Besides a generic flamebait, do you have any actual basis for that statement or is it just wishful thinking?
What to you denotes "the Death of America"? For the United States to lose it's superpower status? Even if that did happen, the United States isn't going anywhere. The UK didn't go anywhere after WW2 with the dismantlement of the Empire. Germany and Japan didn't go anywhere even after being crushed, occupied and divided (Germany, not Japan) after WW2 and I find it highly unlikely that such devastation could be wrought on any nuclear-armed power in the 21st century, with deterrence and all that.
An economic downturn perhaps? That's very possible, but I still don't see how it brings about the death of America, particularly since the global economy means that any economic downturn in the US is likely to be followed/preceded by an economic downturn in the rest of the World.
Wonder if you could use tor to prove/disprove this? I've seen tor exit nodes in China, but if they are doing this via DNS poisoning and not ip-redirection I'm not sure if that would help you. How does tor handle DNS requests? Do they exit at the same node as your connection or at random ones?
It's almost like the Chinese are a little leery of the US having a very large amount of control over the Interne
Oh, give me a break. This has nothing to do with being leery of the US and everything to do with wanting to undermine foreign businesses while promoting local ones. It's not like Google would be any less of a target if it was a British company....
As far as the "resource that should belong to everybody" thing goes, check out the "Tragedy of the Commons" in Wikipedia. Things that are owned by everybody are invariably overused, which drives down the total benefit. Granting a property right in that thing, which happens on the auction, is a common solution to the problem.
I've never advocated treating the radio bands like the commons of old. But I don't think it's asking too much that we take steps to bring new people into this market instead of strengthening the hands of the existing businesses that are doing everything they possibly can to ensure their business model remains intact even if that requires stamping out innovative features and technologies that consumers want.
The 700mhz band is probably the last chance we have (outside of more Government regulation) of having a third broadband pipe to the home. Can you at least understand why I'm not exactly eager to see Verizon (with their draconian terms of service and 5GB data limit) and AT&T (opposed to network neutrality, equally draconian terms of service) gobble it up?
Can you at least understand my frustration when Verizon feels the need to file a lawsuit to oppose the open access requirements for 700mhz, in spite of the fact that it doesn't apply to their existing business. Are they so afraid of people being able to use whatever cell phone/mobile device that they want ON OTHER PROVIDERS (since there is noone forcing Verizon to bid on and use 700mhz) that they feel the need to sue the FCC over it?
If we followed the model of the "free market" and not regulated these bastards back in the day, we probably wouldn't have fax machines, modems or even the internet, because the Ma Bell of old controlled every single device that you were allowed to use on the network and had no incentive to come up with new technology. These are the same bastards that sat on the technology for DSL for years because they didn't see the advantage of allowing people to have high speed data access without paying for dedicated lines. It was only the emergence of the cable company (i.e: a second pipe) as a viable data provider that changed this.
I want to see a third pipe come in and shake things up. God willing, Google will encourge this to happen, even if they aren't doing it themselves (and I doubt they are -- does Google really want to be in the ISP business?)
Let's get the US on the same frequencies and cellular standards as the rest of the world
Uhh, you do know that it's not just the US using 850/1900 instead of 900/1800, right? Most of the Americas use 850/1900. This isn't a US vs. the World thing (like the metric fiasco is....)
And while it would be nice if the whole world had a standard on this, it's not likely to happen now that there are hundreds of millions of handsets and tens of thousands of base stations using the existing bands. Sucks, but that's the reality of the situation.
Personally, I think that the value per pound spent on an album compared to something like Halo 3 is vastly different. Halo 3 at the £40 it costs is at least ten times the value to me than the equivalent number of albums I could buy for that price
Value is what each person decides it is. I know a number of audiophiles that sink thousands or even tens of thousands of bucks into buying music and gear. I don't understand it, but there you go. I also don't understand people that build five thousand dollar water-cooled gaming systems, but if they enjoy it all the power to them.
Personally, I see value in Pandora. I have a paid membership even though I didn't really need one to enjoy it. I don't see as much value in CDs because I have to deal with shuffling them around and eventually they get stale. Ditto for DVDs. Save a few favorite movies, I don't own very many of them. How many times can you watch that movie before it gets old? Yet some people own hundreds or thousands of them.
They expect to be paid rather than realising they're competing for our money just like everyone else.
There does seem to be that arrogance, doesn't there? They do have somewhat of a legitimate case about rampant piracy of their copyrighted material, but I think their fears go a lot deeper then worrying about you downloading pop songs for free. The biggest fear is that the internet will render the recording label irrelevant. The artist already makes next to nothing on albums... so why not give them away for free instead of signing your life over to a record label to promote you?
