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If ICANN Can't, Who Can?
alanjstr asks: "After reading this article at The Register, I no longer understand how domain registration really works. Quite a few posts have come across Slashdot about ICANN elections and rights to domain names. It sounds to me like it started off as a good thing but is struggling to move to be autonomous. ICANN was created in an attempt at
who should run it and How should it be paid for. Clearly the Who has become a problem with many complaining about not being represented. The How is a problem that is still unresolved. The more I think about it, the more it seems like we're setting up a new government to rule the land of Domains. How should be go about fixing this dilemma? The first thing that comes to mind is to write a Constitution to lay the groundwork. How would you complete the following: We the People of the Digital Planet Earth...." It all boils down to ICANN asking most of the ccTLDs to pay a third of it's operating costs without allowing them representation in ICANN itself. Now that doesn't sound very fair, does it?
What an American centred view. Still, nothing new there I guess.
I mean, ICAAN is'nt even that important, anyway.
I propose that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And certainly don't create another 'big government' style overbearing beurocracie.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
I mean, ICAAN is'nt even that important, anyway.
I propose that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And certainly don't create another 'big government' style overbearing beurocracie.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
Multiple top level registars - that's the future!!!
who put these bozos and WIPO for that matter in charge? I honestly don't know how they got there or who they answer to, if anyone, and I am mighty curious about the situation, especially in regards to WIPO.
BilldaCat
Between charging 1500 dollars plus raised registration fees for
humor for the clinically insane
great comedy company.
Why is it that any time you have any small group of humans with even the tiniest amount of power they start to make decisions that absolutely reek of corruption. I have no idea whether or not these people are corrupt, but they seem to be acting in a way that is not in the least bit accountable. I don't think humans are suited to responsibility really. I reckon problems like this would be best handled by a big old expert system. They usually work better than people do anyway.
Fromm Nominet's 2000 AGM notes.
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
Now, I am a relative newbie to Unix in general. Don't even think of asking me to say anything intelligent about how DNS works or about how BIND works or about exactly what happens when I type a domain name into my web browser past the fact that it goes out to a DNS server and fetches an IP address.
/home/inquis. All the user directories are subordinate to the /home directory. The /home directory and my home directory within that /home directory are logically linked.
/home directory, looking at the contents of that directory, and finding it filled with /sbin crap.
y /lowerLevelCategory
My feeling for a while now is that while Uniform Resource Locators make sense, domain names don't. Think about it from this perspective, and see if it makes any sense.
In the context of your computer, there is a string that you can specify that can point to any particular file, or resource, on your entire machine. For example, my directory would be
Jump over to a win9x box. The contents of the Windows directory are logically linked to the identity of the Windows directory itself. Everything in the windows directory belongs in that directory, because everything in there is a part of windows.
Now look at our idiotic system of using domain names to access resources over the web. First of all, nothing requires that the domain name itself have anything to do with the content that can be accessed by using that domain name. This would be akin to sitting down at your linux box, moving to your
Another problem I have with DNS is that related content is not grouped together by default. This harks back to the previous problem (you can't tell the content from the domain name). And I'm not simply talking about going to a portal that indexes web content and drilling down through the links, I'm talking about a fundamental archetecture change.
Look at it this way. Say you want to look up newbie Linux sites, but you don't know where to begin looking. As it stands now, you can go to Google and hope that their spider has picked all of them up; you can go to Yahoo and hope that they have manually indexed them all; either way, you miss out on content.
now, check this out... wouldn't it be easier on you and everyone else if you could just do this?
http://xml/linux/newbie
transferProtocol://contentType/highLevelCategor
As the web stands now, it is analogous to a linux box with every single file on the entire machine crammed in the root directory. You have to know what exactly you are looking for and how to find it before you can actually find it. A more efficient system would allow even the most braindead user to shoot in the dark and still manage to find somehting useful quite quickly.
(Response to one obvious counterpoint: you can grep a directory to find what you are looking for quickly even if you don't know its name. However, grepping the web is not trivial. The closest tool we have for doing that is Google, and we all know that while it is pretty good, it is not perfect.)
