News U.S. Wants To Keep Web

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/09/29/us_wants_to_keep_web/

 

Wow, lets just say I'm glad the US is staying firm on this. With the way the UN handles some things, I dont think they could handle another thing to worry about.

 

Thats partly my concern as well.. I mean with something this important now adays i just don't think it should be messed with in the name of politics..

I don't need the possibilty of the possibilty that some one will say "in the intrest of fair play all countrys using internet or now will have equal addresses assigned to it." O fun... and i bet they won't make more we'll get get some removed and then internet bills will go the way of GAS.

Ok so it's a bit over the top

 

I'd rather an independant orginisation did it funded by a set percentage of every counties GDP. At least that way it isn't run by a far right conservative/facist christian nation.

 

Yea but it's still gota be run out of our country.. as moving it would be an ass pain to the extream

 

I assume by our you mean the US. But not really, the territory could be declared sovereign, which is something that I'd like to see. It sounds abit extreme for the internet to have its own country, but think about it, over the next 100 years the net is going to get even more integrated into our lives, I doubt an hour will go by without every single one of us using it once or twice, so it needs very solid foundations, and its own country would be a better way to guarentee them, as long as it was a protectorate of every major military power.

 

i wouldnt say that we're facist

 

I Would.

 

I wouldn't really seriously either. But there are those who would, and even if you miss out the facist from that sentence, its still a fairly scary description for anyone who isnt alligned to that political/religious way of thinking.

 

w00t America?

 

Care to elaborate? Or was the meaning of your messsage tied up in your post somewhere and I missed it for all the words?

 

While I don't like the fact that any goverment would have control over the net, I'd rather have it stay the way it is then see it turned over the the UN. The way they handle some things.. just doesn't make sence considering the speed at which technology is growing now a days.

 

agreed. I take offense in what was said above. The world, its ongoings, and the people who are ultimately caught up in them are more often than not a lot more complex than can be summed up in one generalized steriotypical statement made on a forum. But its okay, theres no need to retaliate as that would be pointless and just lower myself.

As for the governance of the internet I dont believe the UN should gain control. But I think its important to keep the lines of communication open for future management options. I do believe to a certain extent that the Internet belongs to those who created it. I'll use a quick analogy to reason out my opinion.

A man owns a decent sized house. There are a lot of people around him living on the streets who dont own homes. He decides to invite these people into his home and they could live together sharing the more-than-enough room it provides. He repairs the home when its broken. Sets up the rooms. Cleans and maintains it. All the people in the house live together, benefitting from each others life experiences, abilities and perspectives on anything from random situations to how food should be cooked. The house grows and instead of being one mans house, it becomes the home of multiple men.

However the fact remains that the house ultimately is the owners home. He owned it from day one, he invested quite a bit, loved it, cared for it. It is his property, his project. Do the people who came to take up residency have the right to take that home from him now that they all live in it?

Obviously this analogy isnt completely accurate as theres a lot more politics, conflicting national laws and moral/social opinions at stake in the issue at hand. However, you can see from that where I get the general basis behind my opinion on the matter.

But like I said. I dont think it should be an closed issue. We should always be open minded to what the future holds and what could benefit all. The prospect of making the internet its own nation for instance. I never thought of that, but that could be a very interesting path to follow. However in the world of global politics that would never fly. A shame really.

 

Well written and agreed, Asphix. The U.N. is probably not the best place for the control to end up and so I agree with keeping it here for now, but we as a country need to make sure we're not just keeping posession of the house just because it's 'ours.' If everyone did that, Linux would be non-existent. Sometimes a house, through the contributions of others, becomes owned by more than just the first man. It's not as if he has learned nothing by letting these other members into his house...eventually, when everyone contributes, the ownership should change to reflect that. As the house grows and the rooms expand, the people who built the new rooms and occupy them with their own contributions develop rights, too. Else they have no reason to contribute.

I would like to mention that the "far right fascist/christian nation" specofdust mentions is very far from fascist or far right...I take offense to that, and blind commentary like that is something that is not tolerated much by the rules of the forum. Please refrain from making such ill-phrased remarks again, as there were many better ways you could have made a similar point. Let's all try to keep this discussion a bit above the "OMG!!1!!11 Team America is taking over teh interweb!!1!111" Thank you for those posters who followed that chose to ignore such remarks.

/kicks thread back on topic.

 

My point of view is that we have to look at how the Internet basically functions. Is it a resource, or a commercial business venture, or both?

It started (as many people will know) as a US military resource. Then it became a scientific resource. Then, with the invention of WWW in 1992, ironically to facilitate it as a scientific resource, it became a publishing medium.

Although it is still wonderfully free-for-all, the whole thing costs to maintain and run, and I see this becoming only a more expensive and complicated setup to run, maintain and incidentally to protect from virusses, as its technology and its use grows and evolves. It will need a vast amount of expertise, based both in media publishing and technology, and vast amounts of money that is halfway sensibly managed.

Now ask yourself the question: who has experience of running large scale complex technological ventures successfully (emphasis: successfully)? Goverments sure don't. The UN has never demonstrated that ability. The entities who have done so however, in spades, are companies in the US and the Far East.

Given that we already pay for hosting and access, it is fair to say that the Internet is by and large a commercial venture. And why not? For instance Google is. And as internet search engines go, it is doing pretty well. Any internet based service or company worth its pixels at some point is floated on the stock maret and ran as a commercial venture. There has to be a lesson somewhere.

So much as I disagree with US politics at times, I think the Internet is safer in the hands of US (and possibly, far Eastern) companies who know how to run a complex technological business successfully and make a buck (which can be re-invested in the internet, but at the very least ensures its continued existence). Leave it where it is.

 

Why the hell do the Americans think they have the right to control something they didnt invent......

 

Read your history. They did invent it (today's clue: ARPANET).

OK, moderator hat on: no more US bashing please. If you have an argument to make against the US keeping the internet, make it a reasonable, well argued one, not some dumb "They shouldn't because they are nasty people" statement. Please.

 

Well, I've no objections to Richard Branson (Sir) being in charge. What a nice man.

 

Little bit of history for ya mate, the Internet/Web is something where both the US and UK claiming they invented it is actually relatively true.

More to the point, the US ARPA workers developed TCP/IP which is the "internet" as we think of it, they made the infrastructure.

This was used for various things up untill a UK Researcher called Tim Berners Lee came along and created HTTP(the four letters that appear at the beggining of all website addresses). HTTP is the web, TCP/IP and it's associated systems are the internet.

HTTP is just one protocol that runs on the internet, like FTP, or NNTP. However, it is the most popular and probably the most widely used.

Hope that makes things clearer for you

EDIT:

Argueing over assumptions here, but, since he didn't state what it was the US was wanting to keep the internet or the web, and the title of the topic states U.S. wants to keep web it could equally be said that he's correct.

 

Well I don't particularly love the idea of us having control over something that's so not ours (us/ours=US), but the UN doesn't seem like a better idea either. Who cares what it used it be, it's now a worldwide resources that's becoming more integrated into our ways of life by the day. I don't love the idea of a country that I feel is slowly moving to communism and aiming for world domination (as a US citizen can I bash it Nexxo? even though that's more of an opinion than a bash) having control of probably the second most vaulable thing created in the past hundred years (the most important being the transitiors that power it).

And guys, to most of the population, www/web=internet. Press releases and statements are worded accordingly. I think it's safe to say that most of us geeks know the difference, but it's the same idea has how (at least in my region) "car" generally refers to any four-wheeled motor vehicle, including trucks and SUVs.