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Can World Governments Veto Your Domain Name?
AugstWest writes "There's been talk recently of the Obama administration wanting the right to shoot down possible TLDs, but it looks like things may be going even a step further — According to this article by Laura Stotler, 'the NTIA is asking for the power to object to any proposed Internet address for any reason.' What happens if, say, the government of Germany decides they don't like your domain name? ICANN's had its share of bureaucratic nightmares, what happens when world governments also have a say?"
All your domain are belong to US!
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
This is a really wonderful idea. I certainly wouldn't want to register a domain that might not be acceptable to every bureaucrat in every government on the planet. This way, if there's something that a particular government doens't like, they can just remove it for me. Simple! This will be awesome!
Read the story?!? haha... I was too busy wanting to get first post
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
Of course they quote this line:
Then in order to push their pov they ignore the very next line:
No single country can veto something, it takes a majority to agree to the veto.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
We don't need any more TLDs. We should be phasing out some of the existing ones, not creating new ones. The .mil and .gov TLDs should be transitioned to reside under .us, and .net and .edu should be transition to reside under the appropriate country. Everything else other than .com, .org, and country TLDs should be phased out.
There is no law that says there can be only one DNS root. If the Governments start censoring domain names, a competing DNS structure will arise, e.g. based from OpenDNS or some other entity.
Don't forget Cyrillic characters which have some that look like the Roman alphabet, but are not in reality.
So someone gets told to go to a site "theirbank.com", when in reality, the ".com" TLD is really a different set of three letters than the original .com top domain. Phishers would be in hog heaven.
Of course, the SSL certs would show green, perhaps with the EV logo, so even people who know enough to check the cert validity would be nailed by this.
It's time for a peer to peer DNS system that doesn't have an easily controllable central server.
I'm thinking perhaps a mix could be used. P2P for the replacement of the root servers, and the rest of the system kept the way it currently is. The root servers are what all this is targeted at anyway.
Figuring out how to deal with collisions and attempts at impersonation will be tricky though. Certs can be used, but the CAs reintroduce he same problem.
Does anyone else thing it's rather silly that ICANN is seriously considering new, highly-specific TLDs?
For example, a .nyc TLD is rather silly, as one can already get example.ny.us domains. If one has a New York office for their company, why not simply set up a subdomain of nyc.example.com? That way the organizational hierarchy is preserved without needing additional TLDs.
The article also mentions that the dotGAY Initiative and the .GAY Alliance are looking to get a .gay TLD. Why? Why not get gayalliance.org, assuming they don't already have it?
I'm curious as to the utilization of the less-common TLDs like .info, .jobs, .museum, and so on. I can't imagine they're terribly useful; why would a company buy example.jobs rather than simply use jobs.example.com?
Sure, ICANN wants to make money and trademark holders would need to re-purchase their names in different TLDs, so I see the financial motivation to create new TLDs, but it still seems like a bad idea for the internet as a whole.
As I've always thought, why don't we have people who know about the internet be in control of the internet. To politicians, posting you latest campaign meeting on Facebook does not mean you know about the internet!
Looks like all the hopes of technosavvy Obama electorate were in vain. Obama uses his techno awareness mostly for evil.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Didn't read the story did you? NaziMohammed.com is good to go. Mohammed.Nazi may be a bust though.
Didn't read the story, did you? NaziMohammed.com and Mohammed.Nazi may both be busts.
From the article:
In fact, the NTIA is asking for the power to object to any proposed Internet address for any reason.
That is a power not limited to TLD proposals.
Seriously, talk about a reason to use an alternate DNS source -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Has there ever been a less effective US president?
You realize they AREN'T just talking about TLDs right?
the NTIA is asking for the power to object to any proposed Internet address for any reason.
Didn't even bother to read the summary, eh?
But what about subdomains? Those are entirely under the direct control of the domain admins. If the owner of mydomain.org wanted to create a subdomain called "screw.[insert country here].mydomain.org", there's nothing stopping him/her.
