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Legitimacy Of ICANN?
"ICANN is really a government no matter how much they deny it. They create laws that affect people internationally and levy taxes in the form of fees for doamin registration. It can control anyone's presence on the internet by taking away your domain name and your IP address as they see fit.
The popular opinion of ICANN seems to be that they serve to exclude people rather than include them. This was exemplified by the fact a the most recent election that only 5 seats were up when there should have been a lot more (apparently some members self-lengthed their terms from 1 to 4 years)...
So as I understand it, ICANN was just sort of created by the Commerce Department without regards to any outside opinions. It seems like the Commerce Department is extending governmental rights to ICANN since the Commerce Department pretty much goes along with whatever they say. Why should ICANN receive so much weight in the mind of the Commerce Department? Perhaps we, as Internet users, should petition the Commerce Department for changes we want to top-level domains and other naming issues. To this end, I think we should question the foundation of ICANN.
I am not saying that the Internet shouldn't have a governing body, but perhaps it should have been created through a system that drew on input of Internet users, instead of shutting them out."
I believe it was the Department of Commerce that assigned the task to ICANN, and ICANN is accountable to the DoC (in other words, if ICANN does something, the DoC can reprimand ICANN, etc). I support OpenNIC, but the fact remains is that I am in a VERY small minority. Sorry, numbers do NOT make you legitmate. I would suggest that legitimate is whatever most people use. Think of it as democracy. Seriously, though, ICANN was created by a few folks back before most country codes were even used, and may have outgrown itself. Corporate pride just doesn't go as far as it used to I guess... You want the truth? I am sure that these concerns should at least be looked at and sorted out by international treaty, instead of ad hoc for the benefit of the members. I'm afraid it is you who are mistaken about a great many things....
implementing rules that we now know that we need.
I think he is actually referring to rules that he knows that we need.
Suppose AOL created new TLDs (.biz, .kids, .fun). The new AOL run "TLD registrar" would have an instant HUGE userbase. Further they could open their DNS servers to let anyone who wants to point to them. It might be a successful coup of the ICANN czars.
Under current copyright law, once a private company controls a DNS, with their own special modifications, they can copyright the database, even though they do not own a copyright on the individual pieces of data. See the database formerly known as CDDB for an example infamous to slashdot. Therefore if this private DNS service becomes corrupt, there can be no smooth transition to another.
No one forces anyone to use ICANN for DNS resolving. I can forsee some large ISP, say AOL, offering its own internal TLDs (.biz, .fun, .kids, etc.) This would not impact the net outside of AOL. They could, though, allow anyone to point to their DNS servers. If enough do, we will have a new controller of DNS. Then, if they become corrupt, people will move again. There is a chouce here, people. Don't like ICANN? Don't use ICANN. Use ALTERNIC. There are maky others out there too.
Of course, this probably goes over about as well as a dead duck.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
There is not a single point of failure. There are something like 14 root name servers, and the security of each one is taken very seriously.
Your primitive Earth equation is too simplistic.
Movement will take time.
You only are calculating two dimensions rather than taking the whole thing into consideration. Any movement requires slight movement on all dimensions.
You need to remember that there is nothing as 'true rest', only relative rest. You put a rock on the ground. It is a rest in relation to the planet itself, but the world is spinning, while orbiting the sun which is rotating around the galactic center, which is moving outward from the big bang point.
Totally sense-making it is. If you move from point X1Y1Z1T1 to X2YxZxTx, everything has moved. Your primitive equation does not take that into effect. In a universe which permitted a state of true rest, your supposed loophole would, in fact, check out. But in our universe, it leaves out reality.
ICANN is just like a third-world, third-rate countries with tinpot despots screwing their fellow citizens for their own financial and power gains.
And like those despots, the only way things are going to change is for the people to revolt. If you want change, ICANN must be overthrown.
But a revolution requires mass public support. Despots don't typically get dethroned by a single person, nor even by a few hundred rabid guerillas.
And if there's one thing there ain't on the Internet, is a mass public that's informed enough to understand why it's necessary to overthrow ICANN.