Allright, this now ends my directionless rant. Mods, respond to this if you disagree instead of modding it down.
Thanks, and everyone have a good day. I just pulled an allnighter writing polysci paper, so I needed a good rant.
-inq
Look at it this way: Yet IPv4 has a huge address space of 256^4 unique addresses (and with the advent of IPv6, this is set to increase enormously). Considering that there are only around 70,000 words in the English language (many of which are not memorable enough for use as a domain name anyway), it seems obvious that there will never be enough domains out there to satisfy everyone.
The solution to this is to abandon DNS altogether. People are easily able to memorise telephone numbers in everyday life, so why should we assume that they become instantly stupid and forgetful as soon as they connect to the Internet? Despite what some people (i.e. ICANN and domain registrars) would have you believe, people ARE capable of memorising IP addresses. For example, I know the IP addresses of all the machines on my LAN (192.168.0.1, 192.168.0.2 and 127.0.0.1) - remembering these numbers hardly challenges my intellect. Anyone who can't remember a few simple numbers of less that 12 digits is too stupid to be allowed to live, let alone be allowed to use the Internet.
We should revert to accessing resources just by using IP addresses, and forget about ICANN and the greedy domain registrars.
Until then, I think the best way is to open it up to everyone and get the registries to allow mass voting on what new TLDs are added. WIPO can handle the problems with trademarks.
Another point I feel worth mentioning, is that the problem also lies with the fact that WE are not taking advantage of the alternative DNS systems out there. If we make a mass migration over to alternative DNS systems, ICANN will lose its clout. This should send a message to any future organization or government that would like to manage DNS. Check out and support:
Open DNS Technologies
AlterNIC
ADNS
Open Root Server Confederation
Name.Space
There's more too.
Chris
Open DNS Technologies, Inc.
Everyone's b*tchin' about ICANN but not many people are really doing anything about it - but in the Register article there's a link to The SuperRoot Consortium that has a proposal and is actually doing something about the TLD problems.
I know that I'm switching over, if everybody starts using their rootservers ICANN will loose it's power and all of us will be happier. Think about it, ICANN depends on their rootservers to stay in power, use other rootservers and ICANN can't touch you.
Like I said, I'm switching...
--
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
Okay...I run BIND for where I work. Given that I'm not Earthlink and connecting massive amounts of the american populous to the net, but we've got about 5500 people.
As I read through the comments on here, I find things like Superroot.net, alternic, etc...
So, for people to get access to these rogue sites, I need to add all these other entries to my root.db and other files. And merge the entries from the various splinter groups, as I can't just dowload one groups root.db and run with it. And what is going to happen when two groups both have the same TLD listed in there?
I'm all for ICANN going away, but like it or not, there needs to be that tiny bit of control in there to keep utter anarchy (ie alt.*) from happening.
Anyone have a better way of handling this nightmare?
At the moment it works something like this:
.uk server.
.com, .org, etc.
you type in a URL and your web browser queries your ISP DNS for www.theregister.co.uk.
It doesn't know the IP addr, and so asks the DNS root for the address of the
This server does know about everything *.uk, and can answer the query for the IP address of www.theregister.co.uk.
If theregister.co.uk ran it's own DNS, your browser would ultimately have to query that DNS for the IP address of www.theregister.co.uk (as happens in large organizations)
As the article says, if the ccTLD data for enough popular countries moved, ISP's in those countries would have to change DNS root settings, to correctly resolve these domains.
These registrars could then do cool things like create new TLD's which the alternative DNS root knew about.
ICANN probably wouldn't like that and would keep their root server as-is, so users accessing ICANN's servers wouldn't see the new TLD's
the 'new DNS root' could reference ICANN's existing gTLD's, so non US users could access
What would ultimately happen is that because the 'new DNS root' is effectively a superset of ICANN, US ISPs would ditch ICANN's root server.
no more ICANN.