That "problem" isn't going away even if they managed to completely stamp out piracy, which we all know is virtually impossible. Sooner or later some up and coming band will hit it big doing their promotion on the internet. Once people realize that's a viable way to do business it will be the beginning of the end of the record label as we know it. At least as far as anything new is concerned -- they will probably exist for quite a long time leeching off existing content, thanks in no small part to the ridiculous length of copyright in the Western World.
As Darwin said: adapt or die. Well, that's not what he said, but that's the basic idea;)
still seems to have no idea what the consumers want
That's easy. Consumers want the ability to buy content and use it on any device of their choosing. Personally, I want to be able to take my music and load it onto my mp3 player, play it on my car stereo, play it on my home stereo and listen to it on my computer. I don't want to have to buy it for each of these formats. I don't want to have to pay for it on a monthly basis with subscriptions.
Subscriptions may prove profitable for videos (Netflix is proof of this), but people generally want to own their music and be able to do whatever they want with it. This isn't rocket science people.....
The only thing that's changed is how the government decides who gets it
And therein lies the problem as far as I'm concerned. There used to be a requirement that broadcasters serve the "public interest".
But, if they get outbid, it'll be because their model won't offer things that are as valuable to consumers as the high bidder.
I'm sorry, but I don't buy this, as I obviously have a differing view of the merits of the "market" then you do. As it stands there is nothing stopping Verizon or AT&T from bidding on spectrum they don't need for the sole purpose of locking out new providers or putting existing ones at a dis-advantage. How the hell can you justify that?
I find it morally questionable that I have to justify my use of IP address space but a resource that should belong to everybody is auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Like a pattern of bandwidth charging that discourages server placement in their own country
I wonder if that's a legacy of when it was actually expensive to get bandwidth to down under or if it's monopolistic providers screwing their customers? I've heard from many people that the broadband situation in Australia makes the US look downright advanced and friendly.
Well, I think you've summed it up right there actually.
Hehe, well yeah, but my sig isn't (to me anyway) anything more then homage to one of my favorite movies.
The only part of the whole deal that bothers me slightly is the US government having veto power over ICANN
The US Government chartered it. The veto power is a legacy of that. I would like at least one semi-trustworthy government (as much as you can use the word 'trustworthy' next to 'government') to have veto power over ICANN (or whatever replaces it), simply because I don't see any other way to ensure that end-users on the internet have a voice. Short of some sort of extra-governmental international agency whose board would be elected by the citizens of the world (hardly a realistic suggestion), I don't see how you ensure that otherwise.
IF there has to be a governing body involved as some sort of checks and balances type arrangement then one which is likely to represent everyone's interests rather than one which may have some bias would be preferable.
I would like to assume that the basic interests of American citizens (freedom of speech and expression being chief among them) align with the basic interests of everybody else in the World. If you abandon US Veto power over ICANN, what do you purpose as a replacement? You can't do it internationally without including nations whose interests don't exactly align with freedom of speech and expression. Wouldn't you agree that's one of the most important things about the internet?
I would like to thank you for the constructive argument that didn't boil down to "USA sux0r". Maybe we can salvage some productive debate out of this yet:)
Do to the ways the ISPs charge, it's often cheaper to host your sites in the USA than to have the servers in Australia.
How is that the fault of US control over ICANN though?
If Aussie internet sucks that bad (and by all accounts it does) then they should be petitioning their Government and/or telecom carriers to build more links to the rest of the World.
f it goes to the highest bidder it will be bought by whoever can expect to get the best return from it
"Best return" is a subjective term. My "best return" if I bought spectrum might translate into successfully establishing a wireless carrier with enough customers to survive and make money after my venture capital runs out.
Verizon's "best return" might translate into buying spectrum that they don't need just to keep me out of the market.
I fail to see how it would harm them or the economy to have to prove they actually have plans for all of this spectrum that they are gobbling up when they aren't even fully utilizing what they have now. Should we likewise address the pending ipv4 shortage by abandoning the existing IP assignment process and just selling them to the highest bidder, regardless of whether or not they need them?
The more who participate, the higher the price paid -- spectrum auctions offset my taxes.
What a wonderful free-market view of the problem. Of course it's not really saving you a nickel if you need to use wireless service and wind up paying more for that service because of the entrenched market positions of the dominant carriers, who are only gobbling up more spectrum to prevent anybody new from coming into the market.
One would think that with a free and competitive market that prices, terms and conditions would come down/align with the interests of consumers, because after all, in a free market if you over-charge for something your customers are just going to go somewhere else.
