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."

Talking this up...

[gowen]

Lots have people have people have been trying to make big news out of this, but it's really nothing.

i) Control of DNS is not the same as control of the internet.
ii) If the US started to exercise internet control via DNS, alternative root servers would likely appear almost overnight. Remember that old saw about "routing round censorship"? This time it's actually true.
iii) As a Brit, I applaud the current essentially hands-off control the US has. We get all the benefits, US tax payers cover the actual cost.
iv) The UN couldn't find it's arse with both hands. Of course, neither can Congress, but at the moment the system is up and running and they'd have to actively intervene to screw it up. Migrating something as important as this to a new bureaucratic body doesn't bare thinking about.

Re:UN control of something important?!

[Threni]

> The organization that put Libya in charge of human rights. Yes, Brilliant.

Exactly! Libya hasn't supported or condoned anything like as many human rights abuses as the United States!

The US doesn't want the UN in charge of anything, so this isn't very suprising.

This is only the first internet. There'll be others.

Re:The UN is incompatible with the internet

[ash.connor]

America *free*, ye' right buddy...

Go back to bed, America, your government has figured out how it all transpired, go back to bed America, your government is in control again. Here, here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up, go back to bed America, here is American Gladiators, here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go America - you are free to do what we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!
- Bill Hicks

Praise Be...

[Brad Groux]

I'm glad that our State Department stood up to the call for us to relinquish control of the internet domain servers to the UN. Let's be honest, the UN taints and screws up nearly everything they touch (ie Oil for Food) and they have no experience in technological matters such as these and supporting such a massive operation. Meantime, for over 30 years the US has rightfully controlled the servers and networks they financed in the first place. I wouldn't trust our networks with any other country in the world... feel free to call me cocky or chauvinistic but we foot the bill, so we should have control.

Is this really a bad thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Before the inevitable US bashing starts, I've got to ask (as a non-American), whether this is really a bad thing?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that the current situation is in any way a viable long-term answer to the top-level administration of the net. What I am suggesting is that it's way better than letting the UN run the show. The status that the UN grants to some of the worst human rights abusers in the world (and no matter what your feelings about the current US administration, there is a vast gulf separating them from this status) would surely open the doors to all kinds of abuses. We've already seen how net restrictions can be applied in places like China and, let's be honest, there's not a single realistic indication that the US intends to move in this direction.

By all means, let's discuss a proper international framework for the administration of the net. But let's keep the UN, and nations which show blatant hostility to the free exchange of thoughts and ideas out of the picture.

The Internet was created in the U.S. of A...

[GecKo213]

and so I think control over it and the domain servers should stay in the U.S. of A. Now, it is a World Wide Web, but why should the US have to give up control to the U.N.? That could only have disaserous results. The Internet being a world wide network shouldn't have laws or rules or really a governing body deciding what can and can't take place on it, or who can or can't register a domain or put up a webpage. If the control of the Internet were to be passed to someone like the U.N. I would fear, much like the open source concern of slowing innovation and development by keeping source code private, that rules would be imposed for the "greater good" thus limiting progress and damaging the Internet as we know it. Worse yet, there may be a limitation imposed on the people or businesses that wish to buy and register domains. They may even try to standardize charges for purchasing and registering domains thus injuring businesses that are already in competition for your money keeping prices relatively inexpensive.

The US postal service has long been fighting to put a tax or "stamp" on every single e-mail sent via the Internet to recoup losses involved with instant communication and people not wanting to send letters any more. How can this ever really be accomplished? It really can't, unless there is a governing body that has central control and makes it a law. If this were the case, people would just begin to use another non e-mail means of electronic communication I would imagine. At which point some sort of stamp would be applied to that as well.

Leave the governing of the Internet to the people that create, maintain, and use it.

Re:Talking this up...

[putko]

I'ver never really got how people conflate DNS and the TLDs with "control of the internet".

Isn't it that you've got a function that maps a string ("AMAZON.COM") to a 32-bit number (more for IPV6).

So here it is (for the mathematically inclined):

F: string -> number

Big deal, right? Anyone could plug in their own naming function, and they "control the internet?"

Indeed, as soon as the USA gets uppity, I would expect to see a distributed naming system up very quickly. There'd be chaos for a while -- but it would get worked out one way or another.

It wouldn't be so bad to have a distributed naming system, either -- especially if you could somehow reify the naming function and share it full or partially with your friends.

