The Fracturing of the Internet 440
farrellj writes "There is currently a major conflict between the US and the rest of the world about the control of the Internet. They are fighting over who will control the root DNS servers and assign IP addresses. The US is against an independent international body to do this. This could fracture the Internet into multiple country and regional mini-internets, with conflicts over IP and Domain Name assignments, with no interconnects between them." From the article: "... the Bush administration said in July that the United States would 'maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.' In so doing, the government 'intends to preserve the security and stability' of the technical underpinnings of the Internet. Without consensus, some experts say that countries might move ahead with setting up their own domain name system, or DNS, as a way of bypassing Icann." Update: 09/30 20:45 GMT by Z : I believe this to be another view of the discussion we had a while back.
followup field (Score:5, Insightful)
I dont mind hearing about them again, it would just be nice to be able to see the past article. Kinda like the "Related Links" on the right side of the articles we have now.
It nice how this article DOES link to the previous story at the end.
which was Posted 09:43 AM -- Friday September 30 2005
If funny how he calls it the other day tho
Re:followup field (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Post story about US vs World.
2. Watch discussion degenerate into a flame war, as it always does in these type of stories
3. Get tons and tons of comments, mostly angry rants by trolls and flame throwers posting as ac, which is all but gauranteed with a story like this
4. Get more pages refreshed
5. Serve more ads!
6. Profit.
Even a/c counts as a page view from a traffic standpoint. An intelligent conversation devoid of a/c and flaming gets many fewer posts and thus fewer total ads served. If it that complicated? If you can get a story like this up once in a day, double you money by running it again!!!
Re:followup field (Score:5, Insightful)
My feelings exactly. How naive do you have to be exactly to believe that all those "dupes" are really down the incompetence of the editors?
Slashdot is a large, well-visited site, with paid editors, and we're asked to believe that they're not capable of spotting stuff like this?
Sorry, it happens often enough that if it weren't deliberate, they'd have hired someone with two brain cells to rub together by now. Simple acknowledgements of the dupe or even of their supposed incompetence have become so much of a Slashdot "tradition" that it obscures the bleedingly obvious lack of plausibility these repeated "mistakes" have.
But in this case, I'm glad of the dupe, because without it, I'd have missed the banner advert for another gimmicky boy's toy^w^w^w brain-expanding, uh... glowy thing from ThinkGeek that I *must* buy!
Re:followup field (Score:3, Insightful)
Embrace your moral hypocrisy!
Re:followup field (Score:3, Informative)
Re:followup field (Score:2)
Re:followup field (Score:2)
Govern (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Govern (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I guess we can't blame US for wanting to control certain things from another countries. I guess the EU would do the same. What buggers me is that our governments (US and EU) are so fucked up that it seems countries aren't able to think "hey, this is the Right Thing to do, let's do it because everybody will benefit". Instead, apparently they just think "let's do everything we can to have more power and control so we can have more money"
Re:Govern (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. The U.S. has given power over the Internet to a private group with an international board. It doesn't directly control ICANN, but it does retain a veto--a right which it has infrequently exercised. The EU and the other countries are making a power play to move internet governance to the UN, where their governments can gain power over how the internet is used and regulated. This isn't altruistic in its motivations in the least, and it's certainly not The Right Thing To Do. Everybody has benefited from the internet so far, and it is only active government intervention that has limited people's access to free information.
don't agree (Score:3, Funny)
Somehow I find that Internet would be much better by the "intergovernmental body" the EU is proposing than by a PRIVATE entity. We all saw what happened with verizon, when they set the IP addresses of all the unregistered
Re:don't agree (Score:3, Informative)
Christ Almighty, people, it's Verisign. "Verizon" is a telephone service provider
Re:don't agree (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Govern (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. is pro-democracy, but only insofar as democracy is a means to guarantee a liberal and limited government. The UN is anything but, because of its member states, who are far more willing (indeed eager) to regulate, limit, and filter the internet. Other nations already have a voice--they just don't have ultimate control. And that's a good thing.
Re:Govern (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Govern (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Govern (Score:2)
Not really the same thing at all. HTTP is simply a communications protoco
Re:Govern (Score:4, Insightful)
The IP network would be worthless without the higher level protocols and services. Likewise, there's a whole stack of further inventions, developments and products of world-wide research that the IP concept grew from.
My point is, when it comes to the Internet, Nationalism (for that's what this is) is ugly. There's a pissing contest going on here and it's just plain dumb.
