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Does anyone know of a new site to post criticism of ICANN besides slashdot?

At ICANN 43 I found three sites useful for keeping track of ICANN's moves :

• ICANNwatch
• CircleID
• .nxt

ICANN's New Commitment to Transparency Arrives Via Secret Process (more background here)

Milton Mueller's mention of some people about to have a big surprise probably refers to the likes of IP weenies like Marilyn Cade, quoted in the article, who have probably slowed down rational management of the namespace much more than all other factors put together (and banked more billable hours from rich newbie megacorps). They are so technically cluefscked that I once had to show Ms. Cade how to read the header on an email to trace it to its source IP, and she's wielded more power for years over the DNS via ICANN than almost anyone, including the ICANN (unelected) board.

Just recently I wrote about what the .name gTLD is now doing. They're charging $2 per 5 WHOIS snoop. Like I say in the article it's all about money, so let the folks who want a public WHOIS pay for it for a change. I also mention in my first link that repurposed ccTLD .ws (western samoa) was acting as a cutout proxy for its registrants for years without the world coming to an end. -g

Milton Mueller's mention of some people about to have a big surprise probably refers to the likes of IP weenies like Marilyn Cade, quoted in the article, who have probably slowed down rational management of the namespace much more than all other factors put together (and banked more billable hours from rich newbie megacorps). They are so technically cluefscked that I once had to show Ms. Cade how to read the header on an email to trace it to its source IP, and she's wielded more power for years over the DNS via ICANN than almost anyone, including the ICANN (unelected) board.

Just recently I wrote about what the .name gTLD is now doing. They're charging $2 per 5 WHOIS snoop. Like I say in the article it's all about money, so let the folks who want a public WHOIS pay for it for a change. I also mention in my first link that repurposed ccTLD .ws (western samoa) was acting as a cutout proxy for its registrants for years without the world coming to an end. -g

Is it possible to structure a banking-specific top-level domain that would be immune to this sort of domainer horseplay? Even if you could, how do you force banks and their customers to use a domain that's obscure? The customers will simply continue to type "mybank.com."

* .root - a system TLD created without authorisation - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.root
* ICANN - meetings held in Ghana and Tunisia and other countries that most people don't even know exist - see http://icannwatch.org/

How about how they altered the .net requirements so they could give the contract to Verisign? With the exception of things that were so completely hated by internet users (SiteFinder, WLS) that it would threaten ICANN's existance, Verisign seems to get whatever Verisign wants.

The Committee did not find any purely technical reasons that the root name servers could not provide the same level of response with a much larger root zone file. Indeed, the ability of the .com name servers to respond to billions of queries a day against the .com zone file, with over 20 million entries, is a demonstration of the technical capacity that could be applied to the root zone, if necessary.

Considering technical and operational performance alone, the addition of tens of gTLDs per year for several years would pose minimal risk to the stability of the root.

Think transfer security is a problem ... there's a security problem far worse:

(a post of mine reposted from ICANNWatch http://www.icannwatch.org/ - slashdot.org rejected it, but I'm used to that LOL!)

-----

Bogus "Whois Problem Reports" are increasingly going from being an annoyance to being a real security risk. Some recent incidents I've experienced due to Whois Problem Reports *merely* being filed:

* Dotster, about two weeks ago, threatened to delete a domain if I didn't respond.

* BulkRegister, just yesterday, threatened to suspend a domain if I didn't respond within 5 calendar days.

What good are Whois Problem Reports when anyone can file one and there is virtually no screening performed to ensure such reports have any validitity to them; reports filed on some of my domains claimed everything was wrong, including the expiration date - what!? Talk about pure nonsense!

As of now, if one wants to cause a registrant problems, all they need to do is file bogus reports at the Internic link below (it's so easy, it's frightening!) - heck, if someone really wanted to be deviant, they could spread a virus that sends bogus Whois Problem Reports from hijacked computers...

http://wdprs.internic.net/

In addition, some registrars, such as GoDaddy, charge a fee to the registrant for *merely* reviewing a Whois Problem Report for a particular domain, regardless of whether the report is valid - see links below for more details:

http://www.dnforum.com/showthread.php?t=67862

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&th readid=328696&perpage=15&pagenumber=1

There is much talk about the transfer policy changes and security, yet bogus Whois Problem Reports is a security risk many times worse.

Some ICANN policy changes are needed pronto regarding Whois Problem Reports...

1. Requiring more than just a name and email for people making complaints - they should have to provide a postal address that's verifyable and/or some other information.

