Read more:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20030809-281.html#ixzz1DPmunIs4What is this about? It's about internet domain names--you know, those URL addresses that most people use to find name their pages and find things on the internet. The "top-level domain name" is the final extension: .com, .net, .org, .gov.
To put it briefly, we're running low on domain names. At this point, there are approximately 15 kajillion websites out there (that's a rough estimate), and most of the good names are now taken. You could, of course, name your new site about social injustice in Darfur "
unfairpear.com," but it doesn't take much imagination to see the drawbacks. The easiest way to fix this is to increase the number of top-level domain names. But on the internet, which spans nations all over the world, who has the power to make such a sweeping change?
That'd be the ICANN organization.
http://www.icann.org/Created in 1998, ICANN is an officially neutral organization that listens to the voices of governments and non-governmental entities (corporations and non-profits) in making those sweeping decisions that affect the entirety of the internet (mainly address-related stuff). Unofficially, it will probably surprise no one to hear that governments get a lot more say than non-governments, and some governments get a lot more say than others.
This particular argument is over who will have authority over the next wave of suffixes to supplement the venerable .com, .org, and .net. To make a long story short, the US wants to be able to make the call.
Okay, now what am I going on about here? Well, the way this new top-level domain naming system is supposed to work is, groups propose top-level domains they would like to see created, ICANN reviews the proposal and decides whether to implement it or not. Simple enough, right?
But have a working example. Considering the nature of the internet, it may surprise no one to hear that one of the first new domains proposed was .xxx.
That's the classic code for pornography. Har har har, very funny. But hey, the adult entertainment industry saw value in having a root domain to put all its stuff under for people to find easily. And you know, there's something to that. It'd be easy for people to find, and just as easy for people who don't want to find it to avoid it.
Only ICANN decided it didn't like the thought of that, so it proceeded to permanently ignore this proposal.
Now, there are a few issues here.
1. In most countries, your standard run-of-the-mill pornography is not illegal.
2. No one is saying that all the sites under that extension have to be porn, or that porn can only go under that extension.
3. Who gave ICANN the moral authority to decide whether something is too tacky to go on the internet?
So basically, hello censorship.
Now, that's annoying and (depending on whether you hate pornography more than violations of free expression) distasteful. But now let's extend that and say it's not just this non-governmental organization that's making this calls, it's the US government. Or the French governmnent. Or the Chinese government. Or the Egyptian government.
NOW how do you feel about it? How do you feel about it if it's not a porn domain, but a domain for activists supporting the free press in fundamentalist countries?
Because mistake me not, they
very much do intend to do this sort of thing. To quote:
"The Obama administration is proposing (PDF) that domain approval procedures be changed to include a mandatory 'review' by an ICANN advisory panel comprised of representatives of roughly 100 nations. The process is open-ended, saying that any government 'may raise an objection to a proposed (suffix) for any reason.' Unless at least one other nation disagrees, the proposed new domain name 'shall' be rejected."
Translation: the proposal gets sent to a committee of 100 representatives of different governments. Every one of them has to agree that the new suffix is okay with them. If anyone complains, then another nation has to actively resist that complaint, or the proposal gets tossed out. Does that sound bureaucratic, byzantine, oppressive, and/or ridiculous to you? Well, they've got a rebuttal for you!
"A statement sent to CNET over the weekend from the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, or NTIA, said its proposed veto procedure 'has merit as it diminishes the potential for blocking of top level domain strings considered objectionable by governments. This type of blocking harms the architecture of the DNS and undermines the goal of universal resolvability (i.e., a single global Internet that facilitates the free flow of goods and services and freedom of expression).'
Another way of phrasing this argument, perhaps, is: If less liberal governments adopt technical measures to prevent their citizens from connecting to .gay and .xxx Web sites, and dozens of nations surely will, that will lead to a more fragmented Internet."
Read that argument again. They're saying that censoring the creation of these domains will benefit the internet by preventing these domains from being censored by individual governments if they're created. And this is helpful because it leads to a 'less fragmented internet.' Or, to translate it even further, "it's better if we censor it before those other guys have to."
If my tone in this post sounds huffy or opinionated, this is why. I'm actually insulted that they thought they could slip that argument past anyone with a mind. And it all hinges on the premise that a fragmented internet is something to avoid. You know what? This isn't going to prevent that. It's not going to get any less fragmented. If the .xxx domain doesn't exist, the porn producers will just put their sites under .biz or something. If .free doesn't pass, the activists will post their blogs in a different domain, and China and Iran will block them just the same. Furthermore, a fragmented internet is comparatively a good thing. Sure, if the Chinese are blocked from accessing blogs hosted on .free, then that's a communications hole for the planet's population. But at least it exists. And those internet users in China who are savvy enough to slip around the firewalls can still find it and spread that information.
And that's 100% better than not ever letting it be created at all.
