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Join ICANN and Make Your Voice Heard
GuNgA-DiN writes, "ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) announced at large memberships available to the public." Yes, it's true - and it's free. Instead of leaving Internet policy decisions to AOL and other biggies, you can now help select "at large" ICANN board members and generally help make Internet policy. Will individual ICANN members like you and me get heard as loudly as the corporates? Hard to say, but worth a try. It's more voice than we've had in the past, anyway.
But even without the offical monopoly, it seems that Network Solutions itself holds the majority of the power over domain names and the like. How much power can the ICANN board really wield?
There seams to be 9 at large members on the board who would be elected byt the atlarge membership.
Damn you... damn you to hell
Am I the only one who thinks DNS is past its time? I mean, there's got to be a better way. I think it's time for a new naming service to be developed. I'm thinking context- and location-sensitive, text-based (as opposed to the fixed format of URLs), distributed naming services. CORBA already has some of the features I have in mind, but they're localised to CORBA apps and built in at compile time; I say the next-generation network software will be based on a more general distributed object model, indexed and localised through the use of these naming services.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.
Sounds neato um yea www.crosswinds.net/~dctech
I find this story really interesting.
I don't know how the members of the Internet Boards are elected at present and how much influence they have in the development of the net but of course there is (or has been in the past) concern in some countries on the predominance of the USA in most of the internet decission bodies. To give voice to the final users is a bettery way to go.
I think the aim here is to build a more democratic Internet and if this initiative works, soon we will see other boards making the same move.
We will see how all this is finally implemented given the possible problems in any Internet voting system: I have about 20 email addresses and could create thousands more in any of the free email services; it seems easy to vote hundreds of times beeing unnoticed, isn't it?
Anyway, I'm going to register myself immediately.
In reality members will not get to elect board members, or have any other rights commonly associated with membership. Those rights belong only to the special interest constituencies in the DNSO (Domain Name Supporting Organization, donminated by Trademark and Corporate Interests) ASO (Address Supporting Organization - ARIN, RIPE, APNIC) and PSO (Protocol Supporting Organization - IETF). The membership only gets to vote forward a small group of people who then get to elect a board members.
I just registered ICANNT.net and am thinking of posting information like this there. Should I take the time?
Just out of curiousity, is there a valid legal reason for stipulating that participants must be over 16 years of age? If not, I feel that age is rather arbitary. I know many fifteen, and even many fourteen year olds who use the internet for a dozen hours a day, who are *not* 31337 w4r3z d00dz, and that possess great technical knowledge of the issues at hand. While I am ecstatic that ICANN is opening its membership, this provision is reminiscent of Corel's license agreement.
But, then again, they could've limited it to 18 or older to look more professional. It's nice that they at least recognized that SOME younger people arn't all complete idiots.
The truth doesn't set you free, it makes everyone irratable and generally screws things up.
Considering that there are competing (and cheaper, ,more convenient, and just plain better!) registrars, why do people use NSI for new registrations? Seriously?
Icann get laid and ucann't.
Sorry this is a little offtopic... 2 things:
1) Netscape under Unix doesn't like large lists where you have to "Select One" (the country). Very annoying. Had to use Lynx instead. Is there a workaround?
2) Can't North Americans get it in their thick skulls that not every country in the world has states and/or provinces. It always bugs the hell out of me when it has a field for State/Province which is required. And they talk about wanting to have diversity in their member base and wanting to have Internet users in other countries represented as well... this really shines out as a piece of North American bias.
The Official Steve Ballmer Webpage
Memebership is free for some undefined limited period. So when will that end? And more to the point: will I pay? Or will I just stick with paying through the nose for .nl domainservice which is not open to competition, leaving me no money to spare to pay towards membership of nifty semi-democratic clubs?
--
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Well, as the subject says. /. itself could provide the ground for discussing more or less uniform voting.
How about forming a kind of team slashdot there.
I guess if they really do voting, we could really make our voice heard.
For instance we could try to get someone the linux/slashdot/open source/geek (whatever) to the directors board.
I know not all people have the same opinion on everything, but I do expect even the lowest common denominator here on slashdot to differ often from the AOL/MS/ POV.
$1,000 US ICANN application fee
$5,000 US ICANN annual fee
$70,000 US in working capital
not to mention...
$10,000 US NSI registration fee
$100,000 US performance assurance bond
and even after all that trouble, NSI will take $9 US from every registration I were to put through! It's nice to have a say in who gets to go through, and to perhaps bring NSI back down to earth.
