Internet Power Struggle Reaching Climax 791
Fredden wrote to mention a BBC piece discussing the U.S.'s poor image when it comes to Internet management. From the article: "It has even lost the support of the European Union. It stands alone as the divisive battle over who runs the internet heads for a showdown at a key UN summit in Tunisia next month. The stakes are high, with the European Commissioner responsible for the net, Viviane Reding, warning of a potential web meltdown. " We've previously covered this story.
What meltdown? (Score:4, Interesting)
members (Score:2, Interesting)
Bad journalism (Score:5, Interesting)
Freedom of Speech? (Score:2, Interesting)
If the EU runs the Internet, would they ban holocaust denial or other forms of "hate speech" which are a crime in the EU?
While I don't agree with any of those groups, I'm rather fond of free speech.
(Personally, I think the US should have .com, .net, etc (due to ARPA's legacy), and every country should be responsible for their own country TLD. So Russia would be responsible for .ru, US would be responsible for .us, and Columbia would be responsible for .co, etc.)
Re:It just seems to be a question of pride... (Score:3, Interesting)
From what I can see though, according to TFA, the UN doesn't want to take over or strip away Icann's role as a regulator of web traffic. Rather, they wish for Icann to become independent as it was supposed to in September of 2006. When the U. S. said no, it wasn't gonna give it up, that's when the ruckus started.
If Icann could truly become an independent body, not bending to the political agendas of various countries (including the U. S.), how could that be a bad thing?
Re:It just seems to be a question of pride... (Score:3, Interesting)
It is about taxes and money. ICANN is largely independent anyway and most root DNS servers are operated at universities and research centers. Its not like its run from the pentagon.
Personally I do not see why its a big deal but I am an American so I view it differently. The internet as it is right now is a wild place and libertarian. Things just happen. The internet should be run by a non profit charter or organization and governments should not run it. Perhaps they could work on the physical infustructure with corporations but nothing else. Maybe a treaty is needed?
I am thinking right now of the old rumors that IP addresses are running out and IPv6 needs to be implemented that was being said around 5 or 6 years ago. How would we upgrade the internet with newer protocols?
Part of me does thing more control is needed. Spyware, IP address spoofing, spamming, and fraud, are just reasons why I think some research into a second next generation internet is needed. Also I heard many fiber optic networks have troulbe with IPv4 because of the way the protocol is setup. Maybe someone could enlighten me.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed. I have many, many more spam and firewall rules specifically against other countries. About 50% of my spam gets hit with one rule that reverse lookups the URLs that resolve to be in Korea or China. I have another spam rule for cn, br, ru, tw being in the headers.
I'm not one to come to the US's defense just because I was born there. But in general, we are fairly honest people. Sometimes I'm shocked, but then I realize that its usually more expensive to do shady but legal business than to do it straight.
Re:No new solutions, no new news (Score:3, Interesting)
Most users would never even notice the system, because de.http would be just another kind of bookmark, and google will still be able to index across national boundaries without any real difficulty.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If I Can't Vote For 'Em, They're All Alike (Score:1, Interesting)
happened to win the seat representing North America.
Unfortunately once the powers that be realized that their hand
picked cronies could actually lose to people who cared about the
internet more than lining their pockets, that was the end of
elections.
Re:It just seems to be a question of pride... (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly right, in that it's all about money and power [mangeek.com]. Other concerns include foreign governments being able to control facets of the Internet where the US would otherwise say no.
Taxes, Internet Surveillence, and even the ability to require payments to reserve names in each country. Suddenly foreign governments can do all sorts of things to each other by stretching their Internet-puppet-strings. They could even hold portions of the Internet hostage or resell domains in their own country if they would profit more from their local commercial interest. "Hmm, I can claim $150,000 from this local manufacturer to give them volvo.com so I think I'll go ahead and do that."
So far:
The US has been fairly honest and without a great deal of corruption in this business. I would not expect that from Brazil, China or many member countries of the EU.
Nothing prevents me from having my own DNS server (Score:5, Interesting)
The DNS data -USED- to be huge- but now it is a dot on a typical 300 gig hard drive.
Nothing prevents any country, business, or person from setting up a new DNS server and saying "come here for your addresses first!" And all you have to do is configure your computer to use them.
If I set up a server, I could list a range of addresses on it by totally different names. I'd kinda like the Max domain.
www.msn.max
www.maxo.max
www.min.max
www.slashdot.max (aka www.duplicatearticles.max)
If you configured your browser to look at my computer for addresses first, then you could use those addresses in your browser and other programs.
Where do YOU point your DNS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, the USA exercises exactly as much control over the namespace each sysadmin chooses to give them.
Change your name service switch configuration and Jack's a doughnut!
Now, IP address numbers, that's another matter entirely. Packet routing depends on the numbers, and allocation of the numbers = control of the Internet. If I hate you, I'll give you a number in a chinese or korean block that has been blacklisted globally for spamming - take that you filthy wogs!!
For readers mercifully free of the burden of a sense of humor: I'm not a racist. For those unfamiliar with proper english: Wogs start at Calais.
Re:No new solutions, no new news (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No new solutions, no problem anyway (Score:2, Interesting)
You mean like what happened when Libya was taken off the net a few months ago? Oops, they didn't.
