Well, it's ours. We created it. We've allowed other countries to use it because it benefits us to do so.
I realize this is probably not the popular opinion, but I'm not sure it makes any sense really to give up control over it.
I realize this is probably not the popular opinion, but I'm not sure it makes any sense really to give up control over it.
Whisleblow in China. You don't end up in front of a judge, you end up at the bottom of the ocean. And the journalists who published what you whistleblew? Likewise. And the people who tweet about it, or talk about it at work, and the websites who previous hosted it are suddenly down for maintenance...
So is the US a free speech utopia? Probably not, but I don't know of any other countries where the Westboro Baptist Church could last for so long...
I'm not completely sure, but I'd think a transfer to a non-US entity would make this harder in the future.
[1] http://blog.easydns.org/2012/02/29/verisign-seizes-com-domai...
I have to wonder about that, especially with the fight over net neutrality.
So, as far as I can tell, the U.S. is practically unique in having the most liberal free speech protections, and actually unique among any countries that could be considered peers.
When that is part of your national history and identity, I think there's a good reason for banning that practice and behavior. Even if it violates free speech. To practice those ideals in the same country where those crimes were committed can do no service to anyone; there is no good outcome, no valid reasoning. It can only harm everyone. That's just about the only "exception" to free speech I can think of that holds up, though I still do question where you CAN have exceptions. Kind of like with encryption, you can't say "it's secure BUT..." you can't say "we have free speech BUT..."
No (t really).
> We created it.
Yes (mostly, originally).
> We've allowed other countries to use it because it benefits us to do so.
It is a distributed network. It is composed of pieces owned by different principals, content created by different people and code and technology contributed by the entire world. If the U.S. were to close its internet today, and block any connection to the outside world, it might crash the web for days or weeks, but after that, the dependencies on U.S. controlled infrastructure would be quickly replaced, and the U.S. would be left with a national intranet, while the rest of the world would have the Internet. Hell, even for DNS, which is the specific system in question here, it is not so much "the U.S. owns DNS" but "a large number of DNS servers, owned by different parties, have pretty much agreed to replicate the U.S.'s version of the DNS registry and trust it as authoritative". They could be set to replicate a root DNS server in Geneva, Brussels or even Beijing within hours. In some ways, other countries allowed the U.S. to dictate how domains are assigned because it benefits them to do so (and because ICANN has been for the most part a trusted arbiter of the DNS system).
I am not even in favor of a U.N. controlled Internet, based on what I know is likely to happen if this move occurs now (the U.S. is, depressingly, among the least Internet-hostile countries in the world right now... and it is hostile enough). I actually like ICANN and how they do things, for the most part. "If it ain't broken don't fix it" and all that. But this whole "we own the entire Internet because it started here" sentiment is as ridiculous as if, say, China were to claim that they own all of the world printed money because they invented paper money originally.