How interesting then that each of the carriers seems to match each other then it comes to price hikes. Like SMS. Used to be able to receive them for free and it cost a pittance ($0.02 in many cases) to send them. Then it was $0.02 to receive and $0.10 to send. Now it's $0.15 to send or receive across the board. Doesn't matter which carrier you use.
Rather interesting that they all raised the price at the same time, now isn't it? If the benefits of the "free market" translate into a oligopoly that seemingly acts together to raise prices and impose harsher and harsher terms on their customers, then where do I sign up to become a communist, because frankly I'm sick and tired of being screwed by companies that are operating on the radio spectrum that belongs to everybody.
It applies to this issues with regards to the fact that the US has veto powers over ICANN
That's a legacy of the fact that the US Government funded the initial internet backbone and encouraged the growth thereof. It's your right to suggest changing that, but I think anybody looking at it rationally can understand why the US doesn't want to give it up and why your typical American citizen could have a problem with the UN being in charge of it (since that seems to be the most popular suggestion).
Sure, the United States has an agenda on the World stage. But so does China. And Russia. And every other nation-state on the face of the Earth. Do you really want a UN type scenario where nations with the censorship record of China/Saudi Arabia/North Korea/etc have a veto over internet governance matters?
I fail to see what's so horribly wrong with the status quo that it needs to be changed, other then "it's not fair that the US has veto powers!"
So? if not many people use them, that inversely means that some people use them. It obviously makes them happy, so what's the issue. as far as I care, people can go ahead and create any kind of TLD they like
Because I don't like having to register my trademark in 50 different TLDs in order to protect it. And even if it didn't cost ANY money to register a domain name it's still a pain in the ass.
If you are able to create any kind of TLD you like with some form of minimum support, the whole business model would fall out from under Verisign and ICANN
And replace that business model with, what, exactly? The nature of the way DNS works means that at some point you are going to need some sort of authority to manage the DNS root. If that authority isn't ICANN, with all it's pros and cons, then who the hell should it be? And why are you even bringing Verislime into this? They don't control what new TLDs get created or approved. They do control the.com and.net roots, per a contract with ICANN and while I find that somewhat troubling (given some of their past actions), I fail to see how it relates to the issue at hand (the US having veto power over ICANN which controls the DNS root).
Eventually someone will "win", but this will be a phyrric victory as the amount of money they will have to pay for a licence will be so high that they'll either go bankrupt
The whole system fucking sucks. Why exactly are AT&T and Verizon even allowed to take part in this auction? Both of them have TONS of spectrum in the cellular, PCS and even AWS bands. Why is there no justification process attached to bidding on a limited resource and no mechanism in place to keep greedy monopolies from hoarding all of the spectrum to shut out newcomers?
Did you know in some markets that AT&T holds over 75% of the available cellular and PCS spectrum? They justified this back in the day by claiming that they needed to run three networks -- AMPS (analog), TDMA and GSM, even as they were forcing their customers to vacate the old AMPS and TDMA equipment.
I find it depressingly ironic that I have to fill out paperwork to justify my IP requests to ARIN, but a far more limited resource that theoretically belongs to everybody is just auctioned off to the highest bidder with no consideration as to whether or not it's in the interest of the public. Hell, even the limited "open access" rules that have been purposed are even being fought by Verizon, because they'd rather lock you into their hardware, their content and their service then allow an open market to flourish.
The Assembly webpage came back up. It's a little vaguer then I recalled but I still think you are safe:
156.05 Unauthorized use of a computer.
A person is guilty of unauthorized use of a computer when he or she knowingly uses, causes to be used, or accesses a computer, computer service, or computer network without authorization.
Unauthorized use of a computer is a class A misdemeanor.
Then from the definations:
8. "Without authorization" means to use or to access a computer, computer service or computer network without the permission of the owner or lessor or someone licensed or privileged by the owner or lessor where such person knew that his or her use or access was without permission or after actual notice to such person that such use or access was without permission.
Proof that such person used or accessed a computer, computer service or computer network through the knowing use of a set of instructions, code or computer program that bypasses, defrauds or otherwise circumvents a security measure installed or used with the user's authorization on the computer, computer service or computer network shall be presumptive evidence that such person used or accessed such computer, computer service or computer network without authorization.
Based on that I would assume that you are ok connecting to an open wi-fi network without encryption. There's also this:
156.50 Offenses involving computers; defenses.
In any prosecution:
1. under section 156.05 or 156.10 of this article, it shall be a defense that the defendant had reasonable grounds to believe that he had authorization to use the computer;
One could probably make the argument that an open wi-fi network implies authorization to use the network. I doubt you could pull this off if you were using the wi-fi network to download kiddie porn, but given that many operating systems will connect automatically to such networks, you could probably use it as a defense if all you did was check your e-mail and surf a few webpages.
