The Billiken's Bluff

I was reading this article today, and it got me thinking... what is this internet thing anyway? Sure, I know how to use it reasonably well, I know Al Gore created it, and I know that my daily information intake relies on it. I know its tangible forms; porn, party poker, espn.com, The Billiken's Bluff but I'm still not exactly sure what it is. What does it smell like? Who should I contact when it screws me over? If I cut it, will it bleed? And where the hell is it anyway? There must be some giant supercomputer in Alaska, or Bill Gates' basement where all of my emails and instant messages flow through.

I was curious myself so I asked Jeeves :

What is the internet which helped a little. Jeeves, says, "The Internet is a worldwide system of computer networks - a network of networks in which users at any one computer can, if they have permission, get information from any other computer (and sometimes talk directly to users at other computers)." So in my layman's understanding that translates into each individual computer communicates directly with each other. That sounds very egalitarian, very democratic in nature. But I'm still not sure where Billiken's Bluff goes when I turn off my computer. It's still out there somewhere in cyberspace, which is...where? Jeeves says, "Today, the Internet is a public, cooperative, and self-sustaining facility accessible to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Physically, the Internet uses a portion of the total resources of the currently existing public telecommunication networks." So it exists physically in telephone wires. That hardly sounds like a satisfactory explanation to me. If anyone can explain it to me feel free to email me at BillikenBluff@yahoo.com.

But putting the question of "What is the internet?", I pose another conundrum, "Who controls the internet?" This isn't just another one of my liberal conspiracy theories (Neill!). There is a group that sanctions domain names and inclusion in the world wide web, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN . They maintain close ties with, and are sanctioned by the US government. If a website in China wants to be included in the world wide web they have to go either directly or indirectly through ICANN.

"In 2000, ICANN approved a separate domain name for Palestinian Web sites — ".ps" — giving them independence in cyberspace before they get a country of their own. It has yet to decide the future of Iraq (news - web sites)'s "iq."" ICANN has the power to define what a nation is, at least in cybersapce.

What concerned me when I read this article was the possibility that the US could censor and disrupt foreign websites. "Because ICANN reports to the U.S. Department of Commerce, some countries are nervous that Washington could force the disruption of Internet traffic to entire countries by deleting them from central computers — like ripping out pages of a telephone directory. While that is technically possible, it would be a disaster for the Internet and ICANN."

Micahel Aisenberg, director of government relations for VeriSign Inc., an ICANN contractor that keeps the master list of domain name suffixes like ".com doesn't think this is a legitimate possibility.

He says, "The first time anyone tried to do that, there would be such a hue and cry. You would be such a pariah, you would have your role as a custodian ripped away from you."

But doesn't this sound familar? The US doing something without support from the international community. 5 years ago I wouldn't have thought we'd go against the UN and invade Iraq, unprovoked. I could see this issue falling under the jurisdiction of the Patriot Act. Let's say Homeland Security decides a website in Syria is pontentially dangerous, they could effectively erase it from the world wide web. This is all news to me. I assumed if a website ending in the suffix .cz, that it orginated out of the zech Republic, not out of California.

But not to worry the Billiken will be keeping a close watch on the Internet, ICANN, the UN, and Homeland security, BEWARE




Developing...