U.S. wants to keep Internet governance control

[lovuian]

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3375011

We will not agree to the U.N. taking over the management of the Internet," said Ambassador David Gross, the U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy at the State Department. "Some countries want that. We think that's unacceptable."

Many countries, particularly developing ones, have become increasingly concerned about the U.S. control, which stems from the country's role in creating the Internet as a Pentagon project and funding much of its early development.

Gross was in Geneva for the last preparatory meeting ahead of November's U.N. World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia.

Some negotiators from other countries said there was a growing sense that a compromise had to be reached and that no single country ought to be the ultimate authority over such a vital part of the global economy.

But Gross said that while progress was being made on a number of issues necessary for producing a finalized text for Tunis, the question of Internet governance remained contentious.

more...

This issue is heating up!!!

[bemildred]

1. Nobody controls the internet. (Free clue.) nt

[rodeodance]

2. well, technically the US does (at the moment)--there have been several

articles about this the last few weeks.

[bemildred]

3. Please post so I can refute.

But seriously, I believe you are talking about the
DNS root servers, and while we have "control" of them
now, we will be replaced if we act stupid about it,
it's easy to do.

But anyway, DNS is a name to address translation service,
it is not "the Internet".

[rodeodance]

4. guess I was referring to some stories from the UN--there have been

articles here and else where but i have not saved them.

One of the articles talked of the EU have there own Internet--then we would really have 'internets'

[Maple]

5. Welcome to Internet 2

http://www.internet2.edu/

[bemildred]

6. It's possible. There is a dispute.

There are always people that want to control things,
that gives you power and money, but if you isolate yourself,
then well, you're isolated, and in the end a loser, since
the power comes from access to information in the first
place. It sucks to be a control freak.

[sweetheart]

7. Yes and the new battle is to keep information "off" the internet

The new republican approach is to disenfranchise the internet, that it
not be seen as mainstream, and rather than as a global common, the
internet can be relegated to the zone of 8 track tapes... or so they think.

[bemildred]

8. Yep. Can't exploit knowledge monopolies if you don't have one.

Gotta keep those pernicious ideas out of circulation.
But I think they are fucked, the internet has already
screwed untold numbers of middle men and knowledge
monopolists, and I think politicians and bureaucrats
very much fall in the same category. But it will be
a duel to the death, and it's hard to be sure. The
thing that persuades me, as I said, is that a censored
internet is an inferior product, and in the end the
market will rule. You can control it, but at the expense
of becoming uncompetitive. It's driving the Chinese
nuts right now, and that's a very good situation to
watch if you want to know how its going to come out.

[Thaddeus]

11. Actually...

I think you have a pretty market centric view of the internet. The market will not decide. Explicit policies like common carriage laws (and the lack thereof) will determine who gets to deliver what at what price to whom. Right now we have a duopoly situation between big cable and telcos. Further, intellectual property law, also dominate4d by big corporations, has enormous control over the what we can see and hear on the internet. The internet is not as free as you would make it out to be.

And those who control the DNS root server (meaning ICANN and the Department of Commerce), have a fair amount of power as to who gets what top level domain name, the location of the root servers, etc. It's not an inequity that makes my blood boil like, say, the IMF, but nor is it trivial. Symbolically, it has enormous significance. Why should the U.S. control the root structure of such a global medium?

[bemildred]

13. You mistake me Sir.

I am merely saying what you say in post #9, using different jargon.
You speak of the domestic situation and I speak of the global one.

I consider the domestic situation to be badly distorted by an
obsession with "profit", never mind that "profit" is nothing but
bits on a magnetic medium these days.

I always find people who question Darwin but think the "free market"
rules amusing. Selection is selection.

Inferior solutions tend to be weeded out. If you do a crappy job
you must expect that alternatives will be considered. And the
technology is well understood now. The internet has tremendous
power, things will emerge that we do not understand yet, and those
that do not embrace it will be left behind.

[Bassic]

20. Heh, they'll need luck on that one.

The E.U. is not going to let something like this happen. At the very worse they'll just make up their own D.N.S.

They like breaking U.S. monopolys, they're even working on an alternative to the G.P.S. system called Gallileo (I think).

[hunter]

9. Jon Postel, RIP

In his memory I bought my first internet domain just a few days after his death. I loved the guy from afar, even when he was a prick.



http://www.postel.org/remembrances

I well remember this:

Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 22:31:13 -0800 (PST)
From: Jon Postel <[e-mail]>
Subject: root zone transfer verification completed
Cc: [e-mail], [e-mail]


Hello.

The root zone transfer verification test has been completed.

Please return to the previous method of obtaining the root zone
information from the A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET machine (located at NSI).

This applies to the root zone only. If you provide secondary service
for any other zones, including TLD zones, you should continue to
obtain those zones in the way and from the sources you have been.

- --jon.


