Ted Cruz Proposes Bill To Keep US From Giving Up Internet Governance Role (washingtontimes.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Washington Times: Internet legislation proposed Wednesday in the Senate would prohibit the U.S. government from relinquishing its role with respect to overseeing the web's domain name system, or DNS, unless explicitly authorized by Congress. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a division of the Commerce Department, currently oversees control of the DNS, a virtual phonebook of sorts that allows internet users to easily browse the web by allocating domain names to websites the world over. The NITA has long been expected to give up its oversight role to a global multi-stakeholder community, however, prompting lawmakers to unleashed a proposal this week that would assure the U.S. government maintains control unless Congress votes otherwise. The bill, the Protecting Internet Freedom Act, "would prevent the Obama administration from giving the Internet away to a global organization that will allow over 160 foreign governments to have increased influence over the management and operation of the Internet," according to a statement issued Wednesday by the office of the bill's co-sponsor, Sen. Ted Cruz. Specifically, the bill aims to ensure that the NTIA's relationship with the DNS doesn't terminate, lapse, expire or otherwise end up cancelled unless authorized by Congress, while a separate provision would guarantee that the U.S. government's exclusive control over .gov and .mil domains remains intact. In the UK, the controversial Snooper's Charter -- or the Investigatory Powers Bill as it's officially known -- has been passed through the House of Commons by UK MPs.

Comments

Ham-handed

[Tablizer]

It's a delicate balancing act. If we tick off enough nations, they'll fork and go their own way without us.

We'll probably have to settle for a degree of control if we want some control. We don't get the whole enchilada in the longer run.

Re:Ham-handed

[monkeyzoo]

Agreed. It's not like the US has an unblemished record of openness and propriety when managing this either. The US has seized domains names and banned activities they don't like. Europe is actually much farther along on ensuring preservation of internet liberties, data protection, etc.

Re:Ham-handed

[ShanghaiBill]

It's not like the US has an unblemished record of openness and propriety when managing this either.

The US has stronger laws and a stronger tradition and culture of supporting freedom of expression. According to a Pew Research poll published in this week's Economist, 80% of Japanese, 70% of Germans, and 50% of French, think the government should be able to silence people offending others. In America, only a quarter felt the same. The next closest countries were Canada and Britain, both at about 40%.

US stewardship of the Internet has not been perfect, but I doubt if others can do better, either individually or collectively.

Re:Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

how backwards Europe is on meatspace liberties

Time to come into the 21st century, the US are not the free country it used to be anymore

Re: Ham-handed

[ArmoredDragon]

Agreed. It's not like the US has an unblemished record of openness and propriety when managing this either. The US has seized domains names and banned activities they don't like. Europe is actually much farther along on ensuring preservation of internet liberties, data protection, etc.

Actually that's not true at all. The US seizes domain names only within its own jurisdiction, just like everybody else. However Europe, and especially China, Russia, and numerous third world countries, have expressed a desire to force other countries to censor speech, regardless of the other countries laws. Case in point, France wants Google to censor search results in ALL of its domains.

The US hasn't had anything even approaching an equivalent.

Re:Ham-handed

[currently_awake]

While we are altering the deal, we should make .com and .org and .gov as sub-domains of each country domain. so Google.com would become Google.us.com or Google.ca.com. This would prevent any single country from having excessive control over commercial activity on the internet as well as making it obvious where a business is actually run from (legal jurisdiction). Each country would then run their own national domain as they like, including taxes and censorship. And mandate IP6 for everything.

Re:Ham-handed

[rtb61]

Makes not difference what ever the opinion of the US, it is only an illusion of control, brought about by the claimed value of that illusion. DNS data entries in a database aligning a string of characters in the form of an IP address with a string of easier to remember text. That power is an empty illusion and all the governments of the world can set up their own servers to favour themselves and strip the US servers of value beyond what it has in the US and remains only so long as people choose it or even ISP choose to point to it rather than alternate DNS choices. Why give you customers away for free, for another corporation to make money out of, when you can selectively mirror certain entries and sell others, from your own databases, super cheap to set up and could be very profitable, mirroring the bulk of DNS addresses and only selling the high sticker value addresses makes sense or just charging for the default config. Want us to point our customers at your database so that you can make money, well, your going to have to pay for that.

Re:Ham-handed

[Todd Knarr]

That already exists. It's called ccTLDs, and each country has one. .us is the one assigned to the USA, .uk is assigned to the United Kingdom, .ru to Russia and so on. Each one could create the 2LDs you describe, but not all of them actually do.

Re:Ham-handed

[fustakrakich]

80% of Japanese, 70% of Germans, and 50% of French, think the government should be able to silence people offending others.

That's precisely why we need to make that as difficult as possible.

Re:Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, Jesus, you just came up with another way for ISPs to scam money. Dear Amazon, you want your domain to work on Verizon's DNS servers? Pay them $50,000 a month for the privilege.

Re:Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're almost certainly younger than that. What's that say about you?

Re: Ham-handed

[rickb928]

And there is the 'European' idea of a 'right to be forgotten'. Which is really either the 'right to be forgiven', or the 'right to conceal the past'.

Sure, giving any meaningful control over the Internet to other nations couldn't possibly go wrong for us in the USA. Let's leave this as it is for a while, and if other nations or coalitions choose to form independent DNS systems, then fine. They can restrict access to Google, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, etc, or try to force these services to accomodate dual DNS registrations and resolution. That'll work real well.

No other nation on earth can be trusted to defend liberty as much as the US, even in our current failing state.

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

The RIAA and MPAA trying to censor content worldwide and enforce their regioning crap was the slippery slope 10 years ago into the quagmire of censorship we are now facing. The double standards are unbelievable; if I were to try to traverse the border with a laptop hard drive encrypted with AES256 and not allow the border patrol agents to investigate it, I'd have ITAR thrown at me; Disney violates ITAR every day by importing their movies with blue ray encryption. Why do they get a pass? Seriously an arms export treaty can be used to secure cash-flow.

There's zero difference between the Chinese trying to censor Tienanmen Square and what the RIAA tries to do, and because of that, the US government is no better at protecting "free speech".

Point being, The US Government and corporations set the standard for censorship.

The real issue here is other countries don't setup their own internal DNS instead of using the worldwide DNS systems the Americans graciously built; make no mistake however, that was done primarily to serve US business interests. We've even made it easy to interface by giving you guys country-specific TLD's; do all your stuff under .uk or .fr. The reason other countries use the US DNS system is that the internet in the US grew so fast and so pervasively and the demand for free and unfettered export of information products was so great, that to do so would knock a lot of countries literally back to the stone age. So instead of running their own data-center and doing their own thing, they'd prefer instead to hound and guilt trip the US Citizenry. "Well you have your double standards, why can't we have ours (on your system)?" is what all of these arguments boil down to, which because of the NSA Spying, has become a lot more pronounced of a request because the entire point of the NSA is not just surveillance but also subversion of foreign governments.

Personally, I have no issue and would encourage every country to set up their own DNS system. Please get off the US internet. We don't want you here.

Re:Ham-handed

[ScentCone]

The USA is only 200 years old. It has no culture whatsoever.

Wrong. The US was born out of rejection of the culture in which it had been living as colonies of the British crown. The charter that formed the new country IS the culture, at least in every way that counts. Because it lays out a system of governance that doesn't allow the government to create a crown-like culture, and the resulting liberty is the central theme of US culture, warts and all.

Re: Ham-handed

[ScentCone]

You don't really understand the difference between wanting control over how your own work is reproduced and sold and wanting control over what other people can say, do you? No, I didn't think so. I'm not censoring you if I don't want to give you my work. I'm censoring you if I'm preventing you from creating and expressing your own work.

Re: Ham-handed

[ArmoredDragon]

There's zero difference between the Chinese trying to censor Tienanmen Square and what the RIAA tries to do, and because of that, the US government is no better at protecting "free speech".

Yes, there's quite a difference. If the RIAA/MPAA could bring down just any domain it wants, then public torrent trackers would have a very hard time even existing. The reason they are able to float from domain to domain is precisely because the USA doesn't have jurisdiction over non-US TLDs, which means that US based corporations can't obtain a court order to shut them down either, unless they have a presence in another country and go through the legal channels in that country. In the case of TPB, there's an organization called BREIN that was able to get a takedown of their .se domain recently, but it took them a VERY LONG time to do so.

However you'll never see any purely US based entity get a domain seizure for a website registered in another country unless that country's government specifically consents for that to happen. The US government does not, and there are no indications that it will ever, seize another country's TLD.

In fact, what the US actually controls is what you call the root domain, which is just a dot. For example, www.slashdot.org is actually www.slashdot.org., just the last dot at the end is always implied and never shown in most client software. When we talk about "keys to the internet" what we're really talking about is who ultimately owns the dot at the end. In France for example, the US delegates complete control to France the ownership of the "fr." top level domain, and doesn't set any terms for what France can or cannot do with it.

Now, if we turn this over to some international entity, like say the UN, they can and probably will set terms for what a country can and can't do with their top level domain. The first thing that comes to mind is mandating that countries de-list sites that speak negatively against a particular religion, or just in some way sound negative against some kind of ethnic group, regardless of whether or not that is what a site is. For example, they could set rules requiring that slashdot should be delisted unless it outright deletes posts that have GNAA material, and that having them downmodded just isn't enough.

If you want to argue that said international entity won't require such censorship...then I have to ask...what exactly does anybody gain by turning it over to an international body? And again, I need to emphasize, the US doesn't set any rules for what websites can and can't say. Other countries can even host ISIS propaganda websites, pro-drug websites, copyright infringement, and everything else the US government hates with a passion, and the US still doesn't intervene, nor does it have any kind of "unenforced policy" or anything of that nature. When a country owns a TLD, it's theirs to do as they please.

Re:Ham-handed

[quenda]

The US was born out of rejection of the culture in which it had been living as colonies of the British crown.

Oh please stop swallowing the propaganda. US culture did not change overnight with the war of secession. Not even daily life was much affected, aside from the missing war dead and maimed. It was just a new set of masters, who mostly kept the same laws and institutions. Yes they were smart men, and used the opportunity to make some good reforms.

The poor commoners were told they were fighting for lower taxes, but taxes only went up after independence. Except for the elite.

Re:Ham-handed

[SuricouRaven]

But no-one wants a .us, because it isn't cool enough.

Re:Ham-handed

[davester666]

Yeah, has Europe jumped on civil forfeiture the way US police forces have? Suddenly, everything is the proceeds of crime.

Re:Ham-handed

[deniable]

Computer Associates might take issue with your idea but the shifty looking operation running on us.com might be very happy. There's a reason .com.us exists. There's also reasons people found .au.com instead of .com.au shady.

Re:Ham-handed

[sir1963nz]

Hmmm... 2016 freedom of the press, the USA is 41 according to https://rsf.org/en/ranking Democracy Ranking put the USA 16th (The top 5 were all EU countries) Legal system is ranked 19th Corruption the US is 16th. And then we have "The Donald" and his racist xenophobic world view. I am sorry, but I think others could do better.

Re:Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

My answer to that would be - Dear ISP, do you want to keep my business? Then stop f*ing with my DNS queries.

Re:Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

The important difference is that the US actually does try to silcence people, while European countries do not.

Re: Ham-handed

[silentcoder]

The American right is constantly warning us of their imminent need to have a revolution against the US government for abandoning everything they hold dear... but you demand the REST of the world's 7-billion people trust that government not to censor us ?
Despite the fact that censoring YOU is prohibited by a constitution but censoring us is NOT. They may not have done so yet, but you have NO law that says they aren't ALLOWED to do so.

Sorry, we don't share your blind trust in your government - and having nominated the orangutan with the bad checks - we trust your government even less now.

You don't trust you OWN government, but you demand that WE must trust them ?

Fuck that shit.

Re:Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

[citation needed]

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

The Chinese killing their own people who are protesting for freedom is actually quite a bit different from you wanting to watch a pirated copy of " My Little Pony"...

