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The Internet Government Politics

Why Talk About Internet Governance? 258

Posted by Zonk from the the-future-of-tar-interweb dept.
andyo wrote to mention an article on the O' Reilly network entitled Why They're Talking About Internet Governance. The piece goes into the history of how things came to be in the first place, as regards the distribution of internet domain space. From the article: "Having established commercial beachheads on the Internet, corporations wanted to own the whole terrain. Through the World Intellectual Property Organization ... they were designing a new regime for handling domain names. It was nicely suited to large corporations ... Within weeks of the successful conclusion of the Global Incorporation Alliance Workshop, a lash-up of Internet leaders, Network Solutions, and other back room forces popped a proposal of their own on a surprised and unprepared Internet community. The proposal ... ultimately led to ICANN. Most stakeholders were left out of the decision--even many large corporations were angry--but the Commerce Department approved the proposal, happy to wash its hands of the issue. "
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Why Talk About Internet Governance? More

Why Talk About Internet Governance?

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  • Nothing Offtopic (Score:3, Funny)

    by glenrm ( 640773 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @09:06AM (#13835447) Homepage Journal
    I would say when a topic is repeated this often that nothing be modded Flambait or Offtopic, just to liven things up a bit...

    • Re:Nothing Offtopic (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ianmassey ( 743270 ) * on Thursday October 20, 2005 @09:20AM (#13835586) Homepage

      I think it's a pretty interesting topic, and this article supplies the back story for folks who didn't know it already. Ultimately, the hows and the whys don't matter to anyone who has any real say in this issue, though. This will by and large be decided by diplomats and beaurocrats whose experience with the internet consists of their assistant/secretary spending an hour a day trying to help them use it completely in vain.

      What it really boils down to is we either trust the completely untrustworthy, unstable and unorganized UN to handle this very serious responsibility (which we've been handling just fine all by ourselves for years now), or we further degrade our world image by telling the UN where to stick it and keeping the root servers under the perfectly competent management they have right now and have always had.

      America is experiencing sort of a golden age of being loathed globally at the moment, which historically has happened to every major world power, especially when they decided to exercise some of their power to improve their position, as we have been doing for the past few years. It is to be expected, and eventually we can expect one of two solutions to occur naturally: A. America reaches a place where it is comfortable enough to slow its expansion/influence, and the rest of the world's grumbling gradually decreases, or B. the shit hits the fan for one of a billion reasons and America's term as world power comes to a halt. It is my opinion that I will live to see "A" happen more than once in my lifetime, and that I'll be dead long before "B" occurs. This root server issue will be solved like every other diplomatic row, in that things will stay exactly the same but a "resolution" will be drafted that strokes the little countries' egos enough that they forget about it for now.

      • Re:Nothing Offtopic (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        America is experiencing sort of a golden age of being loathed globally at the moment, which historically has happened to every major world power, especially when they decided to exercise some of their power to improve their position, as we have been doing for the past few years.

        I think this sentence makes the point clearly enough. The rest of the world is jealous and embarrassed. When the Soviet Union was breathing down everyone's necks, all ready to "free" the world from the horrible yoke of free speech an

      • Re:Nothing Offtopic (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Ryan Amos ( 16972 )
        You forgot option C: China gradually overtakes the US as the dominant global military and economic power over the next 50 years and the US becomes a relic, much like the EU (sorry guys.) It takes a long time to mobilize 1.2 billion people, but the economic policy makers in China finally seem to "get it" (unlike Russia wrt Stalin, China learned from the disasters Mao caused.)

