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An Argument For Leaving DNS Control In US Hands
An anonymous reader writes "Ariel Rabkin has a piece over at News Corp.'s Weekly Standard arguing that the US should maintain its control over the Internet. After reading his piece, I have a hard time arguing that it should be handed over to some international body."
Well, there is one thing to be said about US control of DNS. Any and all attempts to change the system will be met with years of suits, counter-suits and legal quagmires of the n^th degree before such changes can even be discussed.
That is of course, when it is Americans who are adversely affected by the decisions.
May the Maths Be with you!
Wow a comparison to Hitler, I don't really think you know your history.
~S
Analogy time:
"We don't see any problem without our accountant writing and signing all the checks because we've never had a problem with it before. They're perfectly trustworthy, and so much better than -unknown entity- probably is!"
The time to take control away from someone is -before- they abuse the power, not after. If there's a world-wide organization that can impartially handle this, and handle it well, then it should be done by them. UN was suggested, and while they are weak, they are the strongest international organization I know of that is supposed to be impartial.
Do I want it taken away from us? Heck no. We hold all the power in this area right now. But if we're talking about fair and right, then it really should be handled by the UN rather than any single country.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Actually there have been complaints about how ICANN has run things including some cases where there were disputes about who was the rightful group to handle CC TLDs. In some cases ICANN used these disputes to gain leverage over the parties running the affected CC TLDs.
The guy who wrote the article clearly hasn't done his homework.
Why mess with what is working? Honestly, the US has shown no real heavy hand in managing DNS, why break it now?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Whoa. Godwinned in only three posts.
Wow, a Godwin-First-Post hybrid. The force is strong in this one.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Do we really want the internet domain system to turn into a larger bureaucracy fuckfest? Let anyone who has a problem come up with their own competing DNS hierarchy, a la OpenDNS.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
I have a hard time seeing how the arguments convince anyone other than Americans that it is a good idea. It is a self praising article on how good the US is written by an American in an American magazine.
If the US did not have control of DNS then would the arguments convince anyone to hand the control to the US? No.
Referencing isolated examples of Internet-related free-speech limitations somehow constitutes proof that America is the only country that can manage digital freedom?
We're talking about a country that can't handle a Justin Timberlake exposing an elderly lady's breast on TV.
We're generally impartial and if we ever make a mistake we'll apologize for it.
Actually, even if the mistake isn't our fault, we'll apologize anyway. That's the Canadian way.
What does that massive resource sink have on its list of achievements in, say, the last 30 years? Might as well give it OBL, at least he can do *something*.
It would give some international body actual enforcement power over something. Up until now they only have the power of rhetoric and proclamation (even if they are "binding"). This would create a mechanism for them to actually enforce penalties against non-complying (insert blank here). Given that the international relations are always (by definition) nothing but politics, this would have almost immediate chilling effects on free speech on the Internet.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I dunno... Coast Guard?
The article makes vague speculation about what could potentially happen but neglects to consider that it is the US's ball to hand off.
So if the US wants certain terms (e.g. Freedom of Speech) met when it hands it to an international body they have the leverage to get it.
As far as the "US has never done anything bad with domain names" thing that is bull. The current system basically gives any company with enough money any domain they want and let's not forget the insane anti-gabling domain grab recently.
Subject says it all; The very concept of name resolution would seem to require centralization, but I'm just praying that there's someone out there who is sufficiently smarter than me to have figured it out or sufficiently well-informed that they know of some potential solution, yet who is bored enough to be here to tell me about an alternative.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The Internet should be administered by an international body.
I understand that many Americans want to keep their hands on the project their country invented and advanced, for security or productivity reasons, but the Internet has been so successful because of the international networking it helped achieve.
Otherwise here in the EU we would have used the French standard and I would have posted a similar silly post to the "La BarreObliqueDot"...
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
Wow, a Godwin-First-Post hybrid. The force is strong in this one.
No. That's not the force. That's just a greased up Yoda doll pressing on his brain.
...I think a cogent argument can be made for taking governance of the Internet OUT of the US' hands, and for the establishment of a UN body to maintain DNS and everything else about the Internet. TFA was some of the worst jingoistic garbage this side of RedState.Com. Oh yeah, the Weekly Standard is run by NewsCorp. I understand everything now.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
If there's any kind of central control point in a global architecture, then it's not truly global. Any single governing body (or even a group) will be controlled or dominated by at least one country. Then it becomes a national architecture. I'm all for a different solution, where the industrial model gets broken down and a web of trust gets established. Sure there are issues with a web of trust, but they can be solved with time and money.
I'm personally surprised that there isn't more issue with BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) and it's dominance over the network of networks. I think there's a lot more direct and immediate control there than with DNS.
It's interesting that a lot of fiction scenarios assumed that the global network would be completely decentralized.. and therefore not subject to anyone's control. This utopian illusion is fading away.. because in reality the global network is just a series of cables, and yes, they pass over political borders. I think it is pretty inevitable that the global network we take for granted is going to change drastically, as every country attempts to enforce their particular political and moral stance on the information passing over their borders into their country. It is quite likely that in the not too distant future the internet will be quite a different experience from continent to continent, nevermind from one country to another.. it's already happening..
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
Seriously, get a neutral news report that doesn't have Reagan's face on the page, doesn't have articles like :
-- Conservatism is in good shape
-- The Golden Age of Lobbying : Also known as the Age of Obama.
-- Arabs vs. Iranians : Courtesy of the Jews....
And then we'll discuss as rational people..
Great argument, dicks fuck assholes, assholes just shit on everything, blah blah blah...
Wow a comparison to Hitler, I don't really think you know your history.
Well, say what you will about Hilter but I don't think you can make the claim that he was in bed with RIAA ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Great summary, too bad I have no mod points left.
As for the original one:
After reading his piece, I have a hard time arguing that it should be handed over to some international body.
Either the submitter can't read, or he's completely devoid of critical sense.
The United States could, in theory, set up a renegade, uncensored Internet. But there would likely be significant public distrust, substantial political acrimony, and a great deal of hesitation. We are better off keeping the public Internet free and leaving the social and technical burdens on governments that want to censor. The present system is thus perhaps the best way to prevent the naming system from being used to chill online speech worldwide.
The only problem with his morass of assumptions about freedom is that America does want to censor the internet.
A long time ago Feinstein tried to ban bomb making instructions on the internet, then there was the Communications Decency Act (unconstitutional), followed by the Child Online Protection Act (unconstitutional), ending with Children's Internet Protection Act which the Supreme Court eventually declared Constitutional because it was vastly narrower than its predecessors.
There's other legislation I'm leaving out, but you get the idea.
/And God helps us all if the **AA's of the world get their way.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Seriously. If as some of the folks outside of the USA claim, you have built and paid for your own infrastructure, then you're quite capable of creating your own standards and software just like the Americans did with their own money and brains. Arent' you? All you're really saying by asking for international governance is, "It's great. I don't feel like doing the work to get it. Gimme the thing now." Asking for it to be turned over to a consortium (i.e. and "international" body) without even th suggestion payment of any kind sort of takes gall to a new level.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
TFA raises a valid point but overstates the case. ICANN's work is indeed politicized, and one need look no further than the disparate fates of the .sex and .info TLDs to see that. On the other hand, it's hard to believe that something run by the U.N. would be any better.
In reality, though, DNS has lost much of its original importance. This becomes clear when you consider that all but a handful of Alexa's top 20 sites have names that have no real connection to the business. They're just rarely used words that lack much meaning in everyday life (Google, Amazon) or entirely made up (wikipedia, ebay). There are already alternative public root servers, and while these lack popularity, it shows how easy it would be for a distributed naming system to gain a foothold.
The real outcome of handing the rootservers over to an international committee would be to hasten the day when there is no longer one unified DNS, a day we'll probably see before too long anyway.