We're talking about root DNS. That's all. It's fucking pathetic that neither the powers that be, nor us
Instead, it's deteriorated to "We invented it! It's ours!". Don't behave as if the spread of the internet was pure altruism. It's spread because it made money for companies all over the globe. The internet may have been a US invention, but its current breadth, penetration and sheer utility is a product of global contribution. And that's why the people and corporations (and yes, if they've been paying attention, even the governments) of nations outside the US have a vested interest in the DNS.
Re:Govern (Score:5, Funny)
dude, this _is_ slashdot. Half your audience is thinking "pastry" when you say "7-layer"
Re:Govern (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Govern (Score:3, Interesting)
Anybody can run root servers today. The challenge is getting people to use them.
So why would the US give up control of root servers? Because the UN said it would be more fair? Republicans certainly wouldn't go for that, and if Democrats were in power, I doubt they would, either.
Likewise.... why would a foreign country set up their own root servers? Sure, they COULD, but would it really improve things for them? Would anybody but their own citizens us
Re:Govern (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Govern (Score:2)
Perhaps they should subsidize, develop, and control their own version of it then.
You know those investments were decades ago and surely long since amortized by now. The "we put money into it in the beginning so we owns it" argument is becoming a little stale. I'm sure other countries have invested substantial sums in infrastructure which makes up sections of the internet by now.
And fragmentation is bad? (Score:5, Interesting)
My opinion is that an international institution should define global standards that each country can than agree or disagree to implement, and if the US wants to be separate at that point, so be it.
Re:And fragmentation is bad? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, because Intranets are so fucking useful on a global scale, right? Hey, China would be thrilled! They wouldn't have to worry about the Great Firewall! Bush, his Family First supporters, and Mrs. Clinton would love that they could just block all porn from the United States' intranet. Switzerland would make a shitload of money proxying connections between all the different intranets and would unveil the Swiss Internet Bank where you could have an anonymous account access (for steep fees of course) to actually be able to use the Internet like it has been for year.
Yeah, fragmentation is bad.
Re:And fragmentation is bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
They do now, but in this scenerio COUNTRIES would be Intranets. That puts a huge limitation on the freedom of information (ala China).
Actually, thats all the 'Great Firewall' is, an attempt to make China on big intranet.
Thank you for proving my point.
Re:And fragmentation is bad? (Score:2)
Absolutely. There is no reason, even though the article try to insinuate otherwise, that anyone would have to setup their own Intranet without a connection to the rest of the world. Some countries might try do that to keep their citizens from accessing foreign sites by design, but there is no technical reason it's a necessity. In this case a little diversity and expansion of the technology would be a good thing. Heck, maybe someone will come up with
Re:And fragmentation is bad? (Score:2)
I can start up my own little internet any time I want. Anyone can, there's nothing stopping them. But if I don't have routes to things people want, I won't have any customer base to speak of. It's just that the current internet, with all its peering points and transit agreements, is what e
Re:And fragmentation is bad? (Score:2, Interesting)
The US administers the root DNS servers, and countries are allowed to administer their own servers. In addition, ICANN alots (scarce) IP addresses. The original distribution of these IP addresses is now considered to be "unfair" because companies and countries were given HUGE address spaces because at the *TIME*, the ammount of addresses avaliable was thought to be nearly unlimited. I don't remeber how many addresses there are total, but its a lot. The assignment of addresses
Another WIPO? No thanks! (Score:2)
Yeah, theoretically. But fuck theory at this time. This is a practical matter we're dealing with. The UN is not the ideal body to deal with such matters. I mean, look at the WIPO. It's been nothing but trouble. Now we have shitty WIPO-standardized legality infecting numerous other nations. Let's not let that sort of nonsense happen to the Internet as well.
Centralized anything is proven time an
Re:And fragmentation is bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, as much as I hate the idea of a single country controlling the Internet, I think I like the idea of it being administered by the UN even less. At the moment it is a lopsided system which delivers too much power into American hands, b
Re:And fragmentation is bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
Time warp (Score:5, Funny)
My flux capacitor is out of whack; the earth now rotates [slashdot.org]~every six hours.
Re:Time warp (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Time warp (Score:2)
(Sorry, I had to.)