        But the UN is largely irrelevant. The prime objective of the UN is to give people a forum for diplomacy so something like WWII never ha

        • If Bush Administration Lied About WMD, (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20, 2005 @10:18AM (#13836156)
          (they didn't stop us invading Iraq, we lied and made up a pretty good cover story)

          If The Bush Administration Lied About WMD, So Did These People

          "[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." -- From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998

          "This December will mark three years since United Nations inspectors last visited Iraq. There is no doubt that since that time, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to refine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer- range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." -- From a December 6, 2001 letter signed by Bob Graham, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford, & Tom Lantos among others

          "Whereas Iraq has consistently breached its cease-fire agreement between Iraq and the United States, entered into on March 3, 1991, by failing to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program, and refusing to permit monitoring and verification by United Nations inspections; Whereas Iraq has developed weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological capabilities, and has made positive progress toward developing nuclear weapons capabilities" -- From a joint resolution submitted by Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter on July 18, 2002

          "Saddam's goal ... is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed." -- Madeline Albright, 1998

          "(Saddam) will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983" -- National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998

          "Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement." -- Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002

          "The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." -- Robert Byrd, October 2002

          "There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat... Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time. But the United States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we were before September 11th of 2001... He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn't have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we." -- Wesley Clark on September 26, 2002

          "What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs." -- Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002

          "The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will b

          • All the bourgeois parties are pro-war. If your post is supposed to convince us that the Democrats are as bad as the Republicans- congradulations, we knew that already.
        • The US becomes a has-been, the EU continues as a has-been, China implodes and becomes a never-was. We end up in a world without a viable "world power".
        • Someone points out that Iran hasn't had a shah for over 25 years. Someone else points out that the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons is Israel. Still someone else points out that if an Iraqi assassinated some Iranian leader, there is bupkas the Iranians could productively do about it. If they tried anything bigger than infiltrating insurgent fighters (which they are already doing) the US military would kick them in the nuts.

          If you want to consider large scale war in the middle east,
      • What it really boils down to is we either trust the completely untrustworthy, unstable and unorganized UN

        Umm... untrustworthy to whom and in what regard? Do I take it that the UN are supposed to serve the needs of USA first and the rest of the world second, if at all?

        I can understand how some of those working at the UN might not see it quite that way.

        • Political issues aside, the UN is unwieldy and corrupt. I have no idea whether the the original author meant the UN was untrustworthy in the sense that it doesn't always instantly capitualate to whatever military adventure the domanant superpowers of the day might wish to engage in, or if he's referring to UN troops massacring civilians in backwater African villages as a matter of revenge for an ambush, or their mismanagement of Haiti, or any of the nearly countless other things there are to not like about
          • Political issues aside, the UN is unwieldy and corrupt.

            That may in fact turn out to be the case. It does seem to me, however, that certain media channels have been going out of their way to find dirt on the UN ever since our latest adventures in Iraq. Since the UN seemed well enough regarded prior to that point, and since I very much doubt that the UN has undergone some deep seated moral sea change since that time, I tend to take these stories with a pinch of salt. It wouldn't be the first time that dou

  • Kudos to the comment on the article itself.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jkind ( 922585 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @09:15AM (#13835537) Homepage
    Echoes my sentiments exactly
    "The whole domain name problem could have been solved in a way that would have eliminated strife over domain allocation." Maybe your next entry should explain how.

  • I'm in favor of ..... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AlltheCoolNamesGone ( 838035 ) * on Thursday October 20, 2005 @09:18AM (#13835564)
    None of the of the above.

    If anything all goverments should be barred from having anything to do with internet. Lord know's that one of them will find a way to fuck this up too.
    • The quote from the article on this: Certainly, it is controlled by the United States government--which renegs on its duties by letting ICANN blunder about so much--but the solution is not to bring it under U.N. control. The solution is to hand all its powers over to leaner, more technically focused groups that operate with less fuss and more consensus.

