European Union Asks US To Free ICANN

An anonymous reader writes "Viviane Reding, Information Society Commissioner of the European Union, is calling for the United States to hand over control of ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers). She said that the organization running ICANN needs be free of control by a single nation, and rather controlled by a private entity and governed by multiple nations. ICANN, headquartered in Marina Del Rey, California, was created in 1998 to oversee a number of Internet related tasks. Reding said, 'In the long run, it is not defendable that the government department of only one country has oversight of an internet function which is used by hundreds of millions of people in countries all over the world.'"

Comments

Uh, no

[Jaysyn]

We can see how well the UN has worked out, so no thanks.

Re:Uh, no

[rarity]

We can see how well the UN has worked out, so no thanks.

You're kidding, right? They un-nazied the world! For ever!

Re:Uh, no

[MightyYar]

That's not a troll, guys.

The head of the UN "human rights commission" has been Colonel Gadaffi, for the love of Jebus. The UN does a decent job of preventing major armed conflicts between major world powers, and the food relief missions seem pretty successful - but it is not the forum for all things international in scope.

Even the EU has more limits on speech than the US, and I fear that giving them more control over the internet will result in censorship. I agree that having the US in charge is not ideal, but I'm also having trouble thinking of a way to improve on this, since it's hard to find a country with less restrictive speech.

Re:Uh, no

[Androclese]

uummm... I hope your attempting to be "+1 Funny", because the UN was formed AFTER WWII.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

in which repsect has the EU more limits on speech?
give some examples.

Re:Uh, no

[nothing2seehere]

Hate speech laws.

Re:Uh, no

[Shakrai]

It was the Americans and the British Empire who won the war.

I'm fairly certain that the Soviets and Chinese had something to do with it too. You also neglect to mention the contribution of the French. Someone had to teach the Huns how to surrender ;)

Re:Uh, no

[Shakrai]

Try to stand on a street corner in France and deny that the Holocaust happened.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

More languages to put limits on ;)

Re:Uh, no

[Twyst3d]

Where's a link to that "Britain wants to spy on all internet traffic" article when you need one?

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

-1, failure to recognize an Idiocracy reference.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not a troll, guys.

Uh...yeah, right! I have a feeling I've met the guy who wrote this post (MightyYar). He's a skinny little fellow who always sits alone at the lunch table and tells himself that he's better than everyone else and doesn't want their miserable company because they're all such sheeple. Then he finishes his lunch and has to pick up his tray off the floor because some total jerk bumps into him and knocks everything down and all those stupid, stupid SHEEPLE laugh like the stupid SHEEPLE they are. Then, on his way to his locker, that cute girl in his geometry class, which he's only repeating this semester because he was so bored in the last class, I mean, good God, the teacher was such a mouth-breathing sheeple moron, but anyway that cute girl smiles at him from across the hall and his heart starts to beat a little faster even though she's standing beside that total douche of a quarterback who's like, such a mouthbreather, I mean, really, people like that should just be neutered at birth, stupid sheeple, but the girl smiles and so he slows down and pushes his glasses up on his nose and waves but then realizes she wasn't smiling at him but at her loud friend behind him, the one with the platinum blonde hair who's a total whore which is why he's never tried to sleep with her and never would, thank you. And so he turns his wave into brushing lint off his Battlestar Galactica t-shirt, which has totally been signed by the whole cast, and goes to his locker and slams it shut and saunters out of the building to go home and write another blog post because this world just totally sucks and is filled with mouth-breathing sheeple and then he masturbates himself to a teary climax and falls asleep in the warm, sticky comfort of his own spooge.

Re:Uh, no

[Chris Mattern]

Depends on your definition of "United Nations". The current structure of the UN was created after the war, true. But the Allies frequently called themselves "the United Nations" during the war, and the post-war UN was built upon the wartime alliance (there's a reason that the five permanent members of the Security Council were the five major Allied powers).

Re:Uh, no

[metamatic]

The head of the UN "human rights commission" has been Colonel Gadaffi, for the love of Jebus.

That's nothing, the head of the Department of Justice in the USA approved of illegal wiretaps, and the President of the country personally approved of torture, for the love of Jebus.

Re:Uh, no

[Shakrai]

Why don't you take your snide 'try reading a history book or two' remark and shove it up your ass? The Soviets and Chinese accounted for 88% (yes, eight-eight percent) of all Allied military casualties. It doesn't matter how important you think the US intervention was. The fact remains that many more Americans and Britons would have died fighting that war if it wasn't for the Soviets and Chinese bleeding the Axis powers.

To discount the importance of the Soviet and Chinese contribution to the war is to suggest to me that you are the idiot who needs to 'try reading a history book or two'

Re:Uh, no

[TheP4st]

France and the EU are not the same thing, what you can and can not say vary between the different EU member nations.

Re:Uh, no

[Shakrai]

Hey, thanks for pointing out the obvious. The occasionally reliable source known as Wikipedia says that Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland all have laws against Holocaust denial on the books. With the exception of Israel and Switzerland those are all EU members.

So yes, it's true that not every EU member state restricts free speech. But it seems folly to claim that you have the same free speech rights in Europe as you do in the United States, given these restrictions. Name me an American state that restricts free speech in such a manner.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that there's literally nothing stopping the US doing that if they want to. Sure, you might argue that for the last decade they haven't, but when the administration can change every 4 years, it's a hell of a leap of faith to take.

At least by having it internationally run, there'll be enough red tape and bureaucracy to prevent anything like that from happening.

Re:Uh, no

[Reality Master 201]

But that doesn't count.

You see, those things were done to protect America from the terrorists, and as everyone knows our constitution specifically says the executive branch is free to do whatever it likes - legal or otherwise - without fear of repercussions if it calls any policy it chooses to implement part of a war. (see "drugs, war on" for more details)

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

STFU, the UN is the best ever :-]

It is a huge organization and does a lot of good things. Sure, it has flaws. You just don't like it cause it can not be controlled by the USA.
Secondary, the limits on speech are marginal, and have nothing to do with this. What kind of strawman argument is this?
Since the Internet is a global thing, a global organisation that all states participate in should manage the allocation of TLD etc.

Sorry for starting off as troll ... But US-americans insulting the UN ... no way I'm gonna let you get through with this.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the Internet is a global thing, a global organisation that all states participate in should manage the allocation of TLD etc.

Then set up your own damn root servers and STFU.

Re:Uh, no

[rarity]

-1, failure to recognize an Idiocracy reference.

You said it. Thought I was safe enough referring to it here.

*looks around at nascent flamewar*

Oops. Seems that idiocracy may be a little closer than I thought....

Re:Uh, no

[rarity]

the UN was formed AFTER WWII.

Sure, that's just what Chaplin and the dinosaurs want you to think. I bet you pronounce it "you enn" as well..?

Re:Uh, no

[Narpak]

I was under the impression that this was primarily about the assignment of IP addresses and assignment of domain names. Not about what can or can't be posted on those adresses or domains.

That being said I hope USA take total and restrictive control over ICANN; simply because I want, and hope, that it will force Europe (and basically all the other nations of the world that want to use a type of internet like service) to think outside the box and find ways to adapt and marginalise ICANN and the current way of organizing things. To be more specific I believe the best way for something to remain free is to ensure that it is decentralised and broken into so many pieces it will be absolutely impossible for one organisation or nation to maintain oversight or control. This is because I trust the US Government as much as I trust most of the nations of the world; i.e. Not Very.

Re:Uh, no

[i_ate_god]

The Soviets were being taken over by Nazi Germany. Just like Europe was. The Chinese were being taken over by the Japanese. The Soviet Union, Europe, and Asia would all look and sound a lot different if Japan hadn't dragged the US into the war. I'm thinking things like, no Jews, with lots of German and Japanese speakers.

Try reading a history book or two.

Weren't the Soviets the first ones into Berlin?

Also, Battle of Kursk.

Re:Uh, no

[gparent]

ICANN HAS ICANN??!

Re:Uh, no

[Shakrai]

Name me an American state that experienced Nazi invasion. Laws like this are a reaction to precedence, ignorant yank.

Blow it out your ass you arrogant Eurotard. Prior bad experiences do not provide sufficient justification to infringe upon freedom of speech, IMHO.

Re:Uh, no

[Shakrai]

What's your point? Other people will come and yell at you or beat you up? So what? Free speech != freedom from the consequences of that speech. Will the NYC Government stop you from denying the Holocaust? No? Then what's your fucking point?

Re:Uh, no

[erikdalen]

All American states limit free speech:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, we haven't had WWIII yet, so I'd consider that to be a success.

And maybe you should look at the US record of voting (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2828985.stm) and due-paying record within the UN before you criticize it.

Honestly, I don't believe that anyone thinks the UN is perfect. But it only seems to be the USA that acts like a petulant child at a party screaming in the corner and not wanting to join in the games, whilst conveniently ignoring the fact that everyone is having a better time than they would be without the party.

Re:Uh, no

[Comatose51]

You mean like the time when they kicked North Korea's ass out of South Korea? Yeah that was an UN action (Resolution 84). Or how it served as a forum for the US and USSR to work out the Cuban Missile Crisis instead of fighting it out? How about the first Persian Gulf war, the one that's approved by the UN and not based on bullshit? Don't we wish we listened to the UN instead of Bush and Fox News the second time around?

The UN is huge and has many organs. Most of them are successful enough that you never hear about them and the work that they do. Of course there are failures but a world without the UN would be a far worse place.

Stop sucking on Fox News' teats.

Re:Uh, no

[wertigon]

Many of Soviet's casualties could've been prevented, though, if every soldier had been given a rifle. More often than not Soviet forces sent out 100 men with half a rifle each (every other carried a rifle; the rest carried the ammo). So much of those losses are more due to commander incompetence and lack of weaponry than anything else. But you're right that everyone contributed to a victory. :)

Re:Uh, no

[Zembar]

Well, South Carolina springs to mind: http://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess118_2009-2010/bills/56.htm

Re:Uh, no

[ultranova]

Even the EU has more limits on speech than the US, and I fear that giving them more control over the internet will result in censorship.

The emphasis on the quote above is mine, and is the truly absurd part of this whole thing: the USA is quite unable to give anyone control of the Internet, since it only controls the part that's physically located inside the USA. ICANN is a committee that publishes data, not a special military force that storms every router that's not in compliance. Anyone and their dog - and even the EU - is able to start their own DNS system or assign IPs as they will; even I have done so for my home network. It's just that I would also ignore EU if they started their own "sensitive register" or whatever.

This same thing comes up time and again, and is just as ridiculous every time. The USA does not control the Internet, nor does ICANN; all ICANN does is maintain a database - the root DNS servers - which various people use out of their own free will.

Then again, this whole thing is perfectly in line with the usual idiocy coming from Brussels.

Re:Uh, no

[russotto]

Why don't you take your snide 'try reading a history book or two' remark and shove it up your ass? The Soviets and Chinese accounted for 88% (yes, eight-eight percent) of all Allied military casualties. It doesn't matter how important you think the US intervention was. The fact remains that many more Americans and Britons would have died fighting that war if it wasn't for the Soviets and Chinese bleeding the Axis powers.

If I may dare to quote an American (Patton) on this subject: "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for his."

The fact that the Soviets and Chinese died in far greater numbers doesn't mean their contribution was greater.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Then set up your own damn root servers and STFU.

Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it.

No, wait... This isn't really about root servers at all, is it?

Re:Uh, no

[jgtg32a]

They weren't I think it was Patton who asked if he should keep going and deal with the Soviets now instead of later.

Re:Uh, no

[ZharK]

No, but it's certainly a clear indication!

Re:Uh, no

[apathy maybe]

Is the ITU considered to be part of the UN by you?

I personally think they would do a good job...

What about the UPU (formally IPU)?

Both are older than the UN (being established in the 18th Century), but, both are part of the UN system now. Oh, and what about the IAEA? FAO? ILO? WMO? All these are part of the UN as well. I think they seemed to have worked out reasonably well, though, of course, not perfect.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that the UN is only the politicised bits.

Re:Uh, no

[fredclown]

Making people stand, depriving them of sleep, and making them think they are drowning is not torture no matter how much the media wants you to believe it is. Now having your bones broken, having your fingernails ripped off, having people jump on your stomach, or being mutilated ... that's torture.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. And where are those WMD's? Found them yet?

Re:Uh, no

[Shakrai]

Germany suffered around 3.6 million KIAs on the Eastern Front. She suffered around 5.5 million KIAs in the entire war. The Eastern Front contributed to well over half of Germany's military losses.

The fact that the Soviets and Chinese died in far greater numbers doesn't mean their contribution was greater.

You wouldn't see it that way if you were a Russian ;) There are a number of different battles (Stalingrad) and sieges (Leningrad) where the Russians absorbed more deaths than the British and Americans did during the entire war. I really don't think you can make the claim that their contribution wasn't important and I find it questionable that the Allies could have won without them. The US might have been able to defeat Germany but do you really think we would have walked away with a "mere" 418,000 KIAs if we had faced them alone?

Re:Uh, no

[Shakrai]

What should they have done differently? Given up because they lacked the resources and training to effectively fight their opponents when the war started? We had the luxury of two oceans between us and time to build up and train our forces. We had the luxury of choosing when we would fight.

You don't have those luxuries when your country is invaded. You fight back as effectively as possible and do what needs to be done to drive the invaders from your homeland. Do you really think we would have done it any differently if someone was invading our soil?

Re:Uh, no

[Workaphobia]

I didn't realize slashdot's Idiocracy literacy had fallen so much. It's a reference.

Re:Uh, no

[Workaphobia]

Yes, yes, we know. Everyone knows we torture, but apparently no one in power cares. Best move on to more productive conversations, like how not to get picked up and tortured.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

We can see how well the US has worked out, so no thanks.

Re:Uh, no

[metamatic]

It was torture when the Japanese did it to Americans, so it's torture now.

Re:Uh, no

[Pieroxy]

Given up because they lacked the resources and training to effectively fight their opponents when the war started?

Well, that's what we, french people did! Of course, they did some psychological war which accounts for this result, but they should not have been that successful on that count... ;-)

Re:Uh, no

[TheP4st]

Hey, thanks for pointing out the obvious..

The obvious did not seem very obvious when reading your response to AC. The EU do not have any limit on free speech as the fact that there are 15 Sovereign member states that do not have that limit clearly shows.

Re:Uh, no

[fredclown]

The Japanese version of waterboarding killed people, or injured them for life. Ours does neither.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

"We're gonna take you back, to the year 1939 when Charlie Chaplin and his nazi regime enslaved Europe and tried to take over the world... But then an even greater force emerged, the U.N. [pronounced "un"]... and the U.N. un-nazied the world - forever."

Re:Uh, no

[MrNemesis]

Why is this marked as a troll? It's well documented that the Soviet army was, especially at the start of the war, terribly equipped and horribly trained (thanks mainly to Stalin decapitating the army in his many purges prior to the outbreak of WW2, leaving no effective chain of command or indeed any combat experience) - witness how poorly the Russians fared against the Finns in the opening stages of the war.

And during Barbarossa, Russia literally threw men at the germans whilst they were still gearing up their war machine. Where they could they retreated eastwards, where they couldn't they fought with whatever they could find. Even when supplies did start becoming available, supplies to "hot spots" like Stalingrad were kept to a trickle as part of the military strategy that culminated at Kursk, resulting in the annihilation of the german 6th and the beginning of the end for Hitler.

Statistically, the russians lost ~13% (23 million) of their population during WW2, second behind Poland with 16% (about 5.5 million dead) - remember lots of Poles who had been lucky enough to escape were first on the beaches of Normandy too - in fact most places in eastern europe suffered much higher rates of civilian death due to internment in labour camps (as the slavic races were considered "subhuman" by the believers in Hitler's regime); Russia's death toll was 50% civilian - much of in labour camps, much of it due to Russia's lack of regard for individuals safety and a callous attitude towards the individual that was, some say, inherent under Stalin's communism. Witness his choice to not evacuate Stalingrad once it became evident that it was going to be a cataclysmic battle - "they will fight harder for a live city than an empty one" - using the lives of the inhabitants as incentive for the soldiers. Similarly, Germans were told that the Soviet's lack of regard for their own was symptomatic of their animal nature. That's the sort of thing that happens when two of the world's greatest fascists go head-to-head in a battle that was more about their personal pride than anything else. Stalin could just afford to lose alot more men than Hitler.

Comparatively, both the US and the UK lost less than 1% of their population. Not saying that the Russian contribution wasn't anything other than catastrophic for Hitler's regime, but alot of the deaths *could* have been prevented had Russia been better prepared (which, in turn, would have relied on Stalin not having shot all of his best men), and neither Hitler nor Stalin were too worried about the lives of their troops by the time of Stalingrad. Parent is spot on about soldier deaths though; Russian weaponry and military expertise were in colossally short supply up until the closing stages of the war in europe.

Mods - if you can't tell the difference between a troll and WW2 military history, please use your points on something else. Even better, use your time to educate yourself on one of the bloodiest and most epoch-defining events of the last thousand years which *still* serves as a reminder why letting fascist bastards get into a position of power over others frequently causes those others to die quite horribly.

Re:Uh, no

[shutdown -p now]

If I may dare to quote an American (Patton) on this subject: "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for his."

Sure, and Soviets killed more Germans in WW2 than Americans, British and French combined.

Not to mention that any major (and successful) offensives by Western powers in WW2 started only after the USSR seriously weared down Germany on its territory. Until then, German casualties in the West were an order of magnitude less than those in the East.

To reflect on Patton's saying, it would seem that actual American wisdom in that war, at least in the European theatre, was "not to die for your country, but to make some other guy die for your country."

Re:Uh, no

[MrNemesis]

Damnit, replying to myself, but it's not marked as a troll anymore. Guess I should type less next time ;)

Re:Uh, no

[hagnat]

Weren't the Soviets the first ones into Berlin?

yes they were, but that only happened in the end of WW2 (in the european front atleast), AFTER the US joined the war.

the point was that, without support from the US, the world would look a lot different.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why don't you take your snide 'try reading a history book or two' remark and shove it up your ass?"

Remember that you said this, as I'm sure you are proud in your anger that you did.

"The Soviets and Chinese accounted for 88% (yes, eight-eight percent) of all Allied military casualties."

Maybe, but they only accounted for roughly 18% of Allied deaths, which makes their fighting ineffective. This has more to do with their homelands being invaded and the push to stop that than the ideals of stopping evil.

They didn't have a choice. Both countries were up against war machines. Both countries were ill-prepared. The Soviets sent out people without freaking rifles. The Chinese were undergoing genocide and didn't have much of a military force.

I have no trouble with acknowledging the Soviets, because what they did and went through is underappreciated, but then again having their soldiers go into German cities and towns and rape the entire female population isn't going to garner good will. But you seem to forget such activities, in your efforts to underappreciate and bad mouth US efforts in the war.

"It doesn't matter how important you think the US intervention was."

Then it's your turn to shove it up your ass. We had 1 big reason to go to war which was Pearl Harbor and we might have ignored it if we didn't feel what was going on in Europe wasn't right. That's pretty much it. We came to Europe's support militarily because we felt an obligation to help out free countries a la against tyranny. We had been helping with supplies. Remember that when you're shoving those 2 books far up your rear hole.

Take into account the number of countries that came to any countries support which was NOT largely involved on their own homeland, the US did far more than they should have.

"The fact remains that many more Americans and Britons would have died fighting that war if it wasn't for the Soviets and Chinese bleeding the Axis powers."

No shit. That's what happens over time in a war. We took a different and more effective strategy.

btw, what did France do to the Pacific front? Hungary?

btw2, the US lost more people military than France did during WWII.

You also seem to forget the atomic bomb and how the US combined manpower and technology with strategy. It wasn't our fight, but once entered, our feeling was it was our fight, which was to those countries advantage. The facts are that the fighting force going into Japan prior to the bombs were largely US, not Chinese.

The Soviets and Chinese didn't bleed Axis powers to much effect for a long time, esp. the Chinese. The Chinese and Soviets also didn't have a CHOICE. The Axis made their own decisions to invade those countries, in spite of the casualties they knew they would take, the Japanese for resources, the Germans for whatever reason they felt to open a massive eastern front. And they were largely right in the military decision to do so, because they utterly ran over those countries for a long time. The Soviets large won because they took massive casualties to delay and due to the freaking huge size of their country that enabled them to have manufacturing fire up behind the lines (no different than the US being isolated from most fighting by the oceans).

Britain was being bombed. The French didn't defend themselves effectively, despite the first world war, and their insistance on ineffective treaties, or how fierce they fought after the fact. China was backwards, as were the Soviets largely. Every single major play aside from the US had their homeland invaded.

The reasons the US won the war was because it stayed OUT of the war, learned from their errors, and took to effective technology. It was not our fight. But we still helped out. If you look at the proportion of deaths to fighting force, taking over the shorter 4+ year term, and the percent of our population fighting for what was not our homeland and not for extension of our own lands, the US sacrifice was ridiculou

Re:Uh, no

[shutdown -p now]

Other than having better looking uniforms and a much lower body count, how were the Germans different from the Russians?

If by "Russians" you mean "Soviets" here (which isn't exactly the same thing, you know), then Soviets didn't mass murder people because of their race or ethnicity. Yes, there were massive political repressions, but you always knew that you'd be mostly safe if you conform to the rules. Jews in Nazi Germany didn't have that luxury - they were guilty simply by virtue of being alive.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

"Weren't the Soviets the first ones into Berlin?"

Yup. Ask the women of Berlin who lived during the time. If they'll speak about it. Soviets pretty much raped the entire population.

Re:Uh, no

[MightyYar]

Just fyi, from your link:

Prosecutions continued until a series of United States Supreme Court decisions in 1957 threw out numerous convictions under the Smith Act as unconstitutional.

Re:Uh, no

[Talderas]

Well yes, naturally Russia would have such a high percentage of casualties, just look at their defensive strategies, they brought in men capable of holding guns and told them to go to the front lines to defend the cities from the German advance. It's easy to rake up huge casualty numbers when you're basically throwing lambs to the lion to stop an advance. Moscow and Stalingrad contributed to over a quarter of the total Soviet casualties, and the Battle of Stalingrad was nothing more than a penis size fight. There wasn't anything of strategic there, so Stalin was just throwing troops there to prevent his namesake city from falling fully under German control, and Hitler of course just wanted to city as a personal insult to Stalin. Close to 2 million casualties among both sides (not including civilians), for nothing of strategic value.

Re:Uh, no

[MightyYar]

Glad to see you got your troll script working better. The naked placeholder variable must have been embarrassing for you.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

why would we, when it DID happen.

Re:Uh, no

[iJusten]

There's also the matter of Stalin killing most of the generals before WW2 and then marching the men without direction to their deaths.

Here in Finland stories about Soviet soldiers who ran toward well fortified gatling gun hour after hour under threat of execution are well known.

Oh, and apparently there was order that Soviet soldiers that surrender are to be killed when returned. Makes you take foolish risks..

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Name me an American state that experienced Nazi invasion. Laws like this are a reaction to precedence, ignorant yank.

So, you think it's OK to torture someone who has a precedent of organizing attacks on civilians using hijacked airliners?

Either free speech is an inalienable right, or it's not.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

The UN was built over the corpse of the League of Nations.

The idea of the UN being a version of the League that actually had the power to enforce its decisions.

OK it certainly didn't succeed very well - but you should read up on its precursors inability to even pull together meetings, let alone decide anything or enforce it.

Re:Uh, no

[MightyYar]

the head of the Department of Justice in the USA approved of illegal wiretaps

So "illegal" that congress jumped in to explicitly authorize them after the controversy arose.

personally approved of torture

At the very least, you have to admit that whether it is torture or not is controversial.

Re:Uh, no

[MightyYar]

Secondary, the limits on speech are marginal, and have nothing to do with this.

As you type that, are you smiling? Because I can't imaging typing that with a straight face. The single greatest threat to the internet is government censorship.

Re:Uh, no

[MightyYar]

Not about what can or can't be posted on those adresses or domains.

Whoever controls the root servers ultimately controls all of the domain names. It's not a stretch to imagine, for instance, the domain names of hate groups getting revoked by a EU-controlled ICANN.

I share your opinion, and would rather see the problem solved with diversification rather than simply moving more governments into control. Things like OpenDNS show that there may even be money in it.

Re:Uh, no

[MightyYar]

The USA does not control the Internet, nor does ICANN; all ICANN does is maintain a database - the root DNS servers - which various people use out of their own free will.