In fact, the kiddie porn example would bump the offense up to a felony:
156.10 Computer trespass.
A person is guilty of computer trespass when he or she knowingly uses, causes to be used, or accesses a computer, computer service, or computer network without authorization and:
1. he or she does so with an intent to commit or attempt to commit or further the commission of any felony; or
2. he or she thereby knowingly gains access to computer material.
Computer trespass is a class E felony.
So, in summary, you are PROBABLY safe using an open wi-fi network for ligit purposes, as it's unlikely that the police or prosecutor would bother charging you with a misdemeanor over using your neighbors connection to check your e-mail. You definitely aren't safe if the owner asks you to stop, has encryption in place or if you do something stupid (like try to access his c$ share) or illegal.
Is there a WRT firmware somewhere that has that stuff already set up?
*shrug*, I have an actual Linux box acting as my gateway and have never used WRT. I would suspect there is a way to do it. Whether or not it's "easy" depends on you.
Surely, by nobody you obviously mean FLAG Telecom?
I fail to see how your links to maps of submarine cables disproves my statement that nobody has bothered to build long haul links across Asia and in any case, I was basing it off the discussion the other day (in a diff story) where quite a few people posted traceroutes from Asia -> Europe that went through the United States for some reason.
Don't be a wiseass if you don't know it all.
If they do have those links, then why the fuck is all that traffic going though the United States? Do they need help setting up BGP or something? (there, now I'm being a wiseass;)
In any case, my original point is still quite valid -- people worrying about the DNS root are missing the point. If I was you I'd be more concerned about the fact that so much of the World's internet and telecom traffic passes through the United States and I'd be taking steps to fix this problem. As an added bonus, any steps taken towards this end also have the benefit of adding redundancy to the networks in question and that's a win-win for everybody (American or otherwise).
what I can see from where I am standing is that everything is run by a decidedly closed shop, with only pretenses to openness, and the whole thing happily handed over to a multi-billion dollar business with interests to protect
Agreed. ICANN sucks donkey balls. But how does that relate to the United States? The argument isn't "ICANN sucks", the argument is "We can't trust the United States". How the hell do you expect Americans to respond to that?
Are there? Please enlighten me. I understand that the present system of TLD's was designed to be freely added to whenever required, without much fuss
Let me qualify what I said. There are no reasons to add more English language TLDs. What the hell is the point of.info,.museum,.name, blah blah blah? Not that many people are using them. All they do is send more money to the pockets of ICANN and the domain registers because trademark holders feel like they have to register in every single TLD to protect themselves. We didn't need more TLDs to allow more businesses to flourish. eBay seemed to become pretty big without the benefit of 'auctions.com'.
Note that I qualified it with "English language TLDs". I have no problem with adding TLDs for other languages, as they have been under served by the existing arrangement.
ou mention porn and.xxx as the only reasons people should be upset, but that is both a red herring as well as a non sequitur. The issue goes deeper then.xxx
The issue that I see is that the US isn't very popular right now and somebody manufactured a crisis to that affect. You want to change the way ICANN operates? Where do I sign up? You want to bash the United States and say we can't trustworthy and the UN (*shudder*) should control it? Now we have a problem.....
Uhh, two of them on a whim? I'm pretty sure we had good reasons for going into Afghanistan. Do you think that China or Russia wouldn't have done the same thing if 3,000 of their citizens were killed? Did you forget that NATO invoked it's collective self-defence clause? Afghanistan was hardly invaded on a 'whim' and you lose creditability by saying so.
and the world doesn't trust someone as crazy as the US with that power
WHAT POWER??? Everybody keeps talking about this "power" that the US has over the internet. Control of the DNS root != control of the internet. And if the US attempted to do anything unsavory with the DNS root it wouldn't take that long for everybody else to setup their own DNS root within their own borders.
In fact, if you want to look at control over the internet, I'd look to the fact that so much of the Internet backbone is based in the United States. It was pointed out awhile ago that packets from Japan to Europe usually (always?) travel though the United States, mainly because nobody has bothered to make the effort to build long haul links across Asia. Maybe the rest of the world should be investing all of this effort into building those links and adding more redundancy to the internet instead of worrying about the "control" that the US has over the DNS root?
Then bitch to your telecom companies and/or Government until they upgrade their links to the rest of the world. This has nothing to do with ICANN's control over the DNS root.
As a European, I do feel there is a need to do something with this issue
Why, what's the problem with the current arrangement other then European mistrust of the United States?
Just look at all the problems they have now (packet shaping, net neutrality, etc...)
Disputes over packet shaping on the individual ISP level lead you to think that ICANN can't govern the root DNS servers effectively? Your kidding, right? And traffic shaping is hardly unique to the United States.
