The Internet a USA National Asset?

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Originally Posted by e3j

Unfortunately that won't work. As mentioned in the article, the USA controls DNS and there can only ever be one DNS. (if you want to talk to anywhere else in the world) A separate DNS just for Australia would have a totally out of date database in 10 minutes.

Also the bit about American ownership amuses me. I always believed - and still do - that Tim Berners-Lee (a pom) "invented" the internet.

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Originally Posted by disco2hse

And working in Switzerland at the time ;)

But actually he didn't "invent" the Internet, he coined the phrase Worldwide Web (I have a copy of his research article in which he did that laying about here somewhere), which is what most people think of when they think of the Internet but it is a lot more than that.

What we know as the Internet has more to do with Vint Cerf than Tim Berners-Lee, although Lee has been more influential since then as founder of Web Foundation.

Alan

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I believe it went the same way as with the invention of television by a Scot, James Logie Baird in 1929, while developing it, the 2nd world war broke out and all the developement went across to the US and it was further developed from there.

Besides who cares, I don't, we'll just have to write or text one another:p

Baz.

If the USA shut down the internet, it would not prevent it continuing to function outside there, although it would be seriously degraded in some respects - for example, most of Australia's international connections go to the USA before anywhere else, and a large proportion of everything we use on the internet is hosted in the USA. (The top level domain name, .au or .com etc, does not tell you where it is hosted - it will be hosted where the best deal is, as a general rule, and this is often in the USA!)

But it is not only unlikely, in my view, that the US government could actually shut down the internet, even if they legislate to do so (too much would need to be shut off to shut it down), but it is even less likely that they would do so, as there are too many parts of government and society too dependent on it - everything from internal and external communications to banking, market operations, the telephone system, the broadcasting system etc. They are not total fools, although some times you wonder!

John

Hmmm, the silent skies post 911 was a reaction to a physical attack. How tempered would their response be to a staged cyber-attack. I think perhaps a precendent has been set, shut it down and ask questions later.

Meh, who knows uhh? I am not going to throw away my writing pad, envelopes and stamps just yet. ;)

As said would not stop it altogether but would put a huge dent in things. Worse for GPS, they do control most of that.

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Originally Posted by CraigE

As said would not stop it altogether but would put a huge dent in things. Worse for GPS, they do control most of that.

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thay have losed control of that, russia has there birds up now

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Originally Posted by Pedro_The_Swift

who says the yanks dont control the 'net?

do you really think your emails just go from your PC to your mates?

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of cource thay do, but only after thay have gotten though Echelon