You are strictly right, of course. But right now, ICANN's servers are God. Everyone syncs with them. And while there would be technical solutions to ICANN dropping objectionable domain names, I doubt that many would bother with them if - for instance - ICANN simply dropped all of the hate groups' entries. So effectively, control of ICANN does translate into control over the internet.

They also apportion IP addresses, right? So that's another potential method of control.

Re:Uh, no

[master_p]

So, what is your proposal? a world where there is no place for discussion between countries?

You can find corruption in any organization, either inside the US, or outside the US. The UN is not any different than that.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that the French and France wouldn't exist today if not for the U.S. Not what what happened on the other front. And Stalin was begging the U.S. to come in to take some pressure off of them so don't say the U.S. didn't have a positive impact.

Re:Uh, no

[swillden]

Do you really think we would have done it any differently if someone was invading our soil?

Yes, I do. Not because we were better people but because we were a wealthier and more heavily armed people. Had the US mainland been invaded citizens would not have been as dependent upon the government to equip themselves to repel the invaders. The government-issued arms and ammunition would have been the preferred choice, but millions of old .30-30 deer rifles and .45-70 buffalo/elk guns could have been pressed into service at an instant.

Admiral Yamamoto wasn't wrong when he said that the US mainland couldn't be invaded because there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.

This is still true today, although to a much lesser degree, and of course hunting weapons are further outclassed as combat arms now than they were in 1941.

Re:Uh, no

[dasunt]

What should they have done differently? Given up because they lacked the resources and training to effectively fight their opponents when the war started? We had the luxury of two oceans between us and time to build up and train our forces. We had the luxury of choosing when we would fight.

What should they have done differently?

In Stalin's case, how about not purging Red Army leadership in the 1930s?

Perhaps with generals such as Tukhachevsky, the USSR would have done a lot better in WWII.

Re:Uh, no

[kalirion]

If by "Russians" you mean "Soviets" here (which isn't exactly the same thing, you know), then Soviets didn't mass murder people because of their race or ethnicity. Yes, there were massive political repressions, but you always knew that you'd be mostly safe if you conform to the rules. Jews in Nazi Germany didn't have that luxury - they were guilty simply by virtue of being alive.

Stalin killed millions of his own people. Do you really think they all failed to follow the rules? What about all those Polish officers?

Re:Uh, no

[Chabo]

More often than not Soviet forces sent out 100 men with half a rifle each (every other carried a rifle; the rest carried the ammo).

The famous line from Enemy at the Gates:

"The man with the rifle shoots! When the man with the rifle dies, the man without the rifle picks up the rifle and shoots!"

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hard to quantify contribution in matters of life of death.

But to neglect the Soviet involvement in the War as much as some have in this thread borders on criminal. It's a widely held opinion in UK history (and I'm sure other European countries) that the decision to take the war to 2 fronts is the most critical mistake Hitler made. He underestimated the Soviet ability to pull together a worthy fighting force (thank Buddha for the railway system - I shouldn't have to tell Americans how difficult logistics are in a landmass that size).

The sacrifices the Soviet troops made are also well documented. As an earlier poster pointed out, the early forces came to the fights with 1 gun for every 2 men. The soldiers themselves consisted of aging veterans and teenage conscripts alike, and their willingness to utilise scorched earth tactics in an effort to slow the German advance involved burning their own farms and salting their own earth.

Their contribution, and the contribution of every citizen of every nation (including the 10k or so Canadians that none have seen fit to mention so far), that has ever lifted a hand to protect all lives lived in Liberty; will never be forgotten nor slighted by me or mine.

 

Re:Uh, no

[erikdalen]

Just fyi, from your link:

Prosecutions continued until a series of United States Supreme Court decisions in 1957 threw out numerous convictions under the Smith Act as unconstitutional.

Yeah, but the next sentence reads:

The statute remains on the books, however.

And several people where actually sent to jail under this law.

(not to mention the more than 100 people that have been in jail at Guantanamo lately without even getting a trial...)

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Making people stand, depriving them of sleep, and making them think they are drowning is not torture no matter how much the media wants you to believe it is. Now having your bones broken, having your fingernails ripped off, having people jump on your stomach, or being mutilated ... that's torture.

So if you were arrested on suspicion on conspiring to cause explosions, the police could waterboard you? Because after all, you could be holding something back, right?

Oh wait, it's torture if you do it to a white guy, right? You make me sick.

Re:Uh, no

[shutdown -p now]

Stalin killed millions of his own people. Do you really think they all failed to follow the rules?

Considering how many rules there were, it's not surprising. Keep in mind that you didn't have to show political dissent to be targeted - it would suffice to not show sufficient enthusiasm towards the Party and the leader. Still, it's something you have control over - unlike your race. Even in the case where one had "suspicious" parents (such Russian Imperial Army officers or nobles), which itself was reason good enough, there was still an option to write an official renouncement of your parents as such. Quite a few people got away like that. The same goes for marriages - if someone was convicted as "enemy of the people", their spouse would normally be executed, but they could avoid it by publicly denouncing the partnership.

To put it simply, it was hard but possible to comply with the restrictions of the stalinist oppression system. It was impossible to do so in Nazi system.

What about all those Polish officers?

They were executed because they were officers (and thus viewed by communists as potential leaders of the insurrection), not just because they were Polish.

Re:Uh, no

[Shuh]

Why don't you take your snide 'try reading a history book or two' remark and shove it up your ass? The Soviets and Chinese accounted for 88% (yes, eight-eight percent) of all Allied military casualties. It doesn't matter how important you think the US intervention was. The fact remains that many more Americans and Britons would have died fighting that war if it wasn't for the Soviets and Chinese bleeding the Axis powers. To discount the importance of the Soviet and Chinese contribution to the war is to suggest to me that you are the idiot who needs to 'try reading a history book or two'

What "history" didn't teach you was that a good portion of those "Soviet" casualties were actually people from the areas the Soviets conveniently kept after WWII (e.g. Hungary, Poland, etc.). The Soviet army field-conscripted any men of military age and sent them to the front with no training and few weapons. This was actually part of a controlled genocide that made these nations easy to occupy after the war.

Sorry to rain on your fairy tale of the noble Soviet contributions to WWII. But them's the facts.

Re:Uh, no

[cyberchondriac]

The Japanese version of waterboarding killed people, or injured them for life. Ours does neither.

Interesting. Can you provide a citation for this?

Re:Uh, no

[Shakrai]

In Stalin's case, how about not purging Red Army leadership in the 1930s?

Well, yeah, Stalin bears a lot (most of?) the blame for the poor performance of the Red Army. But that still doesn't change my underlying point. The Anglo-American alliance largely got to decide when and where they would fight. We had the luxury of waiting until we had achieved air superiority before we committed our armies to battle. We had the luxury of not fighting the war on our own soil (yeah, the UK was bombed, but bombing != invasion).

The Russians and Chinese didn't have any of those luxuries.

Re:Uh, no

[Chabo]

Here's the set of movie quotes:

Did you say if you found your army between the Germans and the Russians... you'd attack in both directions?

No, I never said that. I never said any such thing. But I wish I had.

The war shouldn't be over. We should
stop pussyfooting about the Russians! We'll have to fight them anyway. Why not do it now, when the army's here? Instead of disarming Germans let's get them to help fight the Bolsheviks.

Re:Uh, no

[Shakrai]

The government-issued arms and ammunition would have been the preferred choice, but millions of old .30-30 deer rifles and .45-70 buffalo/elk guns could have been pressed into service at an instant.

And you don't think that fighting such an action would result in higher casualties than the neat set-piece battles we got to fight on the Western Front? The battles that we fought with full benefit of aerial supremacy, attacks on the rear area Axis logistical network and an Ally to the East that had already been bleeding the German Army for three years?

I'm a big fan of the "rifle behind every blade of grass" concept but I don't think for a moment that it wouldn't have been every bit as desperate and bloody as the Eastern Front was.

Re:Uh, no

[swillden]

The Japanese version of waterboarding killed people, or injured them for life. Ours does neither.

How about we strap you to a board and try it for 10-20 minutes and see if you still don't consider it torture?

Victims of waterboarding may not normally be physically damaged (though lung damage can occur and if done wrong the subject may actually drown) but the psychological damage is often severe and long-lasting.

I'm not inclined to feel a lot of pity for terrorists, but I do feel very strongly that MY nation should not lower itself to that level. We're better than that. I would much rather have another 9/11 every year than to abandon our principles and the pre-eminence of the Rule of Law -- after all, it would still only account for as many lives as about 3 weeks of traffic accidents, and as much property damage as one fair-sized hurricane. We can sustain that, easily. In fact, though, it wouldn't come to that even without "enhanced interrogation", warrantless wiretaps and the rest of the shameful practices justified as part of the "war on terror".

It's comforting to believe that Jefferson's declaration that "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots" refers only to the blood of soldiers who volunteer to die overseas, but in fact maintaining liberty and the high ideals upon which this nation was founded also exposes those of us at home to risk. The use of torture is just another example of us trading our ideals for "a little temporary safety" and, as Franklin put it, when we do that we "deserve neither liberty nor safety". To maintain the rule of law, to maintain our liberty and our national conscience requires us to accept some risk. There was a time when we were up to it. I hope we still are, though I often wonder.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

How about having a scalpel taken to your penis?

While the act may have been carried out in Morocco, it was done on US orders and sanctioned by the UK.

That's torture any way you spin it, and I guarantee you would redefine your opinion of what is, and is not torture if they ever let me practice these acts on you.

Re:Uh, no

[Shakrai]

Yup. Ask the women of Berlin who lived during the time. If they'll speak about it. Soviets pretty much raped the entire population.

I guess they should have thought about that before they launched a war of annihilation against the Soviet Union.

Re:Uh, no

[MightyYar]

And several people where actually sent to jail under this law.

In the 40s and 50s.

(not to mention the more than 100 people that have been in jail at Guantanamo lately without even getting a trial...)

Are we still even talking about censorship? Are you disputing that the US has freer political speech than Europe? Copyright law is certainly censorship, and the US has stricter commercial censorship - but I'm far more concerned about political speech than commercial speech.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

The screams of our POW's were by far the loudest when the Japanese photographed them doing nude cheerleading and made them think they were drowning.

Re:Uh, no

[slash.duncan]

Wow. Rather have a 9/11 every year, than abandon our principles. That's strong stuff.

I've stated that I'd rather me, or my own mother, daughter/son, or wife (or even all of us), die in another 9/11 should it come to that, than surrender our ideals, which is what we did when we started torturing folks and doing wiretaps without authorization. Yes, in that regard, the terrorists unfortunately won, as they convinced us at least for a time to give up what had kept us in the right and therefore what made it worth fighting for.

But a 9/11 every year? You put me to shame! I hadn't gone that far, probably because while I recognized it wasn't very significant overall, it still seemed more significant than it was, grand-scheme. But you've forced a rethink, and I yes, I now agree with you, 100%.

Were that there were more like us.

BTW, that's why, while I couldn't vote for McCain as he was endorsing all the wrong positions (tho at least he didn't compromise on torture, which given his own history, it would have been a sad day if he had), I ended up unable to vote Obama either, after he voted for the telecom immunity bill. Seems I had good reason not to, now, as well, given further compromises in the same direction. Too bad, really, given what could have been.

Oh, well. I can't say I expected any different after that telecom vote. I predicted he'd win about the time of Iowa, as historically, the optimist generally does and I realized by that point that he was consistently the optimistic candidate (which he remained), but after that vote, I couldn't in good conscience support him, even if I did predict he'd win.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Stalin had the Luxury of knowing there was a large German army building up on his border with repeated warnings from his generals of impending invasion.

You're right though, 'you gotta do what ya gotta do to survive'; but that doesn't give them any more credibility for ruthlessly sending men in waves to their deaths while holding a gun to their backs. So that 88% doesn't reflect anything but Stalins ruthlessness and blind eye naive thinking to sign a peace treaty with Hitler.

Re:Uh, no

[MechaStreisand]

What difference, morally, does it make to murder millions of people because they weren't enthusiastic enough about your murderous regime, and murdering somewhat fewer millions just because you want to? Why is one any worse than the other? They're both equally terrible, in my eyes, and it would seem that others agree.

Also, your sig is out of date. You should update it to "I like paying taxes. With them I line the pockets of millionaire bankers."

Re:Uh, no

[DesScorp]

The head of the UN "human rights commission" has been Colonel Gadaffi, for the love of Jebus.

That's nothing, the head of the Department of Justice in the USA approved of illegal wiretaps, and the President of the country personally approved of torture, for the love of Jebus.

What illegal wiretaps? The courts certainly haven't ruled them illegal. You may consider them illegal, and perhaps you're even right; it wouldn't be the first time our courts ruled on something in a manner contrary to the Constitution. But for good or ill, the law in America is what judges says it is, not you or I. So until SCOTUS changes its mind about the wiretaps, they're not illegal. And apparently, Even President Hope-Change has done a 180 and now backs the wiretapping. So spread the blame around while you're at it. The best you can hope for right now is that the current lawsuit in the 9th Circuit makes it to SCOTUS and that they agree with you.

Re:Uh, no

[KC7JHO]

hmmm. go to your local WallMart and check the supply of ammunition. I would swear we had invaders coming or something! Go to your local gun store and check the supply, they can't keep them on the shelves even at 2x the price of 2 years ago. 2-4 years ago perhaps your last sentence would still be correct, but today... we have even more people, and almost EVERYONE has a firearm of some sort. With the invention of the (Awesome) sport of Paint Ball, many more people are studying squad infantry tactics to improve there game. Perhaps the same could be said to some extent for game of the combat games? No the USA would not be an easy target today! We also have a massive population and area, combined with speedy transportation and good (well mostly) roadways, we could mass a very large force at any point of our border in 1 day, give us a week and ...

Re:Uh, no

[fredclown]

The Japanese used salt water in their water boarding which in and of itself can cause death. http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/60549.html After that if the stomach of the individual became too full of water they would either beat water out of the stomach or jump on the victim. From Wikipedia In this version, interrogation continued during the torture, with the interrogators beating the victim if he did not reply and the victim swallowing water if he opened his mouth to answer or breathe. When the victim could ingest no more water, the interrogators would beat or jump on his distended stomach.

Re:Uh, no

[GalacticCmdr]

But to neglect the Soviet involvement in the War as much as some have in this thread borders on criminal. It's a widely held opinion in UK history (and I'm sure other European countries) that the decision to take the war to 2 fronts is the most critical mistake Hitler made.

I completely agree with your post, except for that section I quoted above. Sure I was not on Stalin's staff, but historical documents have shown that Stalin was already planning on moving west once Germany had stalled in its attack. The German army had no choice but to attack before Stalin could get his war machine up and running.

Hitler and his generals made plenty of mistakes during the attack (changing objectives being one of the most terrible), but the decision to attack was not really a choice.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really hoping you are doing satire....

Re:Uh, no

[fredclown]

How about we strap you to a board and try it for 10-20 minutes and see if you still don't consider it torture?

According to CIA memos they were only allowed to do two sessions per day lasting no more than two hours each. And in those sessions they were only allowed to water board up to 40 seconds (which they say rarely happened). This could only be done a maximum of six times per two hour session. Meaning that at most the person was water boarded for four minutes out of two hours. Finally, in any 30 day period a prisoner was only allowed to be water boarded on five of those days.

I can hold my breath for forty seconds, and I can certainly do this six times in two hours. Can you?

Re:Uh, no

[shutdown -p now]

What difference, morally, does it make to murder millions of people because they weren't enthusiastic enough about your murderous regime, and murdering somewhat fewer millions just because you want to? Why is one any worse than the other? They're both equally terrible, in my eyes, and it would seem that others agree.

I've already explained the difference. If you disagree, that's your right. But I would definitely prefer to live in USSR under Stalin, then in Germany under Hitler.

Also, your sig is out of date. You should update it to "I like paying taxes. With them I line the pockets of millionaire bankers."

I'm not an American. Of course, if you are, and you have those kinds of problems, then maybe you should work at fixing your government so that it spends taxes on things they are intended to be spent on.

These days, I pay my taxes in Canada, and there weren't any bank bailouts here, nor, in fact, did any banks got to the point where they would need one to stay alive. Wonder why?

Re:Uh, no

[dunkelfalke]

Oh yes. And also all the cows and sheeps.
Liar.

Sure some tried but any Red Army soldier caught raping or marauding woud be court-martialled and shot.

Re:Uh, no

[Reality Master 201]

Well, I really wish it was just satire.

Re:Uh, no

[mrchaotica]

The only reason the Russians and Chinese racked up so many casualties is that they used the "Zerg" strategy. Or maybe even the "Zapp Brannigan" one:

Zapp Brannigan: "How did I defeat the killbots? Simple: I sent wave after wave of my own men knowing full well that eventually the killbots would reach their kill limit and shut down."

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Name a European city that experienced anything on the scale of Nanking, you pompous, eurocentric westerner.

~The Chinese

//AC-ing it because I'm normally a nice guy.

Re:Uh, no

[Toonol]

Oh wait, it's torture if you do it to a white guy, right? You make me sick.

Your kneejerk unreasoning accusation of racism is far more despicable and repulsive than anything the parent post said.

Re:Uh, no

[KC7JHO]

... uhhh can we give them Microsoft just to help get them started?

Re:Uh, no

[mrchaotica]

What should they have done differently?

For one thing, instead of sending half the soldiers into battle unarmed, they could have just sent the armed half -- plus maybe a small unit to run around with the medics and collect the discarded weapons -- and then waited until they could arm the rest before sending them in too. They could have retreated into Siberia and let the weather kill the invaders, like they did with Napoleon. They could have used more guerrilla tactics. Etc.

Re:Uh, no

[mrchaotica]

...almost EVERYONE has a firearm of some sort.

No they don't. Most people who own guns own multiple guns, while most of the rest of the population doesn't own any at all -- it only averages out to one gun per person.

Re:Uh, no

[mrchaotica]

To reflect on Patton's saying, it would seem that actual American wisdom in that war, at least in the European theatre, was "not to die for your country, but to make some other guy die for your country."

In that case, us Ameriacans sure sucked at carrying that wisdom out, considering that we did a heck of a lot of fighting in Europe despite the fact that the only direct threat we ever faced was in the Pacific theater!

Re:Uh, no

[Shakrai]

They could have retreated into Siberia and let the weather kill the invaders, like they did with Napoleon

Did Napoleon have plans to starve the majority of the Slavs out of existence while keeping a token amount alive as slave laborers? Would you have left your population at the mercy of such an invasion force or would you have fought that invasion force with every means at your disposal?

Re:Uh, no

[swillden]

I can hold my breath for forty seconds, and I can certainly do this six times in two hours.

You can't hold your breath while being waterboarded. That's the point of pouring the water, to give it enough velocity to force its way in.

Seriously, if you think it's not so bad, I think you should try it.

Re:Uh, no

[shutdown -p now]

In that case, us Ameriacans sure sucked at carrying that wisdom out, considering that we did a heck of a lot of fighting in Europe despite the fact that the only direct threat we ever faced was in the Pacific theater!

U.S. only joined the European theatre when Germany declared war on U.S. Declaring war doesn't count as a "direct threat" in your book? I'd say that it's generally a fairly straightforward way of saying, "Once we're finished here, we're coming after you".

As for how real that threat was - read about Hitler's "Zweites Buch", and see for yourself.

Re:Uh, no

[swillden]

It would certainly have been desperate and bloody, far more so than the conflicts of professional soldiers with integrated forces and experienced leaders. But I don't think it would have been nearly as bad as the Eastern Front of WWII.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is the US government does not touch ICANN.

ICANN is far more independent now than it would ever be under the EU. I imagine the EU would impose some sort of "Suspend any and all domains accused of file sharing".

Re:Uh, no

[swillden]

I've stated that I'd rather me, or my own mother, daughter/son, or wife (or even all of us), die in another 9/11 should it come to that, than surrender our ideals, which is what we did when we started torturing folks and doing wiretaps without authorization.

You, sir, are a true patriot.

Were that there were more like us.

I hate the self-aggrandizing way that sounds, but you're absolutely right.

I ended up unable to vote Obama either, after he voted for the telecom immunity bill.

That was just one of many, many reasons I couldn't vote for Obama. Not that there's much difference between the Republicrats and Democans, from where I sit. They both want to spend our grandchildren into the poorhouse, neither of them care about our liberties or the Constitution that was intended to protect them, except when it's convenient. Both are perfectly happy to continue providing bread and circuses; the Democrats like to focus more on bread, and the Republicans more on circuses, but it's a matter of degree in both cases.

I've decided that the only thing to do is to pick a party and get involved at the local level, to try to change their platforms, because there's no getting around them, and just picking between them is pointless.

Re:Uh, no

[swillden]

We're not as well-prepared as we were 70 years ago, not in terms of weapons, at least.

Yes, the last few months we've had massive increases in sales of guns and ammunition, but there are far fewer guns per capita than there were 70 years ago. Also, even fewer of those guns are rifles (massive increases in handgun ownership of late -- not that that's a bad thing, but they're not militarily very useful) and hardly any of them are high-capacity semi-automatics and virtually none select fire. So our weapons are further from being militarily useful than they were.

Your comment about paintball is interesting though, and the transportation issue is important -- though it also helps the invader. And the total numbers of people and weapons is much, much larger than what we could field 70 years ago.

Overall, we wouldn't be an easy target for invasion. I'd feel better if we had more military-style rifles, though.

Re:Uh, no

[erikdalen]

Are you disputing that the US has freer political speech than Europe? Copyright law is certainly censorship, and the US has stricter commercial censorship - but I'm far more concerned about political speech than commercial speech.

Yes, I'm disputing that. You can also have a look at the latest Worldwide Press Freedom Index:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Press_Freedom_Index#Worldwide_Press_Freedom_Index

1 Iceland
1 Luxembourg
1 Norway
4 Estonia
4 Finland
4 Republic of Ireland
7 Belgium
7 Latvia
7 New Zealand
7 Slovakia
7 Sweden
7 Switzerland
13 Canada
14 Austria
14 Denmark
16 Czech Republic
16 Lithuania
16 Netherlands
16 Portugal
20 Germany
snip...
38 United States

Perhaps you notice that the top of that list is quite dominated by European countries?

Re:Uh, no

[moosesocks]

Well, for one, Stalin probably shouldn't have purged his own armies.

Killing your own soldiers right before a war is generally unadvised.

Given just how poorly everything else in the Soviet Union was run in the 1930s, it's pretty remarkable that they were able to fight at all, or that the USSR managed to hold together during the war.

Re:Uh, no

[JAlexoi]

Oh... But killing PoWs is the whole other crime of war. Torture does not need to end in death to be torture.

Re:Uh, no

[Reality Master 201]

Just ignore him; he's one of them rushbot/hannitards that thinks it's a fraternity prank and nothing big. He'd freak out in under 20 seconds with actual waterboarding.

What the fuck happened to America that there's so many people that think this kind of shit is ok if you do it in the name of freedom?

Re:Uh, no

[fredclown]

Oh... But killing PoWs is the whole other crime of war. Torture does not need to end in death to be torture.

The point was that we are not doing anything like what the Japanese did. What they did is undeniably torture. What our CIA did is not even close to what the Japanese did such that they really cannot, in my view, be called the same thing. So, to make a sweeping statement that our version of water boarding is torture based off of what the Japanese did is a logical fallacy. Scaring the living daylight out of someone is not torture.

Besides the media is making it sound like this is a regular thing that the CIA does. It has only been used on three prisoners, and that was back in 2002. Furthermore, the session revealed significant information that saved many lives.

The prisoners were not harmed in any way and were water boarded under medical supervision. Do you hear that? We gave terrorists medical supervision. Do you think the terrorists would have provided medical support after their planned attacks that were thwarted because we water boarded these three individuals?

Re:Uh, no

[swillden]

He'd freak out in under 20 seconds with actual waterboarding.

No way he'd last that long. According to testimony given in Congress, trained CIA agents freak in 14 seconds. Holding your breath for a few seconds is no problem, but when water starts forcing its way down your windpipe and into your lungs, people lose it fast. That's WHY interrogators want to use it.

I agree that fredclown is a clown, and not worth the attention. The fact that so many people ARE okay with it just really pisses me off.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Going by your comments freedom of speech is over rated.

You never had war come home to roost until 9/11.
At last you reaped some of what you have sowed.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

We had the luxury of two oceans between us and time to build up and train our forces. We had the luxury of choosing when we would fight.