I feel that it has taken faaar too long to get the "ñ" in domain names
And you think the technical obstacles would have been overcome faster by adding more bureaucracy to the process?
Why don't we give the governance of internet stuff to somebody like Switzerland? They look like they could do a good job, they have the money and good reasons to do a good job on worldwide internationalization of internet.
Because Swiss neutrality is slowly being erased in favor of closer ties to the EU? And why the Swiss? Why not Iceland? Why not Mongolia? Why not New Zealand?
bit more seriously, I think that something that has grown as important as this, should be in the hands of the UN
Slashdot Mirror
Besides a generic flamebait, do you have any actual basis for that statement or is it just wishful thinking?
What to you denotes "the Death of America"? For the United States to lose it's superpower status? Even if that did happen, the United States isn't going anywhere. The UK didn't go anywhere after WW2 with the dismantlement of the Empire. Germany and Japan didn't go anywhere even after being crushed, occupied and divided (Germany, not Japan) after WW2 and I find it highly unlikely that such devastation could be wrought on any nuclear-armed power in the 21st century, with deterrence and all that.
An economic downturn perhaps? That's very possible, but I still don't see how it brings about the death of America, particularly since the global economy means that any economic downturn in the US is likely to be followed/preceded by an economic downturn in the rest of the World.
So, explain to me how America is "dying".
Wonder if you could use tor to prove/disprove this? I've seen tor exit nodes in China, but if they are doing this via DNS poisoning and not ip-redirection I'm not sure if that would help you. How does tor handle DNS requests? Do they exit at the same node as your connection or at random ones?
Oh, give me a break. This has nothing to do with being leery of the US and everything to do with wanting to undermine foreign businesses while promoting local ones. It's not like Google would be any less of a target if it was a British company....
Naw, I'd say it's fact. Do you think that it's possible to post a well written GNAA troll without electrical power of some sort? ;)
And don't even get me started on the electrical power consumption of "In Soviet Russia...", or god help us, the beowulf clusters....
I've never advocated treating the radio bands like the commons of old. But I don't think it's asking too much that we take steps to bring new people into this market instead of strengthening the hands of the existing businesses that are doing everything they possibly can to ensure their business model remains intact even if that requires stamping out innovative features and technologies that consumers want.
The 700mhz band is probably the last chance we have (outside of more Government regulation) of having a third broadband pipe to the home. Can you at least understand why I'm not exactly eager to see Verizon (with their draconian terms of service and 5GB data limit) and AT&T (opposed to network neutrality, equally draconian terms of service) gobble it up?
Can you at least understand my frustration when Verizon feels the need to file a lawsuit to oppose the open access requirements for 700mhz, in spite of the fact that it doesn't apply to their existing business. Are they so afraid of people being able to use whatever cell phone/mobile device that they want ON OTHER PROVIDERS (since there is noone forcing Verizon to bid on and use 700mhz) that they feel the need to sue the FCC over it?
If we followed the model of the "free market" and not regulated these bastards back in the day, we probably wouldn't have fax machines, modems or even the internet, because the Ma Bell of old controlled every single device that you were allowed to use on the network and had no incentive to come up with new technology. These are the same bastards that sat on the technology for DSL for years because they didn't see the advantage of allowing people to have high speed data access without paying for dedicated lines. It was only the emergence of the cable company (i.e: a second pipe) as a viable data provider that changed this.
I want to see a third pipe come in and shake things up. God willing, Google will encourge this to happen, even if they aren't doing it themselves (and I doubt they are -- does Google really want to be in the ISP business?)
Uhh, you do know that it's not just the US using 850/1900 instead of 900/1800, right? Most of the Americas use 850/1900. This isn't a US vs. the World thing (like the metric fiasco is....)
And while it would be nice if the whole world had a standard on this, it's not likely to happen now that there are hundreds of millions of handsets and tens of thousands of base stations using the existing bands. Sucks, but that's the reality of the situation.
Value is what each person decides it is. I know a number of audiophiles that sink thousands or even tens of thousands of bucks into buying music and gear. I don't understand it, but there you go. I also don't understand people that build five thousand dollar water-cooled gaming systems, but if they enjoy it all the power to them.
Personally, I see value in Pandora. I have a paid membership even though I didn't really need one to enjoy it. I don't see as much value in CDs because I have to deal with shuffling them around and eventually they get stale. Ditto for DVDs. Save a few favorite movies, I don't own very many of them. How many times can you watch that movie before it gets old? Yet some people own hundreds or thousands of them.
