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.'"
what drives this controversy? (Score:4, Insightful)
How did this ever even become a controversy? Isn't the internet as we know it an outgrowth and result of DARPA work? And didn't the internet essentially grow from those efforts and work?
This feels like envy and jealousy, the United States created a neat and shiny toy unnoticed by the world until it "became" the internet, and now the rest of the world wants some stewardship, whether it is warranted or not (in my opinion, not).
I don't think the U.S. is the wisest and most sage about everything, but seriously, what is considered the risk here for it maintaining stewardship. It may have misstepped once or twice but empirical evidence suggests competent management (note I didn't say the "best"), and I haven't seen any contraindications to the detriment of the rest of the world.
I think some of the threats made by the U.N., et. al., in these attempts to wrest the internet from the United States are misguided, immmature, and more seriously jeapordize the cohesive internet world wide as we know it today.
(Meanwhile, has anyone peeked at the ozone hole lately?)
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
Re:Define "control". (Score:2, Insightful)
The nation/organization that should have final say at this point, is the one that does have the final say right now.
Re: .xxx TLD...? (Score:2, Redundant)
And just think of all the fun Internet content we're missing out on because of that:
www.WaffleHouseWaitresses.xxx
www.JanetReno.xxx
www.OverweightDeerHuntersFromAlabama.xxx
www.Skin nyMetrosexualsWhoThinkGirlsAreImpressedByHomemadeP orn.xxx
If it keeps THAT kind of smut off the web, then by God I hope we keep control for a long, long time!
Re: .xxx TLD...? (Score:2)
Re: .xxx TLD...? (Score:5, Insightful)
The "smut" is already on the web
if you have all the smut under
lets assume
easy to find means dollars
the entities(liraries, schools, families) that DON'T want that smut on their computer screen can easily filter that out and sowith protect the innocent eyes of those they want to.
cheers
Re: .xxx TLD...? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: .xxx TLD...? (Score:5, Insightful)
And what exactly are you going to do. Force everyone who serves up porn to move the
The
Max
Re: .xxx TLD...? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: .xxx TLD...? (Score:3, Interesting)
"The real reason that the US government asked for postponement of the
Nonsense. Cark Rove needed to get a religious group off his back by doing them a favour. Rather than delve into the stem cell issue or any of the other thorny problems on their shopping list, he glanced at their "stop
The whiteho
US blocking .xxx TLD, but not .xxx.${cc} (Score:5, Insightful)
So, for example, if those wonderful bastions of free speech, the French, wanted to, they could make an .xxx.fr domain. Whatever interference is exerted by USGOV to prevent .xxx, there also must be hundreds of other countries preventing .xxx.$(cc) as well.
I personally oppose .xxx, but not for the reason you might expect. I think people (including my own brother [stbi.edu]) who demand that the Internet be made safe for the Precious Children<tm>, perhaps by ghettoizing 'adult content', have it backwards. The Internet was built by and for adults, and the presumption should be that a site is for adults unless otherwise specified. I'm all in favor of .kids or other mechanisms to 'whitelist' G-rated content, but want no part of a system that requires consenting adults to do anything to keep kids out. That's their parents' job.
Re:US blocking .xxx TLD, but not .xxx.${cc} (Score:3, Insightful)
An intersting hypothesis, but factually incorrect.
DNS is just a way to find computers on the network. it is not a mind control protocol. If you think otherwise, raise my arm.
The creation of a new network resource does nor force anybody to do anything. Presumably some people will want to buy
What exac
Re:US blocking .xxx TLD, but not .xxx.${cc} (Score:3, Insightful)
Separation of religion and state is very strict in France, maybe even stricter than in the US. In both countries this derives from the time of enlightenment and the respective revolutions in these countries.
And I'm sure you know enough of recent history to understand why the Germans are a bit sensitive about hate speech and ideologies like Nazism. I wouldn't like to hear the screaming and whining if Germany suddenly started to ignore the problem c
Nor should we. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nor should we. Every country in the world has been assigned a 2-letter top domain, and we should be using them. Rather than creating new 3-letter TLDs we should be adding ".us" to the current ones. Those ".com"s that are not in the USA probably already have a matching address in their own country's TLD anyway. Sometimes it redirects to the .com (microsoft.ca redirects to microsoft.com/canada) and sometimes the redirection works the other way (google.com redirects to google.ca if you try to connect from Canada).