Re:UN control of something important?!

[Anonymous Coward]

"rrrright, and you'd rather have control of a very important and integral communication medium of the world in the hands of trigger happy US"

Why not, it works fine. Given that China is not a smoking and radioactive hole in the ground (or Russia for that matter .. the US could very well have turned it into one until the mid to late 60's without suffering much risk to itself) your allegation that the US is "trigger happy" is somewhat childish. But then it's fashionable to bash the US isn't it? very hip, the "in thing" with today's (and lets face it, for the past 60 years) crowd.

After all our Empires failed and collapsed years ago, only top dog around now is the yanks and oy do us Euro types not like that .. "Waaaaaaaaaah we cant run the world how we want to anymore! those nasty colonial types run everything noooooo fun!".

"Its sad that Libya doesn't have a marketing team like US government"

Or indeed a Govt like the US, which far from ideal is far better than anything Libya has.

"Mind you, I am not supporting Libya but blindly saying US is a saint is an overstatement at the same time."

Which the original poster did not claim, you merely assumed and are blindly going in the opposite direction from a comment you blindly assumed the original poster made.

"What if a cowboy in the govt decides to switch off all traffic to China or Iraq; you know if he doesn't do that terrorists have won!"

The chinese have cowboys? Given their govt is doing more to control and restrict internet access than the US Govt is I dont think you have much to fear about some hypothetical "cowboy" in the Whitehouse suddenly turning around and barring millions of chinese surfers access to their daily porn.

US largely created it, funded it and developed it and allowed others to connect to it and expand it's useability with new protocols, it's currently working fine, why hand over control of the internet to an organisation that is nothing but a bunch of political civil service types with no accountability to anyone but themselves?

At least the US Govt is accountable to someone :) even if it isn't myself. More than can be said for the (dis) United Nations (time to disband that and create a Earth Alliance between the anglo countries .. *that* really would annoy people :D).

Ultimately if a nation doesn't like how the internet is currently run they are more than welcome to fund their own "internet" and see if anyone else wants to play in their sandpit on their terms.

Re:Different spin

[ErikRed1488]

The articles title says: EU deal threatens end to US dominance of internet. However, reading the actual article, you see that it says that EU made a proposal, the US said no way. The EU can make any plans it wants with any other countries, but unless the US agrees, they're left out in the cold.

Speaking of the other countries metioned in TFA: Brazil, along with Iran, Cuba, China and others has created an impromptu "Likeminded Group" at the PrepCom3 meeting in Geneva that has continually insisted on the removal of US control.

Yea, with a group like that, I'm sure the US is ready to hand over the keys any day now.

Re:You are so right!!!!!1111!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The nation that doesn't grant the most basic human rights to it's POW?

Hmm. Well those that have been detained have been treated well and are in good health. There were some unfortunate events that occurred and have since been dealt with. This isn't to say that they aren't questioned or have psychological games played on them to break them and make them talk. To top it off at least the POWs the US took into custody still have their heads.

Since WHEN is war legal? War is war. Whether for political, religious, idealistic or economic reasons. There is no legality to war other than using certain weapons outlined in the Geneva convention. I am sure that every other war throughout history was scutinized for it's legality? The war that has been a constant in the middle east between the Muslim countries and Israel, is that legal? Should they be blowing up schools and buses with children in them? Everyone likes to point a finger and find fault with the U.S. because we are the big boy on the block. The whole time showing a great inability in recognizing their own faults and failures.

One last thing. Yes we used nuclear weapons on civilians as a means to an end. Japan would have not given up and it would have cost the U.S. more of our men to fight a conventional war. Besides we didn't start the damned war, remember? They came in and hit us first in hopes of gaining land and a strategic position in Hawaii. This brings me back to where I started my rant. Human Rights? Nukes on civilians? What about the attempted genocide that was taking place the whole time during WW II? Again the pot calling the kettle black. I am done for now though as I digress...

Re:You are so right!!!!!1111!!!

[ecbpro]

"and everybody thought there were WMDs in Iraq"

This is totally wrong and you only believe this due to the very efficient propaganda in the U.S. France and Germany heavily protested because they did NOT BELIEVE ONE WORD of what Colin Powel said at the U.N. The U.N. protested about the claims made by Dick that there were any nuclear weapons in Iraq. There was a really good book written by a former inspector of the U.N. who worked in Iraq, published around 2000, that it was absolutely impossible for Iraq to still have ANY WMDs. But we know that reading is not one of George W's strong attributes.
Greetings,
ecbpro

Re:Talking to myself

[Spy der Mann]

Really? What has the US done to hinder your online experience as a non-citizen?

