EU, UN to Wrestle Internet Control From US 1974
Anonymous Coward writes "The Guardian is reporting that the EU, obviously unimpressed with the US's refusal to relinguish control of the Internet, will be forming several comittees and forums with a mind to forcibly remove control of the Internet from the United States." From the article: "Old allies in world politics, representatives from the UK and US sat just feet away from each other, but all looked straight ahead as Hendon explained the EU had decided to end the US government's unilateral control of the internet and put in place a new body that would now run this revolutionary communications medium. The issue of who should control the net had proved an extremely divisive issue, and for 11 days the world's governments traded blows. For the vast majority of people who use the internet, the only real concern is getting on it. But with the internet now essential to countries' basic infrastructure - Brazil relies on it for 90% of its tax collection - the question of who has control has become critical."
Last time I checked... (Score:1, Interesting)
Government bodies of pretty much any sort can posture and cajole, but the people running "their" network are going to continue as they have done so to date. The Internet might fracture at the border or regions of the world, but we dealt with Bitnet et al "back then" and can do so in the future.
Much of this Internet thingie consists of private individuals or enterprises paying money to private individuals or money. They're pretty tough to regulate at the UN level.
C.O.N.T.R.O.L. vs. C.H.A.O.S., RIP Maxwel (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is, of course, exactly why the US wants to maintain control of it.
Let the internet be divided! (Score:4, Interesting)
Coup (Score:1, Interesting)
Essentially, that is what this is. We're being hijacked and this could get ugly. What if the US decides not to go along with international consensus? Would the EU and others try to take over the root servers by force (hacking their way in)? Could they actually get away with it?
This is some pretty scary shit. Obviously, the US is currently in the hands of an illegal and diabolical regime, but they haven't really threatened the internet yet. Is this a pre-emptive strike on the EU's part? The Justice Department has announced a crackdown on pornography, but I doubt the EU is to concerned about that. What's going on here? There must be more to this story than squabbling over who controls root servers.
I'm not convinced these bureaucrats even know what they're talking about. Do they really understand how the internet works? Do they realize that DNS servers are not the end-all, be-all of the 'net?
I guess I'm just uncomfortable with the idea of the UN controlling the net. As I mentioned in a previous post about this, it's pretty obvious that the UN will soon look into taxing the internet. No other body could, but the UN is by definition an international body, and they would just love a revenue stream like that. But what about representation? The UN represents governments, not people.
I think dark times are ahead for the internet. The last thing we need is a bunch of know-nothing bureaucrats making stupid rules and standards for a communication medium that has thrived without them.
Devils Advocate (Score:4, Interesting)
I am anti-US on many things, but let back them by saying this.
The USA created the Internet as we know it today, it is their creation, from their tax payers money. As much as I dislike many things that the USA is doing and has done in the past. I'm going to have to say that I'm behind them on keeping control of what is theirs, which happens to be the foundation of the Internet as we know it.
Just due to the fact that it is now a globally used system that effects everyone in the modern world does not give any body/group the right to demand rights of control over that system. Just as new protocols are created over time and are layered ontop of the old to keep the system running regardless of 'obsolete' hardware/software that might be in some remote corner of the web, so to should the U.N create a system that runs along side the current one if it so desperatly wants control. That is the most logical solution to the problem at hand. Countries and corporations can create 'internal' networks that overide the current systems of the Internet.
The fact that the developing world does not see that as the most logical first step attempt at a solution at hand is evidence that they are not ready to have control over a system such as complex as the Internet.
I whole heartly back the US on their choice to not hand it over.
It should not be under.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I see no reason why my government refuses to give up control. I suggest if they don't want to completely release the reigns, they produce an idea to spread out control between countries, or lose any type of control it currently has.
I think for some countries the internet has become economical, but this refusal to hand over control seems more political than anything else.
Old news (Score:1, Interesting)
Leave it to the EU to decide that they must have control over something that they had nothing to do with creating.
The EU can piss off.
