

alphabetical order

[brunascle]

the list is in alphabetical order. that's why the US is at the bottom. there's 3 categories, and France is listed in the same category as the US.

Build Your Own

[Blackknight]

If the rest of the world stopped using our root name servers it wouldn't have much affect on us, they could even build their own internet if they wanted to. Seriously, we need to just stand up and tell the UN to fuck off.

Re:wait...

[toriver]

Yeah, but the rest of the world funded and developed the formal international standards by way of CCITT/ITU like X.25 and X.400. But those mostly died when the less formal Internet technologies started to spread beyond academia.

You see, it's not like the Internet was the only networking option available. It was just cheaper, more dynamic and less regulated. Had the U.S. kept the Internet tehcnologies to itself (hard to do as the need to interact with foreign universities grew), the rest of us would just have settled with X.400 email and the ilk, and Tim Berners-Lee would have created the WWW technologies on top of the OSI stack instead.

And the "we" were largely a bunch of nerds in Berkeley anyway.

Re:HAHAHAH!!!

[Nursie]

Yes, Iraq was all about regime change, all about removing saddam.

Always was, don't listen to those damn liberals who try and tell you you should remember so many years back to the "imminent threat to the west with WMDs" "seeking out nucleur capabilities" and "mobile chemical weapons lab" bullshit that was spewed. No, just listen to us, remember, it was about the iraqi people, always about the iraqi people. Go back to sleep america, your government is bringing freedom to the world.

And may I just say GREAT JERB!! On the the Iraq thing. What's the casualty count now (and no, I'm not talking about US and Coalition troops, I'm talking about the civillians that we're "bringing freedom to".

No, I don't believe for one second the US administration gives a fuck about the people of Iraq. And my post is referring to decades of history, not just these recent adventures. Take a look at some of the shit the US has pulled in south america and the middle east.

Afghanistan was revenge. Iraq was for god-knows-what, but the lies, the propaganda and the total clusterfuck it's become are not something you should be proud of your government for.

full of shit

[sentientbrendan]

There's nothing forcing anyone else in the world to use our domain name system. There are already alternative domain name systems that you can have your computer refer to.

The only reason that the Rusians or anyone else wants control of America's domain name system is so that they can censor the internet not just within their own countries, but globally.

I have a lot of respect for the UN and what it does, but it is important to remember that the UN is *not* a democratic institution and that many of the most powerful countries in the UN are communist or brutal dictatorships and have no respect whatsoever for the freedom of speech. Our friends as well as our enemies sit on the UN. So, while I respect the UN as an international mediator, any democratic country would have to be insane to allow the UN to interfere in domestic policy or allow them to have any authority over our national assets. The UN is not a "world government" and cannot be treated as such as long as countries like China and Russia sit on the security council.

Also, remember that calls to allow "third world nations" to have more say are essentially calls to allow the brutal dictators *running* those third world nations to have more say. I'm sympathetic to the plight of the poorer parts of the world, but one of the reasons they are still poor is that these countries have really crappy, corrupt, or dictatorial governments that we don't want interfering in our country's internal business.

ICANN isn't perfect in some ways, they've obviously allowed domain name parking to become somewhat obnoxious, but they have a good record on free speech. I can't even imagine anything the UN sets up not being routinely abused to censor sites that are unflattering to the security council members.

Re:USA is a Republic, not Democratic

[emm-tee]

WOW. Apparently you get modded down for being unpatriotic around here. That sucks.
Especially when there's an huge number of people who seem to think disagreeing with whoever's in charge is unpatriotic.
The whole idea of democracy is that you can disagree with the people in charge.
Most real democracies have strict limits on campaign budgets, for example. In the US on the otherhand it just seems that the guys with the most bucks win.
Let's see how long it takes for this to get modded down. The truth hurts, heh?

Re:IPv4 cost, DNSSEC, & control of root server

[Ironlenny]

ICANN is completely controlled by the US government, and they have proven countless times they will act against the best interests of the internet when American Corporate Interests require it.

Citation needed.

republics and democracies

[falconwolf]

The U.S. is NOT a democracy (we're a republic, damnit, get your facts right)

Seeing as how a republic is "a government having a chief of state who is not a monarchy" a democracy can very well be a republic.

Philosophers as far back as Plato have warned against democracies and "majority rule"

Plato's teacher Socrates opposed democracy as well. That's why he was put on trial, today it would be called "Contributing to the delinquency of a minor" or "inciting to riot". Confucius also opposed anything like democracy, actually if you were to read Confucius's "Analects" and Plato's "The Republic" they say similar things.

