Reply With Quote
Well, I learned something new today. I didn't even realize we were controlling the internet. Yet another way we get to be a rock in Europe's shoe. Cool!
EU Wants Shared Control of Internet
Sep 30 10:00 AM US/Eastern
By AOIFE WHITE
AP Business Writer
BRUSSELS, Belgium
The European Union insisted Friday that governments and the private sector must share the responsibility of overseeing the Internet, setting the stage for a showdown with the United States on the future of Internet governance.
A senior U.S. official reiterated Thursday that the country wants to remain the Internet's ultimate authority, rejecting calls in a United Nations meeting in Geneva for a U.N. body to take over.
EU spokesman Martin Selmayr said a new cooperation model was important "because the Internet is a global resource."
"The EU ... is very firm on this position," he added.
The Geneva talks were the last preparatory meeting before November's World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia.
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.
At issue is who would have ultimate authority over the Internet's master directories, which tell Web browsers and e-mail programs how to direct traffic.
That role has historically gone to the United States, which created the Internet as a Pentagon project and funded much of its early development. The U.S. Commerce Department has delegated much of that responsibility to a U.S.-based private organization with international board members, but Commerce ultimately retains veto power.
Some countries have been frustrated that the United States and European countries that got on the Internet first gobbled up most of the available addresses required for computers to connect, leaving developing nations with a limited supply to share.
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.
Policy decisions could at a stroke make all Web sites ending in a specific suffix essentially unreachable. Other decisions could affect the availability of domain names in non-English characters or ones dedicated to special interests such as pornography.
Well, I learned something new today. I didn't even realize we were controlling the internet. Yet another way we get to be a rock in Europe's shoe. Cool!
Didn't you hear????? Gore invented the internet!
Well Gore only invented one of the internets.
whoever invents it has the right to control it. Let the Euros make their own separate internet.
It looks like some of the British press is feeling lucky. Here is what "The Register" has to say...
"Nevertheless with just one day remaining, the pressure to seal a deal is intense, and it looks increasingly likely that by 5pm Swiss time on Friday 30th September 2005, the Unites States will be negotiated out of control of the internet."
'Let the Euros make their own separate internet."
Given the distrust the Europeans have of USA's "good intentions", I think they probably will start up their own Internet infrastructure in parallel with the US-dominated one.
It's all public domain technology, so no copywright or trademark barriers.
Internet has become too important to the free flow of information, education, commerce, etc to be left to one country's self-serving whims.
I wonder if the United States is a party to this negotiation. Sounds to me like they may be having a tea party with an imaginary guest.
I doubt the US even goes to these meetings, other than to say we won't turn control over.
Not so far fetched, they are trying about everything to get MS out of the picture including, I think it is Spain, working on Linnux to replace windows operating system. Although haven't read too much about it lately.
The New York Times
September 30, 2005
EU Tries to Unblock Internet Impasse
By TOM WRIGHT
International Herald Tribune
The United States and Europe clashed here Thursday in one of their sharpest public disagreements in months, after European Union negotiators proposed stripping the Americans of their effective control of the Internet.
The European decision to back the rest of the world in demanding the creation of a new international body to govern the Internet clearly caught the Americans off balance and left them largely isolated at talks designed to come up with a new way of regulating the digital traffic of the 21st century.
"It's a very shocking and profound change of the EU's position," said David Gross, the State Department official in charge of America's international communications policy. "The EU's proposal seems to represent an historic shift in the regulatory approach to the Internet from one that is based on private sector leadership to a government, top-down control of the Internet."
Delegates meeting in Geneva for the past two weeks had been hoping to reach consensus for a draft do ent by Friday after two years of debate. The talks on international digital issues, called the World Summit on the Information Society and organized by the United Nations, were scheduled to conclude in November at a meeting in Tunisia. Instead, the talks have deadlocked, with the United States fighting a solitary battle against countries that want to see a global body take over supervision of the Internet.
The United States lost its only ally late Wednesday when the EU made a surprise proposal to create an intergovernmental body that would set principles for running the Internet. Currently, the U.S. Commerce Department approves changes to the Internet's "root zone files," which are administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, a nonprofit organization based in Marina del Rey, California.
Political unease with the U.S. approach, symbolized by opposition to the war in Iraq, has spilled over into these technical discussions, delegates said. The EU and developing nations, they added, wanted to send a signal to America that it could not run things alone. Opposition to Washington's continued dominance of the Internet was illustrated by a statement released last week by the Brazilian delegation to the talks. "On Internet governance, three words tend to come to mind: lack of legitimacy. In our digital world, only one nation decides for all of us."
