EU Claims Internet Could Fall Apart Next Month 1401
freaktheclown writes "The battle for the control of the Internet could hit a climax next month, with the EU saying that it could 'fall apart.' From the article: 'The European commission is warning that if a deal cannot be reached at a meeting in Tunisia next month the Internet will split apart. At issue is the role of the US government in overseeing the Internet's address structure, called the domain name system (DNS), which enables communication between the world's computers. It is managed by the California-based, not-for-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) under contract to the US Department of Commerce.'"
Rubbish (Score:5, Informative)
Beat the rush! Use OpenNIC instead! (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I'm glad that's settled. (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, shit. Wait. Never mind.
Corrected URL (Score:4, Informative)
Correct! (Score:1, Informative)
Notice that DNS was introduced at U. of S. California in 1983 by a Greek US citizen Paul Mockapetris. Althogether, US has done some major contributions to what we currently call the internet, but it's silly to call it an "American invention".
Re:Damn! (Score:2, Informative)
The U.S. was responsible for 26.5 percent of the all spam trapped in Sophos' networks between April and September 2005.
Still, there is some good news: this is significantly lower than the 41.5 percent chalked up during the same period last year.
South Korea ranked No. 2 on the list with a share of 19.73 percent of all spam. Meanwhile, China ranked No. 3 with 15.7 percent. But the Middle Kingdom nearly doubled its share in the spamming market.
So the US is cutting back and other countries are surging.
For those in the future affected areas (Score:3, Informative)
There's nothing forcing you to use *their* servers, yet.
Although the internet has always been about freedom of choice the fact that DNS has been under the iron fist of one entity has been a big reason the naming structure HASN'T collapsed. This is what we call a natural monopoly. It doesn't make sense to have a redundant, fail-over, heirarchichal planetwide system run by multiple independently controlled entities. It doesn't really work well for IP routing *COUGH*COGENT*COUGH* and it certainly wouldn't for DNS.
If multiple regulatory comissions in charge of multiple root structures were the ideal we would already have it. (IMHO) Still, I seriously doubt ISPs will deliberately segment their *customers* from *services* they are no doubt expecting regardless of this regulatory stupidity. SLA's/guarantees/contracts for uptime, intelligent Network Admins/Engineers and business decision makers won't let this happen anyways.
There is one thing that could slaughter this... And that would be for China to do the equivilant: "iptables -A FORWARD -p udp --DPORT 53 -j BLOCK" on their "great firewall" network. If they blocked DNS at their perimeter and only provided the *New* rootservers as alternatives things would certainly break. Then again, maybe it'd be good for the rest of the world's spam filters if China dropped off the map.
The whole situation stinks of personal motives. Whoever proposed this was surely green, in regard to the internet, or with envy. It doesn't make sense to do so for the greater good of the internet as a whole. But that doesn't mean there couldn't be potential for certain individuals to profit greatly in the event of a major shift.
Re:What of pornography? (Score:4, Informative)
Syria: "There's more and more spam every day. Who are the victims? Developing and least-developed countries, too. There is no serious intention to stop this spam by those who are the transporters of the spam, because they benefit...The only solution is for us to buy equipment from the countries which send this spam in order to deal with spam. However, this, we believe, is not acceptable."
All these comments and more can be found at http://www.wgig.org/June-scriptmorning.html [wgig.org] at the fourth meeting of this body on Internet "governance". "Governance" by the way isn't my term, it's theirs.
Re:Damn! (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/index.lasso [spamhaus.org]
Count the number of times "United States" shows up in that list, relative to other countries.
Explanation (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel [wikipedia.org]
+Pete
Re:Question: routing (Score:3, Informative)
You can safely ignore it. The EU can't dismiss ICANN and it can't 'break' the Internet for US users, or anyone else that chooses to ignore this nonsense.
You have a file with a list of root servers. Europe can't make you change it in any way. Europe can't shut down the servers in that list.
