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Former NSI CTO Calls ICANN A "World Government"

Posted by michael on from the calling-a-spade-a-spade dept.

phr1 writes: "David Holtzman, Chairman and CEO of Opion Inc. and former Chief Technology Officer at Network Solutions Inc, has written this interesting ICB editorial titled 'If we're going to have a world government, I want a revolution first." He argues that 'ICANN has the potential to turn into the first world regulatory body. By beginning to associate top level domains with content usage, they are putting themselves into the position of being the defacto arbiter of content,' and concludes 'I never felt paranoia before. I do now.' It's worth a read."

5 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. World Bodies by TBone · · Score: 4

    And no, Natalie Portman doesn't count....

    What about organizations like:

    • The UN, who have the power to essentially allow and deny a country governmental access to the rest of the world. How many non-UN countries are there that the rest of the world deals with on a regular basis?
    • The World Court in The Hague. Anyone up for a little centralized Crime and Punishment?
    • The WTO, who can set trade policy for any country involved with it. And, by association, cut off non-member countries from trading with member countries

    If I have to have a centralized body ruling something, then make one ruling the Domain hierarchy. Who cares. As if whether someone is allowed to host naked pictures at http://goat.sex or at http://sexy.kids is going to cause me to lose sleep at night.

    And what's wrong with a little content control in the DNS Hierarchy? Move all the porn to .xxx or .sex. Anyone allowed to get to it can, and kids that log on will have their resolvers deny access to them. There's your filter, huzzah. Technically, there is supposed to be content control in the heirarchy right now, except NSI sucked at enforcing anything but the .edu rules. .org was supposed to be only got Non-profits, and .net only for backbone, redistribution providers. If ICANN wants to have the various TLD admins police their domains, then I'm all for it.

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    This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U

  2. This article really needed specifics... by VValdo · · Score: 4

    I think a lot of the /. blase response to this article may come from a lack of familiarity with whatever the author is privy to. What exactly kind of dealings are going on? What are the implications?

    Most importantly, what can we do about it? Is an alternate to ICANN (new.net?) the answer?
    W

    Off to icannwatch to read more... There are some FAQs and stuff there.
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    This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  3. Consider the source by st.+augustine · · Score: 4
    Yes, ICANN has been behaving very badly. But is it any worse than NSI? I don't think so. Remember these stories?

    NSI Claims whois Database is Proprietary

    NSI Modifies whois Agreement

    Dyson says: 'NSI is stalling'

    NSI Accused of Cybersquatting

    ...just to name a few. Now, maybe Mr. Holtzman had nothing to do with all that -- heck, maybe he left out of principle when NSI stopped acting like a government contractor and started acting like a would-be monopolist. But if that is the case, there ought to have been a disclaimer somewhere in his comments. And if it isn't, it's the pot calling the kettle black.

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    -- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.
  4. Seeing top exec's write like this gives me hope. by ErikZ · · Score: 4

    Paragraph from article:

    I have no problem with authority over critical infrastructure, but there has to be accountability. When I was running the Internic, I was accountable to everyone; investors, my seniors and pretty much anyone who had a domain name and could get through to me. The people involved in this mess by and large seem to have an unhealthily low score on the six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon game. There's an old adage about only giving power to those who don't want it. By that standard, many of the ICANN participants should be acting like the cymbal monkey that got the stuffing kicked out of him by the Eveready bunny.

    I've seen better writing from Turing test rejects. Obviously this man has already been "Taken care of." and replaced by a robot. A cheap one.

    ErikZ

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    Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
  5. This guy does have a point. by po_boy · · Score: 4
    I have read a lot of posts here discussing alternative TLD's or alternative root nameservers or other similar plans. To me that's about as useful as saying "If you don't like this New World Order, go live on another world."

    There is something to be said for the difficulty a person would have to stop using the DNS system as organized or arranged or overseen (or whatever) by ICANN. It may not be as difficult as travelling to another world to set up a new habitat, but it seems to be on the same order of magnitude.

    I would love to hear, however, how we could more appropriately manage the DNS system that the vast majority of Internet users know and love. (yeah, I love it; it could probably be better, but I would hate to not have DNS at all). If there were a reasonable plan proposed, I would advocate it because the current system does make me a bit concerned. (I was already paranoid.)