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The Internet Communications Network

As ICANN Gains Full Oversight Of Domain Name System, Some Wonder If It Means the US Has Given Away The Internet (bbc.com) 215

Posted by msmash from the complicated-things dept.
The U.S. has given up its remaining control over the Internet. The formal handover, which took effect on Saturday, followed a last-ditch attempt by a group of Republicans to block the move. They had argued that the US concession would open the door for authoritarian governments get control of the network of networks, leading to greater censorship. From a BBC report:A judge in Texas has put the kibosh on a last-minute legal attempt to block the controversial decision for the US to give up control of one of the key systems that powers the internet. It's a move being breathlessly described by some as the US "giving up the internet" to the likes of China, Russia and the Middle East. For starters, while they can take the credit for inventing the underlying technology, the US never "had the internet" to begin with. Nobody did. It's a, duh, network. Decentralised. That's what makes it so powerful. But there are bits of internet infrastructure that some people and governments do have control over, and that's what this row is all about. One of them is the DNS - Domain Name System. This is the system for looking after web addresses. Thanks to the DNS, when you type bbc.com, you're taken to the correct servers for the BBC website. It saves you the grief of having to remember a string of numbers. That pairing of names and numbers is kept in one great big master file, the land registry of the web. The only organisation that can make changes is Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. As of Saturday 1 October 2016, Icann will no longer be under US government oversight.
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As ICANN Gains Full Oversight Of Domain Name System, Some Wonder If It Means the US Has Given Away The Internet More

As ICANN Gains Full Oversight Of Domain Name System, Some Wonder If It Means the US Has Given Away The Internet

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  • What's that smell? (Score:5, Funny)

    by lxs ( 131946 ) on Sunday October 02, 2016 @01:37PM (#52999929)

    It's the smell of Freedom!

    • Re: What's that smell? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      LOL, no. We must have different ideas of freedom. This gives businesses more power over this aspect of the internet. I'd rather have a government with a constitution that protects free speech and free expression running parts of the internet like DNS rather than turn it over to businesses, whose primary interest is their profit. If profit and freedom are in opposition, what do you expect the business to support?

      • The concern is that in most respects, the US offers one of the wider definitions of freedom of speech. It's not perfect, but it really is better than most. Given US control, you can expect that to be reflected in management of the system.

        US control is gone. So we will see what that brings.

        Thinking about freedom of speech issues in Europe and the middle east, some countries have applied restrictions that far exceed those imposed by the US. Germany, Iran, etc. come to mind. So the question arises as to how mu

        • Re:Different ideas, indeed (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Sunday October 02, 2016 @02:40PM (#53000229)

          You should read what Reporters Without Borders have to say on the matter: http://12mars.rsf.org/2014-en/ [rsf.org] .

          • AFAIK free speech doesn't also guarantee anonymous free speech, at least here in the US.

          • Re:Different ideas, indeed (Score:5, Insightful)

            by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) on Sunday October 02, 2016 @04:02PM (#53000669) Homepage Journal

            The problem there is that they are mixing up surveillance issues with speech issues; the one is distinct from the other in some very important ways.

            Surveillance is out of control pretty much everywhere, if for no other reason than the bad actors are running completely loose worldwide. Government and corporate. Speech, however, can exist in a country that allows it, regardless if a government is looking at it, or not.

            Reporters tend to do their own gnarly things with speech anyway; they have a soapbox, and it is almost impossible not to serve some viewpoint when on it. I do wish the news was, you know, news, and not opinion, but even picking what stories to cover (and so, by extension, what stories not to cover), some issues get attention, and others don't. That happens at the editorial, reporting, and news consumer reading level, often with leverage from advertisers applied quite strongly.

            In the context of that kind of mess, I still wave a flag for being as free as possible to say what you want.

            • The problem there is that they are mixing up surveillance issues with speech issues; the one is distinct from the other in some very important ways.

              While i get your point, the two concepts do go hand in hand. You cannot have free speech if you know you're listened and afraid of what might happen.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by fyngyrz ( 762201 )

                You cannot have free speech if you know you're listened and afraid of what might happen.

                Ah, but you can if you're listened to and you're not afraid of what might happen, which is the case for the vast majority of the US population. Pick your reason: ignorance, disinterest, assumption of innocence — but [waves hand at Internet] you can see that there is very little of "I am afraid to speak" going on. And some of the things people say.... oy. :)

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              GCHQ and the NSA spy on reporters, which makes it harder for them to do their jobs. In the UK, for example, the police have used data gathered by GCHQ and which ISPs have a legal duty to collect to identify the sources of journalists who were critical of them. "Chilling effect" doesn't really do it justice.