      I don't think this is really possible. If governments are interested in an issue, you can't really shut them out of it. Deciding what TLDs there are and wha
    • It seems to me that someone has to run the root domains. Right now, I'm of the opinion that given the choices of the UN or the USA, I'll take the USA. And I'm British.
  • I think that change in Domain governance will occur inevitably. As far as I remember, the world is running out of IPs, and eventually everyone will have to start using IPV6. This change may or may not become a significant oppurtunity for governments or corporations for make tremendous changes (In my view there is an oppurtunity for change). In my utopia, domain name registration (governance, as the article stated) would be managed by a world wide governing body which would commit to free (as it $$$) and fa
    • Ok so argue that anyone holding a
      1. .com gtld, has to have publicaly traded stock in three different countries,
      2. .net gtld, has to have publicaly traded stock in three different countries, and actualy be a network
      3. move all the .com's who can't satify the above to .com.us, or an appropriate ccTLD,
      4. move .mil to .mil.us and .gov to .gov.us

      Would that satisfy them, I doubt it because it's not about any of that, it's about who is control, not the nature of the control.

  • I have already completed this entire thread (Score:5, Funny)

    by lbrandy ( 923907 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @09:29AM (#13835660)
    I have finished this thread for you:

    >It's not broke don't fix it. (+5, Insightful)
    >>Yea but America controls it and I don't like America. (+4, Interesting)
    >The UN IS CORRUPT (+4, Interesting)
    >> We can just have some countries control it, then (+5, Insightful)
    >>> Most of those countries already censor the internet! (+5, Interesting
    >>>> At least they don't bomb people! (+4, Funny)
    >>>>>We saved your ass in WWII. STFU (-1 Troll)
    >>>>>>Arrogant Americans. Just like all Americans. All Americans are ignorant and generalize. (1, Redundant)
    >I hate microsoft (+5, Off-Topic)
  • There is the world cup for football (soccer), and it is world series time, so let us have a playoff format.

    Nude mudwrestling anyone? Nethack? Darts? Beer Pong? Cricket on donkeys?

    There isn't any reason not to have some fun while we are doing it.

  • Censorship (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20, 2005 @09:29AM (#13835666)
    I am concerned if the EU or UN is able to take over control that we will suffer due to censorship. Free speech and interchange of ideas is part of who we are. It is the reason we now have an Internet. I would support forking instead of capitulating.
    • "I am concerned if the EU or UN is able to take over control that we will suffer due to censorship."

      Mr Pot, meet Mr Kettle.
  • Just as regualation destroys free trade, it will make the internet crawl to a halt. It is only a matter of time before more governments get their hands on it and destroy the free nature of the net. It is only a matter of time. The UN and the EU want to get control of it, you can ensure that it will become highly hampered, even taxed to use to give it to those that can afford it in good socialist fashion.
    • The Internet is collaborative and largely decentralized. Sure, ICANN's in charge of the root domain servers, and different organizations run the top level domain servers. But nothing's stopping your or your ISP from getting DNS from another source if you're dissatisfied with how the official DNS sources are doing. ISPs can largely offer Internet connectivity however they want, and consumers can choose what kind of services to buy. The free market ensures that the entire system will work as well as possible.

    • Just as regualation destroys free trade, it will make the internet crawl to a halt.

      I believe the first part of this statement is a tautology and perhaps inappropriate as the basis for further assertion.

      I'd say it was more or less equivalent to "Just as wet destroys dry, it will make your automobile crawl."

      In any case, there is already a ton of regulation that no one wants to go away. Dow chemical doesn't want regulation to go away, particularly regulation that protects patents and trade secrets... t

    • regualation destroys free trade

      So : NAFTA, good or bad for trade?

      • NAFTA was nothing about free trade, it was mainly regulation. Why do you think United Auto Workers wanted to impose pollution restrictions on auto plants in Mexico? It wasn't because they care about the health of the Mexican people.
    • yeah, so its a good thing we don't regulate any trade...

  • ICANN and the UN (Score:5, Insightful)

    by canuck57 ( 662392 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @09:38AM (#13835752)

    You can visit the ICANN site and listen to the meeting, informative to say the least. Many sound like they have poor memories, some you can almost hear then snore over the mics and likely many had too much to drink before the meeting.

    Someone didn't want ICANN making much decisions so they stacked it with people who would paralyze any further development. This is clear.

    The UN is not much different for the most part.