Re:Time warp (Score:3, Funny)
Such forgetfulness has its pros and cons, I supp
Brilliant Plan (Score:3, Insightful)
-Erwos
No "citizens" control ICANN, including US citizens (Score:3, Insightful)
It's occasionally influenced by the US Commerce Department, which is occasionally influenced by the Bush Administration, who are occasionally influenced by right-wingers, rich corporations, or cosmic rays, but AFAICT, the only effect the Bushies have had on it is to suggest that
Re:Brilliant Plan (Score:2)
The problem is majority of the internet users have NO oversight if the US runs things. I would trust a carefully chosen and organized body to organize things than a single government (which tends to be more unstable). For example, if Washington DC were nuked by terrorists, the US government could fall apart into an authoritorian governmen
Re:Brilliant Plan (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what I thought. I'll take the US-Net.
Thank You.
dupe (Score:3, Funny)
If it ain't broke.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I say the US has done a fine job in managing whatever it is managing.
The 'net has become a wonderful, open forum where anyone can express their ideas an opinions.
The UN tends to screw up everything it touches. I really don't want the internet to become another great cockup of the least organized, least effective polital body that has ever existed.
Re:If it ain't broke.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:If it ain't broke.. (Score:3, Informative)
In general I for one am all for concensus building and getting buy-in from folks before moving ahead with something that can have large-scale, sweeping effects. That said, the UN tends to just take t-o-o-o-o long for just about anything, and ultimately every decision falls to its member nations for actual implementation.
It IS broken! (Score:2)
Re:It IS broken! (Score:2)
Being prepared for when it does break. (Score:2)
It's better for some action to be taken now, before the US government chooses to take a course of action that is detrimental to the Internet as a whole. At least then the rest of the world can have a somewhat functional Internet, even if the US is not involved.
Badly Broken, but This Won't Fix It (Score:4, Informative)
However, most of the proposals for "Internet Governance" that the WSIS gang have come up with have been evil, clueless, or both.
- ICANN doesn't control the Internet, only DNS policies and IP address assignments, and expanding that scope would be Bad.
- China wants to "govern" the Internet by getting the rest of the world to enforce their censorship policies, which are currently too easy for Chinese citizens to evade by using non-China-based websites, email, and IM servers. A few other governments also want to use "governance" to censor pornography, free speech that criticizes them politics, and pornography. (Really, it's just about pr0n and evil nasty terrorists, pay no attention to that press censor behind the curtain.) ICANN currently has no control over this except perhaps blocking registry of Fulan-Gong.com
- Some third-world countries want "Internet Governance" to tax rich Internet users to subsidize internet connectivity into their countres. Not only do they fundamentally misunderstand how the Internet works, the major problem in many of those countries is telecom monopolies that provide overpriced inadequate service, and the first step in getting their citizens decent internet access is to get the telco monopolies out of the way. That doesn't mean there aren't also infrastructure problems, or that an infusion of cash couldn't be useful, but in general they'd be giving more money and power to their PTT monopolies, which is mostly counterproductive.
- I really hate treating ICANN as the Good Guys here, so I won't - this is a conflict between the Bad Guys and the Worse Guys.
DNS isn't The Internet - splitting DNS would be ugly, stupid, and easily repaired, e.g. by creating records like [newTLD].[existingTLD] or [newTLD].[NewTLDowner].net.Re:If it ain't broke.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Security? Where? (Score:3, Interesting)
Security on the Internet? What are they talking about?
Re:Security? Where? (Score:2)
Re:Security? Where? (Score:2)
i've translated it so many times that my mind does it automatically now.
security means secure against freedom.
what?! you thought you would be allowed to do whatever it is you wished without the consent of monied and powerful interests?
blasphemy!
What happened to "send a message" (Score:2)
Re:What happened to "send a message" (Score:3, Funny)
Meh (Score:2, Insightful)
All that would mean is that DNS goes from being a decentralized system with a central authority to a decentralized system. Once that happens well-tested capitalistic forces will come into play and things will sort out themselves. If the U.S. government chooses not to recognize the actions of foreign root servers, eventually U.S. ISPs will just start using the foreign root servers themselves. Participation in the Department of Commerce DNS roots is voluntary for all involved.
Fractured Internet? (Score:5, Funny)
IT's all BS. (Score:5, Insightful)
IT is ultimately those who provide the infrastructure who will decide what needs to be organized and by whom. This isn't a government issue.. it's an ISP issue.
Re:IT's all BS. (Score:2)
Exactly. Which is why we don't need UN "governance". This is a power play by countries that want to regulate internet content, not a move designed to ensure the free flow of information. The internet has been doing just fine.
