US ready to 'hand over' the internet's naming system
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Open to any explanation about how this will improve the system aside from "more involvement from other countries". Not that I'm discounting that as a good or bad reason, but I'd just like to see more information about why this would be good.
So they cannot be trusted.
Of course, in practice, what goes into the root zone is controlled by ICANN. The whole oversight has been mostly theoretical for many years now.
This implies there is someone who could take over that can be trusted. I'm not convinced there is, personally. The question then becomes "Who do you trust more than the US" in this context. I think the answer to that question would be more interesting.
At the end of the day, someone(s) will be in a position to "pull the plug" or just alter the machine in some way. I think your view is a bit naive. The machines have to be physically located somewhere and they're going to be open to vulnerabilities because someone needs to perform routine maintenance. There will also need to be a group or organization to oversee the day-to-day operations and handle things a machine can't. It's yet another avenue for corruption. Your ideal "control" simply doesn't exist and cannot exist. Someone has to be in control.
It reminds me a bit of the whole superpower conundrum. There are those who want the U.S to step down as the world's police. The question then becomes, who would replace them? This question confuses those people because they do not grasp the whole "nature abhors a vacuum" aspect of the problem. They also ignore the human element, which is that people are greedy, corrupt and power driven. Especially leaders of countries. These people want the U.S gone but won't connect the dots further to see what would happen, and what life would be like without them acting as the world's sole superpower. What would happen is another entity would step in and fill the role. That is guaranteed. It's a certainty because nations have been fighting wars for that mantle since before WW1. And I'm sorry, but I prefer the U.S to China or Russia. They're simply the lesser of the evils. And not by a small amount.
To deny it is to deny the fact that Russia and China would stand aside and not make an attempt to grab that power. Do you honestly believe China or Russia won't leap at the chance? Let's say you honestly do. Ok, so then the question becomes, "What about 25 years from now after Putin has died and there's a completely new administration at the helm. Can you say that they won't grab for power?" It doesn't require people not leaping to grab that power today, but for all time in the future. And believing that someone won't eventually grab for it is beyond naive because it's denying human nature.
There is a perception of Switzerland's stance on privacy becoming increasingly weak as time goes by, showing that their convictions at the very least are becoming diluted in favour of international pressure.
The guy who used to manage the Australian .au TLD.
The problem I see is that since ICANN is located within the US, the system will still be abused, because ICANN falls under US jurisdiction with all its moronic justice system and draconian, though generally ineffective, "intellectual property" law enforcement.
So nothing will change anyway.
Now, with that being said I'm very much supportive of "pirating" in that I don't believe that it's stealing since that would mean corporations are entitled to potential future profits.
Another thing you pointed out was how ineffective it is. And you're right. Basically nobody cares anymore unless you're making a noticeable amount of money from doing so or just generally doing something other than pirating stuff.
Aside from questions about intellectual property, I think the U.S. generally has pretty great laws regarding the Internet. Compare that to, say, Australia where vaginas that don't look "normal" are banned, or the outright censorship in most of the world. With the U.S. being the epicenter of the software industry for the time being, it's very sensitive to any regulation or law involving the Internet.
Unfortunately, the US has used the domain name system to fight piracy without due process in other countries rather than acting within their own jurisdiction and closing illegal servers within their own jurisdiction. That's an (a) abuse of the domain name system, which is (b) technically inefficient -- just use an alternative root server --, and (c) hitting the wrong people such as people who merely put links on their web server rather than those who actually infringe copyright.
Because of this documented and patently stupid abuse of the DNS system the US ought not control the root servers, not because of US laws or anything else related to piracy. I couldn't give a shit about piracy, but I do give a shit when some server that is perfectly legal in Spain suddenly becomes inaccessible and replaced by an FBI logo, just because some technically inept dumbass judge in East Texas thinks so.
Whether other countries would do better than the US is debatable. I'm glad you like the laws of the US so much, but have a hard time sharing your opinion about them and can think of various more worthy candidate countries for the label "best laws".