Re:Ham-handed

[quenda]

[citation needed]

There are countless books on the subject, but for an easy introduction and from the American perspective, I'd suggest starting with the excellent HBO miniseries "John Adams".

Its amazing for example, how many Americans think George III was some kind of tyrant, when in fact the dispute was with parliament, not the king.
Over 100,000 dead, and it lead to the even bloodier civil war. Was remaining in the Commonwealth, like Canada such a horrible alternative?
So unbearable that the colonial aristocracy could not wait for political reform? Maybe, but its worth thinking about.

Re:Ham-handed

[budgenator]

The USA is only 200 years old. It has no culture whatsoever.

As opposed to Europe that was essentially wiped off the face of the planet in WWII?

Re:Ham-handed

[LichtSpektren]

You make some radical claims about the quality of life in a certain era and your only citation is an HBO miniseries.

There is not much here to refute. Good day sir.

Re:Ham-handed

[drinkypoo]

While we are altering the deal, we should make .com and .org and .gov as sub-domains of each country domain. so Google.com would become Google.us.com or Google.ca.com.

You may not be aware of this, but domains work in the opposite direction. It would be .com.us, .org.us and so on. HTH, HAND!

P.S. It would be better to appear as if you understood DNS before making suggestions

Re:Ham-handed

[drinkypoo]

Was remaining in the Commonwealth, like Canada such a horrible alternative?

It depends on how you measure. We can pave Canada, so by some measures, we win.

Re: Ham-handed

[drinkypoo]

the US is NOT exceptional,

What? That's bollocks. Notably, nobody else invented the internet.

There are freedom loving people the world over

And yet, more people in about every other developed country think that the government should be able to clamp down on free speech online than we do. Maybe they don't love freedom as much as we do.

and to claim you are PROTECTING anybody's freedom by wresting power over things that directly influence their lives in YOUR government they have no vote or say in - is literally the worst kind of double-think.

But that's exactly why these other countries want more power over the internet — specifically so that they can clamp down on dissenting speech!

There can be nothing more ANTI-freedom than the US controlling ANY global resource

Of course there can. We could hand it to the UN, and then the UNSC can control the internet instead of just the USA. Guess what the rest of the USNC thinks about freedom of information. Hint: They are against it.

If you truly believe in freedom - start with it's most foundational principles.

So, we're building another internet, with blackjack and hookers?

Re:Ham-handed

[h4rr4r]

I don't think you know what wiped off the map means.

Re:Ham-handed

[dywolf]

bingo.
when the rich wage war it's the poor who die.

Re: Ham-handed

[AmiMoJo]

France wants Google to censor search results in ALL of its domains.

As a matter of fact, since it's pretty important here, France wants search results in France to respect French laws. It isn't trying to force Google to block those results from Americans, it just wants French users who use google.com instead of google.fr to not see personal information about French citizens that Google has no legal right to present.

It's really, really important that everyone understand this, because every debate about it is always derailed by people labouring under this misconception.

Re: Ham-handed

[plague911]

You make up numbers and claim that everyone agrees with you. But then again even if they were true. They do not matter. Its our internet not yours. We invented it, We built it out and the rest of the world latched on. If you want your own make it yourself. No one will use it.

Re: Ham-handed

[silentcoder]

The Germans and Swis were at least as important to the birth of the internet as tge US was. Everything else you say is less true than that.

Re: Ham-handed

[silentcoder]

Fine. Give china back gunpowder. Give germany back the automobile. Give agriculture back to Iran and Iraq. Give the Turing machine design back to Britain and the Von Neuman architecture to the Germans. Lets give each country exclusive control over how other countries can use technologies they developed. Right back to giving exclusive control over fire to ethiopia and archery to South Africa. Finnland gets exclusive control over Linux. Austria gets exclusive control over nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Technonlogy ultimately globalizes and every nation controlls tgeir own usage of it. There is no sane reason to treat the internet any differently.

What an absolutely, mindnumbingly stupid argument. Hell even if DNS had been patented it would be expired by now and a lot of non-US academics contributed to the DNS rfc and refference code before the current infrastructure was even built so to claim you invented it is barely a sane argument in the first place.

Re: Ham-handed

[iamwahoo2]

I do not think it is really a matter of trust. If the DNS system is not being managed well, then it can be taken control of more easily than you might think. For instance, if the EU wanted to take 100% control of all of their TLDs and make them subordinate to a new root, it could be done. It would create issues temporarily, but nothing that could not be worked around. I think the issue with handing over control of the existing root and management of new TLDs is that it is hard to identify an organization and funding that would do a better job of competently managing the system, but there are certainly many organizations and countries that we don't want involved in managing the system. So the low risk approach is "If its not broke, don't fix it".

Re: Ham-handed

[jbmartin6]

In what way? You mean CERN and W3C? I'm not picking an argument, just curious. Could be more of which I am not aware.

Re: Ham-handed

[ArmoredDragon]

Sorry, we don't share your blind trust in your government - and having nominated the orangutan with the bad checks - we trust your government even less now.

You don't trust you OWN government, but you demand that WE must trust them ?

So in one statement you say I blindly trust my government, and in the very next you say I don't? I think that in your case, the truth is that you can't even figure yourself out, let alone my opinion on anything. Try being less of a scatterbrain, and then after that, come try again at making an argument.

Re:Ham-handed

[ShanghaiBill]

because stamping out bigotry, the things the divide us and create instability and chaos, is a bad thing....?

Censorship does not "stamp out" bigotry. It just pushes it out of public view, where it festers in the shadows.

Re:Ham-handed

[Captain Scurvy]

Let them fork. The user demand is overwhelmingly for content generated in U.S.-dominated space, and it will remain that way as long as other nations violate the freedom of speech. People in foreign countries come to U.S. websites to speak their minds. And what non-US users are starting to discover, as more and more of them suffer the repercussions of violating their respective nations' speech control laws, is that a U.S.-controlled Internet is a freer Internet with better content.

Re: Ham-handed

[GlennC]

...it just wants French users who use google.com instead of google.fr to not see personal information about French citizens...

If that's the case, then French ISPs need to force all traffic to redirect from google.com to google.fr in order to comply with French law. It's probably easier to regulate the national ISP than a local affiliate of an international corporation.

Re:Ham-handed

[ShanghaiBill]

2016 freedom of the press, the USA is 41 according to https://rsf.org/en/ranking
Democracy Ranking put the USA 16th (The top 5 were all EU countries)

The main reason for this ranking is America's lack of a journalist shield law that gives reporters special privileges and protections. In America, ALL citizens have a right to say and write what they want, not just the elite, so it is silly to penalize America for that.

Re: Ham-handed

[AmiMoJo]

Google does in fact redirect google.com to google.fr automatically. You have to click something stop it happening. Even if you use google.com, it still returns search results in your language (reported by the browser) and uses the country it thinks you are in to supply stuff like shopping results. Again, you can tell it not to, but as the court noticed they clearly have the technical ability to do what they are asking.

Re: Ham-handed

[budgenator]

If we don't trust our own Government, can we imagine what the fuck we think of your Government?

If you actually read the article the bill being proposed, all it's really about is preventing the POTUS from transferring control of DNS to a non-governmental agency through executive action alone.

Is it really much better to Trust the EU Government who is trying to make mandatory to use a Government Issued Identification Card to make certain online postings; or maybe the UN, Dictator's Social Club would be better?
This is a red-herring anyway, if you want to control the internet, you want to control Border Gateway Protocol, if you control BGP, you can route any traffic to sites you find inconvenient through your own proxies or even your own sites.

  Of course on second hand not having to wade through a boat-load of Group-thinking Fan-Boys Anonymous Cowards might improve things here.

Re:Ham-handed

[monkeyzoo]

The US has stronger laws and a stronger tradition and culture of supporting freedom of expression. According to a Pew Research poll published in this week's Economist, 80% of Japanese, 70% of Germans, and 50% of French, think the government should be able to silence people offending others. In America, only a quarter felt the same. The next closest countries were Canada and Britain, both at about 40%.

US stewardship of the Internet has not been perfect, but I doubt if others can do better, either individually or collectively.

The exception to free speech laws in Europe relate to specific classes, such as inciting hate speech.

But public opinion aside, in practice, the US censors more actual content on the net under the guise of copyright or national security than many other nations. Why shouldn't Switzerland be the ONE government in charge, if the argument is that the most free and open one should have stewardship?

The point to me is that trusting a consortium of free governments is better than putting all faith in one government to do this right. Two hears are better than one. To me, it is just fundamentally flawed to entrust a global resource to one country that has its own self interests and that has demonstrably already been guilty of many intrusions on liberty and privacy on the net.

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

... it just wants French users who use google.com instead of google.fr to not see personal information about French citizens that Google has no legal right UNDER CURRENT FRENCH LAW to present.

FTFY. And it makes all the difference.

Maybe the French should pass another law, one that requires French Internet users to use google.fr, and not google.com.

Re:Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

The poor commoners were told they were fighting for lower taxes, but taxes only went up after independence. Except for the elite.

The poor commoners weren't told sh*t. The common farmer, who was a land owner and therefore privy to political information, was promised a bigger slice of the pie, but laborers only interacted with "la revolution" at the end of a gun -- one end or the other. The lowest the great American revolt ever reached was to the land owners. For everyone else it was "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".

Re: Ham-handed

[silentcoder]

You are right about there being governments that should not be involved. You are wrong that the US government is not one of them.

There are two acceptable options. An international consortium of non-governmental and non-profit organisations would be the ideal. Take all governments out of it. Else give them all equal votes and hope they will all be restrained because any power I grab I am giving to my enemies as well. A mutually assured destruction for DNS.

Bad as that may be its not nearly as bad as the thought of a Trump government having exclusive control over it. No government has ever been worthy of such trust.

And yes Iran and North Korea deserves to have nuclear weapons. If they dont then nobody does. You cannot ever expect the me to support any situation where the US claims a right they deny to other countries. If its too dangerous to let NK have nukes then its too dangerous to let America have them. The sane answer is to never let washington or wall street have anything you would not want Kim Yong Ill to have.

Re:Ham-handed

[Grishnakh]

Why shouldn't Switzerland be the ONE government in charge, if the argument is that the most free and open one should have stewardship?

Sounds good to me. The copyright cartels wouldn't like that though.

Re: Ham-handed

[Grishnakh]

That's a pile of crap. The US has a few advantages, until some corporation disagrees with something.

There's only one nation I can think of that can be really be trusted with this job: Switzerland.

Re: Ham-handed

[silentcoder]

For a start yes. Do you think the internet would have grown large enough to even need the move from host files to dns without its killer app ? What about the thousands of non-US folk who contributed to the RFCs for technologies like DNS and contributed code to the open source projects that implemented them ? Hell what internet would have happened without Turing (British), Zuze and Von Neuman (both German) ?

Re: Ham-handed

[silentcoder]

Its your contradiction not mine. You are asking me to trust a government you do not trust yourself.

Re:Ham-handed

[cyberchondriac]

Yep, no culture.

Jazz
Blues
Swing
Rock'n'Roll
Hollywood
Television
Numerous authors and poets: Too many to even list
Numerous artists: Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell, etc.
Culinary inventions:
Buffalo wings, Cheese-steaks, barbecued ribs, and the whole fast food industry, which has spread globally.. (well, I didn't say it was a healthy culture)

Re:Ham-handed

[mattventura]

I don't think having more country-specific stuff would help. The Internet isn't supposed to be like the physical world where borders are a thing. It might make sense to have sites separated by language, since a French web site doesn't do a whole lot for someone who doesn't speak French, countries should stop thinking they have control over the Internet.

I find it ironic that European countries want less physical borders but want the Internet partitioned even harder.

Re:Ham-handed

[dryeo]

Well, it was George 3rd who issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which started the whole thing by declaring that people were equal, including the natives and papists. For the rich Americans, freedom was the freedom to steal, land from the natives, labour from the slaves adn keep those tax dollars local.
They did end up with a Constitution that declared everyone free and some people were actually worth 3/5ths of a person as freedom includes the freedom to own people.

