An Argument For Leaving DNS Control In US Hands 607
An anonymous reader writes "Ariel Rabkin has a piece over at News Corp.'s Weekly Standard arguing that the US should maintain its control over the Internet. After reading his piece, I have a hard time arguing that it should be handed over to some international body."
Legal Eagles (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there is one thing to be said about US control of DNS. Any and all attempts to change the system will be met with years of suits, counter-suits and legal quagmires of the n^th degree before such changes can even be discussed.
That is of course, when it is Americans who are adversely affected by the decisions.
Seriously? (Score:3, Insightful)
Analogy time:
"We don't see any problem without our accountant writing and signing all the checks because we've never had a problem with it before. They're perfectly trustworthy, and so much better than -unknown entity- probably is!"
The time to take control away from someone is -before- they abuse the power, not after. If there's a world-wide organization that can impartially handle this, and handle it well, then it should be done by them. UN was suggested, and while they are weak, they are the strongest international organization I know of that is supposed to be impartial.
Do I want it taken away from us? Heck no. We hold all the power in this area right now. But if we're talking about fair and right, then it really should be handled by the UN rather than any single country.
Why mess with it (Score:5, Insightful)
Not convincing and very lame. (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a hard time seeing how the arguments convince anyone other than Americans that it is a good idea. It is a self praising article on how good the US is written by an American in an American magazine.
If the US did not have control of DNS then would the arguments convince anyone to hand the control to the US? No.
this idea is insane (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
And giving it to the UN, which regularly demonstrates its embrace of corruption at every level of its bureaucracy and finances, is better because
Speculation... (Score:5, Insightful)
The article makes vague speculation about what could potentially happen but neglects to consider that it is the US's ball to hand off.
So if the US wants certain terms (e.g. Freedom of Speech) met when it hands it to an international body they have the leverage to get it.
As far as the "US has never done anything bad with domain names" thing that is bull. The current system basically gives any company with enough money any domain they want and let's not forget the insane anti-gabling domain grab recently.
DNS should be faded out (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm personally surprised that there isn't more issue with BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) and it's dominance over the network of networks. I think there's a lot more direct and immediate control there than with DNS.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is that fair and right? Looking at it from a moral standpoint rather than a purely policy standpoint, the US created the internet, and has freely and openly allowed the rest of the world access to the technology. What moral reason does the world have to gain control? "We would make better owners of your property than you."?
Re:Why mess with it (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly, the US has shown no real heavy hand in managing DNS, why break it now?
Because the US is the country that everybody loves to hate. Here's hoping that China becomes a global superpower sooner rather than later -- then people will hate them too. Maybe they'll even come to realize that the US wasn't so bad afterall, in spite of our flaws.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
When it comes to "fair and right", the UN is usually a massive fail.
Re:Real summary: (Score:4, Insightful)
Great summary, too bad I have no mod points left.
As for the original one:
After reading his piece, I have a hard time arguing that it should be handed over to some international body.
Either the submitter can't read, or he's completely devoid of critical sense.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then it's simple - have an international NGO mirror the root servers and at the first sign of any tomfoolery, announce that people should use their root servers. Bonus points if they can keep from censoring.
But if we're talking about fair and right, then it really should be handled by the UN rather than any single country.
Is that the same UN that always has its actions paralyzed by the US, China, France, UK, and Russia? The same UN that allows countries to send illiterate and untrained peace keeping troops in exchange for money? Or is it the one whose peacekeepers have a history of rape and murder? Or the one that's standing idly by while the Chechens are being slaughtered by Russia, the Palestinians being slaughtered by Israel, or the massacre in Darfur is going on?
I'm not saying the US is the shining example of what is right and good (torture, rendition, illegal wars, warrentless wiretapping). I'm just saying that the UN has its problems as well.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet WIPO arbitration is perfectly acceptable?
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
The time to take control away from someone is -before- they abuse the power, not after. If there's a world-wide organization that can impartially handle this, and handle it well, then it should be done by them.
That's a very interesting suggestion. It sounds like you want thought police.
How about 'the time to punish someone is after they've done something wrong, or when in possession of ample evidence that they are in the process of doing something wrong.'
The notion that the UN is impartial is a far-fetched one, though perhaps no more than the notion that the US is. The article is making the case that, whatever US government's current agenda, they have thus far been apolitical, refusing to get involved in exactly the kind of murky questions that the UN loves to deal with. You don't hear the US going around threatening countries with which it has disagreements to pull the plug on their TLDs.