Just google the .xxx extension and why we don't have it yet. Seriously and I know this will offend some people, but the internet and the DNS is of too much importance to be in the hands of 1 party. What if the USA goes berserk, something that from an European point of view is totally possible, and they pull the plug? They should not have this power in the first place.
and if we wish to protect the free speech rights of Americans online, we should not allow Internet domain names to be hostage to foreign standards
So the americans want to keep control of the internet in order to keep rights that are only upheld within their country. Since the americans don't apply these rights elsewhere - (a small thing called sovereignty) their desires to retain control of the internet are merely selfish.
As it is, every country wants to do exactly this: control the internet for their own purposes - just because the americans got there first is no reason why the situation should continue as it is.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
No, no, that would be the UN resolutions that got them into the conflict.
But wait, the UN is a powerless talking shop, according to the rest of the comments here.
Anyone else get that warm tingle of cognitive dissonance?
Pope still Catholic, bears poo in woods, nothing to see here, move along.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
You should listen.
Not that I think that the IANA is really broken but this article does nothing to convince me of anything. A bunch of "things aren't broken why fix them" arguments combined with some vaugely offensive, jingoistic, BS that the US is the "only country that believes in free speech". To be honest I think the main reason we haven't seen the US attempting to abuse this is because historically the people in charge simply didn't have any idea what they were doing.
After all it's "not a big truck"
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, was the internet not designed, developed and 'released' through the US Department of National Defense and Universities? If it wasn't for them, we probably would not have it. The US has had control of the internet since it's inception and appears to be working pretty good the way it is being managed now. Leave it the way it is.
Really? That came from someone who attends UC Berkeley?
He's obviously not taking his daily recommended dose of LSD. Or, maybe taking too much.
That's an argument *against* government control of DNS. The article is arguing the opposite, that no one should be allowed to set up DNS servers except bureaucrats in the US government. From the article:
The present system is thus perhaps the best way to prevent the naming system from being used to chill online speech worldwide.
In other words, schemes like OpenDNS that are not supervised by the appropriate government authorities are prone to censorship. The article drives the point pretty hard that DNS allocations should be the exclusive privilege of a government elite. I completely disagree, and I suspect that you would too if you reflected on it.
in an ideal world...sure...an impartial, neutral multi-national organization should handle it.
in the real world, that ain't the UN. Just look at their handling of things (just look at the recent examples: North Korea, Georgia, Darfur, etc.)
The UN is a political, partial organization where a lot of things are broken.
One of the oldest adages comes to mind: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"
Even with the current flaws, there are more protections in the US than there are with the UN.
You obviously dont know about "Hitler Yodels the Classics" from EMI. Theres a number of Top 20 hits on there including "Blitzkrieg for you my love" and the ever popular "Gassing Jews in the rain". Available from all good retailers.
If USA were truly pro-free speech they would of permitted the implementation of .sex and .xxx namespaces.
Its nothing to do with what I think about porn, it has a practical use that allows people to quickly identify with the subject matter and to allow software to classify it as so.
The conservative government simply did not want this to happen, and they have successfully lobbied hard to stop these practical namespaces to be implemented.
Creating an Internet wasteland of "filth" may have some merit, but I highly doubt it will lead to an increase in people watching it. Most large, modern cities have "saucy" areas, but just because they are there doesn't mean every citizen visits everyday.
I still believe this process needs to be apolitical as noted, without government intervention - its the only way. I do not accept that the US has a higher ground than other forward thinking countries in this matter.
> Let anyone who has a problem come up with their own competing DNS hierarchy, a la OpenDNS.
Erm, OpenDNS has nothing to do with this. OpenDNS uses the existing root servers - the existing hierarchy - for name resolution. Then, they apply big blacklists and transformations to the bulk of the data. Typing in a slightly wrong domain will be auto corrected and bounced to the proper domain, "bad" domains (malware, etc) are blocked, and questionable content can be filtered.
(In fact, it is these very same practices that have got quite a few ISPs in trouble with their customers. Verisign pulled the same stunt with the .com TLD some time ago, and caught unbelievable crap for it. Why some people love OpenDNS but hated on Verisign for that I'll never know or understand.)
It has NOTHING to do with root DNS control. It depends upon the existing infrastructure, and does little more than sanitize it. They don't handle domain registrations, TLD management/control, and they don't manage authoritative nameservers for their customers domains.
They are, in fact, not a competitor in any form, but instead they are quite dependent upon what we already have in place. This has absolutely nothing to do with OpenDNS in any reasonable way I can think of. They are absolutely not a "DNS hierarchy" as you would imply.
Nope, I can't see anything wrong here. Everything is as it should be. Move along, citizens.
Internet domain names (such as www.google.com) are managed hierarchically. At the top of the hierarchy is an entity called IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, operated on behalf of the Commerce Department.
Not correct. ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is under contract to DOC. ICANN has two components: control of the DNS root and control of the IANA. IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority deals only with numbers: IP addresses, protocol numbers, AS numbers, port numbers, etc. IANA is almost completely unrelated to the DNS.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Then don't fix it!
Of course we Americans will do this for the rest of you brown skinned people. It is our burden and we know how corrupt you would be if we let you have any say in the matter, considering how inferior you are to we incorruptible shining white beacons of light and hope.
Yes, it is sarcasm.
I'm not talking about the Jehovah's Witness booklet thing but the space station the Justice League uses for a base. I'm not quite so sure that we should turn an important part of the internet over to aliens, mutants, robots, and magicians but the wealthy, tech-savvy folk of the Justice League seem like a good bunch to run DNS. They really shouldn't host the actual servers in orbit as it would be expensive on hardware and maintenance, logistically difficult to accomplish, and most importantly response times would suffer.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
Wow, looked at some of his previous posts... He's like that in most every one. Good stuff if you need a laugh.
Yes, the US has its problems, but I trust American commitment to free speech and non-bureaucratic efficiency far more than the UN's ability to administer something as important as this. The UN lost a lot of my respect when Ahmadinejad gamed the system to give the anti-racism speech. I have no confidence that the UN can't be manipulated in other ways since there's no obvious way to keep it accountable, whereas if the US impinges on free speech we can sue it.
Do we really want the internet domain system to turn into a larger bureaucracy fuckfest? Let anyone who has a problem come up with their own competing DNS hierarchy, a la OpenDNS.
I either misunderstand your point, or you greatly misunderstand OpenDNS.
I'm no expert on DNS infrastructure, but I do understand the basics. OpenDNS appears to be a "free (beer)" set of DNS servers, not an "alterate DNS hierarchy." OpenDNS conisders the same machine names authoritative for .com, .net, .org, etc., that everybody else does-- which is, of course, the infrastructure this article is talking about.
If that's not the case, please explain-- and I'll be sure to be using a different set of DNS servers tomorrow.
Who is RTFM and when will he help me with Unix?
As a card carrying neo-nazi, I resent you comparing the US to Hitler.
Hitler would have efficiently rounded your jew ass up by now and gassed you.
The only solace us Anonynazis can take is that geeks such as yourself will never have a girlfriend to propagate your genetic filth with.
BAHAHA!
If you want it, come and get it, pansies! Want to play "King (America) of the Hill(DNS)" anyone?
If you're good enough to take control of something the king allows for using unconditionally and without taking away anyone's part, then have at it. America should fight to keep it. Everyone else can make their own damn hills if they don't like the king's. Damn lazy bums can't build their own with a shovel and a mile of dirt underneath them.
_|_ *_* _|_ to the world, you greedy bastards
Noisome
The non country specific gTLDs are the problem, .com, .net, .org, ....
When using "country" specific gTLDs such as .uk, .us, ... then decentralized name resolution is deligated to each country.
If the root only contained "country" specific gTLDs, your suggestion might be possible. Another advantage is that the laws of that country can apply to the domains registered under that deligated space. .COM is global in scope so legal juristiction is ambigious.
Given some of the comments above, you could give control of .int to UN, but as was said much better by others above, giving full control to UN would be a huge mistake.
The time to take control away from someone is -before- they abuse the power, not after.
So innocent until assumed to be guilty at some unspecified later date? Awesome!