2. Screening of such reports - permit registrars, if they're not already, to toss out Whois Problem Reports that they feel are invalid without involving the registrant; stop wasting their time over this nonsense.

3. A standard on how registrars handle Whois Problem Reports

* including a reasonable time for the registrant to respond, such as 30 calendar days, before any action is taken ... as of now, some registrars do little while others suspend domains within only a few days - so if one goes away on holiday, they could very likely come back and find their domains suspended/deleted.

Something needs to be done before bogus Whois Problem Reports get any further out of hand ...

Ron Bennett

Our premise can be simply stated: The Internet is a global resource of incalculable value, and nothing is of greater importance to its future than the way in which ICANN performs its role as manager of the Domain Name System. All Internet users worldwide have a stake in these ongoing events, and our job is to serve as a central point of reference, a kind of hill overlooking the often-chaotic information landscape, from which anyone seeking a better understanding of these developments can survey the ever-changing terrain.

Lets think about this. This is the guy that saw the Internet (or what became the Internet) and decided that the one thing this wonderful new decentralized network needed was a highly centralized system for mapping host names to IP addresses - thus eventually creating all the problems we are now experiencing with ICANN?

And we should respect his opinion why?

of Verisign against ICANN put down here.

Glad to see that the early hooting isn't only anti-VeriSign. People ought to consider that ICANN has been burying everything registries want to do in piles of bureaucracy, while trying to grab more and more money and power. ICANN should be reformed and stuck to technical operational issues rather than playing footsie with international bureaucrats. Think of all the nonsense that would come from the ITU/U.N. getting its mitts on "Internet governance," which is being discussed in Geneva today and tomorrow. VeriSign is no angel, but if it can take ICANN down a notch, I'm for it.

"The contractual inconsistencies include, violation of the Code of Conduct and equal access obligations agreed to by VeriSign, failure to comply with the obligation to act as a neutral registry service provider, failure to comply with the Registry-Registrar Protocol, failure to comply with domain registration limitations, and provision of an unauthorized Registry Service."

Something I noticed...

Our good old friend Steve Woston, Lead Programmer of J-J-J-Julius Games, has some insightful comments on this here.

Glad to see the great Mr. Woston back discussing Serious Issues.

I wrote the following letter to ICANN when it first cropped up:

Hello,

We already have the example of WLS in Verisign abusing its monopoly (and ICANN not stopping this abuse -- see www.stopwls.com).

Planning to monetize all typos by rewriting DNS error codes to instead point to itself (i.e. instead of returning error codes, it will no longer return errors, but instead bring the surfer to Verisign money-making pages) is yet another example of an abusive monopolist. See here:

"Some organizations have shown a propensity to make technical changes happen and then ask for permission later," Afilias's Mohan said. "Given the economics of it, I think that's what will happen here."

Given the huge technical standards that Verisign would be violating, as well as the Intellectual Property and economic issues (e.g. a typo of one letter of your domain name could send a client to a search engine listing your competitor as #1, or worse; John Zuccarini is in JAIL for his typo-squatting!), can someone in the Names Council, or the ICANN Board that has a spinal column please pre-empt this Verisign move by forbidding unilateral action of such a nature by means of a vote of some kind, through the introduction of a motion?

From the comments at ICANNWatch when this abuse last came up, perhaps the way to frame the motion is "gTLD Registry operators WILL return NXDOMAIN for ALL DNS queries for which where there is not a REGISTERED domain name." Period.

Once you start tampering with things at the DNS level, as Verisign is intending to do, you threaten the security and stability of the internet, as I think Vint Cerf properly recognizes (being right at least half of the time; bad call on WLS, but the courts and the US governmet will take care of that one eventually). For a company whose slogan is "The Value of Trust", Verisign makes a mockery of the caretaker role it has been given as guardian of the com/net registries. I trust them as much as I trust John Zuccarini.

If the US government had a problem with Microsoft embedding the Internet Explorer browser into its operating system, what will they think given Verisign has an even greater monopoly when it comes to DNS resolution? The power should belong to the users, who should have the choice (through their own software) how to resolve errors. That's why we have technical standards. Making that decision for them, by BREAKING technical standards and the applications that rely on those standards, as Verisign plans to do, and making loads of $$$$ while doing it, smacks of an abusive father-knows-best monopolist. Verisign is the father you wish you never had! Calling it a "service" adds insult to injury, as they did with WLS, especially when it's a MONOPOLY service, for which one has no choice. When you make a typo for a telephone call, does the 1-800 operator (AT&T, MCI, Neustar?) start playing paid jingles for your competitors, instead of telling you that you misdialled via a message?