Not to mention the fact that our factories were not being bombed day and night allowing us to stockpile weapons and armor to be delivered to the front.
(We did suffer losses during the shipping of those supplies but at least we could produce them.)

Re:Uh, no

[TheRaven64]

You don't think Germany being a few months away from developing nuclear weapons would have been a threat to America? The first bomb would probably have been fired at London, the second dropped in the Hudson from a U-boat if the war in Europe had gone on for a year longer. Not to mention the fact that America would not have become a nuclear power and defeated Japan without massive losses without German scientists.

Re:Uh, no

[Rakarra]

I've already explained the difference. If you disagree, that's your right. But I would definitely prefer to live in USSR under Stalin, then in Germany under Hitler.

Or you could have lived in East Germany throughout the 1940s and gotten the honor of both!

Re:Uh, no

[Shakrai]

Well thankfully we'll never have to find out.

I've often pondered the idea that we should gut our military down to a smaller level and rely on the 'rifle behind every blade of grass' concept to deter invasions of the homeland. We'd probably want to keep our nuclear deterrent in such a scenario. If the Swiss can manage not to get invaded without nuclear weapons why couldn't we manage to do the same with the nuclear deterrent and an armed population?

Re:Uh, no

[kaffiene]

OK, well the Russians made many many more times the number of Germans die for Germany than did anyone else, so on that count, their contribution was greater as well.

Re:Uh, no

[Tubal-Cain]

Good thing I know a few such people. Shouldn't be too hard to borrow one at invasion time. Easier than looting WalMart's stock, anyways.

Re:Uh, no

[Shakrai]

and hardly any of them are high-capacity semi-automatics and virtually none select fire. So our weapons are further from being militarily useful than they were.

Some studies I've seen of the Soviet intervention of Afghanistan suggest that the resistance fighters were largely armed with old Lee-Enfield bolt action rifles during the first part of the conflict. Eventually they managed to capture Soviet weapons and received outside support but even then the bolt actions still had their place. I wouldn't underestimate the ability of a population to make an invaders life a living nightmare just with civilian style firearms.

I'd feel better if we had more military-style rifles, though.

Make sure you tell your elected representatives that. Taking away the "military-style" rifles seems to be objective #1 of the gun control crowd.

Re:Uh, no

[mcornelius]

Suffering the most casualties has never been a good indication of one country's contribution to winning a world war. Inflicting the largest number of casualties, while maybe not the best possible standard, is a standard.

Re:Uh, no

[MightyYar]

That list is, well, very narrow. It's a freedom-of-press list gathered by surveys sent to journalists. It includes harassment by non-government entities.

I'd say any real "free speech" list that has Germany with it's anti-hate provisions above the US is immediately suspect.

Can you think of anything that you can say in Germany that can get you arrested in the US? Because you are free to criticize the holocaust, call Catholicism a sham, or say that some racial group is stupid in the US. Try that in Germany and you are breaking the law.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Russia would have more of the moral high ground if Stalin had not initially collaborated with Hitler to divide Eastern Europe between the Nazis and the Soviets.

Re:Uh, no

[mrchaotica]

The article you cite says it was secret. How would the Russians have known about it? They would have had to know in order for you to reasonably expect it to affect their actions, after all!

Re:Uh, no

[Shakrai]

Mein Kampf wasn't very secret and outlined many of the ideas that were the foundation for that plan.

In any case, your idea wouldn't be politically viable in any nation (let alone Stalinist Russia) that I'm aware of. Do you honestly think that an American President would take to the hills and leave the majority of the American population and industrial plant under enemy occupation in the hopes that the occupying power would be bled over time?

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

The Russians were first into Berlin because Eisenhower and Omar Bradley decided it wasn't worth the cost. They figured it would cost 100,000+ casualties to take it and it still wouldn't destroy the German army in front of them. We had also agreed to give control of Berlin and the area around it to the Russians anyway. So Eisenhower decided to stop at the Elbe River.

When the Russians took Berlin, they lost about 100,000 troops. Go figure.

Re:Uh, no

[swillden]

I wouldn't underestimate the ability of a population to make an invaders life a living nightmare just with civilian style firearms.

Absolutely. Better weaponry will make it easier to throw them out, but hunting rifles are nearly ideal for harassing. It's no accident that the most popular military sniper caliber, the .308, is also popular for game.

Make sure you tell your elected representatives that. Taking away the "military-style" rifles seems to be objective #1 of the gun control crowd.

Indeed I do, frequently. Self-defense and hunting are well and good, but military small arms are the reason for the second amendment.

Re:Uh, no

[swillden]

I've often pondered the idea that we should gut our military down to a smaller level and rely on the 'rifle behind every blade of grass' concept to deter invasions of the homeland.

I think that's a marvellous idea (third paragraph).

Re:Uh, no

[argStyopa]

"You mean like the time when they kicked North Korea's ass out of South Korea? Yeah that was an UN action (Resolution 84)."
That's that war that's STILL GOING ON, right....50 years later?
The one where total US forces were about 480,000, and the total of all the "allied forces of the mighty UN in action" equaled about 135,000?
The one where the ONLY reason that "NK's ass was kicked" was the landing by MacArthur (American general) at Inchon with American forces?
And perhaps we should be candid: it was the only significant action of the UN *only* because the Soviet Security Council Ambassador had left the council in a fit of pique?

"Or how it served as a forum for the US and USSR to work out the Cuban Missile Crisis instead of fighting it out?"
Load of crap; the resolution to the CMC was the result of classic direct diplomacy. What did the UN have to do with ANYTHING aside from a forum for (non-constructive, and in fact inflammatory) public posturing?

"How about the first Persian Gulf war, the one that's approved by the UN and not based on bullshit? Don't we wish we listened to the UN instead of Bush and Fox News the second time around?"
Not going there because I'm pretty certain that no matter what I say it's not changing your mind anyway, so why bother?

"The UN is huge and has many organs. Most of them are successful enough that you never hear about them and the work that they do. Of course there are failures but a world without the UN would be a far worse place."
The list of crises where the UN failed to do anything constructive? Probably a list too big for the whole of the internets to handle. How about last week where UN "peacekeepers" let Palestinians launch rockets from adjacent positions, and then complained angrily about Israeli return fire? Or the UN-soldier juvenile prostitute rings in West Africa? Or the stunning and decisive UN response to Darfur...the Balkans....Rwanda....?
You're right that SOME of the bureaucracies of the UN are effective and useful. The general council? Pretty much a whinging forum for countries that aren't worth listening to.

"Stop sucking on Fox News' teats"
You need help, with this weird Freudian idee fixe about Fox News and breasts. It *could* be that someone merely disagrees with you, or in your worldview does that make them automatically an idiot?

Re:Uh, no

[kd5zex]

Select fire is not really practical or useful in our situation. For one, it consumes an enormous amount of ammunition in a short period of time. Two, it is typically used as suppressive fire. We are not likely to have enough supplies or men to fully utilize a suppression tactic, we would be far more effective in using sniper or target of opportunity tactics.

Handguns are only to be used to fight your way back to the rifle you shouldn't have left behind. Better than nothing but should not be someones primary weapon.

I can say with confidence I would be able to inflict far greater casualties with a .308 than say a M249 or M4.

If the USA were invaded by ground tomorrow I would estimate the breakdown as follows:

50% would do nothing (submit or be killed due to inaction or being incapable of defending themselves)

15% would take up arms and fight (of these I think there is a significant group who would "bug-out" and bunker down somewhere)

35% would wait to see what others are doing and fall into one of the other groups depending on the situation

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

We can do this. I like the way you think. Ha ha.

Re:Uh, no

[swillden]

Select fire is not really practical or useful in our situation. For one, it consumes an enormous amount of ammunition in a short period of time. Two, it is typically used as suppressive fire. We are not likely to have enough supplies or men to fully utilize a suppression tactic, we would be far more effective in using sniper or target of opportunity tactics.

It depends on the details of the scenario. With select fire, you have the option, depending on the tactical situation and ammunition supplies. I agree that there are many scenarios in which a .308 would be superior to a 5.56 mm but the superiority comes from better ballistics, not the lack of select fire options.

Though I suppose undisciplined shooters would be better off if they didn't have the option of rock 'n roll, or even burst fire.

Re:Uh, no

[kd5zex]

All true.

OTOH it probably wouldn't be all that difficult to obtain a select fire weapon, along with other goodies, in an invasion scenario. Which reminds me that I really need to get something in 7.62x39...

Re:Uh, no

[calidoscope]

During the Battle of Midway, the Japanese captured several American aviators after they were shot down. The were tortured for information and were then tied to buckets and thrown overboard. Citation is the book "Shattered Sword".

During the battle for the Marianas, the Japanese had sent a sub with jars of bubonic plague infested fleas. Fortunately for Japan, the sub was sunk enroute, had it not been sunk, the US would most likely have retaliated with an all-out chemical and biological warfare against Japan.

Re:Uh, no

[Parasome]

We should be better than that

or

We think we are better than that

fixed that for you.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that the French and France wouldn't exist today if not for the U.S. Not what what happened on the other front. And Stalin was begging the U.S. to come in to take some pressure off of them so don't say the U.S. didn't have a positive impact.

Nobody's saying the US didn't have a positive impact. But the Soviets would have prevailed, at whatever cost.
From a German perspective, being sent to the Eastern Front was what everybody was afraid of. I've read my grandfather's war diary. It went well in the beginning, but it went downhill fast after about when they had to resort to eating their horses.

At some point they'd have had to move even more troops from the occupied territories to die in the East. Without the US it would have taken longer and would have been even more bloody, but there's no way Germany could have won this.

And dare I say it, if it wasn't for the Soviets, the US wouldn't even have considered entering the war, and the world would be a very different place today.

Re:Uh, no

[mjbkinx]

Can you think of anything that you can say in Germany that can get you arrested in the US? Because you are free to criticize the holocaust, call Catholicism a sham, or say that some racial group is stupid in the US. Try that in Germany and you are breaking the law.

I can call Catholicism, or any other religion, a sham as often as I like in Germany, and I do so regularly. Same goes for calling radicals stupid.
I can't publicly deny the Holocaust, because Human Dignity has been given the same priority in our constitution as Freedom of Speech has in yours, but the tits I get to watch on TV make more than up for that.

Re:Uh, no

[swillden]

Agreed. We should be better than that.

Re:Uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

You're kidding, right? They un-nazied the world! For ever!

No they didn't have you looked at the US lately.

Re:Uh, no

[Shakrai]

Yeah, I agree with you. I would slice the standing army down to a small professional force tasked primarily with training, operating advanced weapons systems (air defense and artillery) and defending important American outposts that aren't attached to the mainland (Guam, the Mariana's and Hawaii come to mind).

I would keep the Navy largely as is but make it solely responsible for our nuclear deterrent. I don't see the point of keeping around expensive ICBMs that are easily located and destroyed when we can station our nuclear deterrent on submarines that are virtually impossible to locate. The Navy would be our first line of defense (what are the odds that Canada or Mexico invade us?) as well as the last line of defense (the aforementioned nuclear deterrent).

I'm also tempted to say that the Air Force should be folded back into the Army. It was spun off as a separate service because of the notion that strategic bombing alone would win wars. This notion has not been borne out in any of the wars we've ever fought. Boots on the ground win wars. The Air Force exists to ensure those boots fight under friendly skies while the the boots of the enemy don't. Why should it be a separate service? Fold it back in the Army and make it part of the professional force that would be maintained during peacetime.

The rest of our defense would fall to the organized militia (National Guard and State Defense Forces) and unorganized militia (everybody else) if the shit hit the fan. I would also advocate withdrawing from the world and letting them pay for their own national defense. We'll get involved in their disputes when and if those disputes pose a clear and present threat to the national security of the United States.

Re:Uh, no

[swillden]

Well, that's two of us. Now we just need to convince the rest of the country :-)

Re:Uh, no

[MightyYar]

I can call Catholicism, or any other religion, a sham as often as I like in Germany, and I do so regularly.

You may do so without any repercussion, but technically you are violating the law. You may not spread hate about a part of the population... "defensive democracy" and all that.

I can't publicly deny the Holocaust,

No, you can't.

because Human Dignity has been given the same priority in our constitution as Freedom of Speech has in yours

In other words, speech is less free in Germany, as I claimed. If you want to discuss the relative merits of this, fine, but we'd be getting way off topic.

but the tits I get to watch on TV make more than up for that.

Who can't see tits on TV? Oh, you mean on the public airwaves between 6AM and 10PM? Yeah, well, we're a bit puritanical when it comes to titties. Fortunately, most of us have a private TV provider (cable, satellite, etc). Like I said, commercial speech in the US is fairly restrictive - our copyright law alone is an embarrassment... but our political speech is as wide open as it gets.

Besides, Germany has a tendency to ban horror movies... that's just as funny as banning titties IMHO.

Re:Uh, no

[rainsford]

Well if it was legal, why would Congress have to jump in to do anything? And the question of whether it's torture or not is only "controversial" if you phrase the argument correctly. Supporters of "enhanced interrogation" much more frequently justify it by saying that the people being interrogated are bad people and/or if we DON'T waterboard them they won't tell us their secrets and we'll all die. The (often ridiculously Hollywood) justifications are clearly built around the idea that we're doing something wrong, but in this case it's OK. If torture wasn't really torture, the arguments in favor of it seem unnecessary...as do the assurances that we only do it rarely. "It's not torture, but we only use it in the most extreme circumstances against the hardest cases when life and death matters are on the line...and why do you hate America anyways?" is not a terribly compelling argument in favor of what we're doing being totally fine. To paraphrase an always good observation, methinks conservatives doth protest too much.

Re:Uh, no

[MightyYar]

Well if it was legal, why would Congress have to jump in to do anything?

To end the controversy and make sure the practice is not interrupted, and to end any lawsuits against the companies involved so that they will continue to cooperate.

Supporters of "enhanced interrogation" much more frequently justify it by saying that the people being interrogated are bad people and/or if we DON'T waterboard them they won't tell us their secrets and we'll all die.

No they don't. They clearly state that waterboarding isn't torture, and they define torture in strictly physical terms.

Anyway, I don't really care much about the international call spying and I think, whether it is strictly torture or not, we shouldn't be waterboarding anyone - just so you know where I'm coming from.

My point originally was, flagrant human rights violators are heading the human rights commission - making the whole thing a joke.

I've always wondered...

[Rich2k]

How such an important function was run by a single country. The problem is how do you structure such an important organisation so that it is run by the international community and actually get things done, rather than just debate and run around in circles!

Re:I've always wondered...

[Steauengeglase]

Easy, you build enough corruption into it to make people a large group support it. Political solutions for political problems.

Re:I've always wondered...

[Nutria]

I've always wondered... How such an important function was run by a single country.

Simple: that's the country that created the Internet.

Re:I've always wondered...

[Anonymous Coward]

Very simple: It doesn't have much authority, unless it acts in the interest of the international network operator community. If ICANN were to do something unpopular, particularly something which openly favors US interests over those of other countries, providers in other countries would quickly band together and form an opposing organization. We'd see the network administration split for a while, but the network doesn't really need ICANN day-in day-out, so there would not be immediate problems.

Re:I've always wondered...

[Rich2k]

That was way back in 1958, surely things could have moved on by now considering North America only contains 5% of the World's population.

Re:I've always wondered...

[JorgeFierro]

Hmmm... I thought one of the major advantages of the Internet was that of World Wide communication, but hey, you are right!

Re:I've always wondered...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong!

It's the country of which Al Gore happened to be a citizen.

Re:I've always wondered...

[Anonymous Coward]

They certainly came up with the idea, but all the technology behind it today was created internationally. Hell, the key is in the name - INTERnet. The internet wouldn't BE the internet if it wasn't for international coverage, so why should one country run the whole thing?
That's like saying that because a German inventor came up with SMS that Germany should be in charge of all international text messaging stuff.
Or perhaps France (or Belgium, depending on who you ask) should be in charge of the distribution of all french fries, internationally.

Re:I've always wondered...

[Culture20]

They certainly came up with the idea, but all the technology behind it today was created internationally. Hell, the key is in the name - INTERnet. The internet wouldn't BE the internet if it wasn't for international coverage, so why should one country run the whole thing?

Because they created it, and the other countries attached to it like parasitic lampreys. They could have set up their own internets, after all. INTER does not stand for international. The internet is a network topology to connect a bunch of smaller networks, all originally designed to be in the US.

Re:I've always wondered...

[MBaldelli]

How such an important function was run by a single country. The problem is how do you structure such an important organisation so that it is run by the international community and actually get things done, rather than just debate and run around in circles!

That's what I fear. Pleading for them to get their hands on it, without properly setting up a structure for the take-over/transition/whatever they want to call it will spell certain disaster.

Re:I've always wondered...

[TheRaven64]

This needs to be modded up a long way. ICANN, like any government, exists only so long as it has the consent of the governed. Their only power is to produce a short text file which is mirrored by a few hundred servers on 13 well-known IP addresses and used to define the start of authority records for the top level name servers (e.g. .com, .uk, .edu, .fr).

In another post, I linked to this map, which shows the location of a all of these servers. Note how few are in the USA. Note that they are all (most?) operated by organisations other than ICANN. The only reason that they get traffic is that the backbone providers have configured routes to them, which they only do because they choose to agree with ICANN's suggestions. Note again how few of these routers are in the USA or on US-controlled networks.

Re:I've always wondered...

[blueg3]

[quote]Hell, the key is in the name - INTERnet.[/quote]

You're joking, right?

Re:I've always wondered...

[Nutria]

That was way back in 1958

Ummm, no. The first two computers in the nascent Internet were linked in 1969, and Cerf and Kahn didn't start designing TCP until 1973.

things could have moved on by now considering North America only contains 5% of the World's population.

So... majority rule? Give the most control to India (with more religious factionalism and caste poverty than you can shake a stick at) and the PRC (which is a paragon of tolerance and enlightenment if there ever was one)?

STOP SMOKING THAT ADULTERATED WEED!!!!!

Re:I've always wondered...

[darkpixel2k]

Simple: that's the country that created the Internet.

Yep. The US created the internet. If you want to be the ultimate authority, or let a group of countries have a consensus over a network--go create your own damn internet.

Re:I've always wondered...

[wimg]

Time to look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hIQjrMHTv4

You will notice that the Internet is actually based on ARPANET, Cyclades (French network - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CYCLADES), CERNET (Swiss network), SERCNET/Janet (British) and several other commercial and non-commercial networks.

So ARPANET might have existed first, but it certainly isn't the absolute base on which the Internet was built, since technology from other networks was used to link up... technologies which eventually controlled the Internet. In that respect, you could say that ARPANET was replaced by a network based on global technologies.

Re:I've always wondered...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Please don't let facts get in the way of their pride. :-)

But yes, arguing that the US "invented" the Internet because some of the very early networking happened between US sites is a bit futile. You could just as well argue that the UK invented it because ENIAC was built here, or that the Babylonians are really the guys responsible because they used the abacus to perform addition and subtraction.

The reality is that things have moved on. The Internet as we know it today draws on myriad technologies and ideas that originated in many different nations, that were researched in many different nations, and whose development was funded in and sometimes by many different nations and carried out by people from many different nations. Without those diverse contributions, the Internet would be nothing like as technologically advanced nor as useful as it is today.

And yes, many of those contributions were made well before ICANN and the data it co-ordinates came were invented.

Re:I've always wondered...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Gah... Messed up the edits, sorry. I meant to write, "You could just as well argue that the UK invented it because Colossus was built here before the US built ENIAC."

Re:I've always wondered...

[Nutria]

since technology from other networks was used to link up

The Internet is based on TCP/IP. How much work did the French, Brits or Swiss do in designing TCP/IP?

Re:I've always wondered...

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don;t think it was "designed to be in the US". Do you honestly think that one of the requirements was "must only be able to work in the US"?

It JUST SO HAPPENED that the first computers internetworked were in the US. If you want to get picky about it, computers were not even invented in the US.

Re:I've always wondered...

[jcnnghm]

The other 95% can feel free to do something for themselves. You don't need to rely on us.

Re:I've always wondered...

[RiotingPacifist]

ask the itu

Re:I've always wondered...

[Ash-Fox]

I am pretty sure Europe had a lot to do with the "IP" part of TCP/IP.

Re:I've always wondered...

[jcrousedotcom]

Actually the INTERnet refers to INTER-network not INTERnational. Kinda' like INTRAnet refers to an internal or employee site.

While the thought was a global (International) network - from Wikipedia - "This spread of inter-network began to form into the idea of a global inter-network that would be called 'The Internet', and this began to quickly spread as existing networks were converted to become compatible with this."

Just my 2. :)

Re:I've always wondered...

[toriver]

Simple: that's the country that created the Internet.

And Germany created cars. Follow their regulations much? Why should the contry of origin of an invention decide something everyone uses when the country is the USA while the same does not apply when the country is another one?

Re:I've always wondered...

[Nutria]

And Germany created cars.

I think it was parallel development in multiple countries.

Follow their regulations much?

Regulations? No. Design, yes.

Why should the contry of origin of an invention decide something everyone uses

Paper was invented in China, but they aren't dominant in the paper trade. So it's not just country of origin.

It's that the Internet grew quite large in the US compared to the relatively few University hot spots in the rest of the world. And the research was mostly paid for by the US government. So, naturally, the major controlling organizations were founded and led by people in the US.

However, when ICANN starts fucking up worse than a controlled-by-the-EU-or-UN ICANN would fuck up, then I'll support moving control to a multinational organization.

Until then, don't fix what isn't broken...

Re:I've always wondered...

[Nutria]

major advantages of the Internet was that of World Wide communication

No. ARPAnet was designed for the US military, and TCP/IP for internetworking. None of them conceived of internetworking with enemies like Russia, Cuba, DPRK or bum-fuck little countries like Tonga or the Christmas Islands.

Re:I've always wondered...

[makapuf]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CYCLADES
quote :

The CYCLADES packet switching network was a French network system in the early 1970s, similar to the ARPANET. It was extremely influential on the Internet's final design.

Re:I've always wondered...

[Nutria]

The CYCLADES packet switching network was a French network system in the early 1970s, similar to the ARPANET.

Very interesting. Thank you.

One thing you forgot to mention, though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CYCLADES#Demise

The PTT did not see why the French government would fund a competitor to their Transpac network, and insisted that the permission and funding be rescinded. By 1981, Cyclades was forced to shut down.

When you don't exist anymore, you can't establish co-dominance with ARPAnet.

(Besides, would the Brits and Germans really have bought networking gear from the French, in order to connect to CYCLADES?)

"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[Animaether]

full bit:
"She said that the organization running ICANN needs be one free of control by one single nation but controlled by a private entity and governed by multiple nations."

That's quite a different story than implied by the summary's "hand over control [implied: to the EU]".

I still think it's a bad idea to let 'multiple nations' govern the thing - there's too many nations that would seriously curb what can and cannot be done. I don't think the U.S. having sole control is all that great either, but out of the various options - I'd sooner 'trust' the U.S. with it (given existing records, although I disagree with the whole .xxx domain getting nixed - especially since ICANN has/had plans to offer .anythingyouwant anyway) than, say, the U.N. or a grouping of e.g. U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China to pick a semi-random grouping there.

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[InsertWittyNameHere]

Obviously Canada should govern it. After all it's in the name.

Yes ICANNada!

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, I don't think anyone,*anyone*, outside the US feels the same way. We would rather Iran ran it than the US. Nothing personal, many usians are perfectly nice, but your government are christo-fascist lunatics. The fact that americans seem to think the UN is a bad thing doesn't help. (I guess because they refused to sanction the US invading 3rd world countries, how strange).

The correct place for it is the ITU (itu.int). They are the guys that maintain communications standards for everything else. It's only a matter of time anyway...

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[Satanicolas]

agreed

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes I-CAN-Nada!

Fixed that for you.

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[TheRealMindChild]

Why? So we can have another war when a couple of those countries disagree? No thanks.

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[Grimbleton]

Add in that the UN wants the whole world disarmed, and you might figure out why a country like the US might dislike it.

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[Anonymous Coward]

"The organization running ICANN needs be one free of control by one single nation but controlled by a private entity and governed by multiple nations."

That's what she said!

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[IndustrialComplex]

Here is the cool part.

The US can't abuse ICANN. Well, it CAN, but when it does, it will lose all control over it as the EU/China/Russia/Australia... every other nation works to set up it's own segregated service. The other nations could force the US to release control if the US gave them a reason to. So as long as the US remains a relatively benign aspect of ICANN, it can remain in control.

