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European ccTLDs To ICANN: "We Won't Pay!" 145

Posted by jamie from the dumping-tea-into-Boston-Harbor dept.
Thirty European country-code Top Level Domain operators have gotten together and told ICANN they won't pay the full amount of dues that ICANN says they owe. (NYT article, free reg. req.) Not good news for ICANN -- when you owe someone $100, you have a problem, but when you owe someone $1,000,000, they have a problem. The domain-name operators see ICANN as a U.S., not international, organization, and worry that their "tenuous and largely undefined" relationship with ICANN allows the latter to reassign curatorship of their domain-name databases -- as has already once been attempted.
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European ccTLDs To ICANN: "We Won't Pay!" More

European ccTLDs To ICANN: "We Won't Pay!"

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  • How so? The small nation could fill its own domain with whatever crap it wants, but what could it do to the rest of the world?
  • the "United Nations Committee for Assigned Names and Numbers" - then the US can refuse to pay also!
  • Actually the root name servers are some very specialized machines that cost big bucks to make and maintain. If your machine dosen't know where to get a specific domains information from it has to talk to the root domain servers to be told where to look.
    This is nonsense. Root name servers are just plain vanilla Unix systems running BIND. And, to add insult to injury, actually some of them are already run in Europe.

    To illustrate the problem: the root name server does not answer the question "who knows about paris.fr" but only "who knows about fr". Then the french run and of course already pay the server who tells you about paris.fr.

    In short, I have no Idea what they are trying to get millions for. Their main task is to (re)organize the mess that the US (aka 'generic') toplevel domains have become, and that should be entirely financed by their US stakeholders.

    Other countries TLDs already work quite nicely, have shared registries, appropriate oversight and so on. And now we are supposed to finance an organization whose most important task is to clean up the mess the US of A created when giving away its registry to some private company without appropriate contractual safeguards.

    Hilarious...

    f.
  • Welcome to the *real* world. The 'Internet' isn't a utopia where everyone get's along.. Technically, the internet doesn't really exist. It's a bunch on indipendant networks that all interconnect with eachother.

    You don't understand what the Internet it. It's an international network. It doesn't matter what it is technically, or who invented it. The non-US internet using population is exploding. It connects people all over the world and belongs to the world now.

    We can have the wonderful situation where everyone tries to set up their own root servers.

    Or the US can let go of it's hegemony.

    And try to stick your head out of the narrow American sandpit.
  • I'll just use the ip.... :)

    For some sites, you'll be able to do that, but there are a *lot* of virtual hosts that only respond to the name. If use an IP only, the web server won't know which of the sites it hosts you want. You can't blow off DNS that easily..

  • This is actually what I would envision, except allow the foriegn governments to decide. ICANN would simply point all of a given TLD to another root server, run by the target country. Couple hundred lines in the root server does the trick. They don't want to support ICANN, great. Let 'em do it themselves. Simple solution
    This is exactly the current status quo. All major ccTLDs run their own set of central servers. The only thing the root servers do is pointing to them

    f.
  • This is all well and nice, but...

    there is no such existing contract

    ICANN doesn't provide much (if any) services to ccTLDs

    they could easily run local root servers.

    Some people seem to confuse root servers with zone servers for the messed up US ("generic") zones. These are not necessarily identical. A non-US root server would just have to point to the comparatively few generic zone servers plus .us.
    Not much of a deal....

    f.

  • Wow! It took me 4 hours to figure out what you guys were picking on... I'm sooo embarassed. Well, not really :) I bet my HS French teacher would have me shot, though.

    Eric
  • Go Google for "AlterNic" - it's been done, it's just not very well known
  • Yeah, the moderator system is kinda weird that way. The first two marked it as "funny", which of course was my intent, but the last marked it as "insightful", and the most recent moderator description is the one that shows up.

    I guess he/she thought I was being deep or something...
  • You've got to be kidding me! I can't believe that a group with this kind of authority would presume to charge for country domains!

    What are they gonna do? Give ".fr" to someone else?

    Maybe I'm just understanding this wrong, but, man. The audacity of some American institutions never ceases to amaze/disgust me. (I am a US citizen)

    -JimTheta, jimtheta@beer.com

  • Just one more proof (along with the generic TLD namespaces) that the Internet was not well thought out (from an administrative standpoint - technically it works great) at its conception. Someone decided, by fiat, what to do, and that's what we're stuck with now. No wonder people get ticked; I would too if my online presence was being handled in a willy-nilly fashion.

    Until the Internet has a governing body that fairly represents all interests, there are going to be problems. Didn't we just have a story about the ICANN board being stacked in favor of corporate interests? That's what I'm talking about here.

    (I also think that all TLDs should be cc's, or .int for truly international concerns, with the other 6 existing and 7 proposed TLDs as standard 2LDs underneath them. No grabbing your trademark in all other available 2LDs either, leave them for others that also have a valid claim to the name - but I suppose that can be left to the individual country's trademark laws. But that's another issue.)

  • Re:Good! (Score:4)

    by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @07:09AM (#1019140) Homepage
    It could provide a haven for people to run their own domains without being sued by the likes of Mattel. What a disaster that would be.

  • The nerve! (Score:5)

    by G-Man ( 79561 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @07:10AM (#1019141)
    Damn you Europeans and the Vespas you rode in on! Don't you know we're the only ones allowed to not pay dues to international organizations!