Re:IT's all BS. (Score:2)
Except, of course, that the government currently has its finger in the pie. The US Dept of Commerce authorizes or denies changes to the DNS proposed by ICANN.
US Dept of Commerce announced in July that it would not relinquish this control:
http://www.circleid.com/article/1130_0_1_0_C/ [circleid.com]
Like any major infrastructure in the US, the government wi
Re:IT's all BS. (Score:2)
Except that anyone with a '486, a bunch of RAM and a fast connection could bypass it. Feel free to create your own TLD. The big problem is convincing everyone else to recognize you as authoritative, but it can happen.
Hell, you could create a private Internet that overlays the existing one and just have a TLD that is usable by your friends. How do we
Gov't has nothing to control (Score:2)
How exactly, other than funding ICANN?
Say China splits off from DNS - I can point my servers at China's root servers and if the gov't want to stop me they can kiss my butt. I know this argument may not penetrate your tunfoil hat, but they can't stop me without filtering packets, and fighting the US telco indutry tooth and nail over that.
My fingers hurt... (Score:3, Informative)
Here's approx 0.33 of the posts (some collapsed) (Score:3, Funny)
IF this happens (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd much rather let the UN manage the net than even begin to contemplate the above. I'm not saying the UN has properly managed everything they've touched, but there is no other international body capable of managing the internet. And it needs to not be exclusively under Amerikan control.
And I'm and Amerikan.
Re:IF this happens (Score:2)
Even a larger nation, like China or the US, would only be harming themselves if they tried a stunt like that. People in other nations could not interact with the modified systems, and thus the modified system would become isolated. When it comes to commerc
Re:IF this happens (Score:2)
I don't actually think any nation would try it. I just think the idea of one country controlling all the root DNS servers is a bad idea. They should be distributed and managed cooperatively.
Re:IF this happens (Score:2)
Then how about those other contries that want some control go build their own root DNS servers, since that seems to be what this is all about. And by the way, what country are you from exactly? No
Re:IF this happens (Score:2)
And I am in fact from the U$. :)
Re:IF this happens (Score:3, Insightful)
There may be no other international body capable of managing the internet (a specious claim on face), but granting you that, there are plenty of organizations capable of running the internet that are not international. ICANN has international board members and is doing just fine. Nor is the int
I only just discovered you could killfile editors (Score:5, Informative)
For those who haven't discovered it: It's in your home page prefs next to the topic ratings radio buttons.
Politics really is pretty though.
- Chris
Let the third world build its own goddamn internet (Score:2)
Re:Let the third world build its own goddamn inter (Score:2)
Are you implying that all the non-third-world countries would prefer it to be controlled directly by the US as opposed to the UN?
Seems to me like a strange opinion for Americans, considering the UN would be a more democratic alternative...
Given that they pretty much had no other option (and that it was politically convenient for the great firewall of China), what with the pathetic number of IPv4 addresses allocated to them (amusing considering the
Cool... (Score:2, Funny)
Whatever the U.S. can manage poorly, a conglomoration of bureaucracies can do poorerestly.
Seriously... (Score:4, Insightful)
There is currently a major conflict between the US and the rest of the world about the control of the Internet...
is such an over statement that it's almost misleading. We're not going to war with the world over this. It's a dispute. The only war so far are the flame wars that broke out on Slashdot when this was posted the first time. The Iraq War was a major conflict; this is a dispute that might have serious consequences on the Internet. Let's be a little more precise.
No, I'm not new to Slashdot. Yes, I'll probably be modded down for this but this is just so silly.
It has already Begun (Score:2, Funny)
Rome (Score:3, Insightful)
When Rome did fall, the roads were taken over by various parties and sometimes looted for their stones and not very well maintained. But, those evil arrogant Romans got their uppcomance, and that's what really mattered.
Re:Rome (Score:2)
Algeria had the same problem along with Zimbabwe.. Kick out the evil oppressive jerks, get your freedom, but now you no longer have the experience to make things smooth.
In the end though, as Europe showed, the slaves eventually take the reigns and they do well.
If there is a lesson to be learned it is that freedom is more important than stability even if the stability is achieved under authoritarian means. There may be hiccups but I'm sure there are some sm
Re:Rome (Score:2)
And what you end up with is some other evil opprssive jerks take over. You either get those who just want to move into the power vaccuum to be in control, or you get those who have a "vision" of how things should be and work at all costs (including the wellbeing of those they want to help) to make that vision come true.
All democracy does is have that transition without all the bombs and s
ob Bender (Score:5, Funny)
On second forget the blackjack. And the Internet.