This has brought my conclusion to going through the Tucows OpenSRS system, which is a free registration and free perl based CGI's, through which I can register domains for a simple $10 US per year ($9 of which goes to NSI, $1 going to Tucows for providing us with this great service).
Some more links for those of you ready to become your own registrar:
http://www.iana.org/
http://www.icann.org/
http://www.ietf.org/
http://www.nsiregistry.com/
http://www.internic.net/
Good luck! I hope everyone helps contribute to the OpenSRS project, as it will certainly be the way of the future for small ISP's like myself who can't afford NSI's outrageous costs and bonds.
- EraseMe
Here's a website that is a "reference point for ICANN news and developments, in order to promote informed discussion and debate in shaping this institution"; ICANNWatch.
Hmm, I-CAN sounds like some kind of self-esteem things, but I-CAN-Watch.... that sounds a little strange... =)
No, but it makes sense to me that all my AOLish friends might become puppet members. "Hey, guys, register yourselves here. I'll tell you how to vote, and I'll make it worth your while."
I'm sure that Slashdotters will make up a large portion of the votes received, when the process happens. I'm picturing something not unlike the Interview process, where moderators pick the posters who seem to know what they're talking about, and then the top ten or so are selected.
Before you jump to sign up for membership, read this article in Web Review by Andy Oram. Entitled "Would I join this Club if it would have me as a Member?", the article outlines some of the good reasons NOT to join ICANN as a member-at-large, as tempting as it may seem.
-cf
I support the fee structure - not only does it suport the organization, but it keeps only serious parties involved.
By the way, if you are halfway serious at all about running a registrar, getting that sort of capital should be a trivial matter. In fact, you should already have it. Visit your local Angel Investor, VC, or bank for more info.
1) You've ALWAYS been able to participate in ICANN. Every time someone's posted anything related to domain policy, I've practically begged people to get involved, join working groups, and work to ensure things like the ICANN UDRP were fair to individuals. All you've ever had to do to get involved was to subscribe to a DNSO mailing list. (You can't join the ASO, but don't feel bad -- they're not letting ISPs join either.)
2) You will not legally be a "member" of anything. ICANN has gone to great lengths to ensure there is no such thing as a legal membership. In fact, they've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal counsel to ensure that there's little if any accountability within ICANN at all.
3) You will not get to elect board members. You will get to elect a handful of people, who will then CHOOSE the 9 new board members, and only then with the consent of the existing board.
4) Did I mention that you've ALWAYS had the ability to participate in ICANN and have your voice heard?
5) If you join the At Large Membership without informing yourself first, you'll only be harming EVERYONE. Take some time and learn what's been going on before you jump in and implicitly support what ICANN's been up to:
Go read how WIPO is using the ICANN UDRP to enfore implicit beliefs that the Net is nothing but the web, only businesses should own domain names, and only trademark owners should have rights to those names: WIPO dispute decisions
Go read how the UDRP was created in the DNSO WG-A. Go read how corporations want to prohibit you from registering any domain name that contains a trademarked substring (e.g., whereitsatt.com contains ATT) in WG-B. Go read how members of WG-B are trying everything they can to stop the rollout of new top-level domains in WG-C. Go see how the DNSO general assembly deteriorated, destroyed itself and was censored...the GA is the precursor of the ICANN At-Large membership, and should serve as a warning to any considering joining: DNSO Archives
In short, go read up on the history of ICANN and domain name policy before you lend your name to it. Rest assured, Mike Roberts is going to take every opportunity to hold up your membership as implicit support for what ICANN's doing. And you should think long and hard about whether you do support what ICANN's been up to. It may be trendy and cool to bash NSI, but to support ICANN just because they're not NSI may be the poorest decision you've ever made.
Go see for yourself what ICANN is before you lend your name to it.
.@.
The IDNO is in the process of becoming officially recognized, and needs your help. It's a very good organization, run as a true digital democracy.
--
It's interesting that you point that out.
The internet is not a publicly held entity anymore as it was before 1995 when the National Science Foundation lost control of it and it was given to corporate entities. Has anybody noticed how before 1995 the media referred to the internet as the "Information Superhighway" but now all we ever hear is "E-Commerce". This is not an accident. I suspect that ICANN is doing this free membership thing to create the illusion of public inclusion in the process. What you pointed out of course makes this clear.
- Minister of Propaganda,
- Minister of Propaganda,
Activist News Network
Well, even if the members won't have much power, think about it. icann gave in. they let us get a little farther, but not what we want. If something is pushed into giving you a little of what you want, but not all, what do you do? Just sit there and do nothing? No, you keep pushing, that's what. So we join the membership and make a fuss until they actually give us some say.