Heck, there ain't even a mass DNS-controlling population that's got enough of a clue to understand that they can get root name serving from an alternative source.
Which basically means y'all are fscked. No revolution is going to happen until all the domain controller guys are educated as to why they should abandon ICANN name resolution, and go with someone else (OpenNIC).
And given that most people don't ever want to have to think, I think educating them stands a snowball's chance.
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Since the poster apparently continues to think that the internet-drafts story means something, I'll repeat my comment from that story.
Simon Higgs is fighting ICANN, and using the internet-drafts process as a tool.
There is no fight between ICANN and the IETF as such. Not to say that all IETF members like everything ICANN does (we don't), but Simon Higgs' opinion is his own, even when expressed as internet-drafts.
I just wonder if it would be technologically feasible and practical to actually create a peer to peer application that would provide all the functions of the current Domain Name Service. One way to get rid of ICANN forever, and eliminate the weak link that binds the Internet (no pun intended). If the practical functions of the domain servers they own and control are taken away, well, that would be the end of them, I think. That will mean the beginning of the end for all dreams of central control over the Internet.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Yes, It is time to Question them. What was trully annoying, is that when you did registered with them they said that the id that was necessary to activate your registration, was to never be used again, but when elections came along, it was needed to login.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is part of the Commerce Department. There are a lot of smart people at NIST. They have been involved in computer and network technology for many years.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
ICANN will remain legitimate as long as the Dept. of Commerce lets them stay legitimate. .whatever and everyone wants a .whatever address. We're sort of fucked as long as the DoC keeps rolling over to the whims of ICANN (which they created anyways). In a nutshell blame the DoC, they're letting this turn into a huge mess and it's going to shove a giant stick up the ass of all internet related commerce in the future.
It's fairly easy to see we need some sort of central body or group to designate and dispense internet namespaces. The e-economy worth billions now and is supposed to be worth more billions in years to come wouldn't exactly work if amazon.com only pointed to the correct IP address on some but not all NS roots. But how exactly do you go about that? ICANN is fucking up because they're charging for TLD proposals and letting the proposers run said proposals. This means registrarX is fucked if registrarY gets control of
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
It's about as legitimate as any fiat money. And organized just about as much for the benefit of the users.
The only legitimacy that ICANN has is that DARPA funded the invention of the internet. Period. That's it. There's no logical connection, but they are both creatures of the US Govt. (ICANN a bit more on the sub-rosa side... it pretends to be a private monopoly.)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Yes.
IPv6 TLDs are the same as IPv4 TLDs. There is no difference whatsoever for the end-user.
At the name-server end, the only difference is that IPv6 name to address mappings are an AAAA record, instead of the A record used for IPv4.
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
The real people calling the shots over at ICANN are Louis Touton, Joe Sims, and VeriSign (who bought Network Solutions).
.COM. There are hundreds of outraged posts from people around the globe screaming "This is wrong! Don't give VeriSign any more control than they already have!" But, even though 90% of the public was against the VeriSign contract... what does ICANN do? They do what is "best for the Internet community" and give the existing monopoly even MORE control of the DNS.
They claim to have a "bottom-up" consensus approach to their decision making. They claim to be "open and transparent". But, they are anything but. Rather than having the the public elections that they have TWICE promised the US Gov't -- they decided to do a long (2 yr.) and costly ($400 K +) study instead. There may never be public elections ever again!
Go look at the ICANN public forum regarding the recent decision to give VeriSign long-term control of
They conduct closed-door meetings. They post major policy changes only days before they get together to vote on it (leaving no time for public debate) and they have recently voted unanimously for pay-raises for ICANN members. Meanwhile -- the public outreach and education budget has been slashed to almost nothing.
The only group who might possibly be more crooked than ICANN would have to be the US Congress. But, guess who is lobbying both of them? VERISIGN !!!
There is none.
It is an attempt by IP interests and big corporations (read: NSI) to take control of the root.
