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October 07, 2005

Control of the Internet.

BRAIN: Come, Pinky, we must prepare for tomorrow night.
PINKY: Why, Brain? What are we going to do tomorrow night?
BRAIN: The same thing we do every night, Pinky. TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!

The UN and the EU are both fighting to have a larger slice of the pie that is known as 'control of the internet'. They currently have none. The US, which invested, developed and created the internet through research and expenditure own the 'root servers', controlling it all. The Guardian reports:

The EU had decided to end the US government's unilateral control of the internet and put in place a new body that would now run this revolutionary communications medium ... [The US refused] ... But the refusal to budge only strengthened opposition, and now the world's governments are expected to agree a deal to award themselves ultimate control. It will be officially raised at a UN summit of world leaders next month and, faced with international consensus, there is little the US government can do but acquiesce.

Incidentally, the UN does have an International Telecomunications Union (ITU), and had a chance to develop their own network standards and implementations. I should like a show of hands of people who use X.25 (not the hypersonic rocket plane) over TCP/IP. Thought so.

Which countries were insisting?

Brazil, China, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Russia and several African states.

I cant wait for Fidel, Mugabe, Xiang and Hosni (where's Jaques? He's usually good for a bit of this kind of tomfoolery) to decide what I can read on the internet. China's Ambassador, Sha Zukang, said "This situation is very undemocratic, unfair and unreasonable" - which sounds a salient point, unless you're aware that this week China imposed new rules that allow only "healthy and civilized" news to be read by the mainland's 100 million Web users.

But, above and beyond that, countries exercise complete authority over their own ccTLD servers. Brazil, China, Cuba, Iran control .br, .cn, .cu, and .ir respectively. The root servers see to that. So what control issues do they have?

There is, however, good news. It will be officially raised at... a UN sumit. When was the last time that was actually effectual?

And the US does have a large ace up the sleeve, called "VETO".

Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at October 7, 2005 12:04 PM

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