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Verisign Shuts Down Domain Policy List
topeka writes: "From ICANN.Blog:
'Without warning or explanation, and without even providing list members an opportunity to reorganize, Verisign today closed the long-running 'DOMAIN-POLICY' list.'" tdye adds: "Even the archives are apparently gone,
before they could be rescued.
Some interesting comments on the shutdown here(1) and here(2)."
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List owner: rforno@infowarrior.org
25 May 2001
A corporation which has been granted by the government with an important (and LUCRATIVE) public function has, by implication, given up some of its "freedom" to treat profits its sole priority. It still has freedom, yes-- this is why it can do what it just did-- but it also has something else, something which is quite interesting and isn't usually held by a corporation: OBLIGATIONS. Theoretically it is now a part of the whole "consent of the governed" social contract now, and must take the greater good of the general populace into consideration or else said social contract may be terminated from the general populace's end.
And even ignoring that, even if the government hadn't given them what it did, it is generally considered considerate to do things like give users of a service you provide fair warning when the service is to be discontinued, so that your users may undertake transitioning ahead of time. This is usually a good idea if you want to keep the good will of your former customers, so that they will want to come back to you to use your services in the future.
Didn't Ayn Rand just HATE govenment-granted monopolies?
Copy the archives at Google's cache. Do it before Verisign asks Google to remove them from its cache.
Questions:
Assuming a reliable, reasonably trustworthy competitor picks up running the list and is allowed to provide access to the cached archives, might this be a good thing? It adds value to the new company and diminishes the value of Verisign?
Maybe this would be more important if more people knew what the list was and how it might help them, could someone provide a good description of what the list is and how it has helped them?
http://HavenWorks.com/find
"Caffeine and indexes to books are God's little way of saying he cares."
- http://HavenWorks.com/hermit
When Declan sent this news to the politech list he cced a verisign contact asking if the list was to be released.
Text URL to the politech post: http://www.politechbot.com/p-02060.html
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Odd, I thought the point was networking computers. Which RFC requires freedom and justice for all?
Nationality has little bearing on it.
Try telling that to someone in China, or Iran, or Afghanistan. Hell, try telling that to someone in a library or school getting funding from the US gov't.
Perhaps the solution is to make a new TLD governed by an administration that's more responcible about freedom, justice and liberty
It would never work, and it shouldn't be necessary to explain why. I think the best solution is more drastic: kick everyone off the big five TLDs and stick them under a country code -- where they're supposed to be -- and let them prove that they deserve an international name; or, for that matter, a national, state, or county (in .us) name. Restrict everyone to the smallest confining domain, and keep them there until they outgrow it. Like it or, political borders exist, they're far more meaningful than any TLD, and they're a damned convenient organizational tool. There no reason to pass up the benefits of using them just to satisfy some anarcho-socialist dream of being free from tyranny.
granted by the government...
Whose government?
Theoretically, .com and .org are universal and beyond national governments. Certainly you cannot predict from what country a domain originates when it is .com. Does anyone else remember the .us domain?
The US government snarfed the .mil and .gov domains when the Internet was still ARPANET, and they are not going to give them up, but it still seems to think that the entire Internet is its property, to manage or dispose of as it wishes.
It shouldn't need saying, but the United States is not the only country in the world. Its goverment is not the only government. Its goals are not the only goals.
Just maybe one or two people who are not United Statesians are getting a little upset that the US seems to treat the entire world as its private fief. This is just another example.
Sorry. I'll shut up now.
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife