U.S Refuses To Hand Over Control Of The Interweb

[Lee]

GENEVA - A senior U.S. official rejected calls on Thursday for a U.N. body to take over control of the main computers that direct traffic on the Internet, reiterating U.S. intentions to keep its historical role as the medium's principal overseer.

"We will not agree to the U.N. taking over the management of the Internet," said Ambassador David Gross, the U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy at the State Department. "Some countries want that. We think that's unacceptable."

Many countries, particularly developing ones, have become increasingly concerned about the U.S. control, which stems from the country's role in creating the Internet as a Pentagon project and funding much of its early development.

Gross was in Geneva for the last preparatory meeting ahead of November's U.N. World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia.

Some negotiators from other countries said there was a growing sense that a compromise had to be reached and that no single country ought to be the ultimate authority over such a vital part of the global economy.

But Gross said that while progress was being made on a number of issues necessary for producing a finalized text for Tunis, the question of Internet governance remained contentious.

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.

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.

One proposal that countries have been discussing would wrest control of domain names from the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, and place it with an intergovernmental group, possibly under the United Nations.

Gross dismissed it as unacceptable.

"We've been very, very clear throughout the process that there are certain things we can agree to and certain things we can't agree to," Gross told reporters at U.N. offices in Geneva. "It's not a negotiating issue. This is a matter of national policy."

He said the United States was "deeply disappointed" with the European Union's proposal Wednesday advocating a "new cooperation model," which would involve governments in questions of naming, numbering and addressing on the Internet.

In 1998, the U.S. Commerce Department selected ICANN to oversees the Internet's master directories, which tell Web browsers and e-mail programs how to direct traffic. Internet users around the world interact with them everyday, likely without knowing it.

Although ICANN is a private organization with international board members, Commerce ultimately retains veto power. 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

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050929/...MwBHNlYwM3Mzg-

Looks like the US government has some long term 'internet' plans by not wanting to relinquish control of the web.

I cant say i blame them either, he who controls the flow of information, controls the world.

Regards,

Lee

[Paco]

I cannot say I blame the US:

Did the US not invent and develop the 'internet'?

Also, relinquish control to a 'governing body' that is very corrupt, spineless and non-supportive of the US.

The U.N. is always welcome to take a crack at their own version of the Internet ... I am confident Kofi Annan and his son will take care of this new venture the exact same way they did with the Oil for Food 'scenario'.

[Dzinerbear]

Yes, but must the rest of the world be held hostage by your Christians? If you actually practiced separation of Church and State we wouldn't be so bothered perhaps.

Michael

[Lee]

Also, relinquish control to a 'governing body' that is very corrupt, spineless and non-supportive

Notice how by taking off the 'of the us' we have a pretty damn good description of the people who currently control the web? I.E, the US.

Regards,

Lee

[Paco]

Yes, but must the rest of the world be held hostage by your Christians? If you actually practiced separation of Church and State we wouldn't be so bothered perhaps.
Michael

I am not in the US, and more importantly, I am not a Christian/religious -- I do not worship imaginary icons!
I truly believe that religion is the root of evil and believe in full separation from church ... remove it from the face of this planet and life will be much better (and here is where the 'you fascist, your just like Hitler ... blah blah’ remarks usually begin).

I do like that which Gautama Buddha tried to teach, but when it comes to Christianity, Catholicism, Islamic and all the other homophobic, paedophiliac, freedom suppressing corrupt corporations/organizations/institutions ... I have better things to do with my time.


(Whatever happened to basic social values so people simply get along? Religion, that's what happened!)

[jIgG]

give control to the UN? Haha ....

[Paco]

give control to the UN? Haha ....

People seem to forget that the United Nations (previously known as the League of Nations) is more corrupt than what people try to say Bush is, or could ever be.

Problem is, people want so badly to believe in what the U.N. state they are for ... a unified world (yah, Eutopia is just around the corner).
Problem is the persons at the helm.

Heck, you may as well give the dickhead Ratzinger the wheel (I'd be seriously shocked if any of you support that prick!).

[gaybucks_chip]

Actually, Tim Berners-Lee, an English-educated scholar and computer scientist, is the "inventor" of the World Wide Web to the extent there's any single inventor. The early web development efforts took place at a number of different locations and I don't think it's necessarily accurate to say that the US developed it.

