Lawmakers Support U.S. Control Of The Internet 691
TechScam writes "A new resolution was introduced in Congress that aims to backup the Bush administration over retaining U.S. control of the Internet's core infrastructure. From the article: 'The resolution, introduced by two Republicans and one Democrat, aims to line up Congress firmly behind the Bush administration as it heads for a showdown with much of the rest of the world over control of the global computer network.'"
Define "control". (Score:5, Informative)
What is in question is what nation/organization should have the final say over the domain assignments, creation and so forth.
Because the US is still in control, we do not have the
A Non-US Opinion (Score:5, Informative)
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:2, Informative)
Get a grip, millions of people have died from these actions.
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:4, Informative)
No, and that is kind of the point. No, the US does not want two nations famous for their censorship of the Internet to have any more control then they already do.
Oh... what is this fine gem from the UN? http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/docum
Is this China asking for more control over the Internet?
And lookie here.
http://www.wgig.org/docs/WGIGREPORT.doc [wgig.org]
The original report on Internet governance. Hrm, who signed this merry little report... China, Cuba, Egypt, Russia, and Saudi Arabia to name a few. Now, I now the US is the great Satan and all, but do you really want those nations to dictate internet governance? Me personally? I'll pass and take my chances with the nation that has seemed to have done a marvelous job keeping their hands completely off of ICANN.
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:2, Informative)
Global military spending [nationmaster.com]. You also started an unwise war of agression on an oil rich country. And as the grand parent poster said, you have been undermining democracy in South America for decades. No one trusts you any more.
The US has a long history of setting up democratic free nation after they defeat them.
That "history" only exists in Hollywood. Go get a history book.
They look and see how much power the US has and know how they would abuse it in the US's place.
That was the UN, and a VERY long time ago. For example, Germany was split into several zones. Conflict between the US and Russia later led to the creation of the Berlin Wall. The UK and US regions merged and became West Germany, in fact it was the "closness" of these two zones that led to most of the conflict.
The USA that helped rebuild Japan and Germany is long gone. We miss her. Since the sixties, your country has behaved vastly differently. It still amazes me how the US population is still under the impression that your persuits abroad are part of some sort of idealistic crusade. The facts suggest that it's 100% self-interest. Seriously, put down the Brukheimer DVDs and pick up a book.
Just because your country was started on admirable beliefs, it doesn't mean that there is some sort of genetic safeguard ensuring that dishonest and greedy men cannot take control of the system.
DNS is NOT the Internet! (Score:5, Informative)
The most fundamental is the wire! This is not made by the US, but mostly telecompanies around the world. But also some WIFI and other free networks has been build.
The core technology is based on the TCP/IP. This is like telephone numbers. These are distributed all over the world as we speak and it would be close to impossible to break this up.
In regards to who made the Internet, it was based on some ideas made by the US army many years ago. But the net was not build by the US. It was mostly universities who had local networks that over time got connected to each other, slowly building the Internet. It is not the US who went to every country and implemented it locally. If the rest of the world disconnect from the US, US will be alone.
The most common feature of the Internet; the World Wide Web, was not an invention from US at all. It started in CERN, and was made to provide scientific results out to a large audience.
So what is the fuss about? If the DNS goes offline (or I chose to use my own), all I need to do is to find the IP's I'm looking for. Well that's what I did before the DNS was invented. And there is no one who can prevent me from distributing my own phonebook (DNS) today, ignoring the US root.
So control of the Internet? It's a joke! The Internet is extremely difficult to control. Anyone who thinks its possible doesn't live in the real world. They are probably more political orientated than having technically knowledge.
The Internet is fundamentally a collection of networks that various people, regions and countries has decided to connect together.
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:3, Informative)
National Executiions Per Capita. [nationmaster.com] Notice where U.S. allies rank on that chart.
Now, you were saying something about black-and-white? Or was that pot-kettle-black?
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Re: .xxx TLD...? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:3, Informative)
but like much of the world, your charicatures of U.S. behavior show a recently rising anti-American bias.
A side-effect of your actions, sorry.
