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ICANN Board Members Squat
Professor Froomkin has written a strong criticism of the ICANN initial board, which has extended its unelected one-year term to an astonishing four years, with no end in sight. According to ICANN's current bylaws, those board members are serving a life term - their terms never expire. I strongly urge Slashdot readers in California to make time to attend ICANN's next meeting in November.
throughout human history, whenever laws have become oppressive or disagreeable, communities of persons have left their societies to claim new land and form new systems.
there is no more land to emigrate to.
virtually all pieces of land are bound by regulations of some kind.
we are at a new period in history.
even if so-called "cyberspace" is an abstraction, its human operators are corporeal, and they shall continue to be held to the laws governing whatever physical space their bodies occupy.
to truly accept and support the notion of Internetworked systems as autonomous entities will be no different than other revolutions.
violence.
rights sound wonderful in Declarations of Independence, but are meaningless without the support of guns and people willing to use them.
there will be no Digital Revolution as long as the above conditions hold true.
the momentum of ~8,000 years of history will crush your puny new technology.
for now.
but you're right -- although it's impossible to improve circumstances because humanity remains the same, it's nice to fantasize about.
---
the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
"An apology for the Devil: it must be remembered we have heard only one side of the story. God has written all the books." -Samuel Butler
God didn't write all the books. She can't speak to humans -- She has to speak through the Metatron.
Besides, the Devil is the "Price of Lies," is he not? And he's not forbidden from frolicking among the mortals. So I'm sure he's had his hand in these books we read.
Just another thought to scare your ultra-religious relatives with. ;-)
--
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
A fully distributed, rootless name service would be something from the current DNS protocols and DNS implementations.
However, if one considers today's DNS to be a set of TLDs (Top Level Domains) that are found by consulting a "root" then it is indeed possible to create root systems other than the one most, but not all. of us use. Personally, I use one of these other root systems - and I have been doing for several years and have had zero problems. Take a look at http://www.superroot.org/ and http://www.opennic.unrated.net/public_servers.html
A while back I wrote a note on competitive root systems: http://www.cavebear.com/cavebear/growl/issue_2.htm #multiple_roots The IAB of the IETF takes a dim view of competive roots, but I don't accept the logic of their decison. (The IAB's note is in RFC2826.)
Yeah, I know, this is getting into the domain of consipiracy theory.
________
I think that a two-pronged approach to this issue is worthwhile.
One prong is the public demonstrations. Make sure that these people understand that we the people are not interested in lifetime appointments to the icann -- especially unelected appointments.
The other prong should be the development of realistic alternatives to the (currently) established system. It is doable, but it's going to take some work. With the pending implementation of IP6, there's actually some room to manouver in.
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Is the ICANN better then NSI? Worse? I suppose that some might consider them worse since they put on an air about being 'for the people' or whatever you have, but in reality they are a little better.
Anyway, who cares? NSI was bad and so are these people. Nither one had to much power (although NSI seems to really be trying to grab some nowadays), and they arn't really doing that much harm.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
This is actually looking more and more doable as time goes on.
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Adding insult to injury ... The new board members (the ones, such as myself, who were actually elected) will not be seated until the conclusion of the November/annual board meeting.
This is a change from ICANN's prior practice of seeting new board members at the start of the annual meeting.
As a result of this change, we elected board members will end up sitting out this upcoming board meeting in LA unable to participate, unable to vote, unable to do anything.
you could build something based on the old UUCP bang!separated!path!model Individual name servers can give a referral based on another name. ... in UUCP style ...!foo!bar!baz!myname :-(
But you would still need some "root nodes", where root nodes are a set of well connected nodes which all can refer to the same set of systems. This would be the equivalent of the
No matter what system you evolve, if you want to be able to allocate unique names that everybody agrees on, you need some form of centralised registry and "root"
More time? Because the Constitution of each of the United States took centuries? In a world where seconds, not years count? And what is this story about consitutions being adopted during centuries? As far as I know it was a Conevention of a few guys in shorts, long hair, speaking bad english, smelling tobacco and being some of the highest minds of their century that wrote the Constitution of The United States of America. And I don't think they were sitting centuries there to write it.