And that's a good thing, it means that through the Mutually Assured Destruction that would occur in the event of an abuse of ICANN, it generally remains true to what it is supposed to do without becoming more than what it was intended to do.

I kind of view the US' control over ICANN as the Royalty in the UK. Sure, they technically have a lot of power, but the instant they tried to use that power it would evaporate away in an instant.

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hurray! Then we can have the .eh TLD allowed!

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[Anonymous Coward]

It comes down to - The USA OWNS it.
You would have to be crazy to give up something with that much control over everyone else.

Is it fair? How about - if you don't like it, get off.

The USA owns it, end of story.

Fair - well if you want control, then buy it. I think a fair price for something that powerful would be in the range a FEW TRILLION dollars. I am not even slightly exaggerating. You are talking about giving control of something that has worldwide influence. If they wanted it I would lease it for 25years @2-3 Trillion US Dollars.

Keep in mind I am Canadian and I am not a big supporter of the USA.

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. America wants the world disarmed too in case you hadn't noticed.

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[olborer]

i totally agree with you especially when the EU wants to approve of this whole Telecoms Package

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[wall0159]

I don't have a deep understanding of what ICANN does, but it seems to me that the ideal would be that it is controlled by _nobody_. I had a quick glance at the wikipedia article ICANN, which proposes that ICANN would be replaced with (among other options) a free-for-all. Can someone with more technical knowledge explain what this would entail?

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[IanHurst]

Talk about confirming our stereotypes of Europeans. The US government are christo-fascist lunatics, therefore islamo-fascist lunatics in Iran would be better? God damn, man, get some perspective.

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[mabhatter654]

exactly, ICANN has given control of local domains to local countries... it's just that the "big" names still reside in the US.

Each individual country has control over assigning it's own domain names. The only reason the EU wants ICANN out from under the US government is that it can then be sued within an inch of it's life in every single nation that wants more restrictions. People in the EU don't really understand that all ICANN gives out are names, I believe another group grants IP ranges, so ICANN has no real power. Even international enforcement has been put under WIPO rules rather than US court rules. Being under the US government shields it from many of the petty lawsuits, like when the Google execs were arrested over a YouTube video... making it private removes the shield and lets governments like the EU have their way.

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[Anonymous Coward]

man, "boob.eh" would be the sweetest domain ever.

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[Skye16]

No, we don't think the UN is good because countries like Libya chair the human fucking rights commission, for fucks sake. The only way to make that any more surreal would be to put North Korea in charge, or resurrect Hitler, form the country of "Hitleria", and put THEM in charge.

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sooo...that's like, 10 Euros?

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[Workaphobia]

I thought it was OhCANada.

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[mike2R]

We would rather Iran ran it than the US.

Speak for yourself, mate. Seriously, if that's your idea of a sensible proposal I'd rather have George W Bush running my country than you, I kid you not.

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[Dextrously]

Agreed, the Internet is an opt in service of interconnected networks. An entity only has power if you recognize them via route configuration and authority. I personally think that the idea of moving ICANN out of the US is a good one. I also don't think that any country should have a voice though. I think that only countries whose current infrastructure policies do not breach a certain code of ethics should be allowed to participate. So a country like China would need to get their policies inline before being allowed to have any voice in the matter.

As for defining the policies that must be adhered to, I will leave that to others more talented than myself. However, I would think that something like the code of ethics on lopsa.org would be a good base to start with.

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[Grimbleton]

Only the parts of America that I don't like. :P

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[RiotingPacifist]

dunno how you got to 2-flamebait. but as a european i agree with you, probably could have been put more eloquently though. I wouldn't want the EU,russia,china OR the US in control, however a UN committee seams like an idea everybody (except the US) would be happy with.

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[cool_story_bro]

DNS is the process by which a computer says to the internet "Hey, I want to go to [insert URL here], where should I look?" ICANN controls the most fundamental list of name-to-IP address mappings. Any DNS server (or any computer, for that matter) is capable of redefining all or part of this list, but most choose to mirror the ICANN data. In the free-for-all scenario, each computer (or network, subnet, etc, depending on the granularity) would define what, for instance, "www.google.com" really is. If you want to have a bit of fun, open up your host file (/etc/hosts/ on Linux/Unix, C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on WinXP (open it with notepad)) and add to the bottom the line

74.125.155.99 www.wall0159.com

then point your browser to www.wall0159.com and see what happens!

Re:"hand over control" - yum, troll link text!

[eihab]

A free-for-all system will not really work.

To expand and simplify on DNS and ICANN, think of it in phone number terms. When I call 999-555-5555, the phone company figures out the area code, prefix and line number then transfer me to the area/network/device that matches what I dialed.

DNS works in a similar way. When you type in say slashdot.cn [China], your computer looks in its own records to see what IP address (server location) this name resolves to. If it doesn't know the answer then it asks your ISP (Comcast, AT&T, whomever) who can answer your question. If your ISP doesn't know the answer, it keeps going up the chain and so on.

ICANN is the master registry, they're the ones who say .com addresses are handled by such and such servers (they handle top level domains (TLDs) such as .com, .org, .net, .us). So following up on the example of slashdot.cn, ICANN would then point your ISP to the entity that handles all the .cn domains (whomever it is that they designated at China to handle domains).

The problem with a free-for-all system where anyone can say which domain points where is that we will all have a different Internet experience. So let's say I use AT&T and you use Comcast and both of them have their own root servers without relying on ICANN. Google.com could take you to Google, while it would take me to a porn site who paid AT&T enough money to point the domain to them.

Think of it in phone number terms, if every phone company parsed phone numbers as they please, 911 could be a hotline if you're on a certain network.

We need a master database that we can all use and agree that google.com = 74.125.155.99.

Now the thing is, ICANN can't really be evil. As cool_story_bro pointed, it's _real_ easy to have your own hosts file pointing a domain to whatever you want. It's equally easy for a company/country to setup their own domain name registry and decide which domain points to what IP address/server (How IP addresses resolve to a physical server is a whole different entity called Internet Assigned Numbers Authority [IANA]).

So the day ICANN (or IANA) misbehave would be the end of the internet as we know it. Every other continent (or even country) could (and probably will) start their own root domain name servers and have their own "Internet" going on.

I personally don't want to live in a world where my bookmarks will take me to an unknown or a competitors site if I move to Italy or something, just as I wouldn't want to live in a world where dialing a phone number will connect me to different people depending on where I am at.

The best defense is a good offense

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Reding claims that it is indefensible that one country control the internet as if it were prima facie true that this were the case.

However she prefaced that statement with the best defense:
"Reding believes "The US, so far, has done this in a reasonable manner", referring to the oversight that the US government has given ICANN."

So the US is providing oversight in a reasonable manner according to the people who wish to strip that oversight from the US. Then they claim that such "reasonable oversight" is indefensible.

I think Ms. Reding would be surprised how a great many things she doesn't believe in have reasonable and sometimes convincing defenses. I also think she'd be surprised to see how many of the things she holds so dear are actually undefended biases.

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[denttford]

Wow, I think you ended the need for comments in seven minutes.

Hat tip!

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't read Slashdot anymore

Are we supposed to cry?

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[drinkypoo]

I think Ms. Reding would be surprised how a great many things she doesn't believe in have reasonable and sometimes convincing defenses.

I think you're starry-eyed, and living in a fantasy world. Maybe I'm just a cynic, but usually people don't get to where she is by believing their own bullshit.

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[Anonymous Coward]

well then you are fucked... and happy.

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[Sockatume]

The "reasonable oversight" isn't what's considered indefensible. The tacit permission for the US to control most of the world's data infrastructure is the problem. Even though the US hasn't done anything bad with its power over the infrastructure, it could, and that potential makes some people nervous. It's entirely possible for a happy status quo to rest upon dangerous possibilities.

As an analogy, consider the Anti-Social Behavior Order. It's a kind of order that a judge can issue to a UK that bans you from doing something. Anything. Right now it's generally used to stop people being douchebags to each other, but there's nothing to stop a judge issuing one banning you from writing anti-authority newsletters, or protesting somewhere, if those are considered "anti-social". That makes people nervous.

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[oldhack]

Fine and dandy, but where is the twisted analogy, analogy guy?

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Ms. Reding would be surprised how a great many things she doesn't believe in have reasonable and sometimes convincing defenses.

I think you're starry-eyed, and living in a fantasy world. Maybe I'm just a cynic, but usually people don't get to where she is by believing their own bullshit.

No. Of course not. People get where she is by convincing other people to believe their bullshit.

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[Culture20]

The US is not holding a gun to their head, telling them they _must_ use the US tubes. Let them make their own internets. The US made this one.

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[NormalVisual]

In this context, the US "controls most of the world's data infrastructure" only to the extent that everyone voluntarily points their DNS boxes to the ICANN-controlled root servers. If they're not happy about the way things are with ICANN, they're free to point their DNS someplace else at *any* time if they so choose. It just so happens that it's not in their best interests financially to do so, but there's no law that says they have to use those root servers.

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[zigmeister]

Except that they gave their tacit permission by using the system. If they don't like it they are free to roll their own, it's not like the US owns their fiber or copper.

As an analogy, consider the Anti-Social Behavior Order. It's a kind of order that a judge can issue to a UK that bans you from doing something. Anything. Right now it's generally used to stop people being douchebags to each other, but there's nothing to stop a judge issuing one banning you from writing anti-authority newsletters, or protesting somewhere, if those are considered "anti-social". That makes people nervous.

No, its nothing at all like that. In that scenario the judge can use the power of the gov't to enforce an arbitrary rule, and it's legally binding. If the US tries to enforce an arbitrary rule that others don't like, they can tell the US to screw off and run their own networks.

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[HasselhoffThePaladin]

-Noah Daniels

Isn't that the former President on 24?

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[Sockatume]

It's not a very good analogy in that respect, I didn't intend the message that the US held the sort of sway over the network world that a judge does over the common man. That's far from true. My point was that just because something's currently accepted, that doesn't mean somebody's expessing their happiness with the situation. I absolutely believe that it's better for us to set up our own infrastructure than demand control of the US's, if only because it's one less layer of red tape. This applies to NormalVisual's response above, also.

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need to remind us, everybody here knows UK is a police state.

C'mon, we're speaking from the "reasonable oversight" of a true (cough!) democracy (cough! cough!).

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I'm really tired of this whole argument. The USA started the internet, and the other nations of the world made their own decisions to connect to it. If the other nations don't like the US having control of the infrastructure, fine. Set up your own networks. There is absolutely no reason that the US should relinquish control.

We started it. We should retain control. If you don't like it, nothing is stopping you from setting up your network.

Yes, it wouldn't be easy. So what. If you don't like the way things are, do something about it. But I for one am just sick of all the whining.

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[kimvette]

Well considering that the Internet was originally funded solely by the US. retaining control over ICANN is perfectly reasonable. That initial investment ought to be good for something.

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[Ash-Fox]

You don't need to remind us, everybody here knows UK is a police state.

What are you talking about? I've been in police state nations, there are no check points here (although I did see quite a few in the USA), there is no police patrolling the streets with machine guns (although, I did see quite a few of those in the USA too), I've never seen police in the UK randomly stop people asking them for their papers.

Only thing that I can think of that remotely connects the UK to a police state is the cameras and the internet censorship that is prevalent throughout most of the world.

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[stim]

I therefore decided, today, to cancel my account (Smidge207) take them off of my RSS Reader, and cancel my Time Warner broadband "service". I am off the grid; I am off the 'net as of today.

Can I have all your stuff?

Re:The best defense is a good offense

[Anonymous Coward]

Close the door and switch off the lights on your way out please.

Learn by experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen to that.

European Threats

[geoffrobinson]

Oh no. Here comes the sternly worded letter if we don't comply.

On a serious note, they have a point.

Re:European Threats

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything. .

I'll have to quibble with the third one on that list. First, communism isn't ended! The Soviet Union is no longer communist (it's no longer even existing), but many of the former Soviet Republics still are, and then there's China, Cuba, and a number of others. Second. the remarkable thing about the end of the Soviet Union is that, despite all the fears in the '50s, it occurred without a war. In fact, if you read the various memoirs of the participants, it looks like it ended because the first person put into power who was born after the Soviet revolution, Gorbachev, basically said "Frak this; it ain't working." In fact, of all the countries that shifted away from communism, from Albania on, I don't think that any of them had a war to do it. And, third... looking at the current state of Russia, it's not at all clear to me that communism in Russia is down for the count.

The other items on the list are reasonable.

Re:European Threats

[Anonymous Coward]

You know you have too much time on your hands when you write a long diatribe on someones tag-line.

Re:European Threats

[TheRaven64]

To quibble your quibble, but the War in Afghanistan (you know, the one the US funded, which put the Taliban in power) went a very long way towards bankrupting the Soviet Union. Much of the rest was accomplished by the Strategic Defence Initiative, which periodically leaked information to the Soviets about the US (fictional) ability to block a nuclear first-strike, causing the USSR to massively overspend on nuclear weapons. The cold war ended because the USSR could no longer afford to take part.

You could quibble the 'ending slavery' part. In the USA, slavery wasn't really abolished until a few decades after the Emancipation Proclamation. Slavery was a convenient rallying cry for the civil war, but it wasn't the only reason for it. Elsewhere in the world, slavery was abolished without a war.

Re:European Threats

[Jane Q. Public]

Why do they have a point? I would like this explained to me.

The Internet, and the protocols it uses, were invented in the United States. Until recently, the vast majority of users were still in the United States. If others wanted to follow suit and join in... fine. The United States formed an organization to oversee the network. But it isn't "theirs". They have no "rights" to it. If they don't like it, they can always just form their own damned network.

Imagine that I invented a cool new kind of telephone network. I build up a network in my own neighborhood, complete with switching station. Then, other nearby towns get wind of the network, and want in. So, out of the goodness of my heart, I let them hook up to my network, and I even update my switching station to handle the traffic.

Then, after they have used it for a while, and decide they like it, those neighboring towns start demanding that I turn my switching station over to them. The one that I built, with my own time and research and money.

Huh? By what right do they presume to demand such a thing?

Re:European Threats

[derGoldstein]

But *this* switching station has been worked on by countless people all over the world. These "other people" didn't invent it or initialize the effort, but that's like saying "dibs on the telephone! It was invented in the US!".

On a more practical note, nothing will change. They'll correspond politely over however long they can draw this out, and every side will come to some "resolution" which they'll file away in their respective drawers.

Nothing prevents the EU, or any other country with sufficient infrastructure, to launch their own IP and either start pushing it as an alternative or attempt to "shadow" the current internet, making it into a subset within that system. If they were really serious about this, then that's the step they'd at least "threaten" to make.

I don't live in the US, but I generally see nothing but trouble coming from this direction if whichever other authority/ies start/s "taking action". Interfacing, bottlenecks, more standards, more bureaucracy.

I hope, for everyone *working* in this field, that this is resolved purely through whatever international legal crap they feel they have the need to settle. Just leave the damn hardware alone, we have enough problems as it is.

Re:European Threats

[Jane Q. Public]

"But *this* switching station has been worked on by countless people all over the world. These "other people" didn't invent it or initialize the effort, but that's like saying "dibs on the telephone! It was invented in the US!"."

ICANN is little more than an extension of what we were already doing here, as a courtesy to other nations. References, please, if you disagree. It was, however, BUILT in the U.S. That is indisputable.

Re:European Threats

[derGoldstein]

Note that in the end, the cold was ended "cold" -- there was no actual, out-in-the-open conflict. Unless we're redefining war (which I suppose we could, and will, given enough time), the cold war ended *without* a war.

Also, Nazism was ended pretty much as a reaction. The "solution" was not war, it was simply the response to events. What I mean to say is that the alternative to war, in the case of WWII, would have been some sort of pacifist submission. Examples of "war as a solution" should only list occurrences in which, during a state of *peace*, war was decided upon, executed, and *solved* something. Slavery in the US is a valid example. But "reacting to an attack" by foreign forces isn't a "solution", it's a reaction to reality. By that logic, if I defended myself when attacked by a mugger, I could say "my solution was violence", when in fact I simply chose to resist violence.

Re:European Threats

[derGoldstein]

And how would this network look like if it *remained* a US-only network?

Also, "built" is pretty much meaningless at this point. You could say developed, initialized, put in practice; but "built"? The moment the protocols were proven it was up for grabs, any nation/organization could, and still can, setup their own cloud. Every Intranet *is* its own cloud.

This is a discussion about management, regulation, and to some degree, "sovereignty". But it's sovereignty in the same way the the UK is a Monarchy.

Also, "an extension of what we were already doing here, as a courtesy to other nations"? There's a much broader discussion begged by that statement. It's a statement that implies a certain way of thought, along the lines of "There's the USA, and then there's the rest of 'em". No nation is a bubble. This "courtesy" is far more lucrative to the US than it is to any one particular nation. That's the nature of all markets.

Re:European Threats

[Jane Q. Public]

"The moment the protocols were proven it was up for grabs, any nation/organization could, and still can, setup their own cloud. Every Intranet *is* its own cloud."

But that is exactly my point! Let them, if they want to.

"There's a much broader discussion begged by that statement. It's a statement that implies a certain way of thought, along the lines of 'There's the USA, and then there's the rest of 'em'."

Nonsense. You assume too much... you are trying to read my mind, and failing. My point is simply that when it comes to the internet, the United States does not owe anyone anything.

Re:European Threats

[dodobh]

I believe that packet switching is a UK invention, not the US. The rest of the world might find it better to isolate the US from their networks (especially as the US declines as an economic power).

Now, like it or not, the US will lose control of the naming system. The question is whether you do it nicely and retain some influence or lose it by pissing everyone else off and retain no influence at all.

I'm sure it'll work...

[Anonymous Coward]

As well as it did last time.

Some of your base r belong to US.

If it ain't broke don't fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

Just what would a group of 'countries' actually do differently? This sounds to me like a veiled attempt at power-grabbing

Re:If it ain't broke don't fix it

[TheRaven64]

And which part of the plan to introduce any TLD for anyone who fronts the cash counts as 'ain't broke' in your interpretation of the phrase?

Re:If it ain't broke don't fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

For starters they would be able to implement a lot more censorship.

Re:If it ain't broke don't fix it

[Attila Dimedici]

Just what would a group of 'countries' actually do differently? This sounds to me like a veiled attempt at power-grabbing

That's easy, censor the things on the Internet that they don't like. As several posters further up pointed out, the woman making this assertion is a supporter of censoring the Internet to "protect the children".

Re:If it ain't broke don't fix it

[RiotingPacifist]

Introduce .xxx for starters

it might help prevent telcos from taking over

[inkhaton]

if more countries have input into the direction of how things are handled it will help prevent the unbalanced influence of the 2-3 major telcos from having too much control over content etc... in the end if they or the gov want to restrict or change the direction of the internet for any given country the will risk their own isolation from the international web. if one country has control than they will have less risk for bending it toward their current whims.

Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

"ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internetâ(TM)s unique identifiers."

So it's already private and even countries that US companies cannot legally trade with still manage to get Internet access (North Korea). So there seems to be a solution without a problem.

Re:Uh...

[Nutria]

So there seems to be a solution without a problem.

Power-grabbing bureaucrats trying to fix what's (imperfect but) not broken? I'm shocked!!!!

Re:Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

ICANN is non profit in the sense of block buster movies that always seem to lose money. Plenty of connected people have made money off of ICANN (in particular Jones Day lawyers).
They also did not (and probably still don't) follow the rules for non profits. Go read up on how the rules for picking the board of directors were modified after the "wrong" people were elected as the north american and european representatives. And how ICANN kept things secret from the board, that board members needed to do their job (resulting in Auerbach's lawsuit).

Re:Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

The "problem" is that the UN or other nations do not have control (power). That is the real goal here. They want the power to control the distribution of news, press and information via the internet.

Re:Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the government controls ICANN's mandate to continue. This allows it to pressure ICANN like it did over .xxx

NO.

[Anonymous Coward]

We made it, it's our toy, and we'll do with it what we please.

Seriously, multi-nation governance over the Internet is a terrible idea. Excellent decisions are never made by committee (let alone one with multi-national components), and when you cloud the waters even further with political motivation it makes for an excellent tasting recipe for disaster.

I love how once an idea gets popular everyone feels that they should have a say in how things run, as if the old ways of doing things (though not infallible) haven't worked pretty damn well up until now. Unless you can make a better argument than "we use it too so we get some say as well", I see no reason for this to happen.

Don't like it? Invent your own interweb.

Re:NO.

[Anonymous Coward]

The web was invented in Switzerland by an Englishman. The Europeans have already invented their own 'interweb'; you are using it right now.

Re:NO.

[TheRaven64]

We made it, it's our toy, and we'll do with it what we please.

Not really. ARPANet was your toy. The original core protocols were developed with ARPA funding, but the current generation of the Internet Protocol (version 4, with version 6 being slowly deployed) was created as an international effort. The physical bits of the Internet in the US and some outside were created by US corporations, some with funding from the US government, but most of the current infrastructure is not US-owned.

In reality, ICANN does not control very much. They control the root DNS servers (most of which are outside the USA, by the way). If the UN set up a competing ICANN and mandated that ISPs in their member regions use the new DNS root servers - which could potentially include all of the existing ones outside the USA, since they are not actually run by ICANN, they just carry ICANN's configuration) then there isn't much ICANN could do. US ISPs would have the choice of either switching to the new roots or having their customers potentially have links incorrectly handled in the future, if the two organisations didn't keep their configurations in sync.

Seriously, multi-nation governance over the Internet is a terrible idea. Excellent decisions are never made by committee (let alone one with multi-national components), and when you cloud the waters even further with political motivation it makes for an excellent tasting recipe for disaster.

I can make a telephone call to almost any country in the world from here. The UN doesn't seem to have done a bad job ensuring that this works correctly, in spite of the committee that controls the international telephone system having multi-national components.

Unless you can make a better argument than "we use it too so we get some say as well", I see no reason for this to happen.

I seem to recall reading that a variant of this phrase was the rallying call for the American Revolution.

Don't like it? Invent your own interweb.

I assume you know that the web was invented by an Englishman in Switzerland.

Re:NO.

[Anonymous Coward]

>I assume you know that the web was invented by an Englishman in Switzerland.

While working at CERN, an european financed research center.

Re:NO.

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume you know that the web was invented by an Englishman in Switzerland.

Pffft fine. We'll give you the web back. I've been looking for an excuse to bring back gopher anyway.

Re:NO.

[Publikwerks]

The problem is this sounds like a powergrab. The United States and ICANN's stewardship have been remarkably good for somthing governmental. They can't find fault with the way the US and ICANN is running it, they just want to be driving. I say no. If there is a particular issue you have, bring it up. Want to run things diffrently, mandate changes on your own networks. China is a good example. They are implementing ipv6 way ahead of everyone. But just because our network is the "reserve currancy" of networks doesn't mean you get a say in how we run things.

Re:NO.

[Aeonym]

I can make a telephone call to almost any country in the world from here. The UN doesn't seem to have done a bad job ensuring that this works correctly...

Do you seriously believe that the UN gets credit for global telecommunications? I'm sure they'd love to, a la Al Gore, agree with you but that's ridiculous. And would you seriously claim that the UN--a political organization by definition--would somehow NOT politicize ICANN more than it is now? Some people don't like America having the control it does, but that's political as well. Show me one way in which the US has abused its oversight and then we can talk about reasons for a possible shift in control. Until then, stop your reflexive inclination toward warm fuzzy handholding, and get back to work improving the world rather than trying to control what others have made.

Re:NO.

[Anonymous Coward]

And such is the state of U.S. innovation.

Re:NO.

[NJRoadfan]

I can make a telephone call to almost any country in the world from here. The UN doesn't seem to have done a bad job ensuring that this works correctly, in spite of the committee that controls the international telephone system having multi-national components.

Good idea, any reason why the ITU can't administer DNS? I can't imagine them doing a worse job then the ICANN has already done.

Re:NO.

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume you know that the web was invented by an Englishman in Switzerland.

What are you talking about? Al Gore invented the internet ;-)

Re:NO.

[Anonymous Coward]

ICANN doesn't control the root servers. They are all independently run (well, OK, ICANN controls one of the root servers, "L"). The only real thing ICANN (as a community of stakeholders) controls is the policy defining what goes into the root zone. ICANN doesn't even edit the root zone, VeriSign does.

As for the telephony system, the ITU settlements regime was probably the biggest barrier to the spread of telecommunications technology. The only reason the Internet was allowed to exist and grow was because the US bucked the PTT-controlled ITU and declared data an "enhanced" service.