But you dismiss Iraq as "unwise" and make allusions to oil, without even considering the fact that what we're doing there - toppling a brutal dictator in order to install a democratic system
No, if that were the case, I'd agree with the intention but not the method. Assuming democracy was the intent, you've still killed more Iraqi civilians than Saddam did. The country is now going to fall apart, and we get to watch it from our armchairs. Capturing Saddam was actually bad, it turns out. Many in Iraq were fearful that you'd pull out*, and Saddam would return to power. With him out of the way, the more agressive groups that he surpressed were free to start attacking collatition troops. Whatever happens, Saddam is gone. Removing him ironically is going to be the thing that destroyes the country.
* in the first Gulf War, we dropped leaflets that said rise up against Saddam and we'll support you. Many did, however we stopped once we restored the Kuwait dictators to power. Those who stood up were massacred. Many were fearful this would happen again.
The intent to attack Iraq predates 9-11. It has NOTHING to do with defending yourselfs in any way. Nor was it done for the Iraqi people. Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. The USA economy is 100% reliant on this oil, changes to the price affect everything. Now, peak oil [google.co.uk] dictates that the "easy" oil is running out, and the price will rise as more adventurous oil reserves are tapped. This price rise would topple an already faltering economy.
With Saddam in power, Iraq's oil was off the map, unavailable to US markets. With him gone, it's flowing freely. Billions upon billions of dollars have been made. Companies with representation in The Project For a New American Century [newamericancentury.org] (official website) (e.g. Harliburton/Cheeny) have gotten wholely rich from this. The US is in a far stronger strategic position WRT to access to oil. Don't forget, much of the worlds oil belongs to Saudi (9-11) and Venesuala (socialist). Your "enemies". The US now has direct influnce on the price of oil, as well as having private access to vast quantities.
It WAS NOT done for the Iraqi people, and it saddens me that people believe that. It proves that propaganda and nationalistic tendencies are not a thing of the past.
What do you think of Afghanistan? Should we have left the Taliban in charge there?
Well, you were quite happy to deal with them for many years. For example, in 1997 a Taleban delegation visited Texas [bbc.co.uk] for talks on a huge deal to build a pipeline through the country. It was only after that deal went to an Argentinian group that we suddenly started hearing about the evil Taleban. We have always been at war with the Taleban.
Is toppling an oligarchy that made women wear sacks and prevented them from getting an education just another indicator of our aggression?
Only when it happens after big business says so. By the way, the people involved in that 1997 deal have moved on. They are in the Whitehouse now. The pipeline's coming along nicely.
Actually, the web is also a US invention... (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.xanadu.com/ [xanadu.com]
Tim Berners-Lee's HTML (which not coincidentally uses Ted's term "hypertext") implemented a small subset of Ted's vision. It was of course based on SGML, the offspring of GML, which was also created by a US national, Charles Goldfarb.
http://www.sgmlsource.com/history/roots .htm
Europeans miss the point (Score:2, Informative)
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:3, Informative)
What complete and utter bullshit. Obviously, this comment was written by some kind of ignorant, arrogant American who thinks that the whole world revolves around his/her country. I can't remember when I last read a sentence that was so ... so ... what's the word ? Arrogant ? Stupid ? Narrow-minded ? Ignorant ? Stereotypically-American ?
Right now I'm browsing this US website called slashdot.org. A few minutes ago, I was looking at a couple of sites here in Australia for a birthday present for my wife. In a little while, I'll probably browse over to the BBC website to check out the news, then maybe send emails to friends in South America and central Europe.
Internet useless without US sites ? Well, it would be a shame to see all US sites disappear, I'd miss some of them. But I wouldn't miss them any more than if, say, all the sites in the UK were to disappear, or Germany, or whatever.
Americans may spend 99.99% of the time they are on the Internet visiting American websites, but - I hope this doesn't come as too much of a blow to your pride - people in the rest of the world (you know, us 95% of the earth's population who live outside your country) probably don't spend more than 10-20% of the time we are on the web viewing sites in the US.
If all Americans think the same way as this one (who I see was modded "5 - Insightful"), then its pretty obvious why they can't figure out why 95% of the world doesn't want a global resource to be controlled by 5%.
(BTW, I'm not anti-American, some of my best friends are Americans, but gee I wish you guys could widen your horizons realise that there is a world beyond your borders, full of people who are pretty much the same as you.)