The last thing anyone should be doing at work is watching movies on their PC or playing games on Company time.
If they're bored, they should take a friggin' walk outside, or barring that, do everything they can to GET AWAY from the damn computers. Give your mind, eyes, and wrists a break.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
For two legal views on ICANN's Legitimacy, see Jonathan Weinberg, ICANN and the Problem of Legitimacy (.pdf), and my (long) article, Wrong Turn in Cyberspace: Using ICANN to Route Around the APA and the Constitution , available in HTML or .pdf formats.
I have a blog.
DNS is a system to change verbose, human friendly names into IP addresses (and the reverse). Bind (the software that does this) version 9 supports IPv6 (Bind 8 is probably the most common version in use right now, but then, there is no real need to upgrade; plenty of Bind 4, etc. servers are out there). The DNS system, root servers, etc, all technically support IPv6 (well, in theory: there needs to be some upgrading of software and maybe a bit of hardware), they were designed to work together.
Now, having said that all, comes *my* question: has anybody seen a host registration form *anywhere* that can accept a IPv6 address? I'm moving my servers (the colo ISP is dying out from under us), and I have to reregister my nameservers anyway, so it might be cool to have ns3 be listed on a IPv6 and see what traffic it gets. It's a belt and suspenders host server anyway; it runs mostly my hobby stuff (personal mailing lists, etc).
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
whever two or more people have conflicts (or at the very least differing social goals) then there has to be a resolution process. The IETF have refined their RFC system for multiple vendors to nominate technical "solutions" in a fairly transparent process. The courts have another one for resolving property rights and criminal behaviour.
The problem is that a statutory authority (effectively the address of IP resources) is also trying to act in a commercial role. There is a reason why regulatory/investigation arms of sharemarkets are separate from their operational arm. Another is that when Postel passed away, there wasn't any impartial authority with vision trusted by everyone for an alternative to evolve. For example, in a practical sense there is no scarce resource in the names (once IPv6 comes along). What is missing is someone smart enough to nominate a sensible name scoping extension to the BIND. When the new technological frontiers are interpreted by old rules, there is a serious disconnect with reality. In this case whoever was flogging street addresses for a namespace saw an opportunity to become a virtual real-estate agent. In the quest for an easy buck, the politics was probably not carefully thought out and now you have a situation where enough people are unhappy that mud is continually flying.
Is there a better solution? Well the AARNET was originally isolated islands trying to communicate. There's no reason why the same can't happen when you embed IPv6 subdomains within the wider scheme and have a suitable killer app.
LL
Claiming that sheer numbers give legitimacy is as idiotic as that old bromide about lemming hordes going over cliffs. . .
Serious programmers don't need games, free soda, movies, etc. to "keep them happy."
What next? Bus drivers complaining their bus isn't good enough, airline pilots only wanting to fly supersonic aircraft, etc, etc?
The point is that unless these programmers are programming games they don't need fancy graphics cards with more memory than the CPU...
The problem is that .com, .net and .org are still seen as belonging to the US. They don't. ".us" belongs to the us, just as .fr belongs to France. But .us has been very poorly designed and administered, and that's why nobody's using it.
So poorly administered that a certain US city wants to hijack another country's TLD.
Without such an authority, we will inevitably have disagreements between various root servers and inconsistencies between the meanings of some DNS names.
You only need this for non geographic TLDs. With geographic domains this authority is obvious and likely to be delegated to an appropriate level of government in such places as the USA.
You can't get this without a single authority for a zone that can enforce some discipline about how the zone is maintained and resolve disputes when there are conflicts.
But this does not have to be the same authority for every zone.
Numbering within the United States is supervied (area codes given out) by NeuStar (nanpa.com), under an FCC contract.
.com should be better compared with psudo contry codes such as 87x or 800.
Complicated by the fact that the USA dosn't actually have it's own country code. So must coordinate numbering with neighbours, most especially Canada.
It's not a model for the Internet, with its textual names, trademark claims, etc.
Not really sure that texual names actually really make a difference. Though maybe the likes of
As for tradmarks these are governed by geographically specific laws anyway.
