EU says internet could fall apart (Guardian Unlimited Technology)

[Wordie]

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,16559,1589967,00.html
<snip>
EU says internet could fall apart

· Developing countries demand share of control
· US says urge to censor underlies calls for reform

Richard Wray
Wednesday October 12, 2005
The Guardian

A battle has erupted over who governs the internet, with America demanding to maintain a key role in the network it helped create and other countries demanding more control.

The European commission is warning that if a deal cannot be reached at a meeting in Tunisia next month the internet will split apart.

At issue is the role of the US government in overseeing the internet's address structure, called the domain name system (DNS), which enables communication between the world's computers. It is managed by the California-based, not-for-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) under contract to the US department of commerce.

A meeting of officials in Geneva last month was meant to formulate a way of sharing internet governance which politicians could unveil at the UN-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis on November 16-18. A European Union plan that goes a long way to meeting the demands of developing countries to make the governance more open collapsed in the face of US opposition.

[Dogmudgeon]

1. I didn't think the Internet was really centralizable

I also thought that ICANN was simply providing a name disambiguation service.

Maybe this is good. Let the end user disambiguate the names, and let a decentralized system do the work.

Of course, maybe I'm wrong ...

--p!

[Solo_in_MD]

2. See prior thread

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=163772&mesg_id=163772>

about this

[Wordie]

6. Here are the options proposed by the UN

<snip>
The UN's WGIG has suggested four alternatives:

* Option One - create a UN body known as the Global Internet Council that draws its members from governments and "other stakeholders" and takes over the US oversight role of Icann.

* Option Two - no changes apart from strengthening Icann's Governmental Advisory Committee to become a forum for official debate on net issues.

* Option Three - relegate Icann to a narrow technical role and set up an International Internet Council that sits outside the UN. US loses oversight of Icann

* Option Four - create three new bodies. One to take over from Icann and look after the net's addressing system. One to be a debating chamber for governments, businesses and the public; and one to co-ordinate work on "internet-related public policy issues".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4296646.stm

[LatinoSocialist]

18. I like

options 1, 3, and 4. Those options have substantive reform in mind, with the U.S. losing control (CRUCIAL ISSUE). Option 2 leaves room for the U.S. to still control the Net, as the advisory committee wouldn't have any power beyond "advising".

I don't care which option is implemented, as long as the U.S. doesn't dictate or control the Internet.

[Wordie]

24. but couldn't it turn out like globalization? where huge mega-corps control

EVERYTHING. I'd rather have it stay under US control, thank you very much, if that is the ultimate result of internationalizing it.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. ...internet could fall apart....

Sounds good to me. The Chinese spam gangs and Eastern European and Russian identity thieves can have an Internet all to themselves, and we can have the rest. Where's the problem?

[lonestarnot]

4. Yeah... maybe less identity theft?

[Wordie]

5. Well, yeah, there's that. But the internet also is a way to travel the

world without leaving your own home. I hope that isn't lost.

[Karmageddon]

7. where would DU be without the internets? We'd be stuck with the MSM.

[jsamuel]

8. Yeah and all the people in NO were murderers and rapers

:sarcasm:

[FarrenH]

9. Check this out

http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/index.lasso

According to Spamhaus, the majority of the worlds spam originates in the USA, so "Chinese Spam Gangs" is more than a little unfair

[mahatmakanejeeves]

12. Keep clicking

At http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/index.lasso

click on TOP 10 Spammers

Alan Ralsky ... Hosts sites mostly in China to evade US law.

Leo Kuvayev / BadCow ... Russian/American spammer.

Jeffrey Peters - JTel / CPU Solutions ... behind a fake Russian "ISP"

Alexey Panov - ckync.com ... Russian

Pavka / Artofit ... A Russian gang who's been spamming for years.

Ruslan Ibragimov / send-safe.com ... Runs a CGI mailer on machines in Russia.

Granted, quite a few were in the US, including Robert Soloway of Newport Internet Marketing, who was recently on the losing side of a judgment in Oklahoma.

Robert Braver wins big against Soloway in court

Further supporting your assertion is this:

Worst Countries

1. United States
2. China
3. South Korea
4. Russia
5. Taiwan
....

So, I must concede that you are correct: the good ol' U. S. of A. is still number one. Nonetheless, I got hammered over the summer by spam sent from the Chinese Railway System's servers. That finally got shut down.

For more on Soloway, and an excellent Usenet anti-spam newsgroup, mosey on over to news.admin.net-abuse.email

Thanks for writing.