More like, what has the US done to PROTECT my online experience as a non-citizen? Why didn't they punish Microsoft when they could? Why do the congress keep making laws that are a pathetic attempt to control everything, everywhere? Decisions taken in the US affect the whole world (as if that wasn't obvious enough).

Re:It's not broke...

[rabeldable]

The interent is not broke and it does not need to be fixed.

Hand it over to some organisation that knows nothing about it and it will break (as in oil for food broke), or get broken into (as in Kremelin broke). I like it just the way it is thank you.

If you (UN) really want to piss off the US - keep asking for it! Otherwise - a word of advise... do one thing, do it good, make it better and do it again. Fix world hunger or something, and stop trying to take over the world.

Re:Talking to myself

[monkeydo]

So, you don't have any objection other than you dislike the current administration? If it were the KerryGore administration would you feel better? If you want to make fundamental changes to stuff like the Internet, you really should have somthing you are going to, not just something you are running away from (just like planning for a natural disaster). What's wrong with the current system and how would the system be fixed if the UN was in control? (Other than the increase in embezzlement and bribery)

Re:Talking to myself

[Idealius]

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

Little did she know that's the type of wages one can get from working at McDonalds over here in the U.S.

My old job I made twice as much as her, and my current I'm making four times what she makes.

So yes, in a way the U.S. does care more about the people (ITS PEOPLE) because the competition is the rest of the world, and the rest of the world is worse economically for the most part. To be appealing, you don't have to be good, or the best, or perfect, you just have to be a little better than the competition.

But, I guess that's why our medical always sucks. hehe.

I'm just saying it sounds like your standards are based on a world under a united leadership, and it most definately is not. If one country can get a bit ahead at the expense of another, they'll probably do it.

And, if you ask them to relinquish control to the UN. Pft, the UN is going to need some leverage because no one just gives up a possible advantage in a competition.

It all goes back to the Lord of the Flies or Rome. Sure we can all work together in a controlled environment for a while, especially for survival. But, give humans time and they'll break down into factions that compete, eventually. It's how we evolve for Christ's sake.

Re:Talking to myself

[FecesFlingingRhesus]

Your government puts the needs of the people behind the needs of corporations. That is not how I would like to see the internet run.

Absolutely agreed Hamilton should be dug up and shot again for conceiving of the corporation and limited liability for a fictitious entity. Most of the other founding fathers saw this as a sure fire way to create an empire building government. Further Lincoln helped this along by further limiting the liability of corporations and changing laws to please his financial backers in his pursuit of the war against the south. In saying all that though, Americans designed and built the Internet with American tax payers' money as a defense network. The core layers of the internet where bought with our dollars and therefore I do not want my government wholesale giving away my money to the discression's of the likes of China and Brazil. No matter your gripe or how valid it is, with America we built it and we should be allowed, not even allowed, we maintain the right to control our DNS system. If other countries want control, the technology is there. Talk to Microsoft, talk to Linus and have them point the DNS systems to international servers. Developers have a right to make choices for their systems and I would imagine that you would get an open ear from the free software community, but to say that we need to give up something that we built and paid for is ludicrous at best.

Re:Good

[RevAaron]

That idea of an unwritten article is alive in the USA as well. To quote Howard Zinn, in _The People's History of the United States_:

The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights shows that quality of interest hiding behind innocence. Passed in 1791 by Congress, it provided that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . . ." Yet, seven years after the First Amendment became part of the Constitution, Congress passed a law very clearly abridging the freedom of speech.

This was the Sedition Act of 1798, passed under John Adams's administration, at a time when Irishmen and Frenchmen in the United States were looked on as dangerous revolutionaries because of the recent French Revolution and the Irish rebellions. The Sedition Act made it a crime to say or write anything "false, scandalous and malicious" against the government, Congress, or the President, with intent to defame them, bring them into disrepute, or excite popular hatreds against them.

This act seemed to directly violate the First Amendment. Yet, it was enforced. Ten Americans were put in prison for utterances against the government, and every member of the Supreme Court in 1798-1800, sitting as an appellate judge, held it constitutional.