I'm no expert on the subject and would be happy to read an argument to the contrary, but I do accept the premise of Rabkin's thesis, which seems to be 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.'
So let's a) see some cases where the IANA was in the wrong in such a manner that its status as subject to the Department of Commerce bears responsibility, and b) see some convincing evidence that the UN would do a better job.
The chief problem I would have arguing in favor of a UN solution (which, in theroy, I agree sounds like the best one) is that you cannot be 'impartial.' Deciding on cases of civil war or Taiwan vs. China cannot be done without value judgments. Obviously it's possible for any national government to make biased value judgments (one might even say that it's necessary some of the time) because they are elected/appointed/whatever to serve their own people. It just so happens that, in the case of the IANA, we've taken what appears to be a relatively hands-off approach where, rather than try and make impartial judgments on everything, we either don't make judgments (see TFA's comments on referring most matters to national courts) or make purely technical judgments.
Like anything else I'm sure there's room for improvement. I'm not convinced that the IANA or the US Department of Commerce deserve pre-emptive sacking just because they're the US DoC and IANA.
Big Assumption (Score:5, Insightful)
The United States could, in theory, set up a renegade, uncensored Internet. But there would likely be significant public distrust, substantial political acrimony, and a great deal of hesitation. We are better off keeping the public Internet free and leaving the social and technical burdens on governments that want to censor. The present system is thus perhaps the best way to prevent the naming system from being used to chill online speech worldwide.
The only problem with his morass of assumptions about freedom is that America does want to censor the internet.
A long time ago Feinstein tried to ban bomb making instructions on the internet, then there was the Communications Decency Act (unconstitutional), followed by the Child Online Protection Act (unconstitutional), ending with Children's Internet Protection Act which the Supreme Court eventually declared Constitutional because it was vastly narrower than its predecessors.
There's other legislation I'm leaving out, but you get the idea.
/And God helps us all if the **AA's of the world get their way.
Re:Not convincing and very lame. (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm not sure moving DNS to a bigger bureaucracy is the best move, but I have to agree with you. The author argues that the US provides neutrality, for example, by deciding who controls .pk in the event of civil war in Pakistan, and goes on to say that an international organization such as the UN wouldn't be able to provide that neutrality. Other than it being harder to get consensus, instead of the US unilaterally mandating who gets control, I don't see how that's true.
In fact, in the example of a UN-controlled system where .tw might away if China "absorbs" Taiwan, this could be pretty bad for the US--it might have a horrible impact on US relations with China if we unilaterally decided to keep .tw around, instead of letting the UN make the call (where we'd still have a huge voice, but the buffer of bureaucracy to stand behind).
And the author's concern about sanctions against TLDs? Instead of a bad thing, I think that could be a powerful motivator for change, getting the comfortable business class very unhappy when their online business suffers...
DNS has lost much of its importance (Score:3, Insightful)
TFA raises a valid point but overstates the case. ICANN's work is indeed politicized, and one need look no further than the disparate fates of the .sex and .info TLDs to see that. On the other hand, it's hard to believe that something run by the U.N. would be any better.
In reality, though, DNS has lost much of its original importance. This becomes clear when you consider that all but a handful of Alexa's top 20 sites [alexa.com] have names that have no real connection to the business. They're just rarely used words that lack much meaning in everyday life (Google, Amazon) or entirely made up (wikipedia, ebay). There are already alternative public root servers [wikipedia.org], and while these lack popularity, it shows how easy it would be for a distributed naming system to gain a foothold.
The real outcome of handing the rootservers over to an international committee would be to hasten the day when there is no longer one unified DNS, a day we'll probably see before too long anyway.
Re:The Internet belongs to those who use it. (Score:2, Insightful)
I understand that many Americans want to keep their hands on the project their country invented and advanced
Last time I checked the World Wide Web was invented at CERN by Tim Berners-Lee who is British. Sure many protocols that the Web uses date back to DARPAnet but the Internet as we know it is the way it is due to Berners-Lee.
DNS Should be in everyones hands (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Speculation... (Score:1, Insightful)
So if the US wants certain terms (e.g. Freedom of Speech) met when it hands it to an international body they have the leverage to get it.
What do you propose is the incentive to honor any conditions placed upon that transfer of power? Once transferred, it is unlikely to be given back under any conditions.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do I want it taken away from us? Heck no. We hold all the power in this area right now. But if we're talking about fair and right, then it really should be handled by the UN rather than any single country.