Re:This again? Where's the problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is the same issue that Europe and the rest of the world realized with GPS. They have a strategic interest, the US has a strategic interest. In that case, they've decided to create Galileo, an entirely redundant system. Why can't their diplomats stuff it and let their engineers figure out a way have a backup plan in the event of war, if that's the case? But strategic considerations isn't what's at stake here. What's at stake is the imposition of some sort of international law on the internet. As long as the US maintains some independence in maintaining the network, they can stop international laws they don't like.
Lets remove DNS (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The UN has finally lost it (Score:2, Interesting)
Compare this to, say Bangladesh, which has 8,812 personal. Bangladesh has a GDP of $275 billion, to the US's $11.75 billion. (and Walmart, with ~ $300 billion in revenue).
The US contributes almost nothing to the UN.
Re:This again? Where's the problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey, don't count me among the fear-struck militaristically obsessed bunch, but an aggressively expansionist campaign of wars both solves both the disparate proportion of men to women, and gives the men something to do to keep them occupied.
Re:Slashdotters should be ashamed of themselves (Score:2, Interesting)
Here is a Hypothetical for example sake:
Microsoft makes Windows. The US government comes to rely on Windows so much that it decides that the most secure action would be to take control of either Microsoft or the Windows line of products making them property of the US government. Now, the rest of the world has also come to rely on Windows and the UN pushes to take control of the now US owned Microsoft or Windows line of products. This situation is socialist and stupid. It takes away all incentive to try selling anything because at any moment it can be taken away.
Now this last argument is a little extreme, but if the UN took control of the Internet for those reasons what kind of precedence does that set?
Re:The UN has finally lost it (Score:3, Interesting)
Debt is bits and paper. If it came to war, real war, not just a luke-warm conflict, do you really doubt that the United States, nearly an entire continent with vast resources, would be unable to maintain the military machine, produce weapons and ammunition, and fight our possible enemies, be they Chinese, Arab, or, um, French? WWII was a mechanized conflict, with an incredible number of men and (far less efficient) machines in combat. The United States successfully prosecuted that war, and it wasn't an importer (of any consequence) of oil at the time. Our supply chain came from the United States outward.
This isn't bravado. War, real war, would not be subject to the niceties of making debt payments and arranging import duties and cartel prices for oil. China isn't going to come and repossess our tanks and B1 bombers if the Feds stop paying off bonds. The loss of overseas oil isn't going to stop the American military from prosecuting war and securing necessary resources to do so. If it comes to an us versus them conflict, Americans will surely employ whatever means are necessary to make sure it is us who remain on top. It sure as hell would be messy after such a war, but the world has been through that scenario before, and yet here we cozily sit talking about how impossible it would be to do it again.
Larry
Re:The UN has finally lost it (Score:5, Interesting)
> rest of the world.
Just a point; if anyone tried to destroy the US monetarily, the effect on the rest of the workl would be easily as bad. The dependency works both ways. Yes, the US is dependent of foreign trade, but most of the nations we trade with are dependent on it as well. Some few nations would just suffer loss of income and products, but many would suffer pains equal to some of the worst natural disasters.
> And people with your attitude wonder why there is so much rampant
> anti-Americanism around the world today. You're too arrogant and conceited
> to see it.
Just a point. There are a few hundred million people in the US. All of them are not arrogant and conceited, any more than all the French are rude and smelly, all Muslims are terrorists, or all the Chinese are great at math.
Yes, there are legitimate grievances against the US. But much or what is perceived as US arrogance is merely the US attempting to retain it's own constitutional structure. A large portion of the world wants the US to tear up our constitution and remake ourselves in the image of the EU. And we aren't interested, now or ever.
> Thank goodness 99% of the Americans I know are fantastic people and
> don't live up to this stereotype.
Good to hear it. But stereotypes are like that. Most of the what the world knows about the US is garbage, heavily influenced by Hollywood. Just as most of what most Americans know about the Middle East is from Hollywood bull and news reports showing scenes of war and terror.
Thanks for your observations.