Now some gentleman in bright cleaned suits and having some bad popularity around about their capacities, should stay for longer than the rules allow them?
Let me tell you one thing. Here some people are trying to move the President of Tatarstan, Mr. Mintimer Shaimyev into third term. The Constitution of the Russian Federation strictly forbids Governors or Presidents to be more than two terms. Now Mr. Shaimyev is a national symbol here. This man did more than any other regional leader to hold up the Federation together. In his Republic he did so much that, if elections would be today, 70% of people would still elect him as President. Now there is the Law of the Federation. Some local politicians tried to overcome it and even found a legal issue that effectively gives a chance for Mr. Shaimyev to be a legtimate Presidetn for four more years.
Now what we have? A national symbol, a Constitution stating two terms no more, and several Federative acts that give the chance to be elected more than two terms. These acts are mostly due to the "interim" situation that happened after the fall of Soviet Union. Nearly all of them will loose any sense after 2010. Anyway they still work. So what Mr. Shaimyev does?
He refuses to be elected for third time...
Not that he would not like to be elected. But suddenly someone reminded that these are not only elections and state jobs. It's the validity of the Constitution itself. There it is written black on white "no more than two terms". By overpassing it, even legally, it would weaken the meaning of the Fundamental Law in front of the whole Federation. What today seems correct, tomorrow may turn to tragedy. Suddenly people will start to pass over the Constitution. Laws may start to be issued on the corner of the constitution. Governors will start to stay "for life", because one act, a law, federative agreement or his intuition says that Constitution does not fully cover all cricumstances. Emergency may be called by the President (I don't mean Mr. Putin but the job) without consulting anyone because "there is an emergency and it is too hard to follow the Constitution".
We have here a similar situation. Yes there is some "interim situation". However the White Paper states, black on white, "no more than two years". So? Even if all these guys are good people. and suddenly they are real great people. And one of the elected members starts overpassing the White Paper and issuing rules above his powers. Why he would stop in front of these "great people". In front of the White Paper, they are ilegitimate...
This is actually looking more and more doable as time goes on.
You still missed the main point of my post. After you have done it, what do you have? You've now picked another ruler.
For those who have read Animal Farm, you've traded the humans for the pigs. Are you any better off? Would it not be easier to force the humans to act correctly in the first place. Someone must rule, and without checks and balances they will rule in their own interest. Creating another system without installing the checks and balances is a waste of time at best and most likely counter-productive.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Oh, and to the best of my knowledge none of my relatives are religious :)
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I'd suggest you have a look at ICANNmembers.org. There'll be a public meeting dealing with the question how public participation in and transparence of ICANN can be improved on Sunday, November 12.
A call for papers for that event will be published in a day or two.
Has anyone researched such an idea? Alternative root servers are not the answer as they always have to mesh with the existing servers and the control issue appears all over again. But perhaps there is no solution that is backwards-compatible with the current DNS.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I haven't read the bylaws of the ICANN, but presumably there's a procedure for the membership to recall a board member before his/her term is up. My suggestion is that members do just that to all of these people (or at least the ones who voted for the term extension). Otherwise, before you know it this bunch is going to start voting themselves pensions.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
it's not "our" internet, and it's not "theirs" either. it's a bunch of computers that are connected with various protocols and wires. it's not the geeks vs the state either. if we blow it out of proportion, we'll just go red in the face and give ourselve hernias. some people have made some very valid points. ICANN isn't the be all and the end all. it's a CORPORATION, and as such, can be severly hurt by bad publicity. it's also subject to government regulation. Site them for breaking their charter. Site them for ammendments made solely to further one's term. Heck, make them obsolete; take them out of the loop. just DO something. take a whole 5 minutes out of your day and write you representative or do something. if you can take five minutes to rant on /. about how *your* internet is being taken away, you can certainly do something about it. the government will do a lot for you, not necessarily out of any altruistic desire, but simply becasue if your representative and congressmen want to stay in, they better do what you ask, if *enough* ask. but yeah...i can say all that till *I* go red in the face :) let's hope that people do something. we've spent a lot of time building and maintaining this geek image, that sometime i think we're not taken seriously because of that image. i mean..if all we do is hiss and moan online, then corporations can walk all over us because we don't actually do anything about it. i'm not saying lets form an internet militia or anything, but something...