No, it doesn't. ICANN was created precisely because the United States Government (under pressure from the rest of the world) wanted to get out of Internet governance. ICANN derives it's legitimacy (such as it has) from the IFWP.
Amen to that. Jon did the job a lot better, a lot more efficiently, at far less expense. And if he made a decision you disagreed with, he'd listen to your arguments about it. However, Jon was more or less unique, and truely benevolent dictators are in very short supply.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
That is, unfortunately, the most sensible response to this story so far.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
This is untrue. There was an extended process of consultation, involving meetings in Geneva (which I attended), Singapore, and Buenos Aires.
Well, and what else are they going to do? If the United States Government tried to control Internet governance, the rest of the world would not be very pleased, to put it mildly. Face it, the Internet changes things, and makes national governments less and less relevent. We have to develop new ways to govern the Internet, and ICANN is an experiment. Personally I preferred it's predecessor, and I agree that the current lawyer-driven ICANN is a bit of a mess. But we're learning.
What has the government of one nation got to do with it? How can the United States government change things? If you want to change things, join ISOC and come to Stockholm next week. If you come to my tutorials, I'll even stand you a beer!
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I was using the Internet with a .uk address in 1985, which is to say seventeen years before ICANN was founded. It was created (as I've detailed in another post) following an extensive open international consultation process in which I took part - and you could have, too, if you'd been bothered. Certainly it's a mess; certainly it needs to be changed. Join ISOC and campaign!
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Unlike the Internet, telephone networks are strictly regulated, having been largely developed under government-imposed monopolies. Country codes are assigned by the ITU. Numbering within the United States is supervied (area codes given out) by NeuStar (nanpa.com), under an FCC contract.
It's not a model for the Internet, with its textual names, trademark claims, etc.
ICANN dates back all the way to 1998 or so. Before then, the generally-accepted authority was Jon Postel at IANA. Jon died suddenly. Shortly afterwards, a lawyer with IBM connections named Joe Sims showed up, claiming that Jon had hired him to create a body to oversee Internet names and addresses.
Sims set up ICANN, giving the top job first to newsletter writer Esther Dyson, and appointing the "interim" board. Most of them are still there, "boardsquatters"! ICANN made a deal with Ira Magaziner at the White House, who got DoC to accept them as the new authority.
Thus Joe Sims is the Melvin Dummar of the Internet. (Mel had a forged Howard Hughes will, giving him a share of the late zillionaire's estate. His phoney story made a funny film, "Melvin and Howard".)
Legally, their authority is only what you believe in. Anybody can set up a DNS server and anybody can set their resolver to whatever server they want. ICANN replaced Dyson with MCI Worldcom's Vint Cerf, keeping its UUNET (the largest ISP) on its side. But a grassroots movement can, in theory, give power to an alternative root. New.net is the latest one to have some credibility.
Vint himself, of course, is the Chauncy Gardner of the Internet. (Chauncy was the retarded protagonist of "Being There", whose simpleminded mumblings were confused with brilliance.)
For more info, you all might enjoy http://www.icannwatch.org/
.. is unacceptable.
Governments want the ability to shut off the net at will. Sorry, but I flat-out don't trust *any* government when they say they have compelling reasons why I can't talk to you.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
If you do not like the dns system run by the ICANN, then start encourage everyone to switch to the alternate dns systems.
Sure it mike make it more confusing, but the more choice, the better.
http://www.root-dns.org/ is a place to start.
I am sure that these concerns should at least be looked at and sorted out by international treaty, instead of ad hoc for the benefit of the members.
I agree. The internet transcends national boundaries. It unites the entire human species. It should be an global body, with representatives for all peoples and adequate checks and balances. The only problem is that this would make it to big and unwieldy. However there is no reason we cannot have a rotating governing body.
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.AOL have?
.aol tld. I can easily see them
.kid tld. You could then apply to AOL for a .kid domain
.kid sites and they have an instant
t io d5WIuhUMoAnAlA
Hash: SHA1
>WHY would AOL want it's own tld?