    The internet naming is already fragmented and less standard. China for example is using DNS to filter content. We can expect this fragmention to continue.

    Ultimately the Internet belongs to the people. And it will be run by the people if necessary. If something becomes popular, ICANN nor the UN could stop it. The Chinese are already creative, using proxies outside their country to bypass the government.

  • Pressing Questions (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SQL Error ( 16383 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @09:52AM (#13835909)
    From TFA:

    Should bloggers, for instance, meet the same standards for accuracy as professional journalists?

    You're proposing a law requiring bloggers to misquote people, get key facts wrong, present nonsense in the name of "balance" and generally make stuff up? Well, sure, if you're going to pay them for it.

  • Damage, censorship and governance (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nharmon ( 97591 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @09:52AM (#13835911)
    Have you ever heard the saying, "The Internet views censorship as damage and routes around it"? I'm not sure who said it, but he/she was right on. To expand on this, we need to look at governance in the same way we look at censorship.

    If you have never read World of Ends [worldofends.com], I recommend you do so now.

    The solution to "governance" over the internet is to remain true to the foundations it was developed under. The internet as an agreement cannot be governed. It can only exist while there is compromise and consensus. So, here is what I believe is the best solution to this problem:

    1. For the time being, maintain the status quo of having ICANN responsible for the assignment of IPv4 addresses.

    2. Transition into IPv6 by assigning blocks of IP addresses to all countries. Perhaps leaving some addresses for space stations, the moon, mars, etc. Do this though multi-national treaties. This is where the United Nations can help out, but the UN should only be a facilitator. Remember, the Internet is an agreement among nations.

    3. Have each country be responsible for assigning its block of IP addresses, and for the management of their TLDs.

    4. Transfer .com, .org, and .edu management to some sort of NGO (ICANN for example), with the purpose being for multi-national corporations, organizations, and institutions of higher education who do not associate with any particular nation (for example would be icrc.org)

    The important thing is that the internet remain decentralized. This seems to be the point that everybody is missing. It doesn't matter who governs the internet, because nobody should govern the entire internet. Its works best as an agreement, and that is how we should proceed.
    • Unfortunately, the UN doesn't see it that way. They want WAY more than just IP addresses. They really want to govern the Internet. The UN body proposing this is actually called the Working Group on Internet Governance . http://www.wgig.org/index.html [wgig.org]

      In general they rationalize this decentralized governance by claiming the woes of spam, porn and of all things hardware costs. None of those things have anything to do with some administrative technical controls. Have no doubts representatives of the UN

  • Committee != 'Democracy' (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) * <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Thursday October 20, 2005 @09:54AM (#13835929) Homepage Journal
    Here's my #1 problem with governments: the committee. These mini-groups tend to debate over what is best for them, not their constituents.

    Example of typical bad true Democracy: 51 out of 100 people love large bananas. They vote to regulate bananas, and now only large bananas are available.

    Example of typical bad representative democracy: 5 representatives of 100 people form a banana size committee. 2 of them have friends or family who grow medium sized bananas. 51 of 100 citizens prefer large bananas. The 2 reps convince the other 3 to set the definition of 'large' as equal to the medium sized bananas, in exchange for adding pork to the law that helps the other 3 reps.

    Example of free market democracy: 51 out of 100 people like large bananas. 30 like medium, and 19 like tiny. Banana growers grow all 3 sizes, selling them at a price set by the supply of certain sizes and the demand for those sizes.

    The first two forms of democracy are, well, bananas. Nuts! This is how we live today in the US. The UN is even worse,with almost zero input by the constituents.

    Internet governance is best delegated to corporations and individuals. Profit is merely a reflection of a company's ability to meet the demands (price, quality, performance) of their customers. Profit can not be demanded. Profit can not be stolen. Profit can not be fraudulent for long. Except when a company is given monopoly power by government mandate (schools, roads, etc).

    The Internet is a group of individuals who pick an ISP. The groups of ISPs choose a backbone provider. The backbones choose to interconnect.