Ultimately, folks know Verisign wants to milk every last penny out of its monopolies, and doesn't care who they have to step on to do so. Take a look at Games.TV which shows:

games.tv is available and can be registered immediately for $100,000.00/year

to understand what Verisign's goals are (Verisign runs .tv). Do you think you really own your .com domains? What price would Verisign like to charge you for your domains?? Once they wipe out some registrars through WLS, and other monopoly abuses, who will be left to stop them?

If Verisign is permitted to g

The big sunk cost is that for initial acceptance by ICANN as a registrar. I believe the costs there approach $250,000. Then, there are typical server, bandwidth and administration costs, plus the cost of running a call center and probably some softwar development for establishing the user domain registration and management interface. After that, a portion of the registration fees go to the organization managing the particular RLDs you're registering domains for, and as far as I know, that's about it. I'm not certain of tha accuracy of the above, but this is what I recall reading a few years back. The folks over at ICANN Watch probably have more authoritative information on the subject.

--CTH

Yeah, ITU...great idea. Let us all harken back to that Simpsons episode where the smart people are put in charge of the town. Meanwhile, if you read the article cited you will come across a URL. A URL that says a little something about why the ITU wouldn't necessarily be a good idea. Maybe you could check it out?

I've had this idea: A CDROM that contains all the pieces that one needs to build an emergency DNS service for one's home, company, school, or whatever..

apparentlyicannwatchnew year resolution was to migrate from nuke to slash.

I've had this idea: A CDROM that contains all the pieces that one needs to build an emergency DNS service for one's home, company, school, or whatever..

apparentlyicannwatchnew year resolution was to migrate from nuke to slash.

I've had this idea: A CDROM that contains all the pieces that one needs to build an emergency DNS service for one's home, company, school, or whatever..

apparentlyicannwatchnew year resolution was to migrate from nuke to slash.

I've had this idea: A CDROM that contains all the pieces that one needs to build an emergency DNS service for one's home, company, school, or whatever..

apparentlyicannwatchnew year resolution was to migrate from nuke to slash.

The Internet is the primary storage place for all information contained in the world, and largely serves as a global resource onto which a price simply cannot be placed.

Therefore, I and many other feel that the actions of those on the executive board of ICANN must be closely monitored. Anyone and everyone who's ever signed onto AOL or Prodigy or even MSN has a stake in these events.

I've attached below a list of some sites to gleam information from about the latest happenings (and scandals) related to ICANN.

- http://www.icannwatch.org/
- http://www.icannwatch.com/
- http://www.atlargestudy.org/index.html
- And, for reference, http://www.domainhandbook.com/archives/comp-icannb ylaws.html

The stats for the h.root servers are available for the time period of the attack. Seems as though the h servers were taking in close to 94Mbits/second for a while.

More links to server stats can be found at Root Servers.org and some background is available at ICANNWatch.

The IETF is an amazingly transparent organization that has consistently "delivered the goods" with almost no back-room politics. ICANN is its exact opposite, perhaps reaching a nadir when one of its own board members had to sue to see the financial records. Why doesn't ICANN operate in a completely transparent manner? Do you feel the slightest bit uncomfortable with its policies and procedures? Given your background, Welch's comments in the McCarthy Army hearings come to mind.

Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 14:26:26 -0800
From: John Gilmore
Subject: Re: ICANN: Auerbach's Allegations Off Target
To: vcerf@mci.net, gnu@new.toad.com

> "Karl paints this as a dispute between him and ICANN management, but
> nothing could be further from the truth," noted Board chairman Vint Cerf.
> "ICANN management is merely carrying out its obligation to follow the
> wishes of the Board as a whole rather than follow the dictates of any
> single Director."

Hi, Vint.

I haven't wanted to disrupt our friendship, so I've held off a long time in telling you what I think about how you are leading ICANN. That's why this message is a little longer than it needs to be; I'm saying things that I've been bottling up for a while.

I don't want to be considered a friend of what you now stand for.

You are on the wrong side of this issue, as you have been on the wrong side of many issues regarding ICANN. If ICANN has secrets about who it is doing backdoor favors with, those *should* be made public. And you, as Chairman, as the most prominent and trusted board member, and as the architect of the openness that should still be in the Internet, should have been way ahead of Karl Auerbach in making them public.

