US Keeps Control of the Internet

Adam Schumacher writes "As a result of a a deal reached late Tuesday, the US and ICANN will maintain control over the Internet's core systems. A new body will be created to provide international oversight, which will, of course, have no binding authority."

Yeah but...

[GrendelT]

This is great and all, but who's to say the argument won't spring up in another 3 to 4 years. The only reason ICANN actually has authority is because they say who has control of the root servers. If an international body setup their own root servers and decided they would all use them, then only the US would have control of the current roots. Then, if you wanted your website to look the same to the rest of the world as it does to the US, you would have to deal with both governing bodies (US and world). It could be a headache, and the only thing keeping the ICANN in control is that the majority of the world currently lets them be in control. It can be snatched away relatively easily.

Re:The Minutes Of The Meeting

[Anonymous Coward]

"the unelected EU parliament"

Of all the EU institutions you picked the only ELECTED one to call it unelected. It's the COMISSION that is unelected.
Not that it makes it much better but you still gotta be accurate.

The EU parliament is directly elected...

[blorg]

...perhaps you meant the commission? [wikipedia.org]

Re:We paid for it....

[samjam]

What is this "it" that _you_ paid for?

Lets face it, most of the internet that exists was paid for by private companies with their own money, replenished by re-selling use of "it".

I've owned and run my own ISP which puts me a legup over you and I'm not so vain as to say that any of "it" belongs to me apart from the bit of "it" that is inside my house. It is an INTER-net.

Sam

The headline should read....

[tpgp]

The headline should read:
Private Sector will probably retain control of the Internet.

From the TFA:

the compromise's ultimate decision is that leadership of the Internet, and its future direction, will remain in the hands of the private sector, although some critics contend that the U.S. government, which oversees ICANN, if only nominally, could still flex its muscle in future decisions.

And it hasn't even been ratified....this is just a preliminary decision.

Have a read of this the register article [theregister.co.uk] about the Pakistani Ambassador who made this possible.

Re:The Minutes Of The Meeting

[mdecarle]

The commission gets elected by the parliament. See also: the problems Barroso had when he proposed that italian guy in his commission. The European institutions are no different than any other democratic government. The only problem is that is parliament opposes one memeber of the commission, it has to oppose the whole of it.

Do the US vote who gets to be Secretary of State? Defence? DHS ? Didn't think so.

Get our of your hole

[brunes69]

... and stop being so biased.

If you really think that Europe is for some reason "less free" than the US, than I would suggest you take a look at the http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15333 [worldpress.org]"> Worldwide Press Freedom Index, which lists it in a solid 44th place on the index of freedom of the press, which is mainly what you are talking about when you discuss speech on the Internet, since it is a form of press.

The US has really dipped a lot in this lately (20 places in the past year).

Re:and who better than the US...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're lying. In germany you can discuss nazi history all you want. In fact I doubt that there is another country that discusses its own history as much as germany. You can buy nazi memorabilia and use them as a teaching aid or for art purposes. In fact there's even a turq guy (forgot his name) touring through germany reading "Mein Kampf" by Hitler.

Now in the US, how many torrent trackers were forced to shutdown? Free speech my ass.

Re:A monopoly is a monopoly

[arevos]

DNS resolves in a hierarchical structure, and therefore there are root DNS servers that sit at the top of the tree. This has to be the case in order to guarentee DNS entries are consistant. Without a central authority, how would you decide who gets a certain domain name?

Given this, a monopoly is a necessary evil. The question is who controls this monopoly. Currently ICANN, a private US company oversees this. ICANN has its faults; more public involvement would be nice, less kissing up to large multinationals wouldn't go amiss either. However, ICANN has not screwed up too badly, and the US doesn't interfere with ICANN too often.

The alternative to ICANN is a group created by a bureaocracy of counties that all want a piece of the pie. Many people are leery of such an idea, as there's a strong possibility that this will turn out to be worse than ICANN.

Better the devil you know, in other words.

