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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.
It's the smell of Freedom!
They had argued that the US concession would open the door for authoritarian governments get control of the network
Rather it has been liberated from the control of an authoritarian government.
Eurotrash shitbags put people in jail for expressing unpopular thoughts. And that's *more* tolerance than you'll find in Africa and Asia. This is a sad chapter in the history of the Internet.
I've got the greatest. most fabulous, hugest network EVER!
People will be lining up to use my network, lining up around the world to use it I tell you.
But those people, those undesirables, from outside of our borders, they will NOT be able to use this fabulous, fabulous network because it will have a Great Wall protecting it, and protecting all of the Americans on this fabulous wonderful network.
TrumpNet is born
53000000 GET
"If there was a gay Afro-Puertorican Linux distribution, I'd give it a try" ~lucm
...but this is bad how, exactly?
Not a problem. We can start on Internet 2.0. The re-write will be so much better now that we have a better idea of what we are doing.
2.0 can start off as a project to supply secure connectivity to the military, government and critical infrastructure; internal non-public facing usage. Basically take the important hacking targets off today's internet.
Some Wonder If It Means the US Has Given Away The Internet
"Some" refers to geniuses like Trump who worry about "The Cyber" and 400-pound hackers "sitting in their beds." And people like Ted Cruz, who is Ted Cruz.
At the other end of the argument, you have people like Tim Berners-Lee who wrote an editorial in the Washington Post rebutting Cruz's nonsense.
Slashdot has been wasting electricity with this "story" before. Seems like a waste. Or does Slashdot, like Trump and Cruz, also believe climate change is a hoax?
The concern is that in most respects, the US offers one of the wider definitions of freedom of speech. It's not perfect, but it really is better than most. Given US control, you can expect that to be reflected in management of the system.
US control is gone. So we will see what that brings.
Thinking about freedom of speech issues in Europe and the middle east, some countries have applied restrictions that far exceed those imposed by the US. Germany, Iran, etc. come to mind. So the question arises as to how much influence they will be able to exert upon the new management.
Oh well. Brave new world, folks. Onward!
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
In the sense that the organization in control of root name servers will no longer be under government authority. Would you feel the same way if it was Russia instead of the US?
"Nobody did. It's a, duh, network."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I mean, presumably if I have a server somewhere, on Google cloud, AWS, at home, whatever, and it it has a public IP address, then I can have it serve up IP addresses of all my other machines when I give it some name. With whatever naming scheme I might like to use. I can make my own IP address lookup system.
Yes, absolutely. This is how I block advertising and malware sites, I set up a DNS server that resolves 20,000+ domains to 0.0.0.0 and pointed all my devices at it. Nothing is preventing you or anyone else from setting up a DNS server, the only challenge would be convincing others to use it, if that was your goal.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
A relative of mine was freaked out about this because pundits made it sound like these countries would be in a position to dictate policy over how we run our slice of the Internet. When I explained how the Internet works and how the US has absolutely no obligation to ever follow their dictates, even going so far as to fork the DNS system if absolutely necessary to keep them from controlling our slice of the Internet the reaction was "then... what's the big deal?"
It seems a lot of people angry about this don't understand that the federal government has precisely no legal obligation to give a flying fuck what other governments think about our domestic internet policies. So if we want to let the NSA steal all of North Korea's secrets and drop leaflets in North Korea showing installation instructions for TOR and how to get to the NSA's cloud hosted wikileaks clone for the juiciest data the DPKR doesn't want its people to know, the rest of the world can't do anything to stop us--just like they can't right now.
The US government could easily militarise Icann in an instance if it wants to. Don't think for a second this wouldn't happen if push came to shove. The US still has control over the entity so long as Icann rests inside US borders.
globalists who are your masters do not want state sovereignty in any way, especially that pesky USA, so they want to centralize as much power as they can on a global scale
The USA is to be powerless. Globalist billionaires and private trillionaires will run the world, and mind controlled sheep will still think voting for trump or hillary make a difference in a rigged election :) :) :) :) :) :)
I can make my own IP address lookup system.