They could monkey around with networks that exist within their sovereign control. For example; they could mandate that their ISPs block access to ICANN root servers in favor of their own. Unless the new servers were somehow capable of emulating the content of ICANN servers almost perfectly (in which case ICANN is effectively still in control,) this won't happen because their own subjects would revolt. The same is true for practically anything else they consider attempting; if the EU mob wakes up one morning and the Internet is broke, the EU mob will un-break it rapidly.
Perhaps the ultimate solution is to create resolvers that can handle alternative collections of root servers. Assign weights to each collection and attempt resolution starting with the highest weighted set. Obviously you'll want ICANN servers at the top, and any others you choose to include after. Iran or China can then establish all the roots they want and you can include or exclude them as necessary.
As far as whether any of the EU's concerns have a basis is reality, here is all you need to know:Wave 'hi' to Hamas, resolving via US DOC funded ICANN roots.
Whatever you may think of the United States (Score:4, Informative)
And who exactly is it that wants control of DNS? France, so they can shut down Nazi websites and threaten E-Bay into removing WWII memorabilia listings? China, so they can be absolutely sure that their population is ignorant of anything the Glorious People's Revolution doesn't want them to know about (like say, Tinamannen Square or the Great Leap Backwards)? Iran and Saudi Arabia, so they can block out the evil west and keep their people from finding out that all Westerners are not, in fact, evil blood-crazed monsters who want to destroy them? Cuba and North Korea, so they can block the websites of the Evil Capitalist Exploiters of the Common Man?
In other words, politicians whose agenda involves using DNS to censor the Internet and pervert it into nothing more than a state-controlled interactive TV. Say what you will, but so far the United States has done a remarkably good, fair, and unbiased job of handling DNS. Those who want to take control hate the fact that it's been fair and unbiased because they want to use it against their 'opponents.'
Dear North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, France, China, Russia and co: Leave your meatspace BS in meatspace. I refuse to let your petty bureaucratic empire-building destroy the greatest medium of information exchange ever to exist.
Control (Score:4, Informative)
"The EU proposal, announced by Britain, which currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, was intended as a compromise between the UN supporters and America. It would create a new organisation to set policies over distributing routing numbers, creating new domains and the like. Because of its role as chair, Britain, usually America's closest ally on internet issues, had to stay neutral and could not beat back calls by Denmark, France, Spain and the Netherlands for greater government influence over the internet. After the announcement, Brazilian and Iranian delegates rushed to congratulate British officials, whose faces dropped when they realised the EU policy was being lauded by America's loudest opponents."
"However, the disingenuousness of the position was made clear during the meeting last month in Geneva. Some countries demanded that groups representing business and public-interest causes be thrown out of the room when governments drafted documents for the summit in November. In one instance, delegates from China and Brazil actually pounded on tables to drown out a speaker from industry."
"The good news from the UN meetings is that governments increasingly understand the importance of technology to society. The bad news is that the internet risks becoming suffocated in their embrace."
Re:Isn't it obvious... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Icann's motto... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.root-servers.org/ [root-servers.org]
Re:What of pornography? (Score:1, Informative)
What if the servers that run slashdot.org have multiple virtual hosts on the same IP (name based virtual hosting)? The server sees slashdot.org.us and hasn't the slightest clue of which site you really want to go to.
Re:Icann's motto... (Score:1, Informative)
Except the funny thing is the US pays 21% of the total UN dues, not to mention the tens of billions in IMF/World Bank default loan coverage. Here are some amounts (in varying years per what I could pull up quickly):
(2003 dues payments)
- Mali: $11,800 (less money than the cheapest Geo Metro!)
- Congo: $13,500 (Honda Civic D with no features)
- Honduras: $67,500
- Latvia: $135,000
- China: Pays 2.1% [chinadaily.com.cn] of the total UN budget. Not bad for the world's largest economy with more than two thirds the worlds population.
- Russia: Pays 1.1% of the total UN budget.
- Japan: 19.5% of the total UN budget, at $364,000,000 (but pushing for lower dues since they haven't gotten a permenant security council seat as they demanded, so they're going to pay less than 20% of the total now. Seems fair).
- United States: 22% of the total UN budget at $ . The largest amount of all, and doesn't include IMF/WB and other loan defaults assumed.