    I need to switch to decaf...
  • Icann billed the countries' registrars based on how many domain names they have registered, with the tabs ranging from $500 for little used domains to $500,000 for the administrator of Germany's country code, .de.

    Get yer top level domains -$500 bucks.. buy now.. What? contract? services? Aw yeah we'll work all that out in the future..

    Still.. $500 bucks for a Top Level Domain.. Who's not up for that?

  • ICANN still in bed with NSI (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @07:11AM (#1019143)
    On the 10th June this year, Domain registrations all around the world will have to be put on hold for over 12 hours by ICANN, because NSI are upgrading their systems.

    That is right - You cannot register a domain because ONE American corporation is updating their systems. ICANN are powerless against the might of NSI, and most people think that NSI (those people that value your domain so much that they will take it back at the drop of a hat and don't have any security over changes to any domain name) should be banned from being a registrar.

    The Internet might have originated in America (probably designed by people all around the world though), but it is now a world-wide phenomenon, and should be treated as such. Countries shouldn't have to suck up to an American company or organisation to manage their TLD for them - the TLD should be owned by the people of the country it represents, and a non-profit organisation should administer all domain names (i.e., charge people for the admin charges and running costs for a domain name, but not any more - like Nominet in the UK). People can then resell these domains for profit, but provide services with them.

    NSI are the bad boys at the root of this all.

    ++++++++++
    Eating the Earth beneath our Feet

  • What the hell was ICANN thinking?

    Perhaps that a million bucks would be a lot of fun to play with? Or perhaps simply that it would go a long way towards paying the bills.

    --

  • Taxi Driver: That'll be 50 quid please.

    You: What the F*@K for?

    TD: Oh, you know - stuff. Petrol and bits of wear and tear.

    You: Let's see the meter.

    TD: Er... I forgot to put it on.

    You: Look, here's £10, give me a call when you've got an itemised bill.

    TWW

  • Correction: ICANN has actually done nothing; the infrastructure (IP networks and stuff) belong to others, ICANN is supposed to be an arbitration organization, helping out to resolve conflicts and such. I may be wrong, so please correct me if I am.

    Now... ICANN has *really* dropped the ball more than once, and has done *nothing* worth of note. Nothing that says "Wow! It's so cool we have these guys!"; actually, I've heard nothing about them, just lots of noise and no real substance.

    Second, ICANN was imposed by US officials, so I can guess there's a certain nervousnes about giving total arbitration and control to them; it's global in scope, but not vision or appointment, so there is a certain imbalance there.

    What I say? To hell with all this. Every country has their own telecommunications infrastructure, IP technology is out in the open. The rules are simple really, I don't see a need for the ICANN.

    Conflict arbitration can be done on each country's jurisdiction: if "cocacola.com.mx" is owned by someone else (and not CocaColaCo.), hell, let mexican authorities work it out, not the ICANN.

    -elf

  • not to say to much now (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There is a large group of national ISP admins, who participate in the registration of thousands of domains who are tired of this netsol/internic crap. And, now that internic is useless, and ICANN has taken over, things are only getting worse.

    The solution is simple. Create a new DNS hierarchy, with new TLDs.

    mail paradigm@phreedom.net for more info.
  • Allow me to retort...

    A comment posted by an Australian gentleman a day or two ago indictated that one day he was unable to access any US site. The links were down or the routing got messed up or something, it doesn't matter what, prevented communications between Australia and the US. He poked at the net with some blunt tools and found that access to Europe had been rerouted through South Africa and that Asia was accessible directly. It's interesting to note that despite the fact that traffic could have been routed through South Africa and Europe to get to the US, it wasn't. Please don't read too much into that, it was probably just an issue of timing, but it is interesting to note the limits of dynamic routing have grown to almost include the entire Earth.

    It's been said before that the Internet routes around censorship... apparently it can route around the United States, too. It's also been said before that the foreign policy of the United States should be to "Walk softly, and carry a big stick." So much for walking softly.
  • SET UP YOUR OWN DARNED ROOT SERVERS

    That won't work. You can set up all the rootservers you want, but it won't matter. Most admins of DNS servers (for ISPs and the like) have their servers set up to query the 'official' rootservers ([a-j].root-servers.net, I believe). How are you going to get the admins to add your rootserver to their list of rootservers to query? Unless the admins of DNS servers cooperate, no one else will be able to see your domain.

  • I once saw a suggestion for removing TLD's completely. Allow almost any type of expression for a domain name: 'ice.cream', 'nike.shoes', 'gatoraid.drink', etc...

    How hard would it be to design a system like this??? I realize that the current system would not be compatible with something like this, but how much of it would need to be replaced to implement this kind of system?

  • Look to the contract (Score:4)

    by hardaker ( 32597 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @06:39AM (#1019151) Homepage
    Always look to the contract. I'm sure ICANN is obligated to honor previous contracts before it existed. What does the contract say with respect to fees that need to be paid?

    Or, if they've signed a contract with ICANN already then they've probably already agreed to the prices. If they signed a contract that stated the prices would be arbitrarily set by ICANN without advanced notification, then maybe they should have thought a bit before signing it.

    Or, they could attempt to form a new organization that promotes its own root level domain names and convince the rest of the world to point to them for them. The choice is theirs.
  • Very close, but not quite. All I would have needed would be a link to any one DNS server -anywhere- in the heirarchy. The data in my server would then have been reachable by anyone.

    (This is the way that the IPv6 name service was run, for a while, before ICANN and other big names pushed their way in.)