Even if those secrets are never made public, or even if there are no terrible secrets inside ICANN, the activities of ICANN MUST be available to every person on the Board of Directors. Without restriction, without delay, without subversion. By law, and for good reasons.

You have been a rubber stamp for many corrupt ideas out of Network Solutions, Verisign and ICANN ever since your election. When I complained to you in the past, such as when the NSI contract was amended to give them a perpetual monopoly, you said that there was nothing else that you could do. I disagreed with that sentiment then, and I disagree with it now. You could have left the contract the way it was, rather than amend it. You don't even have to make things better to keep my respect; you could keep things from getting worse. But you continue to choose to make things worse. Now you are defending ICANN's lack of openness even with its own elected directors!

ICANN was created to promise openness, transparency, accountability, and competition. It has provided none of those, and actively works every month to reduce what little it has provided. You have worked with it to eliminate, rather than create, those promises.

Opening whatever squirming can of worms that is calling the shots at ICANN is what is needed. I can see that ICANN management is terrified that directors from outside the old-boy network might actually find out the details of what ICANN does day by day. They have eliminated any future threat of that, by eliminating outside directors after this term. And they are delaying the current directors' access to information, in the hope that they can permanently avoid outside scrutiny.

I've been a director of several California corporations. I've read that part of the law myself. I've invoked it in a couple of occasions. I contributed significant funding for Karl's lawsuit. Karl is right and you and the ICANN staff are wrong. And now I find you lying about it in a press release. "ICANN management is merely carrying out its obligation to follow the wishes of the Board as a whole..." ICANN *management* instigated those policies, the board didn't. The board has never even considered them.

Virtually everyone at EFF has been looking for ways that we could help to open ICANN and get it to do what it was chartered to do. I've had to hold them back for years, telling them that participation was a waste of our scarce time -- and that no matter how much time they put in, ICANN would have to get really bad before it would ever get better. I put two years of my own life into the domain-name issues, with CORE. It became clear that the strings were being pulled behind the scenes, because the right answers were relatively obvious, yet the wrong answers got approved, providing billions of dollars of benefit to certain parties with heavy ties to the US military. Rather than ICANN making open decisions and using transparent processes, whoever pulls those strings is still controlling what happens. But under ICANN, the process is even murkier and further hidden from public scrutiny. And you're helping.

All the way back at the start of ICANN, EFF and I proposed amendments that would provide a "Bill of Rights" and a "Sunshine Act" and a "Freedom of Information Act" in ICANN's Bylaws. These were all summarily rejected. ICANN does not give a damn about the fundamental rights of citizens or Internet users. It does not want to operate in. the sunshine. And it does not want information about what it's doing to be made available even to its own directors, let alone to the public. Give me one good reason why such an organization should get even a millisecond more of your support -- or anyone's.

The law gives directors an "absolute right" because directors exist to be INDEPENDENT OF and SUPERIOR TO the management. Each and every director has a separate duty to the company; each one carries it out in their own. way. The Board cannot prevent any board member from merely inquiring into the state of the company. The Board cannot condition any board member's inquiry on agreement to a set of arbitrary terms. Nor can the management. This is not only a good idea -- it's the law.

ICANN is going down, one way or another. Either it will go down like East Germany, with a peaceful transition to governance responsive to the public will, or it will go down like Japan, with big bombs dropped on it. ICANN has lost all semblance of credibility and merely seeks to entrench its unaccountable power.

I have absolutely no idea what you are doing leading that megalomaniac, unaccountable, unresponsive, anti-expression, anti-public-interest organization. Did they take your kids hostage? Did you sell your soul for a mess of pottage? What hold do they have over you?

I used to think much better of you than this, Vint. You can see that even now I'm grasping at straws rather than believe that YOU are one of the megalomaniacs. But the evidence continues to pile up, and I'm afraid it's true. I don't want to be the friend of such a person. I'll see you from the other side of the courtroom. Bye.

John

There are a variety of solutions to the technical problems that arise from wide-ranging internet access by the public. Those of us who were using the net in the late '80s recall sending and recieving email, unincombered by large volumes of spam. As internet usage gained popularity, so to did unacceptable practices undertaken by businesses and indeviduals.

SPAM is as much a social problem as a technical problem. Blackhole lists attempt to solve the social aspects of the problem with a technical solution - the idea being that the sender of spam is shunned and ignored when trying to communicate. I don't have all the answers but solutions like Vipul's Razor seem a bit more like technical solutions to the technical aspects of the problem.

