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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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)

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: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

[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

[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

[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: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.

He misnamed the bill I think

[nehumanuscrede]

Don't
Undermine
Muricas
Awesome
Surveillance
Systems

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: Illusion

[Type44Q]

You were able to post which speaks volumes...

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

[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.

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.

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.