There was a legal basis for this, one known to legal experts, but not to the ordinary American, who would read the First Amendment and feel confident that he or she was protected in the exercise of free speech. That basis has been explained by historian Leonard Levy. Levy points out that it was generally understood (not in the population, but in higher circles) that, despite the First Amendment, the British common law of "seditious libel" still ruled in America. This meant that while the government could not exercise "prior restraint"that is, prevent an utterance or publication in advanceit could legally punish the speaker or writer afterward. Thus, Congress has a convenient legal basis for the laws it has enacted since that time, making certain kinds of speech a crime. And, since punishment after the fact is an excellent deterrent to the exercise of free expression, the claim of "no prior restraint" itself is destroyed. This leaves the First Amendment much less than the stone wall of protection it seems at first glance.

USA! USA! USA!

mod parent up!

[DarkTempes]

Exactly. If the UN wants control over the internet, they can setup their own UN internet. They can fund a UN DNS system, they can pay for the upkeep, the bandwidth, and trying to promote other people to use it.

I'm quite fine with the current internet how it is. I don't see the US really doing much evil with the internet, and the current 'internet' DNS system IS the US' baby. Look at China, they basically already have their own 'internet'. This is just a bunch of whining democrats who don't know anything, and want control over something that other people worked hard to create and maintain.

Re:Stating the obvious...

[Anonymous Coward]

To any robotic flag waving idiots,

Did Germany force you to use cars, jets, rockets and television? Could you have not banded together to make your own version of personal transportation, rocketry and transmission of images?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_braun [wikipedia.org]

Did Scotland force you to use the telephone, penicillin and modern economics? Could you have not banded together to make your own version of mass communication, antibiotics and economics?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith [wikipedia.org]

Did Greece and Rome force you to use Republics and Democracy as your form of government? Could you have not banded together and make your own unique version of government?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic [wikipedia.org]

Did China force you to use paper currency or gunpowder? Could you have not banded together and invented your own version of money and method to propel your bullets and fireworks?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_money [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder [wikipedia.org]

Did England force you to use the world wide web? Could you not have banded together and invented your own world wide web?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners_Lee [wikipedia.org]

I could go on all day.... but the point is nationalism makes mush of your brain and helps generate wars which this news thread will attest to. Now imagine if we all had guns in our hands and you'll understand the root of the greatest evil present in the world today.

Warm regards,

Citizen of earth

Re:UN control of something important?!

[ghc71]

There's no need to get that defensive - after all, I just think that US administrations over the last century have acted on behalf of their constituents, which is the moral responsibility they bear upon being elected. Who else's interests should come before those whom they represent? That's the objection to ceding sovereignty to the UN, to allowing the ICC jurisdiction over serving US personnel - I think it's very hard to argue against, unless a representative is elected on a platform that commits to serving foreigners as well as the electorate. If your response is to resort to ad hominem attacks, it suggests that your position is the one lacking merit.

The "freedom of the European continent" is a sweeping generalization. To play Devil's Advocate, the freedom of the Europe is due to the tardy actions of the pre-war French and British governments, who actually finally abandoned appeasement and declared war on Germany in support of Poland. The United States did not. Roosevelt was de jure constrained by the Neutrality Acts from taking a side until Germany declared war on the US after Pearl Harbor, and de facto from siding with the British Empire, the primary geopolitical competitor to the US. Prewar Annapolis wargames paid equal attention to war with the Japanese in the Pacific and the British in the Atlantic. From a strategic viewpoint, the result of the war was to reduce these two empires to client states, one occupied and the other burdened by massive debt, that largely served as unsinkable aircraft carriers for the Cold War. If Germany had not declared war on the United States, would Roosevelt have been able to intervene in Europe at all, with a war to fight in the Pacific?

Re:The UN is incompatible with the internet

[Liam Slider]

And stop abusing the word freedom. The US is not a free country, it's a police state run by religious fanatics, a military industiral complex and we're it's legal to give money to politicians to change their vote (usually called bribery in other countries).