They expect to be paid rather than realising they're competing for our money just like everyone else.There does seem to be that arrogance, doesn't there? They do have somewhat of a legitimate case about rampant piracy of their copyrighted material, but I think their fears go a lot deeper then worrying about you downloading pop songs for free. The biggest fear is that the internet will render the recording label irrelevant. The artist already makes next to nothing on albums... so why not give them away for free instead of signing your life over to a record label to promote you?
That "problem" isn't going away even if they managed to completely stamp out piracy, which we all know is virtually impossible. Sooner or later some up and coming band will hit it big doing their promotion on the internet. Once people realize that's a viable way to do business it will be the beginning of the end of the record label as we know it. At least as far as anything new is concerned -- they will probably exist for quite a long time leeching off existing content, thanks in no small part to the ridiculous length of copyright in the Western World.
As Darwin said: adapt or die. Well, that's not what he said, but that's the basic idea ;)
That's easy. Consumers want the ability to buy content and use it on any device of their choosing. Personally, I want to be able to take my music and load it onto my mp3 player, play it on my car stereo, play it on my home stereo and listen to it on my computer. I don't want to have to buy it for each of these formats. I don't want to have to pay for it on a monthly basis with subscriptions.
Subscriptions may prove profitable for videos (Netflix is proof of this), but people generally want to own their music and be able to do whatever they want with it. This isn't rocket science people.....
And therein lies the problem as far as I'm concerned. There used to be a requirement that broadcasters serve the "public interest".
But, if they get outbid, it'll be because their model won't offer things that are as valuable to consumers as the high bidder.I'm sorry, but I don't buy this, as I obviously have a differing view of the merits of the "market" then you do. As it stands there is nothing stopping Verizon or AT&T from bidding on spectrum they don't need for the sole purpose of locking out new providers or putting existing ones at a dis-advantage. How the hell can you justify that?
I find it morally questionable that I have to justify my use of IP address space but a resource that should belong to everybody is auctioned off to the highest bidder.
I wonder if that's a legacy of when it was actually expensive to get bandwidth to down under or if it's monopolistic providers screwing their customers? I've heard from many people that the broadband situation in Australia makes the US look downright advanced and friendly.
Hehe, well yeah, but my sig isn't (to me anyway) anything more then homage to one of my favorite movies.
The only part of the whole deal that bothers me slightly is the US government having veto power over ICANNThe US Government chartered it. The veto power is a legacy of that. I would like at least one semi-trustworthy government (as much as you can use the word 'trustworthy' next to 'government') to have veto power over ICANN (or whatever replaces it), simply because I don't see any other way to ensure that end-users on the internet have a voice. Short of some sort of extra-governmental international agency whose board would be elected by the citizens of the world (hardly a realistic suggestion), I don't see how you ensure that otherwise.
IF there has to be a governing body involved as some sort of checks and balances type arrangement then one which is likely to represent everyone's interests rather than one which may have some bias would be preferable.I would like to assume that the basic interests of American citizens (freedom of speech and expression being chief among them) align with the basic interests of everybody else in the World. If you abandon US Veto power over ICANN, what do you purpose as a replacement? You can't do it internationally without including nations whose interests don't exactly align with freedom of speech and expression. Wouldn't you agree that's one of the most important things about the internet?
I would like to thank you for the constructive argument that didn't boil down to "USA sux0r". Maybe we can salvage some productive debate out of this yet :)
How is that the fault of US control over ICANN though?
If Aussie internet sucks that bad (and by all accounts it does) then they should be petitioning their Government and/or telecom carriers to build more links to the rest of the World.
"Best return" is a subjective term. My "best return" if I bought spectrum might translate into successfully establishing a wireless carrier with enough customers to survive and make money after my venture capital runs out.
Verizon's "best return" might translate into buying spectrum that they don't need just to keep me out of the market.
I fail to see how it would harm them or the economy to have to prove they actually have plans for all of this spectrum that they are gobbling up when they aren't even fully utilizing what they have now. Should we likewise address the pending ipv4 shortage by abandoning the existing IP assignment process and just selling them to the highest bidder, regardless of whether or not they need them?
What a wonderful free-market view of the problem. Of course it's not really saving you a nickel if you need to use wireless service and wind up paying more for that service because of the entrenched market positions of the dominant carriers, who are only gobbling up more spectrum to prevent anybody new from coming into the market.
One would think that with a free and competitive market that prices, terms and conditions would come down/align with the interests of consumers, because after all, in a free market if you over-charge for something your customers are just going to go somewhere else.
How interesting then that each of the carriers seems to match each other then it comes to price hikes. Like SMS. Used to be able to receive them for free and it cost a pittance ($0.02 in many cases) to send them. Then it was $0.02 to receive and $0.10 to send. Now it's $0.15 to send or receive across the board. Doesn't matter which carrier you use.