              That's why they consider mass surveillance to be a problem, it limits journalistic freedom.

          • An old statement about ICANN [rsf.org] says that the ideas people were coming up with for international governance would lead to more censorship. I don't see a newer statement directly on the topic.

        • Re:Different ideas, indeed (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02, 2016 @03:51PM (#53000625)

          How much influence? About as much as they currently do.
          The nations of the world are already on the advisory board of ICANN, including China, Russia and the various Middle East nations. The US doesn't lose influence, and no other nation gains it. The only change is what court ICANN answers to. You know those people who use the courts to seize domain names and transfer ownership by force? Those are the only ones who stand to lose anything... and their astroturfing is the big reason everyone's so terrified about the USA 'giving up the internet'.

          • Re:Different ideas, indeed (Score:4, Interesting)

            by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) on Sunday October 02, 2016 @04:05PM (#53000689) Homepage Journal

            The only change is what court ICANN answers to.

            Yes, that's precisely what I was saying. It's a huge change, one that could bring additional restrictions on speech.

            Thanks for putting such a fine point on it. :)

            • I'd think fewer. Getting enough UN countries to agree on something to effect change isn't easy - but under US control all it takes to an entire TLD to be disabled is one call to the DOC as has been demonstrated with .iq. (Even though other factors might have been involved, such as the Tech-C having been arrested, it still coincided exactly with the Iraq War.) So the USA have already shown that they will not guarantee freedom of speech for their enemies.

              I'd rather have an internet where TLDs don't get disa

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by fyngyrz ( 762201 )

                As I said, the US is imperfect. But as the old saw goes, and particularly so WRT freedom of speech, it's the worst -- except for all the others.

                I'd rather have an Internet where I can speak about superstition (and religion - but I repeat myself) without being stepped on for "intolerance."

                This is an interesting read. [foreignpolicy.com] Once you click the advertising sludge out of the way, sigh.

                • Still, despite Europe getting worse with regards to press freedom, it's still better on average then the United States (who got a lot worse in that regard after 9/11). So despite the rhethoric employed by foreignpolicy.org, Europe is better at freedom of speech than the United states according to that article's source.

                  Also, again, the United States already have demonstrated a lack of regard for freedom of speech by suppressing the speech of a political enemy. It appears that there is no country or organiz

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The US has issues with copyright, trademarks and parents. Frankly some of its laws are crazy, obviously bought by corporations in a most undemocratic fashion.

          Its freedom of speech protections are very weak in some areas, particularly metadata. In parts of Europe metadata sites are protected, not so in the US.

        • The concern is that in most respects, the US offers one of the wider definitions of freedom of speech. It's not perfect, but it really is better than most.

          That depends on what freedoms you prioritize. The US priority is that the government cannot restrict freedom of speech but turns a complete blind eye to corporations restricting that freedom for employees or for others by suing. While this does not carry the threat of jail lifetime financial ruin is just as effective in silencing people and the power is controlled by entities which the people have zero control over.

          European countries tend to have a more comprehensive view and put restrictions on what sp

          • To sum up what you said: when you restrict government censorship but not corporate censorship, as in the US, the only people with freedom of speech are those who don't fear financial ruin: which is to say the extremely rich and those with nothing to lose.

            It's not surprize that both those subsets have large numbers of members who hold bizarre, even crazy, ideas.

        • But isn't ICANN's power pretty much limited to regulating top-level domains? It's not like Gemany can say "We don't like sexyhitler.ca; ICANN, ban that domain!". That's still something the individual registries control and those are beholden to the countries they operate in. Germany could ask for all of .ca to be banned but that's unlikely to actually happen - especially since UN/ICANN will not give arbitrary veto power to every member country so they couldn't get away with it anyway.

          Note that this exact

      • "I'd rather have a government with a constitution that protects free speech and free expression running parts of the internet like DNS"

        And where do you propose to find such a government?

    • I'm far more concerned about where it's going. Where is it going to live? Under who's jurisdiction will it obey law? Please tell me it's not going to be under the auspices of the UN because we might as well have just handed it to China or Iran!

      So where is it going?

      • Re:What's that smell? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday October 02, 2016 @04:00PM (#53000659) Homepage Journal

        It's fine to ICANN, it says so right in the headline. ICANN is a US corporation, under US law.

        It's not really a big deal. Eventually the root DNS system will have to come under international control of some kind, likely distributed so that no one country can make unilateral decisions.

