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.
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:Legal Eagles (Score:4, Interesting)
"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."
No, they wouldn't. The UN is like a game of chess in the position of a stalement. And vote that has severe negative ramification for one country is most likely vetoed by the UN security council thus creating international powerblocks. For example, North Korea is under the umbrella of big brother China who will veto any negative resolution about NK, you can check the books on that.
"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."
Well duh. "Disconnecting" other countries has no significant advantage in these cases since other countries either tiny in comparison(Iraq), touchy(Iran with possible nukes) and juggernauts themselves(China). With that comes the fact that if the US would ever try such a thing, the internet would most likely fork because of the (justified) fear of total US control over the internet.
It's like the powers of Queen Elizabeth II. Sure, she has a lot of powers but the second she would try to use them, all hell would break lose.
Re:Legal Eagles (Score:4, Funny)
That sounds good, but the problem is that it's quite easy to go from this to a state where the queen is briefly the most trusted person whilst others are untrusted. She is "persuaded" that she must use her powers for good and you slide into dictatorship. This might happen if a bunch of bastard MPs suddenly started abusing their expenses process, allowing claims for all sorts of things which they would never allow normal working people. You migh even find that this almost completely discredited parliament and caused all sorts of problems. Of course such a thing would never actually happen in the UK because British MPs are paragons of virtue.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Horseshit. Read up on the history of DNS. The only major DNS decision that affected a specific country was back in the early 90's when IP's started running a little short due to too many large blocks having previously been given out. To US companies.
Those companies were forced to do a full accounting of their IP scopes and most of them ended up giving back large chunks of IP space, and in the process spent a lot of money on network migration and redesign.
I'd say based on the track record the current system
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.
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
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet WIPO arbitration is perfectly acceptable?
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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: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: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:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
I still don't see why the US owes anyone control of DNS.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since some people may not remember what office everyone is in, I decide to be nice and make a directory that I hang on the wall next to the panel, listing name and office number.
40 years later, I'm still taking care of the directory, but a group of offices decide they want a committee to run the directory and tell me to stop working on it and let them do it. I let them know they're free to make their own directory, but I want to make sure my 500 offices that I own are updated in the style I prefer. I will also continue to make updates to the other 1,500 offices that ask for changes to be made.
They get mad, and claim I'm being unfair.
So, by your definition, I'm the bad guy?
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: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, Funny)
> The US keeping control however will simply bread more resentment toward the US.
It's part of a plan to collect a huge amount of resentment bread, then use that bread to feed the poor and bring about world peace. How can you be against that?
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: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.
Re: (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: (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Is anyone else going to, besides the US? Britian in particular seems to be hell-bent on censoring and monitoring everything they can. Germany censors quite a bit based on sensitivities. Turkey attacks anything they find insulting, similar to Muslim nations. I'm not trying to claim that the US does not censor anything, but which government or organization is going to hold civil liberties and rights to a higher standard than the US?
It's hard to ask that question and not sound like a douche, I'm really not
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:5, Informative)
You mean the guy who created HTML (based on a lot of previous work by many others) and had complete boo to do with the hardware side, which came from ARPANet?
Look, nothing against Tim Berners-Lee, but I keep seeing this growing meme that he somehow fathered the entire blessed Internet.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Funny)
When we _all_ know that it was an American who did that.
Al Gore.
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: (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
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
Nope; I think the GP has it exactly right. AOL had Internet e-mail by 1991, as well as X.400 gateways (for MCI, I think?), SprintMail/Telemail, a fax gateway, a U.S. postal mail gateway, and some others. Licensing wasn't an issue at all; development time was the only bottleneck, since AOL's proprietary mail system didn't map well onto most of the interoperable standards.
AOL got USENET and FTP in 1994, but only through a server-side gateway. Native Web browsing (using the client-integrated BookLink browser) came along a year or two later, and it was anything but a sure win; browsing over slow dialup links was painful, especially as IMG tags became widespread. Our proprietary P3 protocol made things even worse, with overhead that duplicated functions in TCP, and an architecture that made lightweight back-and-forth roundtrips (as in HTTP/1.0) horribly slow. We ran the first large-scale caching proxies, and the infamous .JPG-to-.ART graphics recompression servers, and only then was dialup web browsing tolerable.
