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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."
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.
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?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
But you do, in fact.
Content is not infrastructure.
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.
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.
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.
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?