UNITED NATIONS CONTROL OF THE INTERNET? Did you know that there was a little meeting last week at the UN? The quasi-public corporation in the United States that handles the assignment of Internet domain names (ICANN) was meeting with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. It seems that some UN members and "activists" are saying that the Internet is too closely associated with the United States, and they want their beloved UN to take a greater role in regulating the 'net. Last week about 200 diplomats and others met at the UN to discuss just such a plan. Danger, Will Robinson. Look around the globe. The more despotic the government, the more that government tries to control the dissemination of all information within its borders. The United Nations is not an organization that is interested in freedom. It is an organization that is interested in one-world government and the international redistribution of wealth. Freedom of speech is "guaranteed" in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights; but if you read a bit further, to Article 29 (3) to be specific, you will read that "These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations." If the international community succeeds is making the Internet a UN operation it will just be a matter of time before the UN starts regulating content. It will all be done in the name of "world peace," of course, but it will be done. Web sites will be scanned for material that might be "offensive" to various cultures .... calling Palestinians murderers, for instance ... and will censor those sites. The United Nations is no friend of freedom, and it is no friend of the United States. The Internet is an American creation. If people in other countries want to use it, fine. But operational control should stay here. We've had enough internationalism lately.
I agree with your comments but the "www" system that is widely used was created at CERN in Switzerland.
Invention? To know who invented the internet you'd have to define what the internet exactly is and which part you are referring to - hardware, software, browser, encrpytion, etc.
Re: Invention? This reminds me of Clinton's famous line, "it depends upon what the meaning of the word is, is."
Re: Re: United Nations Control of the Internet? You are correct. Consider the time-line of the creation of the internet.... 1961: Leonard Kleinrock writes the first paper on packet switched networks. 1962: J.C.R. Licklider of MIT writes a paper describing a globally connected "Galactic Network" of computers. 1966: Larry Roberts proposes the ARPANET to the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). 1968: ARPA issues Request for Quotations for the Interface Message Processors (IMPs), which became the first routers. 1969: First IMP is installed at UCLA. Early 1970s: Universities and defense agencies and contractors begin to connect to ARPANET. 1973: Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf begin research into what eventually becomes IP - the Internet Protocol and its companion, TCP - the Transmission Control Protocol. 1973: Bob Metcalfe develops Ethernet, which had been the subject of his PhD thesis, while working at Xerox. Early 1980s: The Personal Computer revolution begins. Mid 1980s: Local Area Networks (LANs) begin to flourish in business and university environments. Campus area networks soon follow. January 1, 1983: All "old-style" traffic on the ARPANET ceases, as TCP/IP becomes the only protocol used. [Arguably, this is the date of the birth of the Internet as a functioning, practical, production network.] 1985: Dennis Jennings chooses TCP/IP as the protocol for the planned National Science Foundation Network (NSFnet). 1988: NSF sponsors a series of workshops at Harvard on the commercialization and privatization of the Internet. 1988: Kahn et al. write a paper "Towards a National Research Network." According to the Brief History, "This report was influential on then Senator Al Gore, and ushered in high speed networks that laid the networking foundation for the future information superhighway." [Emphasis added.] 1991: Mark McCahill et al. (University of Minnesota) release the Internet Gopher, the first widely-adopted menu-based system for browsing and retrieving Internet-based documents. 1991: Tim Berners-Lee et al. at the European Center for High-Energy Physics (CERN) describe the World Wide Web. The first browser is a line-mode tool. March 1993: Mark Andreessen et al. at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois release Mosaic, the first widely-adopted graphical browser for the Web September 1993: NCSA releases Macintosh and Windows versions of Mosaic.
Re: Re: Re: United Nations Control of the Internet? Senator Gore then proceeded with research which ultimately led to the invention of the Internet as we now know it.
Re: Re: Invention? Why? The internet is more than just a couple of servers talking to each other. Which part / hardware / operating system were you referring to?
