U.S. Insists On Keeping Control Of Internet

veggie boy writes "A U.S. official strongly objected to any notion of a U.N. body taking control of the domain servers that direct traffic on the Internet." From the article: "'We will not agree to the U.N. taking over the management of the Internet,' said Ambassador David Gross, the U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy at the State Department. 'Some countries want that. We think that's unacceptable.' Many countries, particularly developing ones, have become increasingly concerned about the U.S. control, which stems from the country's role in creating the Internet as a Pentagon project and funding much of its early development."

Different spin

[the bluebrain]

The Register [theregister.co.uk] has the same story, with a different spin.

To me, looks like the US might not have a whole lot of choice in the matter, in the end.

Re:The proper answer to the UN..

[Chuq]

You realise that the US funded and developed ARPAnet - it was only when it was linked to other networks (JANET, AARNet, etc) that it became the internet? That is, if the US was to cut off all links to other countries, the rest of the world would be bigger than the USA-net?

It should be about ip6 not dns

[amcdiarmid]

The two complaints mentioned are 1) US and European companies snapped up all the good TLDs; 2) US and European companies have snapped up all the IP addresses, leaving only scraps.

my $.02:

1) All the TLDs are snapped up only in European languages. This should piss off basically no one. Why, every country has its' own TLD. To whit, American techies had to use www.theregister.co.uk for years before they decided to make a www.theregister.com version. Why, because everyone in the UK was used to typing .co.uk to look for UK business/media/whatever. The main people pissed off by this are prob. big Latin-American media companies that want a .com name taken by someone in Spain. They were late to the party & the good beer is gone. If they don't want to bring their own beer (country based URL), too bad.

2) All the IP blocks are snapped up by Europeans & North-Americans. I'd say they are late to the party, too bad - but it's a legitimate complaint. Without IP addresses, they can't do what they want. However, what they really should do is mandate IPv6 so that there are more blocks to go around. The people who have blocks now don't want to pay for it, but if the rest of the world want's it - everyone will have to go along (or loose out on business if they don't interoperate well). I mean, really, how many addresses are lost by using a class A (127.x.y.z) block for loopback?

Hey, look - shiny toy: I want it!!! If they really wanted, they could use new.net and IPv6. Waaaaaaah!

It's not the US government's choice

[Todd Knarr]

I think the US government fails to grasp that they don't have a choice in the matter. The root DNS servers are the roots because most DNS servers point to them in the root hints configuration. Any DNS server operator can point their servers to a different set of root servers by just changing that's in the root hints configuration. The question isn't whether the US government will allow a different set of roots but whether the alternate roots can convince the majority of DNS servers to re-point to them instead of the current roots.

And the above doesn't really matter directly anyway. The critical servers aren't the roots, really, but the TLD servers the roots delegate to, particularly the ones for the .com domain where it seems most of the biggest domain names are. That's where the real hands-on control is. The roots only affect things in a major way in that they determine what the TLD servers are for a given TLD. The only way alternate root servers can really affect things is if, in addition to getting a lot of people to use them, their operators can also convince people that using alternate, non-official TLD servers for the big domains is also a good idea. For practical reasons I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Re:My turn: Democracy

[ozmanjusri]

And moreso please don't let the UN fix it.

It might be worth dropping the silly jingoism and having a look at how the world actually works. International telecommunications are already being coordinated (very successfully) by a UN agency, and have been since 1947. http://www.itu.int/home/ [itu.int]

Re:I say...

[Draconnery]

Go ahead, make some random letters bold; that will definitely change the meaning of the word they're in. I don't know how long you've been around reading English or any language mildly derived from Latin, but there are many words which include the prefix "inter-" and refer to relationships between entities aside from nations. Why doesn't the UN send us some money to fix Interstate 94 in Detroit? Doesn't that mean it is "to be handled internationally?"

Moron.

Re:UN control of something important?!

[LionATL]

Check out the United Nations "Universal Declaration of Human Rights".

http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html [un.org]

There's the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Sounds lovely, no? Read further. Article 29, Section 3.

"These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations."

There's freedom of speech for everyone until it's contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations...

-- Credit to Neal Boortz (boortz.com) for this research

To the U.N. haters:

[bobbo69]

I agree the U.N. is pitiful - but maybe it would function better if:

A. the U.S. stopped underhanded tactics such as witholding money owed to the U.N.

B. the U.S. stopped vetoing resolutions against the proliferation of WMD re. Israel

C. the U.S. stopped vetoing resolutions against genocide

And that's just for starters! Please be in no doubt - WRT the U.N. America has a track record of putting its own interests way ahead of those of the rest of the world community, and until that changes there's not much hope of the U.N. getting any better.

Still, you can be sure that when American hegemony is undermined by the rise of China the U.S. will use every means at their disposal - including the U.N. - to try and cling on a little longer...

Re:My turn: Democracy

[AKAImBatman]

Iraq doesn't have to go anywhere. They have their domain [theinquirer.net] under their control. The REASON why ICANN was reluctant was because the domain was previously part of an elaborate terrorist funding affair. You'd be reluctant to turn it back too, if you previously had to sieze it because of terrorist funding.

Besides, so the Iraqis had to register through a foreign company. Big whoop. At least they could. Under current Iraqi regulations, private citizens are NOT allowed to have .Iq domains. Great freedom that is, eh?

Re:Talking to myself

[FatherOfONe]

"No single country should. That's the point."

Unless that country payed for the following:
1. The architecture of the Internet.
2. The initial layout ouf the Internet.
3. By far and above the largest working part of the Internet today.

