Another Reason why the US shouldn't control the Internet Name Space.
 

A Travel Agent's Web site is shut down because it advertises trips from Spain to Cuba from a .com address. Dot Com is controlled by the US.

This was handled completely wrong. I think the US gov't. has a right under law to have eNom shut down the site since it's US based, but holding the domain name hostage is too far.

United States of America, home of the red, red and red.

This gem from The Simpsons always makes me laugh out loud.

This is a reason why NO GOVERNMENT should be allowed to be in control. Distributing the control/servers across a dozen countries would nearly guarantee that there would never be a consensus on censorship.

Agree -- It would be like the UN's Security Council.

I know this isn't going to start any huge debates, but I completely agree as well.

It would certainly be a good idea to split it up amongst countries, but if it isn't under government control, it will be under the control of business. With ISPs already "shaping" internet traffic, I think that would be the worst of all possibilities.

In my view, it should be under the control of an international committee created for that purpose.

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The Internet, and especially domain names, should not be susceptible to hijacking by authorities following narrow or misguided national interests.

One of my best friends is married to a Cuban woman. He met her on holiday there, went back to visit a number of times -- now they’re living here. But I don’t think he bought any of his tickets from www.cuba-hemingway.com.

The moratorium on travel to Cuba strikes me as absurd. A few months ago there was a big stink here in Norway after an American-owned hotel tried to deny guests from Cuba, who were pre-booked and participating at an international convention. They were informed by Norwegian Authorities in no uncertain terms that such a discriminatory business policy was unacceptable here.

-- ArcticStones

I can't think of anything to say to that Stones that isn't entirely inflammatory (about Americans and their view on Cuba).

I was born in Cuba, and I'm an American. You have to separate your concept of the "American view" of Cuba from the "government control" problem. Americans in general seem to agree that the embargo is silly. Actually I've never heard anyone speak for it. It's purely a government power play.

It's a residue of the McCarthy era; another national panic that destroyed lives, invaded privacy, etc, repeating itself now.

My take is just a little different (and a lot more cynical).

The US gov't has had no problem reaching accommodations of one type or another with "Communists", "Socialists", dictatorships of all stripes, etc., etc., over the years.

Cuba, and Castro in particular, embarrassed and humiliated the US government in a very public way by allowing the world to see elements of US foreign policy (a la Bay of Pigs, and others) exposed as it had never been exposed before. Cuba's symbolism in having successfully*** resisted the US continues to be embarrassing.

I believe this exposure and national embarrassment is at the heart of US policy towards Cuba. (To say nothing of the powerful (or at least, very vocal) voting bloc in Florida.)

EDIT: Agree with CAlvarez that it's the gov't, not the people of the US that feel this way.

***successful in terms of not being under the US heel, not necessarily successful as a vibrant, advanced independent economy with a high standard of living for their people

Canada, on the other hand has always recognized Cuba and that doesn't seem to have brought us to wrack and ruin.

So, this forum is now qualified to speak on U.S. foreign policy re. Cuba? :rolleyes:

Maybe it's just me, but this is the sort of stuff I consider "political discussion." I also observe that the general theme of most of these discussions tends to be "diss the U.S."

Maybe read up on Castro and the history of Cuba sometime . . . how he came to power . . . double-crossed the U.S. government . . . the human rights situation there since . . . why "business as usual" with Cuba gives the wrong message, etc.

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If this has gotten out on a tangent, that’s partially my fault. But the question that was raised was the shutting down of the .com domain of a travel agent -- and the validity of doing so. (In this case that action came as an extension of US foreign policy vis-à-vis Cuba.)

The question of principle, then, is whether or not it is wise for this particular Internet name space to continue to be under the control of a single country -- whatever that country may be.

-- ArcticStones
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I consider myself eminently qualified to speak on my opinion on US foreign policy re. Cuba.

I concede that you may have a valid point here, although I personally wouldn't call it such (edit: i.e., political discussion).

I don't believe that to be the case. Holding and/or discussing a viewpoint that is critical of an action, or policy, or behavior of any entity does not constitute either an attack on or disrespect of the entity itself, whether that entity is a person or a country. It is precisely this attitude that critical views of an extrinsic characteristic of something are equivalent to a condemnation of the entity itself which tends to raise barriers and stifle discussion in all walks of life.

I'd be happy to discuss this.

Perhaps a new thread? Or perhaps private message?

The linking of criticism of an entity to condemnation of the entity is the basis of most "Politically Correct" arguments, unfortunately. Folks who want to argue that global warming is not everything Al Gore chalks it up to be are labeled as "deniers", for example, a clearly pejorative term in this day and age.

It is going to be impossible to discuss many things that affect the internet and computing without involving politics. Net neutrality, DNS control, Chinese filters...the list is long.

I agree that doing business with the Cuban government is bad. However I also don't believe our government has a right to control what its people do in this way. And it's completely ineffective. Additionally it's hypocritical since we do business with China and others with terrible human rights problems. The only logical conclusion is that there are irrelevant political/power reasons for it.

And certainly, it illustrates why government control is bad.

On the note of Chinese filters, and web filtering in general. Since I work IT for public schools, K-12, we are required to filter the internet browsing both on and off campus. Since we have 5500 or more macbooks and they all have wireless and every high school kid gets their own personal macbook they can take home, by policy we must filter the internet both at school and at home.

Which is a pain in the ______ (pick your favorite quote and insert)!

Why do we have to do this? Simple, by policy, parents don't want any responsibility for anything a child may do at home. Why is it the school's responsibility? Well, it is our equipment. So, if a kid were to go off school grounds, and not during school hours browse for porn on a school computer we are held liable. It makes total sense.....:rolleyes:

So, during our deployment we messed with several different filters. The first one we tried required a box to sit outside your network for external authentication, well it was getting slammed by all kinds of internet browsers from both China (who are trying to bypass the government filters) and several from Czech and other nearby countries (the spammers, hackers) over and over again that we had to just kill the default set up and require authentication to even touch it.

If it were up to me, I would just make the parents responsible and let the kids surf unfiltered at home. I mean, there has to be a fine line of responsibility between the education administration and parenting, and I think that once you leave school grounds it is no longer anyone in the school's responsibility.

It is very interesting to see all the chinese IPs just peg the crap out of our external filter box, it was like they were trying to be less filtered? Even if any of them actually gained access, they still would have been filtered.

Too bad the school system here doesn't have enough money to do something like that.

Anyway, here's something interesting:

Pakistan government accidentally placed worldwide block on Youtube:
General info: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...30210920080226
Technical info: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-pakistan.html

The Pakistan government recently found YouTube hosting "content deemed offensive to Islamic beliefs" and ordered all ISP's in Pakistan to ban YouTube.

From what I understand, this ban accidentally spread to an ISP in Hong Kong, which then spread to some other ISPs, which then started a chain reaction, and affected every single ISP's in the world.

Would this be considered a major security hole? I mean, would it be possible for some hacker get into an ISP's system and place an 'auto-ban' on any site they wanted?

That particular exploit was known, and while I am not a routing expert, it seems to me like some of the network admins who run these ISPs were lazy, or did not configure their routing tables correctly.

It's always been my impression that the US Government's policy towards Cuba has more to do with the feelings of Cubans living in Florida than anything else. In that sense, the government is just fulfilling the will of its people, which is far better than a corporation like Comcast "shaping" internet traffic.