America is a police state? News to me. This is a land where buying books about Nazi regalia, purely for the historical context, is legal, or you can buy books about explosives, or drugs, or books critical of our government, even books saying it should be overthrown....because we don't ban books here. Unlike in certain other "Free, Western" nations. This is a country where citizens can legally own M-16s. This is a country where anyone can express any political opinion they wish, even call the leadership evil...without being jailed. This is a country where people can vote for or join whatever political party they wish (even if it has a snowball's chance in hell), including the Nazi or Communist parties....without being jailed. And this is a country where people can be any religion they wish, there are various Neo-Pagans, Jews, Muslems, Hindus, Buddhists, Vodunists, and people of many other faiths...there's no law against it, there's no government oppression. Sure most are Christians of some sort or another...but most of those aren't even Fundamentalists of any stripe.

Where? Where is the fucking "police state" you are bitching about? I don't see it. If it were here, we'd overthrow it because Americans are culturally intolerant of tyranny.

Re:Talking to myself

[DavidTC]

The existing system, works quite well, thank you very much.

God, everyone here is a moron. And I'm talking to you 'pro-UN' people, too. The issue isn't what government is in control, it's if ICANN is in control.

Have you seen what ICANN has been doing the past few years? Remember the 'let's redirect invalid names to our server so we can show ads', that was lots of fun. And that was just the obvious tip of the iceberg, the one everyone could see. The problem isn't that the US is nominally in charge of ICANN. The problem is ICANN, period.

I'd be perfectly happy if root DNS operations were turned over to the IANA or the IETF or even back to the NSF, anyone trustworthy, with ultimate control remaining in the hands of the US. (Who would continue to never use it.) However, the US refuses to do this.

Because the US has let ICANN do whatever the fuck it wants, the US must stop being in control. It is not responsible, it has decided on a 'hands-off approach' to the internet, which is normally fine, but not when the people they have deligated to manage DNS for them are running wild.

That's what this push is about. It's not because of any issues with the US control, it's because the US completely refuses to do anything about ICANN, even when they blatantly violate their charter by removing non-corporate elected people and keep secrets from board members and whatnot.

Re:It's not broke...

[Clockwurk]

Some countries have been frustrated that the United States and European countries that got on the Internet first gobbled up most of the available addresses required for computers to connect, leaving developing nations with a limited supply to share.

I'd be pretty frustrated too. You can't say with a straight face that MIT deserves 16 million addresses.

Re:The UN is incompatible with the internet

[Liam Slider]

Why aren't you seeing body bags of Americans killed in Iraq on the evening news? (lesson learned from Vietnam, don't show dead Americans on TV or you'll loose the war)

The government not letting the press into the place they keep the bodies isn't the same as censorship. The press is allowed to print what they like. In fact, they did once get ahold of a picture, taken by a soldier, of bodybags and printed it. It caused an uproar in the military as they moved to punish the soldier who took the picture. But nobody stopped the press from printing any photos nor punished them for doing so.

Why is there such a gigantic fine if you show a nipple on TV?

Now that's different. There are rules about basic content for such things as considered obscenity and language...but within those very general guidelines people can do whatever they want. I do think that the fine for accidental nipplage on a live event was a little stupid though. It's not censorship though, fines are applied after the fact. There are no official government censors approving what is seen. If something happens, and people complain, a fine is likely...but also likely challenged. That's very different from censorship.

There was a survey of what people watching mostly FOX knew about the world around them. On most of the questions people watching FOX thought exactly the opposite of the truth. One of the questions was they thought foreigners though of the US, and 80% something say 'They like us', when most people outside of the US in fact dislike you. As a journalist, would you be proud of your network if a majority of of viewers believe the wrong thing most of the time? I would not.

So you honestly believe that most of the people of the world hate the American people? Careful now....I'm not saying government, I'm saying people.

Can you show a link to that vote?

I saw the footage when congress gave the president power to start any preemtive war. You should watch it too, in fact every American should, but they are not going to see it on TV (cause it's censored):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436971/#comment [imdb.com]

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/11/ira q.us/ [cnn.com] http://www.yourcongress.com/ViewArticle.asp?articl e_id=2686 [yourcongress.com]

In fact, the issue of voting on the war with Iraq was a major political issue during the last Presidential election, as John Kerry, the opponent to George Bush, had voted for going to war with Iraq....and yet strongly opposed the War in his campaign.

You should stop listening to your own propaganda and start contemplating how people outside the US think of you, and also why.

Perhaps you should take a dose of your own medicine there.

The whole "the Internet belongs to the US!" thing is exactly why people dislike you.

But it does. We built it, with our tax dollars, for our military....and then decided to open it to the public. That it gained popularity worldwide was a bonus. But it is our property. We made it, we paid for it.