UN was suggested, and while they are weak, they are the strongest international organization I know of that is supposed to be impartial.
The UN? Home of the Human Rights Council lead by Yemen that wants to globally censor any criticism of Islam (see the anti-blasphemy resolution 62/154)? The same UN that elected Sudan, home of the Darfur ethnic cleansing, to a human rights commission?
Weak? You jest! Why when the specter of genocide appears on the Earth, the UN rushes in an observer who stridently and immediately issues a report! Take that, evil doers!
Considering the RIAA formed in 1952, 7 years after Hitler's death, yeah I would say that is a pretty safe bet. Completely irrelevant, but safe. On that note he was never in bed with Microsoft either, much to the chagrin of many Slashdot readers...
"But this one goes to 11!"
FTA:
Firstly, the department of defense collaborated with educational institutions to create the Internet. The things he's extolling about the Internet are in fact the things that come from excessive U.S. government intervention in the network.
If private industry controlled the tubes half as much as they want to, we'd all be paying out the ass for pay-per-view YouTube videos. Thank God for American government.
You're an enormous stereotype. I'm wondering if you are in fact a human cartoon.
That's because you're an American.
Last time I checked, the World Wide Web(WWW) was not The Internet. The WWW consists of Hyper Text Markup Language(HTML) running over Hyper Text Transfer Protocol(HTTP) and nothing more. It happens to run on top of The Internet that was already in place before Lee had a clue.
The Internet is an interconnection of physical networks. These interconnected networks or Internet carry much diverse data over many protocols. Examples include Simple Mail Transfer Protocol(SMTP) without which there would be no email. There are also several Instant Messaging(IM) protocols. Files are transferred using the FTP protocol and Voice over Internet Protocol(VoIP) carries voice and video without relying on anything that Tim Berners Lee ever had anything to do with.
Simply because you are of limited experience or understanding does not make The Internet what YOU think it is. In other words; TEH INTARWEBS IS NOT THE INTERNET!
If it ain't broke - don't fix it. -- That's because most system failures occur after PM [preventive maintenance].
FYI, The Internet is the successor to arpanet, beginning with Honeywell IMPs, etc. over 30 years ago, NOT with Tim Berners-Lee and his www app that ran over the net, which he did at CERN in the 80's. There are also many other protocols besides http using the foundation of the Internet. Most people did not have access to the Internet until it was opened up to the public for domains in addition to university and military in the 90s.
If you don't know what you are talking about, be quiet and listen. You may learn something.
Obviously it's possible for any national government to make biased value judgments (one might even say that it's necessary some of the time)
Isn't the purpose of any governmental organization to make value judgments that have the same bias as that of its constituents?
It's not just inevitable, or sometimes called for. It's their duty.
That being said, any government is boneheaded if it implements policies whose effects are contrary to its goals, even if the policy through appeal to (misguided) common sense sounds like it achieves the stated goal.
(A particular case: increasing taxation may decrease government revenue because people work less so there's less exchange of money to tax.)
what a load of crap. I think the world as a whole has learned that the US government cannot be trusted with a damn thing. And on the subject of abuse.... what about the massive data mining of most major internet links by the NSA... have we all forgotten about that? The US is the freaking poster child for corruption, greed, and abuse of power. This jokers arguments are weak at best
I guess you really didn't read it. If the US ever abused it's power then all that an other country would have to do is set up it's own version of ICANN and make their ISPs use it.
Of course they will not and this is really all a tempest in a tea pot. No country really wants to run it because they don't want the heat. As long as the US runs it they can blame everything on the US.
Oh you don't like those websites? Well we can not stop them since the US runs it.
In all there is no more reason for the US to give up control of ICANN than there is for France to give up control over the FIA.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
A self consuming American perspective. .XXX and patriot act-esque snooping of plenty of my otherwise private data. Also this author's credibility is skeptical -- exactly what censorship has Canada enacted over the net? Great research indeed.
The idea that American style freedom of speech is somehow superior to other G20's freedom of speech is laughable in the post Bush era, with the potential exception of the UK.
Let's not forget that the Americans invented the internet as a military tool and likely continue to see it that way. The pentagon has surely already considered what a great power total control of the internet would be during a time of war. This is why they will keep the status quo. Besides, we've already seen amero-centric management of the internet -- what with no
Does France suddenly start regulating wine according to EU standards? Does any government just give up valuable research apparatuses and functions for some so called 'public good'? Even participants in the CERN program don't get a free ride. DNS servers run on US equipment, were made by US citizens, and was paid for by the US government. What would the UN like next? Would you like control over GPS? Satellites? How about you just regulate our economy too, since much of the world relies on US-based companies. The international community is asking the US to give up a valuable strategic resource FOR FREE. It's true that giving away things to people that need it is morally right-Âbut you don't give away your life savings to free, right? The US already contributes billions of dollars to random foreign aid and the UN. Quite frankly, the day I think we should give up DNS is the day the UN starts subsidizing high-speed internet connections for everybody. Until that happens, you can live with it.
Give control to France.
They'll surrender control to the first party who asks nicely.
(Sorry. Just kidding. I have seen the crosses. Sadly, I can't remember all the names on them.)
...because it's fair AND balanced!
How the hell did it get all the way up there?
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
From 1986 to 1999 it was run autonomously. Sure the US paid for it (15K/yr as a part time project) but whatever Jon Postel decided was fine. Jon would measure the consensus of the net and implement it. During this time the DNS went from 0 to 250+ TLDS.
When the US government assumed oversight in the period 2000 to now 10 new tlds were created at a cost of nearly a billion dollars. And the registration process for .com became the most inept sleezy shit ever seen on the net.
"The US" or "another country" or group of countries is not the answer.
The dns should be administered by the poeple that know what they're doing in terms os techical, legal and social policies and governments of the world has zero say in this.
The internet is not some "thing" that needs to be administered. It is not a public resource!
There are millions of private networks and we all agree to use TCP/IP and DNS to interoperate. Not one bit of it is a puboic resource. It's all privatly owned. You own your bit, I own my bit. Do we really want some government telling us how we use our computers and what we can do and can't do?
The USG and ICANN are the worst things that ever happebed to the net. They stagnated it as a single point of failure by having a choke hold on the A-ROOT of the legacy DNS.
There are better and more appropriate ways.
Need Mercedes parts ?
"On that note he was never in bed with Microsoft either, much to the chagrin of many Slashdot readers..."
IBM, on the other hand...
This has been a coming since the first root servers.. the power struggle for DNS.. as countries get more technologically capable and see the real power of what that means, either it will be controlled by everyone or we will end up with a segmented DNS as they run off and do their own..
a godwin already? also, maybe we should hand it over and let britain and australia and maybe even saudi arabia and china censor our internet for us too! great idea!
The stories and info posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
Only fools would take it as fact.
we have very large penises so we should maintain control.
My other sig is a knife wound.
The Internet was developed using "our" (U.S.) tax dollars, from DARPA, then the NSF, and now the Commerce Dept. It's "our" (U.S.) sandbox, people. "We" "allow" you to play here. If you don't like it, tough titties. Make your own. Handing IANA, ARIN or any part of Internet over to the stuffed, corrupt shirts in the UN opens it up to all kinds of abuse by the various national, religious, and ethnic special interest groups that have taken over the UN and run amok. At least our stuffed shirts currently running things can tell the stuffed shirts at the Commerce Dept., "Um, no, and here's why...".
Nothing to see here but us trolls...move along...
Is that it is even possible to be politically neutral, when in reality attempting to be neutral will always land you in a catch-22 situation. Ask China what they think of the .tw extension. Is it politically neutral from their view? No. Would taking the extension away be politically neutral either? No.
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
Trouble is, the ITU isn't an impartial international party. As at least one other person has pointed out, the ITU doesn't like that phone calls can be made over the internet (because it cuts into their phone networks' profits). I don't know if the ITU makes any money, but I certainly would not be surprised if the companies who work with the ITU were to try to pressure them into blocking VoIP domains.