And finally, China
But it is far from clear that other roots will do any better. SuperRoot, for instance, claims that "it is not an alternative to the ICANN/IANA root". But SuperRoot lists a
And it's very clear that no matter who does it, there will be a lot of political controversy.
Technology is simple. Politics are expensive.
Concentrated power=bad
Distributed power=good
But what about power distributed to the point where it is completely ineffectual, but at the same time (due to its democratic nature) holds a great deal of credibility? You have the United Nations, a body which passed the Universal Declaration of Human rights back in the 1940's and has yet to develop any real teeth for it.
Mr. Dictator, sir? Please stop mutilating your own people in a desperate bid to hold on to power.
Laws without enforcement or the will of enforcement are worse than no laws at all. If ICANN is the United Nations, then we can do what we have always done: ignore them.
Will history remember the open-source phenomenon like it has communism: as a short-lived farce?
www.ridiculopathy.com
However, the problem is two-fold here: those 5 people are to replace the original, gov't selected ICANN officials, but these officals have yet to step down. In addition, the ICANN board just happened to change it's bylaws after the internet election but before the new domains were selected as to basically prevent the new members from having a say on the new domains.
In other words, until the new members are in place and replacing the other 5, it's still mostly a gov't organized system, which is definitely not democratic in this case (at least, no representation methods). I'm sure that the change over will happen *now* but now is too late as the new TLDs are rather poor choices.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Asking the ccTLD's to pay their dues but get no representation sounds like an old Union practice. Substitute teachers have to pay Union dues but get no Union representation or protection. The teachers Unions may be so entrenched that they are highly difficult to get rid of, but we shouldn't be letting ICANN get away with something like that.
Aren't they here just to approve registrars and TLD's?
forge
The first thing that comes to mind is to write a Constitution to lay the groundwork. How would you complete the following: We the People of the Digital Planet Earth....
Repeat after me...
The Internet is a computer network.
The Internet is a tool.
We are not citizens of the Internet.
We cannot be citizens of a tool.
--
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
I expected as much from such a motley gathering of megalomaniacal CEOs. That's basically what ICANN is; a gathering of the top IT/telecom/Internet business owners with the fattest wallets on the planet. Sure, without one solidly defined organizational system, the Internet would just be a barrel with fish in it, but just look at the morons in ICANN!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Buy the DNS & Bind book (if you haven't already)
Setup a nice little name server with a catchy TLD like ".slash"
Add your friends' boxes to your new TLD
Change your .sig to tell people how to modify their resolv.conf
Rinse & Repeat
Once roughly a third of the Internet is using "pirate" DNS systems some propeller-head at Yahoo or some such will have the great idea of mirroring all this at their site and ICANN will soil their trousers. You can expect ICANN to pressure ISP's into only using the "official" name servers, and a few lawsuits to settle who can run what services (named) on their own machines. Those things will likely split the Internet (again) between the haves (those who have the knowledge and will to modify their resolve.conf) and the have nots (those who must use their ISP's config.) However, that might be a Good Thing.
"Hmm... this link to l337.h4X0r seems to be broken..."
"Dammit! That darn sensorware must've blocked newdgeeks.slash"
The Internet is a tool.
We are not citizens of the Internet.
We cannot be citizens of a tool."
Isn't government a tool for running a nation? You can not successfully run anything without some sort of organization and protocols (pardon the pun... and alliteration ;-) in place.
While your post was certainly poetic, it was also somewhat naive. But to make-up for calling your post naive, I followed your link and rated you a 10 ;-)
-p4
(c) All Rights Released.
Here's a link to youcann.org, a site devoted to promoting alternative TLDs. Looks like they duplicate the 'standard' DNS information and augment it with their own stuff that ICANN doesn't accept.
It's a very interesting idea, but as this Wired article details, bad things happen when people disagree about who on the Internet is in charge of a certain TLD (.biz in this case).
If you're actually interested in doing something, rather that just complaining all the time, here's an opportunity, staring you in the face.