Re:NO.

[blueg3]

[quote]I can make a telephone call to almost any country in the world from here. The UN doesn't seem to have done a bad job ensuring that this works correctly, in spite of the committee that controls the international telephone system having multi-national components.[/quote]

The UN handles international telephone regulations? Surely they have no control over the companies that make the connections, yes?

[quote]The original core protocols were developed with ARPA funding, but the current generation of the Internet Protocol (version 4, with version 6 being slowly deployed) was created as an international effort.[/quote]

TCP/IP and, as far as I can tell, IPv4 were both developed while it was still ARPAnet.

[quote]If the UN set up a competing ICANN and mandated that ISPs in their member regions use the new DNS root servers[/quote]

For one, you seem to miss that the US is a UN member nation. For another, I can only imagine the European reaction if you replaced "UN" with "US".

[quote]or having their customers potentially have links incorrectly handled in the future[/quote]

I don't think you're all that familiar with how the Internet works.

Re:NO.

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume you know that the web was invented by an Englishman in Switzerland.

Yes, the web was invented by some Englishman who did a bang-up job of appropriating concepts developed by Vannevar Bush and Ted Nelson.

Yes, gopher would have evolved.

Yes, Hypercard was invented by Apple.

Yes, other concepts such as RIP (not the routing protocol) would have taken the place of Berners-Lee's implementation of everybody else's brainstorming.

Care to try again, Pugsly?

Re:NO.

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer Archie.

Re:NO.

[Straterra]

I assume you know that the web was invented by an Englishman in Switzerland.

I didn't know Al Gore ever lived in Switzerland...

Re:NO.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. ARPANet was your toy. The original core protocols were developed with ARPA funding, but the current generation of the Internet Protocol (version 4, with version 6 being slowly deployed) was created as an international effort. The physical bits of the Internet in the US and some outside were created by US corporations, some with funding from the US government, but most of the current infrastructure is not US-owned.

In reality, ICANN does not control very much. They control the root DNS servers (most of which are outside the USA, by the way). If the UN set up a competing ICANN and mandated that ISPs in their member regions use the new DNS root servers - which could potentially include all of the existing ones outside the USA, since they are not actually run by ICANN, they just carry ICANN's configuration) then there isn't much ICANN could do. US ISPs would have the choice of either switching to the new roots or having their customers potentially have links incorrectly handled in the future, if the two organisations didn't keep their configurations in sync.

If that were really the case it would have already been done. 'Taking over' the root servers is almost impossible. ICANN would simply put another root server up and change the root server list.

Anyone is welcome to start another Domain Naming root service. The reasons this has not been done are look many to list here, but they are easy to figure out if you think about it for a while.

Personally, I am not a huge fan of UN control of DNS but I would not cry a river over it. Actually mundane admin work is one of the few things the UN does correctly.

This assumes the member nations did not vote for some kind of restrictions (Allah-sucks.com, killjews.com, etc not available.. Which I could see happening, which is my fear. As much as the US has been on the wrong side of some decisions, they have kept DNS pretty non-political.

One other thought. To give you an idea of what it might be like with a UN controlled primary registrar, look at Italy. We have several business units in Italy and it literally took 24 months to get a name transferred into our name. On the upside they are getting better. The last one only took 6 months.

Re:NO.

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume you know that the web was invented by an Englishman in Switzerland.

Oh, you mean how Tim Berners-Lee took Gopher (patented by the U of MN), added an tag, and unencumbered it to be used worldwide? You might want to take a look at that word "invented" a little more carefully.

Re:NO.

[Chirs]

"The UN handles international telephone regulations?"

Um, yes. The ITU is a UN organization.

Re:NO.

[Chirs]

"Do you seriously believe that the UN gets credit for global telecommunications?"

They definately get credit for global communication *standardization*. The ITU is a UN agency. Their standards govern things like ISDN, JPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, dial-up and DSL modems, SS7 signalling, etc.

Re:NO.

[blueg3]

Interesting; I didn't know that. Technically it seems their function is not quite like ICANN. More like the IETF + ICANN, if actual control over the root servers was more localized and ICANN was a less-active regulatory body. The ITU also significantly predates the UN.

Nonetheless, they seem to do a good job of telecommunications regulation and are multinational.

Complaints?

[Bob9113]

I understand the unease that the rest of the world has with a single nation controlling ICANN. However, much as I often ask with engineering requests that seem spurious; what is the ROI to justify the change?

What is going wrong, which could reasonably be expected to go better, if we make the change? I'm not saying our stewardship of ICANN has necessarily been perfect, nor that we have a divine right just because we built the Internet. I do believe that the Internet is now a global resource, and that everyone has a very strong vested interest in it. And I am, generally speaking, a globalist -- I'd like to see us all spending more time on bettering all of us.

However, if there are not specific complaints, with a clear and significant path to improvement, it seems difficult to justify transferring control. Making the rest of the world feel good about Internet stewardship is not a good enough reason to risk the gridlock, posturing, saber rattling, and horse trading that could result from U.N. control.

Re:Complaints?

[cashman73]

Like ICANN has done such a wonderful job in its stewardship of domain names to begin with! Let's start off with such useful TLDs like .museum, .aero, .biz (a spammer's haven), and .info (another spammer's haven)! Does anybody even use these anymore? And they never really could figure out what to do with .xxx, either. And let's not forget that their proposal to let people buy TLDs is motivated primarily by greed.

Still, I'm not sure that more international oversight would solve this. We'll probably just see more useless TLDs added to an already overcrowded conglomerate of crap, and .xxx will still go nowhere (unless, maybe, if we put the Dutch in charge, because they seem to have made Amsterdam work out ;-). Nevertheless, I can understand why other nations may want to have a say in things. After all, while the U.S. may have "invented the internet", the most popular "application", the World Wide Web, was invented by a British scientist at CERN, in Europe. I'm not so sure that our original version of the internet would have taken off quite as well with out Sir Berners-Lee's invention?

Re:Complaints?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, think of it this way. You have this person grabbing hold of your nuts. This person is a 150 kg body builder who has repeatedly displayed a conflicting personality, specially if he doesn't get things his way. Yet, he is friendly with you and he even managed to keep your nuts safe and working properly since he managed to get a hold of them. Heck, his strong hold on your nuts even managed to keep them warm.

Well, although things aren't all that bad you still don't feel comfortable having this big 150 kg body builder with a temper holding you by the nuts. He may do a decent job at it but hey... Nonetheless someone is in fact grabbing you by the nuts.

Put yourself in that situation. Would you go on calculating the ROI of getting someone else's hands off your testicles? Would you start up a spreadsheet analyzing the pros and cons of not having this massive pair of hands grabbing you by the balls? I don't believe you would. It's your balls. You depend on them. You organize your day around any business regarding your balls. Why should anyone have the right to just put their hand down your crotch and squeeze your nuts as they see fit?

They don't teach this sort of example on your MBA meeting. You know why? Because not everything is money and there are far too many things which are far too important to be reduced to ROI.

And by the way, wouldn't handing the ICANN control over to China end up producing a better bottom line than managing it by very expensive americans in very expensive america? Oh, there's a ROI thought for you.

Re:Complaints?

[Kamokazi]

nor that we have a divine right just because we built the Internet

You're absolutely right. We don't have the divine right just because we built it. We have the divine right because we built it AND because we can blow anyone who tries to take it away into tiny pieces.

Re:Complaints?

[Ogive17]

What's wrong with leaving it with ICANN but sending a few reps from around the world to work there? The EU just wants to have as much control as they can get.

Slightly related... anyone else ever wonder why international basketball and ice hockey rules differ from the rules of the NBA and NHL even though the sports were pretty much invented in N. America? The rules for Olympic play match the rules of the European leagues.

Re:Complaints?

[Anonymous Coward]

..because we can blow anyone who tries to take it away..

That sounds kinda bad. You might have wanted to reword that before posting.

Re:Complaints?

[the eric conspiracy]

That's ridiculous. TLDs have nothing to do with whether or no spam is being sent. That is all up to the ISP and how they handle it.

Before WWW left CERN I was already connecting to the internet as a home user for ftp, email, and so on. It was already making some pretty serious inroads towards a ubiquitous service in the US.

And as far as WWW, TBL did a really good job with that, but how far would that have gotten how far without the internet? There were already several text oriented apps available like WAIS and gopher at the time. It is hard to imagine that evolution would not have brought along something else that fulfilled the same role.

Re:Complaints?

[cashman73]

That's ridiculous. TLDs have nothing to do with whether or no spam is being sent.

No, they don't. But the vast majority of people registering domains in the .biz or .info TLDs are spammers. I have yet to find anything either legitimate, or of value, in either of those TLDs.

Re:Complaints?

[charlesnw]

Oh.... useful sites exist. Like http://layerone.info/ for example. :) Sweeping generalizations..... yep this is /. :)

Just fork it

[Anonymous Coward]

If they really want to take it over a group of European governments could effectively do it. They could set up their own root servers including information for the current TLDs, order ISPs in their countries to use hidden proxies for DNS traffic. Then they could start adding new TLDs and requiring at least some organizations under their control to use them. This would put pressure on the ICANN controlled roots to add the new TLD information.

Multinational control

[rlp]

I have no problem with allowing ICANN to be controlled by a group of nations which all have a constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech.

Re:Multinational control

[AliasMarlowe]

I have no problem with allowing ICANN to be controlled by a group of nations which all have a constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech.

Heh! And how many of them are there?

Re:Multinational control

[Nutria]

group of nations which all have a constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech.

Like France, Germany and England, all of which have speech restrictions which I find disturbing?

Re:Multinational control

[lachlan76]

Good luck with that. Not every nation puts that sort of thing in their constitution; Australia certainly doesn't, the UK (as I understand) doesn't have a written constitution. You might have better luck in the civil law states, but the only one that I can say for sure does so is China. No state allows unrestricted free speech, and requiring that they claim this fiction provides no gain whatsoever.

But that aside, why? Why should some states have no say regarding shared infrastructure? Ought the ITU be restricted to those states that have (at least on paper) unrestricted free speech? How about the International Postal Union? ISO? IEEE?

Re:Multinational control

[TheRaven64]

How about the USA? Or is the Internet in a free speech zone? The kind where a state judge can order domains ceased because they violate local laws?

Re:Multinational control

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he means like Massachusetts, Virginia, Delaware, etc.

"state" and "nation" are synonyms you know.

Re:Multinational control

[Nutria]

The kind where a state judge can order domains ceased because they violate local laws?

Gambling has never been considered "speech". Otherwise, all conspiracy laws would be invalid.

Re:Multinational control

[Anonymous Coward]

And the US, which has freedom of speech restrictions which you apparently don't.

Re:Multinational control

[Tablizer]

Like France, Germany and England, all of which have speech restrictions which I find disturbing?

I used to think the same thing. But if the growing trend of gun-shooting angry Rush Limbo-only-listen zombies continues to grow to such an extent that it creates social upheavals, then something like the Fairness Doctrine (both sides must be presented) sounds like a reasonable compromise to Europe's all-or-nothing approach. They've seen such upheavals on a massive scale that the US has not (so far). Thus, their view of internet speech regulation will be different than ours. We may just have been lucky, although, their approach seems too extreme.
     

Re:Multinational control

[Nutria]

growing trend of gun-shooting angry Rush Limbo-only-listen zombies continues to grow to such an extent that it creates social upheavals,

Jesus H Frickin' Christ... When you make such inflammatory comments, back it up with some facts (like how often abortion clinics get bombed, or doctors and Democrat politicians get shot at). Otherwise, you're just an ignorant left-wing blowhard so far up Keith Olbermann's ass you tickle his tonsils.

Re:Multinational control

[dwye]

Whoosh!

That almost no other country has it in their constitution is precisely the GP's point.

Re:Multinational control

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet on television in all 3 countries you can say "fuck" and see naked people. Just pointing out that no country has completely free speech, and the USA has no unique claim to freedom of any kind.

Reply: No

[phantomcircuit]

Seriously does anybody expect this to happen? No? Yeah I didn't think so.

Strong free speech rights in the US

[Glass Goldfish]

I'm not an American, but I'm glad that ICANN is run by Americans. For the most part, the United States has a great deal of respect for different view points and allows for free thought. I can certainly imagine Europeans banning Internet websites for fear that they will anger Muslims, gays, atheists, Christians, animal rights activists, etc.. You can imagine European bureaucrats coming up with a handbook of acceptable thought and using that as a guide for website banning.

Re:Strong free speech rights in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

i am a canadian, and i completely agree. but what i also think is important, is the physical location of the servers themselves. stupid as it sounds, i like the idea of having the root dns servers operating behind the worlds largest military.

Re:Strong free speech rights in the US

[Nutria]

fear that they will anger ... Christians

Do they really give a rat's ass about angering Christians? I didn't think so either...

Re:Strong free speech rights in the US

[TheRaven64]

The problem with having ICANN controlled by a US corporation is that it is subject to US laws and, more importantly, US court rulings. This has caused some problems in the recent past, because even state courts can issue judgements which affect ICANN. It's not just US law, for example, it's California law which governs ICANN.

Re:Strong free speech rights in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah I can imagine... and I can imagine I'd put money down that that's precisely what *they're* imagining and what they want. On top of that, I'd bet they would instantaneously require almost UK-level monitoring and logging... while I'm sure the various 3-letter agencies in the US do their fair share, I shudder at the thought of the scale that the EU is dreaming about.

But they can't have any of that with US control, so they pretend that even though the US is doing an admittedly good job, it's just somehow not good enough. Bull.

Re:Strong free speech rights in the US

[slapout]

They're already trying to ban the words Miss and Mrs.

Re:Strong free speech rights in the US

[rcasha2]

The problem with American policies is that they depend heavily on whoever currently occupies the White House and its subsidiaries. So, when the administration had the kind of people who would cover up the nipple of a marble statue in the DOJ, the various entities like ICANN adopt a comparable attitude.

Re:Strong free speech rights in the US

[geoffrobinson]

Yeah, Christians don't riot and behead people. No one cares about their feelings.

Re:Strong free speech rights in the US

[Jaysyn]

Proof these fuckers just don't have anything worthwhile to work on. They are *making* problems up so that the *look* proactive.

Re:Strong free speech rights in the US

[Buelldozer]

"You can imagine European bureaucrats coming up with a handbook of acceptable thought and using that as a guide for website banning."

I don't have to IMAGINE that as they are already DOING it!

Germany: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-shermer22feb22,0,2752813.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

U.K.: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=97127

France: http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2000/11/20/202040.shtml

Those are just the tip of the iceberg. France started doing this back in 2000. Germany fired it up in 2008 with state created "for teh childrenz!!!11!!!" anti-porn / anti-torrent laws. The U.K. is increasingly surveillance happy and began banning "sex offenders" from social networking sites.

Now the U.S. may or may not have free-er speech than those three countries but if it cannot be conclusively demonstrated that they DO then what rationale is there for making the change? You'll also note that those are generally considered first world countries with good to excellent free speech track records. When you start examining other countries like China, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Venezuala, etc you can see how censorship would QUICKLY become the order of the day.

You'll note that all of my examples show censorship being applied using the foundation of FEDERAL (National) law. It's not some hurk hurk jerk judge in a single state or municipality (like Kentucky) showing stupidity about how the Internet works.

Long post short: Without any sense of national patriotism, I am American, I am VERY happy that ICANN has remained here. We may not be the best at free speech but we are a *very* long way from the worst.

Re:Strong free speech rights in the US

[blueZ3]

Like the quote from Star Wars:

"That's because droids don't pull people's arms off when they lose. Wookies have been known to do that"

Re:Strong free speech rights in the US

[Sockatume]

The Catholic Church has a sovereign nation here, and prints its own version of the Euro. You'd be surprised at the kind of protection of religion that goes on in a continent where most of the population is, officially speaking, subject to a national religion.

Re:Strong free speech rights in the US

[Nutria]

You'd be surprised at the kind of protection of religion that goes on in a continent

Have those Danish newspapers ever published editorial cartoons mocking Catholic priests or the Church for their complicity in the child sex scandals? (Or is that just a US phenomenon?)

Re:Strong free speech rights in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

In the words of a recent US president. "You are either with us or against us". Not much room for different points of view there. (And yes, I know he wasn't talking about ICANN)

Re:Strong free speech rights in the US

[kalirion]

Yup, what next, outlaw flag burning?

Re:Strong free speech rights in the US

[guyminuslife]

They do, but whatever. Still don't care about their feelings.

Re:Strong free speech rights in the US

[rastoboy29]

I would agree except for the US Gov't becoming so embedded with the RIAA & co.  Those people mean to end free speech on the internet, in the form of verifying that you aren't violating their copyrights.  Could get ugly.

And no, we haven't seen ugly, yet.

Because the UN would be *so* much better

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, then they can openly steer business to their families and cronies.

You can have my ICANN...

[Rabbi Shmabbi]

...when you pry it from my cold, dead hand.

Gotta give Stalin some credit...

[tjstork]

If the dictator Joseph Stalin had not have killed a few million German soldiers and destroyed I think at least 20,000 tanks during the course of the Russio-German war, D-Day would have been awful tough for the United States and Great Britain. What sort of shape would the German army have been in without having endured the winter offensive on Moscow, the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk and then Operation Bagration.

Re:Gotta give Stalin some credit...

[shutdown -p now]

If the dictator Joseph Stalin had not have killed a few million German soldiers and destroyed I think at least 20,000 tanks during the course of the Russio-German war, D-Day would have been awful tough for the United States and Great Britain. What sort of shape would the German army have been in without having endured the winter offensive on Moscow, the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk and then Operation Bagration.

For the record, 2/3 of all German casualties in WW2 were on the Eastern front. That is manpower, for artillery and tanks it's up to 4/5. Note also that Germans started racking massive casualties in the West only from 1943 onwards, when they've already had their ass kicked in the East for the most part.

At the same time, you know, Stalin didn't do that. Soviet soldiers did that, and Stalin, in fact, made a lot of blunders, esp. right before and early in the war, that made the Soviet casualties much higher than they had to be. The credit for USSR winning WW2 goes mostly to the people of the country, not to its leaders.

It's also fairly educational to compare WW2 military casualties for the USSR, and US/UK/France.

Re:Gotta give Stalin some credit...

[TheSync]

If the dictator Joseph Stalin had not have killed a few million German soldiers and destroyed I think at least 20,000 tanks during the course of the Russio-German war, D-Day would have been awful tough

Well, maybe if Stalin hadn't signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Germany in 1939 that secretly agreed to divide the countries of eastern Europe between them, which lead to the German and also Soviet invasion of Poland, not to mention the German-Soviet Commercial Agreement of 1940 and the German-Soviet Border and Commercial Agreement of 1941, WWII would have ended up looking a bit different...

Re:Gotta give Stalin some credit...

[tjstork]

For the record, 2/3 of all German casualties in WW2 were on the Eastern front. That is manpower, for artillery and tanks it's up to 4/5

Very true... I think it is only really in aircraft that German sustained more losses on the west...

Soviet soldiers did that, and Stalin, in fact, made a lot of blunders,

Tis true that the troops win the war, but the troops cannot win the war unless they are capably equipped, deployed and led. The Germans bungled in all three as the war the progressed whereas the Russians improved in all three.

Stalin relinquished control of his military mostly to Zhukov after his disastrous orders. He put into place capable production people. As much as a command economy would later fail the Russian people, a command economy saved them during World War II. The Russians produced more tanks, more artillery and more aircraft than the Germans, and not even by a narrow margin... but by a larger margin.

As far as casualties go, I would be willing to bet that the greatest proportion of Russian casualties took place in the earliest part of the war, while the reverse held true for the Germans. As the war progressed, Russians got better at keeping their guys alive, and the Germans got worse.

All of these improvements made by Russia suggest that, for a time at least, the Russian leadership and that means Stalin, was able to look at what was happening on the ground and respond to it realistically, whereas the Germans got increasingly worse at it.

Re:Gotta give Stalin some credit...

[guruevi]

The Russians used a classic move they learned from history: scorched earth. They did it with Napoleon and they did it with Hitler. The shape of Russia also helps a lot with that technique.

In short: As the Russians go back, they burn down every usable thing. As they go back the front gets wider making it more difficult for the invaders to attack, the invading troops don't have any local supplies so need to ship everything in which takes a long time. By the time they get to Moscow, the winter has started and since both the French and the Germans were planning on a quick summer invasion, they now have to deal with the harsh winter without any supplies. As a result many soldiers freeze to death, equipment malfunctions and eventually they have to give up.

Re:Gotta give Stalin some credit...

[dodobh]

There was also that secret Russian weapon: winter.

Buy Out Anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets see, $1B equipment, $2B human capital, $4B development costs, $5B IP value, $22B goodwill....Hmmm. Split into 10 shares for about $4B each. I can see how passing "control" could even be profitable.

Give it to the UN

[Gothmolly]

so that they virtually rape, pillage and squander resources instead of doing it solely in meatspace.

I CANNada...

[jonaskoelker]

ICANNada!
Our 127.0.0.1 and world-wide LAN.
[...]
ICANNada we firewall for thee

Keep it in the US

[michael1078]

This is just my opinion, but the US created DARPANet for military purposes and although the internet spawned from the military creation - the US has a right to continue to manage and maintain its creation for its purposes. After all, you don't often see the US petition France to manage souffle recipes international nor British rock singer Ozzie Osbourne (they can keep him!)

So if the internet was a road system....

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Let's consider an analogy. I come into your country, build an entire series of roads at my own expense with technology and equipment I developed and let you drive on these roads for free - as a gift. The only catch is that I control the traffic laws, parking and traffic lights and road signs. Because the road signs in your free system, gifted to you by others, are in English, you ask for control of the systems traffic, construction, signs and laws. I think we've just redefined "Chutzpah."

Re:So if the internet was a road system....

[LWATCDR]

Yea it would be like if you became part of the world air way system and build airports and all your pilots and ATC people had to speak English!

Re:So if the internet was a road system....

[TheRaven64]

Yup, good old USA. Thanks for laying all of that undersea cable and all of that copper and fibre under the whole of the rest of the world. Thanks for all of those satellite links that cover the world and are free to use. Thanks for selflessly hosting all of the root servers.

Are you as stupid as you appear, or just trolling?

Re:So if the internet was a road system....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the US plant all the submarine cables. All routers of all countries and corporations have been payed,build and installed by the US. All the protocols have been invented and implemented by the US.....
Well. Bad analogy.

The US only started the thing, only that... And not munch of what was at that time still remains today anyway.
Just an example of early non US involvement: the IP of TCP/IP is an european "invention".

Re:So if the internet was a road system....

[janrinok]

But, if I've understood your analogy correctly, you're claiming that the US has paid for all of the internet infrastructure? That is incorrect. Many nations around the world have invested in their own internet infrastructure, and more than just the US has been instrumental in providing technical innovation and progress to the network that began with ARPANet. To claim that it is an entirely US funded and developed resource is simply wrong. It began with an idea that originated in America, but it has grown because of the contribution of many nations and individuals.

Re:So if the internet was a road system....

[Sockatume]

Uh, you realise you've pretty much described the British Empire, right? Comes in, gives everyone infrastructure and modernisation for nothing, just wants control of that now-important infrastructure in return? Watch your analogies! The ICANN's a long, long way from that. ;)

Re:So if the internet was a road system....

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's consider an analogy. I come into your country, build an entire series of roads at my own expense with technology and equipment I developed and let you drive on these roads for free - as a gift.

Well, the analogy is a bit flawed. The US did not build the Internet infrastructure in most countries. It's build and financed by various telecom companies (or their customers) or - as far as the research networks go - by the various governments (or their tax payers). They did not get the infrastructure for free.

Not that I believe that your analogy works very well anyway, but in any case it would be more like: one country inventing the idea of roads, others like it, built their own systems and connect it to others, including the original country. To the mutual benefit of everybody. And the original country defines the rules (or road signs or whatever).

Re:So if the internet was a road system....

[Anonymous Coward]

What's stopping you elitist Eurotrash from setting up your own DNS servers and getting the hell out of Dodge? Nothing. You want control over DNS--just stop pointing your servers at the ICANN controlled root servers, problem solved.

This is the typical whiny crap we always see from the New World Order panty-waists. "Wahh wahh, we don't like it that you set up these DNS servers and everyone is using them. We want to run them. Wahh wahh"

Just STFU and make the switch.

Re:So if the internet was a road system....

