ICANN and the US

[yourlife]

OK, this is probably stupid, but I think its a point worth making

OK so America do not have a country code, so lets take the example of the government domain.
US = .gov
UK = .uk.gov
See the issue? It makes you think, who really owns ICANN? It's meant to be run by every country, but by the looks of it, the US own it...
If lets say we got an alien to look at this, then which country would they go to first? the one that looks the mightiest, and America is basically saying that with their fancy, no country, domain

What we should see is:
US = .us.gov
UK = uk.gov
Yes? Good

Same with telephone codes
US = +1
UK = +44
WTF IS GOING ON HERE????

And hold on, who invented telecommunications? Oh yes, THE BRITISH, so why has AMERICA TAKING OVER ALL OF THE SUDDEN?

Admittedly the US did make the internet but we did make telecommunications and the telephone(?)

Anyway, I just think its unfair and that every country should be treated the same way and by the looks of it the US are sitting on a nice cushion.

Please share you views...

[Lead Head]

The US DOES have its own country code - .US. Just not many things seem to use it. Wikipedia says ICANN does not manage .gov TLDs. .gov is managed by the GSA. This is because the Internet as basically started as a US government funded project.

The Telephone has no single inventor, but the first person to ever successfully patent it was Alexander Graham Bell - and he patented it with the US Patent Office. Anyways, the +1 country code is not just the US, It also includes Canada. Not to mention the organization that came up with the country telephone codes is based in Geneva Switzerland.

[yourlife]

I still don't like it.
US should have .us.gov (or is it .gov.us? I always get it mixed around) and .co.us like the rest of the world has to.

I don't care if the bitches made the internet, same as I don't care that 9/11 was caused by the US military.

DO NOT LECTURE ME ON 9/11, start another topic for that.

[Lead Head]

The rest of the world doesn't have to do anything if they don't want to. People in England, Australia, whatever can register .com websites just the same as we can. They choose to use .co.uk to show that their website is UK based, but they don't have to. Just like how people in America have the option of using .us to show the website is US based, but they don't have to.

The only limitations is that people/companies outside the US, or at least do not have an operating branch in the US cannot register a .us domain name. Only government bodies can use .gov. We were the first to start using the internet, as a result government agencies started using .gov before any  one else did. Obviously other countries wanted it for their governments so they started doing .gov.uk, gov.nz , etc...Why should we change all of our website names because other countries started using different variations after us?

I don't even know why I'm bothering to argue this. It really doesn't matter at all. Nobody is going to think the US is a superior nation because they use .gov, and everybody else needs a suffix.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I don't care about any of this and if this really pisses you off it's a good sign that you're happy with your life, otherwise you'd have more important stuff to complain about.

[Refalm]

.gov is kind of an exception. For example, universities in other countries can request an .edu address.

[yourlife]

We were the first to start using the internet

All Americans Are Disqualified For Talking In This Post
)because this is the exact response I predicted would come from Americans)

[piratePenguin]

In that case I'm from Ireland so I think I can reiterate Lead Heads legitimate input:

The US were the first to start using the internet or internet addresses so for compatibility purposes they got to keep their addresses. I don't know many of the facts as to how exactly this unfolded so I wouldn't assume it was for any other reason e.g. the US illustrating their domination upon the rest of the world.

If however it's to turn out their net neutrality idea is to go down that road e.g. the US pass it, then put pressure on the world to setup similar powers (as I believe has happened with e.g. drug probation), then I will personally be at war with them. Net neutrality should never be passed anyhow, but I don't understand or follow it much.

[Lead Head]

I'm a bit confused by your comments on net neutrality. Net neutrality is the idea that ISP/Other Agencies cannot put restrictions on your internet browsing. What's so bad about that? ISP's would love to block certain websites from you, and make you pay extra to access them, perhaps for say high bandwidth sites like YouTube.

A Net Neutrality law would prevent ISPs from doing things like that.

[piratePenguin]

Oh, I had a very mistaken view then (to these issues I have taken, clearly, a very bored ignorant attitude). I thought there was a relation between net neutrality and this - an internet killswitch, that's the worrying thing (I guess it's laws undermining net neutrality and supporting an internet killswitch, or any interference the US government can have that makes the internet more controlled like in China (the irony of it)).

related, hilarious:

WIKILEAKS vs The Pentagon - Rap News

[yourlife]

"National Cybersecurity" wtf? I does not take a genius to work out that if you block America from the internet, you will block thousands of other countries internet as well, and no one nation should have any control over the internet.

Unless I'm confused over this...

[davidnix71]

The Internet treats blockage as "damage" and routes around it, but if the US gov't demanded that all US phone carriers stop all traffic exiting or entering the US, the US internet would only be isolated from the rest of the world. To actually bring down the Web, all they would have to do is order the DNS hubs to shut down or just go in and fsck up their routing tables. Without the ability to lookup, you aren't going to have much traffic. Most websites are scripted to pull ads and content. That would cease. Even if you knew the full IP of a site, you would get a mostly blank page.

If you have a phone bill in the US there is a "Universal Access Fee" on your bill that the feds put there. It pays for universities and libraries to have internet access so in theory anyone can use it for free if they don't have a home connection. We don't own the web, but we do pay a lot of money to make it work like it does. Without that phone subsidy, the web in the US would revert to the AOL days where you were actually not on the web, just a private dialup server that pretended to be the web. I haven't telnetted into the county library in years. I don't think it's even possible anymore.

ICANN just allowed other alphabets to be used in web names. That makes the web truly universal.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/icann-approves-internet-addresses-in-arabic-cyrillic-script-1877447.html

[reactosguy]

It makes you think, who really owns ICANN? It's meant to be run by every country, but by the looks of it, the US own it...

Actually, I feel that the ICANN runs itself and it's just based in the US.

And hold on, who invented telecommunications? Oh yes, THE BRITISH, so why has AMERICA TAKING OVER ALL OF THE SUDDEN?

Admittedly the US did make the internet but we did make telecommunications and the telephone(?)

Wait a minute. The telephone was developed by Alexander Graham Bell, a Scottish man (assuming Scotland is part of the United Kingdom). He developed it in either Canada or the United States, however.

I do admit that British people developed the first electrical telegraph, but American(?) Samuel Morse improved it, according to the Wikipedia article on telecommunication.

I'm confused to the dates however. The article says through dates that Morse's variant came before the British electrical telegraph, which doesn't make sense because it's impossible to make an improvement of a final version application when the final version is not available to the public in any way.

EDIT:

this - an internet killswitch, that's the worrying thing (I guess it's laws undermining net neutrality and supporting an internet killswitch

Yeah, and talking about an Internet kill switch, yourlife is probably not going to like this.