    DNS requests, once sent, don't follow a simple trail, but rather spread out like ripples, through a web of DNS servers, as far as is needed to get a response.

  • I can see their point. The creation and behaviour of ICANN has been, um, more than a little weird. Does anyone have a suggestion as to an appropriate place where the countries of the world should have met to discuss the creation of an ICANN-like body?

  • The real problem I see with this is hardcoded links. If you click on a link to somethingorother.com, will that go to a different site depending on what TLD you are under?

    Making this work logically--that is, so that links to root-level domains go to the same country as the referring page unless a national TLD is provided--would require changes to software and to the rules for resolving URLs. The user agent would have to maintain the current TLD and append it to the domain part of the URL.


    ---
    Zardoz has spoken!

  • The Internet Wars begin... (Score:3)

    by JCMay ( 158033 ) <JeffMayNO@SPAMearthlink.net> on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @06:39AM (#1019155) Homepage
    Does this mean that we're going to see nationalization of the net, where we'll go through border checkpoints when leaving the country? Or DNS entries for outside our country won't work?
  • Hmm...that doesn't sound quite right, tho. When a user tries to look up foo.com, if his/her local DNS does not say it is authorative, then that server refers to either it's "forwarder" servers (most probably don't have one,) and then it's root.cache file, which is a list of the root servers.

    The root servers then lookup what DNSs should be authorative for the domain (as per InterNIC/NetSol/ICANN database) then refers the request to that server.

    So, if you just setup your own DNS, and even have your friend's DNS acknowlege it's existance through some kind of secondary or forwarder configuration, joe user's request will still not ever make it.

    -db

  • Does anyone have a suggestion as to an appropriate place where the countries of the world should have met to discuss the creation of an ICANN-like body?

    I would recommened Denny's, they are open 24 hours, have great coffee, and you can order breakest, lunch or dinner at any type of the day or night!

  • Hrmmm.. Fine . Don't pay. Then a big bad US corporation will buy your TLD. Obviously, TLDS are reserved for each country, but if the country doesn't want to pay the fees, why not someone else? .cc and .to were 'sold' ? I agree something needs to be done, but why is this suddenly an issue NOW ? This isn't the first year they've had to pay fees.
    -Iota
  • ICANN certainly did have the authority, which was assigned to them by the US government, which also, BTW, had the authority, as the whole DNS system was based around a US based government orginizations. How can you possibly say 'You have no right'. They have the right to do whatever they what. Don't like it? Kiss off and make your own name resolution system. Period. End of story.
  • up to God? [chick.com]

    If anyone does anything really wrong, they will be smitten.

    "And on the seventh day the Lord created .com, .net, and .org, and it was good. And he saw to it that sovereign domain-abuseers were strook in terror, thus verily did they flee with their loins girded. Yea did those sinners pay their registration fees, and turned thrice in repentence, yog-shaggoth nig-shaggath!"

    :P

  • I'd be shocked if there wasn't one now. Certainly in the beginning, that may have been true, but these days lawyers on either side wouldn't have let that happen. Since I don't actually own a TLD, I of course can't be certain about this...

  • Re:Good! (Score:1)

    by Logi ( 2799 )
    While it does allow a country to do what it wishs with said domain, all it would take is one small whacko nation going for it to screw it up.
    Is this much worse than having one very large country screwing it up? At least let us screw it up for ourselves :)
  • Why not join ICANN At Large so you can see what the hell they're doing? I did. http://members.icann.org/join_now.htm
  • For each top level country domain, there should be two: one controlled by the current national government of said country, the other controlled by a not-for-profit government-in-exile (which in extraordinary conditions of civil freedom may actually choose to base itself within the physical territory controlled by the so-called legitimate government). The governments-controlled domain set should have dues enforced by the rigorous UN collection agents; the in-exile domains should be provided through the free services of the international hackers union, whose members will refuse to work at any corporation that doesn't tithe itself to pay for the redundant, distributed in-exile server farms.
  • Joining ICANN is, to a degree, an acceptance of their legitamacy. As I don't particularly think they have any legitimacy, why should I join?

    I'm getting pretty damn tired of people with little or no technical knowledge trying to tell the people who do how to do things. (this is not to say that I am a knowledgable person, though I would like to be in time)

    Now I don't know if ICANN is completely made up of useless smart people, idiots, or actually knowledgable people, but they've made no actions that don't look half assed. So based on their track record I'm not inclined to want them to have any legitamacy. In fact, I'm more inclined to push for their removal. Completely.

    too much caffine has rotted my ability to think clearly.
  • the Internet was invented by scientists and engineers in the US

    Yeah, but its killer app is undoubtedly the World Wide Web. The reason internet connections are so commonplace today is cos people want *web* access (and, also, email). Without such a hypertext system, there wouldn't be half as many domain names to manage.


    Ok, I hear you say, but if it hadn't been for the www, other hypertext systems such as (the US-designed) Gopher would've prevailed. Quite right. But the same is true of the Internet. The point is, the way things are in *this* reality, all this Internet money is sloshing around because people want to use this European-designed system.