Re:"Latin languages"

[Zarhan]

Domain names can be outside latin alphabet:

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3491.txt [rfc-editor.org]

And the encoding is presented in http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3492.txt [rfc-editor.org] and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode [wikipedia.org]

Re:The Minutes Of The Meeting

[flyinwhitey]

An example of European thinking- say something that is widely believed to be true, but is in fact completely wrong.

From the official website of the communist party in the US

"Was the CPUSA Ever Banned by the U.S. Government?

The answer is both yes and no. The CP was never banned as a political party in name by the US government. However, the CP has had its leaders sent to prison for long terms for teaching Marxism-Leninism, has been declared illegal in more than a few states, and has been the target of numerous forms of official and unofficial government repression."

Individual states made it illegal, and those laws were unconstitutional. Stop making crap up.

Re:The Minutes Of The Meeting

[Miros]

In general, the DNS system really benefits from its scale, like the phone system. The bigger it is, and the more people use it, the better, because there will be less loss of welfare due to simple confusion. Even if another country set up their own DNS root which placed lets say all the .coms under .com.us, without some really fancy tricks, virtual hosting on the .coms would be broken for everyone in that country. (just an example)

Re:Yeah but...

[Anonymous Coward]

The potential power that comes from running the internet is getting greater.

The US doesn't run the internet, no one does. The many, many individual owners of fiber optic cable & routers around the world run their own little individual piece of the internet.

ICANN, being located in the US, is subject to US law. ICANN controls the root zone DNS file. The root zone DNS file says who is the authority for a given top-level domain name. The worst that ICANN could do is change who is authoritative for a top-level domain name.

For example, .ca (Canada) is delegated to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority who run their own affairs as they see fit (and do a lousy, overpriced job, in my opinion. Try register a .ca name, make some changes, then transfer it to someone else, then do the same thing with .com. You'll see what I mean.).

ICANN could take away .ca from CIRA and allow some other entity to be authoritative for .ca domain names. Given how rapidly the geek community reacted to Verisign's power grab with .com, it would be easy to manually configure DNS to ignore ICANN and still use CIRA as the authoritative DNS for .ca.

Contrary to popular belief, very little on the internet requires the use of DNS - it's just much more convenient to remember domain names instead of IP addresses.

This is on the front page of The Independent too

[tezza]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_techno logy/article327341.ece [independent.co.uk]

For all the people on this post saying "The UN" or "The World" wants this, that is not true.

Much of the rest of the world objects to that but the loudest opponents are countries with a history of censorship and repression, such as China and Iran.

I'm an Australian, living in London. I find the idea of the UN running this very scary. An indepedent american body is far preferable.

The UN have a very chequered history. Seldom do they stand up for the Big Issues. Take as an example the decision to withdraw UN troops from Sinai in 1967 on the wishes of Assad. Take whatever view of the subsequent war you want, but the UN caved in to the demand to remove peacekeepers.

Re:Source of statistics

[klang]

combining your link with the cia fact book

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ranko rder/2119rank.html [cia.gov]
http://www.whois.sc/internet-statistics/country-ip -counts.html [whois.sc]

we get that USA uses 4.5, UK 4.2, Japan 1.1 and China uses 0.0555 ip-adresses per capita, so they are not really the problem ..

Swaziland has 18682461 ip-adresses and a population of 1138227 which is 16.4 per capita..
Uruguay has 42701418 ip-adresses and a population of 3415920 which is 12.5 per capita..
.. I don't understand .. maybe they've never heard about LAN's? (or something is seriously wrong with the ip address space)

Re:I'm sure the US will listen to everyone else...

[stupidfoo]

I don't really understand why the American public looks down at the UN.

Most Americans don't like the idea of a huge corrupt overpowered beauracracy that seems to do nothing but hold month long conferences at 5 star hotels to discuss the idea of having a conference to set the guidelines for a meeting.

The UN is a cesspool of ineptitude and it, at the very least, needs an enema of biblical proportions.

