> "This is such a sideshow debate," said Oxford University professor
> Jonathan Zittrain. "If you couldn't find IBM at ibm.com, what would
> you do? You would Google it, and there you'd be."
And you would find Google how?
> Some countries worry that the United States could use this system to
> effectively "unplug" a nation from the Internet by redirecting its
> country code.
And some countries (or, more likely, the reporter) are idiots, because
removing my domain's registration wouldn't unplug me at all. It would
just make my stuff a little harder to find. (But anybody can register
a .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and many countries don't care who
registers in their domains, either (e.g. .tv).)
> Experts say that would be difficult to pull off because
> it would require thousands of computer administrators across the globe
> to cooperate.
For a value of "thousands" closer to a dozen. Or, perhaps, one.
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It seems to me that the USA is being
> sort of high and mighty on this matter. Just as the USA pays little or
> no attention to what other countries want or do with their two-letter
> TLDs such as .uk, .gr, and others, why would they now start worrying
> about what a UN-controlled body said regards (for example) China being
> the controller or Germany or UK? Wouldn't we still continue to do as
> we pleased anyway? PAT]
With .us we would. But what happens when such an international body
decides to globalize censorship? Say, it decides you lose your domain
if you host reporting that didn't come from a "licensed reporter"?
Right now, such a country can possibly act against domains in its tld,
and sites within its borders. Someone trying to remove a foreign .com
domain for that will just get laughed at.
Seth
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, to me it is sort of a toss-up.
Which to you is more opressive? Tons of spam and scam and phishing
each day via a coordinator (ICANN) who essentially turns a blind eye
to the mess that the internet has become in the past decade, or some
_other_ coordinator who *might or might not* attempt to exercise some
censorship on a few web sites here and there. Might or might not ...
but would most assuredly instruct registrars and ISPs under them to
clamp down HARD on spammers, etc. I always laugh when I hear people
complain that some other administrator would (gasp!) probably censor
users and sites, all the while going ho-hum and shrugging their
shoulders while scammers, scammers and phishermen have almost shut
us down now, so fearful are many users to sign their real email
addresses or participate in any real, meaningful way. I mean, even
if it is true that ICANN is sort of backed into a corner with the
contracts they have out on the net now, even asking them to give
favorable consideration to eventually phase out their existing
contracts in favor of differnet ones just gets a blank stare in
return. Some of us would just as soon take our chances with someone
else running things. That is why I feel the arguments about how
'some other organization in charge might be censors, etc' are so
bogus. PAT]
Seth Breidbart (sethb@panix.com)