Meanwhile, the smartest minds at Johnson-Grace came up with a truly elegant solution: a format called ARTDOC. It contained all the information you'd see in a web page today - video, audio, graphics, text - and a "choreography" that would render each part at the desired timing. It was designed to let you pre-author media for specific modem speeds, and it was sent in a single stream so the client could progressively render it at any baud rate. Everything was compressed to within an inch of its life. It was gorgeous, and it offered capabilities that even today would require Flash or something similar, yet it ran on the slow PCs and servers of the day. HTML couldn't come close.
If the web's popularity had been delayed by a year or two, we'd probably all be running ARTDOC [uspto.gov] browsers.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
There's alot more to internet than "a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet" and in fact, Tim Berners-Lee's system wouldn't work without the internet. I would say you are partly right about this since WWW (or Internet Explorer) is what the public sees as "the internet" and you are partly wrong because TFA talks about DNS which has basis in ARPAnet.
TBL didn't create internet, USA/ARPA did in 1958 (Score:5, Informative)
The USA created ARPA in Febuary 1958 in resonse to the launch of Sputnik by the USSR on October 4, 1957.
The inter-computer transport medium that eventually became 'the internet' of today was tested successfully on October 29, 1969 and was named ARPAnet.
(Sir) Tim Berners-Lee conceived the World Wide Web, in March 1989. He tested it successfully on 'the internet' on 25 December 1990.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee [wikipedia.org]
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Well, he's afraid of censorship--at least after reading the first page and scanning the second that's what I gather. Specifically something like a Muslim nation or organization forcing domains with "Mohammad" in them to be automatically rejected or some such nonsense.
That said, he conveniently ignores any attempts for it to happen in the US [wikipedia.org]. And on top of that he doesn't have a real grasp on how actual country by country censorship works today. I mean, it's happening in Thailand occasionally with blocking YouTube on the ISP level or last week with Facebook in Iran. I mean, those things should be done at the ISP level with local law enforcement to stop it.
I say if we hand it over we do so on the condition that certain things stay the way they are. One being that you can't censor a domain but you can allow country by country to force their ISPs to obey whatever stupid law their government enforces. Let their constituents complain.
No one has presented to me a definite argument one way or the other.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
So what about the International Telecommunication Union? Has the ITU ever had any political disputes that were leveraged over a certain party?
It seems to me (though my perspective is limited) that the telephone network is pretty well internationally compatible. And on the topic of politicization, what ever happened to the .sex or .xxx domain? I thought that was a great example of politic butting its nose into the internet.
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: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.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
When it comes to "fair and right", the UN is usually a massive fail.
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:4, Informative)
And really...'illegal war'? What the hell is a LEGAL war?
One that has been approved by the UN security council in accordance with chapter 7 of the UN charter. For example, the war in Afghanistan is a legal war. The 2003 Iraqi war was not.
Note that's a judicial perspective, not a moral one - it is a defensible position to think that the war was illegal, but justified.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
> For example, the war in Afghanistan is a legal war. The 2003 Iraqi war was not.
You fail at history. The first Gulf War never officially ended. That means every time Saddam violated the cease fire agreement we had the option of resuming the war. That we went to the UN again and wanked away was purely for domestic consumption. Without making that effort, and proving to all the UN was ineffectual, the Democrat leaders in Congress would have never voted for the use of force resolution. Because Bush th
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Funny)
December 7, 1942 justified war with Japan..
It took a whole year after the US was attacked to justify declaring war against Japan? Is this some kind of mandatory waiting period like when we buy guns?
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
But if we're talking about fair and right, then it really should be handled by the UN rather than any single country.
No. It should be handled by an organization with a demonstrable history of not fucking things up in the name of censorship. Unfortunately, such a beast does not exist, and insofar as the "choose the lesser of the evils" mantra goes, your country seems to be doing a solid job.
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.
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:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
The internet as we know now is already the "renegade internet", that's why it became so successful in the first place. I left France to come to the United States in 1987. By the time I left France, almost every French household had a network computer in it. It was called the Minitel and one year it was handed out for *free* instead of phone books. When I say this to Americans, I'm not even sure they can imagine the massive scale of what I'm talking about.