Re:Ham-handed

[kheldan]

The problem is, that while we here in the U.S. haven't done a perfect job of managing it, and have done some questionable things, there are many countries out there that, if they started having a say in how the entire internet is operated, would make it much less open place, put more restrictions of free speech, etc, than it is right now. Good things rarely come out of decisions made by committees. I for one don't want to have to think about maybe being arrested and extradited to Thailand because I said something online construed as derogatory to their King, for instance, and while that may sound pretty wild in the current internet climate, who knows what things might end up like if many nations of the world suddenly had a say in how it's operated?

Re:Ham-handed

[SumDog]

Culture is Americas second biggest export ... the first being war .. I mean *cough*cough* democracy.

Re:Ham-handed

[TheCastro1689]

They outlaw cash, so there's no reason to have civil asset forfeiture. http://www.reuters.com/article... https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens when a user in France explicitly tells Google to not localize the results/content for France and instead serve the content for US?
End-to-end encryption means no middle-man can alter the request to set the locale. May be Google can use the source IP. However, when you add Tor/proxy to the mix, that option goes out the window.

So now a user in France requests content as it would appear to a US user and Google has no way knowing where the request originated. So it serves the content meant for US.

Is Google violating the French law?

Re:Ham-handed

[micahraleigh]

I forgot about that one. It is a big deal.

Thankfully it varies by state, and my state (NC) doesn't dabble in it.

Nice to be pseudonymed as MicahRaleigh today!! :)

Re:Ham-handed

[LynnwoodRooster]

Huh. Germany consolidated in 1815, Italy became Italy in 1861, Belgium came to life in 1830, the Netherlands around 1815, and Luxembourg around 1890. Heck, most of SE Europe, including Greece, was part of this thing called the Ottoman Empire up until 1922.

By your standard, most of Europe has even LESS culture than the US because it's even younger!

Re:Ham-handed

[micahraleigh]

America was founded by anti culture.

The Puritans (1620) wouldn't so much allow embroidery on their gloves. Their who schtick was to live hard-working, businessy lives. Eventually, as Weber noted this attitude engulfed the entire Massachusetts bay colony (3 existing US states today), the Easter seaboard, the US, and the US consumes 90% of the world economy.

It has only declined due to its own decadence as the success of one generation led to waste in ensuing generations.

So I say give anti culture a chance !

Re:Ham-handed

[LynnwoodRooster]

Yes, people are never arrested for making a political speech or action that would be tolerated (ridiculed and mocked, but tolerated and legal) in the US.

Re:Ham-handed

[micahraleigh]

as Mark Twain said, a bigot is just someone who disagrees with you.

Mark Twain wasn't a Sunday school teacher or anything like that.

Re:Ham-handed

[Coren22]

.com, .org, and .gov are US sites, not international. If you want your own in your country, the proper way to do that is .com.ca, not to take .ca.com from whoever owns it. .com isn't yours to take, get over it. We invented the internet, we got first dibs on names on our network, you just joined in on the fun later.

Re:Ham-handed

[Coren22]

Just imagine if control went by population. China restricting free speech, India thinking it is ok to harass women at every turn. It would be a very interesting internet.

Re:Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we should make .com and .org and those other TLD's go away entirely.

All of our domains should be .universe.milkyway.sol.earth.{whatever} as it is. And from that you should already know how I feel about fixing TBL's directional fuck-up with domain names as well.

Either that, or make TLD's easier to get and stop forcing us all to use a handful of poorly-conceived, unenforced-and-unenforceable categories based on some arbitrary organizational motive. My personal ramblings are not commercial, not organized, not a network provider, not governmental, and not military. What's left? .info? Nobody goes to that ghetto because it's all spam and advertising. If you want rid of "DNS ghettos", get rid of the original TLD's. And the additional ones that all turned into ghettos. And the ccTLD's. But allow whoever owns it to keep .horse, because that whole walmart.horse thing was just funny and weird.

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

As a matter of fact, since it's pretty important here, France wants search results in France to respect French laws. It isn't trying to force Google to block those results from Americans, it just wants French users who use google.com instead of google.fr to not see personal information about French citizens that Google has no legal right to present.

It's really, really important that everyone understand this, because every debate about it is always derailed by people labouring under this misconception.

How about France orders French Citizens to stay in France where their information requests can be curated for them instead of going to the USA and seeing the unfiltered results?

You know... enforce your laws on your own citizens and leave the rest of us the fuck out of it?

What was the argument against that, again? Oh yeah... it was too easy for a french citizen to bypass the border and look at a non-french version of the internet, exposing them to information that they are not allowed to see.

That is sad.

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

You are free to go set up your own DNS servers that refuse to accept the TLD maintainers' nodes as canonical, then force your country's ISP's to use it instead of the existing DNS infrastructure.

It's not an international network. It's not a national one, either. It's a network. Your rules don't apply here. They never have. They never will. You can only damage the endpoints that reside within your borders. And, yes, what you propose is damage to the network.

FOADIAF.

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

What your saying is already possible for the folks in France by using the FRENCH google portal. Google.com is the US version and no one in USA cares that we have a .com.us. France can already firewall off google.com and leave google.fr for their people.

As others have said, let the rest of the world firewall off their countries if they don't like freedom of expression. It is clear most countries, regardless of GDP rank, don't want freedom of expression or otherwise think their governments should protect their feelings from getting hurt by someone else's expression.

Re:Ham-handed

[cptdondo]

Listen to Fox much?

Most Euro-based software companies won't take contributions from Americans because of the absurd US laws on encryption. The US has warrantless wiretaps, Stingray, Gitmo, etc. etc. etc. Basically, all the US has to do is to listen to your "free speech" without a warrant, proclaim you a terrorist, and ship you off to Gitmo forever without a trial.

It used to be the Gulag.

So... There are many, many other countries with greater privacy protections than the oft-ignored First Amendment.

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

Then may I suggest that your country disconnect itself from the internet and make your own?

If you don't need us, put your money where your mouth it. Frankly I do not want any other country telling me what can happen on the internet in my country, and that is the very reason the EU, UN, and China all want more control, they want to control what I can see in MY COUNTRY.

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

Its funny how your posts always degrade to trying to compare the US to North Korea. What country do you hail from good sir.

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

For a start yes. Do you think the internet would have grown large enough to even need the move from host files to dns without its killer app ? What about the thousands of non-US folk who contributed to the RFCs for technologies like DNS and contributed code to the open source projects that implemented them ? Hell what internet would have happened without Turing (British), Zuze and Von Neuman (both German) ?

That's like saying that I helped create iOS because I built an iphone app that used it.

Re:Ham-handed

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

And Germany was only reunified less than 30 years ago. That hardly means Germany has no culture.

Re:Ham-handed

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Ha, that's a good one. When the EU gets rids of hate speech laws, then you can say that.

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

and 7 Billion people who consider the US no more trustworthy than North Korea.

Well, that's just laughable.

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

The text of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Note that there's nothing about "only for US citizens" in there.

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Google.com has no presence inside of France. If the French intentionally circumvent the redirect, and use Google that is not located in France, then that's on them. The French government should not be able to force a Google subsidiary in any other country to censor anything. At most, they should be able to tell them to not serve French traffic at all.

Re: Ham-handed

[silentcoder]

Only to Americans. The rest of the world would very much prefer NOBODY had as much power internationally as America does. No, it's not about who is best suited to have that power - its that it should not exist.
No government should be able to influence the lives of non-citizens that much.

Why do you think you are constantly accused of imperialism and unspeakable arrogance ? The former because America keeps messing in the lives of people who have no say in it's decisions, the latter because Americans honestly can't seem to even consider the possibility that anybody else may be less than grateful for this.

America tends to be tolerated by the world only because the world has no choice. But if there was a third world war, we all rather hope you and China and Russia all destroy each other to the point where none of you have any power left.

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Your original claim was about trustworthiness. The US is far more trustworthy than NK, and plenty of non-Americans absolutely agree with that.

I'm not constantly accused of imperialism or unspeakable arrogance. The US certainly throws its weight around, and I'm often not a fan of US foreign policy, but it's arguably the most well-behaved superpower the world has seen. Oh, Americans know a lot of the world isn't grateful. On the other hand, America gives out loads of foreign aid, and there are plenty of people who are grateful for that. Some countries are actually grateful for the Pax Americana, and the American military in general, despite its misuse.

Speak for yourself. You do not get to speak for every non-American, and just because you're upset about the way things are doesn't mean everyone else in the world is. You want to talk about unspeakable arrogance? Look in a mirror.

Re: Ham-handed

[AmiMoJo]

Google.com is served from servers inside France for French users. Otherwise it would be slow. Google France does business selling ads and apps on the .com domain.

Re:Ham-handed

[budgenator]

I don't think you know what wiped off the map means.

Kind of looks like Dresden.

Re: Ham-handed

[silentcoder]

Try reading the actual constitution - not just the amendments.

The US government has a very long history of trampling on the freedoms of people in other countries, and a particular love for removing their elected leaders whenever any of those leaders get the bizarre idea that they are supposed to serve the needs of their electorates rather than of US corporations in order to replace them with pliant dictators and an even more comprehensive history of propping up and supporting some of the most oppressive dictatorships in the world whenever such support can ensure somebody's profits.

That whole "consent of the governed" thing has never been applied to anybody OUTSIDE the USA - what makes you think that the rest of it does ?

Re: Ham-handed

[silentcoder]

> The US is far more trustworthy than NK, and plenty of non-Americans absolutely agree with that.

Then they are fools. All governments are exactly equally evil. Specifically: absolutely evil. Yours is no different.

>I'm not constantly accused of imperialism or unspeakable arrogance.
You think people saying that about America are somehow always adding "Except that guy Anonymous Cow Ward on slashdot". It's an accusation levelled against America on a daily basis by everybody from politicians to streetsweepers. And it's not an undeserved reputation.

>The US certainly throws its weight around, and I'm often not a fan of US foreign policy, but it's arguably the most well-behaved superpower the world has seen.
Unless of course you lived in Brazil or Nicaraqua or Iraq or Panama or any of the other place where the US decided they didn't approve of who the people elected and replaced them with some puppet dictator. Hell when a few nations recently decided to overthrow some of your friendly dictators the biggest debates in America was about how concerned everybody was that these newly free people may use their democracy to elect leaders who would not care very much about "US interests". Even if your assessment was true (and I don't believe it is) then that's such an incredibly low bar that it is utterly meaningless. How about being a good neighbour to the rest of the world instead ?

>Oh, Americans know a lot of the world isn't grateful
Well, some Americans, but I would add that many of them would have to be grateful for the deaths of their loved ones at the hands of the US or dictators installed by the US. Grateful to see their economies crashed by US policies. Grateful to see their livelihoods destroyed to serve some US corporation. They are not grateful because, by and large, if you are not American then American foreign policy will screw your or kill you nine times out of ten. The one time you actually appointed a president who seemed to respect the idea that other people have rights and liberties and that they do not just exist to server US interests and actually said so the US media was filled with pundits calling him a traitor for "apologising for America". It never occurred to them that America in fact has a great deal to apologise for.

>On the other hand, America gives out loads of foreign aid,
Oh really ? You think it is "loads" ? We'll ignore that whenever the US has a crisis the rest of the world gives aid to you just as readily. You think it's a lot ? Funny, just last year the African Union asked you to please close a few loopholes that allow American investors in Africa to avoid paying taxes on the money they make there - and offered to forego all future foreign aid in return. They would be happy to do so - since the taxes that American investors evade in their countries are roughly 65 times the amount that America gives in foreign aid. Your "loads" is a mere 65th of what Americans steal from the same countries it is paid to - and those countries know it and know they are getting a pretty damn rotten deal.

>Some countries are actually grateful for the Pax Americana
Mostly the ones who play nice lapdog and act like little more than colonies or are powerful enough to actually set some terms in negotiations. There are not very many of those.