Dupe issues (Score:2)
Could this be a silly idea? (Score:5, Interesting)
The one thing that I don't really get, is that if you understand how it all works, this doesn't really make sense. I mean this isn't something that really matters, for the most part.
A little brush up on teh Intarweb
ARPNET was the origins of the "Intarwebs", it was replaced by the U.S. built and controlled NSFNET [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org] (full transion in 1989, Military went to MILNET). All ISPs had to sign an agreement with NSFNET (1987-1995) to connect to the backbone. NSFNET was not federally controlled, it was controlled by "Merit Network, Inc" which was run by public universities. True, a good bit of funding came from taxes, but it was up to academics as to how it was used. In 1995, NSFNET was transitioned to NAP architecture, which provided much faster routing and the capabilites for more growth. Today the "backbone" [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org] is a collection of commercial ISPs, a few private, and a few University controlled networks. There is little to no direct federal intervention.
DNS [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org] servers are, of course, chained in the sense that one DNS references another DNS, and DNS entries spread like viruses (lookups are forwarded). The root [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org] level DNS servers (serving requests from the root). Some of them are DoD owned, and some are privately owned.
But not all traffic is routed through the root level DNS servers. In fact you local DNS might not need to hit the next guy in the chain if he still has a valid lookup entry for your request (check the TTL, not all BIND [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org] implementations do this correctly). So the traffic on the internet does not go through one space, and you probably dont hit the root level DNS servers that often. Not only that but the way DNS works, unless you hit the root server yourself, it never knows that you were making the request, all it knows is that DNS server at 217.88.99.42 (or what have you) hit it.
Basically this whole argument is kind of silly. No one really controls net traffic, perse. The root DNS servers (i.e. ICANN) do for the most part reside in the US, but because of the recursive nature of a DNS lookup, it does not really tell you what is going on (put a packet sniffer on your own BIND server and see what comes up).
The Internet is still largely, "grass roots". It is largely peer-to-peer. The only centralized items are the root DNS servers.
Since the U.S. gov does not really control "the Internet", why should we change that? It sounds good in a meeting to say "you control the Internet and that isn't right", but that is gross over-simplification. Nobody really "controls" the internet. If their argument is just about moving or adding new root DNS servers, that wouldn't really matter, but instead it sounds like "politics as usual", that is to say FUD./p
wrapper protocol for zones? (Score:2)
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
The US funded the construction of the Internet and has invited other nations to use it. Each nation has as much control over the network in it's contry as they want. Look at China and North Korea for examples.
Each country has control over it's nation level domain. The UK has control over
I do not see how the UN or anybody has the right to demand the US to give over control of the root domain servers or get bent if the US says thanks but we feel like that would be a bad idea.
If the member of the UN really feel like they should have root name server control well then I suggest that the UN gets a bunch of nations together and build the UNNet. You could use IP6 from the start and have point to point encryption from the start.
Knock yourselves out.
simply would never work. (Score:2, Insightful)
What's the big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
IP addresses are already controlled regionally, not by the US. Europe and Asia each have their own registries. Theoretically they manage the IP space under rules set by the IANA, but in reality nobody is going to nay-say them if they don't.
Law and regulation? Ha! The US will regulate for the US and anyone who doesn't like that can block our IP addresses at their border. That's not going to change. Get over it.
The DNS root zone? All 62kbytes of it? Shoot. If you don't want to run ICANN's root zone, download it and run your own version. I do.
Or is control of your own counry's top-level zone not good enough for you? Is there some special zone you particularly feel you need to add to the defacto global root zone? No? Then what the hell are you complaining about!
Don't get me wrong, the ICANN is run by a non-accountable bunch of bufoons, many from Verisign, the same company that somehow managed to lose money selling domain names and ssl certificates. If anyone deserves a comeuppance, they do. But that's not the point, the point is: the system as it is now is stable, functional and reasonably cheap.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Please don't mess up with this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Simply. Don't. Do. That.
Bush != safe and stable government (Score:3, Insightful)
Electing Bush as President once could be put down to an accident.... a second time and other countries started to question the stability of the country that elected him. Now all these other countries may well be in the wrong, and the US may have the right of it, but widespread polls outside the US consistenctly show the people in other countries regard Bush as the single most dangerous man on the planet, and more dangerous that S. Hussein..... in short they're no happier with a country that Bush is leader holding the reigns that they would have been pre regiime-change Iraq.
