Slashdot Mirror
Vote Early, Vote Often
ICANN's At-Large Elections are now underway. If you were lucky enough to be able to get through during the registration process, and then lucky enough to actually receive your PIN in the mail, congratulations, you can vote. Click through for your FREE Slashdot voter's guide... :)
There is actually a great deal of information available about these elections and the candidates - it puts the U.S. presidential elections to shame, quite frankly.
Where to Vote: ICANN's online voting site
When to Vote: Now until midnight (GMT), Oct. 10.
Who to Vote For: That's a little less straightforward. Here's some resources to help you decide.
- CDT's Election Guide - CDT mailed a questionnaire to the candidates asking a variety of questions, their answers are online: North American thumbnail guide - North American detailed guide
- Internet Democracy Project - They also sent out a questionnaire, and the answers from all candidates have been posted. These are good questions.
- Association for Progressive Communications voting recommendations
- Berkman Center candidate forum - The Berkman Center sponsored a debate between all seven candidates (not just the ones with more than 15% of the vote, heh), Webcast it, and recorded it for your viewing pleasure. Archives are available here. While the discussion is lengthy, there's no better way to see the candidates in action.
- Dan Gillmor, columnist
- Brian Livingston, columnist - Livingston has a good summary of what is wrong with ICANN.
The groups above recommend a voting slate of Lessig first, followed by Simons, followed by Auerbach, for the North American seat (you get to rank all seven candidates in order of your preference). Here's my recommendation, slightly different from the above:
- Auerbach - Auerbach understands DNS, and he understands the civil liberty issues, and he has paid a LOT of attention to ICANN, and he understands - right now - how to fix its main problems. The other recommended candidates (Simons and Lessig) have the potential to understand ICANN as well as he does, but he has already put in the study time! I picked Auerbach as my first choice.
- Simons - Simons understands the civil liberty issues, and has spent a lot of time in this sort of political environment, and has the potential to understand ICANN inside and out, but she hasn't put the time in yet. I picked her second.
- Lessig - Lessig is a smart guy. I don't think he comes with as solid a commitment to civil liberties as the others, and I don't think he has any special understanding of DNS issues. Of course he's bright enough to understand anything he puts his mind to, but why distract him from the 20 other things he's undertaking (such as joining EFF as a board member recently). Lessig gets my third choice.
- Tiller - Tiller is sort of a wildcard. From what he says, he would be a civil-liberties oriented candidate, but I had never heard of him before the elections, so he's a bit of a dark horse to me. Still, he beats the remaining candidates hands-down.
- Langenberg - Langenberg seems like he would be a fairly ineffective candidate, no civil liberties focus, not (obviously) captured by IP interests or anything else. But we don't need an ineffective candidate.
- Chapin - Chapin earns the second-to-last spot. He works for Verizon and can be expected to promote policies that would benefit the major telcos, as if they didn't have enough representation already.
- Miller - Miller is dead last. President of the ITAA, he represents all that is wrong with ICANN right now, and states flat out that he thinks they've done a great job to date and he would continue the path taken so far. If you think ICANN is right on track, vote for Miller. Bleh.
I went to the debate at the Berkman Center (note: Langenberg did not show up, probably because it was a pay-for-yourself event, so all 7 candidates were not there), and here are my impressions of how the candidates performed live:
/. said, and I think this is the most important part. Technical information she will be able to get from people like Auerbach, and she showed that she at least has the capacity to know whom to believe (she believed Auerbach without question that we could have millions of TLDs, for example.) She'd defend slashdot-like values by far the most in my opinion.
/. was very right in calling this guy a wildcard. He believes SOLELY in representing the masses. Not the educated masses, the masses. He reminds me of Bush. If you vote for him know that he will only take into view what joe sixpack will want. I also wasn't convinced at all that he understands the legal issues involved. At least he was open-minded and nice.
/. says working for Verizon disqualifies him.
Auerbach: Understands the issues backwards and forwards, he's an engineer who knows what's up. My two problems with him are a) he owns so much private stuff (his own internet company or two, his wife's internet company, his stock in Oracle or whatever place he works for) that he could have some conflicts of interest, and b) he is definitely lacking in the public speaking arena. He often loses sight of the larger issues and focuses too much on the technicalities, leaving people to think sometimes "yes that's nice, but what are you talking about?" Vote for him if you insist on your candidate having the most technical knowledge possible.