Why is that fair and right? Looking at it from a moral standpoint rather than a purely policy standpoint, the US created the internet, and has freely and openly allowed the rest of the world access to the technology. What moral reason does the world have to gain control? "We would make better owners of your property than you."?
That's funny 'cause that is exactly how I read the current state of affairs. Sorry to break it you you sonny, but the US does not own the Internet. No one owns the Internet any more that anyone could own the air we breath. It is a common resource, and the US insisting on keeping control of it is an afront to the rest of the world. Look, the US, as every other country would still control their own country TLDs so all this worry about censorship is totally overblown. The US keeping control however will simply bread more resentment toward the US. Does the US really need that?
Re:Not convincing and very lame. (Score:1, Insightful)
Just also please note, it's not just an American writing in an American magazine... it is a Rightwing Nationalistic American writing in a Rightwing Nationalistic Magazine.
Even us dastardly Americans should know to check the sources and consider their arguments in light of their inclinations.
FWIW, there ARE decent arguments for DNS control to remain under the thumb of the US. But I'd lend those arguments a lot more credence if the weren't coming from Nationalistic sources (I know, I know, that's a logical fallacy... but it's a useful logical fallacy).
Re:Conservative much? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's an opinion piece. Conservatives are allowed to express opinions too.
Some of the opinions in the piece are interesting, e.g. the danger of politicizing TLD issues and the good track record of US management.
Some of them are stating the obvious, e.g. that any government or international body can set up its own DNS.
Some of them are silly, like the reason that the US invented the Internet is that the government leaves telecom to private industry. Of course the opposite is just as silly, that the Internet as we know it is purely a government creation.
There is no single reason the US created the Internet. You can point to a number of things, like the fact we spent such a huge amount of money on defense. In terms of national values that might have contributed to the creation of the Internet, I think our great strength is a kind of dynamic between public and private Interests. A nation with a government run on strict laissez-faire economic principles would never have invented the Internet; nor would a command economy. It started with the government doing something unprofitable, but in the public interest, and it took off when in the public interest the government let private interests use it.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well yes, the ITU doesn't like the fact that people can make phone calls over the internet, and it wants to stop that.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
I still don't see why the US owes anyone control of DNS.
Re:The information utopia that never came (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, do the governments / huge corporations really care about these corner cases? No, Napster wasn't a threat until your grandmother could use it. They care about blocking and controlling the majority. For example, many Chinese truly believe that Tienanmen Square never actually happened. Every time the vast minority speaks up about it, they get thrown in jail, no problem. The great firewall of China is doing it's job, let the local police handle the rest.
But back to what you were saying, yes I believe there was never going to be a Utopia, but for some of us, you can't stop it. I believe Benkler is right in The Wealth of Networks, in that true democracy is the amazing ability of the Internet. Sadly, I don't think America, or any country for that matter, really wanted a democracy, as a republic is more suited for command in their eyes.
OpenDNS is not an alternative DNS hierarchy (Score:3, Insightful)
Do we really want the internet domain system to turn into a larger bureaucracy fuckfest? Let anyone who has a problem come up with their own competing DNS hierarchy, a la OpenDNS.
I either misunderstand your point, or you greatly misunderstand OpenDNS.
I'm no expert on DNS infrastructure, but I do understand the basics. OpenDNS appears to be a "free (beer)" set of DNS servers, not an "alterate DNS hierarchy." OpenDNS conisders the same machine names authoritative for .com, .net, .org, etc., that everybody else does-- which is, of course, the infrastructure this article is talking about.
If that's not the case, please explain-- and I'll be sure to be using a different set of DNS servers tomorrow.
Re:Seriously? (Score:2, Insightful)
Let me know if I've got this right.
The US shouldn't have control over what they currently do because someone feels OFFENDED by it?
I'm sorry but the US has done fine with it to this point and handing it over to a international group is very risky in both time to action and having countries with less free speech involved.
Re:Seriously? (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey, and bonus is...even in those respects you listed, we're still not as bad as other countries around the world.
And really...'illegal war'? What the hell is a LEGAL war? I do believe war is war, there is nothing legal or illegal about it. I'm sure a lot of people were (hell, still are) against WW2...was it illegal then, then over time decided it was justified, and hence..legal?
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
The .xxx and .sex refusals were political, but in a grander sense than you indicated. The Bush administration didn't want them because it seemed as if it was giving a electronic blessing to smut (and mostly because the constituency that got them elected actually does hate smut). Some parents and filtering organizations speculated it would make porn easier to filter, and most of the porn industry opposed it because they believed they would ultimately be forced to move to such a domain, which would marginalize their businesses by shunting them off to an internet red-light district. All this debate is completely independent of what kind of content actually belongs in such a domain.