Jon Postel
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
c/o USC - ISI, Suite 1001
4676 Admiralty Way
Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6695

You can probably count on your fingers the number of federal politicians and non-military policy wonks who actually know what the internet is and how it works. David Gross is not one of them.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/46292.htm

"... management of the Internet" is based entirely on the trustworthiness of the managers. If the managers of the network, be they the United States or the United Nations, are not trustworty then all people who are truly free will shop elsewhere.

This scares the shit out of people who do not want you to be free.

[Massacure]

10. The Internet cannot be effectively regulated.

[Thaddeus]

12. Actually the internet is very much regulated

IP laws, bandwidth, domain name system, rate structures, common carriage laws, spectrum allocation for broadband wireless internet, etc.

[VegasWolf]

14. Actually not ...

The items you quote, with the exception of DNR, all are independent of the internet proper. IP laws relate to any communications medium
and they are thwarted constantly by small servers sitting in Korea and Japan. Air wave radio frequencies bandwith are ruled by the FCC to prevent overlap. Carrier costs are business driven and country specific. The internet, a set of protocols based on UDP, TCP,FTP and IIOP and the higher protocols based recursively on those technologies are world wide standards. The internet technology is in its mere infancy and is changing constantly, no one will control it in the sense your are proposing.

[bemildred]

16. Not to disagree, but

The core is IP, the glue that makes it all work,
that it is all built on, the thing that scales up
forever. Everything else is frosting IMHO.

[VegasWolf]

17. Elaborate on IP. You are not referring to that little four part integer

identifier? As a Computer Scientist of 30 years, the internet and its protocols are a little more complicated than you are suggesting.

[bemildred]

18. Roughly the packet routing and transmission layer:

1.1. Motivation

The Internet Protocol is designed for use in interconnected systems of
packet-switched computer communication networks. Such a system has
been called a "catenet" <1>. The internet protocol provides for
transmitting blocks of data called datagrams from sources to
destinations, where sources and destinations are hosts identified by
fixed length addresses. The internet protocol also provides for
fragmentation and reassembly of long datagrams, if necessary, for
transmission through "small packet" networks.

1.2. Scope

The internet protocol is specifically limited in scope to provide the
functions necessary to deliver a package of bits (an internet
datagram) from a source to a destination over an interconnected system
of networks. There are no mechanisms to promote data reliability,
flow control, sequencing, or other services commonly found in
host-to-host protocols.

1.3. Interfaces

This protocol is called on by host-to-host protocols in an internet
environment. This protocol calls on local network protocols to carry

the internet datagram to the next gateway or destination host.

For example, a TCP module would call on the internet module to take a
TCP segment (including the TCP header and user data) as the data
portion of an internet datagram. The TCP module would provide the
addresses and other parameters in the internet header to the internet
module as arguments of the call. The internet module would then
create an internet datagram and call on the local network interface to
transmit the internet datagram.

In the ARPANET case, for example, the internet module would call on a
local net module which would add the 1822 leader <2> to the internet
datagram creating an ARPANET message to transmit to the IMP. The
ARPANET address would be derived from the internet address by the
local network interface and would be the address of some host in the
ARPANET, that host might be a gateway to other networks.

1.4. Operation

The internet protocol implements two basic functions: addressing and
fragmentation.

The internet modules use the addresses carried in the internet header
to transmit the internet datagram toward their destinations. The
selection of a path for transmission is called routing.

http://www.networksorcery.com/enp/ien/ien123.txt

The important points are three:

1. It embodies the mechanism by which bits get from one place to
another, everything else rides on that.

2. It is "unreliable", it guarantees only to make a "best effort"
attempt to deliver your bits.

3. It scales arbitrarily, and distributes arbitrarily, which is
what makes a "world wide web" possible. No centralized, "reliable"
architecture can do that. Which means that way back when the guys
that designed it got it exactly right, they saw clearly and well.
It is one of the finest bits of computing design I know of, and
almost nobody is aware of it.

[VegasWolf]

19. Good, now that you are digging deeper you are now discussing the protocols

that I mentioned. So, I am at a loss to know what you are disagreeing with my statement. In addition, I am sure you know that the low level packet switching protocols that you mention are just the base of the pyramid with HTTP, VoIP and all the others riding on top. So when you say that IP forms the base of the internet, it is like saying TV forms the base of TV. I am at a loss as to the substance of your disagreement with me.

[bemildred]

21. "Not to disagree, but"

I am not disagreeing, I am quibbling with the statement about
the protocols the Internet is based on.

[VegasWolf]

25. And you disagree with ...

IIOP, FTP, UDP, and TCP ( the ones I mentioned ) as base level communication protocols which support the interet?? You proposal would be ...?

[bemildred]

27. IP. nt

[VegasWolf]

28. Yes, and TV is TV...

Do you have a technical position? Point me to a standards body and technical document, then we can discuss it.