My guess is not. gTLDs run by registrars not operating in the U.S. nonetheless probably sign ToS agreements with ICANN that effectively permit seizures by U.S. authorities. But for ccTLDs I doubt this is the case (it's hinted at in this white paper, https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/guidance-domain-...).
If you want to run a Pirate Bay or something, you're probably safest registering a domain under a ccTLD for a country with a lax policy.
While reasonable gTLDs like .inc, .corp and .ltd get ignored, instead we have .aerospace and .google for reasons that have never been properly explained.
They've also handed over .app to Google simply because Google was willing to pay a stupid amount of money for the rights, and Google can't even figure out how to sell these yet: https://www.registry.google
Personally I would like a strictly hierarchical model (e.g. ccTLDs only with restricted 2nd level) more, but to enforce such system would have meant essentially a complete reboot of DNS which obviously would never happen. gTLDs were imho a mistake (probably caused by not being to able to predict the explosive growth of internet), but if we can't get rid of them then just liberating them makes lots of sense.
They gave away the .book TLD to Amazon too and now no one can publish their own book using a .book domain name for their work.
This makes writing code that vets a fully qualified domain name a lot more complicated. If anything could be a domain name they you need to lean on DNS to do testing, and if that's not producing concrete answers, you have no idea if it's valid or not.
Is clownpenis.fart a possible domain? Twenty years ago, no way that would ever happen. Now I'm surprised it hasn't.
Ideally you want a root namespace that's clean, orderly and predictable so that people can comprehend it. microsoft.com looks legit. microsoft4u.info feels sketchy, and it should. microsoft.xyz is...legit? Or not? I can't tell any more, the waters are so muddied.
Plus, ICANN doesn't seem to consider the ramifications of some of their decisions. The right-to-left gTLDs are obviously a great thing for speakers of certain languages like Hebrew and Arabic, but they also carry severe security hazards: http://www.rafayhackingarticles.net/2016/08/google-chrome-fi...
That's like Warren Buffett making you $50 million over 30 years, and then you get upset with him when he loses you a few dollars.
Given the extreme risk of allowing censorship-heavy nations like China and Russia to have new influence over the system, it's very obvious this is a terrible move.
At least US politicians are susceptible to some minimal electoral feedback from the people. The only way to influence UN functionaries known to work is bribes.
In the 90s I considered the gTLDs (.com, .net, .org) most attractive, because I wasn't quite sure how local governments would react and USG seemed reliable.
Now the situation is reversed, I value domains in local ccTLDs more than the gTLDs. Of course, ICANN creating an insane number of gTLDs doesn't help either.
However, that would be the nuclear option. And I guess most countries would see that as an act of war.
Creating alternate DNS roots isn't very hard.
So just like the US is technically capable of launching missiles in the direction of North Korea, but doesn't do it. It is very unlike that the US would directly mess with ccTLDs.
From a security point of view, locally installing trust anchors for all ccTLDs would be a good idea though.
If the question is whether the US would be a good steward of international domains or other international aspects of the Internet, then the USG has proven that it cannot be trusted.
I'm not saying that any other government would do better, but the new structure reduces (at least in theory) the influence of governments to almost zero and puts oversight in the hand of the Internet community. For better or worse, the Internet community seems to have a better track record than the US government.
It's not like everyone is happy with UN resolutions or the ICJ etc. So don't expect perfection from whoever has formal control over this system.
Those of us in the rest of the world would like our DNS to continue to function, even if the US does not.
It doesn't make sense to have something as global as the internet controlled by the government of just one country.
Of course third parties who make money helping in the process will fear-monger that giving away the control will most likely have you shut down Google and Facebook by Chinese overnight, or some sort of similar end of the world scenario.
Since the internet belongs to all, naming should be overseen by some sort of a non-profit consortium body that is made off of all or most nationalities. This is a good move!
