Alternative DNS systems and net neutrality - Was: Re: [governance] DNSsec and allternative DNS system

[Lee McKnight]

Veni,

That adage 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' was used by AT&T to argue
against getting busted up back in mid-80s; from a political economy
perpesctive one might argue that that was as important as the us dod
backing in teh growth of the Internet, because new entrants like Sprint
and MCI were the 1st movers building backbone nets for the Internet.

So in other words, sometimes even if 'it' is working, we all are better
off in the long run if we or someone has the courage to touch it. So
something new can grow.

Lee

Prof. Lee W. McKnight
School of Information Studies
Syracuse University
+1-315-443-6891office
+1-315-278-4392 mobile
>>> veni at veni.com 11/17/07 5:31 PM >>>
Lee and all,
you have to also understand that anything developed in the Cold War 
time, especially by the military, is considered "bad, bad, bad" and 
aimed at the destruction of the good guys (that is, we, in East 
Europe). I am sure that today there are serious people, who would 
believe that the aim of the Internet is to ruin their life, society, 
country. And that's one of the reasons why we actually need more 
education and more forums like the IGF; places where opinions and 
experience can be exchanged. And that's why I keep on repeating the 
Russian sayin, "rabotaet - ne trogaj" (if it's working, don't touch 
it), which is different from "if it ain't broken, don't fix it). We 
(East) never wanted to fix things; we just knew that if they work, we 
should not touch them, as then they tend to break, and then we'll 
have to fix them. It is really a small difference, but a big cross 
cultural issue.

veni

At 17:18 11/17/2007  -0500, you wrote:
>Ian,
>
>Actually, I would say Veni's take is more accurate - Bob Kahn was
>working as a DARPA program manager at the time, DARPA funded all kinds
>of areas of network research and functions like the IANA function for
>decades - sure the net had other uses but some folks inside the US
>military justified budgets for it for a long long time.  Network
>survivability being an important virtue in that Cold War context.
>
>On the other hand, the EU's official policy as last as 95, and Japan's
>as late as 96, was opposed to the Internet, preferring instead more
>ITUish/ATM-centric/controlled packet networks. Tim & co. came to MIT
>with the web/w3c because CERN and euro industry and govt weren't ready
>to back him sufficiently.   Kind of hard to get that backing if
official
>EU policy says the Internet is a bad thing.
>
>Anyway, top researchers in Europe and Japan and Australia etc were part
>of all this from before the beginning, so credit should go to a wide
>range of folks from all over the world, but no point in pretending
folks
>in US military uniforms weren't signing off on budgets that got this
>thing going way back when.
>
>Lee

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