With blackjack.com! And hookers.org!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The DNS system is not the internet. The Internet works just fine without it- except for those pesky IP4 and IP6 numbers. This is such a smokescreen.
Everything the internet could be transitioned to a separate US controlled DNS system in the event of emergency. Would it be a shock to the system because everyone uses DNS? Of course. But new root servers could be deployed in short order.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
The only thing critical contributed by the US was TCP/IP. Sure, for a time the US was custodian of the top-level part of the DNS system, but if they had misbehaved too badly, it would just have been taken away from them forcefully. That would have been rather easy, as the majority of the top-level DNS servers are not located in the US anyways. One level below, the US was never relevant except for some domains. Country-specific domains were always under control of that country. Even .com and the like would have been removed from US control if abused too badly.
So, no, nothing was really given away, because the US never had real power over the Internet.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
"they had argued that the US concession would open the door for authoritarian governments get control of the network of networks"
Someone needs to explain to the US that they already have an authoritarian government.
Entrenched class system with little social mobility, pervasive surveillance of the entire country, secret prisons, gerrymandered political system...
When the US orders other nations SWAT teams to raid the homes of people who have never been to the US and have them extradited because of alleged theft of imaginary property, then yea, thats pretty authoritarian.
They'd need permission from the SEC to do that.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I predict this thread will be full of alt-right jackoffs who don't understand how the internet works and who for some reason hate the idea of privatizing ICANN, but have been hollering for the US Postal Service to be privatized for decades.
What's next, confused alt-righters? You gonna argue for nationalizing the energy industry, phone companies and ISPs too? Make up your goddamn minds.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yes, absolutely. This is how I block advertising and malware sites, I set up a DNS server that resolves 20,000+ domains to 0.0.0.0 and pointed all my devices at it. Nothing is preventing you or anyone else from setting up a DNS server, the only challenge would be convincing others to use it, if that was your goal.
Or not use DNS but something like TOR's onion sites, search Google (that you'd have to find the IP for) to find everything else or whatnot. Email would die a brutal death as the world switched to Facebook because all the domains failed to resolve. I'm pretty sure we'd find workarounds even if the DNS protocol dropped off the face of the earth. For the countries with Great Firewall they can shit list any domain anyway, so really there's not much new there.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Just stating the obvious, but having control of the DNS servers is really helpful for surveillance.
DNSSEC is very helpful to combat this.
Except that ICANN only controls a small number of the root servers, which overall receive an extremely tiny fraction of all DNS requests. The system is too distributed to be of any substantial use for surveillance.
Within US control there is no guarantee it won't be used for political purposes!
Email would die a brutal death as the world switched to Facebook
Please, dear God, no.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
How different is it from yesterday? Only difference is that the US Commerce Dept had oversight, now they don't. I'm fine w/ ICANN being a completely independent organization, I just don't want UN or any other oversight to replace the US oversight that's no longer there. I'd go a step further - I'd like the IETF and IANA to be completely independent 'international' organizations like ICANN, and ARIN - I'm pretty much open on whether it should be under US oversight or a subset of OAS oversight.
Once out of US control, there's no guarantee it won't be used for political purposes. The US is generally agnostic on political opinions due to our speech laws. Other countries not so much. Once someone is deemed a political liability or in violation of some countries speech laws, this international body will take them offline or push them to the dark web.
The US of Obama and Clinton is not the same in terms of being agnostic of political opinions, free speech laws be damned. This is a government that tried to put the makers of the movie 'Innocence of Muslims' in jail, during the Benghazi consulate riot. The US is as willing to censor anti-Islamic speech just like that of Saudi Arabia, Iran or anyone else. There is nothing redeeming about the US commerce department having oversight.
I'm fine w/ ICANN becoming independent: only caveat I'd put is that I'd like to see NO oversight on them - not UN, not Russia, not EU, not anybody. If that can be assured, I'd also support IETF and IANA going fully independent
"if the USA wasn't here, the world would still be in the dark ages"
Before the USA existed, we had these things in Europe called The Renaissance and The Enlightenment, then while you were playing Cowboys and Injuns we started The Industrial Revolution.
