Re: Internet.na.us intenet.me.iq internet.uk.eu

[Florian Weimer <fw () deneb enyo de>]

* Dude VanWinkle:

> At my last job plans were underway to separate business, resnet,
> building controls, and academic/research networks. While I understand
> that the Internet today has private offshoots (LambdaRail, SLR,
> inet2.edu, etc) I am still wondering if this will further develop into
> "separate but equal" Internet branches. This scares me when I take
> into consideration what some countries (great firewall, *.tn, etc) do
> when passed control.

I think the whole debate is quite pointless.  They aren't "passed
control", they already have control on their view of the Internet,
even if they cannot exercise control over ICANN.

ICANN is not a service provider.  Packets are forwarded and content is
hosted by others.  If those guys don't like your packets or content,
you lose, no matter what ICANN says.

The current state of Internet censorship seems to be, roughly
speaking:

  * Countries like China filter content for poltical and economic
    reasons.  Bribe someone, and your competitor goes off the net --
    a very clean DoS attack.

  * The U.S. censors the Internet in libraries and public schools,
    based on the "local community standards" doctrine.

  * U.S. companies fear that the FBI targets them because they do
    business with overseas online casions (which are completely legal
    where they are operated).

  * Some U.S. ISPs (well, at least one) configure null routes on
    routers in Germany to prevent most Germans from accessing certain
    web sites which might be illegal under German law (but without
    prior judicial review).

  * German ISPs tweak DNS and IP routing in attempt to hide certain
    content, with or without judicial review.

  * A lot of ISPs worldwide put packets into an inferior traffic class
    because they don't like the payload.

Of course, what ISPs like and dislike depends heavily on the
regulation they are subject to.  This means that governments already
exercise a lot of control on the Internet as seen by their citizens.
The UN/ICANN/DoC triangle can't really change that.

> It also scares me when I see what my government does when The People
> stop paying attention or fighting for their rights. I can see a future
> where national security dictates that we cannot browse foxnews.com or
> cnn.com (depending on your demographic) and I wouldn't be surprised to
> find that we are being blocked today from Al Queda sites (not as if I
> could read them anyhoo, but still).

You are looking for censorship at the wrong places.  Have you ever
wondered why you cannot use Paypal for online gambling?
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