It failed for the political reason that pretty much no one actually wanted it.
Welcome to the PreCrime Bureau (Score:5, Insightful)
The time to take control away from someone is -before- they abuse the power, not after.
So innocent until assumed to be guilty at some unspecified later date? Awesome!
UN was suggested, and while they are weak, they are the strongest international organization I know of that is supposed to be impartial.
The UN? Home of the Human Rights Council lead by Yemen that wants to globally censor any criticism of Islam (see the anti-blasphemy resolution 62/154)? The same UN that elected Sudan, home of the Darfur ethnic cleansing, to a human rights commission?
Weak? You jest! Why when the specter of genocide appears on the Earth, the UN rushes in an observer who stridently and immediately issues a report! Take that, evil doers!
Re:The information utopia that never came (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, the US, as every other country would still control their own country TLDs so all this worry about censorship is totally overblown.
No, it's not. Censorship is alive and well all over the world, and there are many governments who would love to excercise censorship beyond their own borders.
Here's a question: if we give the UN control over the DNS system, what happens to Taiwan's TLD? You only have to look at the last Olympics to know how China views Taiwan, they weren't allowed to compete as "Taiwan", they were "Chinese Taipei". If China had a say over which TLDs are allowed, the first thing they'll do is get rid of the .tw domain so that it is effectively censored worldwide. They can block access to .tw inside their own country now, but they don't have a way to block access to Taiwan websites inside the US or EU. That would change if the US gave the UN control of DNS. And that's only the most obvious example. I'm sure Russia would also appreciate the power if they could revoke Georgia's TLD the next time they decide to invade, by claiming that Georgia is part of Russia, or maybe they would set up a new South Ossetia TLD to bolster their claim that South Ossetia is not part of Georgia.
The only reason that it appears that censorship is not an imminent threat is because worldwide internet censorship is not being practiced. The reason that worldwide internet censorship is not being practiced is because the US controls the DNS system.
Re:Seriously? (Score:2, Insightful)
The time to take control away from someone is -before- they abuse the power, not after. If there's a world-wide organization that can impartially handle this, and handle it well, then it should be done by them.
That's a very interesting suggestion. It sounds like you want thought police. How about 'the time to punish someone is after they've done something wrong, or when in possession of ample evidence that they are in the process of doing something wrong.'
I see it as important to note that the parent's suggestion that an impartial body should be put in charge before an abuse of power can happen is not similar enough to the concept of "thought police" to bear the reference. The concept of "thought police" refers to an individual being punished for a crime that is entirely intellectual. In this case the parent is referring to the concept of replacing a provider of a service for an ostensibly more reliable provider of the same service. This is not a punishment. It would be like switching to a web hosting company that you think is going to be more reliable than your current one despite not having any troubles with the current one. It is not the same as throwing someone in jail because they don't like the government (1984) or throwing someone in jail because they might commit a crime (punishment preceding crime).
I am not going to comment as to whether I feel the current provider (US) is a better or worse choice than the UN or some other international, I just wish to point out that there is no 'punishment' and the reference to 1984 is out of place.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
The internet winning was not a certainty.
Six or twelve months delay in users being interested in the internet might have created a whole different future.
The users go where the content is.
If AOL and compuserv, and all the giants of old had gotten their own protocols/content built a _little_ faster than they had, then the exponential factor of the internets growth starts out much lower, or even negative.
In 1999, we could fairly easily have (IMO) seen a slower accepted gopher-with-pictures, and lack of Al Gores pushing of the funding of the eary internet having lead to the internet being a network used by some educational establishments, as a continuing research project, with buisnesses increasingly having presences on Aoluserv.
Look at for example what happened in france, with minitel - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel [wikipedia.org] - it held its own well into the late 90s.
The web - helped the internet to win - although admittedly it came rather late in the game, and was among the final nails in the proprietory networks.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, the UN is completely unrelated to the Olympics, which is run by the International Olympic Committee. You can't really use the failings of the IOC to attack the UN.
Who used to run it. (Score:5, Insightful)
From 1986 to 1999 it was run autonomously. Sure the US paid for it (15K/yr as a part time project) but whatever Jon Postel decided was fine. Jon would measure the consensus of the net and implement it. During this time the DNS went from 0 to 250+ TLDS.