No, mostly cognitive incoherence.
JOIN US FOR PONG!
the routers, the machines the power and the support infrastructure of the ENTIRE INTERNATIONAL INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE????
Shit, you may as well say that you should all give your TV rights to Scotland since it was John Logie Baird who invented the television.
FFS, you had an idea.
Others have paid for the infrastructure in their own country.
And just because the US government came up with the frigging protocol YOU want the US to own it????
PAY FOR YOUR OWN FRIGGING NETWORK.
While you can never have a totally decentralized, as in each client on the Internet is equal, thing you can have it so there are multiple authorities at each level, each responsible for their own little slice. That's already the case with DNS at the low level. Your DNS servers are the absolute authority for your computers. Whatever they say, goes. If you don't like an answer they get from somewhere else, you can change their configuration to override that. However they are the authority only for those that choose to use them. They aren't the authority for me, I don't use them.
Now going up the chain you get to the top which is the root zone, which ICANN controls. The reason it is authoritative for most of the Internet is because it is what the root-servers.net roots trust and most DNS servers trust them. What it does is specify who is authoritative for a given domain. So for .ca it points to the CIRA's servers, as an example. What could happen is the root zone could be split. Different organizations would maintain different parts of it, and then the roots would use those to determine who is authoritative for what domain.
So the proper response to the US's control isn't to whine, it is to make your own. The EU should form EUCANN. Get that running, initially just mirroring the ICANN root zone, get your own root servers up and running that trust EUCANN. Then, contact ICANN about splitting the zone. They take the EU part, ICANN keeps the rest. The US might be amenable to that. Now repeat that process for all sorts of different regions. Have a bunch of top level organizations, each responsible for small parts of DNS space that then give their changes to others and run their own roots.
You'd end up with a system that no one person/country was in charge of. You'd also end up with a system that if one person flipped out, it wouldn't matter to the rest. Let's say that ICANN goes nuts and decides to get rid of all domains but .us and .com. Ok fine, well the other organizations would just ignore their changes. The roots that trusted ICANN would do as they wanted, but the other roots would not. ISPs could then use the non-broken root servers. The damage could be routed around.
The problem is that's not what the international community wants. They want the US to hand over control of infrastructure they built, so that the UN or someone like that can have central control. They don't want to have a system where they have control over their area, they want to be able to control other people too.
After reading his piece, I have a hard time arguing that it should be handed over to some international body.
That's because, like him, you're a nationalist xenophobe.
I mean, the argument boils down to this: America has the First Amendment, therefore we are the only entity capable of not censoring the internet via withholding access to an arbitrary (though ubiquitously popular) namespace. The insinuation is that other countries do not have the First Amendment and therefore, all of them collectively would present the possibility of such (questionably effective) censorship.
Well, how does this argument stand up against the real (though non-American and therefore unreliable) world? Let's take the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights:
Article 19.
* Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Well, that's just a UN Resolution with no binding effect, and only reflects a general sense of the body rather than something they all commit to, right? As Rabkin says, "Most countries lack our First Amendment tradition." Well, let's take the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty that 150 countries signed 30 years ago:
Article 19
1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
But none of these statements ensuring freedom of speech compare to the sheer Holy Writ that is the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Many other First World countries already have government-imposed restrictions on Internet speech that we would not contemplate here.
Because the United States has never, ever, ever, contemplated restrictions on free speech, proving just how trustworthy we are with the world's speech. Of course, Rabkin does not offer any specific examples of un-contemplatable restrictions on speech imposed by other First World nations, nor does he bother to prove the point that the U.S. has never done anything similar (because he can't).
Nor is he at all concerned with people in other countries who may also enjoy free speech, including speech that isn't legal in the United States -- the compelling need is not to ensure the freedom of the world's people, but as he makes clear: "If we wish to protect the free speech rights of Americans online, we should not allow Internet domain names to be hostage to foreign standards." Aha! It's the bogeyman of "foreign standards", which all good Americans rightly fear, because they are all, by virtue of being foreign, simply inferior to our own standards (whatever they may be).
But what disgusts me most about Rabkin's screed is that someone capable of putting his name on something so baseless, undefensible, xenophobic, fear-mongering, and full of straw-man arguments, was accepted to a doctoral program, and printed in a major magazine. Of course, it's The Standard, what did I expect? Not well-thought out global technology pieces, that's for sure.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
To make an argument toward changing a policy that has worked over a long period of time, you need (at least in my opinion) to have a really good case in your favor.
First, you need to have a real problem that creates an issue for a large percentage of the users that cannot be addressed in any other way but by changing that policy.
Second, your policy has to be able to solve the problem in an effective and efficient way.
Third, you need to have a new policy that would address this real problem in a way that doesn't create its own real issues that could affect other percentages of users in a problematic way. I am not convinced ceding US control of DNS to an international body meets any of the 3 criteria (let alone all 3) I have for changing a policy. If any of you disagree with me, could you address my 3 areas of concern? Thanks!
Hypertext works over shared memory. It works on hard drives. It works on telephone and X.25. It works on sattelite links and wireless networks.
WHAT THE FUCK makes it work ONLY on the internet???
PS you still owe British Telecom for the decades of theft of their patented (in the US completely validly, at least as validly as any of the shite you have in your patent office) hyperlink tech.
PAY UP.
Ok, whoever the braindead mod was that just ranked parodyca's post offtopic needs to get a clue. I might totally disagree with him, but his totally incorrect view is very much on-topic.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
The USA created ARPA in Febuary 1958 in resonse to the launch of Sputnik by the USSR on October 4, 1957.
The inter-computer transport medium that eventually became 'the internet' of today was tested successfully on October 29, 1969 and was named ARPAnet.
(Sir) Tim Berners-Lee conceived the World Wide Web, in March 1989. He tested it successfully on 'the internet' on 25 December 1990.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee
The article refers to IANA, but I think it means ICANN.
The article's author apparently did not read IANA's About page, which states what every Internet geek already knows:
IANA executes policy; it does not create policy. Policy-making is left to working groups within ICANN and elsewhere.
Your point that the US is hardly a sterling example of protecting civil rights is valid. However, that doesn't change the fact that the US does have much more robust protections of free speech than many, many other countries, including some that outdo us in other areas of civil rights. European countries, partly in an attempt to protect the rights of minorities, generally have much harsher laws concerning "hate speech" and libel than the US, and most non-European countries routinely censor content they deem to be against the interest of the ruling parties. I'm as appalled at some of the recent US actions as anyone. They're a shame and an embarrassment to a country that is supposed to be "...the land of the free..." But I don't doubt that the article is spot on that US control results in a much freer Internet than would be the case under an international overseer.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
it was ... forced?
Sorry I just could not resist.
Is the best name system that we can come up with DNS?
Come on, all ya all, think of something better and give it a write.
When we _all_ know that it was an American who did that.
Al Gore.
Humour aside, he was the one that was pushing to have it change for academic-only to completely open. A position he was able to push effectively once he became VP.
His father (Al Gore Sr.) presided over, and pushed for, the interstate highway system. That helped bring trans-American commerce (previously it was only two-lane roads everywhere).
Al Gore Jr. wanted to have the same thing happen with information / computing, and I think it's fair to say the experiment has been fairly successful thus far.
Britain, Canada, and Australia all have mandatory nationwide blacklists of banned sites
Umm, while I can't speak for Britain or Australia, Canada most definitely does *NOT* have a mandatory nationwide blacklist of banned sites.
What we do have is Cybertip.ca, who provide a child porn black list to *PARTICIPATING* ISPs (as in *OPTIONAL*). If you worry that the censorship will expand to other categories, you can always pick a different ISP or DNS provider.
Subject says it all; The very concept of name resolution would seem to require centralization, but I'm just praying that there's someone out there who is sufficiently smarter than me to have figured it out or sufficiently well-informed that they know of some potential solution, yet who is bored enough to be here to tell me about an alternative.