I think this is a great idea... But what happens when all the good TLDs are taken? Hrmmmm...
Lets make sure the new digital constitution is filled with the same kinds of "...shall not be infringed" rights that are regularly ignored by the US government.
...shall not be abridged."
- From the first article of the constitution of Beta in Lois McMasters Bujold's universe.
IIRC, the book this quote was taken from was written in the 80s, and is pretty forward thinking. I think something like this should be written into ANY internet constitution. Individuals may choose to limit their own access, or may choose to let someone else do it, but the infrastructure shouldn't be doing it. In short, unless you have written consent from all individuals affected, you may not deny access to information.
I hate to say it, but ICANN comes off looking like the good guys, and the nation-states seem a lot less trustworthy.
Why doesn't each country just take control of their own ccTLD, and leave gTLDs to ICANN?
--
Find free books.
There is some coordination needed to help people avoid creating conflicting TLDs. If both the UK and the US create a ".biz" within their servers, it would be bad for both. Serious registrars will cooperate, and if they won't, users just won't point at them. In either case, the function an organization like ICANN would perform would be a minor, administrative one, not justifying their current size, power, or charge structure: maintaining a list of those TLDs.
Even with the current DNS infrastructure, ICANN is technically and administratively superfluous. I hope the ccTLD administrators will leave the current system: sooner or later, it is destined for demise anyway, and it might as well be sooner.
No taxation without representation!
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
Please don't advocate modeling it after the US Constitution. I have a nightmare forming in my head already.
The nightmare goes something like this: A popular election is held for the position of President of ICANN, the most popular person in the popular vote does not get enough electorial votes to sew up the election. A small country (say Tonga for instance) has some irregularities with its vote and has to do a recount to determine who wins the swing votes to determine who will win the deciding electorial votes. Because of a server crash it is discoverd that a few thousand votes that were cast have unreliable time/date stamps on them. Data recovery specialists are called in but the governing body does not give them enough time to do all their work and they are only able to do a partial recovery in the allotted time. The Tonganese government certifies the original vote but the loser files appeal after appeal and the results stay up in the air for a long time. Because it is necessary to reach a decision, the ICANN board meets and appoints the winner (who happens to not be the popular vote winner).
As a result of all the bungling, ICANN loses a great deal of credibility with its constituancy and with other governing bodies and standards orginizations. The dwindling power that ICANN can exert throws the cyberworld into disarray. Smaller, weaker factions conspire to usurp the authority that ICANN once weilded with total authority and as a result, the once homogionus internet becomes fractured. People who want full service have to subscribe and pay for multiple accounts.
If there are any problems assigning names.
Simple!
The basic thing to keep in mind is that (so far as I can tell) no contract or U.S. statute gives ICANN authority to impose anything on anyone. DNS uses a hierarchical database. ICANN had a contract to run the top-level servers that everyone was using. But nothing forbids you to set up your own top-level server and populating it as you please. And nothing forbids others to use your alternaDNS for name resolution.
ICANN more or less recognizes this one their web site. They point out that they set standards based on voluntary cooperation, adding that their authority does not come from statute or contract.
An organization that exists on those terms can continue only so long as it is backed by at least a rough consensus. The Register article makes it look as though that consensus could plausibly implode. I'm sure that most people would rather that didn't happen--the balkanization of DNS would be a pain in the ass of biblical proportions. But the only way to avoid it will be for ICANN to rebuild the consensus that lets it survive.
(Caveat: IAAL, but I don't practice in this area. My assertions here are based on about half an hour of legal research. If any of those assertions about the law are mistaken, I'd be grateful if someone would tell me.)
Please do not use the word 'anarchy' when you mean 'chaos'. (I assume that's what you mean by your comment about needing a tiny bit of control.) What we have currently is anarchy because people can choose any dns they want but we realize the benefit of sticking to a standard. If the benefit of sticking to that standard is getting less beneficial, we can coose to work with a different one or create our own. It's not like the U.S. Government where if you choose to ignore its rules you get tossed in jail.