    Why is governance needed? If a backbone decides to break away, customers and ISPs will choose another backbone. If an ISP decides to censor or charge too much, users can select another ISP (except when government forces zero choice).

    There is zero need for government involvement, except to tax, regulate, censor and control.

    • Example of free market democracy: 51 out of 100 people like large bananas. 30 like medium, and 19 like tiny. Banana growers grow all 3 sizes, selling them at a price set by the supply of certain sizes and the demand for those sizes.

      Nitpicking, I know, but there's nothing really related to democracy in this example. It could very well be a free market in an otherwise authoritarian country (yes, such things happen), and it would work just as fine.

      On the other hand, what you're most likely to see eventual

      • You're right, but I love to say free market democracy as all free markets are the perfect form of democracy. Voting with every choice, every dollar.

        In your example, nothing will prevent others from constantly competing. If the huge large banana corporation doesn't have competition it means the customers are happy! If not, someone will always make medium and small bananas. Heck, local farmer markets might have F/OSS bananas in order to entice you to browse their other fruit :)
        • The problem with "free market democracy" is that one dollar equals one vote. So people with more dollars get more votes. Forget the tyranny of the majority, we have the tyranny of the minority. A small number of people with a lot of dollars can force the rest of us to do whatever they want. Not only that, but the more money you have, the easier it is to get even more at the expense of others. So if I have $1,000,000 dollars, not only do I have 1,000,000 votes, it's much easier for me to use the power of my
          • I disagree.

            The free market democracy has many more forms of checks and balances than any government democracy:

            1. Time preference. Everyone has a time preference -- what their time is wor h and how they use it. My $1M is not more powerful versus your $50K in many situations. I could buy all the bananas, but is it worth my time? They'll also go to waste.

            2. Unlimited forms of investment. If 30% of the population have 70% of the money, and 70% of the population have 30% of the money, it seems unfair. Ye
        • If the huge large banana corporation doesn't have competition it means the customers are happy!
          *sighs* You know what a monopoly is and how its power can be abused, do you? There were plenty of cases in history when monopolies ruled the market unchallenged, and customers were far from being happy...
        • "If the huge large banana corporation doesn't have competition it means the customers are happy! If not, someone will always make medium and small bananas."

          "Happy" is a relative term. The Wal-Mart that sells only large bananas has the benefit of economies of scale to sell their large bananas at prices lower than start-ups can hope to sell medium and/or small bananas. It is not that people suddenly decide they like large bananas on their own merits, only that they feel that putting up with large bananas is

    • Example of free market democracy: 51 out of 100 people like large bananas. 30 like medium, and 19 like tiny. Banana growers grow all 3 sizes, selling them at a price set by the supply of certain sizes and the demand for those sizes.

      This is where the analogy breaks down. Anybody can grow bananas, so there can be legitimate competition. But there can only be one DNS hierarchy. If example.com resolves to one host in the USA and another host in the EU, it's worthless to both of them.

      There is zero n

  • Unconvincing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by redelm ( 54142 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @09:55AM (#13835940) Homepage
    The essential arguement for governing the Internet is missing: Why does it need to be governed at all? Who, other than potential governors, is clamoring loudly for more regulation? What actual governance failures urgently need rapair?

    I'm sorry, but this looks like a power grab by control freaks. Taking advantage of anti-US sentiment (Iraq/Kyoto) to feather their own nests. Worse, I suspect they intend to provide a great deal more regulation than the minimal needed.

    • "What actual governance failures urgently need rapair?"

      Internet is not broke, it is garbage.
      50 spam emails a
      every day + half of the domain names being "for sale" domains and/or advert-only fake sites.

      This is really anoying.
      This is a failure.
      This has to change.
    • You are right that much of the net does not need to be governed. But there are some things for which it is useful that there be one cohesive system.

      Take for example the allocation of IP addresses - for routing to work well the allocation of IP addresses ought to follow some rules.