While it's true that the National Science Foundation contracted for and oversaw the development and maintenance of the root domain servers, there was a great deal of cooperation on the part of a lot of different institutions (combination of academic and governmental of a number of countries), there has always been a lot of worldwide collaboration.

Network Solutions is the current caretaker of the root domain servers, under a contract granted by the National Science Foundation. They were also, until 1999, the sole registrar of domain names. Frankly, they're a bunch of profiteering sleazebags, and if control of the root nameservers were transferred to the UN, it's very possible that some nonprofit organization that has the public's interest at heart might end up as the new caretaker of the root nameservers. I don't think that would be a bad thing at all... ICANN, W3C, and the other consortiums have done a pretty good job at developing worldwide standards, and there's no reason to think that something similar couldn't be developed for the care and feeding of the root nameservers.

[Paco]

Actually, Tim Berners-Lee, an English-educated scholar and computer scientist, is the "inventor" of the World Wide Web ...

You are correct about Berners-Lee - I was not sure, which is why I asked. (If rhetorical, it would not have had the '?')

[Squirt]

The early web development efforts took place at a number of different locations and I don't think it's necessarily accurate to say that the US developed it.

I wont let you take the creation of the Internet and WWW away from America.

I find it so ironic to hear people say the world created the internet and WWW, it belongs to the world. Tim Berners-Lee is the mastermind of the WWW etc. etc. Whenever America creates something that changes the world, years later people say America didn't do it, others did, blah blah blah. We spend the billions of dollars, our scientist create it, our people bring it to life, yet we didn't do it... right.

Tim Berners-Lee worked off the the PUBLISHED ideas of J.C.R. Licklider (an American) 24 years earlier. J.C.R. Licklider was working at ARPA at the time (an American company) which later became ARPANET. An American creation which created email, packet switching, TCPIP, basically .. the internet.. of which the WWW is a part of, and the WWW was conceived by J.C.R. Licklider in his published work called "Libraries of the Future" where he described the "procognitive system" which is exactly what Tim Berners-Lee later called the WWW.

Let's of course not forget Mosaic and Netscape... the first ways the general public of the world actually were able to surf the web... damn those Americans creating the first browsers the world would use to surf the web. :high:

Here are some facts:

Ray Tomlinson invented email in 1971

J.C.R. Licklider

1962 ARPA later became ARPANET

"Lick continued to envision great uses for computers. In 1965, he wrote a book called Libraries of the Future, in which he discussed how information could be stored and retrieved electronically. His theoretical information network, which he called a "procognitive system" sounds remarkably similar to Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web ( Which was created 24 years later in 1989 )

Leonard Kleinrock

Kleinrock is arguably the world's leading authority and researcher in the field of computer network modeling, analysis and design and a father of the Internet. But the commercial world was not ready for data networks and his work lay dormant for most of the 1960's as he continued to publish his results on networking technology while at the same time rising rapidly through the professorial ranks at UCLA where he had joined the faculty in 1963. Due to Kleinrock's fundamental role in establishing data networking technology over the preceding decade, ARPA decided that UCLA, under Kleinrock's leadership, would become the first node to join the ARPANET. This meant that the first switch (known as an Interface Message Processor - IMP) would arrive on the Labor Day weekend, 1969. Fortunately, the team had done its job well and bits began moving between the UCLA computer and the IMP that same day. By the next day they had messages moving between the machines. THUS WAS BORN THE ARPANET, AND THE COMMUNITY WHICH HAS NOW BECOME THE INTERNET!

Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf invented the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) which moves data on the modern Internet, in 1972 and 1973.

Strange.. they are all Americans, working on an American network, created by Americans.. odd.

Maybe this could put things in more perspective.. I don't have much time to go into detail on each American inventor of every aspect of internet communication there are so many

Internet Timeline

1969
ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) goes online in December, connecting four major U.S. universities. Designed for research, education, and government organizations, it provides a communications network linking the country in the event that a military attack destroys conventional communications systems.

1972
Electronic mail is introduced by Ray Tomlinson, a Cambridge, Mass., computer scientist. He uses the @ to distinguish between the sender's name and network name in the email address.