>and the American military in general, despite its misuse.
I think that's pretty much Israel, and that's because the utterly one-sided US support for Israel is a prime example of the misuse of the US military. If America wants my respect, they would sign the Rome statute and haul the Netanyahu and Bush before the court in the Hague on the same plane.

>You do not get to speak for every non-American
I did no such thing. I merely expressed a common sentiment. I never said everybody thinks the US government is as evil as I think they are. But I did say that 7 billion people out there would prefer not to be dominated by a government they have no say in. That's a pretty universal thing, every Ame

Re: Ham-handed

[ArmoredDragon]

Its your contradiction not mine. You are asking me to trust a government you do not trust yourself.

I never made any contradiction, rather you're just making a bunch of brain-dead assumptions about my comments thus far, and likewise putting words in my mouth.

I never at any point asked you to do anything, nor have I stated whether or not I trust the US government. What I'm stating is that the powers that be should leave the current domain name system with its existing status quo, because it already works well and is one of the few government things in this world that isn't already broken. When it comes to freedom of speech, NOBODY is as liberal as the US government. And so, on this particular matter, and on this particular matter ONLY, I'll trust my government over your chosen one any day of the year, and I honestly don't give a shit whether or not you trust it the same because unless the US Department of Commerce cedes control over the domain name system, you really have no say in this matter, and that's also the way I like it.

I know, it sounds very controlling of me to say that, but I say that because I don't want nor do I trust you or anybody you choose to "fix" something that isn't broken at all. The only things you could perceive as broken is the fact that the status quo doesn't require censorship of any speech that you don't like. And, a zero censorship policy is just the way I like it.

Re:Ham-handed

[quenda]

Its fascinating to see the moderation by time-zones.

The above comment goes from "Score 4: Insightful" to "Score 0: Troll" as the earth rotates and different continents start reading.

I guess we don't have so much in common after all.

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Hmm. Do you have a source for that?

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

It's really funny how you keep assuming I'm American.

Evil does not mean untrustworthy. I also disagree; all governments do bad things, but some do more bad things than others.

Again, I didn't say the US was good, only that it's the best superpower the world has had so far. Whether that's because power corrupts or corrupt nations seek more power, who knows, but superpowers tend to do bad things. The US has, in my opinion, abused its power the least.

Trade is good. American policies, while usually more favorable to America than other countries, for the most part don't destroy economies. "nine times out of ten" is bullshit.

Yep, it is loads, whether you're talking public or private. And yeah, it's fairly understandable that Americans don't want other countries telling them how their tax policies should work. In addition, most of those companies are already operating illegally.

Ask Eastern Europe, South Korea, and Japan how happy they are to have US troops there.

Also - you absolutely did speak for every non-American, several times. "we all", "7 billion people who consider", etc.

No, I used your words as you said them. Maybe you meant something different, but I represented what you said fairly. Also - the French can be pretty fucking rude to Germans, Mexicans, Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese. It's not just Americans they're rude to.

I don't support the drone program. If it was actually surgical, like they claim, that would be better - still bad and you're right, incredibly disrespectful - but as it stands it's just making things worse.

Re: Ham-handed

[silentcoder]

>When it comes to freedom of speech, NOBODY is as liberal as the US government

You guys really believe that ? Well try showing a pair of tits on daytime broadcast TV or saying the word 'pussy' on the radio. Both those things are quite common in Europe. Hell in some European countries you can find hardcore fetish porn on daytime broadcast television and government makes no attempt to sensor what in the US will invariably be labelled "obsenity" and kept of the public airwaves.

If zero censorship is the goal - Germany would probably be a better choice. But the fact is, that censorship has nothing to DO with what's broken. What's broken is having a core piece of infrastructure in the hands of government, any government at all.
Look at what the bill says. It does not say "it can't be given to another government" - it specifically prohibits giving that control to a NON-governmental organisation. Which is exactly where it ought to lie.
Just like we've moved every OTHER part of internet control to private organisations and the internet has consistently gotten better for it. I would love to see a consortium of international non-governmental organisations taking control. With engineers handling the day to day stuff and policy controlled by organisations that have long track records of fighting their governments on censorship issues. The US for example could be represented on such a board by the ACLU and the EFF.

Re:Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

REALLY? You tried that once, we kicked your ass. Want to give it another go? Maybe in the winter?

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no misconception. What you described is a distinction without a difference. Google's results from their '.com' domain are whatever the end-user wants them to be NOT what some French court says they should be. If France doesn't want their people seeing that information than just have the French ISP's block 'google.com' why put that on Google to do for you?

And BTW, if we're being 'clear here', the information Google presents isn't information CREATED by Google, it exists independent of Google, so perhaps rather than go after Google use it as a resource to find the sites with the information the French don't like & go after them. It's where the data is hosted that is violating French law not Google.

Re: Ham-handed

[AmiMoJo]

If you are outside the US just do a traceroute to google.com. You can see the CDN.

For example, from the UK (first few removed for privacy):

  4     4 ms     4 ms     4 ms  ge-6-1.lon-th2cr.spn.kcom.com [62.164.130.91]
  5     4 ms     4 ms     4 ms  vl-802.lon-gs2cr.spn.kcom.com [62.164.130.1]
  6     5 ms     5 ms     4 ms  62.164.169.165

Re:Ham-handed

[TheCarp]

> It's a delicate balancing act. If we tick off enough nations, they'll fork and go their own way without us.

Define "us"?

If a viable alternative DNS system arose, I would gladly use it. In those terms, "we", the internet using community, including those of us in the US, don't really need to care what decision they make.

Personally, I consider your warning a good plan. Congress should grip onto this as tightly as possible so we can create the impetus to create a better system....one they can never even grab a grain of.

Re: Ham-handed

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Huh. That's interesting. Thank you for the information. Does Google.com pay Google France for the server access, or...? Why do they have subsidiary companies in that case?

Re:Ham-handed

[david_thornley]

It's worse than you imply. Germany was not well-defined until 1871 (establishing one country that did not include Austria). I think you typo'ed the liberation of most of SE Europe, which was 1912 rather than 1922.

The only government in the world that's lasted longer than the US government without major changes by force or changes in sovereignity is the UK's, as far as I can tell.

Re: Ham-handed

[david_thornley]

The Internet had DNS some time before the Web was invented. Ever seen a bang mail path? That was before email got automatically routed, and consisted in a list of URLs based on domain names separated by exclamation points (bangs). Those couldn't work without some sort of DNS system.

Re: Ham-handed

[david_thornley]

In practice, it's not as clear cut. Companies have used the DMCA to shut down expression. There's no penalty for filing a mostly bogus DMCA takedown claim, and some security research gets legally threatened because it would possibly include a way to bypass a DMCA-defined access mechanism.

Re: Ham-handed

[david_thornley]

Broadcast TV and radio use a limited public good, and get regulated. I agree that the regulation is stupid and prudish, but it stays out of other US media. Since the 1950s, we've had magazines to show us nude women and discuss sex (not necessarily from healthy viewpoints). We now have a mostly unregulated Internet, with plenty of explicit sexual content, although vulnerable to DMCA takedown requests. The only thing I can think of that the US censors on the Internet is child pornography.

Re:Ham-handed

[LynnwoodRooster]

It's OK. We have no culture. And everyone knows the Brits only have culture and cuisine because they imported it from their colonies... :)

Re: Ham-handed

[plague911]

If you cant tell the difference between infrastructure and the technology IP used to create it. You are an absolute idiot.

Anyone can steal technology it is what it is, what you cant do is steal trillions of dollars of infrastructure. Its just physically impossible The use military strategically planned for critical elements of the internet's infrastructure to be located within the U.S. for the explicit reason of maintaining control despite jackasses from elsewhere whining.

Literally go build the internet over again. Try. I dare you. I don't give a fuck whatever nation you are part of. Hell even the whole EU could try and no one would give a slightest fuck. Your idea of internet freedom simply does not matter. You do not control it and do not have enough influence to create a new one. So your opinion is worthless.

Re: Ham-handed

[silentcoder]

Nobody needs to build a new internet. The internet is already not under government control.

Building an alternative set of root DNS servers - literally the last little vestige of any government control - that would be ridiculously simple. Quite a few countries ran their TLD rootson old 486 machines for years and the burden on the technology has not increased at all. It's simply not a hard thing to do. If the US doesn't give up control over it, an international consortium will start an alternate, the rest of the world will use it, and the US will be the one left behind - and very soon, most US people will use the other one and the one the government controls will be an aging relic of no more relevance.

And - I got news for you - today the government has announced they've already selected the private entities that will be taking over this function. They understand the futility of attempting to maintain control over it even if you and Ted Cruz do not.

Re: Ham-handed

[ArmoredDragon]

You guys really believe that ? Well try showing a pair of tits on daytime broadcast TV or saying the word 'pussy' on the radio.

This has zero to do with the internet, and furthermore, that is on spectrum granted by the government. Is it bullshit? Yeah, but if you do it on cable TV, nobody will give a shit.

If zero censorship is the goal - Germany would probably be a better choice.

Are you high? If you so much as goosestep there or hit your fist to your chest and raise your hand up high, even if you're just joking, you'll go to jail. Also, any kind of WWII memorabilia is completely illegal, and you can easily got to jail if something you say is even remotely considered hateful, up to and including making statements like "I really don't think we should mass import muslims that hate us just because they're trying to escape from other muslims that hate them more."

Make no mistake about it: The Nazi's still reign there, just it's a different kind of Nazi now.

Re: Ham-handed

[drinkypoo]

The Internet had DNS some time before the Web was invented. Ever seen a bang mail path? [...] Those couldn't work without some sort of DNS system.

Actually, no, you have that backwards. I mean, yes, the internet did have DNS before the web, we used it for other things like ftp, telnet, gopher... but email bang paths didn't use DNS. That was back when the mail was carried via UUCP, and UUCP maps told how to route your mail. If your host wasn't in the maps, how you got mail to it was by banging. I was ...scruz.ucsc.edu!deeptht!inkpot!drink for a time. I used UUCP on Xenix, UUPC, AmigaUUCP...

Re:Ham-handed

[Anonymous Coward]

So, when Saddam invaded Kuwait in '90, we should've ignored it, since UN resolutions certainly had no effect in driving him out.
When Al Qaeda attacked on 9-11 and the Taliban sheltered them, we should've just ignored that too? Problems that you ignore just go away, right?
How about Vietnam? Started with French troops, we didn't start that.
The second phase of the Iraq war you can certainly question, but the first two, pretty much an unfortunate but necessary response to aggression.

Re: Ham-handed

[david_thornley]

My bad. Thanks for the correction.

Internet Governance

[Anonymous Coward]

Should be delegated to the United Nations, so countries like Russia and China can be in charge.

Re:Internet Governance

[Anonymous Coward]

No, very much not better than the US.

Re:Internet Governance

[Anonymous Coward]

Better than the US.

LOL why most of the time it's right to assume AC = Anonymous Troll

Re:Internet Governance

[by (1706743)]

Say what you will about the US, but as it is, I can access any of a number of ridiculously pro-USA websites just the same as I can access any of a number of ridiculously anti-USA websites.

Re: Internet Governance

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, you are forbidden from posting any more.

What's that? Free speech? Sorry, China does not believe in free speech.

So... you were saying?

Re:Internet Governance

[readin]

Better than the US.

Not at the moment. But if we keep electing people like Obama and Trump/Hillary, it won't be long.

Re:Internet Governance

[Anonymous Coward]

So can the majority of the world, you're such a stuck up dickhead. "WE'RE NUMBER ONE!" (AT BEING STUPID)

Re:Internet Governance

[Anonymous Coward]

I can access any of a number of ridiculously anti-USA websites.

That's because the US government is currently confident about its approval. By contrast, websites that that explain the positions of terrorists or bypass the intellectual property rights of large corporations do not last long in the US.

Re:Internet Governance

[Coren22]

So websites that break internationally accepted laws aren't allowed? Funny how that works.

What role does NTIA play?