If anyone has the time but not the cash to blow on the Marina Marriot, Venice Beach and all of it's cheap accomodations are just a few blocks from the Marina.
(I can see the hotel and ICANN's building from my apt, which is in venice, ca...)
venice cotel
venice beach hostel
--ai
As the ICANN starts pissing off more and more of the non-corporate world, a revolt will form and start to build up steam. The internet still works pretty much the way it always has, with standards appearing and disappearing as people use them. It may be as simple as people setting up their own root servers or it may be as dramatic as a complete reworking of how DNS works. I'd much rather see the later, but we'll see how things shape up.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
While I am up for the trip to Venice Beach, we can almost certainly voice displeasure with ICANN Board squatting with a letter to your Congressman.
Bullhorns at boardmeetings are always good fun, but a letter to the Whitehouse or your Representitive would be a kick in the balls to these rogue ICANN mofos.
The problem is that writing letters to Congressmen gives no Karma, so no on here will write one.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
Anyone remember the WTO protests? Yeah ..well, the layout of the Marina -- especially the street just in front of the Marina Marriot -- would make it fairly easy for a couple hundred geeks to block the driveways and delay the meeting, if not just draw a big chunk of media attention. If anyone wants to throw together a organizational website and a mailing list, I'd be more than happy to help coordinate.
The best alternative i've seen OpenNIC's openly open OpenDNS.
Is there any technical reason why DNS servers (probably provided by your ISP) can't add OpenDNSs details too?
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
That's important to remember. The more extreme ICANN is, the more it behaves like some sort of government of a banana republic, the more ludicrious its decisions, the less of a leg the US has to stand on when defending ICANN's role.
While I suspect we're going to be held hostage to these imbeciles for the next year or two, I'd be surprised if any talk about quangos running the 'net continues to be taken seriously. Most governments, expecially those in Europe traditionally suspicious of US involvement in controlling the Internet, are going to see this as ammunition.
It may sound bizarre, but now we know ICANN can't be trusted, we need to hope it gets worse, not better. Meanwhile the complaints about it need to go not to ICANN but to the organizations that can put control of assigned numbers under a different model.
That's what I reckon anyway. Anyone for one more round?
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I was one of the optimists when ICANN was first founded. Yeah, sure there were some problems, but surely we could work past them in good faith to get a fair, equitable system which would straighten out the DNS mess.
I'm wrong. I admit it. Kick me.
ICANN is fundamentally flawed, and the flaws aren't fixable. Time to de-charter ICANN and do it right from the beginning.
The only way we can get an ICANN-like organization to really work is to make sure it has some reasonable fascimilie of these characteristics:
These are the biggest things that ICANN doesn't have, and that any successor organization must have. I'm sure I've missed a few, but it's a good start.
Time to De-Charter ICANN and Start Again.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
If a new organization was created and gained anything approaching wide usage, it would be deemed outlaw by the U.S. government and others. If there was so much as a hint of some corporation's name being used in a domain name handed out by such an organization, you'd have FBI kicking down the door and hauling everything and everyone away, probably with no charges filed and no right to know the evidence against them. The media would be told that a bunch of hackers were violating copyright law in a massive way and everyone would just accept that as fact. The government just saved the Internet. Hooray for the government.
Okay, that's a pretty cynical view of things, but who believes that such an organization wouldn't be destroyed either by litigation or by the government? I seriously doubt they'll let their corporate-owned Internet face any competition.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
This is insightful? These host files would be huge, and trading them across the internet would only add bandwidth usage and also many small servers might not have the space to handle such a big file.
//m
For some of us, attending a multi-day event can't be justified, but I'd be happy to drive down one day to get together with a few folks and make our voices heard loudly and clearly.
The was the comment seen at The Register.
This needs more exposure and heavy ridicule. The only way to lever them out will be to shame them. That and lawsuits, angry letters to Congress and the Executive branch. Publicity is a start, but this is in danger of being ignored as "normal" bureaucracy.