Re:This again? Where's the problem? (Score:2, Interesting)
No. WE DID define it, we didnt "get" to, we just did. It was beneficial, efficient and sensible for people of other time zones to be based around it, afterall time is purely human law and has now center in the real world.
Can anyone point to a part of the internet, an absolutely critical part that is 100% designed, owned and made by the american goverment? is it TCP/IP? or the fibre? or cable? or is 'the internet' really services and applications like apache and bind?. Personally, I view 'the internet' as its content, if the US resigns from the UN, and the UN/EU make its own network, will the US use its content?
The internet has out-grown America, entirely. It needs to be placed in the domian of where it is being used, if not then hey, everything can be replaced. This is part of how things evolve. I would say at this point pass this 100% completely unbeneficial psuedo "ownership" on, or the technology (protocols, hardware and applications) will stagnate until it is superceeded by a root shift in technology elsewhere, then in another 15 years we will hear china, or brussels or wherever saying they own 'it'.
btw, anyone notice UTC?
Re:i suggested this in the previous discussion (Score:3, Interesting)
That appears to be what the EU is doing [circleid.com], with the backing of even people like Paul Vixie. Ok, the EU hasn't mandated all of their ISPs to switch over, but that may well be done voluntarily anyway.
Once this alternate root has been set up and is being used and running well, it would be easy for everyone to switch over to it on a whim if ICANN every does anything really bad, thus reducing the chances that ICANN will do anything really bad. The US government has been known to do really stupid things all too often, but I think this reduces the chances that they will try and force ICANN to do something really bad.
Note that one of the key reasons why Paul Vixie supports OSRN [orsn.net] is because they are *NOT* going to go around creating new TLDs and such that aren't supported by ICANN. This alternate DNS root is going to look *EXACTLY* the same as the ICANN root. Or, at least, it will until ICANN does something really stupid.
Re:The UN has finally lost it (Score:4, Interesting)
France (and other security councle members) said before voting on the last UN resolution that it was not allowing it to be used as an excuse for military action. The resolution was made to force Saddam to allow weapon inspectors. If military action would be necessary a new UN resolution would be have to be made with a new vote. The US went anyway without such a resolution, and has got the ass kicked in Iraq with a war done under false pretenses. Now the US administration is using the UN resolution as an excuse for invading a sovereign nation!!! Of course, it is the same administration that is trying to undermind UN on every turn. Make up your mind, either you follow what UN says and you don't invade, or you invade and take responsibility for your own action without blaming the UN. Show some balls.
Re:The UN has finally lost it (Score:5, Interesting)
Please name how the ICANN has failed to perform its duties. I can name how it *has* performed its duties:
1. It has successfully kept the root servers highly available to all countries.
2. It has spent significant time with foreign interests looking to meet the needs of these people.
3. It has shown forethought in decisions, not jumping on new concepts that could be harmful in the long term.
4. Yet it has managed to approve a variety of top level domains (including the new
Doing an excellent job to date is debatable and, regardless, offers no guarantee that it will continue to do so as political situations change.
Show me a guarantee that the UN will do as good or better job. If you cannot, then why place more trust in an entity that has no track record on management of these servers over an entity that DOES have a track record?
[Forcing private companies] is not really relevant. This is an international issue as the Internet is an international resources with countless billions invested by numerous nations all of which rely upon the system to function properly.
No, it is relevant. US laws protect against illegal seizure, and seizure without compensation. Show a REAL ARGUMENT as to why ICANN's holdings should be seized, THEN the US government can consider seizure and compensation.
You've mischaracterized even that basic argument entirely: the UN, or rather, the international community, wants to move control from ICANN to a truly international organization that can operate transparently and that is required to acknowledge and assimilate the input from those governments represented in the UN. Again, the alternative is just to trust ICANN to play fair.
Considering the lack of evidence that ICANN is not "playing fair", I fail to see how this argument is any stronger. I'll say it again, find a reasonable argument and I'll switch positions. Simply, "we don't trust an entity that has shown overall good judgement and has worked well for the past decade" is not a reasonable argument.
