Originally posted by beet1e
No you don't. The whole concept of the Internet in its early beginnings was to decentralise information so that if one node took a hit, information could be rerouted. Even by 2000, there were over 200 million nodes in 246 countries. No country is central to its function. That would be like saying that "the US controls the world telephone system", which clearly it does not. As fishu said, and I quote from the article: - only the domain name registration is centralised, as it would have to be for the reasons quoted.
BALONEY! The early concept of the internet was DARPANET, a method of communications between dissimilar mainframe computing systems. The Internet goes back to the 1960s, FYI.
And it was a wholly US invention--up to the mid-90s. The whole gamut, including HTTP, TCP/IP, RFCs, etc... International participation has brought us many things, such as Nigerian Money Transfer Schemes, Dutch hackers, and so many other wonderful additions to the system.
Why should I trust the UN to manage domain name servers (that's what this is really about, you know, the root servers)? Have they ever managed anything efficiently? What's wrong witht the current setup, other than the fact that us nasty Yankee running dog imperialists are in charge? Has anyone, anywhere ever been denied access to the internet's services through the offices of the US Government? I think not. China, now--China has denied access to the internet to Chinese citizens.
Do I want China to have a say in how the internet works? NOT IN A MILLION YEARS!