  • It's sickening that they now have to 'pay' so icann 'non-profit, of course' can 'manage' something that they have no reason to interfere with. Those TLD's were set out a long time ago as THE WAY IT WAS GOING TO WORK.
    Why should icann collect a fee from these people? Just so it can force them to pass those fees on to their users, for somethign that should be free in the first place?
  • And that bright pink not-even-trying-to-look-vaguely-natural pancake syrup, yum. :-)

    --

  • Registries are not required in order to maintain the other TLD's. A small handful of DNS pointers that have really never changed, and are no different (other than being TLD) than any other are all it amounts to.
    Starting a new TLD, from a technical point of view, is EXTREMELY EASY. I bet most poeple have no idea how easy it really is. It's the politics that make it hard.
    One side sees an ideal, whereby geographic names were picked, and countries left to do what they want beneath them.. another sees profit and greed, as in .com, the whole network solutions fiasco. Both think their way is best.

  • I don't know why I'm bothering but:

    The US does not own or control the net. It doesn't even come close to it.

    Somewhere in Switzerland the web was invented. So, Americans, pay up, or *snip* lose your web access.

    *sigh* gumby.

  • It's all because netsol got greedy instead of acting with honor and running the registry with integrity. Now it's all fucked for the rest of us.
    Even .ca is deregulating. Why? I *LOVED* the ca system!
  • That is patently rediculous. They administer 100% of the cost of registering those domains themselves... why should the amount the domain is used cause more or less to be paid? what ever happened to honor?
  • Actually.. ditching .com, .net, and .org, and getting back to ccTLD's, (even .us.. it's there you know) and having strict registration types (ie: 1 domain per network, period...) and then setting up ANOTHER lookup system for the WWW would be JUST FUCKIN GREAT!
  • Actually, although these are not your run of the mill pc-based servers, they *are* standard unix boxes (albeit large ones, but not million dollar boxes probably) running standard BIND.

    And afiak, they are not all run by netsol... they are running in several different locations, run by netsol as well as several universities and such, spread around the old internet. They are big machines.. but should not cost millions a year to run.

    See the problem though? If I was running a root server from *my* big corporation years and years aog, (or from the research lab I head), i would have been honored to do it. But.. if some compnay like netsol is making DUMPTRUCKLOADS of money off what I am providing for free..w ell.. I want CASH!
    See where this leads?

  • He was modded up as funny, but I think he may be on to something. A bunch of geeks staying up all night drinking bad coffee could probably come up with something better than the current system by the time the waitress comes by with their Grand Slam breakfasts.

    I'm pretty sure there's a lesson in there somewhere that international committees should be listening to.

  • Long rant.. (Score:3)

    by Thomas Charron ( 1485 ) <twaffle@nOSPAM.gmail.com> on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @07:41AM (#1019176) Homepage
    This is going to be a long rant, but I think people are really forgetting what the internet *really* is, down at it's core, and how it was formed.

    DNS was simply a system to provide an english name to an IP address. It was a convienience. Other countries wanted names. So the powers that RAN it at the time where nice enough to give them some top level domains for them to use. The internet wasn't some utopian design by an international committee. It's a gigantic hack. The wonderful 'World Wide Web'. It was MADE UP? Who has rights on it? Do you? Do I? Does ANYONE?

    Right now I can make up my own naming scheme, create a protocol to implement it, and run it. Even hack it into a web browser, so it resolves via my naming system. Can any international orginization now demand I run it a certain way?

    HECK NO.

    As far as I'm concerned, any country who doesn;t want ICANN to run their domains, SET UP YOUR OWN DARNED ROOT SERVERS. Period. It could very well run this way. Now, ICANN most certainly, for their own sake, point out to these external servers, but that's common sense.

    Yes, this also means that other countries could pull stuff out of their rears, and perhaps even have domains that don't resolve outside of a given country. That's great. I have phone systems in countries that cannot be reached by the outside world, becouse they simply don;t talk to eachother.

    Welcome to the *real* world. The 'Internet' isn't a utopia where everyone get's along.. Technically, the internet doesn't really exist. It's a bunch on indipendant networks that all interconnect with eachother.
  • What confused me about the "ICANN is an American effort, thus why should we put our money into it" ideal is that the majority of people on the ICANN board of directors currently are FROM Europe. Thus the majority of interests represented are from there, not from here. Odd...

    Todd
  • With a rapid increase in distributed projects, cheap home networking, etc, the very notion of a "backbone" is doomed, in the long run.

    You say that as if it was a bad thing.

    I think "disaster" is perhaps the wrong word.

  • They don't have any authority.
    US government is nothing in Europe.
  • What the hell was ICANN thinking?

    I'll bet they were thinking how nice it would be to have a million bucks. Now what they were smoking to think they would get it is another question.

  • Haiku (Score:3)

    by 575 ( 195442 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @07:53AM (#1019181) Journal
    Interesting link
    The catch: "Free login required"
    Not that curious
  • Not true. The TLD's follow the ISO Standard for 2-letter country abbreviations.

    The process was, I believe, that someone purporting to me the responsible party would ask for a country delegation, then, if they met the criteria of RFC 1591 (http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1591.txt), the domain was delegated.

    The .com, .edu, .org, .net, etc. domains were already managed by IANA/NSI when most of the country codes were delegated.

  • ICANN wanted the money now, and would make an agreement later. Is it just me, or is puting money down before you know what the product is just bad business sense? What the hell was ICANN thinking?

    Who is ICANN supposed to represent, anyway? Isn't that the whole problem? It seems to have started as some kind of quango with the blessings of the U.S. Government, with Esther Dyson at the helm. It's great politics, trying to corporatize the internet name space with a US-centric approach, then invoicing "foreigners" without their prior agreement - all this from a country so far behind on its UN dues that if it were the electric bill we'd all be cooking with sterno.

