[OT] Internet may "fall apart" next month, says EU

[Robert Brockway]

On Fri, 14 Oct 2005, Marcus Brubaker wrote:

> I agree that the threat of this as portrayed by the media is seriously
> overblown but this could have some serious consequences.  In the short term

Agreed.

> nothing is likely to change, but long term the picture is a bit different.
> What happens if the EU/UN decide to ignore ICANN and setup their own version?
> Suddenly there are two "authoritative" bodies passing out IP address blocks

So far the discussions I've seen have all revolved around the creation of 
an alternative set of root nameservers.  Without legislation the 
governments of Europe/Brazil/wherever can't enforce this.  Watch the ISPs 
all use the normal set of root nameservers.

Remember there have been several private enterprise attempts at creating 
alternative sets of root nameservers and all have been a failure.  A 
government backed set will go the same way without the force of law.

If duplicate address blocks were allocated this would be a big deal.  I 
don't see this happening as ICANN doesn't directly get involved in these 
allocations and Europe already has its own body for IP address allocation 
(http://www.ripe.net).  The world is divided into several regions, each 
with its own address registry.  This has been the case for many years.

> That said, I'm fairly certain that it won't get anywhere close to this.  No
> matter how stupid the Bush administration is, too many multinational (read:
> wealthy) corporations depend on a globally functional internet for something
> like this to carry on for long.  Of course, if said corporations decide it's
> not worth the trouble to lobby and get together to start setting up their own
> "Corpnet" then I will start getting worried.

OTOH the Internet, despite what some claim, was actually doing very well 
without corporate involvement for a long time.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want a split of the network but a network 
where open standards were never under threat would be dreamy.

When the Internet was gaining ground outside univerities (say 1990-1993) 
there were several commercial alternatives (AOL, CompuServe, others).  All 
either died or effectively surrendered to the power of the Internet.  On 
reflection I think the same would happen again if we had Corpnet vs a new 
global open network[1].

[1] Which I'm quite certain would emerge if the Internet actually 
collapsed in any meaningful way.  For one, I'd be involved.

Rob

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