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While "ownership may be the key to conrol", it's foolish to (yet again) grandstand in this way when it would be technically trivial to stand up new top-level domain DNS hosts, and then switch to using them instead of the one's controled by USDOC.
It would require a ton of aggregate man-hours (looking at it on a global scale) to update the TLD files everyone's DNS hosts, but for any given set of DNS servers the process is relatively simple. All in all, it would be akin to, but simpler than, USENET's 'great renaming' for news groups. And, since the information in both TLD's would be the same, at least at first, this would be transparent, and wouldn't have to be an immediate, coordinated change, either, so a changeover would really amount to little more than a bit of non-impactful busy work.
The only mess would come from USDOC still claiming to be the authoritative source, instead of ICANN, if anyone actually took that claim seriously. It's really a political issue, rather than a matter of enforceable ownership from a technological perspective, which is exactly why the article refers to this as 'largely symbolic'.
Worst case, you could have folks on the net split as to who they'd point to for their TLD records, and you could have the equivalent of a 'TLD war'.
Of course, BIND is flexible enough that anyone sensible would simply list both USDOC's and ICANN's hosts as part of their TLDs, so effectively, it wouldn't really amount to anything other than rhetoric, unless USDOC started poisoning DNS records, which would, I expect, rather rapidly cause everyone to stop using them altogether.
So, in the end, this is really only yet another instance where the Bush administration seems incapable of playing well with others, and doesn't seem able to look beyond it's own desire for control. I'm sure, as usual, that regardless of what the rest of the world thinks, that they're trying to claim that their unilateral decision is somehow in "everyone's best interest"...
The US should cease and decist immediately. The very thought of leveraging control of the internet in political purposes is horrible. Not giving over control could resultin parallel internets, something that nobody should be interested in
The UN has been shown with all past votes,policies,and procedurual actions that 85% or more of the items brought up by the United States are voted against by the majority of the general assembly. These are the same countries who would like to see the USA lose all power and influence through-out the world. Just as the EU wants it's own GPS system seperate from the USA's, so too does the rest of the world want seperate powers and abilites from the USA. As a point of security weakness, I believe the USA should maintain contol over those 13 main kernal computers.
INTERNET SHOULD BE FREE IN PUBLIC INTEREST
The Internet is a “joint venture” owned by the netizens at large whether they belong to US, UK or anywhere else. It is true that originally the Internet was invented by the US and US people paid for its existence by paying taxes for the same, but they have already derived enough benefit out of it. It is high time that Internet should be “decentralised” and access to it should be provided to all the nations of the world in an equitable and judicious manner. The same, however, cannot happen unless and until the issues of its “ownership” is decided conclusively at the “International level”. The same should, however, in no case be pressed further through the mechanism of UN. That is a remedy worst than the malady. The proper solution is to make it a part of WTO, etc and formulate an “International Treaty” named “Internet Treaty” and let the nations at large decide about its proper utilisation and ownership. It must be appreciated that Internet is an indispensable mode of communication in the contemporary society and it is the “electronic environment” of the planet named earth. If we can resolve the “environmental matters” of the earth by International Treaties and Convention, we can do the same vis-à-vis the “electronic environment”. The parameters of Internet will be extended to “Space” as well in the distant future and the Inter-Planetary Internet System may again face the same problem. We need a “futuristic aspect” of the current problem and that mandates an amicable solution of the internet ownership problem as soon as possible.
Irresponsible here would be for him to hand over control. Some people in the world really do not get what we are all about here in America - which is as simple as, do what ever the heck you want to do - as long as you dont harm anyone else doing it. The growth of the internet, the openness of the internet really proves that point. If the US really wanted to control it for the sake of some control, it would have been done years ago - but no, we just let it run its course, and know that the system is safer where it is now from major disruption than it could be anywhere else in the world. While anyplace is suspectable to attack, as proven again today, the United States has the kind of built in defense that nobody nowhere else in the world can get (and dont get in a huff over that, unless you want to get annoyed with God for putting two oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, and a few friendly folks to the north, which turns quickly to a very cold place to try move through)
Point is - the US has proven it has no evil motives here, and also unlike Germany, China, and many other countries, has never tried to control the net, and has been its steward from the time anywone realized it existed to the present - why on earth would anyone want to rock the boat on something this important?
We have discovered that true control of anything only exists by removing all controls - and then letting the people themselves determine what should be controlled, and what should not be controlled.
Other than that, we are kind of sick of giving things to the world community to control, while the only thing we get in return is the bills to keep everything running.
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I'm not suprised at this. Ownership is key to control.