That is what a large portion of the planet is reacting to. Not the US in and of itself, but the man you elected as your leader twice (to the amazement of anybody not American), and to whom most of the rest of the planet wouln't trust the running of a corner store. Truthfully, everybody else may be wrong, I'm just trying to convey sentiment in large portions of the rest of the world... we think Bush is a moron, and we don't trust the people who decided he was they best they could find as their leader.
For the record, as I realise this does wade into traditionally anti-American flame territory... I'm English, I've traditionally been very pro the Anglo-American relationship, and a Europsceptic, but I want nothing to do with a Bush lead regime, and if you elect another muppet as your leader then yeah, I'm in favour of the EU backing away from the US on any matter of international import... and that includes DNS
The man's a nut job..... That's what most of us out here thing. We may well be wrong, but right or wrong it's how we view him. In light of that we view the US as a country whose leader is a nut. We therefore don't consider the US a safe and stable country to entrust anything in.
It's your president we don't trust, not the US. Your trustworthiness is only in question because you elected him.
I'm sorry if this gets read as anti-American as I enjoy the company of a fair few American colleagues, and more than a few online friends. I think the world is a better place to have had the US in it, but men of worse character than normal have convinced enough people to fear all else but their vision.
Good luck over the next couple of years, and I look forward to you electing a leader that might actualy qualify for a McJob before you attempt to make him Leader of The Free World.
Re:All according to plan (Score:3, Insightful)
Although there will certainly be conflicts regarding the internet in the coming years, there is too much invested for people to just give up on a solution and resort to fractionalized intranets.
Re:All according to plan (Score:3, Interesting)
Try such pesky venues like Scoop or the Guardian or pravda or AlJazeera. Venues which can and do publish stories which the U.S. government would rather you not see, like the election fiasco or the pictures of atrocities we commit or the fact that the war on Iraq started well before Congressional authorization.
Meanwhile, here in America they've got our whore media turning their backs as the caskets are unloaded at Dover and in Iraq our military appears to be actively hunting down foreign
Re:Fine (Score:2, Insightful)
Not for nothing, but the US funded and created what is now the internet. And your b|tching that we don't give up control of root DNS servers? How's your internet connection, can you browse, shop, play games and read news? Thank the US then!
Next question; Who would you rather handle it? I've heard the U.N. mentioned - Food for oil anyone? Indepen
Re:This is just further proof... (Score:3, Interesting)
We borrow boatloads of money from it and then buy lots of stuff using that money. If the US disappeared tomorrow, the world economy would crater because we owe everybody money. According to the Bureau of the Public Debt, we've paid $335,528,344,667.72 in interest payments alone on the national debt this last fiscal year. Yes, that's 335 Billion Dollars! I think the interest on the debt has cost more than the Iraq war so far.
Add to those interest payments our 500 billion a ye
Re:This is just further proof... (Score:2)
Give plenty of business to countries like china and India. I do belive that the impressive growth numbers for these countries see this [bbc.co.uk] has been influenced by US economy.
America's oil consumption has made the middle east as rich as it is today,
And lastly , some very solid democratic principles, such as "freedom of speech", and other amendments etc. belive me these are some fasinating concepts that were unheard of before the founding fathers of USA brought
Re:This is just further proof... (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's compare, oh say, the Patriot Act - or better yet, Abu Grahib - to, oh say, Tienanmin Square.
Let's get a grip, folks. Even if you think our government sucks, would ANY of you prefer any of the alternatives currently on offer (I'll dispense with the customary "don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out" phraseology)?
Re:This is just further proof... (Score:2)
Plus (Score:2)
Re:This is just further proof... (Score:2)
Re:Needs to be taken from American hands (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Needs to be taken from American hands (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right. Let's give control to Syria, North Korea, and China. These UN members in good standing will keep the internet safe, while the U.S. and its back-dues to the UN can reap the whirlwind of wanting to retain control over their own creation, which they so presumptuously chose to share with the rest of the world.
The US and Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage/ [aljazeera.net]
http://www.korea-dpr.com/ [korea-dpr.com]
http://www.iran-daily.com/1384/2389/html/ [iran-daily.com]
http://www.cubaweb.cu/ [cubaweb.cu]
If so, you're making use of a system maintained by the US Government.
Now try acessing
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/coredocs.html/ [gpoaccess.gov] from China or
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sofocus=
Seriously, who would you rather have in charge of the internet?
Re:what isn't... (Score:2, Insightful)
The world is in a semi-polite revolt against th