When the US government assumed oversight in the period 2000 to now 10 new tlds were created at a cost of nearly a billion dollars. And the registration process for .com became the most inept sleezy shit ever seen on the net.
"The US" or "another country" or group of countries is not the answer.
The dns should be administered by the poeple that know what they're doing in terms os techical, legal and social policies and governments of the world has zero say in this.
The internet is not some "thing" that needs to be administered. It is not a public resource!
There are millions of private networks and we all agree to use TCP/IP and DNS to interoperate. Not one bit of it is a puboic resource. It's all privatly owned. You own your bit, I own my bit. Do we really want some government telling us how we use our computers and what we can do and can't do?
The USG and ICANN are the worst things that ever happebed to the net. They stagnated it as a single point of failure by having a choke hold on the A-ROOT of the legacy DNS.
There are better and more appropriate ways.
Re:Real summary: (Score:5, Insightful)
"On that note he was never in bed with Microsoft either, much to the chagrin of many Slashdot readers..."
IBM, on the other hand...
Re:Seriously? (Score:2, Insightful)
Dude. The US built ARPANet and the DNS system.
And this is relivent why? The printing press was invented in Germany, so should the Germans control the print industry. This technology was created in Universties and then release to the public. All public, not just Americans. It is now an integral part of international standards. There are no patents, no copyrights, not even trade marks that prohibit others from doing the same thing. As you say, they should "go build it". If you agree that other countries are perfectly within their rights to build their own system, then what form of ownership do you think the Americans can claim over the current system? Unfortunately all countries going their own way can seriously damage the Internet, and I expect that is why it has not happened yet. But let the Americans keep this international irritant and it surely some day will. Then we'll all be worse off.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, why should the USDOC hand them off? If other countries are really that worried about the US using them as some sort of club, it's actually pretty easy to setup alternative DNS servers. As a matter of fact, if you don't like ICANN's handling of DNS, you can always turn to an alt root [wikipedia.org]. To be blunt, if the UN is really that hot to run DNS on the internet, there is nothing stopping them from setting up a set of UN alt roots and offering them to the world as an alternative to ICANN. The competition between ICANN and the UN would probably be good overall. But then, there I go with the boorish US, let the free market decide mantra.
Re:Seriously? (Score:3, Insightful)
AOL and several of the others attempted to remain in business as portals to the Internet, but people realized that AOL didn't really give them any value for the money. Ultimately it comes down to this: once I could get in touch with everyone on the Internet, why should I pay rent to AOL (or their competitor) to only be seen by people paying rent to AOL (but not their competitor)?
Re:Legal Eagles (Score:5, Insightful)
Each country already has control over its own TLD. They don't have to deal with the US-based root DNS servers if they don't want to. For example, if it's such a big deal, then the other countries are more than capable of setting up their own root DNS system and simply ignoring the American-run one.
This would end up being a pretty bad deal, at least initially. IF other countries really want a non-US controlled DNS system, then the solution is not to move that control to another country or an International body. The solution is to devise & implement a fully distributed DNS system where the TLD's server in each country operate in a peering setup. Something kind of like how BGP currently works.
Short of that, moving the root control isn't going to change anything. In addition, pretty much all the International bodies out there have a pretty bad habit of punishing other countries over political events. For example, if the UN had control right now they would probably already have taken North Korea off the internet, along several other "undesirable" countries. Notice that despite the political climate, the US has not used DNS to take action against Iraq, Iran, China, North Korea, or any other country. Notice that we did not step into the whole "cyber war" that Russia got involved in.
That is of course, when it is Americans who are adversely affected by the decisions.
If you changed the word "Americans" to "International Business interests", "Foreign political influence", or "Anyone with enough money" then yes, you would be correct. If you really think that decisions regarding DNS take the American public into account at all, then you are sorely mistaken, & I would suggest you take off the rose-colored glasses.
Re:Not convincing and very lame. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just also please note, it's not just an American writing in an American magazine... it is a Rightwing Nationalistic American writing in a Rightwing Nationalistic Magazine.
I just want to point out that none of that changes the meaning of his words. It would be pretty disingenuous to immediately discount an argument simply because of the source, without taking the argument into consideration at all.
Re:Seriously? (Score:1, Insightful)
Better free speech standards? LOL
Better than France maybe but not better than most European and even some Asian countries
BTW you had a president questioned for having sex with a consenting adult! If you think you live in a free country you'd better get out of there and live some months anywhere else.