>What's wrong with AOL.com ?
>What clear advantages does
I kind of doubt that they would use a
going for a
name and if they approved your site you would be issued a domain name
that would be accessable only to those who used AOL's DNS servers.
AOL would then implement a search engine (pretty easy, they already
have one) that only indexes
nicely censored subset of the internet to offer to over protective
parents.
This is actually starting to sound like a half decent idea, maybe I
should buy an book on Bind
after work and set it up on my box at home. If anyone tries to patent
a business plan for this. You saw it here first.
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________________________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
OK.
I propose (as if this will surprise anyone) that the Internet doesn't need a central governing body, ICANN or otherwise. Anyone should be able to start their own TLD (even with the same name) and any network should be able to choose which TLD's root servers they recognize.
--
It's obviously a ploy by Network Solutions/Verisign to legitimize their new offer of the .BIZ TLD. They want to get as many users as possible to send them money, and build thier legitimacy at the same time. They want to prod people into action. In my case it worked, but I did the opposite of what they wanted, and you should too .
It appears that the legitimate holder of the .BIZ registry is biztld.net, and that NSI saw this as too much money to let someone else take, and is in the process of a coup d'état to grab it for themselves.
Instead of acting like a sheep to be fleeced, I took the following actions:
- Replied to their email with this:
.BIZ domain, what agreement have you reached with the current holders of that domain??
- Set up a new db.cache, for our companies name servers, which lists all the roots for each domain, including countries, and now I determine who is the legitimate registrar for every TLD
The blatant agrression on the part of NSI finally got me to act, and it was easy, only about an hour to research, implement, and test. Now I've taken back control and put government back in my hands for our companies part of the internet.It's my understanding that Network Solutions is NOT the legitimate operator of the
In my mind this is a stopgap measure, as my choice was arbitrary, and I really don't want the maintenance headache of having to keep a few hundred TLD entries up to date. I've taken our 30 users out of the ICANN/NSI pool, and will now seeks a better authority to trust in the long run.
It'll be interesting to see what grass roots efforts evolve from this, and what a democratically run Domain Name System looks like.
I strongly suggest everyone else do the same, and vote with your bits.
--Mike--
Those kooky crack smoking products of a poor American education system moderators :)
I look forward to ICANN finally being founded next year.
How about this, I just posted this to the IETF dnsops wg list:
Let's SET UP NEW TOP LEVEL DOMAINS FOR ALL SINGLE LETTERS a., b.,...z. So the top domains will be the classical ones + these new one letter TLDs.
Now I want to have a name "anssi.abc." for my machine. I rewrite it (first in my head) to be "anssi.a.b.c."
I go to the "c." TLD server administration. I ask them, if anyone has registered a "b.c." first level name with them. If such domain exists, I go to its administrator, and ask, if they have a domain "a.b.c." already. And so on, up to the letter, that is not yet served by anyone. If the domain "a.b.c." already does exist, I can't register a new one. First come first served.
In this case, let's say the domain "b.c." did exist, but the domain "a.b.c." did not. Now I register my "a.b.c." with the domain "b.c." administration. There should be a rule, that single letter domains allow registration for any unregistered single letter subdomains!
So now I can set up names like "anssi.a.b.c." in my own name server, serving the domain "a.b.c.", registered at "b.c.".
NOW I MODIFY MY RESOLVER and ask everybody to do the same, if they please! The new versions of resolvers are standardized to TRANSLATE ALL UNRECOGNISED many-letter TLDs into a sequence of one letter domains. So "anssi.abc." will be resolved as "anssi.a.b.c." domain.
Additionally, domains "c.o.m.", "o.r.g." etc. and corresponding country domains like "f.i." and "u.k." can be set up as peered, synonymous domains for "com.", "org.", "fi., "uk." and such. So that the new resolvers would not even have to know any list of special "recognizable" classic TLD domains.