Rather interesting that they all raised the price at the same time, now isn't it? If the benefits of the "free market" translate into a oligopoly that seemingly acts together to raise prices and impose harsher and harsher terms on their customers, then where do I sign up to become a communist, because frankly I'm sick and tired of being screwed by companies that are operating on the radio spectrum that belongs to everybody.
That's a legacy of the fact that the US Government funded the initial internet backbone and encouraged the growth thereof. It's your right to suggest changing that, but I think anybody looking at it rationally can understand why the US doesn't want to give it up and why your typical American citizen could have a problem with the UN being in charge of it (since that seems to be the most popular suggestion).
Sure, the United States has an agenda on the World stage. But so does China. And Russia. And every other nation-state on the face of the Earth. Do you really want a UN type scenario where nations with the censorship record of China/Saudi Arabia/North Korea/etc have a veto over internet governance matters?
I fail to see what's so horribly wrong with the status quo that it needs to be changed, other then "it's not fair that the US has veto powers!"
So? if not many people use them, that inversely means that some people use them. It obviously makes them happy, so what's the issue. as far as I care, people can go ahead and create any kind of TLD they likeBecause I don't like having to register my trademark in 50 different TLDs in order to protect it. And even if it didn't cost ANY money to register a domain name it's still a pain in the ass.
If you are able to create any kind of TLD you like with some form of minimum support, the whole business model would fall out from under Verisign and ICANNAnd replace that business model with, what, exactly? The nature of the way DNS works means that at some point you are going to need some sort of authority to manage the DNS root. If that authority isn't ICANN, with all it's pros and cons, then who the hell should it be? And why are you even bringing Verislime into this? They don't control what new TLDs get created or approved. They do control the .com and .net roots, per a contract with ICANN and while I find that somewhat troubling (given some of their past actions), I fail to see how it relates to the issue at hand (the US having veto power over ICANN which controls the DNS root).
The whole system fucking sucks. Why exactly are AT&T and Verizon even allowed to take part in this auction? Both of them have TONS of spectrum in the cellular, PCS and even AWS bands. Why is there no justification process attached to bidding on a limited resource and no mechanism in place to keep greedy monopolies from hoarding all of the spectrum to shut out newcomers?
Did you know in some markets that AT&T holds over 75% of the available cellular and PCS spectrum? They justified this back in the day by claiming that they needed to run three networks -- AMPS (analog), TDMA and GSM, even as they were forcing their customers to vacate the old AMPS and TDMA equipment.
I find it depressingly ironic that I have to fill out paperwork to justify my IP requests to ARIN, but a far more limited resource that theoretically belongs to everybody is just auctioned off to the highest bidder with no consideration as to whether or not it's in the interest of the public. Hell, even the limited "open access" rules that have been purposed are even being fought by Verizon, because they'd rather lock you into their hardware, their content and their service then allow an open market to flourish.
The Assembly webpage came back up. It's a little vaguer then I recalled but I still think you are safe:
156.05 Unauthorized use of a computer.
A person is guilty of unauthorized use of a computer when he or she knowingly uses, causes to be used, or accesses a computer, computer service, or computer network without authorization.
Unauthorized use of a computer is a class A misdemeanor.
Then from the definations:
8. "Without authorization" means to use or to access a computer, computer service or computer network without the permission of the owner or lessor or someone licensed or privileged by the owner or lessor where such person knew that his or her use or access was without permission or after actual notice to such person that such use or access was without permission.
Proof that such person used or accessed a computer, computer service or computer network through the knowing use of a set of instructions, code or computer program that bypasses, defrauds or otherwise circumvents a security measure installed or used with the user's authorization on the computer, computer service or computer network shall be presumptive evidence that such person used or accessed such computer, computer service or computer network without authorization.
Based on that I would assume that you are ok connecting to an open wi-fi network without encryption. There's also this:
156.50 Offenses involving computers; defenses.
In any prosecution:
1. under section 156.05 or 156.10 of this article, it shall be a defense that the defendant had reasonable grounds to believe that he had authorization to use the computer;
One could probably make the argument that an open wi-fi network implies authorization to use the network. I doubt you could pull this off if you were using the wi-fi network to download kiddie porn, but given that many operating systems will connect automatically to such networks, you could probably use it as a defense if all you did was check your e-mail and surf a few webpages.
In fact, the kiddie porn example would bump the offense up to a felony:
156.10 Computer trespass.
A person is guilty of computer trespass when he or she knowingly uses, causes to be used, or accesses a computer, computer service, or computer network without authorization and:
1. he or she does so with an intent to commit or attempt to commit or further the commission of any felony; or
2. he or she thereby knowingly gains access to computer material.