    If we want permanent and positive change, I think there are two things to face. First , it's going to come about more slowly than anyone would like, in order to get everyone (or nearly everyone) on board. Second, the ultimate outcome will have a more international flavor, and will probably be criticized by Americans as inefficient, inelegant, etc.

    I guess those of us who don't like it will just want AOL and the mega-ISPs to buy everything else up and impose their own rule. Oh wait ... never mind.

    Dave
  • 1) He was clearly intimating that the backbone servers are in a similar quandry as ICANN.
    2) While there is no single backbone to the internet, take out UUNET, PSINet, MCI, and Bell and there are almost no decent routes.
    3) While de-centralized nameservers seem fine in theory, there are many security concerns, as well as issues with co-ordination and exclusivity, what if two different name-servers have different records for my domain? Half the people will be sent to the wrong place, opening up further the possiblity of domain hijacking.
  • I propose that (an interested segment of) the oss movement cook up a new top level domain. I don't really care if it must be operated unilaterally... It's relatively easy to graft support for a new one onto the typical configurations of nameservers on various platforms.

    Yes, other indie TLD (top level domain) projects have been suggested, and some are currently underway (e.g. alternic, the grassroots TLD selector thingie.) But the specifics of my proposal are a bit different:

    - A single open TLD be supported. I tend toward a simple ".o" because it's short, and not already used for any TLDs.

    - The idea is that "registrars" would use the second level domains. (e.g. registrar Joe Schmoe Systems, Inc gets *.jss.o). Registrars can choose whatever they want for their second level domain. Though, I realise that this would quickly degenerate into wierdness, the openness is worth a lot of wierd names (consider the alt.* usenet tree). You might lessen this by imposing maximums and/or minimums on the number of letters in the registrar part of the domain name (or perhaps even a consistent number of letters, say four.)

    - Avoid using existing TLDs as second level domains in .o, to make it easier for those who want to set up .o as a default search domain. (But suggest that the .o be left on in all site references -- html links, etc. -- for compatibility).

    - Encourage those setting up ".o" on general-purpose nameservers to cache the whole .o zone listing, to save the non-profit groups running the .o zone money. This could be taken to extremes by not having .o nameservers at all, just serving the .o zone list from a central ftp server.

    - Obviously, registrars would have to run nameservers for their own domains.

    - No limitations should be imposed on the commercial reselling of 3rd+ level names.

    - Registrar names are assigned on a fcfs basis. (To make it more interesting, you might want to force quarreling parties to come to a name-sharing agreement, under penalty of total domain revocation... But I wouldn't recommend this.)

    - To avoid spurrious(sp?) litigation (and even legislation), you might want to set up shop in a trademark free zone.

    (Here's my problem with even having to consider doing this: If I ask some person I run into on the street to point me toward the nearest McDonalds, and instead they point me towards a Burger King because Burger King is paying them to do that, can McDonalds sue him for diluting or otherwise misusing their trademark? No? But what if the street is the Internet, the person is a DNS server, and the bricks-and-mortar fast food restaurants are fast food restaurant web sites? Well? =) )

    Sure, it's not the most practical idea. But it would at least be a cool experiment.
  • umm, no.

    the web started with tim berners-lee.

    So UIUC built one of the first web browsers. Using Swiss standards. Precisely the same argument applied to TCP/IP developed in America, so America owns the Internet.

    Discovery of sarcasm/irony/etc is left as an exercise for the reader.

  • The major problem with this idea is the same problem as the UN - how do you justify 1 country 1 vote? Do each of the countries pay equal fees? Do each of the countries represent the same number of people? of internet users?
    I have yet to see a cogent defense of the one country one vote principal.
  • Tell me it wouldn't be like every other political bodies with factions and deals etc. The europeans would stick together the americans and canadians would be together. the asians would be together and against the rest and africa would be a muddle. the un works on the same principle and how much gets done there!!!!

  • Re:It does behave like a US institution (Score:3)

    by casp_ ( 136507 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @08:00AM (#1019189)
    > The Internet was invented by scientists and engineers in the US
    No, by scientists and engineers around the world.

  • Just like America (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They don't want to pay what they own the UN - funny old world
  • The audacity of some American institutions...

    I don't think the U.S. has a monopoly on audacity. You should drop 'American' from that sentence.

  • What are they gonna do? Give ".fr" to someone else?

    Maybe not France, but it could happen to a smaller ccTLD like .cx [www.nic.cx] , Christmas Island.

  • Looks like someone else needs to read the article. It said nothing about Private Companies registering TLD's without permission. It talked about Companies who are (or were) registering TLD's for Countries with permissions. In some cases those Countries wanted control back.

    If the Countries legally gave up the TLD to the company, then tough. ICANN shouldn't do anything about it. If the TLD was given to someone other than the country and they are proving to not be acting in the countries interests, then perhaps some intervention is needed.

    forgey
  • And the US doesn't need to provide DNS resoltuion for Europe either.

    You *DO* know that they own and RUN the primary DNS root servers, right?

    Hrm, suddenly they do matter, as long as they want someone else to provide the root DNS entries for them.