Likewise, domain registration operates much like the wild west. He who hets there first, gets the loot. I was attempting to register an expiring domain at one point. It had expired 90 days previous and still had not been released by Verisign. I consulted my perfered domain registrar, who's generally vary helpful staff gave me this wild west analogy and suggested that my only recourse was to lodge a complaint with ICANN. We all know how helpful ICANN can be...

Any new technology opens up oportunities for baser elements of human nature to bear their collective ugly head. Over time the practices will iron themselves out and until then people like the lawyer, author if this article will probably have to suffer unless they want to contribute a positive solution. The Internet will eventually grow out indulging these childish behaviors but until then, we can only do what's best to protect ourselves from the poor choices of others.

--CTH

Or you can browse the whole ICANNWatch .org archive.

Or you can browse the whole ICANNWatch .org archive.

Or you can browse the whole ICANNWatch .org archive.

Or you can browse the whole ICANNWatch .org archive.

Or you can browse the whole ICANNWatch .org archive.

ISOC was formerly headed by Vint Cerf, who is now the Chair of ICANN's Board. ICANN's vice-chair, Alejandro Pisanty, is chair of ISOC-Mexico.

As far as objective sources of information, that is what Auerbach is fighting to get access to. As long as ICANN's records are kept secret, we will never know what is going on.

Damn... Every time I run into something that John Gilmore has done I get this shivery feeling down the back of my neck. Here's a guy who has just got it all figured out, way ahead of the rest of us... or at least way ahead of me.

Err, but yeah. The reason I'm posting is because anyone who hasn't read Gilmore's letter to Vint Cerf really should... it's intelligent, funny and scathing. It's at http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=763 and it's brilliant.

Mike Lawrey's own story
Icannwatch
More from SA sources

Everyone knows ICANN is scum. See also this and this.

And of course the UDRP is dreadful.

However, this proposal reads to me less like a solution to ICANN's well documented track records of cronyism and broken promises, and more like a US powergrab, orchestrated by Republicans who oppose international institutions on principle - a position which has certain merits but which ought to be promoted honestly. Of course, I may be jumping to conclusions since no specifics of the bill are yet available.

For all u eurotrash: In the US, instead of Eurosceptics, we have Republicans, who, instead of hating the EU, hate the UN. American leftists generally support the UN and oppose the WTO. We don't have an international umbrella organisation for both ends of the political spectrum to despise (unless you count the federal guvmint.)

The A server is just the highest profile target.

...but others might be easier targets.

Remember that the root servers, of which Verisign runs 2, are distinct from the .com/.net/.org gTLD servers, all of which Verisign operates.

I can sugest to everyone interested in the icann discusion but not (yet) fully briefed to visit http://icannwatch.org/icann4beginners.php for an nearly objective intro to that weird creature we call icann ;-)

ICANNWatch

(which is also covering this story)

Note the michael posting articles on that site is A. Michael Froomkin, not Slashdot's Michael Sims

ICANNWatch

(which is also covering this story)

Note the michael posting articles on that site is A. Michael Froomkin, not Slashdot's Michael Sims

There are Web sites devoted to following the criminal antics of the ICANN thievery, such as ICANN Blog and ICANN Watch.

The Gardener

Also keep an eye on the ICANN Blog.

Also keep an eye on the ICANN Blog.

One of the at large board members of ICANN, Karl Auerbach was reported as saying that "We've just had the equivalent of the president of the United States abolishing Congress" in response to Stuart Lynn's proposals.

At large board members are chosen by rank and file internet users.

Personally I think this proposal is a threat to the supposed impartiality of ICANN. To allow one third of the board members to be chosen by governments will completely alter the original mandate that ICANN was originally setup.

The BBC Website and the ICCAN Watch website has a much more indepth analysis of the proposed plan.

I'll have a more detailed analysis up at ICANNWatch in a day or so.

Acroding to this article on icannwatch Taiwan is using its own DNS root. Anyone got any more info on this?

"Meanwhile, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an international governance body put together several years ago at the behest of the U.S. government, was set up in part to bring competition into a system that sorely needed it."

If you are at all interested in current ICANN news I highly recommend http://www.icannwatch.org/.

Personal websites for the common user do not need their own domain. They can benefit from Google greatly. However, it is very important for companies to have their own domain so they can both host a website and use email addresses with their own domain.

There's a good discussion of the issue at ICANNWatch.org, in particular: http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=511&mode =&order=0"

I also want to plug ICANNWatch as a place to go for discussion of all ICANN-related issues, including domain name arbitrations.