So who gets to vote for ICANN members?
This attempt to turn into a Member at Life is extrmely dangerous. It is not only a problem of elections. Mostly it is a problem on the validity of the White Paper and consequently on the validity of the whole organisation. It seems that some people got too acustomized to the heat of their seats at ICANN and do not want to go in the cold. Soon they may think that ICANN is not doing enough so it should rule that and that. A little more and they will start saying "L'Internet c'est moi"...
There is a interesting point mentioned on the article:
"Back in the days of the White Paper, the document which still provides the foundation for whatever legitimacy ICANN may retain, the United States government assured all that the initial, secretly appointed members of the ICANN Board were only temporary."
Well if these guys get too nuts, then we should direct protests not to them but to the Government of the United States of America. He is the guarantor that the White Paper will not be violated. No matter how feelings, thinkings and relations with this organism, I think that they will not sponsor such clear violation of the principles that rule its establishment. With propper argumentation, they will surely act and tell these guys that is time to leave.
PS: For those who don't know History and/or French. "L'Etat c'est moi" - "The State is me". It was said by King Louis XIV of France during his rise to power. This King was the most famous monarch and despot of the times of Absolutism. During his reign, he managed to concentrate all state control on himself.
It has been suggested before but go back to trading Host files. Use CGI host, IP adresses, or even write a new dns-app. There are a number of ways you can remove ICANN from your sphere. Their relevence is only what we let them have. Issue has and will be how much power you give ICANN (or its replacement) for the service of propagation and housekeeping. Keep it powerless and Biz will flog it, give it to much and it flogs everyone.
"ICANN stay here as long as I want" -Initial Boardmembers
-Nev
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Is anyone else tired of this BS? You know what I am tired of the most is the blatant exploitation of *our* the "geek" communities hard work in created all that is the damn internet, and now that there is profit to be had we get thrown aside like pricks trying to fuck up their *property*. Corporations, politicians, and non-profit organizations!
I say we split! Why the hell haven't we? Fork off a new Internet. (Internet2 doesn't count) Get back to basics. A place where source is open, ideas are free and remain free and it is all voluntary. A place that from the start declares If your looking for profit, fuck off.
I know, maybe offtopic. mod me down, maybe someone will read this. Maybe someone will find some inspiration. That's I can hope.
So how about it? Would it be possible for a second ICANN to be formed by people that care about the common good?
How about a new internet with a Declaration of Independence right from the start that says We the people say we are unbound by your countries laws, anything you put in is owned by all, this is a free-for-all baby!
I know, it will never even come close to becoming a reality, but it sounds good doesn't it?
...can's application and operating systems put a new DNS system as an OPTION (not necessarily even a default). Every program that comes out should add this! I don't care what it is.
.com .net .org from AlterNIC or whoever.
= -
One click in Opera or Lynx or Netscape to allow it to check with DNS servers run by people who serve the public interest and not bend over for big business and electing themselves emporer for life? A click in WinAmp to enable you to connect to Shoutcast servers located by a NullSoft DNS server (imagine having TLDs based on music genres?)
Better yet, a list of servers that people could pick or choose from based on reputation. Don't like ICANN? Disable the root servers entirely and get your
Operating Systems to could easily make this a part of their DNS configuration menus.
All we need is someone to create the standards and provide some kind of reputation for DNS servers. Surely this is worthy cause? Won't someone just do the paperwork necessary to start the Domain Freedom Foundation so I can contribute large heaping amounts of cash to something that will kill Network Solutions and ICANN once and for all?
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Although after the debacle of "Microsoft Refund Day" I'm a big hesitant to participate in any such activism.
Promise me no one will be there dressed as Obi Kenobe. Seriously.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
that's obi-WAN kenobe.
it's 4:42 fri night. cut me some slack.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I could set up a root DNS service tomorrow. No one would use it, but technically it could be done. If ICANN start to depart from what most Internet users want, someone will set up something different that will gain wide acceptance.
Remember the Name.Space people? Their proposal would have worked technically even if there were other reasons why people were against it.