Controversy Over U.S. Control Of The Internet
Controversy over US control of the Internet
http://www.theroyalgazette.com/apps/...NESS/107130062
Last modified: July 13. 2005 9:43AM
by Ahmed ElAmin
Who controls the Internet? Why, the US of course.
Despite previous promises to turn control of the Internet's root servers over to an international body, the US on June 30 announced it would indefinitely retain oversight of the Internet's main traffic-directing computers.
The departure from policy is already stirring the pot of controversy. The US Commerce Department justified its decision on the grounds of security threats and increased reliance on the Internet globally for communications and commerce. There are 13 root servers for the global Internet, most of which are located in the US. That control gives the US the power, if it so decided, to shut down entire country domain names suffixes such as ".fr" for France, or ".bm" for Bermuda.
The Commerce Department provisionally handed over control of those servers in 1998 to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a private organisation.
In its June 30 declaration, the Commerce Department formally asserts its oversight of ICANN.
"Given the Internet's importance to the world's economy, it is essential that the underlying DNS of the Internet remain stable and secure," assistant secretary Michael Gallagher said. "As such, the United States is committed to taking no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the DNS and will therefore maintain its historic role in authorising changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file."
The decision has led some commentators to speculate we may be heading for a huge division in the Internet, as countries begin carving out their own Internet space, with their own referring root servers.
Worse, the US could skew the development of the Internet toward favouring its own policies and businesses to the exclusion of others.
This would be a step backward, or would it?
As an alternative to division or control by the US, other countries must start investing more in root server infrastructure. The whole idea of the Internet was to spread out a redundant network that would never shut down if nodes were taken out.
So far the big man on the Internet has followed democratic principles and has let it develop under ICANN's direction. Better the US than some other countries I can think of. ICANN has an international board and some are bound to scream if the US begins to assert its powers too strenuously. At least I hope so.
As a preview of the new world of live event broadcasting, AOL's streaming of the Live 8 concerts surpassed all my expectations.
On July 2, AOL broadcast live the event as it was held in six of the ten cities. Online viewers had a choice of switching between the concerts as they were held in London, Philadelphia, Toronto, Paris, Rome and Berlin.
Live 8 was a series of free concerts organised by Bob Geldoff, musician and force behind the 1985 Live Aid concerts. AOL volunteered to stream the concerts at the six cities.
Everything worked beautifully online. Even though I was not at the live event, I still got the feeling that I was somehow part of it, even though it was only by clicking from one city to the next.
An average of 160,000 people were simultaneously viewing the video streams at any given time, and about 5 million people sampled the video at some point during the day.
What's more AOL has followed up the event by keeping all the concerts online. You can see any artist, any song, on-demand at www.aol.com.
That sound you hear is the rubbing of hands by AOL's executives, as they contemplate how to make money from what is probably the largest rollout of video streaming technology.
So enjoy the free broadcasts while they last. Forget cable. This is the point at which the computer takes over from the TV in broadcasting for specific tastes.