[Anonymous Coward]

What role does NTIA actually play? I thought ICANN had governance over DNS?

Re:What role does NTIA play?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the not-for-profit entity responsible for the technical coordination of the Internet's domain name system (DNS). On September 30, 2009, NTIA, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Commerce, reached agreement with ICANN on an Affirmation of Commitments that completed the transition of the technical coordination of the DNS to a multi-stakeholder, private-sector led model and contains provisions to ensure accountability and transparency in ICANN's decision-making with the goal of protecting the interests of global Internet users, as well as mechanisms to address the security stability, and resiliency of the Internet DNS.

NTIA represents the U.S. government in ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), which is structured to provide advice to the ICANN Board on the public policy aspects of the broad range of issues pending before ICANN." [src]

Re:What role does NTIA play?

[Anonymous Coward]

Information on the "Affirmation of Commitments" can be found here

Clueless moron

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously Ted Cruz has no idea how the internet works. Any country can set up a top level domain and authorise anyone that they want as registrars. This isn't something that is within the power of the United States to decide.

Re:Clueless moron

[Midnight_Falcon]

Obviously the AC who wrote this remark doesn't understand how the root DNS zone of the internet works, and that it's regardless of TLDs. The root servers provide start-of-authority (SOA) for all domains, and then your resolver obtains the information as to what authoritative resolvers are for any given TLD. So, establishment of a TLD does NOT bypass this control.

Re:Clueless moron

[ravenshrike]

No shit. Bit they can get away with a lot more without significant complaint if the actual governance is in the hands of an "appropriate international body" that they can jerk around like a puppet.

Re:Clueless moron

[Sarten-X]

Any country, or any company, or any kid with spare time can set up their own root servers, their own TLDs, and their own domains. Then with the authority of laws, policies, or a note passed around the local high school, users can be convinced to point their resolving to that custom DNS, bypassing anything the US government wants to do.

The whole notion of maintaining control of the internet is somewhat asinine.

Re: Clueless moron

[Anonymous Coward]

There are root nameservers that point you to the .ca server for .ca addresses. Control over them means control over what TLDs exist. Since ICANN decided to pollute the TLD space with .biz, .sucks and .coffee, the idea that someone else could do worse is risible.

With DNSSEC, transparently spoofing DNS becomes impossible, while countries can of course set up servers that say whatever they want and use whatever incentives to get their subjects to use their servers.

The chance that the UN will start pulling .com addresses for porn or hate sites is small, since the UN is supposed to point .com at the .com registrar, which is a US company operating under US law.

If porn and hate become banned on .com due to increasing feminism in the US, though, we can always count on .ru to be a free country.

Re:Clueless moron

[Kjella]

Obviously Ted Cruz has no idea how the internet works. Any country can set up a top level domain and authorise anyone that they want as registrars. This isn't something that is within the power of the United States to decide.

Pot, meet kettle. The DNS system asks the root servers what TLDs are valid, if your new TLD isn't accepted it doesn't exist. Sure a country could fork the root servers and force ISPs to redirect their citizens to their root but effectively it wouldn't exist for anyone else. Same as I can set up a domain on my local network and call it whatever, doesn't have any effect on the outside world. And then it's really just a country intranet, not the Internet as we know it.

Re: Clueless moron

[Anonymous Coward]

I though feminists supported porn. So difficult to keep up.

Re: Clueless moron

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a bit of a factionalism thing these days so I understand. Some of them are pro-porn, others anti. Similar split over transgenderism.

Re:Clueless moron

[youngone]

Without reading TFA or even thinking much about it, I decided that if Ted Cruz proposes it it's probably really stupid.

Re:Clueless moron

[Bayowolf]

The whole notion of maintaining control of the internet is somewhat asinine.

It's akin to maintaining control over *society*: The amount of control you want depends on how authoritarian you want to be.

Re:Clueless moron

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

He is correct that Ted Cruz is a clueless moron, however.

Re:Clueless moron

[Waffle Iron]

If all of the countries other than the US were to agree to use the same fork, then the original DNS system would become the USA's very own intranet.

Re: Clueless moron

[DaHat]

And yet they like many remain oddly silent on the long running accusations of UN Peace Keepers raping with impunity: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...

Re:Clueless moron

[MightyMartian]

They can do anything they want, but as soon as they want to do name resolution outside their root servers, they're going to have a problem.

Re:Clueless moron

[Anonymous Coward]

AKA top level domains, you've just reworded what GP said.

Re:Clueless moron

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you'll find that it will be the United States that has the problem if they try to exert this level of control. Other countries will interconnect and leave the USA out in the cold.

Enjoy your single country intranet, because that's all you're going to be left with if your government pursues this stupid course of action.

Re:Clueless moron

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an idiot. Go learn something about networking.

Any country can set up root servers. That is what managing a TLD is about.

Re:Clueless moron

[fustakrakich]

That is what we would call an ad homina attack

Re:Clueless moron

[MightyMartian]

If you break the Internet, you won't put it back together again. The US has been a pretty damned good steward. If you want the likes of China to be running the show, then you'll get the Internet you deserve.

Re:Clueless moron

[rickb928]

Yes, And I'm interested now in how dual DNS would work for most devices. How would Google resolve if the US domain google.com were competing with an EU service of google.com.eu, or the French version google.com.fr? Plainly nations would force software vendors to make their root DNS primary, and possibly even block competing root zones.

And then we have Balkanization, with France blocking the US, former French colonies blocking France, chaos. Really cool. Get the popcorn and drinks.

Re: Clueless moron

[rickb928]

"The chance that the UN will start pulling .com addresses for porn or hate sites is small,"

And you base this opinion on what? Only UN incompetence is plausible. Most member nations would burn the US flat if they could.

Re: Clueless moron

[rickb928]

Transgenderism pretty much destroys gender as a static concept, so feminism seems to now be a movement that can include anyone at any given time, depending on their instantaneous self-identification.

Which is likely to last as long as the ACLU's support, given that sane people are offended that their teenage daughters are being confronted with biological males in bathrooms, which breaks down much support for transanything.

Re:Clueless moron

[ScentCone]

Nice strawman. You build that yourself?

Nice way of trying to dodge the substance of the matter, about which he's correct. And you know it, which is why you're attempting to sling the "you're fighting a straw man" defense even though of course that's not what's happening. No, we do NOT want places like China, or Iran having any influence international communication standards or things like root DNS.

Re:Clueless moron

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but it is exactly what he's trying to do.

Unless you actually believe that the whole world is comprised solely of the USA and China. If that is the case, then I am sorry for your brain damage.

Re:Clueless moron

[ScentCone]

Wow, you just go out of your way to pretend you can't read words in front of your eyes, don't you? That must be exhausting.

Re:Clueless moron

[MightyMartian]

No he's not fucking correct. The Internet has flourished under the US's protection. Deliver it over to some international agency, and the next thing you know it will be cut to ribbons, censorship will become internationalized, and it will fall apart. Simply put, as little as I trust the US government, I trust the UN, the EU, Russia, China, India, Australia, the UK, and well, just about everyone else much much much much much much much less.

Re:Clueless moron

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you should learn how to write. I know it must be frustrating to you that people can't just "get" your thoughts, but if you can't articulate them with words, then you're just going to lead a frustrating life.

Have a nice day.

Re:Clueless moron

[silentcoder]

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c...

Yes, his comment may be a fallacy - but that doesn't mean it's not also true.

I say "may" because I'm not convinced that it IS even an ad hominem fallacy. The definition of pretty much every fallacy includes "without any other substantiating evidence" (appeal to emotion and appeal to tradition are notable exceptions) but most things are *only* fallacious if they stand by themselves, NOT when used as a part of a larger argument with strong evidence.
The evidence in this case is Cruz's entire career - which has been massively anti-freedom (and particularly anti-civil-liberties while his time as an AG includes one of the worst breaches of due process in the history of the United States) and pretty much always being on the stupid side of every issue. It is perfectly reasonable then to start assuming that he is more likely than not to be on the stupid side of THIS issue.

Saying it must be the case - that would be fallacious, inductive logic does not lead to absolute truths, but saying it is "probably" the case (as the OP did) - that is absolutely logical and a perfectly reasonable argument. Nobody is saying Cruz can never be right about anything because he is Cruz. We are simply applying the laws of inductive logic - in a thousand "experiments" Cruz has been found to be wrong 999 times, it is reasonable to think he is probably wrong this time as well.

Re:Clueless moron

[gtall]

Aye, that dirty little squit, Erdogan, was able to reach into Germany to stifle someone saying Erdogan's mother wears combat boots (or something like that).

The U.N. just got "lobbied" by Saudi Arabia to take it off the its human rights blacklist. They used the tactic of threatening to withhold funding, and that they wouldn't be able to stop their clerics from declaring the U.N. anti-Muslim. And the U.N. caved, declared victory with honor, and removed those jerks from the blacklist.

Re:Clueless moron

[swb]

If all of the countries other than the US were to agree to use the same fork,

You have boundless optimism in the level of agreement and cooperation of the entire world.

Re:Clueless moron

[Anonymous Coward]

Ted Cruz IS stupid -> Ted Cruz's idea IS stupid

Here, "Ted Cruz is stupid" is the ad hominem, but being ad hominem, or even fallacious in general, does not imply negation. In fact, many would argue this statement is true. If so, then the implication above (if also true) means his ideas are, in fact stupid. Logically.

Re:Clueless moron

[dywolf]

The Internet has flourished despite the US's "protection".

FTFY

Re:Clueless moron

[thegarbz]

Sure a country could fork the root servers and force ISPs to redirect their citizens to their root but effectively it wouldn't exist for anyone else.

Interestingly control is something repressive countries exert on their own people, not people of other nations. The rest of the world may not care, but that doesn't stop screwing with DNS from being a problem to some.

Re:Clueless moron

[fustakrakich]

that would be fallacious

You read way too much into my comment. I was merely being facetious. I really don't care about Ted Cruz. Like all the rest, he'll hop on on any popular bandwagon that passes by, this time for the IT crowd. Whatever danger or stupidity he might present comes from his supporters. If that is what it takes to win an election, then who am I to argue with success?

Re:Clueless moron

[budgenator]

Any country, or any company, or any kid with spare time can set up their own root servers, their own TLDs, and their own domains. Then with the authority of laws, policies, or a note passed around the local high school, users can be convinced to point their resolving to that custom DNS, bypassing anything the US government wants to do.

The whole notion of maintaining control of the internet is somewhat asinine.

They could, but many ISPs happily redirect ports so it's a YMMV proposition. Now what is even scarier than playing Games with DNS, is playing games with BGP; at that point the limit to what you can do is the effort you want to make in doing it.

Re: Clueless moron

[silentcoder]

Welll... while state AG for Texas our dear Mister Cruz actually appealed the release of wrongfully convicted 20-year old after his innocense was incontrovertibly proven. The kid had been in prison for 4 years out of a ten year sentence when his innocense was proven absolutely by evidence uncovered during the investigation of a different crime. Cruz actually stood before a judge and argued that innocent or not a poor black kid should serve the full sentence he was given by a jury. He did this fully knowing it would undermine the trial his office was prosecuting against the actual offender.

Yeah you should be arguing with success when it gives people like that power. It also means that as far as I am concerned Cruz has proven absolutely that he has zero respect for civil liberties and anything whatsoever proposed by him must be considered an attempt at a power grab for the purpose of anihilating them.

Re:Clueless moron

[budgenator]

I'm not sure that is an ad Hominum, I'm sure that since the Senator from Canada has had to withdraw his presidential ambitions and is now struggling to remain relevant, he has learned that being a bit Trumpian is an effective way to get you some Media exposure.

Re: Clueless moron

[fustakrakich]

Apparently enough people feel the same way about poor black kids that he does to give him the job. Again, direct your attention to his appeal to the people that support him. That is where the power comes from. He is not a leader. He is a reflection.

Re: Clueless moron

[Anonymous Coward]

given that self-righteous losers in desperate need of a boogeyman to justify their petty bigotry are pretending that their teenage daughters are being confronted with biological males in bathrooms

There, now it's not a lie. You're welcome.

