[ga] Are "Split Roots" the Future of the Internet?

[Danny Younger <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200511/msg00184.html

Excerpt:

The U.S. is making apocalyptic predictions of what the
U.N. would do if given control. Those predictions are
probably optimistic; U.N. control would be a disaster.
But there is a third way, as Mr. Gore might say. That
alternative doesn't serve the interests of either the
U.S. government, which enjoys the control it currently
exercises, or its critics, who would much prefer to do
their censoring under a multilateral umbrella. But if
the U.S. continues its Internet brinkmanship, the
third way will become not only likely, but inevitable.

That alternative is a fragmented Internet, without a
single "root file" that describes the locations of
everything on the Net. The U.S. government has led
many to believe that this is equivalent to dismantling
the Internet itself. But it is bluffing.

Root servers could spring up in France, or Cuba, or
Iran. In time, the Internet might look less like the
Internet and more like, say, the phone system, where
there is no "controlling legal authority" on the
international level. More liberal-minded countries
would probably, if they did adopt a local root-server,
allow users to specify which server they wanted to
query when typing in, say, Microsoft.com.

Would it be better if countries that want to muck
around with the Net just didn't? Sure. But they do
want to, and they will, and it would be far better, in
the long run, if they did so on their own, without a
U.N. agency to corrupt or give them shelter. 

It's time to drop the apocalyptic rhetoric about a
split root file and start looking beyond the age of a
U.S.-dominated Internet. Breaking up is hard to do,
but in this case, the alternative would be worse. 



	
		
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