Root DNS
The US has decided to keep permanent control of the root DNS servers. Several years ago, it had announced that the root servers would be transferred to ICANN, the internet’s governing body; now, ICANN has been relegated to the role of a “technical manager”.
There are a number of aspects to this story. First, for some time, the UN and the ITU have been trying to take over the stewardship of the internet. Much as I admire the UN, I do not think that letting the ITU manage the internet would be a good idea. Almost all member-countries of the ITU (essentially, everyone except for North America, parts of Western Europe, Australia, and NZ) wants the internet to be more manageable by governments. They want to filter out paedophiles. They want to hunt down pirates. They want to block inconvenient political parties. They want to limit what bloggers can blog about. They want to turn the internet into a nice, civilized venue, pacifying consumers with a soporific datafeed — in short, they want to turn the Net into a sort of distributed TV system. (It is my firm belief that broadcast national television set civilization back by 30 years or so.) Such an outcome would be exceptionally wrong and evil; so, in a sense, the US maintaining a tight grip on the dot is not that bad — at least the ITU won’t get its hands on root DNS.
However, while I distrust China’s and UN’s attempts to hijack the Internet, I don’t trust America’s government either. Americans have a habit of electing morons into high offices — the current administration being an excellent example. Already, the FBI uses root DNS servers to hijack domains from warez groups. Could the DOJ one day use that power against inconvenient political movements, or even against foreign governments? Would it wield the internet as a weapon? Sadly, I suspect that the answer is yes. First, it looks like the current policy shift was another element in Bush’s “fuck-everyone-except-(some)-US-citizens, it’s our way or we bomb you” doctrine. And second, in the Ars Technica thread discussing these events, over half the posts (presumably, from Americans) are amazingly jingoistic, xenophobic, and intolerant. The readers of Ars are educated and highly technologically-literate people. If they support the current administration’s xenophobic positions, I fear it’s only a matter of time before the US starts abusing its control over the root DNS.
If anyone in the position to act is listening: America, let the dot go! Give it to ICANN. Bureaucrats should not govern what they can’t understand. Let the programmers, techies, and hackers manage the internet — after all, they conceived of it, designed it, and built it in the first place! And please give ICANN real powers to resist the ITU’s advances.
November 13th, 2005 at 3:41
You are a moron. If you believe for a moment that the “programmers, techies and hackers” will somehow be “running the internet” after the control of the root DNS is forked over to the UN you are a historical moron. The UN does everything wrong. So how would “giving” the internet to the UN help anything?
November 13th, 2005 at 4:02
Which is precisely why I do not want the UN or the ITU (essentially, a branch of the UN) to have control over the Internet. However, I also do not want the root DNS controlled by the US government, or for that matter, the government of any other nation. The root DNS ought to be controlled by ICANN — a non-profit corporation.
Next time, read the bloody post before flaming.