The full paper is still available: see Ownership of International TLDs. To make a long story short, NSI's assumption of ownership of .com
To this we might add "has now involved the U.S. government and a quasi-private corporation in an attempt at international governance".
--davedavecb@spamcop.net
The solution is the elimination of TLDs altogether. Major businesses will engage in legal or extralegal shenaningans to insure that they have absolute control over their present second level name in any namespace.
.COM et al, but now they're just an opportunity for registrars to make money and bring instability to the DNS system.
Adding more TLDs doesn't do anything without restrictions on what can go onto those TLDs, and as ICANN has so amply demonstrated, the categories and restrictions get chosen through a particularly bizzarre process that leaves no one happy.
Why do we even need a TLD namespace anyway? It served a purpose once upon a time when SRI or whoever did registrations limited them with in
http://slashdot should be enough.
Although a global namespace served the Internet well throughout its early days (before the perceived need for ICANN), the demand for names has now far exceeded the supply. I don't see any fair way to resolve conflicts without resorting to multiple namespaces. Why not completely switch to local namespaces?
How much do we rely on DNS? I use it to type web addresses fairly often, but 99% of the time it would be nearly as easy to use search engines, follow links from a familiar site, or use a bookmark. I also use DNS for a variety of other services which are configured through files (in which I could just as easily us IP addresses). The trickiest transition (as far as my own usage of DNS) would be email.
We already have a global numeric namespace (IP addresses) which has only a small number of conflicts. Those addresses can even be memorized (at least until we start seeing more of IPv6). They can continue to be used as universal locators while the mapping of names to addresses can become a local task, just like creating and renaming bookmarks in your favorite browser.
In order for this to actually work, entities will need to be able to share namespaces with each other. We already do this in many ways, e.g. Yahoo shares its hierarchical namespace through a simple web interface.
Has anyone done any research into the feasibility of large scale global namespaces with unique identifiers? I think there is a limit to how large they can be and what boundaries they can cross, but I haven't read anything significant on the subject.
I knew Saturday morning cartoons would pay off eventually!
"That's taxation without representation, and it's NOT FAIR!"
(originally with reference to the Boston Tea party)
so....we should package up all of the domain names, sneak up when ICANN is not looking, and dump them in the.....nevermind
(apologies to non-US readers)
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Hi, I think we just need a new root registry, with the spirit of the open source community. thanks ... Collin
The ICANN Board will look to the following guidelines in the consideration of its own conduct and proposed policies and actions arising from supporting organizations. Accordingly, the Board expects that the supporting organizations will include consideration of these guidelines as part of their policy development and evaluation processes. These guidelines are not intended to be rigid. Rather, they seek to establish a culture of institutional openness and accountability, and promote policies that are intrinsically limited in their scope, but rigorous and uniform in their application.
-robin
As one of the folks quoted in the Reg article, I'm kinda surprised that the DNS project I'm working with hasn't be referenced here yet. Well, I'll take care of that ... ;-)
The OpenNIC is working on and promoting a system much like what's being discussed here. We want a global DNS root in which any person or group which can technicaly build and support a root is a welcome and equal participant and in which new TLDs are created simply by vote of the users.
Within OpenNIC, we operate several TLDs (.oss and .null, presumably, would be of the most interest to this crowd).
Cheers,
-robin
No one has yet shown me why we even need a central "government" to control domains. The domain naming system is nothing more than a commonly implemented, highly distributed, and rather arcane, search engine. And it's not even a very slick search engine.
If we are going to form a representative body to manage it for us, then we have to decide who the "us/we" part is. Are "we" the ones who register names or are "we" the ones who are going to be looking up names. I think it should be the latter, if anything. We are, of course, the ones who decide what goes into our own DNS data files, or DNS lookup list. We decide how we shall see the world.