[UN has a far poorer track record] is true, but is not sufficient to override the objections to your prior points.
It is however, sufficient to point out the problem with simply turning over control to the UN. No one has yet shown what is wrong with ICANN control. No strong arguments exist. In absense of such arguments, the relative histories of the two entities must be compared. ICANN has done a satisfactory job at its task and has shown no signs that it has been doing any poorer in recent history. If anything, the ICANN has been slowly improving. You have agreed, OTOH, that the UN has had a poor track record in other joint ventures. Why change something that obviously works the way it is?
Re:The UN has finally lost it (Score:2, Interesting)
What about Afgahnistan? What about the crucial role the UN plays now in Iraq, something the current US administration urged the UN to do after everything was going downhill there. How about the German soldiers patrolling off the African coast as part of the war on terror and iirc they do so under an UN mandate.
And where exactly did the UN interfere?
About Iraq, I'm sorry, but acting as if the US was acting on behalf of the UN, when the US clearly did act against the expressed will of the vast majority of the UN member states and against the expressed will of the majority of the UN security council, which is after all the council that is to decide if Iraq really is, or rather was, not complying with UN resolutions, is simply silly.
Re:Please god not the UN (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The UN has finally lost it (Score:1, Interesting)
As for the US waning in power... well, that's already happening. The DMCA and other exclusionary legal structures are already keeping away top scientists from coming to the US. The bellicose anti-intellectuals are increasingly effective in supressing scientific thought, with an attendant decrease in papers and patents per year where most other countries are on the increase, largely due to not having unrealistic 'faith based' limitations on research. The greenback has lost as much as 40% of its value against other world currencies in the last few years, and many reasonable people high up on the money pole are now wondering aloud what will happen if the US lost its AAA bond rating, a concept absolutely unthinkable even a decade ago... and that's before the real fun starts with stiff interest rate increases and the stagflation period anticipated to happen in 2006. The manufacturing base has been gutted, labour power eviscerated, and electoral system a laughing stock of the rest of the world which seems to have less problems both getting people to the polls and having them use bits of paper and a pen to cast their vote.
Even the US military has waned. For all the hundreds of thousands of troops and billions poured into private corporations' hands (or simply 'lost'), it still can't secure a 7 mile stretch of road from the green zone to the airport in baghdad. Parents of soldiers still have to buy ceramics for their kids vests, pay for 'hillbilly armour' for vehicles, and a myriad other expenses due to systematic shortages and lack of oversight necessary to resolve them. Additionally, no foreign militant in their right mind would ever, EVER surrender to the US now if they could help it. They "know" (rightly or wrongly) they stand an excellent chance of being beaten and tortured to death by their captors rather than suffer a nice, clean death obtained while going down fighting. Any moral superiority the US once had in this regard has been totally blown away... which isn't surprising, given how many couch commandos advocate adopting terrorist tactics to beat terrorists. Whoever battles monsters should take care not to become a monster too, for if you stare long enough into the Abyss, the Abyss stares also into you.
A country is very much like a business, and one of the basic truisms in business is "If you're not on your way up, you're on your way down". To anyone who isn't a proverbial frog-in-the-pot, it's pretty obvious which direction the US is headed.
It need not stay that way, of course. The road to hell isn't a bad place to be, so long as you're moving in the right direction... but fixing what's broken will likely require more political capital than any current politician possesses, and more sacrifice than the population can tolerate. The world wonders when someone who gives a flying fuck will ever finally wrest control from the acolytes of Mammon and neo-Jesus (the jesus who likes to kill and wants you to forget about that whole 'rich man eye of the needle' and 'what you do unto the least of you you do unto me' and any other 'commie' parts).
Re:The UN has finally lost it (Score:2, Interesting)
1441 condemned Iraq for going after WMDs. It demanded access by weapons inspectors and proof of disarnament. Iraq violated Resolution 1441. However, 1441 does in NO WAY authorize invasion.