Once the whole world isn't fighting over the same TLD there won't be any call for the USA to give up control because it would only control the ".us" domain anyway.
This fight is about who gets to profit from issuing and owning "vanity plates".
Re:Nor should we. (Score:3, Insightful)
Except, as the status quo stands, the government of the USA[1] controls the servers that decide which server has the authority to handle requests for country code domains. Why should the US government decide who handles requests to .uk (for example)? In theory, there is nothing stopping them from deciding that France should have backed them i
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:2, Insightful)
You are aware that the present administration has totally squandered any goodwill due to the horrible 9/11 incident? The US has very little credibility with regards to human rights and international law!
Even staunch European allies of USA are deeply concerned a
Re:HAhahahahahaha (Score:2)
Yeah, sure, Iran has as much WMD as Iraq had. But hey, you only watch Fox "news", right?
Re:HAhahahahahaha (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps they know something about the state of their oil reserves that you don't. Perhaps they feel that in the upcoming peak oil scenario their best bet is to a) have alternate sources of energy for themselves as to make maximum use of exportable black gold, b) have nukes to defend themselves from the inevietable, desperate attempts at grabbing that oil by the addicted and suffer
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?
-
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Other countries are in the same situation: The 'net is a major part of these country's economic infrastructure. The US having absolute control of that much economic infrastructure would give them the same willies that your fore-fathers got. It could plausibly start messing with venezuela trade for instance.
This dispute is indicitive of the divergence of interests between US and the rest of the
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Then - like the US - they should declare independence and build their own.
I hate the current US administration, and the uselessly inoffensive Democratic party is a close second. But I love my country, and this is something we made. No foreign bureaucrat has the right to decide it's not ours anymore.
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:4, Insightful)
So semantically you are full of crap.
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the Internet as we know it is the result of the work of programers, engineers and other profesionals from all over the world. It may be based on DARPA's work but there's a lot in it that has nothing to do with it. Simply discarding other contributions as irrelevant to make Internet what it is today is simply an attempt to give the US more credit than they actually have.
The reason why other countries want more control has nothing to do with jealousy or envy. They simply don't want to be dependent on the US in something as important as this network is. I am quite sure that if the situation was reverted, the US would be requesting the same.
What really scares me a bit is the notion some US citizens have that other democracies in the world are not as democratic than theirs. On top of that I find it quite interesting that out of all possible motivations you could have seen behind the request of other countries to have more control, you decided that the most plausible one was jelousy and envy. That kind of reasoning can lead to no good.
That's completely subjective. I personally feel like the Internet is too big for the US alone.
Re:Please... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Please... (Score:3, Insightful)
Can anybody here on
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:5, Insightful)
It has everything to do with economic power. Many people in the U.S. would hardly notice if other countries started dropping off the internet, except, perhaps, for a small decrease in spam. In any other country, the internet would basically be useless without seeing U.S. sites.
I may be somewhat exaggerating, but the basic idea is that the U.S. holds all the cards (for now at least), and the other countries don't really have any recourse.
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,
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:3, Insightful)
What is this 'anti-American' tag that some Americans try to apply to anyone that argues with them? Sounds pretty paranoid.
I agree with what he said, in that
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:3, Insightful)
This feels like envy and jealousy, the United States created a neat and shiny toy unnoticed by the world until it "became" the internet, and now the rest of the would wants some stewardship, whether it is warranted or not (in my opinion, not).
You're right about the origin of the Internet. But that doen't mean it belong
Ok, but we get to take back all engines (Score:3, Insightful)
Or better yet, force the designers to include remote control kill-switches that allow the German government to shut down each one. Don't worry, we'd never abuse that.
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:5, Interesting)
(1) The U.S. has a unified language
(2) The U.S. is an economic powerhouse, especially on the internet
The moral justification is orthogonal to the actual reason. It happens that they point at the same country this time.