As I have mentioned before, it is possible for the whole domain naming system to be run with every server having its own root zone. Will that result in confusion? Probably, but mostly only for corporate suits who were (and probably still are) all confused by all this internet stuff, anyway.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Actually, the rights of atheists are quite well protected. With the notable exception of "In god we trust" on our currency, and the tendency to take oaths on bibles, religious expression in the context of the state is a big no-no in America. Though it pisses off a number of ignorant rednecks, the courts have consistently found that our laws do not permit promotion of religion via public property.
I'll ignore for a moment that atheism is based on beliefs without proof, and therefore qualifies as a religion, and that the guarantees of religious freedom are not in the Consitution, but in the Bill of Rights.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
> It all boils down to ICANN asking most of the ccTLDs to pay a third of it's operating costs without allowing them representation in ICANN itself. Now that doesn't sound very fair, does it?
Yeah, taxation without equal representation. You'd think people would have learned their lesson about trying to pull that, what with the British getting their asses handed to them on a plate in the late 1700s over the exact same issue... ;-)
--
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Not to seem loutish, but of course it's an American-centric viewpoint. We did, after all, sort of invent and propagate this ``Internet'' thing and still have the highest number of 'net users globally. I'd equally expect to here Brit-centric viewpoints in a debate about scones, tea, or cricket.
--
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
however, you are correct in saying our constitution has worked pretty well so far. unfortunately, little things like "in god we trust" and "one nation under god" grate on the nerves of atheists in a government that supposedly protects all piritual beliefs, including the right not to believe in any gods.
--
fight global cooling
Taxation without representation. Wasn't that the major cause of the American Revolutionary War?
`fortune -o`
You guys aren't addressing the biggest concern of the people who are against ICANN: they (rightly) fear the centralization of authority because it leads to inevitable abuse by those with economic and political power. ICANN is a problem for me because it limits domains to "official" ones that its member registrars sell. Pressure from registrars with commercial interest leads ISPs to use only "official" root servers, and it's a bandwagon effect; if ICANN servers are used initially, the chance that a new ISP uses ICANN increases. So basically the internet names will end up with either 99% using ICANN and 1% using others, or everyone using others. Unfortunately, over 99% of ISPs currently use ICANN, so it's already set.
You guys are missing the fact that you are the ones with the knowledge necessary to implement your own authority. All it takes is organization, which is something h4x0rs are notoriously bad at. You have to be a businessman to be able to organize something this big. Unfortunately, Joe Internetuser doesn't give a fuck, so the public is of no help.
There has to be a large influential group of h4x0rs who announce to the mass media that the ICANN system is flawed and also that there is a new, superior system which encompasses all ICANN TLDs while adding thousands more. The media also doesn't give a fuck unless the general public cares. The only way this can get news coverage is with the endorsement of a large company like IBM. Unfortunately, the people who know how the internet works are all working for some dumbass manager who only sees $$$, so they aren't of any help. I'll be establishing my own TLD pretty soon, so it's obvious which side I'm on. Central authority sucks and it defeats the purpose of the internet. That is something ordinary people won't ever realize because all of their knowledge comes through the filter known as entertainment.
I'll support any effort to maintain electronic freedom if anyone else wants to put in the time. A tech users group of 100,000 users might do the trick.
One of the new ICANN board members uses this root, and even has his own TLD in it (look for .EWE).
Download the zone files
FYI: There are no conflicts between the ORSC root zone and the SuperRoot Consortium root zone- they've been sync'd for the last year or so.
--DNS Root
NO Fucking NO bordel
The domain names are basically entries inside databases, nothing more. It's a fucking Common resource. If people tell you that a name is their property, it's time to give them the finger.-- javaDragon is an instance of JavaDragon.
representing the 5.5 Billion users worldwide outside the USA. The words 'Tea', 'Boston' and 'No taxasion without representation' paint a picture of almost total hipocracy coming out of a US Government Institution. 'Third World' and for that matter 'First World' countries are asking themselves IF ICANN had a constitution could they be relied upon to have a voting system that was not only workable but also democratic. The fact that as currently constituted ICANN is a self-appointed dictatorship which the vast majority of informed net users outside the US find utterly distateful particularly as many of them are often lectured by the US on matters of democracy. That said, it comes as no supprise that ICANN is totally flawed because it was set up by a system of partisan interest which cannot organise itseld better than the worlds largest democracy (India) yet with less than one third of the population. Unless ICANN gets it's act together and very quickly the Declaration of Net indepandance will have the name of a NewZealand lawer at the top of the list and not John Hancock and DNS will exist no more.