Falcon

Re:republics and democracies

[s13g3]

The U.S. is NOT a democracy (we're a republic, damnit, get your facts right)

Seeing as how a republic is "a government having a chief of state who is not a monarchy" a democracy can very well be a republic.

Ah, allow me to clarify... We are a "Representative Republic", which is a different thing altogether than a democracy, where the will of the masses is not necessarily the will of the nation. Why? Because as I sad before, "never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." When this nation was founded, it was believed (and true, then, as it still is today) that the average citizen simply was not educated and experienced enough (especially in international affairs) to make well reasoned, rational decisions on how their nation should be governed. This is why we still have the electoral college. The "people" are still too naive and ignorant, on average, to have any say on their nations governance... I mean, seriously... The average American citizen right now doesn't know who the Secretary of State is, but they think that "Survivor" or "Jackass" is quality entertainment, and I don't know about you, but those damned sure aren't the people I want having a hand in decisions about my nations foreign or domestic policies.

control of DNS servers and domain names

[falconwolf]

The world can certainly make their own Internet but splitting the net in two will be to the detriment of everybody, the US included. Relaxing or sharing control over domain allocation can be preferable to forcing every American website to register an extra domain at WorldNet to do business overseas.

Ah, but would it stop there? Politicians and bureaucrats have shown repeatedly that they will grab as much power as they can. If the US gives into UN control how long will it be before China, Cuba, and North Korea start yelling about censoring the net? Heck Cuba, Zimbabwe, and other nations have already said they want to censor the net, with UN control it will only get worse.

Falcon

Great. We "Yanks" love you, too.

[falconwolf]

Now, do you have an opinion of why ICANN shouldn't retain control of the domain registration? Or are you simply so one dimensional that the argument "American's suck!" is all you have? Please, give me a rational, intelligent reason for changing the process that's in place with regard to domain registration and I promise you that I'll pay it sincere attention.

Being born in California I'm neither a Rebel nor a Yanky. That's besides the point though. While I prefer ICANN to be a US organization what I don't like is the Commerce Department having veto power over ICANN. For instance I think Bush's Commerce Department veto of the .xxx domain was wrong. However I can only imagine it would be much worse with the UN in control, not just could porn be censored but political speech would be too.

Falcon

The U.N. is simply a corrupt and impotent body

[falconwolf]

Unfortunately this applies to the US as well.

Falcon

Whaling

[falconwolf]

The same reason Norway, Japan and Iceland will not cede control of their whaling to a body with land-locked countries with absolutely zero whaling history, I guess...?

Yet they're quite willing to give landlocked countries billions in aid if they vote the "right" way on whaling.

Falcon

democracies and republics

[falconwolf]

First of all, the word "democratic" is one of those nice-sounding words that people use all the time, and the US fits the vague concept of "democratic." However, our actual government is, and always has been, a Republic. Many states are democratic, but the US government is not.

The US is both a republic AND a democracy.

Falcon

was the US isolationist?

[falconwolf]

the US culture was famously isolationist before and during most of WWI.

The US wasn't really isolationist before WWI. The term Banana Republic comes from the early 1900s when the US, in supporting US businesses importing bananas and other fruits supported undemocratic methods of gaining control of Caribbean and Latin American nations. Teddy Roosevelt's Big Stick comes in part front his sending US Marines to Tangier, Morocco to fight against Berbers who had taken US citizens in Morocco hostage. And about 100 years before that, Thomas Jefferson sent the Marines there to fight Barbary pirates.

Falcon

Re:It was presented with good arguments

[falconwolf]

Uhh, two of them on a whim? I'm pretty sure we had good reasons for going into Afghanistan.

When Pres Bush asked, er told, the Taliban to turn over bin Laden they asked for evidence bin Laden had anything to do with 911 but he refused and just invaded. Oh and let's not forget Bush gave the Taliban millions of US taxpayer dollars in aid before the invasion. "Bush Gives Taliban $10 Million To Fight Opium". That's $43,000,000 there. Yet the Taliban profit from the opium trade.

Falcon

languages

[falconwolf]

Thats exactly why this can't be given to an international political body. They will just turn it into an unusable mess. I'm a Greek speaker, should Greek letters and accents be in domain names?

Greek is easier than Chinese, Chinese whether Cantonese, Fukienese, Mandarin, or any other dialect (which are written the same, and only spoken differently) has 66,000 ideograms and Mongolian has more like 86,000. Then there's Japanese which has at least 3 different methods of writing, one being Kanji.

Falcon