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Nowadays when you post here, you must take into account that there is an editor called Zonk who barely has enough braincells to keep breathing. He continuously gets tiny things wrong, such as "is this at all interesting?" and "what is this story about?".
The story is not about control of the internet, it is about control of one small internet service, and a fairly insignificant one at that, called DNS. Invented by one Paul Mockapetr
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:4, Funny)
Less visually impressive, but nicer.
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
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ummm, which side are you arguing? It's been stable for like 50 years now, and you want to toss it into a 'rule by committee' environment?
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:5, Insightful)
From the first one (China):
Our government is planning to make new relevant policies and legislations, and making its
efforts toward carrying out more practical and effective ways by using its legislative power
and jurisdiction to create a healthy, stable and sustainable developing net atmosphere.
What kind of legislation? Blocking sites with the word "democracy" in it? China's apparent desire to make the Internet "healthy" is a joke.
To sum up, Internet governance is a system engineering, which need to construct an integrated
system via the efforts from various layers of management in the whole human society. It needs
the participations and support from all the people to protect Internet ethics and develop
Internet civilization. Only in this way, could the Internet information society serve human
being on economic, social, cultural and other aspects.
What in the world? I've got a shiny nickel for anyone that really understands that. "Internet eithics" indeed. This paper contains absolutely nothing of any value. How applicable to the UN.
The second document is almost as good. You can sum it up with the following:
1) Wah wah wah. The US has control over the DNS root servers.
2) It costs a lot to build an infrastructure.
3) Spam is bad.
4) IPv6 is good.
5) Too much English on the Internet
6) The Internet will break any second if the UN doesn't step in.
I have yet to see a valid argument for the UN control of the root DNS servers. Documents such as these are a perfect example of using a lot of words and not saying anything at all.
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, Insightful)
Wow your view of history is odd at best. The UN had no power that the US didn't give it. The UK was still getting Lend-Lease aid for years after the war. The rest of the western Europe was in shambles and living off the Marshal plan. The US had nothing to do with the building of the Berlin wall except that it kept at least part of Berlin free. I suggest you look into the history of the Berlin Airlift.
I had no idea that Europe had done as much "revisionist" history as you seem to indicate. Your fears of the US are grounded in your own actions and history. As you said the rebuilding of after WWII was totally self interest. Yes. The US felt that free and independent nations where more in the US's self interest than slave states.
It is understandable really. The countries in the EU do not want to remember that they owe just about everything they now have to the power and honor of the US. It is upsetting so they change history. Play down the importance of post war aid, ignore the huge number of people that did nothing or helped the Nazis, and inflate the importance of their own "freedom" fighters.
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
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the rest of the world seems to be fine with things just the way they are. The only people who object to it are a few politicians and their brain-dead supporters. In fact, I'm willing to bet that a poll conducted pretty much anywhere in the world would indicate that the vast majority of folks don't even know this "issue" exists. The internet works just fine for them, and I doubt they could see any reason for changing things, or would even care.
It will stop all the spam from mouthbreathing Comcast users
As opposed to the mouth-breathers who use other ISPs, both in the US and Europe? It's painfully obvious to anyone with a few neurons to rub together that Europe has just as many idiots as America does; stupidity isn't a specific national trait.
The US will wall itself off more and more
Riiiight. You mean a few spoiled little brats who can't have ICANN will wall themselves off from the rest of us, to the great anger of their own citizenry (excepting the Chinese, who're already doing it). Good call, that; let's see how long the English, or Danish, or Hungarians put up with politicians grandstanding when it means they can no longer reach any of their favorite sites. That'll put an end to this crap right quick.
the UN has to come in and sort it out.
That would be a first for the UN.
Max
Re:what drives this controversy? (Score:3, Insightful)
This (from TFA):
"Turning the Internet over to countries with problematic human-rights records, muted free-speech laws, and questionable taxation practices will prevent the Internet from remaining the thriving medium it has become today," said California Republican Rep. John Doolittle in a statement.
If anybody fails to see the irony there, I can't help.