On a side note, yes, post it up on icannt. people need to know this stuff.
---- Sig? What sig? Who needs one, anyway?
That guy talking bad german is getting really annoying. Moderating him down has nothing to do with being racist. He is just an idiot.
The following opinions are mine, and reflect absolutely noone else's except coincidentally. Especially those corporate entities that would like to sue me. ;)
Anyways, yeah. I put in for my AtLarge membership. Why? I'm a longtime member of the internet community. I hold several domain names. I'm currently the DNS admin for waaaaaaaaaaaay too many domains. It's my responsibility more than my desire, to join as an at large member of ICANN.
However, this also opens the door for people who do NOT hold domains, who are only on the internet because they want to 'MAKE MOUNEY FAST' and things like that. ICANN is sending all PINs for at large membership accounts via USPS "snail mail". That's not much protection. I can honestly forsee problems.
What scares me most is that there will become splinter groups in the at large membership community - groups that want spam, groups that want a total abolishment of copyrights, groups that want businesses given preference in all domain related matters.
It may or may not be an actual overall sampling of the internet community in this at large community. Instead, we may end up with so many splinter and special interest groups that nothing changes.
ICANN seems to be trying to change their administration structure somewhat - to involve more of the people that their desicions affect. And I commend that. Wholeheartedly. That's been my biggest gripe about domain name systems and IP allocations for the past 6 years - there's no involvement with the people who have to put up with the desicions except when it's time to pay those bills.
The problem is that they are not looking at the possibilities and ramifications of an open at large membership system, though. There are not enough requirements. And some of the requirements are somewhat silly. You must be at least 16 years of age - why? Legally binding age for contracts is 18, and I saw no contracts when I signed up for my membership. And I have talked to 15 year olds who are doing consulting that have some fairly intelligent input on a variety of things relating to the internet. They do not require that you hold a domain name, as far as I can tell, to sign up for membership. That shouldn't be the only question - ICANN is also working with ARIN/APNIC/etc to oversee allocation of IP addresses. I'm overseeing DNS for over 200,000 IP addresses right now. (Yes, that number is correct and genuine.) And that's just the public ARIN allocated addresses.
However, only time will tell, I suppose. However, I suspect that every big business in the world is signing up for atlarge membership right now, so they can get their voices heard. And they'll try throwing around money too. I only hope that's not what happens, and we do get a genuine sampling of the people that really make the internet work.
=RISCy Business
your company here.
shelby != ford
ICANN what? ICANN be a troll. :-)
Warning: Please reply carefully. Otherwise, you just feed the troll ;)
Just a few days ago we had an interesting article about DeCSS, DVD, corporate interests and personal involvement. The rant went along the lines: "It's very difficult to have any say about corporate policies. Let's create a fund and buy shares to be at least heard on shareholder meetings." Many people agreed that it would be a great idea. (Now, I don't know how many actually did something, but that's another story).
And here we are today... Someone else paid their money just to make sure that your voice can be heard. What a nice way to say thank you. So what if you can't directly change policies? It's not like you have direct influence on what laws are passed in Congress. Life sucks, get used to it. Your opinion can be heard and it just might keep people with power within reasonable boundaries.
when the consititution of the United States was first being written, most of the people behind it worried that "political parties" would rise into power and ruin the democratic system, the way that they had in Britain.
Political parties rose into power anyway within a fairly short amount of time, and more or less ruined the democratic system in america.
Please, please-- let's not let this happen to ICANN. Never mind whether or not normal "at large membership" voters have much say-- choosing who you vote for on the basis of whether they have a specific orginisation's endorsement, as opposed to the individual candidates themselves, is a recipe for disaster in many ways.
Not that the different candidates shouldn't be _discussed_ on slashdot.. just that if we get to the point where people just go in the booth and vote a "straight democratic ticket" or "straight republican ticket" or "straight slashdot ticket", you can expect all kinds of bad effects.
-mcc-baka
i'm tired
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Is it really "worth a try"? In it's short history (18 months), ICANN has shown at every turn that it prefers vacuous PR about "transparency," "bottom-up governance," and "consensus" to the messy facts of actually functioning according to those ideals. By signing up for At-large Membership -- a body that has no direct power whatsoever within ICANN's policy-defining structure -- you give ICANN grounds for claiming that it's listening to netizens. ICANN has managed to outmaneuver and circumvent hundreds of people who've been involved in net-governance processes for decades; what makes you think it won't be able to diddle thousands of ill-informed newbies?