During the late 1990s, the Clinton administration refused to pay dues for several years, though it was resolved under Bush. Our apologies for irresponsible "Big Hat, No Horse" Democrats.
Re:Oh, it wasn't just consenting adults. (Score:3, Informative)
Given that this case was reported in 2000, perhaps you could let us know what the court decided?
Re:Free(er) Speech (Score:3, Informative)
Re:They're Dreaming (Score:3, Informative)
Right, because there's only a couple million people in the United Kingdom....
And unlike Americans, who typically speak one (maybe 2) languages, it is far more common to speak two languages and often 3 or 4. English is commonly used in places like France and Germany.
Re:Isn't it obvious... (Score:3, Informative)
An entirely different thing is that I will have a lot of explanation to do when arguing that Nazism actually had some merrits, it is very easily misunderstood for advocating all the evils that come with it, and it is not well accepted socially.
I can discuss the differences (biological, cultural) between races, no problem. I can discuss the differences between men and women, no problem. Different religions? no problem either.
What I cannot do is discriminate people based on hteir race, gender, religion or any such thing, where discrimination is defined as differentiating between those without there being a factual basis for differentiating.
What I also cannot do is publish a copy of 'Mein Kampf' without some mandatory annotation (ie, in its original form).
That is pretty much where limitations on my freedom of speech end however.
There are two places in Europe that have more strict rules with regards to nazism specifically, France and Germany. I do not know about France, but due to spending almost half of my time in Germany, I know that quite a few Germans by now don't think this is such a good idea, but fear the response of their neighbors when lifting such rules. It will happen there tho because the way it is there, it does put too much of a limitation on legitimate political speech.
While large, those 2 are the exception, and not the rule, and as said, in at least one of them this is bound to change with time.
A very interesting detail with regards to Germany is that there is no law there prohibiting the distribution or publication of Mein Kampf in its original form, yet you will not be able to obtain it anywhere legally. This has to do with the current copyright holders not permitting it and not with it being banned. That said, many things that depict nazism or its symbols in another way then just plain evil do seem to either be banned or at least extremely difficult to obtain.
p.s. Much of Europe suffered badly during the second world war. Nazism is to blame for that at least for a very large part. That people in Europe respond strongly still to someone even pondering about what the merrits of nazism might have been should become very understandable for the average American by thinking about how they feel about people looking for merrits in the beliefs of the people who attacked the world trade center. Now also keep in mind the difference in scale between that event and the second world war. You should understand that nazism in Europe is treated in a different way then about anything else, also with regards to freedom of speech.
Re:Free(er) Speech (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think anyone said that New Zealand, Australia, etc. wouldn't also be good locations. However, ICANN is already in the US. There's no point in moving it.
The real comparison is with countries like China, Russia, and "various Arab states". Hell, even Germany and France regulate political speech. Why would you want those countries to have ANY say in how the internet is governed???
So far, the US government has kept its hands off. These other countries want to be hands-on. I may be an American, but I think I'm being very fair and objective when I say, "if it ain't broke don't fix it!"
Re:EU should be careful (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A few questions (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A few questions (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong. It's perfectly ok to be anonymous, as long as you don't do any business over your website. But I agree with the rest.
Re:France is out of control. (Score:2, Informative)
Phones - Johann Philipp Reis, Germany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Reis [wikipedia.org]
Cars - Gottlieb Daimler, Germany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottlieb_Daimler [wikipedia.org]
The use and control of electricity - Alessandro Volta, Italy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Volta [wikipedia.org]
e=mc2 - Albert Einstein. Germany/Switzerland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_einstein [wikipedia.org]
Food not spoiling (refridgeration) - Linde, Germany (among others, also many inventors from the U.S.). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerators [wikipedia.org]
Planes - Clement Ader, France. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Ader [wikipedia.org] ; Karl Jatho, Germany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroplane [wikipedia.org]
Dan.
Re:Imminent death of the Net predicted (Score:3, Informative)
"By far"?
List of countries by GDP [wikipedia.org].
I don't think "by far" means what you think it means.
Re:Imminent death of the Net predicted (Score:3, Informative)
Was the parent poster wrong?
--trb