Time to begin (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Time to begin (Score:2)
I don't really trust the UN to run the Internet.
I don't really trust the EU to run the Internet.
Maybe we should just set up our own one, and not let idiots or politicians (but I repeat myself) join in.
Freedom or Permission? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Time to begin (Score:5, Insightful)
I really do wonder what people want to achieve by this pissing contest of insulting each other. The original network may have been developed by DARPA and U.S. universities, but internet in today's sense would not exists and have the importance that it has without the international participation. Compare that with the original closed networks of e.g. AOL or Bitnet or Compuserve (if you even remember what it was like). However the governance of the network is still (mainly for historical reasons) in the hands of one country, even though others are contributing at least an equal or even larger share than U.S (remember, internet is not only the English-speaking part hosted in the U.S.). This is the problem.
The fundamental issue is that the internet as we know it may stop to exist because of political decision. It is not an attempt to usurp control from the U.S., however ICANN was source of too many controversies in the past and especially the non-American networks were always getting the short end of the stick - guess why. It is used as a club to stifle the competition by the large American network operators, e.g. Verizon. Why would they allow somebody else to operate a root nameserver? They could lose the very profitable monopoly for doing this. Of course that they would block any attempt at doing so through ICANN or lobbying in Congress.
Add a fundamentalist administration which pulls out strawmen such as China or North Korea being able to control internet and in the name of democracy the basic democratic principle of fairness gets trampled. This "patriotic" flag-waving has of course nothing to do with the real issues, but it gets presented as a reason why not to do anything to change status quo (and upset the profitable business of the large telcos).
great (Score:5, Insightful)
what we need is to get some momentum behind a decent decentralized DNS-type system. there have been various proposals out there for a while, but there was never a strong reason to try switching... until now.
Re:great (Score:5, Interesting)
what we need is to get some momentum behind a decent decentralized DNS-type system. there have been various proposals out there for a while, but there was never a strong reason to try switching... until now.
Agreed. What most of the world doesn't understand is that the internet, the real internet, is not controlled by any goverment or agency. It's controlled by us, the geeks and nerds of the computer world! The DNS system only continues to work so long as we continue to use it. If we all start using a different system to find our pron, the companies of the world will follow us to keep our buisness. Then the rest of the world will follow them.We don't have to keep DNS around. There are other ways of finding information on the internet. If we put our heads together and came up with a replacement, then used it, we can put this whole messy business, and any future similar problems, to rest.
Re:great (Score:2)
I've heard a lot of people say "We don't need DNS". What'
Re:great (Score:3)
I agree, it is neat.
Political? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Political? (Score:3, Insightful)
But that's exactly the way to preface a controversial and important action. You know, so that later, there won't be any whining. You know, like how Congress saw all the same intelligence, and then voted for the action in Afghanistan and Iraq. That way, no one can complain about it only being the executive branch that... oh, wait. Never mind, people will whine no matter what we (with or without congressional activity) do about DNS autho
In a shock move... (Score:5, Funny)
-RadioElectric
why the double standard toward globalization? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:why the double standard toward globalization? (Score:3, Insightful)
This stupid battle over "control" of the Internet is at best the EU and UN trying to compare dick sizes with the US to see who is the bigger man, and at worst an attempt by some UN nations to exercise higher levels of taxation and censorship on the Internet. Chances are it is probably a little bit of both.
Personally, I am
U.S. Lawmakers Support U.S. Control Of $WHATEVER (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:U.S. Lawmakers Support U.S. Control Of $WHATEVE (Score:2)
Nothing to see here, move along please, or Officer Bar-Brady will have to execute you with a gunshot to the head.
Next the news will be 'congress approves US bombing brown people', well *duh*.
Re:U.S. Lawmakers Support U.S. Control Of $WHATEVE (Score:2)
Stop This "Control The Internet" Nonsens (Score:5, Insightful)
This "control of the Internet" is just inflammatory rhetoric to drive the US vs. the world posts. If you stop the hyperbole, it's obvious this issue isn't going to really affect Internet users much.
Zonk, stop baiting for pagehits on this topic. Your motives are so clear, it's sickening.
