The Internet is more and far older than the World Wide Web. The web is just a hypertext protocol for displaying documents that sits atop the Internet. There are other and older protocols besides the HTML. The WWW was invented by Tim Brenners-Lee who at the time was working at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Bern, Switzerland.
Briefly, the Internet is a global computer network. It is used for a bunch of different services, such as email, chat, and World Wide Web. Web is a service which uses the Internet, but Internet existed before the Web. Web is the service that lets you find, share and look at web pages.
Tim Berners-Lee is English. Born in London, expelled from Oxford for computer hacking. He invented the Web while working for CERN (on the border between France and Switzerland).The first website was at http://info.cern.ch/. (Archived here.)
(On preview I see Rune has beaten me to the punch 
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So did Berners-Lee base the concept of WWW on the existing internet format? In other words, did he enhance what was already in place? Enhancement is great, and kudos to him for setting the standard we are all familiar with if that’s the case. If he did do this, it seems anyone else could use the technology to form a new service.
I keep wondering why the US is thought to have complete control over the internet. (I am trying to slog through the cites, please be patient) The cites I’m trudging through, though, aren’t offering clear reasons any country other than the US should be running the show. And I sure as hell can’t find anything showing why China, for example, isn’t fast approaching domination of the net.
Networking isn’t that difficult. A 3 paragraph post in GQ will tell you how to configure a server to run multiple computers in your home. This isn’t a State Secret.
If say China wants to come up with a system that can rival the US-controlled internet, what is holding them back?
The fact that the world seems to want to control whatever it is the US controls leads me to think the US knows it’s stuff in IT, while everyone else wants to wrest control.
Seriously, China has 3 times the population of the US. They have a pretty good base of workers that understand computers and electronics. Why the lack of an internet system that eclipses the US model? Why can’t the EU come up with something that puts the US administration of the web to shame?
You get one large base computer. Connect some USB, RJ-45 or even coaxial cable and hook them all up. Viola, a network. Build on that. Add a few more and you have a larger network. Extrapolate beyond and you have your own little haven of users. You want to block out the US? Go for it.
Your site will be dedicated to a server not under control. Wait, already done by BBC, the Guardian, etc. What does the US control anyway? There are a ton of sites that exist outside the US. What the hell do we control?
More important, I’m still wondering:
Why should we trust the UN to control the US invention we all know as the internet?
Well, yes and no. <extremely halting analogy> Somewhat like Bell used the already existing techology of copper wires to transmit speech </extremely halting analogy>
I tried to explain that in my last post. I’ll try to be clearer. The US doesn’t control the Internet. The controversy is about control over names and adresses on the Internet. To expand on msmith539’s “Kind of like how the phone lines work” comment: Consider phone numbers. Now, I can set up a phone exchange in my backyard. I can run wires from it to my neighbours, and decide to use any kind of phone numbering scheme I like. I can give everbody I like phone numbers starting with 666, and give myself the phone number 1. But if I want anyone outside of my private phone network to be able to call me, I need two things: A physical connection to the public phone network, and phone numbers which work when people call me from outside. I can’t just pick any phone numbers I want, I need to go to whichever entity controls phone numbers in my country and ask them to give me some numbers. (Here, that’s a government-run agency called Norwegian Post and Telecommunications Authority.)
ICANN controls the Internet equivalent of phone numbers. Anyone can set up a net anywhere, but if they want to be able to communicate with anyone else they need to have adresses that are recognised by the rest of the world. That means they need to get their adresses from ICANN. (To be specific, ICANN delegates this to various other instances, for instance it lets Norway administrate all .no adresses.)
This is, of course, why noone else can just set up a new network to rival the Internet. There are billions of computers already connected to the Internet, using the Internet adress scheme. That’s an enormous inertia. To make another halting analogy: Say you created a new language, and decided that from now on, you’d only speak that language, and refuse to listen to anyone not speaking your language. How successful would you be in communicating?
Replace your first “UN” with “US”, and you get the question the rest of the world is asking.
I don’t know if it should. I mean, the Internet is a global network, and there’s no reason for us to have control over it other than “we invented it”–which is like saying Alexander Graham Bell’s heirs should have control over the world’s telephone networks–but someone has to have some amount of central control, and we’re doing a decent job so far.
Furthermore, the control we have is based on tradition: our services are only the “official” ones because everyone keeps using them. If we ever abuse our control (e.g. by trying to shut down DNS for all of Iran), the rest of the world could just band together and start up their own alternative to ICANN or whatever service was getting in their way.
Well, yes, lots of people can and do use the internet to form new services. The Internet is a network connecting millions of computers across the world; services like the WWW, email, Usenet, IRC, BitTorrent, etc. are what you do with the Internet. Just like faxing, voice calls, and modem calls are things you can do with the telephone network, and anyone else who has a good idea can come up with something new to do with it.
OTOH, the WWW doesn’t necessarily depend on the Internet. It could work on any network, just like you could send voice and faxes over two cans and a piece of string.
The same thing that holds you back from coming up with a system that rivals the North American telephone network. The technology isn’t all that hard to duplicate, but your new system won’t be very useful if it isn’t connected to the network everyone else uses, and you can’t connect to that network without relying on some of the same standards and governing bodies. For example, you can’t just start assigning your own area codes and expect your system to work with the area codes everyone else already has.
Of course, if China wants to come up with their own nationwide computer network, then they can do it however they like. It won’t be the same, though… it’ll be a really big intranet.
I think they’re just afraid we’ll use our authority for political ends, and considering the events of the past few years, they’re probably right to be worried.