Sure (Score:5, Insightful)
While you can never have a totally decentralized, as in each client on the Internet is equal, thing you can have it so there are multiple authorities at each level, each responsible for their own little slice. That's already the case with DNS at the low level. Your DNS servers are the absolute authority for your computers. Whatever they say, goes. If you don't like an answer they get from somewhere else, you can change their configuration to override that. However they are the authority only for those that choose to use them. They aren't the authority for me, I don't use them.
Now going up the chain you get to the top which is the root zone, which ICANN controls. The reason it is authoritative for most of the Internet is because it is what the root-servers.net roots trust and most DNS servers trust them. What it does is specify who is authoritative for a given domain. So for .ca it points to the CIRA's servers, as an example. What could happen is the root zone could be split. Different organizations would maintain different parts of it, and then the roots would use those to determine who is authoritative for what domain.
So the proper response to the US's control isn't to whine, it is to make your own. The EU should form EUCANN. Get that running, initially just mirroring the ICANN root zone, get your own root servers up and running that trust EUCANN. Then, contact ICANN about splitting the zone. They take the EU part, ICANN keeps the rest. The US might be amenable to that. Now repeat that process for all sorts of different regions. Have a bunch of top level organizations, each responsible for small parts of DNS space that then give their changes to others and run their own roots.
You'd end up with a system that no one person/country was in charge of. You'd also end up with a system that if one person flipped out, it wouldn't matter to the rest. Let's say that ICANN goes nuts and decides to get rid of all domains but .us and .com. Ok fine, well the other organizations would just ignore their changes. The roots that trusted ICANN would do as they wanted, but the other roots would not. ISPs could then use the non-broken root servers. The damage could be routed around.
The problem is that's not what the international community wants. They want the US to hand over control of infrastructure they built, so that the UN or someone like that can have central control. They don't want to have a system where they have control over their area, they want to be able to control other people too.
For the people, by the people, but only Americans. (Score:3, Insightful)
After reading his piece, I have a hard time arguing that it should be handed over to some international body.
That's because, like him, you're a nationalist xenophobe.
I mean, the argument boils down to this: America has the First Amendment, therefore we are the only entity capable of not censoring the internet via withholding access to an arbitrary (though ubiquitously popular) namespace. The insinuation is that other countries do not have the First Amendment and therefore, all of them collectively would present the possibility of such (questionably effective) censorship.
Well, how does this argument stand up against the real (though non-American and therefore unreliable) world? Let's take the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights:
Article 19.
* Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Well, that's just a UN Resolution with no binding effect, and only reflects a general sense of the body rather than something they all commit to, right? As Rabkin says, "Most countries lack our First Amendment tradition." Well, let's take the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty that 150 countries signed 30 years ago:
Article 19
1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
But none of these statements ensuring freedom of speech compare to the sheer Holy Writ that is the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Many other First World countries already have government-imposed restrictions on Internet speech that we would not contemplate here.
Because the United States has never [eff.org], ever [gpo.gov], ever [earlyamerica.com], contemplated restrictions on free speech [wikipedia.org], proving just how trustworthy we are with the world's speech. Of course, Rabkin does not offer any specific examples of un-contemplatable restrictions on speech imposed by other First World nations, nor does he bother to prove the point that the U.S. has never done anything similar (because he can't).
Nor is he at all concerned with people in other countries who may also enjoy free speech, including speech that isn't legal in the United States -- the compelling need is not to ensure the freedom of the world's people, but as he makes clear: "If we wish to protect the free speech rights of Americans online, we should not allow Internet domain names to be hostage to foreign standards." Aha! It's the bogeyman of "foreign standards", which all good Americans rightly fear, because they are all, by virtue of being foreign, simply inferior to our own standards (whatever they may be).
But what disgusts me most about Rabkin's screed is that someone capable of putting his name on something so baseless, undefensible, xenophobic, fear-mongering, and full of straw-man arguments, was accepted to a doctoral program, and printed in a major magazine. Of course, it's The Standard, what did I expect? Not well-thought out global technology pieces, that's for sure.
Re:Not convincing and very lame. (Score:4, Insightful)
National TLDs are derived from ISO 3166 which is a standard set by an international body - ISO.
As for the United Nations - The Universal Postal Union is a UN organization. The telephone system is governed by a UN organization - the ITU. Use +886 to reach Taiwan. Use +850 to reach North Korea.
Re:Why mess with it (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember when DNS registr* wasn't an extortion racket?
No. When did this magic day exist?