As with most things the U.S. pays for it, and the rest of the world wants to take it for free. While the U.S. is at it, it could just forgive every debt it is owed...

I can see it now. China controls the top level domains and you want to register something like ChinaKillsPeople.com, and you just don't get denied acess but they come and kill you and your family later that night. Well they would leave the little girls to be adopted by another country...

Re:UN control of something important?!

[Xaositecte]

Both of the replies to this were labeled trolls, and I'm wondering why..

They're both right, Libya has an outspoken record of human rights abuses FAR more severe than anything the US has done.

And they're not that great at it.

[Benanov]

And they do a terrible job: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/29/itu_ip_loc k/ [theregister.co.uk]

Re:My turn

[jimbolauski]

First of all India's response to the tsunami was thank you america for your money and supplies. Secondly India uses migs, yes old russian air craft, where as we use the f22 now for air to air combat which can out mannuver f15's very easily. Third we invented the internet other countries should be thanking us for us allowing them to use it.

See Also:

[metternich]

Article 51. The exercise by citizens of the People's Republic of China of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society and of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens.
Sort of takes the edge off Article 35, doesn't it?

Re:My turn: Democracy

[hanshotfirst]

I would rather have a central (neutral) authority guard over such systems that trust on a (not so neutral) country to allow me to use my domain

The UN is hardly a neutral body, in my opinion. Unless neutrality is defined as making resolutions and threats of enforcement and never following through on them.

I'd sooner hand control over to the Swiss, who have a much better track record of real neutrality.

Re:My turn

[YrWrstNtmr]

How would we gauge our response to Katrina compared to India's response to the massive tsunami?

You [bbc.co.uk] tell [abc.net.au] me [bbc.co.uk].
"Villagers in India's Andamans and Nicobar Islands have denounced 'paltry' tsunami compensation relief they have received from the local government.
One woman received a cheque of just two rupees (less than five US cents) for damage to her coconut crops."

I also remember reading an article recently about how India's Air Force kicked our ass in joint training exercises

While the Indian Air Force did 'win' several (even 'most') of the engagements, to say they 'kicked our ass' is a bit misleading.
No AWACS, which the USAF would use if it were real
Older F-15C, lacking the upgraded, longer range radar, against newer IAF Su-30's.
No BVR engagements
The USAF sent 5 jets, and were outnumbered during the A-A portions of the exercise. This was a DACT exercise, not a 'beat the other guy' situation.

Having said that...
General Hal Hornburg, head of the US Air Combat Command [defencetalk.com] said "that we may not be as far ahead of the rest of the world as we once thought we were"

From an IAF official [telegraphindia.com]:
"We have appreciated the compliments but we are being pragmatic. We have no doubt about the technological superiority of the US Air Force. The exercise in Gwalior was a low-level one and involved conventional fighter tactics."

Spin it how you want, but that's not quite "kicking our ass"

If it ain't broke... Break it!

[tnk1]

The DNS system works right now. There's exactly no reason to move the infrastructure except for matters of national pride and possibly national security. And the fact is that there is nothing stopping any of these countries from developing an alternate DNS plan of their own.

I don't think it's impossible that the UN could do this right, but it's a change that doesn't need to be made. And I don't want to simply play up "Oil for Food" or "Libya as Human Rights Chair" to counter people's "Iraq" and "Guantanamo Bay" cries, but it does illustrate that the UN has it's own issues which make it likely that the effort in moving the control is probably not worth the effort of doing it. There's no perceptible benefit in making this move in terms of human rights or bureaucracy and those cases illustrate that the UN is not a slam dunk as an improvement over the US by a long shot.

It tends to be a feel good thing to say that the "World" should run a global infrastructure, but the fact is that most of the world is either technically unsophisticated, impoverished and/or run by people who make George Bush look like Eleanor Roosevelt. Even the parts of the world that are none of the above have had their own issues in the past with genocide, human rights abuses and other unsavory trends. The fact that Europe currently looks like more or a "white hat" to some than the US is simply a confluence of situations which could easily change come next election in either of those places. Europe has been fascist before, and can be again. The US has had witch hunts in the past and can have them again.

If Europe or India or China want some control, then they should build out their own extension to the system and then integrate it. China and Europe didn't insist on internationalizing NASA to get to space, they built their own rockets and shot them off. A DNS infrastructure is nowhere near the same investment and they will not be breaking what is working now.

The US created the system and it continues to work. That is enough reason for it to keep it where it is. It sucks that it was promised that it would be distributed and that was retracted, but that's a diplomatic embarassment, not a technical consideration.

Re:Talking to myself

[mikkom]

Last night when corresponding with a German friend online I found out she only makes 600 euros a month in an office building.

She lied to you. Or she's a janitor and was talking how much money she has after taxes.

http://www.destatis.de/themen/e/thm_loehne.htm [destatis.de]

Re:My turn

[Viper Daimao]

Well, response was pretty good in Mississippi which was more devestated than NO. It was really Louisiana and New Orleans that didnt have its act together. You know, all those busses that werent used to evacuate anyone, the state agencies that wouldnt let Red Cross or Salvation army in to help people. MS was hit hard too, dont hear much about them do you?

Re:Different spin

[VON-MAN]

"I'm sure the US is ready to hand over the keys any day now" You don't seem to realize that the world already has the keys. The DNS protocol is old and simple, and once you know how it works you simply point your DNS servers elsewhere. It is not that the u.s. (ICANN of course) has an unbreakable grip on the internet, it just that the world has allowed the u.s. its position. That is, up till now. At least, that's what the title is suggesting. Get it now?