Well, BGP seems to work pretty well without a centralized control scheme. Perhaps each country can run its own TLD, and the TLD's of the world could just work in a peer fashion along the same lines as BGP works between ISP's.
But I do agree, stop wasting time fighting over if, when, and where control should migrate, and figure out a way to simply not rely on such control at all.
Rupert Murdoch and his news corp would argue everything and anything should be in US control.
/lobby/ the UN. Someone from Florida sitting in DC has no idea whats best for me, and barely has my interests at heart, some one from Thailand, sitting in international territory at the UN in New York is 100 times worse. /rant
That being said if someone gave better suggestions then vague ideas about giving it over to the UN, I would support it.
persnolly I would like a lightweight INDEPENDENT international body to run it as a private entity. I.E the board of directors would be composed of one member from each joined country. The countries involved would be those with a lot of internet infrastructure. Of course it would be western biased, who cares. Although, china and Russia would likely get seats. It would still be biased but it would be in enough different hands for one country to not have too much power. Every few years it could add members as it deemed them worthy.
There is no reason we need to give every single country a say in it (sorry), and that's what giving it to the UN would be doing. It's main propose would to keep the status quo it's in, and not to become moral or political czars. All that kind of stuff can and should be done at the ISP level and the national law level. YOu have a problem with it, you go through your national courts and legislature.
On a personal note the more you add layers to government, the more disenfranchised you become. Giving another censorship power to the UN is scary. I can sue my state, or defend myself in courts, or have a group like the EFF help me sue them, It's already pretty impossible to influence the national leaders, but at least I have the courts after the fact if they make weird decisions. I can't even
The idea might have lots of problems, but my point is give me a better idea then what we have, not just different one and say it's better just because it's not the US.
the international phone system works very well _because_ there is no county code for "earth"
similarity there should be no non-sovereignty specific tlds
the current situation is untenable, it's like Iran being in charge of some of the local area codes in Utah, but replace the numbers with letters....
I was reading the article, and the phrase "The White Man's burden" suddenly popped into my head... Did this happen to anyone else? In the context of the US being such a strong force for democracy and peace in the world, I found a number of the following lines from this totally unbias and impartial article quite humorous: "In order to please our European allies and our Third World critics" "America's special role in managing the Internet is good for America and good for the world." "Until now, the management of the Domain Name System has been largely apolitical" then almost immediately after this factoid "Political questions like "Who is the rightful government of Pakistan, and therefore the rightful owner of the .pk domain?" are settled by the U.S. Department"
"There have been no serious complaints about American stewardship of the Internet, no actual abuses perpetrated by American overseers."
"Britain, CANADA, and Australia all have mandatory nationwide blacklists of banned sites, managed by nongovernmental regulators with minimal political oversight."
"If we give control of the Internet naming infrastructure to an international organization, we must expect attempts to censor the Internet"
"Most countries lack our First Amendment tradition" This one really made me laugh...
I would go on,but, I am practically copying the article verbatim. Oh and by the way, who needs citations or footnotes? They are as useless as things like facts, and proof, and research.
Irony is a wonderful thing.
Any discussion over DNS control should include a discussion about Site Finder as that happened under control of the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_Finder
OK, then try this, asshole. We invented it. It's ours. You other piss-ant countries want your own Internet? Fine. Go run your own alternate root name servers. See how many people use them. See how well your own populace likes your Internet as opposed to the real one.
Am I a nationalist? Damn right. Nothing wrong with that.
Am I a xenophobe? Not at all. I spent a large portion of my life living abroad, and while I know there are things in the US that are fucked up, I never found anyplace that was less so. In fact, most places are even more screwed up than we are.
The cranial-rectal extraction surgery shows they were inserted close enough to each others that apparent approximation was enough to have the effect.
Oh wait, am I in violation of HIPPA laws now?
The Nazis were executed for planning and waging an aggressive war.
Nothing else.
Just that.
The US invaded another country on a pretext and ignored anything that said it wasn't needed.
Planning and executing an aggressive war.
ICANN is not a democracy, but DNS is. Or to get all pedantic and lame, it's a republic. You vote for your representative when you edit /etc/resolv.conf. The representative that you chose votes for Supreme Leader when he sets up his recursive resolver.
Here's the real reason no international body has the "right" to take control of DNS from the US: because they haven't bothered to form and take that right. Nobody has bothered to assert it. Nobody ever votes for anything but the status quo. So what are you complaining about?
On that note he was never in bed with Microsoft either, much to the chagrin of many Slashdot readers...
They always talk about the escape subs to antarctica, but maybe that was just a diversion, and Hitler actually took a sub to Redmond, where he shaved his mustache and changed his name to Gates and raised a son?
And those Nazi human-animal hybrid experiments? Ballmer. It explains a lot if you think about it.
All I'm really saying is, I'm not ready to give up on the Hitler-Microsoft connection just yet...
The US will always control the Internet by virtue of having the biggest pornography industry.
It probably should also be noted that even with all that has happened, the longest it can happen in the US under a single president is 8 years and there is the opportunity to end it every 4 years.
We also have most of what has happened under the previous administration like due process and so on administrated by the courts and more notably US Supreme Court which went against the administration on more then a couple of events.
So even when something does happen, it's not permanent nor is it out of the realm of being addressed. Look at how the courts went against some of these attempts to censor content.
It already is.
The issue here is whether ICANN, who owns the most important DNS root, should be given to an international body. (ICANN is currently a non-profit organization in California)
IMHO, it's utterly ridiculous. The UN, or European Union, or the PRC, or some random scam artist in Nigeria has as much right to ownership of ICANN as they have right to ownership of Microsoft. There are zero technical barriers from preventing them from starting their own ICANN clone (or Microsoft clone) and running it in any fashion they see fit. In fact, several organizations already have - it's just that people generally ignore them.
All your FDQN are belong to US!
Is there *any* real evidence of this being true? Thanks to many laws and court rulings it seems like the DNS system would be better off outside of one countries control.
It's strange how people make this "America is the most free" argument with no real data to back it up. The reality is most countries have equal or greater freedoms than the US, and have for the past 100 or so years.
To point to colonial England as evidence against DNS being in international control is just silly.
That said: who was one of the last "first world" countries on earth to outlaw slavery? Land of the free? Yea. Sure.
America has as many faults as any other country.
It's about ensuring that one countries faults and corruption can be balanced out by other countries.
The current price of DNS records is already quite an abuse in my opinion. The US government is making money out of this.
What kind of legitimacy is there in a single country making profits out of the system?
Yea, we got free speech...in free speech zones.
There's nothing at all in the IP protocol that says that the collection of IP addresses in the current root zone are the only options. If someone thinks they can run it better, they should just set one up. It's not as if this hasn't happened before. Yes, the current root is a fairly well entrenched monopoly, but if enough people really considered their practices unacceptable, I'm confident that an alternate root would be able to moot them fairly quickly.
I don't think Canada has a blacklist for internet sites. Or nobody has written a news article about it. Plus I thought your request was passed from dns server to dns server until one found what you needed and the data moved back up the chain. I don't think it is possible to censor the dns system. People would just point themselves to a different dns server.
OH SWEET JESUS YOU MEAN A COMPANY COMPLIED WITH THE LAW OF THE NATION IN WHICH IT IS DOING BUSINESS? STOP THE FUCKING PRESSES!
seriously, shut the fuck up about yahoo. you have a problem with china, take it to china. if you have a problem with a company doing business in china, yahoo is not the place you would want to start. there's countries that bring a lot more money in to china, and ultimately it's the money that keeps the nation running.
You, sir, are a causehead, and like all causeheads you are completely oblivious to the greater reality of things around you and instead concentrate entirely and solely on headline-grabbing newsbites.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again.
The way it should be handled is each county is in charge of it's own domains, in a higherarchy sort of way. Let me see if I can explain it clear enough. Each country is in charge of their own .com/.gov/etc, Each would resolve to their own country specific top level domain, including the US. TO get to another countries .com you would add the TLD on after. In this way, it would disperse the authority to each local government yet US would still control.