Re:Stop This "Control The Internet" Nonsens (Score:3, Insightful)
What sort of harm could they do to non-Americans? Forgetting for a moment that fragmenting of the DNS system would harm us all lets take a look at a recent post about Estonia using online voting [slashdot.org] in their latest election as an example. If you read this article [csmonitor.com] you'll see that their gove
Lawmakers? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Lawmakers? (Score:2)
Global Control of the NETWORK!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Lawmakers Support U.S. Control Of The Internet? (Score:2)
I am quite sure that if you ask some of the lawmakers in Europe, they will disagree with you
Makes it sound like they only make laws in the US.
Why UN control is a BAD idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, let's pay a little extra to give each of the Billion people in Africa a laptop with wireless Internet access. And who uses the Internet the most? It's the US, is it not? So we'd be forced in to yet another form of foreign aid. Lovely.
We *did* invent the damned thing... it is ours, there's no good reason to give it away!
Re:Why UN control is a BAD idea (Score:3, Funny)
Greetings and love to you in the name of the most high God, from my beloved country Nigeria. I am sorry and I solicit your permission into your privacy. I am Barrister Richard Okoya, lawyer to the late Ibrahim Abacha eldest son of the late former head of state of Nigeria late General Sani Abacha.
My former client late Ibrahim Abacha died in a plane crash in the year 1994. Upon the death of my former client and unknown to the family that is currently under house arres
I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
So when "journalists" say "the Internet's core infrastructure" they really mean a few lines of ASCII text. And when I say "journalists" I really mean "bunch of asshats".
A Non-US Opinion (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A Non-US Opinion (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole issue seems a bit pointlessly theoretical now, however it would be naive to think the issue won't arise in the distant future (i.e. sometime over the next 50 years). Particularly in the case of emerging superpower like China and the EU.
I think the U.S. lawmakers are missing the point of the technology and of international politics entirely. There is nothing the U.S. can do to stop these Countries/Unions just using there own alternate servers/protocols which would in the long run b
Re:A Non-US Opinion (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the very point, they don't need permission! .tw domains, it would be bad for taiwan and the entire world if half the internet (i.e. the west) see one set of .tw domains and the other (the middle and far east for example) see another set.
But if countries like China setup their own systems without the "permission" of the U.S. it is unlikely that the competing systems will interact the way they do now. With the example above of
"How does handing contr
Doing Without the UN's Vaunted Integrity (Score:2, Insightful)
How can we possibly be safe without the UN controlling the Internet?
Re:Doing Without the UN's Vaunted Integrity (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait, so...
IT'S A LITTLE FUCKING LATE FOR THAT! (Score:2)
Fuck them.
Trying to kiss our ass by keeping control of the root servers is not going to save their jobs in 2006 and 2008.
What a surprise! (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course they do, they are U.S. lawmakers. Ask a different Government for different results. D'oh!
No new arguments here, just another "We want it all and We deserve it" statement. Not very helpful.
Free spech... (Score:2, Troll)
It is interesting to see that U.S. says that it is defendding free spech, while U.N. says exactly the same, that it is defending freedom of expression (check here [wgig.org])...
Very interesting, because freedom of speech for U.N. seems to be: "We want a rich public domain and no government looking into our conversation.", and for U.S., it seems to be: "If they make racism illegal, the next one will be porn.". I can see why U.S. government is concerned by the U.N. idea of free speech, but I can't see how U.S. people c
Black hole calling the kettle black (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you've already got a full set there.
It's about policing thought (Score:4, Insightful)
Information wants to be free.. (Score:2)
The important thing is to have a DNS root Server everybody in the world, no matter their political point of view, can trust. When politicians (and especially presidents) starts to be interested in the "universal guidebook", no wonder people start loosing faith in the system.
Today, The Internet is not DARPA it is not American. It's international, global, something more that we all need in our daily lives.