When there was no economic benefit from having a registered DN.
Re:Not convincing and very lame. (Score:2, Insightful)
So, tell me, why should the root DNS be handed over to anyone else? AFAIK there hasn't been any serious abuse by the controlling body as of yet. Nor any particular reason to expect any. Frankly, this comes down to a very simple principle. It isn't broken, it doesn't need fixing.
I'll be the first to say that I don't have any problem tearing control away from an abusive power. However, that isn't the case at hand (yet/if). While giving control to any international body will practically promise political games, hypocrisy and abuse. If you can argue that would be an improvement, I'd be extremely interested.
Re:Seriously? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah - but ARPAnet wouldn't work without electricity - therefore I'm claiming the Italians should control it all on the back of Alessandro Volta.
Or maybe the Germans for Konrad Zuse making the first computer.
Or maybe the British for Alan Turing.
It's all shoulders of giants stuff really. Quite a good reason to hand it over IMHO.
Re:Seriously? (Score:3, Insightful)
The UN are just amateurs. W.r.t. corruption, the US is king.
Re:Real summary: (Score:5, Insightful)
Your point that the US is hardly a sterling example of protecting civil rights is valid. However, that doesn't change the fact that the US does have much more robust protections of free speech than many, many other countries, including some that outdo us in other areas of civil rights. European countries, partly in an attempt to protect the rights of minorities, generally have much harsher laws concerning "hate speech" and libel than the US, and most non-European countries routinely censor content they deem to be against the interest of the ruling parties. I'm as appalled at some of the recent US actions as anyone. They're a shame and an embarrassment to a country that is supposed to be "...the land of the free..." But I don't doubt that the article is spot on that US control results in a much freer Internet than would be the case under an international overseer.
Re:Seriously? (Score:3, Insightful)
I worry about their propensity to go after gaming sites, mod chip sites, and sites like IcraveTV.
Oh, you're worried about entertainment being censored. I thought we were worried about political, religious, and civil dissidence being censored.
Snarky comment aside, if the US censors one thing, it can easily censor another. And since Americans were giving up civil liberties left and right for a while there (Patriot Act et al), are we sure they'd say boo about anything else being censored on the internet?
As for the whole "China could squash Taiwan" type posts, aren't there already independent international associations on technical matters? Why can't one of them take care of it?
Re:Why mess with it (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe they'll even come to realize that the US wasn't so bad after all, in spite of our flaws. No, most of us who routinely "bash" the US know that already. Where people such as yourself get confused is when we reply to some typical asshat who, perspective-free, claims some kind of superiority, either real or imagined, like those who subscribe to whatever warped "Manifest Destiny" meme is floating around the jingosphere at any given time.
Manifest Desitny? Surely you jest. That old schtick is over a hundred years old, no one believes in that anymore, and it was never relevent outside our slice of the northwestern hemisphere anyway. "Containment", the policy of the Cold War, was something else.
I don't see that many "typical (Amercian) asshats" claiming any sort of superiority, honestly, I see a hell of a lot more of that attitude coming from the EU, than the US, usually in terms of "intelligence", scope, geography or history.
I think Shakrai had it about right. 100 years from now, the US is going to look pretty good. Unfortunately (for the US), it'll be in restrospect, because China or some other eastern or mideastern country will rule the world.
Re:Seriously? (Score:2, Insightful)
Obviously some of the moderators out there are offended by the idea that the US should co-operate with the International community instead of dictating to it.
The situation as many Americans see it is reversed; we don't want the rest of the world dictating things to us. Generally speaking, we prefer not to mess with things that work, and in this case work very well. Whatever you may think of the US in general or our foreign policy, the US has a track record of benignly managing its role in maintaining the internet. This guy [slashdot.org] said it nicely, despite being AC.
If we handed over control of the internet to the world, what is to stop the rest of the world from using it to impose their will on the US? I picture things going the way of the EU and Sweden [slashdot.org], with the sovereign rights of nations subject to interference and corruption from outside.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can create my own DNS root server and domain and start using it today. No one will be able to use it because no one will be able to find it, but that's only because all current DNS servers point to the main root servers.
So UK, France, Germany, the UN, et. al. can build it themselves, and create the necessary cooperation within their domains to get other people to point to it. Shouldn't cost much, most of the software is free. It's mostly just the timing of the implementation that has to be worked on.
But instead they will continually demand the US to 'just hand it over'.The UN could never get nations to cooperate on much of anything, I can understand why they won't take on the work.