From USA I type in www.microsoft.com, another country would need to type www.microsoft.com.us, or have the .com(or what ever they want to use) registered for their country.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
Free speech zones do not exist because you cannot freely speak everywhere.
Free speech zones exist because in order for a large city to continue daily operation without a great risk of injury to members of the public, or without risk of emergency services being able to reach a location, DISRUPTIVE PROTESTERS need to be kept in a fucking box so they don't throw chains across streets and brick storefront windows.
There's a difference between a protest and a riot and that's just not something the majority of people, most especially those inclined to protest, can understand.
If you doubt me, ask yourself this. Did you hear word one about free speech zones during the recent Tea Party protests? No? Huh, must be because they were mostly older, conservative folk. Free speech zones really only rear their ugly head when a protest is going to be held by some manner of far-left group -- because those protests quite often result in (instigated) incidents with police, and frequently deteriorate to destruction if there is not some form of control established before they show up.
If you think that's just a coincidence, or the Man coming down hard on leftists, you're wrong -- it's actually a fairly clever scheme by the higher-ups that lead these groups (whether openly or via puppet). By creating a conflict with the authorities the movement gains the "VICTIM" badge and gets to cry about how abused and marginalized they are, and how their rights are trampled just because of what they believe. It is, of course, untrue, and any conflicts are the result of actions directly taken by the protesters specifically to create those kinds of conflicts. It's all in furtherance of the cause.
If you think that's some left-field conspiracy theorist shit you really lack an understanding of how the world operates. It's all about manipulation. What is? everything is. If something does not strike you as manipulative, you simply have fallen for the manipulation.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Well, let's take the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty that 150 countries signed 30 years ago
30 years ago, the United States was 3 years past celebrating its bicentennial.
To be somewhat more fair, the bill of rights wasn't fully ratified until 1791, but that's still a far longer standing tradition than you've cited.
Many countries, most notable of them being the United Kingdom, in fact have legislatures that have full sovereignty. A fully sovereign legislature means that they have no constitution to restrain their authority. There's nothing at all to suggest that any law they pass today cannot be repealed tomorrow, so there is no way to guarantee civil rights at all. Parliament could pass a law with the same text as the first amendment, and it would be a completely meaningless gesture.
Now, I am not suggesting that the author of TFA is correct. But I absolutely would place more faith in a constitutionally restrained legislature than a fully sovereign one every day of the week.
I sort of feel like: Wow, the US develops and pays for this cool new thing called the Internet. They open it up to the world and do at least a pretty good job of not being too political about it. It catches on, becomes wildly popular, and now it appears that many in the rest of the world resent them for it. Seems like a classic case of "no good deed goes unpunished"
Mod me a troll if you disagree, but I am genuinely interested in hearing the counter argument. I'm not being flip. I really would like to hear what people have to say. Even if they were doing a really really awful job and being super political, etc, why should they give up control of their own innovation?
It's bad enough to bring Hitler into every discussion. At least people KNOW who Hitler was. The conversation has REALLY hit bottom when it's Godwin'd!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If you think that's just a coincidence, or the Man coming down hard on leftists, you're wrong
Doubtful. The Bush Jr administration allowed pre-cleared supporters to demostrate near the president, whereas those dissenting where caged in free speech zones. Bush often made comments that he never saw much dissent to his policies when he was out in the public. That was a result of keeping the dissenters out of his and the media's view.
It is true that free speech zones existed under prior administrations. They were used minimally prior to Bush Jr, but greatly expanded during his administration to control and minimize dissent.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
The music industry is full of yids, so it's pretty unlikely.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There is as much wrong with nationalism as with any other bigotry.
It seems from your speech that you are not only a bigot, but also a pretty uncultivated one, filled with hatred which seems to be the most important purpose in your life. Poor you.
And by the way, just to explain, why you are delusional in this particular case:
If such a thing actually happens, if every country would use its own root servers, most bigots of your kind wouldn't even know that it has happened. They will happily live in their small national part of the internet, as they already do now.
The only people who would suffer are those who speak more than one language and who do care what happens outside their sandboxes.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Remember all the alternate TLDs and the alternate NICs that got started when Network Solutions was running (or ruining) everything?
We can do it again. There's no real reason that DNS needs to be centralized, or managed by any authority. The people who really control DNS are Microsoft and Apple and ISC and the other people who ship DNS servers with the root cache configured in... and every one of us who runs our own server.
Working code and rough consensus.
Either the submitter can't read, or he's completely devoid of critical sense.
I concur. All you need for an argument against this a the same calibre is "Americans are stupid, so they should hand it over."
I'm not flaming, Americans are great people and all. I'm just saying stupid generalised arguments call for stupid generalised arguments.
Two men claimed to have walked into a bar. Only one had the bruises to prove it.
and saying that is a lot, when it comes from a turk, like me.
Read radical news here
"But if we believe in free speech, we ought to keep control of the Internet away from foreign governments that value it far less than we do."
Oh. Sorry. Yeah, I forgot that for a moment. The last (and the current..) administration of the US of A certainly showed that they value freedom, and personal rights, on a really high level. Now - mod me troll for this all you want. I would always stand up against any single country claiming to be better (Yeah, it's not the country that claims the thing, it's just a lousy CS student). The whole idea is flawed. Who's right or wrong isn't a question that can be answered easily.
The current model just "solves" this issue by favoring one country, for historical reasons. That doesn't change the fact that the decisions (from the article) taken are hard and that they are made arbitrary.
The whole point of the story is: If someone needs to arbitrary decide about the internet, it should be us (We have the First Amendment! Hail us!).
I argue that an international body would be less biased and more "free". Isn't that what the constitution over there is about?
... not exactly. FSZs were actually expanded not because of GW, but because of the WTO protests. It became pretty clear that there is a type of protester who has absolutely no fucking clue what the actual meaning of the first amendment is and who are quite likely to have violent and destructive outbursts.
These people shouldn't be allowed out of their homes, let alone have their voices heard.. but that's another story, and I am fairly elitist when it comes to self-important ignorant asses who forcefully and violently espouse half-baked sound bites as some sort of justification for their rampage with no actual understanding of what the fuck is going on period end full stop.
FSZs are only tied so tightly to the Bush admin. because of.. media. I may be wrong, but as far as I'm aware, the DNC used FSZs long before the RNC ever picked up the habit. It's not a Republican problem, FSZs are used by people on the entire political spectrum -- FSZs are a *protester* problem.
I don't think FSZs are the ideal solution to the problem (I think the ideal solution would be to allow protests to get to the point where it's a riot (which would not take a whole lot when dealing with the groups that most often wind up in FSZs.. that is, ultra-leftists such as the anarchists from the WTO protests or PETA / ELF - type groups, who can't seem to even behave as well as the fucking KKK does when THEY hold a rally).. and then, once they're officially breaking things and disrupting the lives of others with their inane and poorly-aimed message... just drive a fucking car through the middle of the crowd. 'course, we can't do that, and when they get out of hand the police are in a bind. Either they allow the riot to continue and grow unchecked, or they attempt to push back against the rioters and incite further violence (but at least primarily directed at the police, now, who are more suited to handle it), or use measures such as CN gas or tasers or beatings to get the protest under control (and if you have to get a protest under control.. that means it's a riot, now, and no longer a protest). If they do that, the protesters 'win' as they get to post all kinds of (heavily edited) videos online of how terrible these poor innocent protesters who weren't doing anything wrong were treated by police (5 seconds before the video starts you can probably see the incident that precipitated the police response..).