I'm no diplomat, but I suspect any move that's primarily advocated by Russia and China can't be good for [internet] freedom.
It is a pretty obvious fact that internationalized control of internet governance will make censorship more likely, and acceptable, than US control does.
Here is just one example: https://rsf.org/en/news/new-treaty-signed-not-all
> Reporters Without Borders reiterates its appeal to ITU member countries to preserve the Internet as a place of freedom, as a place for the free exchange of views and information. Concern also focused on article 5B of the treaty concerning spam, which says: “Member States should endeavour to take necessary measures to prevent the propagation of unsolicited bulk electronic communications and minimize its impact on international telecommunication services. Member States are encouraged to cooperate in that sense.” The problem stems from the fact that, to block this kind of content, governments will first have to identify it and will therefore have to use Internet control tools. Some governments do this already, but such action has never been recognized in a UN treaty. So this article sets a precedent which governments that have little interest in freedom of information would be able to use to justify the deployment of filtering and blocking mechanisms.
Here is another: https://www.publicknowledge.org/news-blog/blogs/itu-wcit-and...
> A recently released ITU document summarizing various proposals to modify the existing ITU regulations (“ITRs”) confirms what folks have been saying and leaking for some time now. The Russian Federation, various Arab states, and others have submitted proposals that would expressly ratify the right of member states to disrupt communication in the name of national security, and to limit the ability of parties to route around censorship or communicate anonymously by providing members states the authority to determine routing paths and to prevent “misuse and misappropriation of numbering resources.” (See, for example, proposed MOD 30 & 31A – but there are numerous other proposals that could achieve the same end).
We can look at historical examples like mercantile law. Most countries, including the U.S., recognize mercantile law, a body of law that has been handed down from millennia ago and, like so-called international law, distinct from domestic bodies of law, even though many countries have explicitly or implicitly incorporated aspects of mercantile law.
If you look at the history of judicial decisions where courts ruled in favor of non-citizen claimants, or where they adopted rules less favorable to citizens, then the U.S. doesn't stand out as much as you think. It's certainly at the top, but other, smaller countries have legal and political cultures that have respected mercantile law at the expense of their homegrown legal principles, and against the immediate best interests of their citizens and industry, at least as well as the U.S. has.
The real question is how good is a country's political and legal system at respecting abstract legal boundaries, especially in the face of strong, competing interests. Being large and powerful can often be a detriment because domestic competing interests are more powerful, and threats of repercussions less worrisome. Some smaller countries often have a better track record at keeping perspective; they have to be more honest about what reasonable solutions look like if they want to maximize their own, long-term wealth.
Based on mercantile law we can exclude many countries with solid arguments supported by decades and even centuries of concrete evidence. But arguing that the U.S. is the best (or least worst)? Again, that would be hard.
You feel those countries are strong enough, politically and even militarily to resist corruptive influences? England might be, maybe Canada since the U.S is next door, but Switzerland, Brazil and S. Africa? No way. People forget; the U.S is incredibly powerful. It has the strongest military in the world. Nobody has attempted to "mess with the internet" because it meant messing with the U.S. Take it away from the U.S and it immediately becomes more vulnerable by default.
Therefore, naive as I am, I thought in my previous contribution: Why not judge a country's values on the basis of their actions rather than on the basis of internal propaganda or wishful thinking.
For those of us in foreign (to the US) countries, I don't quite see the issue here.
Maybe they would have the good sense not to enforce these policies at the ICANN level...but they also might not.
Bad example, since they 'gave that up' (in the sense you can give up something you never had) at the prize's founding.
Well there really is only one country in the world that has 'Freedom of Speech' codified into law.
In reality, any country can abuse it's position, but in regards the internet it doesn't really appear that it has ever happened. This is very much change for change sake without any real benefit to be seen.
That statement is so absurd that this can only be Poe's law in effect. Freedom of Speech is a requirement for a functioning democracy, and consequently plenty of countries have freedom of speech codified into law.
