On Giving Up Control Over The Internet
BY Herschel Smith
10 years, 9 months ago
In response to months of mounting criticism from the global community over sweeping National Security Surveillance programs leaked by former agency contractor Edward Snowden, the administration surrendered to allegations it had too much influence over the Web through ICANN, which designates the roadmap from web-connected devices to websites and servers across the globe.
“While the Obama administration says it is merely removing federal oversight of a non-profit, we should assume ICANN would end up as part of the United Nations,” Whiton said. “If the U.N. gains control what amounts to the directory and traffic signals of the Internet, it can impose whatever taxes it likes. It likely would start with a tax on registering domains and expand from there.”
Edward Snowden’s name is mentioned in the DC article. Forget about him for a moment. You can blame the loss of influence over ICANN on our creepy 3-letter agencies. It’s their fault.
But you can blame loss of control over the internet on Obama. It’s directly his own fault. WRSA remarks that this likely won’t end well. No, it won’t. A tax to the totalitarians will likely start in the form of registering domain names, but it won’t stop there.
Eventually there will be homage for domain usage paid to the gun-hating, globalist, wealthy totalitarians at the U.N., likely paid by corporations based on something like traffic, pingbacks, time on domain, page views, etc.
It will likely end in a tax for just visiting domain names paid by the user. A final word to the corporations who are in favor of it. Americans will only go so far in the abuse hurled at them. If this is the straw that breaks the back of globalism, look for Americans to shut down their online banking, online purchasing, and in fact most internet visits. It would wreak havoc on the financial system of the nation.
Corporate elitists see dollar signs rolling up in their eyeballs. Reality has a different elixir whipped up for us. Welcome to twenty first century dystopia. Elections have consequences.
On March 17, 2014 at 9:15 am, Lina Inverse said:
You know, we only use the current domain name system’s (DNS) servers by convention. Heck, it started out as a simple file, before that got too long and DNS was developed. If the current system gets abusive, expect a somewhat painful transition to one or more alternate set of roots (which roots are used is determined by each user machine).
For that matter, the real power in the current system lies in the hands of the operators of the 13 root server clusters. If they decide to ignore a dysfunctional or worse ICANN the latter has no technical means of recourse.
This is all part of the philosophy as expressed by John Gilmore that “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”