Or maybe we find it curious as to why countries like Libya should be appointed to head the UN Human Rights commission? Or why the only UN employee that has been fired for the Oil for Food scandal was just rehired so he could receive his full retirement benefits [upi.com]! That poor corrupt bastard was going to have to get a new job but now he can retire and live comfortably with money paid by you and me.

Or how the wonderful former head of the U.N. oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, had a mysterious $160,000 deposit into one of his accounts. When asked where it came from, he stated his aunt had just given it to him as a gift. But before they could ask the aunt in question, she miraculously fell down an elevator shaft [nysun.com]. I mean, for fucks sake, that's a scene straight out of a f'en movie.

They were against the use of force without convincing evidence. Turns out they were right.

About the WMDs? Perhaps, yes.

Over the years it has done a great job in many places.

Where and when? Korea? That war is still going on and you've got the worlds most insane dictator running half of it. Sending strongly worded letters don't count, nor does trying to pass resolutions condemning Israel. ...in a bid to limit Saddam's power, and save hundreds of thousands of innocent lives

Yes, they tried to, and failed. Saddam made billions during that time period in kickbacks and illegal oil deals. The only thing the sanctions hurt were the Iraqi people.

It's not perfect, of course, but it's always ready to take on the dirty jobs that no one else wants.

What would those be exactly? I think you're confusing the UN with NATO and/or the US.

SecDef does have power over the military

[tomcres]

You're absolutely wrong. The first thing we learned in Army basic training was our chain of command. Guess who was right up there in it? A certain guy named "Rumsfeld"... wonder who he could be!

Re:SecDef does have power over the military

[Shakrai]

You're absolutely wrong. The first thing we learned in Army basic training was our chain of command. Guess who was right up there in it? A certain guy named "Rumsfeld"... wonder who he could be!

Yes, he is in the chain of command. He can relay orders from POTUS to the armed forces. But he can not legally issue those orders himself. I recall reading on 9/11 that both Rumsfeld and Cheney tried to give the military the authority to shoot down suspected hijacked flights before Bush was able to do so. Neither one of them had the authority to issue this order and the military was under no obligation to follow it. Of course one would hope that in a scenario like 9/11 that the Generals would take some initiative and issue such an order themselves -- but it doesn't change the fact that neither SecDec nor VPOTUS could legally issue such an order.

Secretary of Defense

[ExMember]

The Secretary of Defense has all the power the President has delegated to him. He is in the chain of command directly below the Commander-in-Chief.

Re:THBBBPPPPPP!!!!

[terrymr]

These are not single hosts ... here for example is f.root-servers.net :

AKL1 Auckland, New Zealand IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
AMS1 Amsterdam, The Netherlands IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
BCN1 Barcelona, Spain IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
BNE1 Brisbane, Australia IPv4 Local Node
CDG1 Paris, France IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
CGK1 Jakarta, Indonesia IPv4 Local Node
DXB1 Dubai, UAE IPv4 Local Node
GRU1 São Paulo, Brazil IPv4 Local Node
HKG1 Hong Kong, China IPv4 Local Node
JNB1 Johannesburg, South Africa IPv4 Local Node
KIX1 Osaka, Japan IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
LAX1 Los Angeles, CA, USA IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
LCY1 London, UK IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
LIS1 Lisbon, Portugal IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
LGA1 New York, NY, USA IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
MAA1 Chennai, India IPv4 Local Node
MAD1 Madrid, Spain IPv4 Local Node
MTY1 Monterrey, Mexico IPv4 Local Node
MUC1 Munich, Germany IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
NBO1 Nairobi, Kenya IPv4 Local Node
PAO1 Palo Alto, CA, USA IPv4 and IPv6 Global Node
PEK1 Beijing, China IPv4 Local Node
PRG1 Prague, Czech Republic IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
ROM1 Rome, Italy IPv4 Local Node
SEL1 Seoul, Korea IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
SFO2 San Francisco, CA, USA IPv4 and IPv6 Global Node
SIN1 Singapore IPv4 Local Node
SJC1 San Jose, CA, USA IPv4 Local Node
SVO1 Moscow, Russia IPv4 Local Node
TLV1 Tel Aviv, Israel IPv4 Local Node
TPE1 Taipei, Taiwan IPv4 Local Node
YOW1 Ottawa, ON, Canada IPv4 and IPv6 Local Node
YYZ1 Toronto, ON, Canada IPv4 Local Node