  • Chinese Hegemony (Score:4)

    by Plasmic ( 26063 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @08:50AM (#1019195)
    "
    Then, there's the physical network. You don't HAVE to use the backbone routers to connect to others, or vice versa. Anyone can build their own backbone and provide access to anyone on the Internet."
    Just out of curiousity, do you have any idea what you're talking about? Let's see.. you went on to say,
    "With a rapid increase in distributed projects, cheap home networking, etc, the very notion of a 'backbone' is doomed, in the long run. It's just a matter of when."
    Umm.. alrighty. It seems apparent from your post that you think that all traffic on the Internet backbone passes through ICANN (that's non-sensical) or that the existance of some specific Internet backbone is key to its functionality.
    "I'd say that ICANN, AT&T and Bell have a LOT to worry about..
    I think most people would agree that there isn't an "Internet backbone" as most laymen probably conceptualize in their head. That is, there isn't one big piece of fiber that everything passes across before it can go anywhere else. Given the number of autonomous systems (as in BGP), the notion that AT&T and Bell (or even the bigger providers at large interconnection points such as mae-east/west) somehow rule the Net is nothing more than a misconception.

    The basis of your post is that there is centralized control over name services and that if that centralized control is lost, then the centralized control over the physical network will be lost. The premise of the latter part of this statement, that there is some centralized physical network, is entirely incorrect. For example, European Internet traffic probably doesn't pass through the United States en route to South Africa (not to say that it couldn't; I'm just pointing out that there's no friggin' global backbone, per se). Decentralized name services could be designed in such a way that they would be just fine and the Internet is already decentralized, physically and logically, for the scope of this discussion.

    Conclusion: This isn't setting a precedent for a chaotic global communications breakdown. It's just the next logical step along the road to virtual nirvana.
  • Actually I'm very interested in doing this - no, not to create a new international TLD, but just 1) to learn how the root servers work and 2) just as a goof with my friends
    So, where can I learn about the root server set up? It's more involve than just creating a .TLD zone on my own DNS, right?
  • You are wrong. The Internet is a proyect started by the US Government. Note that I said it was invented by people in the US, not necessarily american scientists. Surely the knowledge used to invent it was developed and acquired by scientists around the world, but it was american tax dollars that paid for it. Keep in mind that I'm not american nor do I live in the US, but one would have to be a fool to not see this.
    ========================
  • For related discussion, see this Kuro5hin story [kuro5hin.org] about it...
  • Really now. I never knew that DARPA was an internation orginization. :-P
  • That was what ICANN proposed in a meeting recently. .fr is run by INRIA, the french government's network research agency (l'Institut National du Recherche en Informatique et Automatique). It seemed a logical choice when Jon Postel handed out control of the TLDs. INRIA is a mix of altruistic university researchers and profit seeking business interests, but they are overseen by the government's research and economy ministries, and operate for the good of french citizens.

    But now the ICANN is proposing yanking TLD control from not-for-profit and government agencies, and giving it to any private company who will sign a binding contract ensuring for-profit operation with a percentage going to ICANN and Network Solutions.

    It would be a wry bit of poetic justice to see .fr administered by a british or american company, but do we really want that? The french sure don't.

    This issue is one of control, in the absence of any formal agreements. There has been an informal agreement since Jon Postel created the whole domain system, which has been to promote the usefulness of the internet. Now commercial interests would like to destroy that informal agreement, and create an inflexible formal one which promotes only profitability with the flow of money heading back towards whoever controls the root of the DNS tree. Freedom be damned, and ignore sovereignity of other countries to do what they please.

    This should lead to a breakup of the current system in the next few years. With any luck, the commercial internet will collapse into obscurity, and the freedom craving internet will flourish with new, open, technological innovation. So get hacking!

    the AC
  • As I understand it ICANN is responsible for exactly two things:
    1. Running the root name servers but as I understand it Network Solutions are still actually doing that under contract - and, they're only a few, relatively small, servers - they don't cost a million a year to administer
    2. Resolving disputes but ICANN have contracted that out [icann.org] too. And you ought to be able to make money from that.

    3. So let me get this straight. ICANN need US$4.3 million per year to do what Jon Postel used to do in his spare time, for free? Nice work if you can get it. I see we're going to have some fun in Yokohama [isoc.org] this summer...

  • Yep, who invented something which ended up being used in a manner it *WAS NEVER INTENDED TO BE*. I'd say that the creation of such things as Mosiac and email would have more to do with the surge in popularity of the internet more then the advent of HTTP and HTML. They could just as easily be implemented using one of *MANY* protocols that existed at the time, including gopher.
  • If you won't read the material that the posting is about, then don't bother trying to comment on it. It just annoys people who make the effort to learn what the conversation is about.
  • It's good to see that these people are using their natural senses.

  • Good! (Score:3)

    by technos ( 73414 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @06:43AM (#1019220) Homepage Journal
    If I had just recieved a bill for $1 million USD from a company I had no contract with and no agreed pricing scheme, I'd sure as hell do the same.

    ICANN will get their money once they offer up some sort of pricing scheme, and the nations have offered enough to let ICANN meet the budget, so it's not a 'I hate you and I'm not paying'.

    What is interesting is the idea that they may want soverign control of their domains. While it does allow a country to do what it wishs with said domain, all it would take is one small whacko nation going for it to screw it up..

  • URL without Login (Score:5)

    by Rabenwolf ( 155378 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @06:43AM (#1019222)
    You can get there without logging in here [nytimes.com] .

    You may flame now.

  • NYT sites (Score:3)

    by EricWright ( 16803 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @06:44AM (#1019223) Journal
    Just replace the www with partners and viola... instant access.
    Try this link [nytimes.com]

    Eric
  • You can't do this anymore. The .com zone is not available for download. FTP to rs.internic.net. You simply can't download it without a login id.

