Submitted by On Saturday, the U.S. government plans to cede control of some of the internet’s core systems – namely, the directories that help web browsers and apps know where to find the latest weather, maps and Facebook musings.
The U.S. has been in charge of these systems for more than three decades; plans to transfer control of these functions to a nonprofit oversight organization have been in the works since the late 1990s. Some Republicans in Congress raised late objections over the transfer, which they termed a “giveaway” to the rest of the world. But they failed to block the move in a spending bill to keep the government operating.
Here’s a look at the systems in question and what’s at stake for internet users.
This is a HUGE mistake….
Did you read the article? Nothing changes
Actually it is a mistake and the article does not fully capture the implications. “The government is ceding control.” – sounds good. But TO WHOM? Some further research shows that we will se a “governance model defined by the inclusion of all voices, including business, academics, technical experts, civil society…” Again, sounds great. But the truth is those parties are not democratically elected! The government is and can be voted out. The ICANN crowd might develop a life of its own, get highjacked by some special interest group one day down the line, as so often happens with “self governing bodies”. And then there will be no means to control them.
The DNS system is already decentralized, and in reality is a peer-to-peer network scheme. Each DNS server controls and shares the responsibilities of name resolution.
cpuobsessed,
Yes, I can see what you are saying, the DNS protocol is highly decentralized and anyone can host their own DNS for their own domains. However authority in public DNS is actually centralized; it can only be delegated down from this central authority.
To see why this matters, consider that anyone can create a DNS record for arbitrary domains like osnews.com, but your domain records will only be recognized in DNS lookups if the nameserver functions for your domain have been delegated to you by a higher authority. In other words, you need permission ultimately tracing all the way up to the central authority.
While I’m not a big fan of this approach, here’s a look at how DNS could be implemented without a central authority:
https://namecoin.info/
Edit: I have no reason to believe ICANN would abuse it’s position. But just to be clear, they technically have the power to cease/redirect the top level domains as they please. After this, they’d have control over any of the subdomains as well. While it would be technically easy to do, it would be difficult to hide, at least from administrators who are paying attention.
Edited 2016-10-05 16:46 UTC
The title of news articles makes it so, but if you read more into it then you will see there were many points why this makes sense, and also it won’t be much different compared to what already is. I am not sure even in the future they (domain naming mechanisms) will be that much relevant anyway, but thats a hunch.
codewrangler,
This has been debated in the US and there were politicians who tried to stop it, and they’ve actually succeeded in delaying it before, but they didn’t have enough votes to stop it permanently.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/icann-stewardship-transfer-looms-amid-…
Incidentally: This article does a terrible job in educating readers. Anyone who didn’t already have a vague idea of what this was about would still be wholly uninformed and not have any clue of the events leading up to it.
This link has more substance even though it’s dated:
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/04/the-proposed-trans…
why is this a HUGE mistake?
I think this is sarcastic reference to Trump and his whining about this switch.
Hierarchical doesn’t cut the cheese anymore…
At a multi-stake Global ‘Ether’. [Unless You want to nail-up a ‘Private Club’ advertisement].
Of course, it wasn’t a problem with Republicans when the groundwork for this was laid out during the Bush administration.
The fact that it was Mitch McConnell leading the opposition against it means we can discard the opposition to it out of hand, as more than likely the only reason McConnell is opposed to it is solely because Obama is in favor, or not even necessarily opposed enough.
For Mitch McConnell, that has been the overriding reason for nearly everything he’s done in the past 8 years, even to the point where he filibustered his own proposal when he learned that the Dems would vote in favor of it…
Drumhellar,
Wow, sometimes I wonder if we should just get rid of political parties.
Eh. The methods by which we elect our representatives can be altered to create healthy environment for more political parties, which would mitigate much of the partisan ship we’re seeing today.
For example, a proportional representation system, where you vote for national party (Statewide, too, as it is in the US), and the party gets assigned a number of seats in the legislature, rather than voting for an individual candidate that happens to be located roughly near you geographically, would go a long way.
Several nations have moved to that quite happily, and a few more have movements within trying to bring that change.
Not a single nation wants to go back to the way we (and many others) do it.
Drumhellar,
I agree, proportional representation would finally give representation to those who don’t vote for the major parties and therefor end up throwing their vote away. Another idea is a rank vote to let them vote their mind without throwing their vote away.
Edited 2016-10-04 17:02 UTC
there are some who really believe that we should be trying to (re-) decentralise the internet
because any concentration of power, US or EU or UN or .., is too risky
and because the internet is increasing a massive part of living life, and mores in future
http://redecentralize.org
This event is so politically relevant as to occur once in a generation. At the same time, so inconsequent, technologically [in the short term].