Re:Get our of your hole

[Guysmiley777]

No, I think Russia has the U.S. beat hands down for combat casualties. 7 to 8 MILLION Russian soldiers died. Of course their combat strategies sometimes resembled "jam enemy tank treads with bodies", but that is beside the point. And yes Virginia, the Commie Pinko Russkies were on the Allied side (gasp) against Herr Hitler and friends.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Get our of your hole

[anaesthetica]

According to the Freedom House Press Freedom rankings [freedomhouse.org] [PDF file], the U.S. is tied for 24th. It did drop about nine ranks since last year's survey [freedomhouse.org] [PDF file] (from 15 to 24), but that's due to a raw score drop of only two points (from 15 to 17).

Sorry, the gp poster is correct...

[sean.peters]

While there are a few sorts of orders that are reserved to the President, the SecDef can, in fact, order the military to just about anything, without having to so much as notify the President after the fact. If you doubt this, I can send you about a million DoD Instructions signed by... not even Rumsfeld. Subcabinet officials sign them pretty routinely.

I'm a commander in the Naval Reserve, and hence, a lot lower on the totem pole than any of the bigwigs mentioned here. And yet, when I was assigned to a ship (not so many years ago), I had weapons release authority - meaning I could shoot at any targets I felt were a threat to the ship. Didn't even have to ask the captain.

The idea that no one but the President can order the military to do anything is ridiculous. He'd never sleep. The SecDef is part of the National Command Authority, and can (and does) direct the military to do things all the time.

Sean

Re:Get our of your hole

[Maestro4k]

Last time I checked you were not allowed to burn the US Flag, though.

This has never been true, at least not since the US became the US so unless you're over 300 years old you're just vastly misinformed. Don't believe me, check Google [google.com] as always. To ban burning the US flag would require a constitutional amendment. While there are those that support it there are plenty that don't.

I can burn any flag I like.

My point is that Europe and US are largely similarly free. The difference is in the details.

The only point you've made is you're very misinformed about US freedoms. I'm not saying you're right or wrong, but you need to get your facts straight or no one's going to give your argument any credence (with good reason.)

Re:The Minutes Of The Meeting

[crotherm]

You have the .xxx backwards - it was actually a good idea, shot down by the US government because it offended their christian ethics. ICANN could have stood up for its independence - instead it just confirmed it was little more than a department of the US government.

It seems that the good folks at IETF also think it was a bad idea. RFC3675 [ietf.org]

Re:Get our of your hole

[Shakrai]

You can say anything, except you can't swear. And obscenity (defined by the local community standards) is also illegal

There the fuck did you hear that I can't swear in public? That's fucking bullshit. Complete fucking nonsense.

And with that point ;) made, seriously, where did you hear that? I can swear in any public place in the United States. It doesn't mean that people will listen to what I have to say or take me seriously but I can swear all I want. In a private setting (resturant, private home, etc.) the owners could make me leave -- but that's about it.

You could use a picture of a woman in chains being whipped to symbolize the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia and that would be protected under free speech laws. The same picture being used to promote your pornography store probably would not. Political speech is protected.

And you can't expose your breasts in public

Says who? In New York State the Court of Appeals specifically ruled that women are allowed to expose their breasts in any place that a man can (the beach comes to mind). Other states have made similar rulings. It's likewise legal across all of Canada if I recall correctly.

Freedom of speech/expression in the USA is a myth and you know it. So stop lying about it.

Do you hate us so much that you can't even listen to a reasonable argument?