      ICANN doesn't stay within the lines of those kinds of technical areas that could use a bit of control; instead it mostly ignores those and goes on into the more sexy area of business and economic policy - like regulating the way t
    • I'd like to add:

      DNS is a standard implemented to increase the utility of the internet. It is not fundamental to its operation, however, and all these would-be governers are succeeding in is destroying a functional standard. When DNS is owned by King Saudami or Dark Lord Gatesss (pick your own antagonist, it's fun!) people who care will develop a parallel standard. In fact, the concept is already implemented in some peer to peer and otherwise layered networks. Because of this, I say if you want to control na

  • TLDs (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Bezben ( 877719 )
    Just out of curiousity, do we really need TLDs? If you think about it, most companies just register multiple ones anyway, slashdot.org AND slashdot.com for example. To be honest, I think it just adds confusion for the most part, if somewebsite.com is registered to a well know site, doesn't that make somewebsite.org pretty useless to all but squatters?

    The only useful thing I can think of really is to group country specific services, .gov, .gov.uk or whatever. But then they could just register the .uk. or .us

  • Better not just more TLDs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by logicnazi ( 169418 ) <<gerdes> <at> <invariant.org>> on Thursday October 20, 2005 @10:41AM (#13836439) Homepage
    I agree with most things that Oram says in this article. I have one quibble and one major disagreement I will put in another post.

    The quibble is that freeing up more tlds won't necessarily solve the scarcity of good domain names. If done incorrectly it could even make the problem worse.

    The point of domain names is to provide a quick and easy way to remember and communicate internet locations. So long as tlds categorize sites into content relevant categories they do work to relieve the demand for domain names. For instance if you want to go to fuckedchicks (made up) your favorite porn cite remembering that it is in .xxx (assuming it gets popular) is of no difficulty since it is easily connected with important facts you already remember about the site. On the other hand when tlds don't have much to do with content adding more of them can have a negative effect. If you know your favorite blog is computationaltruth.???/blog/ knowing the content or other facts about the site hardly helps you distingush between net, org and com. Since most people and all corporations want to achieve easy memorability when there is no obvious content (or other already known information) based discrimination more tlds can either just increase the confusion encouraging corporations to buy CORPNAME.* for all possible options. Worse too many tlds means some may fade into obscurity and fads keep the 'good' names just as scarce.

    Or to put it another way too many non-content related tlds make all domains harder to remember and hence don't solve the problem but just spread out the pain by making every name slightly worse.

    So far it seems that the country codes (and perhaps some even smaller geographic codes) are good (in the sense above) tlds as are the .xxx, .edu and .gov. Org and Com and Net are necessery general purpose names but that model shouldn't be followed with things like .biz which just sow confusion (is that a .com or a .biz)? The important question is whether there are enough good new content related tlds and that is something I don't know.
    • For instance if you want to go to fuckedchicks (made up)

      # whois fuckedchicks.com
      [Querying whois.internic.net]
      [Redirected to whois.moniker.com]
      [Querying whois.moniker.com]
      [whois.moniker.com]
      Moniker.C om Whois Server Version 2.1

      The Data in Moniker.Com's WHOIS database
      is provided for information purposes only, and is
      designed to assist persons in obtaining information
      related to domain name registration records.
      Moniker.Com does not guarantee its accuracy.
      By submitting a WHOIS query, you agree that yo

  • Fear the UN:Censorship is on the Table (Score:5, Insightful)

    by logicnazi ( 169418 ) <<gerdes> <at> <invariant.org>> on Thursday October 20, 2005 @11:04AM (#13836690) Homepage
    As I mentioned in an earlier post I agree with most of what Oram said in his article. I had one quibble about the solution for tlds but aside from that everything he said was correct. However, what he didn't say is even more important.

    It isn't just commercial interests that make domain names such a hot topic. DNS is the only possibility for control and management of the internet and that makes governments all excited, especially totalitarian regimes and other countries who aren't big fans of free expression. Sure the internet itself may make complete censorship very difficult but control over the domain name system can make certain types of information practically impossible to access.