[Raemond]

Erm, I think most of that road system you analoguously described wasn't paid for or built by you but by the countries it's physically in, even if you came up with the initial idea. Which I am guessing (utterly, no evidence whatsoever) makes up more of the network than is in your country. And yet the vast majority of the users have no say over how the whole traffic laws/lights/parking system etc. is run.

Re:So if the internet was a road system....

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS IS WHAT AMERICANS REALLY BELIEVE

So you came into our country and built all of our telecoms, did you? Must have missed that one...

Re:So if the internet was a road system....

[Ash-Fox]

The root name servers use peer casting, pretty much almost every nation has their own root name servers - So, your statement is incorrect.

Re:So if the internet was a road system....

[Ash-Fox]

Sorry, that should be any casting, not peer casting.

why ?

[heatseeker_around]

I don't understand the need to split the control of a private company (even if it's controlled by a government). So, we should ask the US to force Microsoft to split the control of the company between the countries using Windows OS and servers ? Same thing for Oracle, Apple, etc. ? Come on. It's not because a country is dependent to a technology created by a private company or another country that it should have the ability to control some parts of the decisions over this technology. Create your own "internet" if you really want to control something and stay in your bubble, stupid !

You are RONG! Root servers are around the world..

[jonaskoelker]

Stupid as it sounds, i like the idea of having the root dns servers operating behind the worlds largest military.

That does sound kinda' stupid. At least it makes it hard to seize power from those who have it when they misuse it.

It's actually also wrong. I spent two seconds on google for you, and found this nice map of the root servers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Root-current.svg

"Oh my G ..." ?

[testman123]

You are perfectly right.

Europe is freedom of speech, but restricted by law.
US is freedom of speech, but restricted by religion.

Just a matter of choice : religion vs law ;-)

Anybody tried a "good old" blasphemy lately ?

Anybody as "hot" subject ... Europe is denying crime against humanity (for instance Holocaust). US is about chalenging the religion : "in god we trust".

Both are historical artefacts, you know ;-)

Rgs,
TM

Re:"Oh my G ..." ?

[level_headed_midwest]

The difference is that you *can* challenge religion in the U.S. and the worst you do is get picketed, badmouthed, and boycotted by fundamentalists. There are atheist conventions very frequently in the U.S. and that's the worst that happens. Picketing and yelling is also the worst that happens whenever neo-Nazis come and have their marches through town, at least until somebody starts a fist fight or riot. The police actually protect the neo-Nazis. If the neo-Nazis went to Europe and tried to march, the police would arrest them instead. That is the difference in free speech that Americans have and Europeans don't.

Re:"Oh my G ..." ?

[Greg_D]

Bullshit.

The only time religious speech is restricted in the US is when an agent of the government acting as a representative of the government indulges in promoting or denouncing a religion. Other than that, it's fair game.

Libel and slander rules still apply.

Re:"Oh my G ..." ?

[IanHurst]

I'm sorry, what? Are you trying to say we can't speak against religion here? That's... retarded. Our Atheists are so noisy they actually harm their own cause.

I think the EU is great, and I'm not the least bit interested in bashing Europe, but if you're going to complain about free speech in America you at least need to know what the fuck you're talking about.

Re:"Oh my G ..." ?

[Trepidity]

The US has no blasphemy laws. Guess which country shows like Southpark are made in?

Europe, meanwhile does have blasphemy laws.

Re:"Oh my G ..." ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't realize I had a cause as an atheist. Atheism for the most part is not organized and generally we don't have meetings with each other to discuss religion or the lack thereof.

Re:"Oh my G ..." ?

[IanHurst]

I'm also an Atheist, and if you think we aren't discriminated against, you're just ignorant. Fighting that is the cause you *ought* to have. In fact our lack of community is part of the problem. American society does not consider us normal people, and to counter that we need a non-crazy voice. When normal, well adjusted Atheists like you deny our community, you cede our voice to the loudest and angriest among us. That's the self harm I wrote about above.

Re:"Oh my G ..." ?

[Workaphobia]

US is freedom of speech, but restricted by religion.

No, our *government* is restricted by religion. Our speech for the moment is fine, at least for anyone who's non-religious.

Anybody tried a "good old" blasphemy lately ?

I believe in evolution, if that's what you mean.

Re:"Oh my G ..." ?

[z80kid]

You're a fanatic.

The first sign is that you regard all atheists as "the community". The second is that you feel that all "community members" *ought* to fight for "the cause".

The only thing that all atheists have in common is that they don't believe in a supernatural god. That's it. Holding that belief doesn't confer any obligations on anyone. Nor does it necessarily mean that one has to care what the superstitious around him believe.

> When normal, well adjusted Atheists like you deny our community, you cede our voice to the loudest and angriest among us.

Yeah, that kind of says it all....

Re:"Oh my G ..." ?

[IanHurst]

Um, huh?

I speak out against fanatical atheists and ask for more ordinary atheists to speak up for us, and therefore I'm a fanatic? Really?

How ridiculous.

Re:"Oh my G ..." ?

[Ash-Fox]

France is not Europe.

Re:"Oh my G ..." ?

[Toonol]

US is freedom of speech, but restricted by religion.

How so? All religion is wrong, all believers are mistaken, no gods exist. I'm in the US, and not in jail.

Re:"Oh my G ..." ?

[KC7JHO]

Oklahoma Statutes Title 21. Crimes and Punishments 21 O.S. 901 - 903 Keep reading for the profanity laws.

Re:"Oh my G ..." ?

[borizz]

Wrong. Neonazi's picketing in NL get police protection. Most people don't like them, but they have a right to their views...

Re:"Oh my G ..." ?

[mjbkinx]

I live in Germany and have been to several counter-demonstrations where neo-nazis were under police protection.

I think you confuse that with the display of Nazi symbols, which is indeed illegal outside educational or artistic context (school and movies: OK, at neo-nazi marches: not). According to a skin-head I asked, the swastika t-shirt he was wearing would yield a fine up to 500€. That's because it's considered a symbol of an organization with the goal of abolishing the constitution, which has a number of protective measures based on our experience with our previous, much more liberal constitution, including the right to resistance against a government that tries to abolish it.

Re:"Oh my G ..." ?

[level_headed_midwest]

I suppose you could have a neo-Nazi march without any Nazi symbols or slogans, but all of the ones I have seen on the news or seen pictures of (they come to my city every few years just to stir people up, I do not go watch them) have had lots of Nazi symbols and slogans. Many of them come wearing replica SS uniforms holding banners with Nazi slogans and the whole bit. Maybe the neo-Nazis in Germany and the rest of Europe are a bit different, but the ones here most certainly would get into big trouble over there.

Re:"Oh my G ..." ?

[mjbkinx]

Yes, they most certainly would get into trouble. As I said, display of symbols of organizations that have the goal of abolishing the constitution is illegal. Look at it as advertising of a criminal organization, which wouldn't even begin to describe the Nazis.
Also, hey, that ban was your idea, back in the day.

Mod Parent Up

[obijuanvaldez]

Great links. For those who have censorship concerns, as can be seen on her Policies and Activities page, she supports the Safer Internet Programme. Their mission "aims at empowering and protecting children and young people online by awareness raising initiatives and by fighting illegal and harmful online content and conduct."

Or better yet why?

[LWATCDR]

No it isn't divine right but the right of doing it first. The US did build the Internet and most of the tech that it runs on. "Thanks CERN for that http thing BTW".

So now the EU wants the US give up control. Okay what are you going to give us in return? Respect? I doubt that. Less scorn? Sure....
I have to say that I see no good reason for the US to give up control of ICANN any more than I see a good reason for France to give up control of the FAI.
I doubt that it will improve any service on the internet, increase cost, and potently aid censor ship. There are a lot of countries in the UN that do not value free speech at all.

Re:Or better yet why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay what are you going to give us in return?

We'll continue to submit to the same administrative organization as you, if we see that it is not a puppet of your national government. Making ICANN oversight more diverse would help demonstrate independence from national interests.

You built your part of the internet, we built ours. Your power to tell us how our part of the internet works originates in our free association, which can be changed.

Re:Or better yet why?

[derGoldstein]

On the one hand, I'm itching to go over who invented/developed what, invested what, and using who's resources. I'd like to see what this "US-only" internet would look like if it really *were* limited to US residents.

And yet, pragmatism forces me to acknowledge that nothing globally beneficial would come of this. It's not in ICANN's interest to *do* anything that would in any way stifle or harm the network as it is now. This is just some form of territory marking on the EU's part. It's what they're "expected to do", if only in the sense that they're pointing it out.

There are enough technical challenges to contend with as it is. Starting to change the labeling on wires to say "starting from this point all along 5km from here belongs to the country of Liechtenstein" doesn't seem like a good investment of resources.

Re:Or better yet why?

[Anonymous Coward]

cough choke

Mutters something about "bloody Americans" and goes home for the day.

Re:Or better yet why?

[LWATCDR]

The Internet was created by the US defense department. They also funded the research that created TCP/IP. So yes the Internet was created by the US and that is why it "controls" ICANN.
As too the current Internet is is pretty well distributed but I was talking about the origin and I did mention CERN and HTTP.
But your right this is just silly posturing on the EUs part been their and done that. ICANN works pretty well and there is no reason to replace it.

Re:Or better yet why?

[LWATCDR]

No incentive and no penalty == no reason to change a thing. The current system does work pretty well and there is no reason to believe that a new system would work any better.

Re:Or better yet why?

[LWATCDR]

It could change but it will not. Nobody wants to loose access to US markets. Users outside the US don't want to loose access to US suppliers and or sites. It isn't in the US's interest to mess up ICANN and it isn't in the US's interest to give up control over it. It isn't in anybodies interest to do more than crab a little since ICANN works well for everyone.

Re:Or better yet why?

[nemesisrocks]

The Internet was created by the US defense department.

You mean it WASN'T created by Al Gore???

Easy solution....

[ganjadude]

Let the folks at The Pirate Bay take over ICANN No more worries!

Re:Easy solution....

[Anonymous Coward]

ICANN? WTF does that have to do with WWII. Stay on topic, please.

What?

Oh.

Sorry, carry on.....

The UN is more than just the security council

[rcasha2]

The UN is not just the Security Council. It is also the WHO, UNESCO, UNICEF, FAO and many other entities which are part of the UN and *generally* work well enough that they blend into the background.

Re:The UN is more than just the security council

[apathy maybe]

Heh, thanks, I just posted before I read this.

I also mentioned the ITU and UPU (formally IPU), both of which might be good entities for running ICANN.

French died fighting while the Yanks made excuses

[fantomas]

A lot of brave French men and women died fighting for their homelands while the Yanks made excuses and sat around eating ice cream in Times Square or whatever they were up to and didn't get involved til 1941. Show a bit of respect.

Ok jokes aside and in Europe we're truly grateful for the Americans finally getting involved in 1941 and for less open but valuable support beforehand, but I think you do the French a disservice, take a look at how many were fighting in different theatres of war and in home resistance. I think over here in Europe we're much more aware about how many nations fought together and suffered terribly. Check how many nationalities fought on the Allies side in the Battle of Britain, something like a sixth of the RAF pilots were from countries other than Britain.

I am not sure where American naivety comes from regarding WW2 (though for sure it's not limited to your country)- perhaps because the war was mostly something that happened far away and didn't happen on your home soil except with rare exceptions? I guess the folk-memory of the war is life going on as normal and waving off the brave boys to distant lands. Maybe this is something to do with how that war is perceived differently in the USA from Europe?

Uh, Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

About the year 2012, because probably California will fall off about then (if not sooner), taking Marina Del Rey with it.

You can have my ICANN

[Culture20]

when you pry it from my cold dead hands!

I don't think so.

[Anonymous Coward]

So the U.S. creates the internet originally as an alternate way for the military to communicate.
Then the public was given the right to use it.
Then other countries public crowd could use it.
And now we are supposed to just hand over control.

  don't think so, Viviane needs to quit getting power hungry and be happy with what she has.

Another Verisign?

[rjmx]

Let me get this straight. They want to create a private entity to run ICANN?

Reminds me of the wonderful job Verisign does running the .com and .net domains. Anyone remember when they decided to direct all failed DNS lookups to their own page? I seem to recall that it was ICANN who managed to stop that little project.

I don't believe that ICANN, or the Internet for that matter, should be controlled by any entity which has a pecuniary interest in doing so. That way lies corruption and decisions in favour of commercial interests, not of the community as a whole.

Re:Let's play point-counterpoint

[hansamurai]

No, our law-makers really only care about what angers law-makers. Thus, they ban child porn and the pirate bay.

Even if the Pirate Bay is banned in the United States, which I have no idea what you mean by that, I can still happily go to that site by typing in the domain name. There is nothing suspicious going on with the DNS servers stopping me from resolving their address. GP's worry is that the EU would impose such restrictions.

Also, I heard that after 9/11, people weren't supposed to play "Leaving on a Jetplane". And Comedy Central put a black box over Mohamed in Cartoon Wars (a South Park episode) after the big Mohamed hubbub, despite Mohamed being depicted in Super Best Friends (an earlier episode).

Those were private corporations making those decisions, Clear Channel and Viacom respectively.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Shakrai]

A lot of brave French men and women died fighting for their homelands while the Yanks made excuses and sat around eating ice cream in Times Square or whatever they were up to and didn't get involved til 1941. Show a bit of respect.

The French men and women were brave. The French Government failed them miserably though. Sitting behind their fortifications and ceding the intuitive to the Germans clearly wasn't the best approach to fighting the war. The collaboration of the Vichy regime also comes to mind as a stain on the history of France.

Regardless, I think you misread me. I made a cheap joke at the expense of the French but my underlying point was to dispute the notion that the British and Americans single-handily won the war. It took the efforts of every single Allied nation to defeat the Axis powers. That fact is beyond dispute for anyone who has bothered to give the subject even a cursory reading.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[TheRaven64]

I am not sure where American naivety comes from regarding WW2

Hollywood. Take a look at any US-made WWII film, and you see the French being rescued, the British being helpful to the main American force, and the Russians conspicuously absent (especially on anything made during the cold war).

Then take a look at what history is taught in school in the USA. All (most?) nations are guilty of focussing too heavily on their own history when it comes to education, and for the USA the two world wars were not nearly as major events as they were for most of Europe, and in WWII a lot more focus is given to the Pacific theatre. I'm guessing you have an interest in history, and so have read quite widely on the subject, but try to think back and see if you can remember how much you were taught in school about the Pacific theatre in WWII. Here (in the UK) I don't remember being taught much more than 'oh, and the Japanese, Chinese and Americans were having a bit of a fight over there too'.

Some of the early war films and books in the USA were written based on accounts of US servicemen, but these had a very skewed view of the war; they missed out on all of the early actions in Europe, weren't aware of how much intelligence for the invasion came from various resistance groups, and very few of them came into contact with the Russian war machine that trampled over the Eastern Front. From their perspective, the Americans arrived, landed in Britain, dropped in to France, marked to Berlin, and then went home.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Anonymous Coward]

We are very aware of the sacrifices Americans have made to save Europe from tyranny. Go stand in the cemetery in Normandy and Arlington and then tell us we do not know sacrifice. How about the Lend Lease program. How about a little respect instead of the typical underhanded comments. Typical socialist who does not know the facts and tries to rewrite history to fit a failed political system.

what will they call it?

[FudRucker]

FreeCANN, or freakann?

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of brave French men and women died fighting for their homelands while the Yanks made excuses and sat around eating ice cream in Times Square or whatever they were up to and didn't get involved til 1941. Show a bit of respect.

Yeah, let's talk about the french and war, kthnx.

Gallic Wars - Lost. In a war whose ending foreshadows the next 2000 years of French history, France is conquered by of all things, an Italian.

Hundred Years War - Mostly lost, saved at last by female schizophrenic who inadvertently creates The First Rule of French Warfare; "France's armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman."

Italian Wars - Lost. France becomes the first and only country to ever lose two wars when fighting Italians.

Wars of Religion - France goes 0-5-4 against the Huguenots

Thirty Years War - France is technically not a participant, but manages to get invaded anyway. Claims a tie on the basis that eventually the other participants started ignoring her.

War of Devolution - Tied. Frenchmen take to wearing red flowerpots as chapeaux.

The Dutch War - Tied

War of the Augsburg League/King William's War/French and Indian War - lost, but claimed as a tie. Three ties in a row induces deluded Frogophiles the world over to label the period as the height of French military power.

War of the Spanish Succession - Lost. The War also gave the French their first taste of a Marlborough, which they have loved every since.

American Revolution - In a move that will become quite familiar to future Americans, France claims a win even though the English colonists saw far more action. This is later known as "de Gaulle Syndrome," and leads to the Second Rule of French Warfare; "France only wins when America does most of the fighting."

French Revolution - Won, primarily due the fact that the opponent was also French.

The Napoleonic Wars - Lost. Temporary victories (remember the First Rule!) due to leadership of a Corsican, who ended up being no match for a British footwear designer.

The Franco-Prussian War - Lost. Germany first plays the role of drunk Frat boy to France's ugly girl home alone on a Saturday night.

World War I - Tied and on the way to losing, France is saved by the United States. Thousands of French women find out what it's like to not only sleep with a winner, but one who doesn't call her "Fraulein." Sadly, widespread use of condoms by American forces forestalls any improvement in the French bloodline.

World War II - Lost. Conquered French liberated by the United States and Britain just as they finish learning the Horst Wessel Song.

War in Indochina - Lost. French forces plead sickness, take to bed with the Dien Bien Flu.

Algerian Rebellion - Lost. Loss marks the first defeat of a western army by a Non-Turkic Muslim force since the Crusades, and produces the First Rule of Muslim Warfare; "We can always beat the French." This rule is identical to the First Rules of the Italians, Russians, Germans, English, Dutch, Spanish, Vietnamese and Esquimaux.

War on Terrorism - France, keeping in mind its recent history, surrenders to Germans and Muslims just to be safe. Attempts to surrender to Vietnamese ambassador fail after he takes refuge in a McDonald's.

--Posted by a half-Frenchman (who has a demented sense of humor)

EU likes international organizations because...

[anegg]

This sounds to me like the EU would like to be in control of ICANN. I think the EU loves international organizations... Although the EU gets to act like one entity for certain economic purposes, it gets to vote like a bunch of independent countries in international organizations like the UN. Perhaps the EU should either get one vote in international organizations, or the USA should get 50 votes in international organizations. Just a thought, and a hint at why the EU would prefer international control.

Re:EU likes international organizations because...

[Sockatume]

You imply that the EU acts as one nation with more than one vote, but the nations in the EU rarely agree on anything, in the UN or anywhere else. France is about as likely to vote alongside the UK as the USA is to get in a voting cabal with North Korea. There's barely anything resembling a concensus in the EU's own parliment, for crying out loud. And Eurovision's been edging towards a nuclear stalemate between the former Soviet Bloc and the Republic of Ireland for years now.

Re:This is a good time to ask for stuff like this

[bucky0]

Can you do two things for me?

1) Define fascism
2) Tell me what obama's doing that meets the definition.

Thanks.

Why not make it a democracy?

[denissmith]

Why not remove it from control of any nation by chartering it as an independent entity funded by levies to governments, but controlled by representatives elected by users divided into regions. This way no government could control the election of representatives, which would minimize outright threats to censorship. The rest could be handled by the charter itself. This is just an idea - maybe we could all stop the recriminations for a while and work it out. No... on second thought recriminations are too much fun.

Re:Why not make it a democracy?

[Buelldozer]

What is the benefit of your proposed action?

We should do this WHY precisely?

To give the PRC, Saudia Arabia, and every other two bit tin horn dictator a shot at democratically censoring the web?

So that Germany, France, the U.S., and others can censor the web to remove torrents over Intellectual Property concerns?

I'm REALLY failing to see an upside to any action at all!

Re:Why not make it a democracy?

[denissmith]

I believe I was pretty clear in stating that I wanted to remove it from the control of any government, as in ANY Government.

Re:Why not make it a democracy?

[Buelldozer]

I am clear on your objective, I am unclear on the benefit.

How about a big bureaucracy which fears radicals?

[geoffrobinson]

A big European bureaucracy which kowtows to radicals who want to institute sharia law is how I envision this thing ending.

Whine whine, Build Your Own Tubes Eurotrashette

[gadlaw]

You know, developed by the United States Military, run by Americans - you all climbed aboard the train and now you want to be the Engineer/Pilot of the thing cause since now that you got on the train it must be your train. Typical way of thinking there Bureaucrat Trash Monkeys. :P I fart in your general direction.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[phantomcircuit]

Really now?

I'm sure that there were many brave people fighting for all parties involved, but that is not where the American memory of WW2 comes from.

On D-Day all of Europe was under Nazi control, Britain was all but flattened, and the entire Nazi war machine was pointed straight at Russia.

If you're going to be honest here Russia would never have been able to make the push into Nazi Germany if the western front hadn't been opened up on D-Day.

Without the intervention of the United States in Europe during WW2 Europe would be a very different place today. (Also nuclear bombs).

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[jggimi]

...and the Russians conspicuously absent

I'd like to point you to "Enemy at the Gates". A 2001 Hollywood production led by Paramount Pictures, it starred Jude Law and Ed Harris. Law played Vassili Zaitsev, the most famous Russian sniper of the war. The film was set at the Battle of Stalingrad.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Jaysyn]

There is a Cracked.com article in there, somewhere.

This is a hard problem

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no solution for names and numbers that doesn't have problems. Let's say ICANN were wrested from the US and made some kind of international corporation, or something under control of the UN, or whatever.

Sooner or later (and I'm really just talking about 5 minutes versus a whole hour) its policies are going to conflict with some government (as is already the case now). One or the other will have to back down and not get their way.

What happens, then? Does a government back down from the UN? I don't think so.

I'm not just talking about "rogue" governments, or governments that "we" (whoever that is) don't happen to like, like China. There are all sorts of topics where people aren't on the same page and for whatever reason, feel so passionate about things that other people see as trivial, that they're willing to use force. Europeans are shocked that we Americans don't have boobies on our televisions and are willing to impose huge fines when a booby slips by, and we Americans are shocked by your lack of graphical violence. The state of Kentucky wants control of gambling domain names, and China wants to censor Falun Gong, and Germany has special rules about how you're allowed to talk about Nazis.

Yeah, laugh at the Kentuckians but I promise your nose isn't clean either; your own government (where ever you are!) have some policies that 4 billion people on this planet thinks are unacceptable.

So what do you do?

If we hypothesize that governments are the will of the people (please, let's not fight over that just right now) then Kentuckians really should be blocked from internet gambling and boobies on TV, because that's what they want. But it's not acceptable for their will to be imposed on people who aren't in Kentucky.

You can't make everyone happy, except to balkanize the net. And that's distasteful too, obviously. But isn't democracy and government being accountable to its citizens, more important than "mere" functionality?

Sure, I wish we could all just get along, but we can't. Really. That has never happened and no one has ever explained how it could ever happen.

So: are you willing to balkanize the net? Are you willing to have gambling-example.com resolve to different numbers depending on where the client is?

If you are, then EU doesn't need to ask Obama to free ICANN. It can just set up its own nameservers right now, and tell the recursive resolver operators, "Here's your new root."

If you aren't, then no matter what jurisdiction ICANN is in, I promise: you'll still have a network of losers. Either ICANN is going to do what the State of Kentucky wants (which sucks) or it's not (which also sucks: think about domain-squatting scenarios, or other injustices where people have no recourse through the court systems).

So I think moving ICANN from the US to the UN (or something like that) might have some "feel good" aspects to it, but it's not going to really make anything better. That's not a reason not to do it, but don't get your hopes up about the results.

ICANN does not control anything

[Yvanhoe]

I have the feeling that I am missing something, but... does ICANN have any importance at all other than monetary ? The day it will fail at doing its job correctly or that it tries holding companies hostages by changing their DNS data, alternative DNS root server will appear.

I mean... ICANN makes one tyrannical decision, everybody will switch to OpenDNS. No ? Did I get something wrong ?

Re:ICANN does not control anything

[Tacvek]

ICANN consists of multiple parts. The important part is the IANA, which publishes such things as official port assignments, assigning IP addresses, assigning autonomous system numbers, publishing the root zone file, and acting as the registry for the .arpa and .int TLDs.

Virtually all of that it does on behalf of the IETF. That said, some of that is done autonomously without directly involving the IETF. For example, IP address assignment, except for special purpose assignments like assigning the multicast region it does autonomously. (Of note, it only assigns to a small number of other organizations who subassign IP addresses, continuing on down until an IP address gets assigned to your connection.) Similarly, the AS numbering is done autonomously. Of significant note, with the exception of special TLDs like .arpa, determining the contents of the majority of the root domain file is a task done autonomously.