Okay some of the comments are quite interesting, but most of them sound like the good old "I'm not sure what we rebel against, but it's good to oppose the establishment anyway".
/. discussions - why don't you try to step back, compare data against two or three possible scenarios, before hitting [Reply] and yelling 'fraud', 'conspiracy', etc.?
;-))).
I've been writing mails to ICANN's chairwoman for quite a while - and get replies to each of them, how's that for caring about the 'consumer'?
So, before yelling that your voice is not heard at each other, start yelling in ICANN's direction, so that they can hear you.
When I first contacted her, at was a matter of introducing a group I am a founding member of. We are concerned about what BigBadCorp and IgnorantImbecileGov were doing to 'Our' Internet.
We are in the process of formalizing our own articles and come forward with demands.
Instead of ignoring the announcement, she actually got back to methin a few hours, giving her opinion, voicing concerns and explaining a few things that they did and why.
Next, she actually started to make suggestions and raise issues in regards to our budding association that we hadn't really considered, while asking for our input in regards to the future of ICANN. If that is not listening to 'the people', what is?
Our initial plans were based on a democratic system in which owners of domain names have one vote to the 'commercial house', while everyone with an e-mail account that cares to identify him/herself get a vote in the 'public house'.
As counter-balance we suggested an appointed body that would consist of the companies that provide the backbone, with ISPs and HSPs as well as infrastructure providers being represented [Rep house].
The idea was that the Rep House and the public house had even power to introduce new net-laws, while the commercial house would supervise their implementation. Freedom and democracy, live and let live.
But then she pointed out just exactly what types of vested interests, lobbying groups etc, she has to deal with at ICANN, everyday and no matter how noble and honest our cause was, it was a matter of time until our association would either bring the net down due to anarchy and system break-downs or the association itself would fail to it's job because of [self-]interest groups, etc which tend to surface in any type of association.
So, we are back to the drawing board, trying to figure out what amounts pretty much to the ideal form of government for the Internet. A government that is not subject to any national laws or restrictions and that has only three tasks - keep the internet functioning and expanding; make the Internet secure for everyone ; keep any third party that wants to influence a free net out of the game;
However, for anything like this to happen, we need to act fast, before national legislation in various countries is passed and outlaws our attempts. So, if you guys are serious, get busy, don't just yell around.
In regards to ccTLDs having to pay tribute to ICANN, well I think it's a good idea. Not because it increases the power ICANN has, but because it decreases the possibility over major fuck-ups on nation levels - [self-]interest groups are such a pain. Apart from that, it ensures the smooth jumping from dot au to dot com to dot whatever-ccTLD, as everyone has to adhere by the same standards. Trust me on this one, I've travelled far more than most people on the planet and can tell you that if this sytem wasn't enforced, countries like Iran, Myanmar, Lybia, to name just three, would immediately come up with their own system and not give a darn, if it was compatible with the greater net or not.
As so often in heated
Most of us have to trouble shoot various sytems every now and then. Do we turn around and say, doesn't work, buy a new one - or do we try to find a way to make an existing system work, maybe slightly modify it over time, rather than buying new ones each time?
If the world was to follow your advise, then it would get very expensive as we'd need to change systems and overhaul constitutions twice a day [three times on fridays].
The world is lucky that we keep yelling. Just imagine, we would sit back, think, devise solutions to problems and then make a combined effort to implement them... Has it ever appearred to you people just exactly what immense power we have as a group?
this is exactly while politicians and organizations tend to listen if we start making arguments, rather than just bitch and whine. I have not met any high ranking public servant that wouldn't take a suggestion from techies serious enough to warrant it a personal reply. After all, they never know what we will do if they don't...