Funny thing, less than 10% of the population of this world lives in the US. If the UN just got off their ass, they could make ICAN irrelevant without having to be diplomatic about it at all. They could create a system where everyone HAS to point to their servers to access anything outside of the US.
Re:what about .sex and .xxx??? (Score:3, Insightful)
The US does permit the implementation of .sex and .xxx namespaces. IANA simply hasn't done it, because ICANN has decided they don't want those namespaces within their big namespace. But you can set one up today and you won't be breaking any laws. Go for it.
After that, negotiate with a root server to make you the authority for .xxx. If none of them will do it or you don't happen to like their terms, you can even start your own root server.
After that, then you just have to persuade people to use your service. Persuade. Words like "permit" and "prohibit" don't apply here.
Re:Who used to run it. (Score:5, Insightful)
The IANA exists because to have an Internet, you need an Authority to Assign Numbers. Without that, the meaning of "slashdot.org" or "216.34.181.45" depends on the whim of your friendly neighborhood routing table.
Feel free to debate who the authority is, but acknowledge that we need some authority.
The internet is not some "thing" that needs to be administered. It is not a public resource! There are millions of private networks and we all agree to use TCP/IP and DNS to interoperate.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
The US has never claimed to be "dictator of the world", has never acted as such, and asside from a few very small engagements (which usually went poorly) has only ever interceded militarily in international matters when US interests/security were at stake. It's always "Why wouldn't the US help us?" followed by "Why won't the US just butt out?"
If the other countries would do things for themselves instead of riding our coattails, we wouldn't be the dominant country in the world. One country, at least, that isn't doing that also happens to be rising fast and is in position to displace the US as top dog in another few decades, maybe sooner.
Things change, quit whining about not being #1 any more, it's old news. Europe had a good run, but a few thousand years ago it was small potatoes. Before that was a brief stint where the Mongolians were in charge, and before that Messopotamia ran the show.
If you don't like the way the US runs the internet (again, never heard a complaint about actually running it!), then your country can set up its own DNS body, set up its own standards, and if it wants to negotiate translation with the US system, fine, that can be worked out.
Quit whining about it and take responsibility for your own country's actions. The only way the US could ever be a "dictator of the world" is if the rest of the world lets us. We built our internet, we designed our systems, that you guys use it is great, but you have no right to demand it from us.
If it's yours, defend it, keep it, and maintain it. If it's not, leave it the hell alone ya whiny bastards.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact of the matter is that we already have small-scale local DNS overrides. It's just that most of us would prefer them to stay small-scale - we think it's a very good thing to have a global common reference.
In other words, the system works great now, we just want to see if we can fuck things up?
Brilliant.
Nobody has yet to offer a reason grounded in reality for removing US control over the DNS other than "We don't think they should have it."
Well why not? It's one area we've done frickin stellar with internationally, why take it from us? Because you don't like our politics or something? That's pretty hypocritical. Sounds like one of the arguments for -not- relinquishing control, because then the internet will be subject to idiotic global politics.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seriously? (Score:1, Insightful)
It's not your building. It's either a privately owned, or tenant owned building that you have a claim to. If the majority of the tenants in the building disagree with the way you operate the list you maintain, they have every right to call you the bad guy.
You state that you own a quarter of the offices. if the three remaining quarters elect a committee to run the directory and you disagree, you still lose the vote.
If you continue handling your own list against their will, then they either have the power to claim your share of the vote, or report you to the person you lease the units from.
Mod summary down (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, I'm not sure how the parent got modded flamebait, because I have to agree with that final point. The summary is entirely content-less, to the extent that *shock* I actually did have to RTFA, and all I can say is that I'm not impressed. Don't get me wrong, I can see where the article is coming from, but I do have to disagree with it. The arguments it presents are not particularly compelling, so if you're having a hard time arguing against it, all that tells me is that you're really not trying.
In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that the entire insight contained within the article can be summarised in a single sentence from its first paragraph: "America's special role in managing the Internet is good for America". That's it. I'm sure that reason is good enough for America, and I do have to admit that the Internet has been kinda ok under America's control so far, and for those reasons I don't expect the situation to change any time soon.
In spite of that though, the point I'm trying to make is that TFA did not make a give a single compelling reason for why America should have control of the internet. No, "because it does already" isn't a compelling argument. And contrary to what the summary (which, to reiterate, is utter crap) claims, TFA doesn't even mention international bodies. The article was trite and weak. The summary was not a summary by any meaningful definition of the term.