    I'll agree with you that the US-running the root-servers is alarming to some people. But equate that to cdlu, Emmett and CowboyNeal running #slashdot on OPN... It's not that bad, now is it? ;)
  • Still leaves you w/the problem of individual entities having control over other people's domain names.

    We need a system where people can publish the information about their own domain names, but with enough authoritative info. attached to it as it is distributed so that it is easily distinguishable from info. published from anyone else.

  • Re:Long rant.. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    See the thread on Kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org] for more of a discussion on setting up one's own root nameservers...
  • The 'International Forum on the White Paper [ifwp.org]', as it was called, met in a number of places around the world including Geneva (July 24th 1998, where I convened one of the sessions), Singapore and Buenos Aires. So there was a fair degree of international consultation. There may be disagreements about how much that consultation was actually listened to...

    Oh, and, by the way, I don't think cheap jibes at Jon Postel's expense do anyone any credit. Jon was (in my opinion) a thoroughly nice guy, and, more to the point, did a tremendous amount of work to get this network we all use up and working. OK, so some of the decisions he made years ago long before anyone realised how commercially significant they were going to turn out to be need to be revised, but that's a fairly normal thing in fast growing technologies.

  • It seems to me, that in many cases decentralisation of TLDs would be a good thing. At present, everyone in the world shares root DNS servers for the top-level. These have pointers to other servers, generally different for each TLD, so that other naming entities can divide up the namespace as they see fit.

    But it isn't really necessary for everyone to use the same root nameservers. For instance, here in .uk, Nominet could tell every ISP here to use their nameservers for TLD resolution, rather than the root nameservers, and those TLDs that aren't UK based can have pointers to the relevant countries nameservers.

    This requires that all countries running TLD servers (or the new root servers) work together to ensure that each TLD in their space map to each others root servers, but it does mean that each country is then responsible for their own DNS completely.

    This could allow several nice effects, for example a TLD for .int could have different resolutions depending what country you are in. Obviously, this would again need a centralised naming system for .int, but would allow companies to have a universal name that maps to different hosts depending where in the world you are performing the lookup. No more having to guess the closest mirror to you - it would all be taken care of behind the scenes by DNS.

    Also, it would lead to a more logical ability to have national URLs. For instance, within the UK, I might be able to refer to mega-pizza.ltd, and have this available to non-UK users (and of course, UK users) as mega-pizza.ltd.uk. This simply requires that each company avoids TLD codes in their own TLD.

    The only problem I see with my idea is that every user is then at the mercy of their country's root nameservers to resolve to the correct nameserver for each TLD. This could possibly lead to governments denying access to nameservers in other countries for political reasons, but I can't really see this being a problem in practice. And in any case, if you feel really strongly, you could always choose to resolve from other countries domains if you choose. And I can see some governments preferring not to trust US companies for their nameserver backbone.

  • What's the fuss? (Score:3)

    by Carthain ( 86046 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @06:48AM (#1019247) Homepage
    I don't see why we should worry. From reading the article, it doesn't seem like they're not paying because they don't like ICANN, but because, they're not sure exactly what it is they get for paying ICANN. Even ICANN agrees, there should be something formal.

    A top official at Icann ... agreed that a more formal arrangement was needed.
  • I don't think there really is a contract. From what I have read, it sounds a lot like Postel and his cronies just rang up some low-level official and a couple of hacks in each initial country and said 'We've got a TLD for you. What abbreviation would you like??'.

  • Sure I can. It's a pain in the ass to wade through the postings of people who are playing catch-up with the conversation, because they don't use the URL out of principle.

    The tools to be an informed part of this dialogue are in front of the guy. He's refusing to use them. I'm justified in telling the person that that's irritating.

    If I walked into Calculus class and asked the professor to teach me how to add, the prof would get pissed off. There is an appropriate level of conversation, and that ain't it.

  • ICANN wanted the money now, and would make an agreement later. Is it just me, or is puting money down before you know what the product is just bad business sense? What the hell was ICANN thinking?

    Ciao

    nahtanoj

  • They don't seem to be up to doing much else. The best rant I've seen about what ICANN are planning for our future is at:

    http://www.yelm.freeserve.co.uk/dns/

  • Poor ICANN (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ICANN: Pay up!
    ccTLDs: ICANNT!
  • The Europeans don't need American DNS servers. A big RAID drive, and one DNS dump later, and the entire ICANN system is automagically mirrored in safer waters.

    And if the systems were set to block domain transfers to Europe? Suddenly, European businesses would re-discover the European markets, and the US can go to hell in a handbasket.

    The US name servers only have power over Europe IF:

    1. Europeans want to visit US sites
    2. The European name servers can't obtain the mappings for themselves (legally or otherwise)
    3. A central European name service can't out-compete ICANN in pricing
    4. The IP numbers can't be re-mapped effectively to a new set of names (this would require a translator, at one of the transatlantic gateways)
    5. The US Government puts economic pressure on Europe to comply with internal US decisions.
    If a single one of these fails to stand, then the EU will be liberated from US influence and be free to run their own nameservers without interference from ICANN and with no regard to historical power bases.
  • Nope. When I ran my own mini-ISP, I simply did a domain transfer of the US domains I was interested in visiting, and ran the entire name service on a local basis. It's not exactly considered "polite", and DNS transfers are certainly high on the list of "dubious" activities, but given the choice of causing a few milliseconds of totally mis-placed irritation (repetitive DNS accesses are, after all, much heavier on the bandwidth and the DNS server), or having to depend on potentially cruddy admining, then I'll choose personal freedom, quality I can REALLY be sure of, and independence from morally suspect organizations, and you'll just have to go and be irritated.
  • Being able to do something is not the same as having the right to do something. Might does not make right. Blinking idiot American.

