American clout on the Internet might be over

Anti-American views are the driver

by Walt Wilson,
Founder Global Media Outreach

It all started as an experiment in the United States linking MIT with Stanford and several other universities to share data. It was funded by the US government in cooperation with the private sector and later became known as the Internet. As the World Wide Web came on stream in the early 90's, creating a homogenous global network, the world plunged gleefully into a new ability to communicate and conduct business. New companies were started and legacy companies found new global outlets for their products.

All was well for a decade as the network grew to include every country on the planet. Here at Global Media Outreach, we decided to share the Good News of Jesus Christ on the Internet, now presenting the gospel every 5 seconds, resulting in an indicated decision for Jesus every 90 seconds from all 191 countries in the world. We use the Internet for Bible studies for new believers and are about to launch our small group software to help people across the world deepen their relationship with God.  

Now all of that is changing. As developing nations come on line, there is an outspoken and growing unease with the US government's influence over the network and the aggressiveness of US foreign policy. The fear is, the US has the power to turn off any country.

As is the case with all emerging technologies, those who invent it take the lead and others follow. Following, however, increases knowledge about how all of this is accomplished and sooner or later others can do it themselves. Such is the case as others are now suggesting they no longer trust the United States to be the global administrator for the Internet. Foreign nations are erecting their own networks that will lock out what is increasing viewed as the "American Internet."

German computer engineers are building an alternative network, by their own admission to make a political statement. The Dutch are building one to make money. The French, always on the opposite side of anything American, along with other European Union members are in favor of these developments. China is building theirs to support non-English characters and addresses that will not support .com, .org, .edu, etc. Web sites and e-mail addresses carrying the "American" designations will no longer be accessible from inside China, nor will theirs be accessible from the outside. Communication between the US and others will be cut off by design. The 22-nation Arab League is building a similar network to close out the American English Internet. The immanent threat of fragmentation will end the global communications network built over the years. It will have an impact on business, trading, culture and the freedom of open communication. All of this to reduce and contain American influence.

Having a single "root" (the insider word for domain name) is essential to global communication. It is critical to the power and reach of the Internet. The root is made up of familiar names like .com, .edu, .org, .net, and country codes like .jp for Japan. The root is coordinated by a company in Southern California, called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers known as Icaan. A private company, they are under the supervision of the US Department of Commerce, which set up the organization in 1998.

A single root means that when someone types in an address like http://www.applecomputer.com/ they will end up there in seconds no matter where in the world they are. A single root ensures universality no matter what Internet provider or network supplier one uses. The advantage of the current system is a worldwide standard for every device that connects from anywhere in the world. The current system also allows e-mail contact with any person, anywhere anytime, across the world.

Icaan's database of 13 domain names is preserved in 13 "mirrors"-- servers that automatically update anytime a change takes place to the original database. This massive duplication assures that data will be maintained especially in the event of cyber attack. Three of those mirrors are located outside of the US but they are under the protection of the United States in the cyber world and in the world of atoms.

One is maintained right here in Silicon Valley, not far from our offices. It is oddly enough located between a Walgreen's drug store and an art gallery in an unimpressive building but plays a vital role in the management of Internet traffic. Powerful servers inside locked cages translate Internet domain names into a series of numbers called Internet protocol, known as IP addresses, routing user e-mail to the intended address. The center handlers about four thousand queries every second from several continents. In 2002 this center foiled a serious attempted attack of the Internet by cyber terrorists.

As the Internet grows, at the rate of nearly one million new users every day, other nations are expressing concern that the US government has sole power over domain name control and who can use a name. Arab states are saying that the US is deliberately slow in forming domain names for languages using non-Roman characters slowing growth in those nations.

Concern became very vocal last year as the US Department of Commerce postponed the approval of ".xxx" a domain awaiting approval for porn sites. While this angered porn suppliers both in Asia and Europe, the Department of Commerce said it was under pressure from US Christians to stop the approval process. Critics saw it as Washington, in league with US Christians, having too much influence over a global network resource. Critics said that American's who pride themselves on freedom of speech were in fact enforcing global censorship. This points out that we live in a world that believes what is morally wrong is actually right. It could be argued that this thinking prevails even in US internal politics where what is wrong has been reversed to now be right.

The matter of Internet control came to a head last November at the United Nations Internet Summit in Tunis, where all 170 member nations demanded that the US give up unilateral control and turn it over to the United Nations. When the US refused, the building of new and closed non-American networks was accelerated. Member nations are now convinced that US policy can no longer control a global resource whether it was invented here or not. The Internet is being endangered by global politics, driven strictly by anti-American views.

The US has countered by pointing out as diplomatically as possible that the UN is a hopeless bureaucracy that will stop all growth of the Internet and that those whining the loudest are all controlled, closed countries who fear a free flow of information. Fat chance we'll succeed with that argument.

The leader of the European network development team recently stated, "The Internet is a child of the US government, but the child has grown up and can no longer stay at home."

Now that the technology genie is out of the bottle, countries are taking matters into their own hands. In the past 18 months Arab countries have begun to experiment with country code domain names in Arabic, separate from and beyond the administration of the American system. Khaled Fattal, is head of the Arab organization dedicated to taking the Internet out of US control. The Wall Street Journal recently quoted Mr. Fattal as saying; "There is no such thing as a global Internet today. You have only an English language Internet deployed internationally by the US. How does that empower Chinese or Arab citizens?" Time nor space will not permit what I believe would be a response to that statement.

A leading technologist working on the European network recently commented to the Wall Street Journal, "I realize this could unleash the hordes of hell..."

He is right. It's not a lot of fun being the world's only superpower. For those who use the Internet to share the gospel of Jesus Christ, we know that we are engaged in the beginning of spiritual warfare of global proportion. It is only a matter of time until the Internet fragments by national politics and we lose our ability to communicate with every man, woman and child on earth. That is ... until the next two American kids in a garage find a way to make it happen all over again.