1973
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is designed and in

1983 it becomes the standard for communicating between computers over the Internet. One of these protocols, FTP (File Transfer Protocol), allows users to log onto a remote computer, list the files on that computer, and download files from that computer.

1976
Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter and running mate Walter Mondale use email to plan campaign events.
Queen Elizabeth sends her first email. She's the first state leader to do so.

1982
The word “Internet” is used for the first time.

1984
Domain Name System (DNS) is established, with network addresses identified by extensions such as .com, .org, and .edu.
Writer William Gibson coins the term “cyberspace.”

1985
Quantum Computer Services, which later changes its name to America Online, debuts. It offers email, electronic bulletin boards, news, and other information.

1988
A virus called the Internet Worm temporarily shuts down about 10% of the world's Internet servers.

1989
The World (world.std.com) debuts as the first provider of dial-up Internet access for consumers.
Tim Berners-Lee of CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics) develops a new technique for distributing information on the Internet. He calls it the World Wide Web. The Web is based on hypertext, which permits the user to connect from one document to another at different sites on the Internet via hyperlinks (specially programmed words, phrases, buttons, or graphics). Unlike other Internet protocols, such as FTP and email, the Web is accessible through a graphical user interface.

1990
The first effort to index the Internet is created by Peter Deutsch at McGill University in Montreal, who devises Archie, an archive of FTP sites.

1991
Gopher, which provides point-and-click navigation, is created at the University of Minnesota and named after the school mascot. Gopher becomes the most popular interface for several years.
Another indexing system, WAIS (Wide Area Information Server), is developed by Brewster Kahle of Thinking Machines Corp.

1993
Mosaic is developed by Marc Andreeson at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). It becomes the dominant navigating system for the World Wide Web, which at this time accounts for merely 1% of all Internet traffic.

1994
The White House launches its website, www.whitehouse.gov.
Initial commerce sites are established and mass marketing campaigns are launched via email, introducing the term “spamming” to the Internet vocabulary.
Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark start Netscape Communications. They introduce the Navigator browser.

1995
CompuServe, America Online, and Prodigy start providing dial-up Internet access.
Sun Microsystems releases the Internet programming language called Java.
The Vatican launches its own website, www.vatican.va.

1996
Approximately 45 million people are using the Internet, with roughly 30 million of those in North America (United States and Canada), 9 million in Europe, and 6 million in Asia/Pacific (Australia, Japan, etc.). 43.2 million (44%) U.S. households own a personal computer, and 14 million of them are online.

1997
On July 8, 1997, Internet traffic records are broken as the NASA website broadcasts images taken by Pathfinder on Mars. The broadcast generates 46 million hits in one day.

1999
College student Shawn Fanning invents Napster, a computer application that allows users to swap music over the Internet.
The number of Internet users worldwide reaches 150 million by the beginning of 1999. More than 50% are from the United States.
“E-commerce” becomes the new buzzword as Internet shopping rapidly spreads.

2000
To the chagrin of the Internet population, deviant computer programmers begin designing and circulating viruses with greater frequency. “Love Bug” and “Stages” are two examples of self-replicating viruses that send themselves to people listed in a computer user's email address book. The heavy volume of email messages being sent and received forces many infected companies to temporarily shut down their clogged networks.
The Internet bubble bursts, as the fountain of investment capital dries up and the Nasdaq stock index plunges, causing the initial public offering (IPO) window to slam shut and many dotcoms to close their doors.

2001
Napster is dealt a potentially fatal blow when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rules that the company is violating copyright laws and orders it to stop distributing copyrighted music. The file-swapping company says it is developing a subscription-based service.
About 9.8 billion electronic messages are sent daily.

2002
As of January, 58.5% of the U.S. population (164.14 million people) uses the Internet. Worldwide there are 544.2 million users.
The death knell tolls for Napster after a bankruptcy judge ruled in September that German media giant Bertelsmann cannot buy the assets of troubled Napster Inc. The ruling prompts Konrad Hilbers, Napster CEO, to resign and lay off his staff.