Re:It just seems to be a question of pride... (Score:2, Interesting)
As a test, I ran a traceroute from Bulgaria to Brazil. The packets go through New York, Atlanta, Orlando, and Miami. How is that not using what WE paid for???????
I have worked all over the world with the internet. A few months ago I was in the Republic of Georgia. To get to Kazakstan it STILL went through the US.
least of all evils? (Score:1, Interesting)
Aren't virtually all of the accusations that President Bush leveled against Islamic extremists in his speech today equally true of himself and his government? When will the President stop killing civilians in Iraq, stop protecting the drug trade in Afghanistan, stop torturing prisoners, stop developing dangerous new weapons, stop trampling human rights abroad and democracy at home?
The response he got was: "I would hope that you can see a vast moral difference between the Presidents decision to defend the American people from further attacks and the actions of Islamic radicals who intentionally murder innocent civilians, to advance their evil ideology and agenda."
This damn perception you have two wrongs make a right, ie. that 'war a'int evil if you have some good intentions' it TOTAL BS. YOU seriously live in a country that has free speech? REALLY??!! Yeah, you're probably the leader in talking about it OVER and over and over again like it's something independent to the US alone (and then you make some silly comparison with countries like communist russia, china, or whoever you've had feuds with, completely disregarding the hundreds of civilized countries you could be making comparisons with) - try going up to a cop and saying "I am going to kill the president." IT IS AGAINST THE LAW to make a verbal death threat to the president - you can be arrested for it. Free speech should mean being able to say something without being hassled by law authorites - start making certains statements, fanatical or otherwise, and you will get in trouble (even my country's going to start deporting 'Islamic fundamentalists' for 'insighting hatred' through speech). You talk about promoting free speech for 200+ years - yeah you had it in your fine constitution, but wtf did that mean? 50/60 years ago, black people were being being lynched for looking at people the wrong way, let alone saying anything. It was just a piece of paper which was ignored, yet you kept referring to it over and over again as some fucking beacon of liberty.
You're talking about a country who has enough money and gall to spontaneously invade other countries (these aren't the middle ages ffs, even though you weren't around then, because you didn't invade your own country and attempt to kill off/segregate the locals until a few hundred years ago) - you're not the least of all evils. To openly do evil things in 'the name of freedom' means nothing. And the rest of the world has become pretty damn annoyed about your government too, not just the American public.
Re:DNS inherently centralized. (Score:5, Interesting)
ICANN isn't viewed particularly fondly by those outside the US, most because it takes almost no notice of the view of the various gTLDs; and because it looks like it wants to tax those gTLD to pay for its existance. You won't have heard this in the US media of course, but are you surprised? You may have heard of the phrase "no taxation without representation" before?
The US had agreed to get the US governments hands off the decision making process, then back tracked and said that no, on balance they would like to go back on that and ignore agreements, keeping the 'authorisation' role. This pissed off lots of people who were waiting for Sept 2006 with gritted teeth. The US misjudged their position.
The US government, and its religious nuts, have already interfered (with .XXX). Most consider this a taste of what it might do in future (eg axis of evil = delete the gTLD from the root so they 'disappear'). In short, nobody trusts them.
A proportion of the root servers are already outside the geographic US. Its not difficult to setup a forum to discuss policy, give an automated mechanism to allow gTLD and other non-gTLD controllers the ability to update the root servers, and cut the US gov out of the process.
The root DNS maybe at the root of everything, but a change of who says what is served and how is not going to bring the walls crumbling down. Nobody is likely to say that .COM DNS is now provided by someone else; unless someone does something stupid. However the ability to opt out of that stupidity is what is being taken and there isn't really much that the US can do to stop it, short of threatening force.
Oh yes, and the reporting on this is really, really bad.
Re:No new solutions, no problem anyway (Score:3, Interesting)
You can't expect a forum to have any credibility, however its members put together might.
To get anything done in the UN you need to have the approval of all the moderators, i.e. each and everyone of the members of the security council. Since the US is one of them, if the US don't approve, any amount of screaming bloody murder at the UN will achieve precisely nothing.
It's not that the UN lacks credibility, it's only that to progress at the UN requires unanimity.
Re:US foreign policy made this inevitable (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember, the fact that we found no weapons does not mean that the weapons weren't the reason. Unless you want to call President Clinton a Texas oil barron, saying the Iraq war was for oil makes you a conspiracy nut who is to lazy or too blind to see the facts.
Re:Because people don't like the real solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:War for oil (Score:2, Interesting)
Not exactly, or at least not in the George W. Bush view of the world. Bush delivered what amounts to a famous ultimatum [csmonitor.com], when he said that in the war on terror, you're "with or against us". After that, Saddam specifically came out and said publicly that he rejected the idea that there were only those two options.
Bush saw this as defiance, which is of course exactly what it was. Whether that justifies an invasion is another question. But it does constitute fucking with us, or at least challenging our power.
My feeling is that Bush felt we were better safe than sorry with regards to Iraq. There was uncertainty about whether Iraq still had weapons of mass destruction left (here's some background on that). To me, it seems like Bush though there might be WMD, and Saddam is an evil guy and thorn in our side, so why not just go take him out? Once again, I am not saying this does justify war, but I am saying that Bush had other reasons to invade Iraq that don't have anything to do with oil. I think he saw Iraq as Step 2 on the list of housecleaning that he felt like ought to be done in the post-9/11 environment.