Of course different countries limit this freedom differently. In a US cinema you can't shout "Fire" if there is no fire, or "I just got a national security letter" if there is a national security letter. In a German cinema you can't shout "The holocaust never happened" or "Kill all muslims". But within reasonable bounds both countries guarantee freedom of speech.
[0]: https://popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackne...
> In a German cinema you can't shout "The holocaust never happened"
This is a legitimate example of why Germany does not have freedom of speech. Regardless of how verifiable the Holocaust is or how offensive it is to deny that it happened, disagreeing with the government's version of history should not be a crime in a free society.
> In a US cinema you can't shout "Fire" if there is no fire
A fraudulent statement designed to disrupt society. You don't get arrested because what you said is untrue, you get arrested because you're legitimately trying to hurt people by causing a stampede and desensitizing them to fire warnings.
>"Kill all muslims"
A specific incitement of violence.
> "I just got a national security letter"
I don't like that this is illegal either, but it's a far cry from making it illegal to express certain opinions. And at least there's a fair amount of disagreement within the US as to whether it should be illegal, different jurisdictions have taken either side of this issue.
Setting aside other exceptions, like liable, the rule in AngloAmerican law concerns inciting or otherwise causing imminent harm. What constitutes imminent harm has varied widely over the course of U.S. history. Many people were sentenced by courts under the Alien & Sedition Acts, the argument being that seditious speech _might_ lead to imminent harm. The same things happened over 120 years later when people handing out anarchist and communist leaflets were regularly thrown in jail with even less pushback by society.
These days the interpretation and application of imminent harm is much narrower than it has ever been, and indisputably ahistorical. The conception of free speech that Americans enjoy today didn't exist for most of the history of the country and likely most of the history of the world.
In the context of Germany's history, it's not obvious to me (and shouldn't be obvious to anybody who gives it serious consideration) that their standard is intrinsically, objectively inferior.
I happen to disagree with it, but I don't think it's unreasonable on its face. And I'll be the first to admit that my preference for the modern, American conception is largely a function of my being an American and having internalized certain normative judgments unique to not just this country, but unique to the post-WWII political and legal context and in many respects unique to the past couple of generations.
The NPD by the way is to this day allowed in Germany, they are just not allowed to openly demand the violent parts of Nazism, because denying the Holocaust is a fraudulent statement designed to disrupt society. You don't get arrested because what you said is untrue, you get arrested because you're legitimately trying to hurt people by causing a stampede and desensitizing them to the sanctity of life.
Even China has "freedom of speech" coded in their constitution. Granted, many of the countries with "free speech" in the books don't actually have it in practice, but that doesn't validate your claim.
This of course wouldn't stop the practical removal of said freedoms by a despotic regime, but as a philosophical point, I find it interesting, and it has mattered in court rulings in the past.
Let China be in charge of the Internet for awhile. Or even France or Germany.
They actually go after people for their ideas -- not just their actions.
Yeah, I fled oppression in Canada to come to the only country with FREEDOM! MURICA! YEAH!
What?? America's freedom of speech protections are strong and admirable, but this is surely an empty claim that you are unable and unwilling to defend.
Britain, Canada, the EU and Japan all have Hate Speech laws. Hate speech laws are laws restricting speech for being nothing more than speech.
As another user points out, the limits placed on our free speech are all directly related to actions that can harm other people. Like yelling fire in a crowded theater. That can/will result in a stampede which will hurt or even kill other people. It isn't limiting what you're saying because it's some dislike political opinion, it's limiting what you can say so you don't kill people. There's a huge, huge difference.
Most other countries have similar limits on free speech. The U.S limits aren't of political origins, but actual physical safety. And I think that makes a world of difference.
And before you reply "that's what schools are for"; what difference does it make whether a body of beliefs is government-sanctioned and taught in schools or "merely" treated as a respectable opinion in the public square? A naive kid may have their opinion swayed just as strongly, if not more, by a street cultist preacher than by an overworked, burned-out schoolteacher. Would you be okay with Scientology being taught in schools? I assume not. Would you be okay with Scientologists luring children into a camp five metres away from a school? Fifty metres? Five hundred? At what point does it stop being harmful enough to be worth prohibiting? I don't think there is any.