In fact, this is exactly what Tony Blair's staff was telling him during the run-up to the war. It's been documented in memos that have made it to the press.
The WMD thing has always been a huge fucking lie but noone will own up to it. Noone will own up to 'stovepiping' intelligence (see: the New Yorker). Noone will own up to allowing Iraqi dissidents living in Iran too much political influence (see: Chalabi [sp]). Noone will own up to the fact that the UN did not authorize this invasion and people will LIE TO YOUR FACE and say that resolution 1441 made it 'OK' for the US/UK to invade.
Ignorance and propoganda, they are the strongest weapons that the warmongers use.
GPS, Root Servers, EU flexing it's muscle... (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem for the instigators if this happens is probably the same problem that the Gallileo project currently has: Nobody wants to pay for it. So the european countries involved with the project are in the process of passing laws in their respective countries to force their citizens to use this duplicate service and to fund it with tax levies on the products. Remember in Europe, TV and Radio taxes are common, and I suspect a Internet access tax will be shortly coming to bear (to allegedly support the infrastructure)...
Here's a quick link [wikipedia.org] to a short description about television taxes, maybe we should start one up for the up and coming internet access tax/license...
This is how governments really flex their muscle, they are pissed that they can't control something enough to tax their citizenry, so they interpose themselves into the loop and charge their populace for the privledge.
I for one welcome the new tax regime that will sweep the rest of the world and help hold back our economic competitors... ;^)
Re:I am paying for the internet! (Score:3, Interesting)
Hell, they don't even have to use IANA IP space. They can go and use any IPs they like. Nothing is stopping them from grabbing someone else's IPs. Now, that probably means that their peers will refuse to route their traffic, as most people demand IANA compliance to pass traffic, but says who that's required? Talk to your peers and negoiate a new IP space. You don't have to play on teh one that exists, you just have to play on it if you want to connect to it. However if Canadian ISPs want to go and form CANet that's a seperate space, that's fine. The US will not (and cannot) do anything to stop that.
However, if you want to use the US DNS, then yes, it is ours, we did pay for it and that's the deal. ICANN is a US orignization, all the roots except for two are run by the US government or orignizations (for example Verisign runs A, Univeristy of Maryland runs D, NASA runs E, the Army runs H).
So yes, you have a right to run your own infastructure as you see fit. You do not have a right to tell the US they have to give you control of their infastructure.
I mean think of it on a personal level. You have your own little network, your servers, whatever. You do as you please with them. Now lets say you run a DNS server, you don't care to use your ISP's DNS server because it's slow. You also choose to use some alternate roots so you get non-ICANN DNS access. Your neighbour also decides they like your DNS server, because it's fast and uses it. Pretty soon, your entire neighbourhood is using your DNS server instead of the ISP's. This you have no problem with. However one day you get a knock on your door and it's a group of your neighbours. They say "Hi, we really like that DNS server you run, we all use it. But since we all use it, we don't think it's fair that you control it, so we want you to turn control over to a group of us. We still want you to run it on your line and all, but we demand control over it's operation."
Would you be ok with that? Do you think it would be fair for them to demand control over something you paid for, provide and maintain just because they chose to use it of their free will? I don't know about you, but I'd be pissed. That they would presume, no DEMAND, to tell me how to run something that I own simply because they choose to use it.
Well, it's the same situation here. The entire world chose to use the US DNS system. Nobody bothered to create their own. Hell, until the 11th root server, K, nobody even bothered to create a non-US root, and K, like M the other non-US root, chooses to trust ICANN as the authority, something it doesn't have to do.
So I understand you wanting control over your own network, and I support you building your own root system, wether you personally (you can create your own DNS structure, nobody is stopping you and the tools are free) your ISP, or your nation, but don't presume to tell the US they have to give you the one they developed, paid for, and run.
Re:The UN has finally lost it (Score:1, Interesting)
There are a few hundred million people in the US. All of them are not arrogant and conceited
No, but the loudest 10% or so are, and they are that loud, arrogant and conceited that the other 90% are easily forgotten.