Re:Clueless moron

[fustakrakich]

Oy vey! Was the joke that bad?

Re:Clueless moron

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

You mean, if America keeps things the way they are? It hasn't caused other countries to make their own internet (with blackjack! and hookers!) yet.

Re:Clueless moron

[budgenator]

Oh teach me not to watch the link, the truth is, it's a very good for a 7 digit /.er.

Re:Clueless moron

[allofmyremixes]

You offer a lot of speculation but no evidence to back up the claim that it will be 'cut to ribbons'. Typical fearmonger.

Re: Clueless moron

[Anonymous Coward]

Those people are the furthest thing from sane you can be. They're scared bigots plain and simple.

Re: Clueless moron

[rickb928]

Which people?

Re:Clueless moron

[fustakrakich]

it's a very good for a 7 digit /.er.

Ouch! another death by a thousand cuts!

With full understanding of the sentiment, not everything is as they appear

Re: tHE pOINT iS

[corwinsr]

You're either all kinds of stupid or a sarcastic troll. Really hope it's the latter.

RFC2468 -- I remember IANA

[Midnight_Falcon]

RFC2468 details the story of Jon Postel, who tried to move US control of DNS zones to IANA. This battle still rages, but Ted Cruz hasn't realized other nations (e.g. Russia) have contingency plans to bring up their own root DNS if anything happens with their relationship to the U.S.; making US control of these root DNS zones not-that-important-anymore.

Re:RFC2468 -- I remember IANA

[rahvin112]

IANA would put the stuff in control of mostly engineers, but most countries don't want it there, they want it at ITU. At the same time, if you are worried about corporate control and abusive use of the DNS system you could look no further than ITU. ICANN is it's own hotbed of money being funneled into the pockets of connected people but they can't even shake a stick at all the slush funds and money changing hands at ITU, hell ICANN probably learned the game from ITU.

ITU would be a disaster for the internet DNS. Every tin pot dictator would be trying to get domains shut off for saying bad things about them. And at ITU, they would succeed. The DNS would rapidly devolve into a censored piece of crap.

Re:RFC2468 -- I remember IANA

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. While they can control the DNS within their borders they can't impact other nations nor the root servers which are critical. If the U.S. were to give up control of the root servers than there is a big gamble that Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, etc. or any nation that would use it improperly would be given control by who ever gains control, which we all know would be the U.N. A worthless piece of shit group of criminals.

Re:RFC2468 -- I remember IANA

[Anonymous Coward]

Good, then we could make a brand new shiny internet from scratch with that in mind to try to prevent this kind of things to happen again instead of try to fix the pile of poo we have now just because if it works don't fix it retarded north-american mentality

Re:RFC2468 -- I remember IANA

[Anonymous Coward]

That much is true. Now, if only anyone could trust the imbeciles you have been voting for high positions on the USA government to *stop* censoring DNS in the first place, then all we would have to do as a rule (in non-USA) would be to set aside DLVs and master root servers to take over the root *locally* in case of insanity. Which China already has done (theirs is active all the time, but it is in "mostly cooperative mode" right now).

Declare the DNS something that is of international value and that the USA cannot order the root to censor any TLDs, and you *might* solve a lot of the mistrust. Note, this needs to be something above the powers of a judge. Feel free to censor local registrars all you want, but the ccTLDs and international generic TLDs must be untoucheable by the US government (or any other than their local government, for that matter).

Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

So much core internet infrastructure is in the US that we could easily threaten nations with cutting them off from the internet if we wanted to. Almost all of its in the US and Europe.

Re:Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

So... you're saying Trump was correct about shutting down the internet of shithead nations?

Control Of DNS

[DaMattster]

The internet and it's associated technologies were developed in the United States so DNS should be under the sole purview of the US Government. If I had my druthers, IP addresses would also be controlled by the US. As much as I hate that little bitch Ted Cruz, I support him on this one.

Re:Control Of DNS

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, "it was made in the US so it should be controlled by the US government" doesn't logically follow. There's no reason that "made in the US" should equal "controlled by the US government", and I'm willing to bet you don't apply that standard to literally anything else.

Secondly, "The internet and it's associated technologies" were NOT developed in the United States, unless places like Dorset and Geneva have been moved across the ocean.

(Also, "it's" is a contraction for "it is" or "it has". The possessive form is "its".)

Re:Control Of DNS

[Anonymous Coward]

Your CPU was probably manufactured in China, Korea or Singapore... should they control it then also?

Re:Control Of DNS

[rickb928]

Your CPU was probably conceived of and designed in the U.S. And made wherever.

Probably.

Re:Control Of DNS

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

Considering you are going to elect donald fucking trump president, I really don't think your claims of continued intellectual superiority hold any merit. The USA started parts of the inter networks in the 60s yes, but has been on the wrong course politically since the 80s.
If the leadership becomes insane fascists, then its right to take control of important systems from them.

Ted cruz is a fucking traitorous canadian anyway, trying to suck american cock with these statements. Foreigners always gotta be the hardest in the crew.

America is like a past their prime actor, trying to keep any semblance of control. America is the movie "the wrestler" mixed with orwell and hitler for good measures. We patented it first!! is pretty much the only thing america produces, so i cant fault you for trying to defend your "property".

Re:Control Of DNS

[sir1963nz]

One of the great things is, the rest of the world can ignore the US. 96% of the worlds population lives outside of the USA, what happens if that 96% vote for a change ? Does the US ignore democracy ? US influence is waning , The EU is a bigger economy, China will soon be the 2nd largest. The more the US tries the bully the rest of the world, the more the world will resist. Each country has a strong culture, a strong heritage, a strong system of beliefs and the US must learn to recognise and respect these. US culture is NOT superior.

Re:Control Of DNS

[sir1963nz]

Your CPU was probably conceived by Germans, Chinese, Americans, British, Indians, Swedish, Australian, Japanese, French, Canadian, etc etc working both inside and outside of the USA. Heck Boolean logic with CPUs depend on was invented by the British. Shall we go back to Babbages analytical engine , that was British too. Ada Lovelace is considered the first programmer, again British.

Re:Control Of DNS

[Anonymous Coward]

So the UK should get to control all ARM-based devices and Germany gets to control all automobiles? Your reasoning is absurd.

Re:Control Of DNS

[silentcoder]

CERN is in the US now ? Because quite a lot of "core technologies" were developed there - not least of which the internet's killer app, the world-wide-web. Are you seriously going to argue that control of the web should be vested in the government of Switzerland ?
Let's take your argument to it's logical conclusion. Gunpowder was invented in china so I guess the US will be handing over control of all it's fire-arms companies, guns and bullets to the Chinese government ?
Cars were invented in Europe - so I guess you'll be handing over the controlling interests in Ford and GM to the Germans.
Mind you - Germany also built the first modern computers (predating you guys by nearly a decade with the Zuse computers) so I guess you can keep the internet but control of the servers it runs on goes to them too.
The persians had the first real navy so I guess you'll be handing control of your naval forces over to Iran and Iraq. Mind you they also invented farming so your agriculture industry goes there too.

Basically - your argument is fucking idiotic and you would never consider applying it to anything else whatsoever. Every country gets to control it's own share of technologies that have become global resources. And the internet is DEFINITELY a global resource.
In case you were wondering - the name of who owns it is right there in the name of the technology. It's the INTERnet because it's INTERnational and so any control that we can't avoid existing over it MUST also be international. Applying nationalist sentiments to an international technology makes about as much sense as trying to cure paralysis by severing your own spine.

Re:Control Of DNS

[silentcoder]

The key designs for it was conceived independently in Germany (Konrad Zuze) and Britain (Alan Turing). The first person in America to realize such a design was Von Neuman but he was more than ten years after Zuze and he wasn't an American.

Re:Control Of DNS

[goose-incarnated]

Each country has a strong culture, a strong heritage, a strong system of beliefs and the US must learn to recognise and respect these. US culture is NOT superior.

"Having culture" is something to be ashamed off, not proud off, considering all cultures have more negatives than positives. The US, in contrast, does not have a single homogenous "culture" so I have no idea what it is you appear to believe will be forced by the US onto the rest of the world?

Religion or Atheism? Pro-[some-right] or Anti-[some-right]? Hipster culture or Ghetto culture? Redneck culture or Yuppie culture? Whatever you *think* the US culture is, I can just about guarantee that there is a non-insignificant portion of the US that is the exact opposite.

Re:Control Of DNS

[Hodr]

I know it's been said here, but I feel like you keep missing the point. No one is exerting control over your networks, servers, etc. You are voluntarily ceding control, so it's within your own power to stop.

Don't like the US control over DNS, put up your own root servers and use your own DNS. Want it to be international, then set it up in an international body and convince other nations to join it.

If I offer you a service, and you like it so much you decide to rely on it in lieu of starting your own service, it doesn't give you any inherent rights of ownership over my service. Don't be so lazy and entitled, get off your ass and fix your own problems.

Re: Control Of DNS

[silentcoder]

But thats exactly what Cruz is trying to prohibit. Now there is no practical way to prevent the rest of the world doing so and the US said 2 years ago that once a suitable and accountable alternative exists they will join it rather than balkanise the internet to everybody's detriment. Cruz is trying to legally prevent the US from joining such an international venture and actually use the force of law to require America to balkanise itself when it inevitably comes into being.

The history of the net is one of progressively less US government control which has only benefitted the world (America included). Attempting to reverse course now is both inpossible to justify and utterly idiotic.

Re:Control Of DNS

[drinkypoo]

CERN is in the US now ? Because quite a lot of "core technologies" were developed there - not least of which the internet's killer app, the world-wide-web. Are you seriously going to argue that control of the web should be vested in the government of Switzerland ?

The web is not centralized, and was not designed to be. DNS management was designed to be centralized. The two are not comparable. Nice try, though.

Re: Control Of DNS

[silentcoder]

What ? DNS is hierachical but it is absolutely not centralized. Its one of histories first massive distributed databases. There is nothing in the design that mandates centralized root servers. Why not a cluster of them all of which are synchronized but no single entity controlling more than one.

Re: Control Of DNS

[Anonymous Coward]

China, you have a point. The EU... They obey orders. They have strangled their own economies with the sanctions against Russia and as soon as Germany tried to protest, the VW scandal hit their industry very hard. With TTIP signed however the point will soon be moot.

Re:Control Of DNS

[budgenator]

Cruz's bill only prevents the POTUS from changing the current situation by executive fiat, by requiring legislative action.

Re: Control Of DNS

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an overstatement of the facts. He's not trying to prevent it from happening, he's trying to place control of the decision to make it happen in to the Congress. Now, whether or not you believe that what appears to me to be a purely 'administrative decision' should be handled by Congress who should be up to fixing other shit, that's a different question but don't over play the hand.

What Governance?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to know what governance they currently supply. You can't buy a domain name today unless you pay some squatter $15k. We need a use it or lose it policy.

Republicans hate the Internet and want to kill it.

[Anonymous Coward]

as part of their plan to kill us. They first must control it in order to shut it down. Shutting it down will take the voice of the people. Take the voice of the people.

Re: Republicans hate the Internet and want to kill

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush's executive order that will shutdown the Internet on Jan 1, 2018 is still in effect. It was written in a way that following presidents can't undo it.

Re: Republicans hate the Internet and want to kil

[Anonymous Coward]

We've kept our modem banks at work because I don't see the Republican-ruled congress voting to override the shutdown.

I don't mind ICANN providing public DNS...

[Narcocide]

... I just mind the part where its illegal to run a competing service.

Re:I don't mind ICANN providing public DNS...

[Raul654]

... I just mind the part where its illegal to run a competing service.

Where does it say that?

Re: I don't mind ICANN providing public DNS...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wtf you talking about? If you have access to Linux, you have everything you need to setup your own.

Re:I don't mind ICANN providing public DNS...