  • I think the DNS system needs major help - the namespace is just so restricted it's almost screaming for naming collisions (instant trademark arguments).

    Here's my suggestion: you need a multi-dimensional naming system (where the dimensions themselves can be dynamically defined) - essentially, having each site being identified by a combination of keywords & categories that IT presents itself as (title, name, author, reason-for-existing, related subjects, version, etc), and keywords & categories that OTHER ppl assign to it (where hosted, date/timestamp, ratings, etc).

    Because of the multidimensionality, you can pick things based only on specific categories (and either exclude or include items which have other categories, at the risk of getting back a HUGE list of items).

    This can be taken a little further by marking the SOURCE of the keywords/categories with known identities (so you can ignore somebody's irritating opinions, or put preferences on some "professional" societies's categorizations).

    Take all this information, distribute it around ala Gnutella/Freenet/search engine-style technology, where the publisher of a given categorization of data holds the "master" copy of that description.

    The existing DNS addresses could be a subset of this type of addressing scheme (category: DNS, value: www.boing.com) and boolean filters could be applied (e.g., find `category'=`regexp' or (`category'=`regexp' and `category'=`regexp').

    With this kind of setup, you wouldn't have to worry about naming collisions, since the names being submitted would always be tagged by the entity doing submission, so you would be able to tell the difference between a key describing CocaCola being submitted by the CocaCola company, or one being submitted by a fan or critic.

    You also won't have to worry about anyone controlling a central naming point, since each entity would be responsible for publishing their own categorization/names.

    Each entity would also have control over which categorizations/names that they make available to OTHERs who ask them to resolv a search spec (which will prob. make for interesting censorship analysis).

    Of course, with this kind of setup, the cumulative keys will prob. end up being larger than most of the data they are pointing to :)

  • It would be a disaster for any large organization. For much the same reason as the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, the latter-day Corporatorus Rex can not survive a downsizing of the magnitude involved.

    Someone else argued that no real "backbone" exists anyway. They clearly didn't look at the NSFNet backbone maps, which show that a single, definable network spanned much of the US and carried most of the Global Internet traffic.

    (Actually, I think that the US =IS= the hub for pretty well all international Internet traffic. It would not surprise me if Europeans WOULD have to go via America to reach Africa or Australia.)

    Getting back to the disaster thing, though, it would be a freeing time for Internet users if the backbone, as it exists today, ceased to exist and all traffic went via a web of house-to-house connections. It would also be a lot more reliable. The Internet was designed to be invulnerable to a nuclear attack, but piping data through a handful of nodes connected with no alternative paths is not very proof against anything.

  • I read the article, but didn't catch what agreements are already in place? I assume that the countries are registering domains and are happily using the services that ICANN provides, but don't want to pay the bill when it comes around? Oh, wait, they'll pay a part of the bill so ICANN can meet its budget. Isn't that kind of like me taking a cab to my house, then when the driver says, "That'll be 10 dollars", I say, "Here's 5.75 because that should cover your gas and what the company pays you."

    Maybe I'm confused... someone correct me if thats the case...

  • This could be a disaster.... (Score:4)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <(imipak) (at) (yahoo.com)> on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @06:57AM (#1019269) Homepage Journal
    ....for ICANN and other mega-corporations on the Internet. When one group seizes back control of something ICANN never had authority to have in the first place, it can't be long before others do the same.

    If/when resource discovery makes it into the name servers, centralized control will simply cease to exist. And why limit it to name servers? IPv6 makes provision for decentralized IP numbering.

    Then, there's the physical network. You don't HAVE to use the backbone routers to connect to others, or vice versa. Anyone can build their own backbone and provide access to anyone on the Internet.

    With a rapid increase in distributed projects, cheap home networking, etc, the very notion of a "backbone" is doomed, in the long run. It's just a matter of when.

    All in all, I'd say that ICANN, AT&T and Bell have a LOT to worry about. Either they rule an Empire, as malevolent co-dictators, or they're sidelined, forgotten and broke.

  • It does behave like a US institution (Score:4)

    by Docrates ( 148350 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @06:59AM (#1019270) Homepage
    I headed my country's relationship with ICANN for a while and let me tell you, if it wasn't because I've worked with American companies all my life I would have NEVER been able to work with nor understand ICANN. I can see why other countries feel like this is a US organization imposing fees to other countries. Hmm, well, now that i think about it, IT IS!. sure there's the at large. sure, they meet in places like cancun, and sure there are people from all over the world in there, but let's be realistic: the Internet was invented by scientists and engineers in the US, and was spread initially by US lead acedemia at first and by mostly US based companies more recently. it's now used by everyone and their middle class cousins, but there's GOT to be a centralized way of handling domains (eventually resolving will come to this one place, otherwise it would be chaos(was that.com resovled by the australia server? oh but it wasn't synchronized to the gualalunpur server!...)). So now they have to pay. Now, is the amount fair? I dunno...

    just my 0.02Kb
    ========================
  • I was reading somewhere that several developing countries are refusing payment too, partly out of cost, partly for idealistic reasons (rich american capitalists exploiting poor). Of course, the registries could just drop unpaid accounts.

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