Heated Debates Over US-Free Internet 10/06/2009 by Intellectual Property Watch 1 Comment Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)Warnings about a possible split of the single root zone underlying the global internet have been made by internet governance experts outside the United States following a hearing of the US congressional Subcommittee on Communication Technologies and the Internet on the future of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the internet’s technical oversight body. If the US administration extends the joint project agreement it has with ICANN this year, it might well result in “the emergence of alternative naming and numbering systems” and a further push for the “establishment of intergovernmental internet governance bodies,” warned internet governance expert Wolfgang Kleinwaechter. Not only is a French project already promoting “Competitive Governance Arrangements for Namespace Services,” but also some future applicants for new generic top-level domains are considering testing their potential zones based on routing via local internet service providers, according to sources. ICANN’s departing CEO and President Paul Twomey was questioned hard at the 4 June congressional meeting about ICANN’s effectiveness in fighting fraud in the internet domain name system (DNS) and the high budget surplus of the nonprofit organisation. Twomey has appealed to Congress to send a signal of confidence in private-sector-led DNS management by letting expire the US-ICANN joint project agreement and continuing to exercise its oversight function through the joint agreement on the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) function, which is key to changes in the internet structure. ICANN was created in 1998 under an agreement with the US Commerce Department National Telecommunications and Information Administration that ICANN would gradually become fully independent. The next deadline for ending the agreement and setting ICANN free is later this year. Support for expiration of the joint project agreement (JPA) also came from highly respected internet pioneer Vint Cerf and the Internet Society. Answers to the US government notice of inquiry about the transition are not yet completely posted, as some European governments had filed individual comments, according to one government source. Separately, there are reports that a new challenge has been brought to the monopoly the US company VeriSign has over the .com domain, by far the dominant internet suffix. The monopoly is arranged through contract with ICANN and the US government. NTIA statement to Congress here. Comments to NTIA on the domain name system transition here. Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window) Related "Heated Debates Over US-Free Internet" by Intellectual Property Watch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Jim Fleming says 13/06/2009 at 3:29 pm Times have changed, one can not easily compare the current Internet to the Wild West days of the early Internet… When ICANN was formed, most people obtained their DNS resolutions from servers buried deep inside a small cartel’s data centers. The client and server software was tightly controlled by the cartel. If ISPs deviated from using the cartel’s code they were strong-armed out of business. An ISP’s traffic would be black-holed by members of the cartel. The cartel supported themselves via what they called “Internet Governance”. They would obtain large blocks of routable IP address space via some non-profit sham they set up and then sell/lease or transfer the address space to commercial companies for payments under the table. In some cases, the U.S. Government also funded the members of the cartel via grants to their non-profits, universities, etc. ISPs were shaken down for money when they attempted to obtain routable address space, which was tightly tied to the DNS (in-addr.ARPA). Many people saw the corruption. Since the Internet was growing and was viewed as “a good thing”, people assumed they could fix the corruption by buying time. ICANN was created to buy time. Many changes have been made to try to clean up some of the corruption. One of the most important changes has been education. The DNS software and protocols were studied by many people and now there are many more sources of “code”. Another change has been the establishment of corporations to help contain the corruption or help to expose it. The cartel has adapted to control those corporations. Technologists continue to try to come up with solutions to try to level playing fields and end the corruption. The hope has been that the free markets would adopt the improved technology and that the U.S. Government would try to keep the cartel(s) in check while new technology is tested and deployed. Some of the changes are: 1. Modern DNS software does not use any root servers. 2. TLDs can be automatically selected based on DLD** voting. http://www.icann.org/en/comments-mail/icann-current/msg00342.html 3. The next generation Internet architecture places an intelligent “Node” at each home/office. The network simply connects the Nodes without getting in the way. It will be interesting to see how ICANN delays new TLDs for more changes to happen. The NSF is funding the GENI project to start over. That will take time. Also, the .COM RE-BID will take time. ICANN will likely claim nothing can be added with all of the new changes coming, that they do not control. The cartel continues to game mostly the IANA and RIR “tasks”. The domain names have always been used by the cartel as a source of revenue and also as a **distraction** to keep regulators from looking closely at the IP Address Spectrum Allocation corruption. **==== DLD Voting from 1999 ==== 10514 INC 9264 ONLINE 7288 NET 6472 USA 4481 GROUP 4101 WEB 3891 TECH 3077 UK 2762 DESIGN 2570 SYSTEMS 2542 IT 2415 US 2378 SOLUTIONS 2322 LINE 2209 LAW 2171 CONSULTING 2161 INFO 2033 SERVICES 2027 WORLD 1966 SOFTWARE 1940 INTERNATIONAL 1932 INTL 1880 CORP 1874 CO … Reply