[Narcocide]

Uh, sorry actually I thought that's why they shut down AlterNIC, but I just looked it up and apparently it was actually because the founder was charged with wire fraud for using it to hijack the real InterNIC domain.

Preventing Internet Freedom

[MrKaos]

Did I read the name of the Bill correctly. Considering the Snowden revelations I would have thought it was actually *more* in the interests of US citizens that the root TLDs were not controlled by the US government anymore.

Re:Preventing Internet Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not happy with how things have been operating here.

However, Russia and China operate on a completely different level. When we hand control over, we give up a lot of freedoms. Pushing control of things to the United Nations does not make them "more free".

Re:Preventing Internet Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

You of course believe that freedom of speech isn't a right, just a privilege if you say the right things.

Find another country that has as strong proections on the freedom of speech. Seriously, go ahead. Oh wait, yeah, there aren't any. The purpose of removing control of the internet is to enhance censorship, nothing else.

Re:Preventing Internet Freedom

[MrKaos]

You of course believe that freedom of speech isn't a right, just a privilege if you say the right things.

No way! I just believe that it is a right that *everyone* should have, not just Americans.

Find another country that has as strong proections on the freedom of speech. Seriously, go ahead. Oh wait, yeah, there aren't any.

Probably the UK. In a lot of aspects English rights are a super set of American rights. The French and Canada as well. However here is a list showing about 32 countries with a press freedom index greater than the US.

The purpose of removing control of the internet is to enhance censorship, nothing else.

Bullshit. The purpose of removing TLD control from the US government is so it can't shut people up at will, including Americans.

Re:Preventing Internet Freedom

[MrKaos]

We're not happy with how things have been operating here.

No one is.

However, Russia and China operate on a completely different level. Pushing control of things to the United Nations does not make them "more free".

Stop pretending you care - that's their problem. Let everyone else who is free-er be free

When we hand control over, we give up a lot of freedoms.

No, the US government hands over a lot of control. There is no 'we' here, you are as censored as anyone else - so stop pretending otherwise.

Re:Preventing Internet Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

Find another country that has as strong proections on the freedom of speech. Seriously, go ahead. Oh wait, yeah, there aren't any.

Indeed, many countries have stronger protections and some have even weaker protections. However, why would one want to find a country with exactly the same protections? Wouldn't it be better to have stronger protections?

The purpose of removing control of the internet is to enhance censorship, nothing else.

No, the purpose is to prevent the US from abusing this power. Since the US government has repeatedly shown to abuse its powers whenever it sees fit, that would be a very useful goal to pursue.

Re:Preventing Internet Freedom

[dwpro]

Is there evidence that the US government has used TLD control to shut people up at will? That would be a compelling argument.

Re:Preventing Internet Freedom

[MrKaos]

Is there evidence that the US government has used TLD control to shut people up at will? That would be a compelling argument.

Yes, Homeland security took 84000 .org TLDs down by mistake under the Pro-IP act.

Re:Preventing Internet Freedom

[budgenator]

Did I read the name of the Bill correctly. Considering the Snowden revelations I would have thought it was actually *more* in the interests of US citizens that the root TLDs were not controlled by the US government anymore.

You say that like giving up control of the root TLDs is going to keep the NSA from slurpling up any and all traffic going through the internet's backbone. The only way to keep that from happening is to route around the US, GB and AUS, good luck with that. As it is the NSA's ability to collect traffic has outpaced its ability to process it.

Re:Preventing Internet Freedom

[budgenator]

Under the US constitution, the Freedom of Speech is a Natural Right, not a government endowed right. A person acquires the right by nature of existing, and the Government is prohibited from infringing on it

Bullshit. The purpose of removing TLD control from the US government is so it can't shut people up at will, including Americans.

Yeah, that's why Wikileaks got shut down so easy, in fairness there was a short period of time when we had to use the IP Address to get there.

Re:Preventing Internet Freedom

[MrKaos]

Yeah, that's why Wikileaks got shut down so easy, in fairness there was a short period of time when we had to use the IP Address to get there.

Exactly. They are using these laws, under the dubious pretense of 'wartime' provisions, to attempt to bypass the constitution of not just US citizens but the citizens of other countries as well.

Re:Preventing Internet Freedom

[MrKaos]

You say that like giving up control of the root TLDs is going to keep the NSA from slurpling up any and all traffic going through the internet's backbone. The only way to keep that from happening is to route around the US, GB and AUS, good luck with that. As it is the NSA's ability to collect traffic has outpaced its ability to process it.

Oh, I agree. It is the incremental introduction of all of these Bills/Acts that make them so insidious. The general public has no idea the effect of each on in isolation, but when you combine them, you have the U.S empire's police state operating.

also in the news....

[WolfgangVL]

Old men in government still out of touch with the way technology works. *News@11.us*

Ownership of Internet is just an illusion

[Dorianny]

I think it is important to note that if the rest of the world wants they can easily create their own DNS root servers and only forward lookups to the U.S controlled servers for TLD's (top level domains) they specify. Most everyone simply uses the DNS servers the Internet providers give via DHCP (usually the providers own DNS caching servers) and switching the majority of users would be a simple matter of just switching the lookup tables on the Internet Service providers DNS caching servers. If you really wanted to be thorough, the lookup's to major U.S DNS servers (such as googles 8.8.8.8, hardcoded in many google devices) could be rerouted via firewall rules

Re:Ownership of Internet is just an illusion

[DaHat]

Congratulations... you just made the argument for excusing Microsoft upgrading everyone to Windows 10!

The rest of the world *could*, if they wanted to setup their own root systems, updated routes, patch oodles of systems to use the new system (ie jump through a bunch of extra hoops)... or just let the system keep on working as it's configured to... even when new configurations are pushed from on high.

Sure, if you are extra careful you or I can tweak or DNS settings... just as we could block Windows 10 updates (WU is blockable at the router) or telemetry... most don't have the skills to do so and largely don't care.

Re:Ownership of Internet is just an illusion

[Dorianny]

Congratulations... you just made the argument for excusing Microsoft upgrading everyone to Windows 10!

The rest of the world *could*, if they wanted to setup their own root systems, updated routes, patch oodles of systems to use the new system (ie jump through a bunch of extra hoops)... or just let the system keep on working as it's configured to... even when new configurations are pushed from on high.

Sure, if you are extra careful you or I can tweak or DNS settings... just as we could block Windows 10 updates (WU is blockable at the router) or telemetry... most don't have the skills to do so and largely don't care.

WHAT? Windows 10 is a closed source, proprietary operating system. Making changes to the update mechanism would be considered copyright infingment by Microsoft at the very least and most likely they would call it hacking and call the FBI. DNS is just a standardized protocol that anyone can freely implement however they wish

Re:Ownership of Internet is just an illusion

[silentcoder]

Speaking as a member of the rest of the world - yeah, going 'nuclear' option on this would be a lot of work, but it's entirely feasible.

We want a say in the management of a resource that directly impacts OUR freedom and livelihoods. We have a problem with a foreign government, ANY foreign government including the US one, having exclusive control over ANY aspect of the internet.

We would much rather NOT build a competing system with all the difficulties that entail - but if the US does not eventually give up this control, we damn well WILL do exactly that. It's nobody's first choice - but it is an available one. We would just prefer something where we get a stake through OUR elected representatives in the current one that doesn't require balkanizing the technology.
The US government has NO right to control ANYTHING that affects non-Americans.

Re:Ownership of Internet is just an illusion

[Hodr]

Just for my own curiosity.

What if one day a neighbor of yours put in a very nice dock allowing easy access to the pond adjacent to most of the properties in your neighborhood. And if over time you, and your neighbors, and all of your friends decide that rather than build or continue to maintain your own dock you would instead use your neighbors.

Then one day you decide you don't particularly like that neighbor, or you don't like all of the choices they make about how to maintain their dock (you don't like the color, for example), do you think that you should be able to form a neighborhood committee and nationalize your neighbors dock? If you tried, do you think your neighbor might rightly be a little upset about the people who have for so long taken advantage of his hospitality and now want to take his property away from him, and that he might instead tell you to sod off and build your own fucking deck?

Re: Ownership of Internet is just an illusion

[silentcoder]

Bad analogy. Let me fix it for you. My friendly neighbour built a dock and in the interest of keeping the rest of the shorelime pristine begged us all not build our docks and in return would give us untestricted access to the one he already built.
We expressed some concern about vesting all our pond access in a dock he could stop being nice about but he assuaged our concerns by promising to sign the dock over to a trust run by the whole neighbourhood, we just had to be patient while the lawyers sorted out all the trust related paperwork. Now as that is becoming reality his asshole son who just got kicked out of college for pissing on the deans desk while wearing a ku klux klan outfit and moved into his backyard just announced he is seeking an injunction to prevent dad from signing the dock over to the trust because one day he will inherrit that property and he does not want his potential for being a dick to us all diminished.

Re: Ownership of Internet is just an illusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if your analogy was accurate, what gives you the right to appropriate the dock?

Re: Ownership of Internet is just an illusion

[DaHat]

All we need is strength, and strength comes from within. .. and guns! More guns! Bigger guns! Better guns!

Might may not make right... but it often makes.

Re:Ownership of Internet is just an illusion

[Anonymous Coward]

'...most don't have the skills to do so and largely don't care'...and right there your argument breaks down...you should have stopped before writing that...it's the job of ISP's to maintain their DNS, they have people 'skilled in the art and DO care'...so yes it's 'easy' for them to break away from any perceived or real 'US control' any time they want.

Re: Republicans hate the Internet and want to kill

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet gives a voice. Without that we are nothing.

Frying pan to fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea that a group of nations, each with their own agenda etc can do better than one over cocky nation is flawed.
Rather the status quo than a huge mess. 160 nations having influence is grande casino bestiale! (really big mess)

Re:Zodiac

[Anonymous Coward]

The caption of this video is incorrect as it was taken 3 months before the JFK assassination (Rafael Cruz shows up at 0:35):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBlEtPZ4oEg

With regard to the president, businessmen and corrupt politicians have been running this country into the ground for decades, vote for neither. Bernie 2016. I frankly don't agree with his boilerplate foreign policy model (google: operation gladio to understand why), but at least his domestic policy is a step in the right direction.

Re: Republicans hate the Internet and want to kill

[jeepies]

I'm not aware of this particular executive order, but no governing body is capable of enacting something that it can't itself undo. Congress can create a law that undoes any previous law. A president can issue an executive order or policy that undoes any previous one, and the Supreme Court can issue an opinion that reverses any previous decision. The only way to prevent this would be a constitutional amendment that none of them can override. However, another constitutional amendment can just repeal a previous amendment.

So your premise is flawed from the beginning. Even if such an order exists, any future president could just undo it.

He misnamed the bill I think

[nehumanuscrede]

Don't
Undermine
Muricas
Awesome
Surveillance
Systems

Re:He misnamed the bill I think

[Anonymous Coward]

How about:

Don't
Undermine
Muricas
Brilliantly
Awesome
Surveillance
Systems

It's not a good policy to misspell when you are calling someone dum.

Great Idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only people opposing this would be anti-Americans, dictators, and other despots that aren't worth their daily saltpeter output.

or in reality

[Anonymous Coward]

Ted Cruz Proposes Bill To Keep US From Giving Up Biggiest Internet snooping role\advantage

Re: Illusion

[Type44Q]

You were able to post which speaks volumes...

Seems fair

[quax]

After all it was an American, namely Al Gore, who invented the Internet.

I have it on good authority, that back then it was essential a series of tubes.

Re:Seems fair

[Required Snark]

That's a lie. He never said that. He was on the Senate committee (I don't remember if was Commerce or Technology or something to do with Telcos) that set up the funding that lead to internet development. It would just take you a few seconds to find out the truth on Wikipedia, but you are obviously the kind of moron who prefers lies and slander. For you the internet is a way to stay in your right wing echo chamber and maintain delusional fantasies.

So the Supreme Court of the Republican Party (not even close to the Supreme Court of the USA) appointed Bush, even though Gore won the vote. Do you think that Gore would have invaded the wrong county after the 9/11 attacks?