In any case, my point is that at least, some countries had their chance at building the internet (as we know it now), and in the case of France they can at least claim an extremely high penetration rate -- with an extremely rich set of features -- very early on, but the thing is that France completely messed up their own efforts in that regard.
The Minitel was centralized. People could develop on its network, and they could make money on it, but before they could publish anything -- they had to get permission. It was very much like publishing an app for the iPhone. The French government had done a great job, it had invested a great deal of money, but it just couldn't let go of wanting to control everything. You can rest assured that if they had been willing to let go, just a little bit, it would have become the Internet at the time -- dominating the arpanet (but they simply chose not to go that route). And still to this day (I am french by the way) French politicians talk of controlling the Internet, censoring it, banning people from it, etc. -- all for the good of the people of course, but not clearly understanding what the Internet is really about.
So as a French citizen, I say no. Don't do it. The Internet grew out of a fertile soil. It could have grown elsewhere, but didn't. Transplanting its roots now could potentially cause some irreparable damage. Do not take the risk.
There have been complaints (Score:2, Informative)
Actually there have been complaints about how ICANN has run things including some cases where there were disputes about who was the rightful group to handle CC TLDs. In some cases ICANN used these disputes to gain leverage over the parties running the affected CC TLDs.
The guy who wrote the article clearly hasn't done his homework.
Re:There have been complaints (Score:5, Interesting)
To add to those complaints with an economic one, why should it be that registration fees for .com, .net, .org and friends should be funnelled into the US economy? There have been many complaints about the monopoly powers effectively granted to the keepers of .com from within the US. (And no, .com is not a US-specific domain. .us is.)
Why mess with it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Because some thing that work aren't "fair." Like monopolies for example...
Re: (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: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Then there's also the relative of your own comment, which will
Re: (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 thi
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately (for the US), it'll be in restrospect, because China or some other eastern or mideastern country will rule the world.
They won't rule the world anymore than the United States currently rules the world or the UK ruled it a few decades ago. They will be an economic force to be reckoned with and will have the military might to back up their interests but we'll still be the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Democracy has seen pretty dark times before and managed to survive. And that was before the advent of nuclear deterrence. I don't think we are going anywhere.
Re:Why mess with it (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why mess with it (Score:5, Funny)
Remember when DNS registr* wasn't an extortion racket?
No. When did this magic day exist?
Re: (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:Why mess with it (Score:4, Informative)
There was a time before the National Science Foundation charged nothing for domain names. Then they turned things over to InterNIC. Oh, by the way, InterNIC is still around, but they go by Network Solutions [networksolutions.com] these days.
agreed (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
OpenDNS isn't a DNS "hierarchy" (Score:5, Interesting)
> Let anyone who has a problem come up with their own competing DNS hierarchy, a la OpenDNS.
Erm, OpenDNS has nothing to do with this. OpenDNS uses the existing root servers - the existing hierarchy - for name resolution. Then, they apply big blacklists and transformations to the bulk of the data. Typing in a slightly wrong domain will be auto corrected and bounced to the proper domain, "bad" domains (malware, etc) are blocked, and questionable content can be filtered.
(In fact, it is these very same practices that have got quite a few ISPs in trouble with their customers. Verisign pulled the same stunt with the .com TLD some time ago, and caught unbelievable crap for it. Why some people love OpenDNS but hated on Verisign for that I'll never know or understand.)
It has NOTHING to do with root DNS control. It depends upon the existing infrastructure, and does little more than sanitize it. They don't handle domain registrations, TLD management/control, and they don't manage authoritative nameservers for their customers domains.
They are, in fact, not a competitor in any form, but instead they are quite dependent upon what we already have in place. This has absolutely nothing to do with OpenDNS in any reasonable way I can think of. They are absolutely not a "DNS hierarchy" as you would imply.
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
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.
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: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.
Give control to Canada (Score:5, Funny)
We're generally impartial and if we ever make a mistake we'll apologize for it.
Actually, even if the mistake isn't our fault, we'll apologize anyway. That's the Canadian way.
Give control to France. (Score:3, Funny)
Give control to France.