        But that's not what this is, this is just removing the last bit of direct control that the US government has, which is a good thing. It needs to be put beyond direct political control.

      • We already have so much stuff under ITA, which is UN. So why not ICANN? And it's not the friggin internet, it's just one part of DNS domain.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Who the hell cares, the DNS system is a IP address pointer on your computer, that you control, the references the nick names in a data base to the matched IP address. That match up can be done anywhere, on your computer, at the ISP or at mandated government DNS servers, which you can ignore just by typing the IP address in the address bar. The IP address is the address the powers the internet, the DNS is just a database of nicknames associated with those IP addresses.

        • If I've understood it correctly, the US gov has handed over IANA as well as DNS to ICANN. So ICANN is now responsible for your ISP getting assigned an IP address range which they can assign out to e.g. piratebay http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... [theregister.co.uk]

      • If you read the damn article (I know I know) you would know the whole REASON why this was done was because, if it wasn't done, eventually it WOULD end up under the UN run ITU. The US did not want the UN controlling the root DNS tables, but they also knew they could not keep it to themselves forever either - the rest of the world do NOT look kindly on claims that the US is the only country who can be trusted with it - especially since they clearly cannot as the only country who has EVER use the TLD system fo

  • Backwards (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02, 2016 @01:37PM (#52999931)

    They had argued that the US concession would open the door for authoritarian governments get control of the network

    Rather it has been liberated from the control of an authoritarian government.

    • Re:Backwards (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mikeiver1 ( 1630021 ) on Sunday October 02, 2016 @02:12PM (#53000113)
      Pardon me for trying to understand your stance on this but are you actually going to tell me that the US, who literally invented the internet under grants from DARPA, was suppressing freedom of speech and the exchange of ideas on the internet? IF so I am pretty sure I can't get my head up my ass far enough to ever see things from your perspective. The control of the internet has now been seeded to the likes of Russia and and China, two of the most active suppressors of free speech and the exchanging of ideas on the planet right now. We will not even begin to touch on the middle eastern dictatorships and their bent on internet "freedom" The real problems are soon to come with the active suppression of domains coming down from the top level DNS servers that are now under the control of foreign actors. This opens up the possibility of site redirection and suppression on a scale that has only been seen thus far in places like China, Russia, and the middle eastern dictatorships. The US is not a perfect steward by any stretch of the imagination to be sure but it was still far better than what is coming down the pipe at us now.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by Lisandro ( 799651 )

        It can be argued that yes, they were. The US has a long history of censorship and attempted censorship of the internet: CDA, COPA, DMCA, COPPA, CIPA, DOPA, COICA, SOPA, PIPA, CISPA, the USITC requesting site blockings... i wish i were making those acronyms up.

        • Re:Backwards (Score:4, Informative)

          by Man On Pink Corner ( 1089867 ) on Sunday October 02, 2016 @05:10PM (#53000957)

          OK, so let's take a look at these ominous-sounding acronyms, one by one.

          CDA is the Communications Decency Act [wikipedia.org]. It makes sense to start off with this one because it not only has the most Orwellian name, but it also represents one of the earliest assaults against online freedom of expression by American politicians. In the US, our legislators face no penalties when they pass overtly unconstitutional laws, but the laws themselves still have to survive court challenges. This happened more or less immediately with the CDA, and the result was genuinely ironic. The only significant part of the CDA that survived was Section 230 [wikipedia.org], which is what releases server operators from responsibility for information posted by their users. So the CDA is actually one of the most important pieces of legislation protecting free expression on the Internet.

          COPA Like the problematic parts of the CDA, the Child Online Protection Act was almost immediately struck down, this time in its entirety.

          DMCA Another two-edged sword. Some believe that freedom of expression and copyright laws are mutually exclusive. I'm sympathetic to this point of view myself, but the fact is that our Constitution explicitly authorizes Congress to regulate "intellectual property." Unsurprisingly this is also true of essentially every civilized country on Earth. All of them, in the US's place, would have ended up with a DMCA-like law of their own. The differences is that similar legislation in those countries wouldn't have had to conform to the First Amendment. Much like the CDA, one of the parts of the DMCA that survived court challenges is the "safe harbor" provision that has proven to be vitally important to the growth and maintenance of a more-or-less free Internet. Look what's happening in the EU, for instance, where you're no longer allowed [eff.org] to run an open WiFi access point. The DMCA and CDA are what keep this kind of bullshit from happening in the US.

