Slashdot Mirror
As ICANN Gains Full Oversight Of Domain Name System, Some Wonder If It Means the US Has Given Away The Internet (bbc.com)
The U.S. has given up its remaining control over the Internet. The formal handover, which took effect on Saturday, followed a last-ditch attempt by a group of Republicans to block the move. They had argued that the US concession would open the door for authoritarian governments get control of the network of networks, leading to greater censorship. From a BBC report:A judge in Texas has put the kibosh on a last-minute legal attempt to block the controversial decision for the US to give up control of one of the key systems that powers the internet. It's a move being breathlessly described by some as the US "giving up the internet" to the likes of China, Russia and the Middle East. For starters, while they can take the credit for inventing the underlying technology, the US never "had the internet" to begin with. Nobody did. It's a, duh, network. Decentralised. That's what makes it so powerful. But there are bits of internet infrastructure that some people and governments do have control over, and that's what this row is all about. One of them is the DNS - Domain Name System. This is the system for looking after web addresses. Thanks to the DNS, when you type bbc.com, you're taken to the correct servers for the BBC website. It saves you the grief of having to remember a string of numbers. That pairing of names and numbers is kept in one great big master file, the land registry of the web. The only organisation that can make changes is Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. As of Saturday 1 October 2016, Icann will no longer be under US government oversight.
Yeah, you're right.
I am shocked how Saturday's handover went BACK IN TIME and caused massive DDOS attacks against journalists saying unpopular things, like Krebs or the NY Times.
Nothing is going to change from this. Locked down countries will remain locked down, open countries will remain open.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
It can be argued that yes, they were. The US has a long history of censorship and attempted censorship of the internet: CDA, COPA, DMCA, COPPA, CIPA, DOPA, COICA, SOPA, PIPA, CISPA, the USITC requesting site blockings... i wish i were making those acronyms up.
I predict this thread will be full of liberal shills explaining to everyone why it's good to give more control over the internet to countries which do not protect freedom of speech at the constitutional level and routinely infringe upon it.
Yes. And freedom goes with it. Now the mullahs, eastern kleptocrats and strongmen of the world will decide what YOU can see.