As for the rest of ICANN, pretty much all it does is set policy for the DNS, and arbitrate disputes, etc.

--------

Now, for what should be done with ICANN, the solution is simple.

Split out the IANA as a separate entity under the direct oversight of the IAB, as a group under the ISOC, but not a component of the IETF.

Change the IANA's function to be purely a registry, publishing lists of assignments made by other parties.

Assign the responsibility for assignment of IP address ranges to the IAB. (My understanding is that the IAB is effectively already responsible for those assignments).

Create a fourth significant ISOC organization (Other than the IETF, IRTF, and IANA per above), under the oversight of the IAB. This organization would take the role of setting policy for the DNS, effectively performing all functions of the current ICANN, except those the IANA.

-------

So rather than hand ICANN over to the EU or UN, we hand it over to an existing international organization who is already effectively in charge of the Internet, the ISOC, who breaks it into two separate pieces, and incorporates it into its organizational structure in the usual fashion.

-------

Acronyms:
ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
IETF - the Internet Engineering Task Force
IAB - the Internet Architecture Board
IESG - the Internet Engineering Steering Group
IRTF - the Internet Research Task Force
IRSG - the Internet Research Steering group
ISOC - the Internet Society
RFC - "Request For Comments"

For a more detailed description of those terms see RFC 2860

Sounds like sour grapes to me!

[Jane Q. Public]

And speaking of the war, let's not forget Finland's part in it.

Re:Sounds like sour grapes to me!

[Ash-Fox]

And speaking of the war, let's not forget Finland's part in it.

His link directs to:
http://goldenfail.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/finlandbeafraid.jpg

It is a motivational poster, SFW.

Re:Sounds like sour grapes to me!

[Jane Q. Public]

I don't know how "motivational" it is... but it is interesting, and funny in a way.

Re:Sounds like sour grapes to me!

[dunkelfalke]

Yes, that also motivated Finns to start a war themselves - the so called continuation war. And this time finnish losses were much higher while soviet losses were much lower. At the end of the war Finland had to give up several pieces of their territory, to pay reparations and to fight their former German allies off Lapland.

Pride goeth before a fall.

Re:Sounds like sour grapes to me!

[plj]

I'm Finn, and I think that GP wasn't all that insightful, but you're neither.

We fought well in Winter War, because the nation was very well united. It was, because Stalin's purges of the late 30s had largely targeted Finno-Ugric people in the area just behind our eastern border, and were a rather well known fact among us, even among the political left. That's why everybody knew that it was pretty much a fight about our nation's very existence, and the alternative for that existence would have been a nightmare. Stalin's establishment of Terijoki puppet government and his other known-to-be-rubbish propaganda also stressed that fact. Everybody also knew that Stalin had started a war of aggression (see Shelling_of_Mainila; Yeltsin agreed with that interpretation at 1994).

Soviet army was also very poorly led (again, due to Stalin's purges), had poor winter equipment (and that winter was harsh!), and had been led to believe that Finns would welcome them as liberators. In reality, Finns had enjoyed economic upswing during late 30s, its democracy had gradually became more stable, and the unwelcome war only messed up everything, so the war nothing but fed hatred toward Russians and united the nation.

If Stalin had shown friendly or at least neutral policy towards Finland in first place, neither Winter nor Continuation War had never happened, and we'd been able to concentrate in blocking any German invasion attempts (remeber that Sweden did just that; see military spending). But after Winter War, Finns wanted justice; they wanted back their beloved territory that had been illegally robbed off them (some among us still want it back, even though most of us now understand that it wouldn't make sense anymore). And in that situation, Germany was seen as a lesser evil. We were simply too small to cope alone any longer.

The East Carelian conquest and occupation policy pursued during Continuation War by the wartime goverment generally wasn't supported by the political left, and despite of it and the co-operation with Germans Finns still weren't sympathisers of Nazi policies. Remember that we also had some Jewish soldiers and there were field synagogues for them, all under the very nose of the Germans. (Despite of this, Finland did extradite eight Jewish refugees to Germans at 1942 under murky conditions; they ended up in Auschwitz, and this has later been seen nationally as a very shameful event.)

Former Finland's UN ambassador, who is Jewish, and who fought in Finnish army during the war, once said that he didn't even think about the German danger until 1944, when Finland actively started to seek a way out of the war; only then he started to fear the consequences of Finland's possible separate peace with the Soviets (without German approval), and started to be afraid, whether Germany would attempt to occupy as a result. Before that he only cared about the Soviet danger.

Read English Wikipedia's articles about Winter War and Continuation War. They're very informative, and fairly well balanced, at least comparing to many other sources that often take too single-sided (either Finnish or Russian) viewpoint.

Re:Sounds like sour grapes to me!

[dunkelfalke]

Winter war was a criminal war and a pride goeth before a fall for the Soviet Union.
Continuation war was sheer stupidity (lesser evil is still an evil) and a pride goeth before a fall for Finland.

The world would be a better place if both wars wouldn't have happened.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[ultranova]

If you're going to be honest here Russia would never have been able to make the push into Nazi Germany if the western front hadn't been opened up on D-Day.

And if they would had succeeded, they'd simply captured the whole Europe rather than just the eastern part.

Option 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Option 3. Build your own internet. We build this one. If you want control, build your own.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Hyppy]

Pearl Harbor wasn't the "ZOMG We're in WWII now" moment. Also, landing on the beaches of Normandy wasn't the first US Campaign in the war, either. Both of these are massive misconceptions. The "Yanks" were fighting AGAINST the French and German forces well before 1941. Yes, you read that right. Many, many French were aligned with the Axis powers.

Read up on the North African campaigns. "An Army at Dawn" by Rick Atkinson is a particularly well-written text.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Hyppy]

An exception, to be sure. That's one war movie out of thousands. Ask just about any high-school history student about Russia's involvement in WWII, I'm sure you'll be quite taken back about their lack of exposure to the topic.

Alternative DNS.

[characterZer0]

If the UN set up a competing ICANN and mandated that ISPs in their member regions use the new DNS root servers - which could potentially include all of the existing ones outside the USA, since they are not actually run by ICANN, they just carry ICANN's configuration) then there isn't much ICANN could do. US ISPs would have the choice of either switching to the new roots or having their customers potentially have links incorrectly handled in the future, if the two organisations[sic] didn't keep their configurations in sync.

Great idea. When can they start?

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about every single allied nation. There were a lot of allied nations. You could probably have cut out a few of the smaller colonial states and not made a significant difference in the eventual outcome of the war, though perhaps those particular regions would be different today if they had not fought.

The Vichy government was also useful in some ways--the presence of Frenchmen running the trainyards and civil government, for example, allowed the resistance to mire a train in red tape long enough to let the allies get to Paris, where the train contained the cultural history of France in paintings. (Hundreds of the best works of the renaissance, being stolen by the Nazis. For a more... stylized rendition of that, check out "The Train" on Hulu, which is a good movie.)

Hell No

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello???? The technology used was designed, implemented and governed by the United States since it was created. Other countries adopted the Internet as it is today as supplied by the US. With that being said the United States should govern one of the greatest technology every developed by mankind after all the United States Citizens paid for it. If we choose to use it war time or any other time, that is our choice. If you don't like it develop your own Technology.

Re:Hell No

[Anonymous Coward]

Your specious claims are dealt with earlier in the thread. Please control your use of capitals. That is all.

what will happen to VeriSign's monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

VRSN will lose its monopoly and I think they will fight tooth and nail to stop this. They right now seem to have a stranglehold on ICANN for .com and .net.

The loss to them is half a billion dollars of annual revenue and growing with each domain addition.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the relation between ICANN and WW2 ?
None !

Fragmentation

[pcfixup4ua]

This could be the beginning of the creation of separate "Internets" for different countries or distinct national groups. If each country takes control of its "internet" and creates proprietary standards, they can impose their will on the content of their networks.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Kemanorel]

It would also be considered post-Cold War, so our Ruskie friends were cool again.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, some Frenchmen fought for their homeland in WWII.

The majority did not.

William Shirer ("Berlin Diary", "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich") documented in painful detail how France's military response was paralyzed by France's social conflict between the far Right and the far Left.

The far Right was only too happy to make peace with Germany and set up the fascist Vichy regime. France's dirty little secret is that the Vichy regime was quite popular in France until things started turning bad for the fascists.

The far Left, which dominated French unions (as it does today) was only too happy to see the republic fall. It was the same strategy that the KPD took in Germany; they knew perfectly well that their actions would create a Nazi government, but were certain that it would presently collapse and then they (the Left) would take over.

The French middle was marginalized and leaderless in the 1930s and early 1940s. They were lulled into complacency by the enormously expensive Maginot Line.

The braver elements of the French middle did, indeed, flee to Britain and helped the British war effort. A (very) few others engaged in resistance activities; the French resistance was more the stuff of novels than reality (especially compared to the partisans elsewhere in Europe). The majority stayed home and quiet.

In the dire days of WWII, de Gaulle filled the vacuum as leader of the anti-fascist French middle, although he was a peacock who was more interested in his personal glory than in working cooperatively with the Allies.

With a few notable exceptions (and yes, I will include de Gaulle as an exception even though he often did more harm than good), France's history during WWII was utterly shameful.

Re:Let's play point-counterpoint

[jonaskoelker]

Even if the Pirate Bay is banned in the United States

I think you're falsely assuming I'm from the US. (English isn't my first language; my using "our lawmakers" in response to "Europeans would [...]" implies I'm European, right?).

I'm from Denmark. When I try to go to thepiratebay.org, I'm faced with this: 84.238.1.5/dom.pdf (in Danish, sorry).

It's a verdict from our second-highest court thing which forces $DANISH_ISP to not allow their customers to access thepiratebay.org (and all its subdomains).

Those were private corporations making those decisions

True. Now, why would they make such decisions? I'd say it's highly plausible they'd make such decisions because they believe it's what the people wants. If they rightfully believe so, then at least you can't say that the American spirit isn't "100% free speech, 0% sensitivity".

Maybe it's 90-10 and Europe is 80-20; maybe it's the other way around. Maybe it's 99-1 and 60-40, I don't know.

What I was trying to say: maybe I'm ignorant, but it's not clear to me that it's safe to a priori assume that European control would be worse than US control. Nor better.

Corrected: What the road system is really like

[Bazar]

Lets consider a better analogy.

We build at OUR EXPENSE an entire series of roads, spanning both countries and continents, and we tie the traffic system into YOUR control system.

We REIMBURSE you for your troubles, paying you a small fee for each traffic light you operate (DNS Registration), resulting in cheaper operational costs for everyone.

We however have grown concerned over your ability to operate our traffic as a neutral controller, as some of your states believe they can hijack and disable our traffic lights, if it bothers their locals. They have not been entirely successful yet, but they have caused disruptions that should never of been possible in the first place.

http://blog.cdt.org/2009/01/24/kentucky-court-rules-that-domain-names-arent-craps-tables/

The options we have available to us to minimize US laws/regulations on both our local and international traffic, we have the following options:

1. We leave the system in your hands (and whim), and hope for the best.
2. You hand over the control to an multinational committee
3. We sever our dependence on your system, and create our own. This however will more then likely cause international traffic crashes.

Anyone who thinks that its America's right to retain control over the entire INTERNATIONAL internet will suffer when countries develop their own control system in disgust.

Anyone who thinks America is more reliable then a committee might have a point, but 'because were better then you', is never going to be an accepted reason.

Re:Corrected: What the road system is really like

[Anonymous Coward]

... and we tie the traffic system into YOUR control system.

I see where you went wrong. Lesson learned.

Re:Corrected: What the road system is really like

[ThrowAwaySociety]

We however have grown concerned over your ability to operate our traffic as a neutral controller, as some of your states believe they can hijack and disable our traffic lights, if it bothers their locals. They have not been entirely successful yet, but they have caused disruptions that should never of been possible in the first place.

http://blog.cdt.org/2009/01/24/kentucky-court-rules-that-domain-names-arent-craps-tables/

>

"...have not been entirely successful yet...?" That's some Fox News-worthy spin if ever I've heard one.

Have you even read the URL of the link you posted?
The state of Kentucky itself decided it could not do what it thought it could. See, Kentucky has an appeals court system, whose primary job is to prevent idiots in government from running amuck. And in the case you pointed, it did its job, on its own, without any outside help, before it could cause a problem for anyone. Even the people of Kentucky.

That's about as shining an example of how oversight is supposed to work as I can think of. (And by the way, there are several other levels of oversight above that. Namely, higher state courts and federal courts.) Yes, the US has idiots who will try to seize power, but the it also has a governmental system designed from day 1 to keep those idiots in check.

(Never mind that the state of Kentucky has about as much jurisdiction over ICANN, or the broader Internet, as I do.)

Re:Corrected: What the road system is really like

[Bazar]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/20/kentucky_domain_name_seizure_upheld/

its bounced back and forth, herels one where an appeal lost because a judge though they did have the power, it later got reversed and the domains re-enabled.

They were successful in disabling the domain, but not permanently. That's "not entirely successful". I believe they'll try it again once they try passing new legislation. thats the "yet" part.

Re:Corrected: What the road system is really like

[ahabswhale]

The example you site is pretty bogus since Kentucky has ZERO chance of making that happen. For starters, trade that extends beyond the borders of the state is a federal matter and completely beyond the jurisdiction of a state. This is governed by the US constitution. The only reason the case exists is to influence voters in the state.

Finally, I guess Europeans have never heard the expression, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." As an American, I can assure you that if the US did start doing a bad job of managing things, I wouldn't hesitate to protest our sole control of the internet. We tend to fuck up a lot of things but as it stands right now, it doesn't serve much purpose to turn it over other than to assuage fears that have little foundation in reality.

America Here...

[gzine]

How about we nuke ya for it. If you win you can pry it out of our cold dead hands.

Re:America Here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the typical American response, violence.

Not unexpected in a gun riddled society that sees
nudity as more serious than violence.

You're like 10 year olds with a machine gun, immature but dangerous.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Workaphobia]

Insulting the French is a national pastime for us. I don't really know why, it doesn't make much sense to me. Wikipedia suggested it might be because we have few French immigrants compared to other nationalities, so in effect we're excused from trying to be politically correct to you.

For your information, the people who make jokes about France surrendering often actually believe that France is weak and that their proximity to the Nazis had nothing to do with their country falling. It's an excellent example of the Ugly American archetype.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[elfprince13]

Someone has to bring it up ;)

Why am I modded troll?

[jonaskoelker]

Why am I modded troll?

An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.

Really? I think I'm being on-topic and relevant--I'm discussing particular concerns relating to the relative merits of EU vs. US control over ICANN.

I'm talking about controversial stuff (free speech zone, Mohamed box) but the controversy is whether they're a good thing or not (which I don't talk about), not whether they exist/took place (where I agree with everyone else: they do/did).

The only rude thing I see that I said is "crazy shit goes on in Europe", but that's toward my own people; and I'm being equally rude to US and EU: "I'm not really sure who's worst".

Could someone explain to me why I'm all wrong?

(Or did I just draw the short straw, moderator-wise?)

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Blakey Rat]

I'm sorry, I guess we weren't aware that it was the US' responsibility to look after France's national defense.

How about the rest just ignores the US?

[jonaskoelker]

Yep. The US created the internet. If you want to be the ultimate authority, or let a group of countries have a consensus over a network--go create your own damn Internet.

I know I'll get modded troll, but here goes.

An interesting idea (that will never happen in practice) would be to mirror all the DNS data that's only stored in the US, and probably the RFCs too, then (from the non-US side) drop all packets crossing the US/non-US border.

There we go, now we have our own Internet. What's that, US? You want on it?

I hope it doesn't happen (all my cool shit is in the US). But in case US really becomes too much a problem for everyone else, there's the solution.

Imagine the nightmares when both sides allocate IP addresses previously used by the other side, and the networks have to be merged again...

Speculation: oh the fun! :)

Re:How about the rest just ignores the US?

[Tubal-Cain]

Personally, I can't think of anybody I know IRL that visits a site hosted outside the US.

Re:How about the rest just ignores the US?

[darkpixel2k]

Imagine the nightmares when both sides allocate IP addresses previously used by the other side, and the networks have to be merged again...

We'll just install a huge AmericaRest of World NAT.

Hey--wait! I just solved IPv6! We don't have to switch! (just joking)

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Jaeph]

While I agree the GP needs to be a bit more respectful, you go to far yourself.

"...while the Yanks made excuses and sat around eating ice cream in Times Square..."

I believe the excuse is "nobody declared war on us", which is a damn good one. The more I read about history, the more I believe that a major issue we have in the US is taking sides in wars that do not involve us. We should let other people fight the wars and have the bravery it takes to sit them out. If that means more disengagement from the world to prevent being dragged-in, so much the better.

Yes, that means we sit idly by while the Germans put up concentration camps. Yes, that means watching the slaughter occur in various places in Africa. Yes, that means...you get the picture.

The only wars we should get involved in are defense of our borders, or defense of allied borders, and we should be very, very picky about who we call "ally".

-Jeff

Better Analogy

[TheSync]

This is like saying "Hey Holy See, give up your control of the Catholic Church!"

No one is stopping you from starting your own religion!

There is no law or technical reason why one has to follow the dictates of ICANN.

If you don't like ICANN, start your own! Start using MIME-TYPE "bite/me"! Set your computer and routers to whatever IP address you want! Use the ".ZZZ" TLD in your DNS servers! Go for it!

Re:Better Analogy

[mjwx]

This is like saying "Hey Holy See, give up your control of the Catholic Church!"

They did, he refused and the religious wars that came out of the pope trying to reunify the Christian church under one banner.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[superdave80]

...and the Russians conspicuously absent...

Did the US and Russians ever fight side by side? Weren't US forces driving from western Europe into Germany, while the Russians moved from eastern Europe into Germany?

think betting

[Anonymous Coward]

the us currently casually shuts down companies functioning outside of its juristrction by respecting the judgements of little judges in small towns.

Re:This is a good time to ask for stuff like this

[Hatta]

1) Define fascism

The merger of state and corporate power

2) Tell me what obama's doing that meets the definition.

Given the answer to 1, I think you can answer that yourself.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[MrNemesis]

This would be the film about Stalingrad, probably the most important battle of the entire war in europe, and it eventually gets *one* big-budget western movie about it... that's terribly miscast at best and utterly inaccurate drivel at worst? It's more of a crappy love story with a war gaffer-taped to the side than anything else, which is amazing considering it's based on true events.

Hopefully I'm not alone in thinking that the superlative Downfall/Der Untergang paints a far better picture for "humanised" war movies than any other modern film, and it even bears more than just a passing resemblance to what actually happened.

Not to say the into to EatG isn't awesome though... it's only when the actors start talking that I begin to feel ill ;)

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Anonymous Coward]

Yah, it's not like they helped you at all in your rebellion of the 1770's.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[jggimi]

Film critics who panned it felt much the same.

"..There's never much risk of reality intruding..." "...Hackneyed material..." "...Shows a consistent inability to generate any kind of drama when characters open their mouths...."

The overall consensus among critics was 58% positive, at rottentomatoes.com. That's 42% negative, and sufficient to rate the film *Rotten*.

Create your own

[Hitechwizard]

If the EU doesn't like the way the US is handling ICANN, then they can go through the expense to build their own Internet. When they do, lets make sure they also take posession of the .ru and .cn domains as well, just for giggles. That way when they start whining about how hard it is to control nations outside their jurisdiction, it might sink in to why the one nation/singular control doctrine has worked for so long.

Interesting gaffe...

[Anonymous Coward]

The author of the linked article claims that Reding seeks to "privatize" ICANN, while her own statements show that she seeks to do the opposite: hand over control to a bureaucracy, and one that is likely more friendly to Europe's expression-stifling laws.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[MrNemesis]

Tell me about it - I'm amazed how they managed to make such a complete mess of what would have been the first western depiction of Stalingrad, itself easily one of the most iconic battles and ripe for cinematic exploration. Heck, even the clichéd gung-ho "stereotyped good guys vs. stereotyped bad guys have a ruddy good killing match with lots of CGI intestines" would have been better than what I'll call the "chick flick" treatment it received - sorry, but for a movie about Stalingrad not to turn the stomach at regular intervals was just wrong. Yeah, appeal to a wider audience, maximise returns etc etc... but to me you're just a small step away from giving Schindler's List comedy sound effects.

Although reading the reviews of some of the people on IMDB who gave it 9 or 10 stars is pretty sickening...

Seriously people, if you liked the look of the film and the idea of Stalingrad, please go out and read a book on it. The images you'll see in your head and the emotions you feel will leave you feeling cheated out of the 2 1/2 hours you spent watching that film. Famous excerpt from one of the war diaries of a german soldier:

We have fought during 15 days for a single house, with mortars, grenades, machine guns, and bayonets. Already by the third day 54 German corpses are strewn in the cellars, on the landings, and the staircases. The front is a corridor between burnt-out rooms; it is the thin ceiling between two floors. Help comes from neighbouring houses by fire escapes and chimneys. There is a ceaseless struggle from noon to night. From story to story, faces black with sweat, we bombard each other with grenades in the middle of explosions, clouds of dust and smoke, heaps of mortar, floods of blood, fragments of furniture and human beings. Ask any soldier what half an hour of hand-to-hand struggle means in such a fight. And imagine Stalingrad; 80 days and 80 nights of hand-to-hand struggles. The street is no longer measured by meters but by corpses... Stalingrad is no longer a town. By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames. And when night arrives, one of those scorching, howling, bleeding nights, the dogs plunge into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones can not bear it for long; only men endure.

/slinks off to watch Ice Cold in Alex and remember how awesome war movies used to be. Something about getting off lawns too.

And if they want control

[Sycraft-fu]

Why not make their own system? Make EUCANN. Setup your own system of root servers and so on. Initially, just mirror the ICANN root file. Now, once you've got your infrastructure up and running, and proven it all works well, then contact ICANN. Say "Hey, how about we split root authority, we take authority for EU nations, you keep the rest. We both mirror each other's file." In this case, ICANN might be quite amicable to that. No reason other areas couldn't start doing the same thing. Set up your own system, prove it works well, then ask to get authority over that part.

What people forget, or more likely don't understand, is that the whole thing is just a system of trust. There's no de jure control, no "You have to do this or your get arrested," sort of thing. It is just a system that most everyone agrees to work by.

So your computer trusts its DNS servers, whatever those are. You get to specify those as whatever you wish, though if you use DHCP your ISP will provide you with default ones to use. When your computer wishes to find a domain you ask for, it asks its DNS servers and whatever they say is correct as far as it is concerned. Those DNS servers then trust the roots. If they haven't been given direct information on the domain, they go ask the root servers who they should talk to. The root servers give them the top level. So if you are looking for foo.bar.com the roots will say "Here's who you go to for information about .com," the .com server will then tell you who to go to for bar.com, who will tell you where to go for foo.bar.com.

So, how do the roots know where to send you? Well they trust ICANN. ICANN gives them the root file, and that is what they use. Thus, ICANN has de facto control over it. However, as I noted, this is all just a trust deal. At any time one or more of the roots could stop accepting ICANN updates, or accept them from someone else. Also, there are other root servers, OpenNIC runs an alternate set for example.

So if they REALLY want to control their own stuff well, off you go then. Set up your shit, get it working, then ask ICANN about playing nice. However I see no reason why they should be able to do nothing, and yet tell ICANN what to do.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[AeroIllini]

There is a Cracked.com article in there, somewhere.

I wouldn't be surprised. This article is very old and exists all over the internet.

I have no idea where it originated, but I would love to find out.

Re:This is a good time to ask for stuff like this

[guyminuslife]

1) Stuff that we don't like.
2) Stuff that you don't like.

I strongly believe that celery is a fascist vegetable.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[ScentCone]

Yes, that means watching the slaughter occur in various places in Africa

Should we also stop being the single largest source of humanitarian aid to Africa? Should we stop shipping goods back and forth to and and from areas that come under attack from crazy neighhoring states? Should we retreat from global commerce whenever the neighborhood is taken over by what amount to totalitarian drug dealers, international counterfeiters, and long range missile builders? Should we wait until a militant organization that has attacked us previously in the past does so again, and bigger, before dealing with the far-away government that is harboring and financially supporting them?