For some history of ICANN's hijinks, take a look at the long essays by Gordon Cook, an expert on telecom issues: What's Behind ICANN (Sept 1999) and ICANN Internet Takeover" (June 1999). "ICANN Watch" is another good resource for learning about ICANN's dubious dealings, though it hasn't been updated much lately. For an explanation of the strange circumstances under which ICANN passed the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy before its board was elected, see this short "roving reporter" column and Keith Dawson's excellent chronology of the DNS debates. And here's a summary of some critical views of ICANN from a conference last fall.
There are lots more resources. If you plan to "get involved," you'd do well to know what you're getting involved with. But if you think your voice will be heard, you've got another thing coming. Don't believe me? Here's ICANN's organizational chart.
If only i was sixteen. *sigh* Only 9 more months. :)
Who cares about a drivers licence? I want my ICANN membership
-nick
Sorry for the blank posting (I hit the wrong key)
Anyway, back to ICANN - its so-called At-Large membership is really not particular powerful.
It doesn't even have the power to directly select board seats - rather it selects a council that, in turn selects a minority of all of ICANN's board seats.
This structure was established specifically to eliminate the powers that "members" are granted by California law - powers that were established to protect members and to place some minimal constraints over the board of directors.
There have been a couple of articles about this structural dismemberment of ICANN's "At-Large" membership. My own note is at: http://www.cavebear.com/cavebear/growl/issue_3.htm
--karl--
Aren't there 65K times more ethernet addresses than IP addresses? How could they have run out already???
Spent an hour writing something for slashdot? Where is it now? Well, perhaps a meme lingers in someone's mind, and will flower when conditions are right. One can hope.
But for there to be a change, obviously someone (or some group) with the actual power to make a change must be motivated.
But how do you get a meme for good and needful change into the consciousness of such a person/group, and motivate them?
- First, identify them ( who at ICANN can actually make changes, and what really motivates them? )
- Alternatively, be such a person (get elected, get into position of power), or help such a person get into power.
- Then get their attention, don't abuse it, and communicate. A petition with lots of signatures has leverage.
I believe slashdot has the ingredients necessary for generating and delivering effective petitions.Here's a possible mechanism:
- An initial idea gets proposed (see example below).
- Comments and grits are added to the thread by interested parties.
- A good writer is asked/volunteers to take the idea and comments and write a first draft of a polished petition.
- Petition is posted as "ask slashdot" subject for one more revision.
- The good writer creates final petition.
- Final petition is put in a new slashdot petition department, where people can sign up, and where people can easily be directed to make their signature count.
- Petition statistics are made available (something like like poll results), so everyone can easily find and monitor results.
- Person(s) identified as having power to make and/or influence changes are notified of the petition, and invited to comment as to what they are going to do.
--Following is most of a letter previously posted (I'd link to it, but can't find it), as an example of an idea with which to petition ICANN (it's essentially about bullet-proofing your first-come claim to a domain name):
--
I have read much discussion that has left me with a distinct impression that there are some real problems with the registration system, to wit:
(1) There does not seem to be a reliable way to establish provable priority of a claim to a name, i.e., that one was first in the first come first serve process. And (1a) The act of checking a name for prior registration exposes the name to the risk of being misappropriated if the link is not secure or the registrar is unscrupulous.
I believe the way to solve this is to separate the creation of a proof of first claim from the business of the various registrar authorities.
As it stands, the registration businesses apparently can make mistakes (possibly even on purpose, some seem to suspect) which can make a domain name wind up unfairly in the wrong hands, and point to their disclaimers and say, "too bad."
A possibility would be to have ICANN run one or more entirely automatic secure and certifiably trustable servers synchronized with UTC time (see http://www.time.gov/ ) -- whose only purpose would be automatically to return time-stamped, digitally signed copies of messages sent to them by secure web form. This is simple and quick, and does not involve searching a database. If there were a unique server for each g/ccTLD, they wouldn't even have to be that well synchronized (solves the problem of sub-second ties, for which you probably would need need a tie-breaking rule otherwise).
You would enter your identification and the domain name you were _trying_ to claim, and you'd get a certificate back, which would be the proof of your time-priority in case of duplicate names. There would be three business days to complete a registration using any of the competing registration businesses, which would be bound to respect the certificate (whose signature they could independently verify).