The more US politicians, US lawmakers and US presidents tighten their grip
The genie is out of the bottle... (Score:2)
U. S. control of the Internet is about as likely as U. S. control of the atomic bomb was during the fifties.
The U. S. can certainly mess things up, and, along with other countries, partially fragment the Internet. Usually it is undemocratic countries like China that do things like this. The main effect will be to partially deny U. S. citizens access to the rest of the world, and restrict the ability of small and medium-sized U. S. businesses to do busi
WWTBLD? (Score:2, Insightful)
Let the sanctions commence... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let the sanctions commence... (Score:3, Insightful)
So just reach for the localy made soda instead of coke and locally made shoes instead of nike. You will be helping your local companies grow and you will be helping
How surprising! (Score:3)
Get your facts straight. The Internet is an international progress and profits to everyone. I haven't participated a "DNS control" topic yet, but I'm posting now since I find it really childish that American slashdotters are so reluctant to ONLY let countries manage their own ccTLD, and let ITU manage the gTLD (for the better interest of everyone, since for now the Bush administration is completely corrupted by VeriSign for
The ITU managing root DNS servers doesn't mean that the U.N will get to decide everything and that Chinese will have a say. And even if they did, why not? The U.N. privilegdes democratic thoughts, e.g Free Software (FOSS) is recognized by UNESCO, an U.N. branch? ITU has already managed discussions on IPv6 and is a very prominent actor in the world of networking and communication.
All in all, the US letting the U.N. manage the Internet won't change what we love in the Internet, but it will prevent bad political choices (e.g VeriSign having gTLDs that are supposedly ran as Public Service), and it is just the way it should be. And stop those redundants "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". It's not about fixing it, it's about making things equal. The Internet was made by all (maybe not by country still in development who couldn't possibily help, but does it mean we should say fuck to Africa when it wants to have some input in the future of our great *HUMAN* network?). Oh, forget it, Slashdotters are sometimes so conservative I don't know why I'm posting. Certainly going to burn some karma and getting tons of replies of how wrong I am and how we should just cut the transatlantic optic fibers so we won't bother each others anymore. Sorry, but I enjoy the American Internet. And I enjoy the European Internet. And without those peerings, it would feel like cold war. Think about it: Back in 1991, Linux would have had to be sent to the US by traditionnal mail (yeah, it was developped in Finland). Now that would have been bad for all of us, wouldn't it?
I don't care much about the issue. The US have not managed the root DNS servers too badly, except for the VeriSign crap (but the
Erm, vs. the rest of the world?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you behind the London Hilton? (Score:5, Insightful)
UN ITU is just a meeting place for government technical people. If they don't meet there under the UN, they'll meet at the London Hilton, or the Savoy but whereever they meet and whoever books the meeting room, it will be the same governments and the same technical people. It's not a *UN* resolution or *UN* control, since a UN is just a bunch of governments in a meeting.
You might not like some of the Governments sitting at the meeting table, but they're just one voice each in a big table, and some of them feel the same way about you!
That system works in all other telecoms, including the wires that carry the internet, so why wouldn't it work for DNS?
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:DNS is NOT the Internet! (Score:3, Insightful)
How sure are you that your senator understands the difference? Maybe they are indeed advocating controlling the internet and not just the DNS servers.
Don't be so effing arrogant. (Score:4, Insightful)
- Television standards should be controlled by the Scottish Parliament.
- Postage regulations are controlled by the British parliament.
- Ballooning is controlled by the French (even in the US!)
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Stop being so fucking paranoid about the Internet. So DARPA funded it years ago. Big fricking deal. We've moved on since then. Get over it and deal with it.
fear of the other (Score:3, Insightful)
"Turning the Internet over to countries with problematic human-rights records, muted free-speech laws, and questionable taxation practices will prevent the Internet from remaining the thriving medium it has become today"
The US has one of the most REGRESSIVE tax systems in the developed world, tax cuts to the wealthy with giveaways to companies that do not pay taxes while public programs get cut like HUD. Plus I guess we can forget the whole firehoses and attack dogs thing since that was in the past, no human-rights issues there. Prisons for profit filled up with minorities as street-sweeping by the police, yadda yadda.
And for free-speech, in the US it isn't free and it has already been bought by those who own all the major media outlets.