Their not totally independent...their headquarters are still in the US...they still can get raided by some SWAT-style Justice Department team if needed.
I have a vision of the future where this is actually going to bring us together as "a people"... And who will defend against abuses of power now that they're equally divided? The netizens. The people of the Internet. The hackers. I'm honestly looking forward to seeing how this pans out.
I wish your utopian view of reality will win out, but given that it hasn't for all of human history, I'm pretty skeptical.
More likely, existing large powers (China, Russia, and others) will see this as an opportunity to grab more influence, and devote far more resources than any netizens are capable of spending to bend ICANN and the DNS system to their will.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
Nothing is preventing you or anyone else from setting up a DNS server, the only challenge would be convincing others to use it, if that was your goal.
And what does it take to convince a large number of people to use the DNS system? Usually it requires a trustworthy institution that has the backing of many stakeholders. An organization like ICANN. The idea people can setup large DNS system to actually compete with ICANN's DNS without some type of government backing is unrealistic.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
"When the rest of the lot on this rock wants to kill 13 year girls for getting raped?"
I'm Australian. By "the rest of the lot on this rock" (ie non-Americans) you are classifying me among those that want to kill these 13 year old victims.
You are telling me that everybody outside of the USA is automatically a criminal and deserve every bit of hell that you can give them.
And you wonder why non-Americans are suspicious of Americans.
Yes. And freedom goes with it. Now the mullahs, eastern kleptocrats and strongmen of the world will decide what YOU can see.
The concern is that in most respects, the US offers one of the wider definitions of freedom of speech. It's not perfect, but it really is better than most.
That depends on what freedoms you prioritize. The US priority is that the government cannot restrict freedom of speech but turns a complete blind eye to corporations restricting that freedom for employees or for others by suing. While this does not carry the threat of jail lifetime financial ruin is just as effective in silencing people and the power is controlled by entities which the people have zero control over.
European countries tend to have a more comprehensive view and put restrictions on what speech both government and corporations can restrict. However those restrictions are less comprehensive that US government restrictions. Personally I tend to think that the European system results in more free speech than the US system in situations that matter to most people while the US system ends up with more free speech for groups of the extreme fringe of society e.g. holocaust deniers, racists, extreme religious groups etc.
An old statement about ICANN says that the ideas people were coming up with for international governance would lead to more censorship. I don't see a newer statement directly on the topic.
and am very much against this. Not everyone thinks alike despite generalizations for convenience/blame.
I already got modded down for saying what someone else got modded up for saying - this is another move towards corporate control under "globalization"; a stateless evil entity is much harder to contain and bring to heel than one based in an actual country with (physical) assets to be seized.
Redneck, I dunno, but you are certainly very a nationalistic person. We had a critical mass of those such people here in Germany a while back and that sure wasn't pretty.
Nonsense. If you (collective) were nationalistic back then, no Austrian would have been able to take over Germany and demand, successfully, that everyone hail him instead of saying the equivalents of hello and goodbye.
Reading all the comments and seeing that the vast majority of people posting have absolutely no clue how the DNS works makes me wonder if there are still nerds here.
Why not utilize blockchain technology to decentralize this and give control to the public?
As long as that coalition doesn't use Black Helicopters. I'm willing to fall in line for Starfleet.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Their employees would have to get citizenship of another country and physically relocate in order to satisfy your requirement that they be out of the arms of US law
It's not a requirement, just a thought-process game about the potential future of President Trump wanting to "do something" about "the cyber", so he sends the DOJ to "take down the internet's headquarters" or such. I wouldn't put it past him to go try and seize ICAAN because someone on the internet made him upset.
The handover to Icann is a compromise that appears to suit the country very nicely, and not just because Icann will remain in Los Angeles.
If anything, they've handed it over to leftist interests - the same kind that use organizational control to push narratives.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.