The root name servers, which tell you where to go to look up addresses ending with “.com”, for example. Depending on how you look at it, we also control IANA, which assigns blocks of IP addresses, port numbers, and other arbitrary values… kind of like the FCC assigning parts of the radio spectrum.
You mean like: Why should we trust the US to control the US invention we all know as the internet? - umm… because it’s a US invention perhaps?
Anyway it’s not the rest of the world asking. If the rest of the world was in complete agreement that the Internet should be controlled by the UN or some other hopeless bueracratic entity, they could just rewired their servers and lock out the US. They wouldn’t even have to invent anything new, and the US would be forced to go along eventually if it wanted to communicated with anybody outside the US.
I have yet to see a good reason why this big change should be made. What are the big mess that need to be fixed? Espicially in the light of what they themselves are saying should be fixed. ie. more censure.
I must have missed that part. Cite?
See Mr2001’s comment about the heirs of Alexander Graham Bell. Or say the Chinese or Italians or whoever first invented paved roads tried to use that as a reason for why they should administer street names all over the world. I realise that “because we invented it” can be a strong emotional argument, but I don’t see it as very compelling.
That would be an extremely hostile and harmful way of doing it. A more reasonable way would be to suggest a change, begin discussing it in international fora, try to create a compromise solution that all countries could live with. Something like what appears to be happening now. Admittedly, that would be slow and probably involve a lot of documents and several bureaucrats along the way. But dramatic unilateral action isn’t neccessarily a good way to do things, especially when you’re doing something that depends on, you know, cooperation.
How do you feel about ICANN’s Internet tax, btw, Rune? Good thing/bad thing/neutral thing?
Gah, I wanted to answer in this thread for days now, but haven’t had the time. So, OK – here goes:
There’s nothing stopping other countries from setting up their own domain name services. For instance, look at OpenNIC or the Wikipedia article on alternate TLDs. Furthermore, it is my understanding that the whole “wrest control from the US” can actually be nothing more than control of the root nameservers.
As others have explained, all ICANN does is control the naming resolution. Why should/shouldn’t they control it? In short, my opinion is – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And let’s face it, it ain’t broke. No country is restricted from setting up their own resolution the way the want; it’s only the root nameservers that are under control. Here’s the key bit:
The important parts are the hierarchy and delegation of name resolution. So long as the root nameservers (correctly) point to secondary name servers within a particular country, that country is totally in charge of how its own resolution works. This isn’t rocket surgery, and I can see no legitimate reason for the sound and fury of the arguments coming from people who advocate for UN control. It’s just silliness and posturing, as far as I can tell.
But then, I’m just a computer geek. What do I know.
My major problem with the UN running the Internet is that it is almost certain that they would do it very, very badly. And by very badly I mean godawful badly. Their track record is not good. It’s like the crazy cat lady down the street whose house looks and smells like a litter box/dumpster wanting to be your housesitter. Thank you, no.
Can you be a little more specific about how they could fail? We’re talking about running a few DNS servers and keeping a few lists of numbers, not administering health care or something. It’s not that hard to do well.
I assume you are talking about ITU, Evil Captor. Because, as we all know, UN is a pretty big organisation, with lots of different entities with varying track records in their respective areas. So, can you name one or two specific problems with ITU’s track record?
Not with the ITU, but I think having the Internet under control of the ITU would make it just too tempting to the politicoes in the UN. They would meddle. They would be compelled to by their member governments.
Good thing we don’t have any politicoes here in the US, right?
I agree with your first part (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it). I’m not so sure about the second part. I’ve tried to find examples of specific complaints that other countries have about ICANN, but so far I’ve mostly seen generalities like this:
I’ve mentioned the tax controversy, but as a rabid commie (or at least firmly planted on the left politicially) I don’t have a problem with taxes if they are used responsibly. I might have to look through ICANN’s budget (pdf) to get a more informed view.
I also see some problems in having something with this much international relevance subject to the laws and politics of one specific country. The .XXX domain is one example.
(Added on preview: Yes, Mr2001, that is a good thing indeed 
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Out of curiosity: Where do you see this sound and fury? I haven’t seen much in this thread, but I suppose there may be passionate discussion about this in other places.
Yes, that’s a problem, too, but our track record (to date) is MUCH better than the UN’s, and especially much better than many UN members’ track records wrt freedom of speech. As a pragmatist, I go with the better track record. That may well change soon – we currently have an FBI division being formed up to prosecute adult consensual porn, so we may well be on the road to being no better than China in certain respects.
I’m not aware of any track record of UN bureaucrats “meddling” with the ITU, which existed independently for a century before the UN was formed. Surely, if these member countries wanted to mess with international telecommunications, they would’ve done something to the telephone or telegraph networks by now.
I didn’t understand anything in that article, except that it looks like the world decided they were taking control and there’s nothing anyone in the US can do about it. Huh?
Exactly. As far as I can tell, there are no substantive issues. I’m waiting for someone to point some out. If I’m mistaken, I’ll certainly change my point of view.
I hate the idea of levying a “tax” (in quotes because it’s not really a tax per se). At the same time, from what I read, it only affects .com (and possibly .net and .biz) domains. And I can deal with that. You want to do business on the net, you pay your fee to support the infrastructure. It doesn’t affect any of the other TLDs (and therefore doesn’t affect how they’re regulated).
OK, “sound and fury” was hyperbolic (and most certainly didn’t refer to this thread; sorry if I gave that impression). But headlines like Breaking America’s grip on the net (linked to by esquimalt earlier) are indicative of the trend.