Dimwit "My Pet Goat" Bush and Darth Chaney went after Saddam Hussein even though he had nothing to do with 9/11 and they consciously lied their teeth out about weapons of mass destruction. No one can say what would have happened, but it is a 100% certainty that if Gore had been president we would not have invaded Iraq.

So why don't you STFU. Anything you say is useless until you and your equally moronic cohorts come back to reality and stop spouting crap that is just not true.

And by the way Bush was AWOL. He didn't show up for required medical exams. It's in the public record. He got away with it because of his Daddy and Republican duplicity, the same way he was appointed president.

Re:Seems fair

[dwpro]

Good lord, partisan much? There were two lines in that comment, both of which were jokes, one making fun of a Democrat and one a Republican.

Also, your 100% on no invasion of Iraq under Gore is questionable at best.

Re:Seems fair

[quax]

You require more Snark in your live, you don't seem to recognize it :-)

Relax, I was joking. You totally bark up the wrong tree.

It's too bad /. dropped the ball and there are none of my comments left from before 2007, or I could pull out the ones where I raged against the build-up to the Iraq war despite Hans Blix obviously coming up empty.

But I did later comment on the Iraq torture scandal.

Mentioned how the US media was complicit in selling the Iraq war

And pointed out the terrible cost of this war to the Iraqi civilians.

Easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot won't allow posting certain accented chars.

I rest my case.

Typical politics.

[SuricouRaven]

He's a Republican, so he is obliged to snipe at Obama given half a chance.

If the government is about to do something unpopular, always refer to it as the 'Obama administration.' Never mind if he actually has anything to do with the decision at all, it's important to create the association in people's mind between the Democrat president and Bad Stuff. That's how the game is played.

Do we have to point this out?

[rbrander]

I'm reading arguments that the USA should indeed have this as a natural possession, because they are the best, most moral and/or effective steward.

Irrelevant.

Americans would never accept somebody else's opinion that, say, Canada should regulate the US finance system because our banks never went under or needed bailouts; the argument that Canadians were more responsible stewards of a national financial system would cut no ice at all, despite being objectively true.

Governance - of anything - draws legitimacy from the consent of those governed, not some arbitrary opinion of how much merit it has.

The argument that "I must be in charge because I'm the best guy for the job and the need is great" has been used by every dictator.

Re:Do we have to point this out?

[Hodr]

Who is that old woman on your money? Is she a native Canadian, or do you more or less borrow her from somewhere else (you know, because they were in charge a long time ago and already had a decent system in place).

How often do you try to change that woman's nationality or place her under the control of an international body?

Re:Do we have to point this out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, in this case, they're totally free to set up their own DNS root like the OpenDNS people do, they just have to convince people to use it.

Individual countries already control their registries--France controls .fr, Italy controls .it, and so on. What the US controls is just '.'. The actual root servers are located all around the world. They define the servers that manage each of the TLDs. And... they don't actually 'govern' much of anything. They set up new TLDs, but they don't control what the TLD owners do with them.

So the only reason to want this is to help censor us all (or just as a cash grab). If they wanna do that, they should make their own root.

If the 'governed' don't consent, they're free to use any alternate root. It's really that simple. Most of the high-sounding philosophic arguments are nonsense if you know how the actual tech works.

As with almost everything else...

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is the worst possible... except for all the alternatives. (hat-tip to the late Winston Churchill)

It was under US ownership and operation that the internet became what it is. No other nation on Earth, and no international body on Earth, has a proven record of allowing the internet to be as free as it is. Ceding any control is a dice-roll on everyone'sinternet freedoms. Personally, I'll take American operators and control over those in the UN, India, China, or Russia...

Information

[TheSync]

The DNS root zone is the top-level DNS zone in the hierarchical namespace of the Domain Name System of the Internet. For example, it contains the name servers of top level domains (TLDs).

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an agency of the United States Department of Commerce exercises ultimate authority over the DNS root zone of the Internet.

Through the NTIA, the root zone is managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), acting as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), while the root zone maintainer is Verisign.

In March 2014, the NTIA announced that it will cede this authority to an organization whose nature has yet to be specified.

Also regarding who would take over from NTIA, they state:

"The U.S. Government has made it clear that we will not accept a proposal that replaces its role with a government or intergovernmental organization.

The criteria specified by the Administration firmly establish Internet governance as the province of multistakeholder institutions, rather than governments or intergovernmental institutions, and reaffirm our commitment to preserving the Internet as an engine for economic growth, innovation, and free expression.

The U.S. government will only transition its role if and when it receives it receives a satisfactory proposal to replace its role from the global Internet community - the same industry, technical, and civil society entities that have successfully managed the technical functions of Internet governance for nearly twenty years."

Note that there is a history of alternative DNS roots (OpenNIC for example). Generally few people bother to use them.

Root Zone file

[TheSync]

By the way, here is a link to the Root Zone file if you want to see what it is.

There is also is a human readable version here.

Re:Root Zone file

[thegarbz]

The clusterfuck of what that has become is a perfect counter-example to those who claim it has "thrived under America's stewardship". It may not be censorship but goddamn I remember the Root Zone looking in a much better state than it is now.

Re:Root Zone file

[Anonymous Coward]

'The clusterfuck' is just the result of ICANN cashing out a few years ago.

.com/.net/.org/.edu/.gov/.mil and country-level TLDs was good enough.

.info and .biz and anything newer can go die a painful death. I might spare .eu though.

Re:I Support Ted Cruz, This Time

[Z80a]

Don't like what I write? Find me and kill me. You will not! Why? Cowardice!

Ha ha

Hey, don't tempt Cruz like that! He been trying to stop the whole zodiac killing been quite a while now.

Re: Liberties - after Snowden

[Anonymous Coward]

"No other nation on earth can be trusted to defend liberty as much as the US, even in our current failing state."

Really, after Snowden ?

Re: I challenge you - name a site.

[Anonymous Coward]

So can I. From here at the bottom end of Africa. I challenge you to name one site I cannot reach.

And, whilst you are about it, see if you can establish or join a communist party in the USA.
That is not a problem for the minority of folk down here who feel so inclined.

Re: tHE pOINT iS

[silentcoder]

Actually - I think he was parodying the large number of idiots above him. Pretty good job too. Seems like Poe's law in action. Was it parody or ACTUAL insanity ?

Re: I challenge you - name a site.

[jbmartin6]

There is a Communist party in the USA and anyone is free to join it. I suppose you could start your own as well, but maybe you couldn't call it Communist since the name is already in use. What gave you the idea the Communist Party is outlawed in the US?

Re: I challenge you - name a site.

[valnar]

Yes, but if African country-ABC was in charge of DNS, you would NOT be able to access all those web sites you do now. Some would be silenced.

Riding on the coattails of the USA's openness does not mean other countries would be the same.

"War of succession"

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Oh please stop swallowing the propaganda. US culture did not change overnight with the war of secession.

LOL. You must be a Brit. Over here in the USA (that's "the colonies" to you) we use the term "Revolutionary War" exclusively to refer to this. My personal favorite though is when a guy claimed he heard a Brit call it the "War of Amicable Separation" but that may have been a joke and not something someone actually said.

It could be worse I guess. The Russians call WWII the "Great Patriotic War" which I guess is better than what they probably wanted to say, which would be something like "The War In Which The Soviet Union Alone Suffered Terribly But Did 100% Of The Work To Defeat Fascism With No Help At All From Western Imperial Capitalistic Powers".

Re:"War of succession"

[dryeo]

Well as revolutions go, it sure wasn't successful. Did you guys even get closer then 3 thousand miles from the government?
Revolutions are about overthrowing a government. Wars of separation are about divorcing from a government.

Re:"War of succession"

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact the "great patriotic war" as you translate it is notably different from WWII - it only lasted from 1941 to May 9, 1945 - i.e from German invasion until they surrendered, and only accounts for war in Europe fought by Soviet forces and those that helped them.
WWII starte sometime in 1939 and included vastly bigger territory and is recognized as such in Russia too.

Re:"War of succession"

[david_thornley]

Different countries have different ways to break WWII down. The Finns had the Winter War (1939-40) and the Continuation War (1941-44), and I don't remember if they have a separate war name for the fighting involved in kicking the Germans out of northern Finland. The Soviets had the Great Patriotic War flanked by two periods of fighting the Japanese and the Winter War against Finland.

The start of WWII is actually pretty arbitrary. The first conflict of the ones that merged into WWII was in 1937 (Japan vs. China), The European war opened in September 1939 and continued to May 1945, but it was largely isolated campaigns much like the Napoleonic Wars (note the plural) until June 22, 1941. That started the constant warring in Europe, and also broke the war out of Central and Western Europe, making the European involvement larger than the pre-US-entry Great War. December 1941 is when the US became involved and the European and Pacific wars merged together.

Top level poisoning

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't they poison dns as well?

Could China setup DNS/proxy for google.com and manipulate it to their hearts content?

freedom... yeah sure

[Anonymous Coward]

More like the opposite of freedom ...

Bullcrap

[RogueWarrior65]

Bullcrap. That's the same bassackwards thinking that leads to continual erosion of people's rights. This is not like having to suck up surveillance cameras everywhere or tracking of meta data. Authoritarian regimes want you to believe that nothing will change so that you'll go along with their plans willingly. Their M.O. is to propose something that solely benefits them knowing that you'll never say "Nope. Not ever," because you want to be a "good citizen of the global community." That's when they've got you. They use your delicate sensibilities against you. They have been threatening to fork for decades. If they really wanted to do it, they would have done it by now. Call their bluff.

Re: Liberties - after Snowden

[rickb928]

Yes it's much worse elsewhere, almost everywhere.

Re: I challenge you - name a site.

[budgenator]

So can I. From here at the bottom end of Africa. I challenge you to name one site I cannot reach.

And, whilst you are about it, see if you can establish or join a communist party in the USA.
That is not a problem for the minority of folk down here who feel so inclined.

You mean like the Comunist Party USA or Worker's Party in America or Socialist's Party USA or maybe even the Green Party?
Our ballets are quite rich although the mainstream media and the incumbent Parties would have the World, including Americans, believe they have to chose between the Republicans and the Democrats.

HTTP/Web was just a variation of gopher

[Anonymous Coward]

HTTP/Web was just a variation of Gopher. Serving documents. Yawn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)

US invented internet would have progressed fine w/o your so-called killer app. Arguably even better, as HTTP and associated technologies continue to be a security and structural clusterfuck.

Re: I challenge you - name a site.

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Technically, it is a federal crime under the Communist Control Act, but no presidential administration has ever enforced it.

Re: I challenge you - name a site.

[jbmartin6]

Well, I'll be damned! Thanks for informing me. I'll have to go update my Linkedin profile...

Wrong Period.

[morbingoodkid]

It's wrong period. Whether you like it or not. Absolute control corrupts absolutely. For some reason, Americans believe that there are only one government form and one economic model that they wish to enforce on everyone. By controlling the DNS system, they will control all countries in the world. If there is something they do not as they can only disable the domain and that ideology is suppressed.

I'm hoping the DNS system administrators think very carefully. We have gone through something similar in South Africa where the government wanted to take control of the DNS system. So the first reaction was to move it out the country and after that, the negotiations started to keep the system independent.

Re:Wrong Period.

[ebvwfbw]

There is nothing absolute about it. It isn't as if the US will say - in your case South Africa - no no, Bad South Africa - you must use our DNS. If you don't, we'll [pick something - kick your ass, embargo, sit in the corner, Send (Hilary or Trump) to visit.. whatever].

If you want to go, go. Nobody is forcing you to use the US dns.

Good luck with that though. On the other hand, giving up control would be really stupid. The one sure fire way to screw something up good is to as a bunch of people's opinion. Especially a bunch of people without a clue, and that's what you'd get. It would be the lowest forms of life on earth - politicians.

Suddenly, the internet is useless. The flow of Porn would slow down or stop (See the internet is for porn). The humanity, oh the humanity!