If they really want to be able to veto any name, methinks this proposal was made by people who don't understand how the Internet works---not that this should come as any surprise.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
no. because the government of iran is illegitimate. the government if the usa is legitimate, meanwhile. only democracies in this world are legitimate and are to be respected. i do not respect the government of iran and i grant them no right of authority over anything. why? because the government of iran does not respect its own people. on that logical basis alone. as such, in solidarity with the iranian people, i do not respect anything the government of iran wants. the same is true with china. if your government is not a democracy, i stand with you against your government. meanwhile, if china or iran became democracies, at that point in time i would respect what those governments say. until then, i grant those governments no right of authority in my mind, even within that country's borders. democracy or fuck off
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We're already seen this.
In the US, where political speech is mostly protected, this may be an argument for persevering our freedom of address-ing.
Sounds like it's time to implement a regime change in D.C.
Welcome to Communism! Where the government can take away your hard earned property just because they want to! Ask how wonderfully this general mechanism works for China...
It has everything to do with it.
Nowhere in the entire world that I've travelled to or had contact with - and that's quite a bit of it - do you find the same conspiracy theory base attitude towards government. Not even in countries where the government actually is evil.
Most people, even and sometimes especially those who live under an oppressive government, are able to see the world in shades of grey. That means understanding that some things a government does are good, and some are bad, and most are a matter of perspective.
It is their chartered, stated purpose to be that way, and they actually are.
That's a typical quote you'd not hear anywhere in Europe or Asia, and not in very many places in South America or even Africa, where they arguably have the worst governments.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
we don't trust any governments. That's not an American thing. That's anybody-with-a-brain thing.
No, it isn't. Anyone non-american with a brain knows that the world is not that simple, that governments come in good and bad, and that a lot of things are a matter of perspective.
History shows repeatedly that when governments have the authority to do something, they always abuse that authority. Always.
If you wait long enough, you will certainly find proof. What you ignore is the many years inbetween. And, of course, the good that you rightfully need to consider as well.
I'm no friend of my current government, absolutely not. They're incompetent nutcases, idiots, powermongers and things I don't yet have words for.
But there's in important difference between seing government as evil per se and seing it as a tool that - like all tools - can be used well or badly, or abuse, and thus needs to be put into the hands of the right people.
Governments have to be kept in check, just like people.
There's no difference. Governments aren't run by aliens or SkyNet, they're run by people. To abuse another american proverb: "Governments don't oppress people. People oppress people."
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Where the hell do come up with Americans == The US Government?
Nowhere. Maybe you should add comprehension to your list of skills, you already have reading on it, which is a good start.
The people you're going off on are not the US Government, they're fellow Slashdotters. You asshat.
Nowhere did I intend to go off on the US government. It was my full intention to go off on the slashdotters. I don't like your government any more than you do, but that doesn't mean this simplistic, bullheaded, "if you're not with us you're against us" attitude towards your own government is right. That's a medieval kind of thinking, that anyone who doesn't work the way you'd prefer must be in league with the devil or otherwise pure evil.
The world is not that simple. Governments are not all bad all the time, though the do evil things sometimes. Not all muslims are terrorists, though some are. Not all germans are Nazis, even though half a century ago most were. Not all americans are stupid, there actually are a few with brains. I even know a priest who I'm fairly sure is not a child molester. There are always exceptions, there is never a single simple sentence to explain a complex situation, and when you look at it, you'll even find your terms misleading - what exactly is "the government", for instance? Where does it begin and where does it end? Precisely? Is the policeman "the government"? The fireman? The guy sweeping the sidewalk? The nurse in the state-run hospital? "The government" is a fuzzy entity when you look closely. And that's important because while Obama or Merkel or Mubarak are clearly a part of "the government", they are not identical to it. And most of the evil does not begin with them, and much not even come across them. The real powers in most governments are not the leading public figures, but the unseen administration under them.
And once you start into a real, serious discussion about government, you see how ridiculous this primitive "it's all evil" attitude is. That's like saying "all plants are green" or "all animals have four legs". At first glance it's right, at second glance it's wrong, at third glance it's just stupid to say something like that, and if you discuss it with a biologist, you'll find out that "plants" and "animals" are terms that are quite a bit more complicated than you'd thought (as are "green" and "legs").
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org