So use that brain power and your abilities trying to find solutions - then post them for discussion. Once we have something that appears workable, we can suggest it to the relevant people. And if that doesn't work and we are all really unhappy, well, then - you know...
But if we don't try, then we have only ourselves to blame. If we buy into the conspiracy theory and think that they are out to get us, well, then we can always come up with our own conspiracy.
And if we are more reasonable and don't believ in conspiracies as such, then one could almost say it is very much our 'civic duty' in a democracy to indicate flaws in the system and tooffer possible solutions.
Remember, indicationg flaws in others, but no solutions, that job is already taken. It's called 'Politician'.
We need to process domain name registrations and to apply an eventual priority to this. .museum TLD instead of .sex (like it or not, this would be the best way to limit e-pornography), then we definitely shouldn't discuss.
This should be managed by a program, not by an office : an office means staff and also costs.
Hence the title of this reply.
You have to ask them to allow you to use a given name, why ?
What if by hashing your domain name string a program would just be quick enough to tell you "Ye're the first, buddy, this name's yours.".
If instead of this you need some useless, redundant organisation that will prefer spending time and money to define a
Icann wrote they are here to govern the Internet (their word, not mine).
So, I'll advise decent Internet people to just choose freenet as their Mayflower before it is too late.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Information wants to be free, and much content actively *defies* categorisation, since "to define is to limit" (as the Buddhists say). That's your problem when trying to impose a top-down categorisation system. The answer, IMHO is to look at the problem on a more granular level: self-categorisation through probability, for example (e.g. like Autonomy do). G
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
I think that INTERNIC determines these but I'm not sure. I know the DNS server looks up www.yahoo.com and sends you to the correct IP address but who and how they get assigned that address I don't understand. It's like the question, where does bandwidth come from?
--Nick D.
inick@netacs.net
http://www.inick.net
http://www.lavoixceline.com
You say "WIPO can handle the problems with trademarks"
You obviously have not been paying attention to what has been happening.
Goto WIPO.org.uk to find out.
America is a free country Ð at least thatÕs what they told me when I was little. So why do we need an organization like ICANN to approve what names will become available for TLD usage? Someone should rethink this whole idea and come up with a different organization whose sole purpose would be to process applications (for a REASONABLE fee) and approve them on first come - first serve basis. Who are they to decide who gets what? Are they descendents of witch hunters, who just managed to keep high positions in the family? Every era seems to bring some other kind of control freaks, who are given the power to make decisions. LetÕs analyze the abbreviation ICANN. Internet Corporation for Assigning Names and Numbers. For ASSIGNING Names and Numbers. So why donÕt they start ASSIGNING? Or should I say why donÕt they start doing their jobs? Name.Space, from New York City, is a company whose ideas I have been supporting from the end of 1998, when I found out about their main area of interest. Name.Space has been trying to introduce new TLDÕs ranging from "dot art" to "dot zone". They have a long list of satisfied clients (I am one of them) who use those TLDÕs. We the clients have been patiently waiting for those TLDÕs to be approved by BPPÕs (Big People in Power), so that we can do with them whatever it is we plan to do. Enlighten me if I missed something Ð but Ð does someone own the Internet? Or is it free for everybody to use for whatever purposes they wish to? (Providing that they donÕt commit crimes). Name.Space has been serving the needs of us clients, who wish to have domains under "dot art" etc, for a number of years. We are repeat customers, who believe that the inevitable future of the Internet lies in an unlimited number of TLDÕs in all languages, scripts or numbers of the world. I personally disapprove the control any organization or individual claims to have over the Internet, which is not supposed to be owned by anyone. If you own something, only then should you be allowed to be in control of it. If this is not the case than you can become a user like everybody else on the Internet. The Internet is very much in its infancy. LetÕs not make it another communist regime or dictatorship Ð letÕs make it the free network for people to use. LetÕs join forces with Name.Space and similar organizations and individuals with similar ideas and free up the Internet for all. Cheers, Igor