In its new proposal, the EU said the new body could set guidelines on who gets control of what Internet address - the main mechanism for finding information across the global network - and could play a role in helping to set up a system for resolving disputes.
"The role of governments in the new cooperation model should be mainly focused on principle issues of public policy, excluding any involvement in the day-to-day operations," the proposal said. The new model "should not replace existing mechanisms or ins utions," it added. The proposal was vague but left open the possibility, fiercely opposed by Washington, that the United Nations itself could have some future governing role.
The United States has sharply criticized demands, like one made last week by Iran, for a UN body to govern the Internet, Gross said. "No intergovernmental body should control the Internet," he said, "whether it's the UN or any other." U.S. officials argue that a system like the one proposed by the EU would lead to unwanted bureaucratization of the Internet.
"I think the U.S. is overreacting," said David Hendon, a spokesman for the EU delegation.
"But I think it's a tactical overreaction for the negotiations," he added.
"We expected this proposal to move the summit along from the stalemate," Hendon said. "It is unreasonable to leave in the hands of the U.S. the power to decide what happens with the Internet in other countries."
Various groups, including the International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency based in Geneva, have suggested that the U.S. government has too much control over the Internet.
Under the terms of a 1998 memorandum of understanding, Icann was to gain its independence from the Commerce Department by September 2006.
But the Bush administration said in July that the United States would "maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file." In so doing, the government "intends to preserve the security and stability" of the technical underpinnings of the Internet.
Without consensus, some experts say that countries might move ahead with setting up their own domain name system, or DNS, as a way of bypassing Icann.
The United States argues that a single addressing system is what makes the Internet so powerful, and moves to set up multiple Internets would be in no one's interest.
"It's not just working," said Michael Gallagher, an assistant secretary at the Commerce Department who heads communication policy. "It's working spectacularly." Paul Twomey, chief executive of Icann, said fears of U.S. government influence on the Internet were overstated.
Delegates say the conference has made much better progress on issues like dealing with spam e-mail messages and iden y theft since it began in 2003. But they said they did not expect to be able to complete a do ent on Friday, as had been planned, and that further talks would be needed before the Tunisia meeting Nov. 16 to 18.
* Copyright 2005
three words for Brazil...We. Invented. It."a statement released last week by the Brazilian delegation to the talks. "On Internet governance, three words tend to come to mind: lack of legitimacy. In our digital world, only one nation decides for all of us."
here's three more....Ha.Ha.Ha.
No ...
I wish we could take electricity back, too.
and the light bulb! Leave all these crybabies in the dark.No ...
I wish we could take electricity back, too.
Governements, and ultimately, people, love to have power over other governemnts (and people). This is how the human race operates. The US has the power to control the Internet (because they invented it or for whatever reason) and the rest of the World wants to share that power.
If it were the other way around (the EU controling the Internet) I can bet the US would be wanting a piece of the pie.
Nothing new here.
Because the DoD funded it.. DARPA in conjunction with a few colleges. It's designed as a redundant communications system. That can withstand cities being destroyed by Nukes and data routed around.
The fight is over the master DNS servers that propagate data..
In an emergency the DoD could take it over here and propagate whatever list we want (let's us shut down routing to unfriendly sites).
We have a lot of other tools as well. We can bomb or cut with Submarines fiber lines. Blow up comm buildings etc.
Stupid, sponging bas s. Get your own brains and imagination.Governements, and ultimately, people, love to have power over other governemnts (and people). This is how the human race operates. The US has the power to control the Internet (because they invented it or for whatever reason) and the rest of the World wants to share that power.
I honestly don't know what would happen in that instance....when were they the first to come up with anything of that magnitude...or just, anything?If it were the other way around (the EU controling the Internet)
I am teasing. Kind of.
Actually, if I'm not mistaken, it was a Brit that "invented" the internet. The U.S. just had the ingenuity, capital, and wherewithall to see it happen. We provided the intellectual capital and infrastructure, the rest of the world can sit on a e or pay for their own ing internet...nothing's stopping them.
And, as far as the U.S. being envious of another and "wanting a piece of the pie," please! We'll write a new ing recipe and bake our own goddamned pie if we have to.
You are most definitely mistaken. The internet is an entirely American invention, used first for our military.
(You are thinking of the guy who invented the world wide web system. He was British)
True. We should drop that www crap anyway.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