It's a whole lot more than just GW infringing on people's rights. It's a whole lot more about people not understanding that the first amendment isn't a "Do Whatever the Fuck I Want" card. Yes, you can peaceably assemble, but you can't peaceably assemble on somebody else's property. Public streets are public property, true -- they are for the use of EVERYBODY, and the rights of everybody take precedence over the rights of a group of protesters. Essentially if your protest is on public property, and not disruptive to others attempting to use that public land, you're not in a bad place and should be left alone... however, certain groups have made it clear through repeated actions that they're not satisfied with that deal and will disrupt the freedom of everyone around them until the world suits their little idea of How Things Should Be. It's that disruption that leads to the FSZs, and until that ends I don't see any end to FSZs either. I certainly would support locking up loons who are going to handcuff themselves across an intersection simply to block traffic so that everybody so inconvenienced takes notice of them. 'course, a smart person would realize there IS such a thing as bad PR, but I think I've made it pretty clear I don't exactly consider those sorts of protests to contain any smart people.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
No one seems to have pointed out that this article is in the Weekly Standard which is owned by News Corp. These are the same clowns who bring us Fox News. The Weekly Standard is one of the pits which contains the consistently mistaken band of retards known as "neocons." Iraq anyone? Hello? The firewalls on your brains need to be turned back on. Jesus. Surely there is a better source of information to guide decisions about Intertrons and DNSes.
You're contradicting yourself on quite a few levels here. Will the Hungarians get to keep the biro, vitamin C and the A-bomb and let the others invent their own? It's public now, don't claim too much. Whoever laid the wires doesn't get to own the content, see. Maybe just maintain it, but that's what the discussion is about here.
Also, there can be quite a few things wrong with being a nationalist. People in Sarajevo, Rwanda, many other places and yes, the US have lived to tell the tale, or not. Nationalism comes in many forms, some of which declare liberté, egalité, fraternité, others declare Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer etc caetera. Worthy authors to check out: Ernest Gellner, Rogers Brubaker, Adam Smith, Will Kymlicka, Sammy Smooha.
I haven't been to the US and I cannot really comment on how messed up your system is. It's hit and miss, based on what I have read.
And you pretty much sabotaged your own attempt to make any sort of point whatsoever by indulging in an ad hominem attack.
It doesn't help your case that nationalism is not recognized as a form of bigotry. I'll cut you some slack since English is clearly not your primary language, but I would like to share a couple definitions. First, for nationalism:
There are other senses of the word which I did not include, but the ones cited should suffice for this discussion. Note that only the third sense given above is explicitly negative, while the fifth sense could be construed as negative or positive depending on the circumstances.
By contrast, here's a definition for bigotry:
While you could argue that some forms of nationalism are pathological (and I would agree), it's a stretch to call nationalism a form of bigotry. While you could even argue that the United States is chock full of bigots (which I consider to be an unfair characterization of the vast majority of Americans), you haven't really shown the GP to be a bigot.
You also seem to take issue with the GP's mode of expression, which, while somewhat confrontational, is pretty culturally common here in the U.S. It's the height of cultural arrogance to expect us to conform to your social norms. You accuse him of hatred and a whole host of other things, but I don't actually see anything hateful in his speech. If you're judging him by a UK lexicon, may I simply remind you that the United States has its own dialect of English that is distinct from the standard UK dialect that most Europeans are exposed to. Expecting his language patterns to conform to some arbitrary foreign set of standards is a bit like expecting a cab driver in Mexico City to speak Castillian, complete with European Spanish idioms.
Finally, just to point out, when you accuse the GP of being delusional, you sort of miss the point he was trying to make. The GP never once said that he actually thought it would be a good idea for other nations to have their own root DNS servers. He was being sarcastic.
Honestly, I'm not sure how the parent got modded flamebait, because I have to agree with that final point. The summary is entirely content-less, to the extent that *shock* I actually did have to RTFA, and all I can say is that I'm not impressed. Don't get me wrong, I can see where the article is coming from, but I do have to disagree with it. The arguments it presents are not particularly compelling, so if you're having a hard time arguing against it, all that tells me is that you're really not trying.
In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that the entire insight contained within the article can be summarised in a single sentence from its first paragraph: "America's special role in managing the Internet is good for America". That's it. I'm sure that reason is good enough for America, and I do have to admit that the Internet has been kinda ok under America's control so far, and for those reasons I don't expect the situation to change any time soon.
In spite of that though, the point I'm trying to make is that TFA did not make a give a single compelling reason for why America should have control of the internet. No, "because it does already" isn't a compelling argument. And contrary to what the summary (which, to reiterate, is utter crap) claims, TFA doesn't even mention international bodies. The article was trite and weak. The summary was not a summary by any meaningful definition of the term.
Santa's suicide mission go!
Yes, DNS can be fixed. The basic idea is to let ICANN just be one authority among many. Put the entire current DNS under .icann (and default to appending .icann so you don't break stuff, I guess) and let anyone else run their own DNS hierarchy setting up competition in the area of properly assigning domain names (for however your users define "properly" here). The result would most likely be a Wikipedia-like distributed oversight system for who controls which domain names, hopefully with no cost for "registering" a domain which seems pretty silly.
The linked essays explain and argue for it much better than I can. In the end, the proposed system makes the root more or less powerless so it would no longer really matter who controlled it.
Centralization breaks the internet.
From TFA "Britain, Canada, and Australia all have mandatory nationwide blacklists of banned sites..." Australia doesn't have a mandatory nationwide blacklist in operation. The idea is being trialed by Conroy and is backed by certain conservative religious groups but has been met with such protest that it is unlikely it will ever be put into effect. More recently conroy has been forced to backtrack and propose a voluntary blacklist (http://viv.id.au/blog/20090527.5069/conroy-backing-down-on-internet-censorship/). Some Australia ISPs are trialing the blacklist to show if it is even technically feasible. Since Ariel Rabkin has that fact wrong it casts doubt on the rest of the article.
What's to stop a few people from putting together there own internet and call it, say, Internet3? With all of the regulation going on and those seeking to control it, I say it's high time a group of hard core computer users got together and started a new internet: one done from the ground up and done correctly. Make it utilize IPv4 and take all of the politics out of it. Instead of giving entire Class A blocks away, we smartly manage addresses and take actions to prevent all the nonsense associated with current ISPs, IANA, and ICANN.
After reading his piece, I have a hard time arguing that it should be handed over to some international body.
After reading this piece, I'm inclined to say "give up the damn DNS already, you egomaniacs".
The entire argument boils down to "we're better than everyone else, so we should rule". And you're surprised nobody likes you anymore?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The only argument really there is "other countries tend to censor, if given to an international organisation the chances of this happening will increase"
Not much of an argument really when the PATRIOT Act allows them to tap computer anywhere between A and B, and the fact that Net Neutrality is apparently contentious enough to even be debated... It's not a very firm argument considering what else the Americans do.
1) let the us drop back behind the .US tld so www.google.com becomes www.google.com.us
2) Each country operates their own country level tld and it's authoritative DNS roots.
3)Countries may filter at their borders
4)No body gets a say on how we number and name .US websites. We don't get a say in theirs.
5) use something like NAT routing so each country level domain has the full IPV4 address range
(thus putting off the call for IPV6 for a little longer)
Quote: "Most countries lack our First Amendment tradition, and if we wish to protect the free speech rights of Americans online"
I just have to LOL, as if the Americans (which by the way has a great TRADITION in defending "free speach") has anything
NEAR the free speach and protection of individuality, privacy and it's like as MOST european countries.
Besides, the sentence says it all...."if we wish to protect the free speech rights of Americans online",now that
just says it all...namely the concerns for americans, crap on all others....Mind you, a TRADITION isn't necessarily
the way it is in reality today...
Isn't the us turning into some kind of totalitarian governed state? Besides, the us don't care much for anyone else
but their own, protecting and covering up for it's close friends (f.inst Israel) and denying the global community
to put in place effective blockades when a state step's out of line and behaves unacceptable?
Arguments are utter crap...
It is new for me that calling someone an asshole is now considered polite speech in the USA.
Anyway, reference.com makes a big mistake, a mistake neo-nazis especially like: the difference between patriotism and nationalism.
You see, patriotism is all about loving the country where you were born. Nationalism, on the other hand, is a whole different beast.
A nationalist classifies "us", that is, his fellow nationalists of his particular country, and "them" - the rest, especially citizens of other countries. After this classification, a nationalist puts his country and his group beyond good and evil and the "them" group as bad.
