WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- U.S. lawmakers are urging the Bush administration to resist a push from other countries to shift control of the Internet to the United Nations, arguing that such a move would stifle innovation and free expression.

"Is it going to become a vehicle for global taxation of domain names? Are you going to allow folks who have demonstrated a pattern of suppression of content, are they going to be put in charge of running this thing?" said Minnesota Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, sponsor of a Senate resolution that calls for the Internet's core addressing system to remain under U.S. control...


Complete article:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/10/2...reut/index.html

The US created the internet and the US has done a lot of the development on it. We do not want to give up control of it because it is becoming so critical to how the US runs business. I do not see congress wanting to give up access any time soon. That being said it will be interesting to see if Europe tries to split the internet

That's why they have treaties.

I don't trust the U.S. Government, and no one should. If you do trust them then you are misinformed.

I don't know why they can't come up with a system that is distributed so everyone can be happy.

You also don't want to be a United States citizen. Ask yourself who the "United States" is when they sue someone. It's U.S. vs whoever.

So do you want to be owned by this thing called "the United States"? A 2nd class citizen that is subject to and owned by the government? Can't the government own cattle? How about human resources?

Could they put a serial number on their property? Could they number each cattle?

Do you have a serial number? Does it look like this XXX-XX-XXXX ?

Did you swear under penalty of perjury that you are a US citizen? Did you check that little box that says so when they ask? Did you ever ask why? Did you know you just signed away your birthright?

If you could own and control a whole bunch of cattle or "human resources" wouldn't you be more powerful? Could you then take all they produce as your own?

One good example of why to never trust any government. They always want more and more power (and money) and then expand to try to control everything.

Governments are defined by what they control.

I say no one government , including the UN World Government, or corporation should control the internet.

Who created the internet? Ah yes that would be the US government under a research grant from DARPA. It is not like they are trying to take anything back they are just maintaining control. Now that the internet is big everybody wants a piece of it.

And so why would you want to trust such an important thing to any government?

Doesn't matter who created it, it's too important to trust to any one government, group or company. History has proved that over and over.

Somehow it will be figured out in a way that all the users of the internet really have control, in a distributed way so that it can't be stopped or used as a power play.

They won't rest until they figure out a way to profit from it.

I wouldn't hold my breath. Consider these things that don't work that way:

• telephone (land line or cellular)
• television
• utilities (gas, electric, water, sewer, etc)
• gasoline
• postal mailing or other shipping
• food
• medical (in most countries)
• insurance

These things are controled either by governments or businesses and generally without consideration of the users interests.

Now, name a few things where the end users actually have some form of actual control over it.

I do know that given the choice of the US govt (that has controled it since the beginning) vs. the United Nations controling it, I definitely prefer to keep things the way they have been.

As far as I am aware (from the UK) the European argument is that unless the US allows countries a bit more root name server control for their own territories then countries like China (and it's allies) will have a perfect excuse to break away and have a seperate system with a gateway - and that this cannot be good.

I can't see it staying the way it is now that the debate has started.

Of course because of the way it works no government can control it technically - only the bits they have physical access to. There would be nothing to stop (eg) China going ahead and doing this. As usual it will be us the users who will suffer.

I've no qualms about the US (technically) 'controlling' the root name server system but I live in the UK and the 2 countries are pretty much wired up together in lots of ways.

But I do wonder wether this isn't actually designed to make it so that individual governments can start taxing the internet as Rebis comments ....

Just occured to me though that it's a lot of countries that are responsible for a lot of Spam and hacking/viruses that are wanting more control - so maybe it would be a good thing if they DID break away

I wanna run the internet.

I've got this old 386 in the basement collecting dust and this would put it to perfectly good use.........

You have my vote!
Btw, I'll see you & raise you. I have an Compaq 286 (dig it!) which I'd be happy to contribute to your arsenal. Works great! I'll just have to build another DNS server.

As Bill Gates said in 1981:
"Nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM."

Too cooool !

Maybe I still have some of that ol ARCNET network gear :-)

You're in business! Let me know if you're looking for investors. I've got excess $ burning a hole in my pocket. Always looking for that golden opp!

Let's see, those are created by government authority and jurisdiction so maybe that's why they have control over them? (go look up the "codes" for creating corporations, and registering them etc...)

And even though the media is catering to the 6th grade level, no one can control the internet, this is just the control of the registration of names that resolve into IP addresses.

Just wait for IPv6 to hit, that may change a few things.

The internet is like a bunch of people walking into a room and connecting up to a lot of other people in the same room through ethernet cables. We the people pay the service providers to connect us to those other people anywhere in the world.

Hmmm, so as the US invented it they should retain control of the internet and the UK (Tim Berners Lee) invented the web they should have control of that, seems fair to me.

I don't think governments should control anything on the net IMHO but what are the implications for the English language taking the above quote into account

I have to say that so far, in the US vs UN idea, I'm liking the US holding on to control.

All though, it just occured to me ... it'd be lovely to have the root server control turned over to some like the EFF or some other body that isn't out to make money from the net.

http://forum.ev1servers.net/showthread.php...7218#post367218

I hate to drag this one up again but I just came across this quote by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on this and had to comment:



15 year olds learning to drive often find it difficult to follow all these processes and feel the process isn't what they would like it to be too. But I don't think the answer is to get 15 year-olds involved in changing the traffic laws to better suit them. I can see it now, "Speed Limit 55, unless you have a really cool sports car". Or "No U-Turn, unless you see one of your friends going the other way".

Now, I am not saying that developing countries are immature like 15 year olds can be (although some do act like it), but by definition they don't have the same experience level. And, as Kofi Annan also said in the same brief:

I'd like it to stay under control of U.S. government. It has worked fine under their control and Im afraid things might get worse if this is changed.

Just an example - look at European Union. It's "international" organization controlled by many different countries, all they can do is fight each other, never make any real changes. They are making decisions of how much jelly can one country produce and the other not. It's expensive for each country and it seems to be breaking apart. Still all the decisions are made in favor of the bigger countries.

My point here is that some things are not good to be run "internationally" by everyone together. It will end up creating problems when all countries would be after their own interests... it's better it stays the way it is. Who wants North Korea be part of deciding Internet's future? I dont.

That would actually work out better than most people would probably anticipate. No more spam from the asia-pacific!

A lot of folks need to do some research. Nothing could be wrong with the UN. After all, it even has a bill of rights....right?

Read article 29, item 3...

http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

That should be an eye opener....The UN is on it's own agenda, and it sure isnt to my benefit.

Internet access for the world over?

Yea...that goat herder in Africa, the one with no electricity for 100's of miles around....really needs it to expand his business customer base.

F*ck the UN!