Simons: she's my favorite. She understands the civil liberty issues like
Lessig: a reaaaaally smart guy (he was a law prof at Harvard and now Stanford), he knows what's going on legally. What's more he understands perfectly his vision of ICANN and its legal implications -- specifically that ICANN should keep its focus extremely narrow in order to increase its mandate. My problem with him is that I don't agree with making ICANNs scope so narrow. When it comes to trademark disputes, for example, Lessig was dissapointed in ICANNs trademark board, he says this should be the role of government, while Simons said that while she agrees, the ICANN trademark board is far superior to existing structures and therefore should be kept. I think Lessig is obsessed too much with keeping down ICANN to its original and extremely limited charter and doesn't understand how ICANN will have to grow with the times.
Tiller:
Langenberg: wasn't at the debate so I have no idea.
Chapin: He's a very smart guy, and his views are actually pretty good. But as
Miller: this guy sucked my ass. He's annoying as hell, he would interrrupt people, and he has absolutely NO idea what he's talking about. He's nervous and he gibbers and he managed to piss most of the panel off because of his intense incompetence. Vote for this guy if you want a lemming politician who understands less than nothing.
I'd vote last for Langenberg. Read his responses to the questionnaire. I mean, this isn't an apprenticeship. When he learns something about the Internet, and generates some reasonable opinions, then we can take a look at him. This isn't open-mindedness, this is ignorance. I'd much prefer the other candidates, who put their opinions on the table. Who will teach him about DNS issues? What conclusions will he come to once he's informed? Answer: Why risk it?
First and foremost, we need people with a technical understanding of the internet. Fortunately, most of them have it (Lessig, for instance, doesn't). Then, we need someone with a procedural understanding of the internet. Almost all have that as well (Lessig is strong here). Finally, we need to look at what values they have drawn about the direction of ICANN-- and how effectively they will pursue them.
Truth be told, I can't find myself straying from /.'s recommendations. I disagree most of the political stuff I've heard from them, but they seem to be totally on target when it comes to ICANN's 'election'. I'd rank Lessig a little lower, just because I'm more worried about his time/knowledge constraints, and Chapin a little higher (I don't think his employment matters). But that's just poking around here and there. Frankly, if people vote as listed above, they'd be doing just fine.
As for Auerbach, I can't see what isn't to like about him. gTLD anarchy is fine with me... but then again, I want to burn all TLDs. And as for disagreement-- with the state that ICANN is in, to the point where 'members' are not legally members, and the 'election' is not legally an election--- we need active and forceful representation. Especially because ICANN seems to want to become the Government of the Internet (though they strenuously deny it).
This may be the only election ICANN has. At Yokohama, they tried to kill @Large elections altogether, and have constantly worked to make them irrelevent. Any truly effective representation will require some confrontation from the candidates-- and support from the constituencies who elect them once the real debates begin.
I don't know whether you'd consider ICANN's penchant for meeting in secret, or the fact that their board is stacked with representatives of narrow commercial interests (as opposed to the public or users) civil liberties issues, or the fact that they make the name, address, and phone number of domain holders available to any spammer who wants it (while keeping the voter list secret so that candidates cannot access it). But they could be.
Another civil liberties issue is the way this election has been conducted (whether caused by malice or mere incompetence). Such as hastily meeting before the election and cutting the number of elected seats in half, to ensure that the incumbents would not face a serious challenge no matter who got elected. Such as the disenfranchisement of large numbers of voters because of failure to provide a server that could handle the load of registrations. Such as an ungainly and confusing registration procedure (hell, it me about 10 tries to figure out that the string "PIN-" was part of my PINumber, but maybe I'm exceptionally dense.. I'm sure those extra characters immensely improve the security). Such as failure to mail out PINs by snail mail in a timely fashion. Such as changing the election rules after the election had begun, to try to prevent publicly nominated candidates from reaching the threshold necessary to challenge their hand-picked nominees.