A patriot may like the way of life of his country, a nationalist would force it to everyone else. So, as you see, it is a form of bigotry.
European, and especially russian Neo-nazis use the mistake mentioned above when they say: We are patriots, why do you protest against us, do you hate your country?
I could say, of course, that the difference between a patriot and a nationalist is the same difference as between a loving father and a child molester (they both love children) but it would be a passable analogy only in terms of the gap size between those two terms.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The article does not have any arguments regarding technology and/or economics. It's just politics. and the kind of politics that America has been disliked for: "we are morally superior to the others, so we have the right to do it".
And judging from the author's name, he may have a particular interest against another religion.
They're not even American!!
Brief summary of article:
- DNS root means real political power, US wants to keep it.
- We use this power to defend our constitutional right in the entire world, this is good for the world as US constitution is good and universal.
- We have invented the internet, so we have control and should keep it.
Well, for people who already agree, it may sound very convincing. Actually, you can also argue this is exactly why DNS root control should be removed from the hand of a given government.
Concerning libel laws, this is untrue: although British libel laws are extreme, generally speaking libel is a far more serious legal threat in the US than in most of the EU. These laws should be tuned down everywhere; they prevent criticism by those unwilling or unable to afford costly legal battles.
Particularly in the US the danger to free speech is high due to libel since court cases are more risky in the US than elsewhere, and secondly due to general public intolerance of criticism of the US - witness the reaction of passersby to the protesters calling for the release of the incriminating Abu Ghraib: people felt the need to proclaim their patriotism, rather than to defend the very essence of free speech: transparency with regards to abuses of power.
American society pays free speech lip service - no more (which is bad), but also no less (and simply awareness of the virtues of transparency is worth a lot).
So, while I don't believe it's necessary to transfer DNS control to an international body, you're kidding yourself if you believe the US is doing a fine job, and in particular kidding yourself if you believe that freedom of the speech is particularly high in the US: it's not.
Calling sumdumass a nutter is not a troll, it's informative.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
There's a thing called Open Root Server Network that was supposed to be a fallback solution to US-backed root DNS servers. Unfortunately, it stopped operating last year and I wonder if CIA was involved in that.
The article states:
"Most countries lack our First Amendment tradition, and if we wish to protect the free speech rights of Americans online, we should not allow Internet domain names to be hostage to foreign standards."
My country is democratic and definitely has the "First Amendment Tradition" no worse then US. Will my country be awarded the same right to "protect the free speech rights of ??????s online"?
If not, why would US deny the rights to others? We experienced several "protectors" throughout our more then thousand year long history and we've learnt that it takes just a small twist to change "protectors" into "dictators".
Any democracy can easily slide into dictatorship. Giving a control over Internet to the more people will ensure that if the "bad times" comes to US (aren't you sometimes scared of your own government?) then the Internet will not become the effective tool of control in the hands of few...
Think about it. We don't want to steal something from US. We want to fully share what was built for sharing... Everybody will benefit from it.
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
No, the US doesn't need more resentment. But, hey, that's life, and that's what separates the US from Europe. The US isn't as intimidated by resentment as Europe is - another reason to keep the root servers in the US.
I don't know this Hilter you speak of.
supposed to be impartial.
The UN is corrupt beyond that of my western governments.
They routinely place thugs on human rights committees.
They routinely allow religious state X to libel religious state Y, but not accept free speech within their own systems.
Yes, stewardship of this world resource by USA interests isn't perfect. I'm afraid that any other government would get in the way and use it to impact organizations and states that are "less popular, locally."
Free speech, even unpopular, is critical for DNS management.
From the article:
Yeah! a departament of state of one nation is the authority to decide who is the righful government of another nation.
Contrary to what's stated in the summary, the article is a great reference to actually push the internationalization of the internet.
Just for starters, remember America is a continent, not a country.
Well, congrats on finding definitions that support your personal belief that your nationalistic views are not negative. Well, at least most of your definitions were non-negative. Well, I guess that depends on the perspective -- such as what your nationality is in relation to the nationalist, or whether you think a competitive anarchy of nations is a sustainable world model, etc.
it's a stretch to call nationalism a form of bigotry.
Well, I dunno about that. Even Conservapedia will concede that nationalism "can also go to extremes, leading to hatred of non-members of the nation (which is often ethnically defined) and violence."
Nationalism is at odds with globalism. If you have a worldview that includes and respects all nations -- or more to the point, all the world's people -- as equals, nationalism is anathema. Nationalism says my country is better than yours. It's well beyond patriotism, which says my country is great, and I care about it.
Missing from the definition above of "bigotry" is the cross-reference to "bigot", which is defined a bit more thoroughly:
So yeah, I'm pretty sure that "Fuck you, it's our internet, and you don't get to have a say in it" would qualify as nationalist bigotry, as much as "Non-American countries can't be trusted with the internet" does.
And yes, I do qualify nationalism as bigotry. (I don't know what your basis was for the assertion "nationalism is not recognized as a form of bigotry", and I'm not aware of anyone that conclusively determines these things.) Insisting that your country is more capable of something than any other country -- how is that structurally different than, say, insisting that men are better at governing than women, or insisting that white people are better workers than black people? It's a determination of value or ability based not on merit but on circumstance of nationality. Both Radkin and the OC here assert this same national supremacism. "Bigot", then, is an entirely suitable epithet. No one likes being called a bigot, including (and especially) bigots.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
I'll just start my OWN internet! With blackjack, and hook...never mind.
I'd take anything they write with a bag-load of rock-salt. They have highly intelligent writers, lawyers and paid-think-tank' personnel who do nothing than think of ways to package conservative thought to sound acceptable and logical to the masses.
While I usually judge an article on its merits -- when it comes to anything by owned by Murdock -- I'm immediately suspect -- as his stated mission, besides reducing the average intelligence and education level of Americans in order to make them more 'pliable' by his heavily used and financed multi-media empire, he also has of reducing America's economic power and brain-base in order to increase the value of Australia's growing tech and IT sector -- so America will come more to rely on exported brain power from Australia. All of their IT folks I've dealt with, are both smart and dedicated, and totally willing to follow any unethical or America-harming orders without question. I.e. they are not brought up with American values -- (not that American values are what they used to be 30-40 years ago).
It's in Murdock's interest to recreate the deregulated and 'robber-baron' environment that existed in the early 1900's that allowed capitalist employer's to heavily exploit workers while using a stick approach of little or no social safety net to enforce compliance.
Murdock, Fox, and his ilk are quite 'anti-American' in their goals -- and are working their best to hold back responsible social behavior to the benefit of capitalistic greed and empire building even if it causes mass numbers of people to lose their homes and life savings (current recession being a prime example of Fox-related influence (though they were far from a 'cause', they set the stage for idiots electing idiots to loosen the reigns of government and allow unbridled lust to be rewarded and unchecked which created many horrible, exercised opportunities for abuse.
It sickens me to see Fox cloak itself in the US-Flag colors -- which they strongly identified with during the Bush era and and their strong encouragement for us to waste our dollars and research in 'tilting at oil-wells' in Iraq et al. Where now, with a change toward a progressive administration, they totally set themselves up as the anti-government station while maintaining their cloak of patriotism, and the nerve to trademark the language "Fair and Balanced".
There are times American's rights to free speech need to be more examined and restricted when major media outlets are owned by very powerful foreign businessmen who very likely have the interests of their own country and own foreign-based empires first and foremost, before any consideration of what is good for the US.
If using a local domain were as easy as using a .com domain everybody would have local domains.
And of course, no one would care about who controls the root DNS servers.
But they are more expensive, more cumbersome, and give us little benefit.
What the article argues is that this cumbersome and bureaucratic entities should not control the main DNS servers and make it expensive and cumbersome, and I agree with the article, because of this.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
How about putting DNS servers on a neutral territory. Mars is a good candidate: there is a growing list of countries that launch their probes there. There will some web access delay, but it's another issue.
OutputLogic