We don't want to turn over internet speech over to the Chinese but do we want to turn it over to the US Christian Right. They exchange the idea of censoring ideas from the west for censoring sexual material. I'm sure the very moral people can make that choice easily but have we put them in charge of our speech.
If the people who actually built the internet we making the decisions of its future I would be OK with that, but I cannot turn it over to politicians or companies that have bought up all the votes to do whatever they want.
Who is complaining then? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Waiting For The Valerie Plame Wilson Grand Jury: The Big Question Is Whether Dick Cheney Was a Target" [findlaw.com]
"2 Brits nabbed with $3 trillion in fake US fed notes" [abs-cbnnews.com]
Robert
What the rest of the world wants. (Score:3, Interesting)
- Stopping spivs stealing TLDs from small, and naive states.
- Stopping spivs hoarding domain names thus creating a very expensive market for what should be an administration-cost only resource.
- Stopping organisations hoarding many millions of unused IP numbers.
- Stopping the registration of Out-of-Country servers and email addresses.
- Stopping the largest supplier of software foisting insecure by default machines on innocent customers who then use them on the 'Net, thus allowing the creation of million machine bot-nets to be used for criminal purposes.
- Stopping the broadcasting of billions of spam messages which are mostly used for criminal purposes.
- Controlling the veritable flood of revolting, depraved, and offensive images and film clips.
Once the addressing of these issues has at least been attempted by the US Government and its co-conspirator the ICANN, the rest of the world might agree that the Internet is being properly administered. Until that time, so sorry Uncle Sam, but you are a failing parent.Strongly put maybe, but as far as the rest of the world is concerned that's what the issues are all about. In a word, shared Sovereignty over what has become an internationally shared resource.
Re:I want to see what China thinks about this (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why this is issue is so significant. The US does not want to the EU to have anymore power than it does now. This classic showdown highlights US foreign policy. The US will win because of simple facts. The sheer amount of Tier 1 ISP's as US companies, Akamai is a US company, the ICANN is still in the US. And many major websites are US owned.
The EU can poison all the DNS servers they want. It will hurt them more than the US because the simple fact is that more Europeans do business with US companies than American's doing business with European companies.
Re:I want to see what China thinks about this (Score:4, Insightful)
Poison is a pretty emotive word, and I'm not convinced it applies here. Unless you see everything in black-and-white with yourself as the fearless defender of God's own American values against the heathen Socialist cheese-eating Europeans.
My guess is that in the short term the US will win this one, simply because it isn't currently worth the hassle to set up an alternative DNS system.
However, I expect that behind the scenes- or away from the present "controversy"- if the US maintains its current position, then other countries will make moves to create their own root DNS server system anyway. This will almost certainly mirror the existing root servers, and be used in conjunction with them.
Only if US control grows too great will they fully switch over to use of "their" root servers and stop mirroring. In short, people will be migrated to the "new" systems with no noticable effect on their use of the Internet, whilst allowing government X (rightly or wrongly) to control the servers better.
Personally, I think that this story is way overdone. There was nothing to stop this happening before, and if places like China felt like doing it for reasons of repression, they'd have done it anyway. That's not to mention the vagueness of the reporting; the BBC basically said "The Interweb is going to split/break", and didn't go into more detail.
Re:I want to see what China thinks about this (Score:2)
Bush is irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, whether Bush backs down or not is irrelevant. Despite the views apparently held in the White House and among a disturbingly large proportion of US citizens, the US has no authority over anyone outside its own borders. If the rest of the world wants to run its own alternative DNS system, then realistically there is pretty much jack the US can do about it, and if it tries to play the isolation/fragmentation game, it's going to miss the rest of the world a lot more than the rest of the world misses it. The only constructive thing the US administration can do is try to talk/bribe them out of it diplomatically and/or hope they decide that it's not really a good idea after all and drop it.
Personally, I have mixed opinions on this one. On general principles I think the US should be forced to relinquish absolute control, particularly since it has demonstrated a willingness to abuse the position by effectively vetoing the .xxx TLD. However, I maintain a healthy scepticism about the UN, which lots of US-based people seem to assume is the only option on the table here despite at least four serious proposals having come out of the EU already.