    For instance imagine a body running the DNS system which decides to crack down on hate speech. They could deny a domain name to every site hosting hate speech (or if they wanted to go really hard core every site linking to hate speech by IP). Search enginge domain names are very valuable and a great deal of pressure could be exerted on google by threatening to take away google.com and give it to someone who promised not to link to offensive material.

    While I'm not a big fan of hate speech I do think it is a great mistake to ban it. I think the suppression of racist speech in germany has only given neo-nazis an air of danger and mystery and spread the movement. Since many countries other than the US have laws against hate speech it is quite plausible a UN body might enforce such a scheme if they got control over the internet. Even more disturbingly is that a large number of countries would likely push to expand the definition of hate speech to anything which is sufficently critical of islam.

    On the corporate front giving control of DNS to some UN body removes the first ammendment protections for parody and commentary from play. Right now there is some (minimal) legal protection for things like McDonalds-sucks. If it was run by a UN body it would not only remove the legal hurdles preventing the administration in the US (and other countries) from giving in to the corps but also make it so distant from voters that politicians could avoid any serious political harm from giving in (it wasn't me it was the global community).

    Most ditrubingly is the fact that many of the biggest pushers for UN control over the internet are also countries with large censorship agenda's like china, iran and others (brazil is an exception). While a full on censorship scheme like I describe above is unlikely to be used against talk about democracy it could be against pornography. More likely, however, is that these countries will push to create a mechanism for per country censorship of domain names, e.g., DNS records will be required to include information about the type of content to allow easier censorship of their populations.

    You can find analysis [computationaltruth.net] on my part and more facts/links [computationaltruth.net].

    Don't get me wrong ICANN is far from perfect but it is mostly incompetant and a bit corporate influenced which is a lot better than some of the possible alternatives. US record on free speech is also spotted, but then again so are most countries records, and the US has some of the best protections for speech the majority finds disagreeable. Moreover, I think DNS administration is safer in any western democracy than in some intergovernmental body where everyone can deny responsibility. I would rather just give the DNS system to england or germany than share it.
  • Its pretty clear this isnt about just domain names. From http://www.wgig.org/index.html [wgig.org]:

    12. It should be made clear, however, that Internet governance includes more than Internet names and addresses, issues dealt with by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN): it also includes other significant public policy issues, such as critical Internet resources, the security and safety of the Internet, and developmental aspects and issues pertaining to the use of the Internet.

    The really re

  • Geocode IP addresses (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jeanicinq ( 535767 )
    If they implement the IP protocal with geocoded addresses instead of the IPv4 or IPv6, they wouldn't have such an argument to fight about in who controls the Internet.

  • Why do we need to follow their lead anyway? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sir.Cracked ( 140212 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @12:54PM (#13837698) Homepage
    Correct me if I'm wrong here, but assuming that name resolution is handled so poorly, regardless of what institution is responsible for it, there is nothing stopping us from forking DNS. If Slash users don't like ICANN or the UN, why not start an alternative DNS? If I remember correctly, something to this effect was done when people wanted some TLD's early that hadn't been passed through. Why not split off from the whole thing?
    Slash certainly has the usership and technical knowledge and resources to setup alternative Centeral DNS machines, this time with the name hierarchy done properly, and if a good amount of the tech sites go over, really what else would you need? If the businesses don't follow, good riddance, you can always go back to the polluted namespace with a simple config change, and if they do decide to migrate as popularity increases, they will have to play within the new rules.

    Am I missing something here? Why NOT do this?
  • In that article, he statede that the ICANN is not running things smoothly. How exactly are they not that someone else could do better? The only problem I see w/ the ICANN in US control is the fact that the US has like 60% (pulled out of my ass, a very bad guess) of the ip registrations, when we have nowhere near 60% of the internet population. And how's IPV6 fit into this? Has ICANN even worked with it at all, or no? That would seem like the perfect opportunity for the UN to seize control.

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