[governance] People's Daily of China: US must hand over Internet control to the world

[Daniel Kalchev]

On 21.08.12 15:23, parminder wrote:
>
> On Tuesday 21 August 2012 05:27 PM, Daniel Kalchev wrote:
>
> snip
>>
>> 2. Internet is an open network of private networks. Each private 
>> network operator can do and actually does what their own agenda 
>> suggests (such as, in China's case -- implement the Great Firewall). 
>> There is nothing in the design of "Internet" that has any provision 
>> for "countries" and therefore "countries" are not an defined party in 
>> the Internet. This includes the USA.
>> (I know, this sounds harsh, but truth is always this way)
>
> What holds as the ideal is your mind is obviously not the real 
> Internet that operates. For instance, US courts can decide which gtlds 
> are allowed and which not as per US law and/or dictate the terms of 
> registry agreement (do you refute this). This is of course apart from 
> the fact that no change in the root can be made without US gov's 
> express authorisation.... The Internet that I use in India has the 
> properties as indicated. Which Internet are you referring to, 
> Daniel..... And so strange that you refer to 'harsh truth' while 
> making such an entirely fantastical statement that no country - 
> including the US is 'an defined party in the Internet'.
>

There is nothing fantastic about this.

Let me give you some perspective, why I think so:

The hard truth is, that I can run any of the root servers (with their 
proper content!) on my very own desktop computer. It runs UNIX, so that 
helps in a way (with performance, Internet standards compliance etc), 
but is not a requirement.
I could even run it on my old 1st generation iPod Touch (which also 
happens to run UNIX). The data that goes in the root servers is.. PUBLIC.

By using visualization, I could run ALL the 13 root servers in my 
desktop computers. I could assign their original IP addresses etc. Then 
instruct my router(s) to direct traffic to these root servers there. For 
anyone in my network, they will believe they are talking to the original 
root servers and for all practical purposes they will get exactly the 
same responses as from the original root servers.

Now, some more hard facts. I happen to be responsible for my country's 
very first ISP that has presence practically everywhere. There are also 
very good internal connectivity etc. This means, I do not have to 
"overload" my very own desktop computer with these tasks, I could spread 
them over to a number of datacenters across the country. I could also 
announce the routes to these root servers to anyone in the country (or 
even neighboring countries' ISPs) locally. So, even if the US, or China, 
or say, Macedonia :) decides they will cut all connectivity to our 
country, or filter us from any other TLD, we can have our very own 
copies of the root DNS servers and be fine with it.

If I wanted, I could have my very own imaginary TLDs in my root servers. 
In fact, many countries, industrial groups and individuals have done 
this for years, primarily with IDN domains, during the time ICANN was 
hesitant to work in that direction.

I don't like India's TLD? Or I don't like the IN registry? I 
"re-delegate" the IN TLD in my very own root servers to someone else. Or 
just remove it altogether. I see my own version of the Internet. The way 
I like it.

Let's hope you understand...

If you think that I could do this because of some unique abilities or 
special powers, you are wrong. I know of kids that have done this, many 
many times. It doesn't require much resources. The whole setup process 
could take me less than an hour, from the idea, to implementation and 
documenting it. It is trivial. I am however, one of the people who 
oppose such ideas.

Why? It is simple: remember the Cold War? When the "Western Block" and 
the "Eastern Block" were at (whatever) parity -- no one could risk 
attacking the other party, because mutual destruction was guaranteed. 
Some (many) were thinking they could be faster than the enemy, so why 
not just try... but thankfully there were enough sane people to prevent 
it from happening. Or we would not be discussing this Internet thing today.

It is because creating your very own version of Internet is so 
inconvenient and pushing you back (in any possible sense), why countries 
like Cuba abandoned that idea. Why countries like China will at some 
point in time dismantle the Great China Firewall.

As to your other concerns, I don't really care what gTLD labels exist. 
Domain names are just labels. Like the street address you use to address 
someone. Or their phone number. Do I care if there is an XYZ street in 
Los Angeles? Or do I care if there is Los Angeles city at all? No, I 
don't. They can rename it any way they wish. And I don't get mad at 
people who don't even know where Bulgaria is. :)

Daniel

PS: I believe by now you decided that I have used too much reference to 
myself. If it helps, substitute "I" with "You", or "Them", or "He" -- 
won't change anything.

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