OK, call me a technotard, but how exactly does the U.N. take control of the internet without the consent of the U.S.?

I don't see why there needs to be a discussion about governance of the internet, unless there is some change that is to be made that our control is not facilitating.

"Control" of technolgy would require technological ability. That, in turn, requires innovation which requires economic initiative driven by market-based competition...We're talking about the UN, right?

Can anyone tell me where the Internet came from? Anyone? Yes, yes the DOD designed...blah, blah. But what drove the forces that built it into what it is today?

Answer?

The breakup of AT&T in '84. Competition, baby. Good times. Hey, what future breakup of a huge monopoly could spawn an explosion of new technological development driven by competition?

I'll give you a hint. They aren't Starbucks but they're close enough to smell the beans.

Ah, the free market. You know how all of creation in the Tolkien Universe came from the music of God? Well, the free market came from the post-coital glow of Dick Cheney.

I don't understand the technical aspect of it entirely, but I believe it's very roughly something like this:

The U.S. controls (through ICANN) the DNS servers, which are basically the phone-books or switchboard operators of the 'Net: if a computer wants to contact another computer to send an e-mail or find a webpage, it calls a DNS server and is routed to a connection. The system works because the DNS servers know how to reach every computer, either directly or (more commonly) through intermediaries.

So, if I want to read a moronblog, my computer calls the server next door, which calls the DNS server. The DNS server knows to call UCLA's server whenever anyone asks for a mu.nu site, and the UCLA server contacts Ace's server.

Now, this only works if everyone makes sure to register with the DNS servers, and if we use a common naming format (so the DNS server can tell the difference between Ace's moronblog and O-Dub's). If French servers no longer registered with ICANN DNS servers, or used a different addressing system, then Jacques Six-Pack can't surf U.S. web sites or send e-mail to the States. Thus, we might not find out that Paris was being invaded by Girl Scouts until it was too late.

The shitstorm regarding "The U.N. is taking over the Internet!" is largely a product of a lack of understanding.

Some U.N. types want the U.S. to give control of the canonical Domain Name System to the U.N. The Domain Name System, or DNS, is the service that maps Internet addresses to IP addresses: for example, "mu.nu" to 1.2.3.4 (just an example). When you enter an address into a Web browser or other Internet application, the program queries a DNS server (usually maintained by your Internet Service Provider) to determine what the corresponding IP address is.

DNS is designed so that all addresses are in a "root" domain. The next level down are so-called "top-level domains": .com, .net, .us, and so on. A group of "root servers" handles queries for all top-level domain info (in practice, the high-level DNS servers are rarely queried, as DNS servers run by ISPs cache DNS information). Now, for DNS to be really useful, most people have to agree on a common naming scheme. The one that pretty much everyone uses is administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a quasi-independent agency under the U.S. Department of Commerce. ICANN runs the root servers and sets the rules for top-level domains. This is a bit of the legacy of the Internet's origins as ARPANET.

Since the Internet has become international, some argue the U.N. should run the "official" DNS scheme. Yes, the U.N. is corrupt and full of despots, loonies, and their apologists. However, there really isn't too much damage that can be done. There's no way to force people to use a certain DNS scheme, short of a government imposing restrictions, which I'm sure would never happen in the U.S. Changing the DNS servers you use is as simple as changing a couple of networking settings. In fact, there are alternate roots that exists, for various reasons, and anyone can set one up if he or she wants. The only issue is getting others to use it.

Also, DNS is simply a name resolution facility. The worst thing that could happen is censorship of certain domain names, which still doesn't stop anyone from connecting to the device; you'd just have to use the IP address. This is why "The U.N. wants to take over the Internet" is a bit of a misrepresentatioin. And if the U.N. did actually impose censorship of domain names, it would probably lead to abandonment of the U.N. root. But I wouldn't even be really worried about that; the U.N. would most likely leave the top-level domains in the hands of the companies and organizations, mostly U.S. based, which currently run them (for example, Verisign maintains the .com registry) simply because they're the only ones with the expertise and resources to run them well.

Well, that was long.

For even more unnecessary detail:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System

Nothing brings out the geek squad like saying the word Internet out loud. Now, can one of you geniuses tell me a story about Angular Momentum and Normal Forces? Wait, let me get some cocoa first.

OK, call me a technotard, but how exactly does the U.N. take control of the internet without the consent of the U.S.?

They can't.

What's more, they can't take control of the internet even with the consent of the U.S, as the internet these days is run almost entirely by businesses, rather than governments. It's complicated, but even if the U.N. took over the DNS system and screwed everything up, we could just ignore them and go on as before.

Big brother is alive and well and running the evil UN