Us Holds The Reigns.

[ledzep09]

this is very true...al gore right? haha. who ddi invent the internet? whos credited with it? we all know al gore would like to think he did but

ps i think its just djibouti not djibouti city but doesnt matter..its pretty cool that somebody else actually knows something about that coutnry.

[steronz]

al gore really took a bad rap for his comments on creating the internet. while he was a senator (representative? whatever he was) he was on the appropriations committee that approved funding for DARPA (defense advanced research blah blah) to proceed with development of the internet. this was in the mid 70s. in the context of his speech, it's clear that he's only taking credit for approving the funds, not that he had the idea for it or was running cable or anything. but all that's remembered is "i created the internet."

so it's true that the internet was originally funded by a joint effort between DARPA and a bunch of universities with no foreign involvement, but that was 1970-ish through 1990-ish, before we had DNS as we know it and people at home could get on it. by the time congress granted exclusive control of the namespace to ICANN in 1998 (i looked it up), it should have been clear to them that the internet was a global entity, utilizing a server backbone spread across dozens of countries, and should therefore have some kind of global input. the fact that 7 years later the US is revisiting that decision is a sign that maybe we didn't do it right the first time around.

[ledzep09]

i have a hard time believeing that we would be where we are now with the internet had the US not had control all these years.

thanks for the info

[steronz]

well, the US doesn't really control much of anything... the backbone of the internet is, by design, distributed and decentralized, consisting of servers from major US and non US companies, universities, and governments (again, US and non US). so the infrastructure would have grown regardless of who was granted control of the namespace in 1998.

i suppose now that i think about it, it's really a quibbling matter... who really cares that the US gets to use .gov, .mil, and .edu names whereas other countries are forced to use, for example, .go.jp, .mi.jp, or .ed.jp. US companies get an unfair advantage during naming disputes, but here's the thing about that... ICANN has no authority. an example:

i have steronz.com registered, but let's say microsoft releases a new operating system called steronz. naturally they want to acquire my domain name, but i refuse to sell. so they go to ICANN, file a dispute form, and ICANN sides with me because their generally policy is first-come-first-served. game over? not quite. microsoft can then go to any civil court in the US, although it will shop around for a circuit that has a history of siding with big business. so let's say a 9th circuit court judge grants microsoft control of steronz.com. they'll order ICANN to comply, and ICANN does so because they're pussies.

this is a problem, but the problem will get worse when US courts start forcing ICANN to take away domain names from foreign companies. There have been a few cases of this already, but nothing major. this also begs the question, what would happen if, say, a french court ordered ICANN to give microsoft.com over to a french company? the answer right now is that ICANN would ignore them because they don't listen to foreign courts, but those kinds of battles could get very interesting in the future.

i don't know what my point is anymore, but i find all this interesting, and i have nothing to do at work, so... yeah.

edit: ICANN does more than just namespace stuff, but the IP space is pretty well established and probably wouldn't change at all if someone else took over. however, if IPv6 addresses are ever rolled out en masse, i'm sure other countries would like a say, since more addresses more numbers to sell and a better local economy.

[simplegreen]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(steronz @ Nov 16 2005, 10:37 AM) [snapback]96192[/snapback]</div>

However, there's nothing stopping another country from establishing it's own version of ICANN and start managing its own servers. So when you type in google.com, right now you go through a series of DNS servers and then a series of routers that ultimately connect you to a specific MAC address for google. the DNS servers and routers all agree with each other where to go because of ICANN. If China stands up its own DNS servers and routing tables that disagree with US based ones, then in china google.com will take you somewhere else. You'll get massive worldwide routing conflicts, but eventually if enough countries agree with china, their servers and routers could take precedence everywhere outside of the states.

At that point there could very well be two internets... one controlled by a global body and centered in china, and one controlled by the US and centered in the US. it wouldn't be a huge deal because most of the stuff worth going to is in the US, but eventually businesses that depend on global commerce would abandon the US internet, eventually the rest of the country will slide as well, and then the china internet will have successfully taken over and the world will have gotten its way against our collective will.


i should write a book or something.
[/b]

this is actually an very good point. China already kinda does this with blocking out sites (the great china firewall). Indeed, not practicle for anything other than a comunist state. But good reading non the less. +2

edit: by the way the real internet was started in a DOD effort to link missle sites for fast deployment, the interaWeb as we know it, was through darpa etc.

edit #2 this quick edit feature is bad ass. (click on the edit button on one of your posts)

[ledzep09]

well, yeah i know that when i say US i mean US companies and stuff. but ...


one would hope that domain name disputes are handle with some sort of logic in relation to economy and worth of the name. example..yeah you have steronz.com but what the hell good is it to anybody? so what you tell us about your dog and how you went to the grand canyon but who gives a shit? its not doing anybody any good so you would hope theyd make you hand it over to microsoft seeing as how theyll make it into a busines site with useful (i guess) information or a store or whatever they want to do with it. see where im going with this? but if steronz.com is a site for a small business thats trying to make it in the world, youd hope that they would say fuck off microsoft youve already been warned about monopolizm (word?) and you cant have it unless steronz decides to sell. really, good old fashion common sense would go along way in this world if it was just used more often.

btw i dont know what you use that website for i was just making an example...but really i do hate when people make websites about themselves.


yeah the new board is kcik ass

[steronz]

that's one of the huge debates behind domain name disputes... nerds like me agree with ICANN in that it's first come first served. we're all hippies at heart and don't like the man and whatnot. but most judges agree with you, that the entity that will use the site more should win, although in their defense they'll usually have them pay fair market value for the site. so if a judge ordered me to hand over steronz.com to microsoft, i'd still get a few million bucks out of the deal. but it's all case by case at this point, and there's really no rhyme or reason to the judgements being made.

my two favorite examples are madonna.com and nissan.com. madonna.com used to be a porn site, but it was proving to be unprofitable, so the owner donated it to a rehab clinic by the same name. that got them some good press and everyone was happy, except for madonna the singer. now she didn't know the internet existed until she read about the domain name being donated, but she figured she had a right to the domain. she sued, her lawyers picked the right court, and even though the name had been registered for 5 years before she got involved, the judge gave it to her.

nissan.com is the home of some shitty computer company owned by a mr. uzi nissan. he's had it registered for over a decade, before car companies even cared about the internet. well eventually they did care, so nissan sued and lost. and sued and lost again. and again. because the computer company was still in business and he got there first, the judges kept siding with him. although they did make him put up banners saying it's not the car company.

there are some pretty solid precedents that have been set. confusingly similar names that knowlingly capitalize on misdirected traffic usually don't win, such as micorsoft.com or mcdonald.com (without the s), but only if those sites really don't do anything. if mcdonald.com is the home of mcdonald investments, then it'd be all right.

*sucks.com sites have survived pretty well... so you can have a site like hondasucks.com that bashes honda and you'll be protected because the courts say nobody would confuse hondasucks.com with an official honda site.

squatters always lose, so if you hear from a friend on the inside that microsoft's next OS will be called MS catnip, and you run out and register mscatnip.com and wait for them to cut you a check, chances are they won't have to.


this is why it'd be nice if there were a global body that actually had some authority in the matter. so if you sue someone in a US court over a domain name, the court would just direct you to the global version of ICANN and leave it up to them. then there may actually be some consistency in the rulings.

[Smooth_Imports]