2003
It's estimated that Internet users illegally download about 2.6 billion music files each month.
Spam, unsolicited email, becomes a server-clogging menace. It accounts for about half of all emails. In December, President Bush signs the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (CAN-SPAM Act), which is intended to help individuals and businesses control the amount of unsolicited email they receive.
Apple Computer introduces Apple iTunes Music Store, which allows people to download songs for 99 cents each.

2004
Internet Worm, called MyDoom or Novarg, spreads through Internet servers. About 1 in 12 email messages are infected.
Online spending reaches a record high—$117 billion in 2004, a 26% increase over 2003.

[Paco]

Squirt;
thank you kindly for posting all the information, I do appreciate you shedding light on this for me.

(I am still against the U.N. taking control of 'the net' !)

[Squirt]

Squirt;
thank you kindly for posting all the information, I do appreciate you shedding light on this for me.

(I am still against the U.N. taking control of 'the net' !)

As am I Paco. As you've read above, the internet was initially created as a backup to communication in times of war, the last thing we need is a corrupt U.N. controlling those systems, or having any influence on them whatsoever.

They can't do their job as it is. They can't handle more responsibility

[collegeboyslive]

oh but suppose, in his crusade against porn bush impliments a system that drops all access to sites that contain certain combinations of keywords or are put on a "sex list" right now its american policy BUT that would also block say a site in amsterdam being able to be received by a user say in england.

The way the internet is growing and being used, ( Remember the Web is only one part of what goes over the net, Voip, banking and other data services also use tcip technoligny now ) will mean that MOST devices that communicate will be useing the net in the very near future. and thats one very powerfull hold the US will have over the world.

[Squirt]

oh but suppose, in his crusade against porn bush impliments a system that drops all access to sites that contain certain combinations of keywords or are put on a "sex list" right now its american policy BUT that would also block say a site in amsterdam being able to be received by a user say in england.

OH we've had Hustler on the racks at 7-11 for years you really think they're gonna hide all porn sites on the web? I don't think so BUT if they did, then action would need to be taken.

This whole situation is like me building a house and then being told the house doesn't belong to me because the trees used to build the house are from nature, as is the steel, and mortar. So in actuality the house I took the time to build, and pay for, belongs to the world. bullshit

The stakes on cyberspace real estate are getting higher as nations are finally seeing the value of cyberspace. It will be interesting to see where things go. I think it's entirely possible that the web could be segregated by internet borders to appease the values and goals of different nations. We will be allowed to surf foreign parts of the web with an electronic passport that will give us access with the stipulation, like in the real world, that we have to follow the rules and customs of that web or we could end up in trouble, like the real world.

I think we should maintain control over what we created. Below is a very SHORT list of American inventions... imagine if we wouldn't have shared this ingenuity with the world? The least they can do is give credit for our work in creating the internet


FM Radio
Steam Engine
Transistor
Jenny (Train) Coupler
Plastic
Steam Locomotive
Telephone
Gramaphone
Pacemaker
Browning Rifle
Analog Computer
Transistor
Nylon
Air Conditioner
Peanut Products
Colt Revolver
Locomotive
Airplanes
Motorcycle
Tractor
Vaccume Tube
Pencil
Horseless Carriage
Dry Plate Photography
Light Bulb
Steamboat
Model T (Car)
Lightning Rod
Steamboat
Gatling Gun
Rockets & Liquid Fuel
Vulcanized Rubber
Ice Machine
Liquid Paper
Shorthand
Submarine
Artificial Heart
Swivel Chair
Desktop Computer
Automobile Air Conditioner
Polaroid Camera
Bolometer, Early Airplane
Polygraph
Maxim Machine Gun
Mechanical Reaper
Gas Mask
Morse Code
Oldsmobile
Atomic Bomb
Elevator Brakes
Coca-Cola
Pullman Sleeping (Train) Car
Cash Register
Polio Vaccine
Razor
Bombsight
Helicopters
Helicopters
Sewing Machine
Alternating Current (AC)
Scientific Method of Assembly
Rotary Engine
Electrometer
Cotton Gin
Open Heart Surgery
Railway Telegraphy Stations
Airplane
Locks
Electron Microscope

I mean, America isn't the only nation that invents, many other nations do. We all contribute. But at least give credit where it's due. If we hadn't shared our ingenuity with the world... the world would be a very different place.