Computer trespass is a class E felony.
So, in summary, you are PROBABLY safe using an open wi-fi network for ligit purposes, as it's unlikely that the police or prosecutor would bother charging you with a misdemeanor over using your neighbors connection to check your e-mail. You definitely aren't safe if the owner asks you to stop, has encryption in place or if you do something stupid (like try to access his c$ share) or illegal.
*shrug*, I have an actual Linux box acting as my gateway and have never used WRT. I would suspect there is a way to do it. Whether or not it's "easy" depends on you.
I fail to see how your links to maps of submarine cables disproves my statement that nobody has bothered to build long haul links across Asia and in any case, I was basing it off the discussion the other day (in a diff story) where quite a few people posted traceroutes from Asia -> Europe that went through the United States for some reason.
Don't be a wiseass if you don't know it all.If they do have those links, then why the fuck is all that traffic going though the United States? Do they need help setting up BGP or something? (there, now I'm being a wiseass ;)
In any case, my original point is still quite valid -- people worrying about the DNS root are missing the point. If I was you I'd be more concerned about the fact that so much of the World's internet and telecom traffic passes through the United States and I'd be taking steps to fix this problem. As an added bonus, any steps taken towards this end also have the benefit of adding redundancy to the networks in question and that's a win-win for everybody (American or otherwise).
Agreed. ICANN sucks donkey balls. But how does that relate to the United States? The argument isn't "ICANN sucks", the argument is "We can't trust the United States". How the hell do you expect Americans to respond to that?
Are there? Please enlighten me. I understand that the present system of TLD's was designed to be freely added to whenever required, without much fussLet me qualify what I said. There are no reasons to add more English language TLDs. What the hell is the point of .info, .museum, .name, blah blah blah? Not that many people are using them. All they do is send more money to the pockets of ICANN and the domain registers because trademark holders feel like they have to register in every single TLD to protect themselves. We didn't need more TLDs to allow more businesses to flourish. eBay seemed to become pretty big without the benefit of 'auctions.com'.
Note that I qualified it with "English language TLDs". I have no problem with adding TLDs for other languages, as they have been under served by the existing arrangement.
ou mention porn andThe issue that I see is that the US isn't very popular right now and somebody manufactured a crisis to that affect. You want to change the way ICANN operates? Where do I sign up? You want to bash the United States and say we can't trustworthy and the UN (*shudder*) should control it? Now we have a problem.....
Uhh, two of them on a whim? I'm pretty sure we had good reasons for going into Afghanistan. Do you think that China or Russia wouldn't have done the same thing if 3,000 of their citizens were killed? Did you forget that NATO invoked it's collective self-defence clause? Afghanistan was hardly invaded on a 'whim' and you lose creditability by saying so.
and the world doesn't trust someone as crazy as the US with that powerWHAT POWER??? Everybody keeps talking about this "power" that the US has over the internet. Control of the DNS root != control of the internet. And if the US attempted to do anything unsavory with the DNS root it wouldn't take that long for everybody else to setup their own DNS root within their own borders.
In fact, if you want to look at control over the internet, I'd look to the fact that so much of the Internet backbone is based in the United States. It was pointed out awhile ago that packets from Japan to Europe usually (always?) travel though the United States, mainly because nobody has bothered to make the effort to build long haul links across Asia. Maybe the rest of the world should be investing all of this effort into building those links and adding more redundancy to the internet instead of worrying about the "control" that the US has over the DNS root?
We would if the people that think the General Assembly should be the Governing body for the World had their way.
Then bitch to your telecom companies and/or Government until they upgrade their links to the rest of the world. This has nothing to do with ICANN's control over the DNS root.
Go for it. No one is stopping you.
Why, what's the problem with the current arrangement other then European mistrust of the United States?
Just look at all the problems they have now (packet shaping, net neutrality, etc...)Disputes over packet shaping on the individual ISP level lead you to think that ICANN can't govern the root DNS servers effectively? Your kidding, right? And traffic shaping is hardly unique to the United States.
I feel that it has taken faaar too long to get the "ñ" in domain namesAnd you think the technical obstacles would have been overcome faster by adding more bureaucracy to the process?
Why don't we give the governance of internet stuff to somebody like Switzerland? They look like they could do a good job, they have the money and good reasons to do a good job on worldwide internationalization of internet.Because Swiss neutrality is slowly being erased in favor of closer ties to the EU? And why the Swiss? Why not Iceland? Why not Mongolia? Why not New Zealand?
bit more seriously, I think that something that has grown as important as this, should be in the hands of the UNYes, because more will solve everything!