Member, the lumber cartel. (TINLC)

[newyawker99]

19. Hi FarrenH!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[FarrenH]

21. Thanks for the welcome

I've lurked here for quite a while. I'm South African but my interest in US politics has grown over the last five years, sadly because of the unbelievably bad government of George W and his horrible influence on the world.

[Seansky]

10. wouldn't it just be it that the Internet splits apart under B? Uniter my

a....

Man, this administration is taking us back to the 1900s...There isn't way on H**l that the Internet will be permanently as it is...It is an evolving, globably design, communication platform and has grown beyond anyone's wildest dream...It belongs to eveyone now...

[Wordie]

11. Well, I'm just not certain as I read this more carefully.

it appears that the administration is trying to PREVENT censorship of the internet. At least that's what they say, and given the propensity of many governments around the world to wish to stifle free speech and human rights, maybe they've gotten this one right.

Of course, I am just not a truly techie type, so maybe I've misread this. I just am not certain about this one. I would love to hear from the more technologically literate DUers who can explain this one.

[bemildred]

13. It's about control of the name space.

The furriners want to decentralize control of the name space,
the US wants to keep it in silicon valley. I don't really see
how it would affect issues of censorship much, in the sense that
I don't see how China, say, is not in control of it's delegated
namespace now, so it would get no NEW ability to control content
from this change. What it would get is lots more names, so to
speak, and a lot more latitude to arrange things to suit itself.

Without cooperation there is a possibility of a loss of coherence
in the global namespace, and of fragmentation of the internet.

[Wordie]

14. So what is the advantage to the U.S. to keep it in Silicon Valley? And,

which of the four options mentioned by the U.N. is best, if any?

As I have some trepidation about things we have given away in the name of globalization, I am worried about this one too. What really are the plusses and minuses?

[bemildred]

15. That would be only my opinion, but ...

I think ICANN shoud continue and remain in control,
it's really a very technical issue, and should not be
put at the disposal of politicians of any stripe.

That said, I think a widening of the advisory organization
is a good idea, so I like the EU approach.

As for what advantage the US gets, I think it's mainly
a status kind of thing, hegemony, being at the center,
reminding everyone that we invented it and that sort of
thing.

[LatinoSocialist]

17. Let the U.N. control it.

Sorry, but I've lost all trust in the U.S. taking care of international institutions and technologies on its own. Let the U.N. take it over, or form an international body with equal membership for all nations to oversee the Internet. Put its headquarters in Norway or Sweden, and nobody in the world will complain.

The U.S. has no legitimate claim to full control of the Internet. It belongs to all the world now.

And the U.S. has only itself to blame. I bet if they weren't such an empire, most of the world wouldn't be making such an issue about their control of the DNS servers. They reaped what they sowed.

[Wordie]

23. but are we really doing some specific objectionable thing? or is it just

the IDEA of the US being in control?

[LatinoSocialist]

16. so, what's the worst that could happen

that we'd have to get used to a differnet protocol for Europe? Big deal. I'm for the world having control of the Net, and if it means a split, so be it.

If from now I got to type httpUSA:// and http:EU:// to access different addresses, I'll do it.

[fshrink]

20. Would even be better.

Less easily controllable.

[FarrenH]

22. The worst that could happen

Countries that increasingly use the Internet to actually run their governments and conduct a lot of business have a valid concern. Messing with the root servers could have severe economic implications. If the routing for ".za" was redirected, say, it would have a severe effect on South Africa, even though we only have around 3.5 million users. Economically active As far-fetched as the politically motivated rerouting of name spaces sounds (and I think it is far-fetched) this is, I think, what makes some people nervous about the fact that the US government has retained its special role in ICANN, especially foes of the US.

On the other hand any International body premised on political control of what is essentially a highly technical responsibility would be wrong, wrong, wrong. A purely technical commitee charged with facilitating discussions on standards, with strict parameters that protect neutrality, keep the discussion around technical improvements (like, say, address space issues) and actually prevent any kind of political interference would be OK. I think this is what some parties are suggesting when they speak of formulating international laws to deal with it.

Its also important to this discussion to understand that IP addressing is not really at risk, as the top "tier" of IP address routing is distributed among peer organisations around the world. For anyone who has a fuzzy grasp of how it all works, host names like "democraticunderground.com" actually resolve to numeric addresses like 216.158.28.196, which you could enter in your address bar and still get here even if the DNS routing was screwed up.

[Wordie]

25. I appreciate your thoughts, but I wonder if it is possible to keep

politics out of it. Politics, in one way or another, seems to be a part of EVERYTHING. Although your idea of a technical committee, with a technical focus, does seem to make a lot of sense.