If two criminal gangs are frequently shooting it out on the streets you use going to and from work, are you really better off just permanently staying home? Or do you have an active interest in dealing with them, even if they don't actually live in the house physically next door to you?

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Shakrai]

The only wars we should get involved in are defense of our borders, or defense of allied borders, and we should be very, very picky about who we call "ally".

The only ones that I would call "ally" are the ones whose conquest would pose a direct threat to the United States of America. I.e: We should probably get involved if someone tries to conquer Canada or Mexico.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[LeafOnTheWind]

Yes, that means we sit idly by while the Germans put up concentration camps. Yes, that means watching the slaughter occur in various places in Africa. Yes, that means...you get the picture.

Let genocide happen so we can... what? Eat more ice cream?

The more I read about history, the more I believe that a major issue we have in the US is taking sides in wars that do not involve us.

Keep reading. The wars that have been problems for the United States have been those based on our foreign political interests. No one thinks that it was bad that we intervened in WWII, no one would think it bad if we interfered in the Sudan or had done so in Cambodia.

I'm sorry but your need for a traditional cushy American life doesn't abrogate your responsibility as a human being to prevent crimes against humanity. This is not an American responsibility, it is a human responsibility. It just so happens that we have the most power and "with great power comes great responsibility."

Everyone is still missing the point...

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet was created by the U.S. Government. So of course they want to maintain control.

How would you like it if you came up with some invention that took you years and billions of dollars to mature and then after everyone started using it decide they want to take control of it away from you because they use it too...

The rest of the world never needed to join the "internet", they chose to. And now that they have become so dependent on it, they want to strip it away from the people that made and paid for it. Thats just plain silly.

Besides, we have all see just how well the UN runs things. Can't stop people from trying to make nukes or ICBM's, cant stop piracy, cant stop wars/infighting/ethnic cleansing in places like Africa and Bosnia/Croatia... And have we forgotten about all the scandels? Oil for money jog any memories?

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not sure where American naivety comes from regarding WW2 (though for sure it's not limited to your country)- perhaps because the war was mostly something that happened far away and didn't happen on your home soil except with rare exceptions? I guess the folk-memory of the war is life going on as normal and waving off the brave boys to distant lands. Maybe this is something to do with how that war is perceived differently in the USA from Europe?

"Life going on as normal..."? I'm not sure where this naivety comes from regarding American sacrifices for WWII -- perhaps because the American homeland experience during the war was "something that happened far away and didn't happen on your home soil." We didn't just unbox soldiers, tanks and planes from our idle military surplus to send overseas you know. The WW2 years in America were hardly years of plenty. That came as a result of the end of WWII years later. Pot, kettle.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[jcnnghm]

It may have something to do with the fact that, if you ever travel to France, you'll quickly learn what pompous assholes the French, in particular the Parisians, actually are.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Egdiroh]

The Vichy government was also useful in some ways--the presence of Frenchmen running the trainyards and civil government, for example, allowed the resistance to mire a train in red tape long enough to let the allies get to Paris, where the train contained the cultural history of France in paintings.

Good thing too, cause with Germany never having been defeated, we would never have been able to get them back, and it's especially good because as we all know, the cultural history of France is THE most important cultural history in the world. You've won me over, now when asked about the best governments of all time, The Vichy government will be at the top of my list.

As it stands, the problems are known & establi

[dfenstrate]

The problem with having ICANN controlled by a US corporation is that it is subject to US laws and, more importantly, US court rulings. This has caused some problems in the recent past, because even state courts can issue judgements which affect ICANN. It's not just US law, for example, it's California law which governs ICANN.

The devil you know is better than the one you don't.

The fact that everyone says the US has done a fine job so far is the number one reason NOT TO FUCK WITH IT.

The last thing the Internet needs- or anything needs, for that matter- is a bunch of self-styled do-gooders asserting control over something running perfectly fine, and then trying to 'perfect' it.

Does it work? Then don't screw with it.

[dfenstrate]

None of that really matters. We could get into epeen contests about who invented or built what all day long.

The only thing that matters is this: Leave well enough alone.

Screwing with something that functions adequately, in a known fashion, is an invitation to all kinds of mischief, not all of which can be predicted at this time.

If this isn't a backdoor effort to control speech on the web with European-style 'hate speech' laws, then it is nothing more than some internationals wanting their existence validated and their egos stroked.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Patch86]

Nobody declared war on Britain or France either- they both declared war in support of the Polish.

And there's a reason for this: far and aside from humanitarian arguments, Britain & France both reached the conclusion that Nazi Germany probably wasn't going to stop at Eastern Europe. The realisation that you were probably in the firing line anyway will do a lot to make you stick together with your fellow targeted neighbours.

What do we think would have happened to the United States once all of Europe, Asia and Africa were under fascist regimes? And how well would they have fared, with no allies and the industrial might of a whole world poised against them?

We actually don't really need to ask this. Hitler demonstrated quite amply with his treatment of the Soviets. At the beginning of the war Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact. As soon as the Nazi regime decided that they were able to take them, they turned their attentions on the Soviets. And of course, the US was attacked by the Japanese as soon as they thought they could win, too, despite not having declared war.

All the US could have achieved by staying out of the war longer would have been to deepen the hole they would have needed to get out of. It is good for us and good for history that it didn't turn out this way, and that both the USA and USSR were dragged into the war before it was too late.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Spazmania]

the people who make jokes about France surrendering often actually believe that France is weak and that their proximity to the Nazis had nothing to do with their country falling.

France helped us win our revolution and we were grateful.

We liberated France from the Germans and we were even.

We liberated France from the Germans *again* and Charles de Gaulle complained that we weren't nice enough to him in the process.

Between De Gaulle's unmitigated arrogance and the sheer stupidity of the Maginot Line, our national opinion of the French has never recovered. You might say we find their behavior rather galling.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[PGOER]

Most nations tend to view thier battle history in a positive light, personally I am from Canada and according to our history we have never lost a war. WWI and WWII in Europe we had our asses handed to us in alot of battles.

We always allign our selves with the US or GB, but in the case of Iraq, we were already committed to Afganistan, luck for us. Personally I knew it was a bad idea, but US intelegence and the media were extremely blind to the fact that there were lots of UN weapons inspectors telling them that they couldn't find WMDs.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[pnuema]

Our relationship with the French is complicated. But let me make one thing crystal clear - some of us (usually the liberals) have not forgotten our debt to the French. We owe them our liberty, our philosophy, and our country. In our minds, the French will always be fast friends - even if it seems we do not get along. That debt can never be repaid.

That aside:

1. The number 1 European nationality in the US is British. You know what the best thing is between the British and the French? The Channel.

2. After WW2, the US gave lots of money to countries all over Europe. Etiquette was that you paid a token of it back, and the rest of the debt was forgiven. France never made an effort to pay any back, and that has irritated some Yanks.

3. Making fun of the French is, well - fun. The French are a prideful people (and Americans have a bit of an inferiority complex at times), so watching them come unglued when we call them cheese eating surrender monkeys is entertaining. Plus, they love Jerry Lewis, which none of us understand.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[PGOER]

I thought GB got involved in the War because of an agreement to protect Poland, which was in the way of thier attack on France?

The germans thought that GB wouldn't have the spine to stand up to them. Slight mis-calculation

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[dunkelfalke]

They not really fought side by side but they meat in Berlin as you can see on those photos:

http://images3.webpark.ru/uploads46/1418_106.jpg
href="http://victory.rusarchives.ru/img/photos/403_big.jpg

There were even some soviet propaganda posters along the lines of "soviet and allied soldiers are brothers in arms".

Do you WORK for the UN?

[DesScorp]

"You mean like the time when they kicked North Korea's ass out of South Korea?"

Saying Korea was a UN victory is like saying WW II was a French victory. The UN had very little to do with it. The vast bulk of the fighting forces were American and South Korean. That doesn't belittle the contribution of other allied nations, but face it, just five years after WWII, no one else was in any shape yet to fight a major war again. And the point is still moot, as after Korea, the communists wised up and used political tactics to make the UN completely useless, usually with reliable vetoes on the Security Council. And its been that way ever since, with both Russia AND China now continuing the same tactics. As for the Cuban Missile Crisis, that wasn't settled in the UN at all; it was settled in back channels between JFK and Kruschev, basically with JFK capitulating on missiles in Turkey. The UN is just where the best show was. Former UN workers have testified (and even written a book) to the fact that if you're suffering from civil strife, the very worst thing that can happen to you is the arrival of UN "peacekeepers".

Using the Korean War as an example of how well the UN works is like using the Code of Hammurabi as a model for a modern Constitution. So stopping sucking on the UN's teats.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Hyppy]

Putin was in office by then, so I'm not sure if "cool" is the right term.

EU: Check your history books

[bughouse26]

U.S. taxpayers funded DARPA's principle research and development of ARPANET, the precursor for what is now known as the internet. IANA, the agency responsible for managing DNS namespace and IP ranges, was funded directly by DARPA up through 1998 when an act of U.S. congress established ICANN to take this responsibility over from the department of defense.

The United States need not forfeit property rights just because European, Asian, and other nations' decided to connect their sytems and infrastructure to the internet.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Anonymous Coward]

And we have a long tradition of insulting the French. The hand gesture of the "V"s (2nd & 3rd finger making a V) originated from English archers taunting the French. The 2nd and 3rd fingers are used to pull back the draw string on a bow and English archers kicked arse, back in the days.

Not to be confused with the '60s peace sign which is the opposite way around.

What's the motivation here?

[MikeChilders]

Sorry I haven't read all the posts before replying, but a lot of them seem to be off topic. I would like to reflect on some of the conclusions presented here... So what if we (United States) happen to control the ICANN. Why would another country or the EU want to control it? The only answer would be to control OUR Internet! Think about it... If we screwed up the Internet for Europe, for example, they could simply cut us off from the rest of the world, as some have said. DNS is decentralized. only the naming conventions and the addressing scheming is ICANN controlled. Any country who wishes to could create their own ICANN at any time and set up any addressing scheme they choose. IPV6 is an option now and it could be adopted in a European country at anytime with a gateway to the IPV4 land. Or they could simply cut the US from the Internet to the rest of the world. The problem is, the creme of the Internet is here in the US! Cutting us off is not an option. Even the Arab countries who desperately hate us and call us Infidels haven't isolated themselves from the whole US-based Internet because they like our content. The terrorists who were responsible for 9/11 apparently used hotmail for communications! I believe that the US should keep ICANN because WE-CANN. :) I do not see the dangers or the risks in us keeping it. There has been no major problems as of yet. There has been no impropriety yet. The Internet is freely configured and any country or government entity is free to isolate themselves if they wish. The actual intent here with this request to take over ICANN is to take over the US-based internet, otherwise they would just create their own. The US created the Internet and the world piggy-backed onto it. The US didn't threaten to charge a fee to access it. The US didn't censor content from the rest of the world, although the US government has put restrictions on encryption, but that would have nothing to do with whether we controlled ICANN or not. The US has done some stupid things in the past, but the people who "run" the ICANN so far have behaved fairly. It is simply a pride issue. I remember way back when I worked in a data-center that had Novell servers and we all had the supervisor password. Then some admin types moved in from out of town and decided that we network-operators didn't have to have the supervisor password, and we all got pissed. The internet is too important and too fragile to make any command changes when there is no reason to do so. If ICANN were to suddenly take the internet hostage and make demands and abuse their powers, then that would be a different issue. Until then, I just hear a bunch of whining babies who wish .COM was in their country instead of ours, even though it doesn't really matter anyway except for marketing convenience. Show me an unfair situation where the US is bullying the world over the ICANN control or a major problem that was caused by, or ignored by, ICANN and maybe I might change my position...

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[ravenshrike]

The french died because their leaders were dumber than shit. Only two people have led the french to victory, and one of them wasn't properly french.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[ravenshrike]

You could easily have cut out China, since the Japanese pacific operations were limited by their supply lines and an influx of soldiers without the rise in naval capacity wouldn't have helped the Japanese. Although reconstruction afterwards might have been more interesting.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[ravenshrike]

Ahem, then were ordered home. Patton wanted to continue and kick the shit out of the remnants of the russian army but Eisenhower ordered him to stop. Dumbest thing Ike ever did really.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[ravenshrike]

And we helped them at the end of WWI. We were even. But then there was WWII, and after that war Truman being the dumbass that he was, backed the Frenchies claim to Vietnam. Which eventually led us to the Vietnam war, and we all know what a mess that was. Fuck the French.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[thetoadwarrior]

I can't vouch for all school systems or even what mine teaches now but we were taught a fairly balanced view on WW2.

A lot of my fellow students still hold US biased views of WW2 but that's not because of what they were taught but because, naturally, people tend to remember the bits they prefer and of course they prefer to hear about their country being the best.

As you mention, people in the UK can often focus more on the bits that they were more involved in. That's just human nature and some people need to take that into consideration before criticising other people's points of view.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[ravenshrike]

Yes. The humanitarian aid we give does nothing to alleviate the political problems present and often exacerbates them.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Jaeph]

"What do we think would have happened to the United States once all of Europe, Asia and Africa were under fascist regimes? And how well would they have fared, with no allies and the industrial might of a whole world poised against them?"

Foreign trade would have dropped. What do you think would have happened?

As far as industrial might goes, the US was the industrial might of the world at the time. I'm well aware of the production that the Germans, Russians, etc had, but the US was top dog by far and we didn't even really try hard.

Besides, your scenario is a farce. The japanese were already at their limits in China. Even if they had moved armies across the length and breadth of the country, they never, ever could have held it. China would win eventually.

Some argue that the Russians really won the war. I think it's close to that, but I think American and British contributions tend to be undervalued in that calculation. Whatever, the point is you're sweeping aside the Russians without a second thought.

The best the Axis could hope for was surrender and a top-dog status in their respective spheres. They had nothing like the resources it would have taken to conquer the world.

I'll add one more thing - the French and British thinking was fine and goes hand-in-hand with what I was saying. Quite frankly, they were late in their commitment, but again that's a long argument with two strong sides.

-Jeff

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[TheRaven64]

The French Government failed them miserably though

One massive failure which wasn't taught in British classrooms and I learned from a French friend, was that in the run up to the war there was a contingency plan to cede all French colonies to Britain in case of invasion. The fact that this was never put into effect was a massive boost for Hitler. If the colonies had been (temporarily) made British or even independent then the surrender by the French government would not have covered them, and they could have kept providing support in the war.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[TheRaven64]

Should we also stop being the single largest source of humanitarian aid to Africa?

If it comes with the same kind of conditions as your aid in Pakistan then yes, you would probably be doing the world a significant benefit if you did. Does your aid in Africa still come with the condition that it prohibits anything other than abstinence-only sex education, helping to spread AIDS?

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Shakrai]

You've won me over, now when asked about the best governments of all time, The Vichy government will be at the top of my list.

You forgot about the part where the Vichy Government implemented their own racial laws, stripped Jews of their French citizenship and established internment camps.

We invented it. You want ICANN, go invent your own

[Anonymous Coward]

We invented it. You want ICANN, go invent your own Internet and come up with your own ICANN.

U.N. is Worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

So we are going to entrust the most free communications medium in the world to an organization that placed Iran on the UN racism conference? This organization cannot be taken seriously while countries like that have any role whatsoever.

The Internet needs to be controlled by a country that values freedom. We can't allow it to be controlled by an organization that will give racist countries a say in the policies that will shape the Internet.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[mjwx]

Did the US and Russians ever fight side by side? Weren't US forces driving from western Europe into Germany, while the Russians moved from eastern Europe into Germany?

I've never seen Hollywood produce a movie about the battle of Kharkov or the battle of Kursk, which remains the largest armoured engagement in history.

But this was the GP's point, the US has its history of WWII skewed by Hollywood, Australia and Britain tend to have been taught a more objective view in schools, well at least those who graduated pre-2000.

Not going to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA controls the domain names for the internet. This will not change until there is a country less crazy and less useless than the USA. There isn't.

You don't hand over the communications of the planet to a bunch of Europeans that think they wear the big pants. They don't.

The fact is Obama is introducing a bill to make him and the new Technology "Czar" the sole authority on Domain Name infrastructure. When that point is reached, then it'll be time to distribute responsibility- because then America will be no better than Europe or any other 3rd world shithole.

Mmmm, ice cream...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, young French men would rather die by the thousands for America than eat ice cream? Let me answer: no, they wouldn't. Don't lie to yourself.

Remember who invaded Poland

[calidoscope]

Looks like you're forgetting that the European theater of WW2 started when Poland was invaded by Germany and the Soviet Union. This was a few weeks after the Soviets kicked the Japanese asses out of Siberia.

International cooperation

[jandersen]

It is funny to see how the Americans on /. are always up in arms over this subject, as if it would somehow constitute a major loss for America and make your position in the world much more vulnerable. I think what America still hasn't learned is how much more valuable a position it is to be one of the team, rather than the heavily armed outsider.

Let's consider some of the arguments against:

1. The internet was invented by the Americans:

Well, was it really? Some elements of what is now the internet were admittedly worked out by DARPA, but the overwhelming majority has grown up in international cooperation - "Open Source", remember, that rather Communist thing we all praise? The ideas and methods of open source were what drove the whole machinery most of the way, even before the concept was formalised. Looking back, I think the biggest American contribution to computing and the internet has been in the area of monetarisation and commercialisation, not in the area of inventing things.

2. The UN is a complete fiasco and therefore ICANN should remain under US control:

There are two things wrong with this statement - first of all, how do you logically get from the first half to the second? This is just unthinking generalisation - international cooperation in UN "went wrong", therefore all international cooperation must always be a disaster? I kicked a ball and missed the goal, therefore it is impossible to kick any ball into any goal? That's just stupid, if you ask me.

And of course, the UN is not a fiasco, but arguably the first great success story in international cooperation. The purpose of the UN was never to be an efficient World Government, but to be a forum for all nations to meet and discuss things, because meeting up and shouting at each other is a hell of a lot better than going to bloody war over and over. And of course, things might have been running a bit smoother if certain member states were a bit keener on paying their contributions.

3. ICANN is ours, OURS, YOU HEAR!!!!

OK, how about this then: you keep it and we ignore it - instead the rest of the world get together and make our own version of ICANN and all the other stuff that goes into this. You Americans are welcome to go and ask information from our DNS servers and so on, no problem, but maybe we have some of the same hostnames as you use in America; it won't be a problem for us, we just attach a ".us" to all name lookups on the American system, and you can attach, say ".world" or ".reality" or whatever to names outside the US - we don't give a damn, to be honest. I can't see the problem with this.

The thing is that we are trying to establish an international cooperation, whether America wants to imagine that it is all theirs or not. America makes an important contribution to the project, but it is not the only significant contribution; that is indeed the fundamental thing about cooperation. And it is simply not acceptable for the rest of the interessents in the project, that America holds on the the exclusive control of ICANN - they want to have a fair share in the decision process, and they don't feel they have that yet.

It is in many ways a question of American influence. After WWII America dominated much of the world, culturally and economically, but that time is nearing its end, and America will have to get used to not dictating things any more; that is what this is really about. I think everybody can see that it will not make a huge difference to how things are run, if ICANN was not under American control - there is after all only a few ways it can sensibly be done. But the rest of the world, and especially countries like China, Russia and India are not satisfied with allowing the US to hold on to what increasingly feels like an unjustified top position; and the thing is - I can see their point.

Re:International cooperation

[tekshogun]

You last section is like OPEC saying, well, we'll go find another major oil-demander because the US can't have any. . . . I don't think so. You don't turn off one of your biggest sources of income because you decided to act like a five year old. The United States is not going to just hand this service over to anyone. It is not that simple and while many Americans would be fine with it, it has to undergo significant and constant scrutiny. There have been many government funded projects, from the United States, and other countries, that have gone "open" and willingly released to the public. Encryption, IP, Onion routing, NLS (!! Hyperlinks and mouse clicks!), portable open source security elements (POSSE), etc, etc.

Re:International cooperation

[jandersen]

I think my last section is more like saying "OK, we can't agree, but we can just move our seperate ways and work out an interface" - in this case the interface is not too difficult to work out, really. However, there are many good things to be had from cooperating, even in a relatively small matter as this one, and I think the US is taking an unreasonable stance on this. There are no technical or practical reasons why the US should not relinquish control of the ICANN - it is purely a matter of wanting to be seen as the top dog, which is an increasingly unrealistic proposition.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Anonymous Coward]

Britain & France declared war, but they did nothing to support Poland. And they had very good opportunity...

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[mjbkinx]

It's not the only western movie about Stalingrad.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[pacinpm]

Nobody declared war on Britain or France either- they both declared war in support of the Polish.

That's true. They declared war.

And there's a reason for this: far and aside from humanitarian arguments, Britain & France both reached the conclusion that Nazi Germany probably wasn't going to stop at Eastern Europe.

You are wrong. In fact both of those thought Hitler will stop in Poland (or at least leave western Europe intact). That's why they declared wars but didn't help Poland in any other way.

Poland had to fight alone against German and Russian invasion at the same time (people forget that at that time Soviet Russia was German ally). At least our government did not flee at the first sight of danger and we had real partisants.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Patch86]

Oh, no argument there. Although Britain & France both declared war, it was after months (years?) of foot-dragging on the issue. Even once they had "declared war" on Nazi Germany, they continued to drag their feet and hope they wouldn't need to get properly involved, letting the opportunity to help Poland slip away.

But incompetent foot-dragging doesn't preclude the reasoning for declaring war in the first place. Britain & France both knew they needed to do something, but were completely unwilling to actually do anything...

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[chrismeidinger]

The French men and women were brave. The French Government failed them miserably though. Sitting behind their fortifications and ceding the intuitive to the Germans clearly wasn't the best approach to fighting the war.

Yes, the Germans certainly are an intuitive people.

Easy solution NOT..

[ganjadude]

Final solution

agreed, using comedy to hold up a mirror

[fantomas]

Agreed Jeff, I made a cheap joke about the Americans to hold up a mirror to all those folks who idly announce that the French are all cowards and surrender in times of war and tried to get the parent and others to do some more thinking.

I hope you understand I did it in this context to raise debate and my third sentence clarified that I do have upmost respect for the Americans and everybody else who helped the UK when we were fighting against invasion in 1940 and later in the war. I've been to the USAF war graves in Cambridge and seen the rows and rows of graves of young US airmen who came over here and died far from home. Nobody can be failed to be moved by that and respect what they did. You only have to talk to my parents and other folks of that generation who can remember hiding in cellars while the bombs were dropping and coming out to find their streets obliterated and neighbours and friends dead to realise how terrible those times were.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Xest]

"Here (in the UK) I don't remember being taught much more than 'oh, and the Japanese, Chinese and Americans were having a bit of a fight over there too'."

I'm in the UK too and it's certainly something we were taught, primarily because the British were over there too. We still pretty much had a lot of our empire at that time and Australia and New Zealand were still much more friendly and to an extent tied to us, similarly we had Hong Kong and fought with the Chinese.

About the only theatre that was under-taught was probably the Russian front, that's not that it wasn't taught at all, but that proportionally it wasn't given the importance it deserved.

Re:French died fighting while the Yanks made excus

[Anonymous Coward]

Without meaning to sound anti-American, I'd say it's probably partly envy that triggered it originally.

The fact is, France has a long and interesting history that America lacks, but more importantly there is a fair argument that the American war of independence might not have been won without French support.

Of course, one of or perhaps even the single most defining emblem of America is the statue of Liberty, which of course was gifted to America by the French.

Canada, New Zealand and Australia peacefully gained their independence and accept that yes, they are pretty much primarily British in origin, but now they're building their own identity. America fought for it's independence and it seems to stem from that the American idea that it can do everything in the world by itself. It's the American patriotic mindset that leads them to try and push those who were essential to them in the past aside to build a false image that they always have and always will be able to act unilaterally when, where and on whatever they want.

So we're back to the World War II argument - this is again why America likes to think it was single-handedly responsible for winning the war, when in reality it played a smaller part than both Russia, and the Europeans themselves. America is a nation that cannot accept that sometimes, just sometimes, it needs the help of others, and situations in history where it has are either ignored, or twisted and taught in an incorrent manner. It's a nation too young to have a strong national identity like the old world but unlike Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc. it seems to want to build a fake national identity rather than accept that the bulk of their story starts later in the history books.

Don't get me wrong, I love America, it's a beautiful country but I strongly believe the people need to take a step back, figure out who they really are, accept that and perhaps even thank other nations that have played a large part in their history - possibly even those that were once their foes, the British, for establishing what became an independent America in the first place.