Karl is a lawyer. He happens to work as a techie because he enjoys that more.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The current plan (as I understand it, which is admittedly not well) is pretty much exactly what you're saying: Add TLDs like .shop and .ecom and .biz and .bank... and then give trademark holders of domains first-chance... so, microsoft will immediately buy microsoft.shop, microsoft.ecom, microsoft.biz, microsoft.bank, microsoft.sucks... etc. That's fine for microsoft, but what about 'southwest airlines'? they'd probably buy southwest.everything-except-.bank-and-maybe-that-t oo.
.com/.net/.org domains are idiots and the neat thing about the geographical domains is they're inherently unmonopolizable. (no more than 10 domains per administrator, I seem to recall, so if holland.mi.us's administrator were some sort of corporate lackey who refused to cooperate with slashdot, just get slasdot..mi.us or some other 'nearby large city' that isn't unreasonable to put yourself in.
I'm sure there are other 'trademarks' that are common words and really only trademarks in a particular sphere of business. 'Disney' and 'Microsoft' and 'Coca-Cola' are obviously universal trademarks. Any-way.
The civil liberties issues are, what if somebody's asleep at the helm and I sneak in and buy microsoft.sucks and put up a parody site. Can Microsoft insist that the domain is under their trademark and have ICANN transfer ownership? Is that a violation of free speech? (Technically 'no' because this is a business transaction not a legal one, but in practice it's a -supression- of speech.) What about etoy/etoys type suppression-by-trademark where a domain just gets deactivated? If my last name is miller and I get miller.per what protections to I really have from miller beer?
An-yway, the solution to all this in -my- mind is to use the geographical system... granted, 'slashdot.holland.mi.us' doesn't sound as spiffy as 'slashdot.org' or 'slashdot.dot' but it neatly sidesteps the whole trademark thing. Unless, of course, the administrator of holland.mi.us happens to be an idiot, but hey, we -know- the people at the top of the
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
Some reasons to vote for Barbara Simons:
1. Decades of activism: Barbara Simons has received the highest activist awards (EFF Pioneer 1998, CPSR Weiner Award 1992).
2. Leadership: Led the ACM (president 1998-2000) and USACM. Of all the nominees, I think she has the strongest proven ability to deal effectively with committees and opponents both in and out of government.
3. Computer science expertise: She has a CS PhD from Berkeley, has held senior research positions, been made a fellow of the ACM, AAAS, etc.
Well, the reason Karl said what he said is because some people (namely NSI) have claimed that there are technical reasons why we should limit the number of gTLD's. In context, he's saying that what matters are the social concerns.
You seem to feel that the number of gTLDs should be limited. Why? Are you an NSI stockholder?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I'll vote for the "ineffective" candidate Langenberg. I want someone who goes into the ICANN board with an open mind toward all the issues. Also, he comes off as someone who will work with the other board members and promote responsible change.
The other leading contenders in the Slashdot list come off to me as radicals who want to liberalize everything to a point where everything will break down. Auerbach especially seems to want to create a gtld anarchy and also cops an attitude that he may not cooperate so well with the other board members--thus he will be very ineffective.
So it's effective, responsible participation (true leadership) or ineffective, radical non-cooperation. The choice is clear to me.
Steve Magruder
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
In 5 years are we going to be petitioning for meta-TLDs or "Even-higher-level-domains (EHLDs?) I don't fully understand what the problem is that more TLDs fixes because anyone who owns a .com/.net/.org group and has some kind of brand name to protect is going to prevent you from using it with any other TLD so the number of choices isn't really that much greater.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
I'm still laughing at this.
Some no-name, generic people who barely know what the DNS is are being chosen to attach "innovations" to the Internet by a committee of voters that most of us (who actually understand what is going on) can't even join.
Were it up to me, TLDs and the architecture of the Internet would be decided by seasoned, 20 year veterans of networking. People who program, people who hack (in the positive sense of the word), people who have a wealth of understanding in technology.
I'm 24; I've used the Internet since 1991 and GNU/Linux since it was .9... but someone who is 44 and has 20 more years of historical experience in how things (UNIX, networking, etc. etc.) were before I came on the scene is infinitely more beneficial to the direction of the Internet than I am. Choosing a politician, lawyer, or businessperson who happened to be at the right place, who barely understands the technology, and who "understands civil liberties" (yah, don't we all...) seems to be a bad move for the future, even if simply setting a precedent for the type of people that "should" occupy the position.
Lucas
--