But much or what is perceived as US arrogance is merely the US attempting to retain it's own constitutional structure.
I can only imagine you must be a USA citizen to believe that. That is such a warped point of view. We don't give a damn about you retaining your constitutional structure.
Re:The UN has finally lost it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The UN has finally lost it (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes...when has france ever used an economic tactic against the US. Stopping the merger with Honeywell and GE? Surely not...In fact, that is their chief weapon against Boeing!
Re:WWW != The Internet (Score:3, Interesting)
While America trumps the EU in its ability to project both military and economic force (the EU has a large economy, but has trouble using that fact as if were united under one leader - bad for a trade war), that may not be the deciding factor here. DNS just barely works to begin with, and it's certainly possible for someone to come along with a better idea to replace DNS in a way that's transparant to end-users. While that would take a Hell of a lot of work, it's completely *possible*, and is therefore a threat useful on the bargaining table.
The threat to "forcibly remove control" however, isn't even credible. I could see an end-run involving a huge effort to make a better protocol, but we've yet to see a united Europe with the military ability, ecomonic ability, or political will to "forcibly remove control" of anything from anyone.
Re:It's all about DNS (Score:3, Interesting)
Problem solved, and there is nothing the US can do to stop them. With this capability in place, governments "maintain" or "usurp" control.
As far as the UN goes however, fuckem.
Umm, no. (Score:3, Interesting)
Repeat after me 'The internet' is just a network. Sure other places have added innovations on top of that network, but when you talk about 'The Internet' your really only talking about the network on top of which people send all those packets.
Anyway, 'The Internet' and DNS (which is what this is really about) have little to do with each other. DNS is just another protocol sitting on top the network. The funny thing is if you where to turn off these 'core' servers that the UN is complaining about not much would happen. All there data is cashed on other systems around the world and the UN could easily setup UN-DNS with all the correct data with little difficulty. The way I see it if they knew what they where talking about they would know it's not really an issue. However, as they clearly don't have a clue what there talking about they should leave it the fuck alone.
PS: HTML is just SGML (invented in the US) with a few extra tag definitions. "1989: Tim Berners-Lee invents the Web with HTML as its publishing language" He basically extended SGML to include a hypertext tag (already established as a concept by academics as early as the 1940s).
Vint Cerf did his part, but it's silly to say the Internet would not have had hypertext without him. Hell, I know someone that was on the STML standards committee that wanted to add that feature but it kept getting shot down...
Not again... (Score:2, Interesting)
The effect of Offshore outsourcing (Score:2, Interesting)
You misunderstand... (Score:2, Interesting)
The Internet is the result of the voluntary interconnection of a bunch of independent networks, based upon a.common set of protocols. It's the closest the modern world has come to anarchy - there is a hierarchy of technology which supports it, but real control is dispersed, because participation is by voluntary consent. Someone doesn't like the way it works - fine, here's some tools, they can go off and build their own. And that can even work, if enough people agree that's what is useful to them ( http://www.internet2.org/ [internet2.org] ). But more likely, they'll quickly come to the realization that the Internet isn't technology or even a network, it's communications amongst consenting peers. It's part of the evolutionary path human communications has taken.
Yes, cars were invented. They myriad ways we use cars evolved from that invention.
Or maybe it's more like Myxomycophyta ( http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/protista/slimemolds.h tml [berkeley.edu] ), in that the most interesting thing is the sum of the whole, not the components.
Re:The UN has finally lost it (Score:1, Interesting)
And I can guarantee you that if all of the terrorists comitted suicide tomorrow then the "war" would likely be over tommorow also. But like your assertion is is also NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
You really need to learn the reasons for the current "terrorism" in iraq. People in occupied countries tend to call the kind of behavour seen recently in Iraq as a "resistance movement".
Is it? That tends to depend on whose side you are on.
In general it is evil, vicous and vindictive. It hurts civilians (men, women and children) but it will have many sympathetic supporters in amoungst the population affected.