I would rather live in Germany than in the United States, and one of the main reasons is precisely this kind of free speech absolutism.
What about laws like the Communism Control Act?
The U.S doesn't enforce most of its obscenity clauses. With the exception of Child pornography, etc... And if you're asking what harm does that cause, well, it harms the kid getting sexually abused. Most of the obscenity laws are related to minors. Either in the the consumption of pornography or production.
> Communism Control Act
What about it? It's irrelevant here. In fact, anything that hasn't been challenged in the supreme court is irrelevant because the supreme court is the law of the land, not local, city or state governments. Per wikipedia: "the Supreme Court of the United States has not ruled on the act's constitutionality. Despite that, no administration has tried to enforce it. The provisions of the act "outlawing" the party have not been repealed. Nevertheless, the Communist Party of the USA continues to exist in the 21st century." It's quite obvious which way they'd rule if it were to be challenged, as even lower courts in NY ruled against it in the 70s.
And I think that's the most important thing here; In germany, for example, you can't challenge their free speech law regarding the holocaust. It's set in stone. In the U.S, unless the supreme court has ruled on it, it is not set in stone. And the supreme court of the U.S has an incredibly good track record when it comes to defending our freedoms. Sure, it's laid a couple stinkers here and there, but 99% of the time, its ruling is favorable towards those who value freedom, liberty and independence. It's kept us from fascism and helped keep us from turning into a theocracy.
Wrong. We have the constitutional court (essentially the US supreme court equivalent) and since the holocaust denial law is not part of the constitution, but freedom of opinion is, all the same arguments you presented about the US laws works just as well for Germany.
And in my opinion our constitutional court has an even better track record of defending our freedom than the US supreme court (from the rulings I hear about on this side of the pond).
Then it would be up to each nation to enact rules for their part of the net, and nothing more.
Right now, if i happen to access a .com that is operated by a non-US entity, am i subject to the rules of USA, the nation of origin of said entity, or where they happen to have their servers housed?
I'm not worried about ICANN, here, I'm worried about Google. Specifically, now that ICANN is expanding top-level domains to include thousands of generics, the big players are going to make lots of grabs and become first-class citizens on the Internet. It is not better for the Internet if Google controls the .dev TLD and if Amazon controls the .shop TLD.
At the end of the day a democratic system of any kind is vulnerable to corruption from the influence of power and must actively defend against this influence. If ICANN is supposed to be a more democratic means of controlling the Internet than the US government, it has to be made invulnerable to the influence of large players like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.
Thought of course I'd have preferred it stay with DoC under its benevolent and almost entirely hands-off stewardship.
This article raises a rather serious political (but also philosophical) question mark over diffuse concepts like "government" and "foreign", in the context of Internet. I honestly don't know what is the current status of citizenship and territoriality nowadays in a "place" (is the Internet really a place? ) as fluid, fuzzy and multi-layered as this one we are discussing.
The problem is getting everyone else to configure their systems to use it.
I would think that the real pressing issue is Internet censorship. And on this issue the U.S. really does have a very good track record compared to a lot of the other countries who might want to control ICANN. http://map.opennet.net/
You can rightfully criticize the surveillance state that has arisen, but it's just wrong to try and paint freedom of speech as an offshoot of that. Or even, frankly, to criticize the US stance on freedom of speech (unless you think it's too broad).
Someone who knows how to follow the BBC style guide.
ICANN is pronounced "I can" not "I. C. A. N. N." so they write Icann.
edit: See "Acronyms" section in http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/article/art201307021...
I think this is bad idea. The rest of the world consists of China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, UK, Russia. I don't want them to have any say in the naming system.
Once USA gives up this control it can not take it back and hence I think USA should not give it up.