They'll surrender control to the first party who asks nicely.
(Sorry. Just kidding. I have seen the crosses. Sadly, I can't remember all the names on them.)
this idea is insane (Score:4, Insightful)
Who will police the police? (Score:3, Funny)
I dunno... Coast Guard?
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.
Is there some way to decentralize name resolution? (Score:3, Interesting)
Subject says it all; The very concept of name resolution would seem to require centralization, but I'm just praying that there's someone out there who is sufficiently smarter than me to have figured it out or sufficiently well-informed that they know of some potential solution, yet who is bored enough to be here to tell me about an alternative.
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.
The Internet belongs to those who use it. (Score:3, Funny)
The Internet should be administered by an international body.
I understand that many Americans want to keep their hands on the project their country invented and advanced, for security or productivity reasons, but the Internet has been so successful because of the international networking it helped achieve.
Otherwise here in the EU we would have used the French standard and I would have posted a similar silly post to the "La BarreObliqueDot"...
Re:The Internet belongs to those who use it. (Score:4, Interesting)
The Internet should be administered by an international body.
Here's an alternative; move all the existing three letter TLDs under .us, and give each country control of their country-code TLD. Why should the USA have any say as to what happens under, say, China's TLD?
Re: (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 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.
The information utopia that never came (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You probably didn't get the memo, but it's not a series of cables but a series of tubes. It's a slight difference, but a critical one too.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, do the governments / huge corporations really care about these corner cases? No, Napster wasn't a threat unt
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's an interesting example. In trying to show how the US wants to censor, you give 3 pieces of legislation that did not succeed because they did not pass constitutional muster. 3 examples of things politicians wanted to see happen, but upon closer examination, before they had a chance to get implemented, cooler, more sane heads prevailed.
Politicians might want to censor this or that, but that doesn't mean their proposals get put into law. That's sort of the point we're talking about here, that the US
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.
DNS Should be in everyones hands (Score:2, Insightful)
what about .sex and .xxx??? (Score:3, Interesting)
If USA were truly pro-free speech they would of permitted the implementation of .sex and .xxx namespaces.
Its nothing to do with what I think about porn, it has a practical use that allows people to quickly identify with the subject matter and to allow software to classify it as so.
The conservative government simply did not want this to happen, and they have successfully lobbied hard to stop these practical namespaces to be implemented.
Creating an Internet wasteland of "filth" may have some merit, but I highly doubt it will lead to an increase in people watching it. Most large, modern cities have "saucy" areas, but just because they are there doesn't mean every citizen visits everyday.
I still believe this process needs to be apolitical as noted, without government intervention - its the only way. I do not accept that the US has a higher ground than other forward thinking countries in this matter.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (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
Seems easy enough (Score:5, Funny)
Nope, I can't see anything wrong here. Everything is as it should be. Move along, citizens.
Got the basic facts wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Internet domain names (such as www.google.com) are managed hierarchically. At the top of the hierarchy is an entity called IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, operated on behalf of the Commerce Department.
Not correct. ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is under contract to DOC. ICANN has two components: control of the DNS root and control of the IANA. IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority deals only with numbers: IP addresses, protocol numbers, AS numbers, port numbers, etc. IANA is almost completely unrelated to the DNS.
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: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Wow a comparison to Hitler, I don't really think you know your history.
~S
Re:Real summary: (Score:4, Funny)
Wow a comparison to Hitler, I don't really think you know your history.
Well, say what you will about Hilter but I don't think you can make the claim that he was in bed with RIAA ;)
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:Real summary: (Score:5, Funny)
Whoa. Godwinned in only three posts.
Re:Real summary: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Real summary: (Score:4, Funny)
Wow, a Godwin-First-Post hybrid. The force is strong in this one.
No. That's not the force. That's just a greased up Yoda doll pressing on his brain.
Re:Real summary: (Score:4, Funny)
How the hell did it get all the way up there?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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.
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.
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: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: (Score:3, Funny)
Ask any politician - a hundred million for a TLD is a bargain. Stop whimpering, will ya? You should realize by now that your purpose in life is to supply money for politicians to waste. Just stop whimpering, get with the program, and PRODUCE MORE MONEY!!
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: (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