Is it? This is the _one_ thing in the article (is that term giving it too much legitimacy?) that I whought was barely true. Whoever controls the root level DNS servers effectively controls the Internet. I postulated a couple of months ago about how the US Govt might attempt to censor the rest of the world: "Remove lurid.porno.site.other-country from your DNS system within 72 hours or we will remove references to your DNS servers from the root level servers.". (I also speculated that if the US Govt tried doing this, that an 'underground' DNS system would form almost immediately.)

[off topic] It almost did when InterNIC announced it's recent (and abrupt) new pricing structure for domain names. All it would take is an additional entry in {dns}/root.cache - even a small company with decent VC (and multiple geographic locations, preferably) could have pulled this off and made a decent chunk of change underselling InterNIC; with a slight shift in the way things are done, the model could have been opened up into a competitive market with price and (GASP!) customer service/response time wars. [FADE IN: Look, Jim! I submitted my domain through Campbell.NET 30 seconds ago and it's already live .. That's nothing, Terry, ...] Yet another 'axiom' that turns out to be nothing more than convention. -- Jay Campbell edge@got.net - Operations Manager -=-=-=-=-=-=- Sense Networking, Santa Cruz Node Jay@Campbell.net got.net? PGP MIT KeyID 0xACAE1A89 "On the Information Superhighway, I'm the guy behind you in this morning's traffic jam leaning on his horn."