You would be protected, because you would no longer be dependent on the performance or reliability of any particular registration business. The name could not be misappropriated, because it passed securely to the time-stamping server, and if your first choice registrar could not return legally binding proof that they had received and processed your application into pending status (again probably a transaction record forwarded through an official time stamping server), then you could go to another registrar with no risk to your claim, even from an unscrupulous registrar that as it stands now could potentially put you off with some operational delay excuse and pass the name to a cybersquatter for registration via another channnel.
Of course if the name had already been completely registered, or had a prior pending application, your application would be rejected with no charge (and you could verify that you lost fair and square). At the end of the three days, your pending status would change to completed (unless someone else in the meantime submitted an application with an earlier time stamp), and your credit card could be charged.
This would also create a competitive incentive towards good service.
(2) The transfer of ownership/title to an existing domain seems vulnerable to equipment or procedural errors or registrar misconduct. The cited discussion suggests that title tranfer was not reliably under control of the owner.
Domain name title/ownership transfer must be totally atomic and have no possibility of falling into unregistered status without the owner's informed consent. Registering businesses should not have the authority to change the status of a registered domain name except by due process of expiration or as explicitly authorized by the owner. The burden of proof of authorization must be on the registrar, and any operational or equipment error on their part should not have legally binding consequences on the status of the domain name.
The key is to design a sequence of verifiable transactions that guarantee execution of the owner's intent, even with a bad service apple in the barrel.
This is just what I've thought since reading the discussions, so there may be some holes in the above, or better ways to achieve the guarantees, but I believe some technical implementation changes could make for better legal protections in registering and transferring domain names.
Thanks for reading.
Regards,
Bengt Richter
PS, right now, what constitutes the irrefutable proof that you own a domain name? What do you have to depend on the get that proof into your hands? Is what you have sufficient by itself to assert your ownership if ALL other records are destroyed? IMHO, that's the way it should be, and could be. Appropriate digitally signed transaction receipts could accomplish it, I believe.
Most of the Internet community probably won't know what ICANN is, and likely not care. Unless there's some type of awareness campaign going on (via traditional media) to alert the world what ICANN is, then the only people that will be registering will be the geeks/hackers/sysadmins of the world.
Therefore, this likely won't make a difference at all in what new policies are enacted.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
If there is one thing history has taught us is that their is NEVER people's choice. The article itself said that the execs will probably have more say, well that's true. It's a lot like the U.S. government. It's ruled by the people who have money, that's why George W. Bush (blah) will probably be the Republican candidate, he has the money. So though it sounds nice it's just too good to be true.
this first quarter german reads (if you can call it reading) something like this:
>>>>>>>>>
say no to america!
racism is completely american, america kidnaps elian gonzalaz and doesn't return him. he and amadou are martyrs of america. a police officer kills an african american, amadou, when he's innocent, and then the americans kidnap gonzalaz from cuba, my country.
return elian to my land, you [the writer was nice enough to use the polite form of you] pigdogs.
communism is the good government, and cuba is better than america. you are intimidating by [from?] my german accent. now return gonyalaz or communist cuba and the fuhrer castro will nuke you!
fuhrer castro, the good socialist, will kill america!
fuck!
I am a cuban man, and I am angry about elian gonyaley and how many american states had stolen him. return elian gonzalez, or the US is **satan**! Americans are gay, i kick them in the balls. i had large balls. you did not have large and fast balls, americans!
slashdot is a fucking shit-site, and cmdrtaco is not good and homosexual, bomb slashdot, the evil fuck-site.
clinton is [can't translate "dumk off"]
>>>>>>>>>
I was nice and fixed his grammer and guessed at some of the words which were either badly spelled or not german. Some were english, but spelled in a german manner.
The writer is obviously not german, and probably not cuban. My best guess is that it was probably written by a "r33l~l33t~fuk34".
-----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
From the signup confirmation email:
And they call this a standards organization?
The IDNO is FAR FAR away from ever being considered as a constituency by ICANN. It is not democratic, it has absolutely no cohesion, and it is not representative of the group it purports to be a constituency for.
I am not just a simple detractor. I was one of the founding members, betrayed by the ego of the founder who abused our trust to create a bully pulpit for his own views, rather than a really open place for domain owners to be represented.
If it doesn't fit his view of what is right for domain owners, it doesn't get included in the IDNO agenda. Plain and simple. Until this changes, the IDNO is not a legitimate effort, and I do not encourage people to join it.
A few of us fed up members have talked about a truly open IDNO, with an open sourced polling booth with auditing tools of the results, and with a structure that works for all the members, and doesn't let anyone one person's personality or agenda dominate. If you are interested in being a part of this, please email me.
I'll have you know I've had TWO YEARS of German.
Obviously, I just forgot most of it.