[bemildred]

29. Are you looking for a job? nt

[VegasWolf]

30. Thanks! No I am independently wealthy fortunately! nt

[bemildred]

31. Discuss what? nt

[VegasWolf]

32. What particular standard you think "IP" is.

We may be discussing something similar but I am speaking at a different level. If you can point me to a particular standards body and document, then we will have a concrete starting point.

[bemildred]

33. IP is an RFC. I gave you a link in post #18. nt

[VegasWolf]

35. That is a DARPA RFC to standardize the various internet protocols in much

the same way DARPA did with NIST and relational database technology. The protocols that I mentioned are the underlying protocols that DARPA would like to standardize and are in fact described in the DARPA RFC. I am just describing things at a much lower level than you are. BTW, the DARPA RFC only applies to corporations wanting to do business with the US Government. The world wide web is way ahead of this common denominator proposal.

[bemildred]

36. It's been a pleasure talking to you, Sir. nt

[VegasWolf]

37. Thanks! and you too Sir!!

:toast:

[hunter]

22. Really?

IP laws - how many kids are illegally downloading intelllectual property today and getting away with it?

bandwidth - if I hand you some CD I burned, what is the bandwidth of that transaction?

domain name system - am I required by law to use anyone's nameserver?

rate structures and common carriage laws - currently a mess. The foundation of our laws is still based on obsolete telephone switching and cable television technologies. In the bigger picture, if I send out twenty CD's a day via UPS, what is the bandwidth of that connection?

spectrum allocation - wireless internet escaped from the lab and into the wild largeley before anyone got around to regulating it. I can't see how regulators could put it back into the box, except by draconian measures such as large scale jamming or seizure of existing wireless equipment. The current world record for unamplified wireless networking is 125 miles. ( http://www.wifi-shootout.com ) Do you think we should arrest these people?

I think what people forget in all these discussions is that the internet, or any network at all, is based on procedures that people create out of thin air in their own minds.

To regulate the internet you would have to make general purpose computers illegal and put people who write unauthorized networking protocols in jail.

I've had access to the internet since 1979. Until maybe 1992 access to the internet by the general public was severely limited, and for that reason networks like fidonet and bitnet were developed.

If our government restricts internet access in some way, then people will most certainly create alternative networks. One assumes we are still a free and democratic republic, and that the Secret Service is not going to bust down my door and take away my computer just because I speak out against the actions of my own government.

[PATRICK]

15. Gore, in spite of naivete,

was right up to a point. The spook intel forming a world wide "internet was an intriguing realization of a long ago choice of divergent paths for
intelligence operations. The Pentagon probably did not realize the consequences nor was it in any way capable of handling the opportunity. probably itt was convinced by a lot of wishful thinking, arrogance and ignorance of the civilian world.

Stalin set the secret dirty war model of espionage. The CIA chose to out match them in kind. The other alternative was to get all thing out into the light. A subtext of that, and one that informed their final decision, was the need to control the massive direction of that flow in "our" interests. I am reading that into the historian's record since to attribute entirely open altruistic motives to people willing to use Nazi thugs as murderous agents is less than unlikely.

Corporate and MSM forays into the net have been overwhelmed by the truth and the little guys. The idea with controlling the direction is that you can't shut out the truth as one of the methods. There is a horrible disconnect and it is not only with reality but with the utter madness of trying to steer the world into a fantasy that benefits a miserably deceitful, incompetent and fundamentally evil minority of power freaks.

Like any good Democrat Gore say the optimistic and very very real benefits of uniting the peoples of the world in an information network.
Like any good democrat he had some cockeyed confidence that steering the world toward progress and democracy was also possible and good. he probably, no certainly, had no idea at the war for the world's soul the corporate dark side was willing to make, especially when they saw things slipping away into a new future- without them.

[bemildred]

23. U.S. Won't Give Up Control of Internet to U.N., Official Says

LA Times version today.

A stalemate over who should serve as the principal traffic cops for Internet routing and addressing could derail the summit, which aims to ensure a fair sharing of the Internet for the benefit of the whole world.

Some countries have been frustrated that the United States and European countries that went on the Internet first gobbled up most of the available addresses required for computers to connect.

They also want greater assurance that as they come to rely on the Internet more for governmental and other services, their plans won't get derailed by some future U.S. policy.

One proposal that countries have been discussing would wrest control of domain names from the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and place it with an intergovernmental group.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-internet30sep30,1,7169941.story?coll=la-headlines-business

[rocktivity]

24. It's called "the WORLD Wide Web," duh!

The whole wide world should play a role in governing it.

:headbang:
rocknation

[VegasWolf]

26. Exactly, and they do. All important protocols are in world wide standards

bodies. Control my pimpled ass!!!

[lovuian]

34. Hey Has any of you guys heard of Google starting their own

Internet??? or did I hear that wrong!!!