          COPPA is the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. It doesn't address free speech, unless your idea of free speech is the freedom to collect personal information from children under 13 without their parents' supervision. If that's your idea of free speech, we're done here.

          CIPA, the Children's Internet Protection Act, is problematic from a free-expression standpoint. But it is also strictly limited in scope to schools and libraries that receive government funding. It has no effect on the rights of any private citizens or organizations.

          DOPA ("Deleting Online Predators Act") is one I hadn't heard of. It was introduced in Congress but appears to have made no progress toward passage since 2007. It's not the law, so it's not relevant.

          COICA, "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act," and its successor PIPA, "Protect IP Act" also were shelved after widespread protests.

          SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, was basically an attempt by the content industries to buy a legislative end run around the DMCA's safe harbor provision. Like the DMCA it comes into play only in the context of copyright law. Like PIPA, it failed to pass in the wake of widespread protests.

          CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, doesn't appear to have anything to do with freedom of speech. It "allows for the sharing of Internet traffic information between the US government and technology and manufacturing companies." It wouldn't be affected one way or the other by the ICANN transfer and isn't germane here.

          It's not clear what you mean by "the USITC requesting site blockings." Presumably another case where the right to infringe copyrights collides with the right to free sp

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            Hate speech in Canada is defined in sections 318, 319, and 320 of the criminal code.

            The US has very similar exceptions to their first amendment, except they exist in legal precedent instead of formal law:

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

            • That's the difference between conduct and expression. Unless you figure out a way to burn a cross on someone's lawn via the Internet, Virginia v. Black is not applicable.

  • 53000000 (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by TroII ( 4484479 )

    53000000 GET

  • ...but this is bad how, exactly?

  • There are plenty of networks that are completely owned. I have to confess that I myself, own at least one network.

    "Nobody did. It's a, duh, network."

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday October 02, 2016 @02:36PM (#53000211)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:It's the reporting (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Sunday October 02, 2016 @04:26PM (#53000777)

      I had to explain the same thing to my mom, who was concerned about how we were "handing over control of the internet". I told her that this was sort of like handing control over the entity that assigns unique telephone numbers to people, but it doesn't control the phone lines themselves.

      Besides which, the internet is somewhat resistant to change of *any* sort, as evidenced by the extremely slow adoption of things like IPv6 and DNSSEC, both of which would be very useful, but simple mass inertial keeps adoption rates down. So, any radical changes by these bodies would likely just be ignored not only for ideological reasons, but for practical ones as well.

  • Not a big deal. (Score:3)

    by DatbeDank ( 4580343 ) on Sunday October 02, 2016 @02:40PM (#53000233)
    The US government could easily militarise Icann in an instance if it wants to. Don't think for a second this wouldn't happen if push came to shove. The US still has control over the entity so long as Icann rests inside US borders.

  • The DNS system is not the internet. The Internet works just fine without it- except for those pesky IP4 and IP6 numbers. This is such a smokescreen.

    Everything the internet could be transitioned to a separate US controlled DNS system in the event of emergency. Would it be a shock to the system because everyone uses DNS? Of course. But new root servers could be deployed in short order.

    • The DNS system is not the internet. The Internet works just fine without it- except for those pesky IP4 and IP6 numbers.

      Virtually every user of the internet only knows how to use the internet through DNS. These users will not know how to use the internet with DNS. A huge amount of software has hard programmed DNS values rather than IP addresses. This software will fail without DNS. It is true that DNS is not the internet, but without DNS, you have no internet.

  • The US never "owned" the Internet. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday October 02, 2016 @03:54PM (#53000633)

    The only thing critical contributed by the US was TCP/IP. Sure, for a time the US was custodian of the top-level part of the DNS system, but if they had misbehaved too badly, it would just have been taken away from them forcefully. That would have been rather easy, as the majority of the top-level DNS servers are not located in the US anyways. One level below, the US was never relevant except for some domains. Country-specific domains were always under control of that country. Even .com and the like would have been removed from US control if abused too badly.

    So, no, nothing was really given away, because the US never had real power over the Internet.

  • "they had argued that the US concession would open the door for authoritarian governments get control of the network of networks"

    Someone needs to explain to the US that they already have an authoritarian government.

    Entrenched class system with little social mobility, pervasive surveillance of the entire country, secret prisons, gerrymandered political system...

    When the US orders other nations SWAT teams to raid the homes of people who have never been to the US and have them extradited because of alleged the

  • Reading all the comments and seeing that the vast majority of people posting have absolutely no clue how the DNS works makes me wonder if there are still nerds here.

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