Anssi.Porttikivi@teleware.fi
Data communications trainer/consultant
Teleware, Helsinki
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
Note, that if you have registered "a.b.c." with "a.b.", and somebody is resolving a name "www.anssi.foobarabc", a query can be immediately satisfied without delegation when it arrives to the DNS server at "a.b.c.". If all subdomains below "a.b.c." referenced in "www.anssi.f.o.o.b.a.r.a.b.c." are local to "a.b.c.", then they can be specified in the one and only zone file for "a.b.c.".
Additionally, note that although there will now be much more domain components in the names than before, it will probably not add much to the number of delegated subqueries in global statistics. The more queries your name server answers, the bigger part of the single letter hierarchy it will learn to cache. The single letter domains should have a long TTL. When your name server has answered order of alphabet_size^2 queries, it has probably cached most of the second level domains (a.a., a.b., a.c.,...z.z.). When it has answered alphabet_size^3 queries, it has cached most of the third level domain DNS IP addresses.
To make sure that this learning process is not interrupted too often, it would probably make sense to keep a disk based cache of the letter based root delta domains. And have a guideline specifying a minimun TTL value that the single letter domains must advertise.
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
In the beginning of my reply above, it should read:
and not like I wrote:
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
your sorry bastard discussing his stupid ideas with himself
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
I am not sure why anybody modded you up. ICANN has a monoply on the DNS system. Their members are extending their terms as they please. Making deals with Network Solutions (the evil of evils)as they please.
They are spitting in our faces and you're saying lets not do anything cuase it can get worse? I am not you're not the leader of any team I am following.
For starters ICANN can make the whole process a little more democratic. That ought to make things alot worse?
ICANN's legitimacy has been questioned from the get-go by policy wonks. I am frankly suprised that the left wing doesn't get more upset about this, or the hard right for that matter. There are other private corporations organized by charter with the imprimature of public agencies, the old HEAF (Higher Education Assistance Foundation) comes to mind, as well as organizations administering certain HUD programs and mortgage resellers. They all raise various degrees of stink WRT accountability, responsiveness and monopoly power.
They are, nearly all, the fruit of the small government movement championed by Reagan and Bush pere. Ironically, they are held up as exemplars of quality public/private partnership by free market moderates (Clinton, Dole, et. al.)
illegitimii non ingravare
If you get rid of ICANN, you still need an authority to resolve disputes about the root zone. Without such an authority, we will inevitably have disagreements between various root servers and inconsistencies between the meanings of some DNS names. People want and need DNS names to be consistent across the entire Internet. You can't get this without a single authority for a zone that can enforce some discipline about how the zone is maintained and resolve disputes when there are conflicts. You can and should try to give that authority the bare minimum control that it needs to do its job, but you can't get rid of it entirely. This is what ICANN tries to be - a single authority for the root but one that exercises no more control than necessary. It's not perfect, by any means, but that's the idea.
If you were to set up an authority from scratch, it would need to be organized much like ICANN - with representation from various consituencies, including folks with technical clues about the DNS protocols, the registries, and so forth.
ICANN is a mess but it's not at all clear that you could do better by tearing it down and starting over. Too many people want control of the DNS root, because too many people see it as a way to extort money from people, or to exert control over people, or to gather information about people. Others want to do away with the DNS root because they see an opportunity to make money from a land grab of new TLDs - never mind that the DNS doesn't scale well to large numbers of TLDs (cache effectiveness goes way down, for instance).
One of the main reasons that ICANN is a mess is because folks from NSI (now verisign) worked hard to make it that way. For all practical purposes ICANN was created to keep NSI from controlling things (because they were treating the DNS root and the major TLDs as their monopoly). Since NSI recognized ICANN as an obvious threat to that monopoly, they lobbied in various ways (for instance, by having influential Congressmen attack it) to saddle ICANN with an unwieldy organization with significant clue dilution. They also encouraged those who, for reasons of their own, wanted to attack ICANN. Those efforts were largely successful. NSI will still control .COM for many more years despite providing really lousy service and subjecting their customers to unreasonable and unfair business terms designed to maintain NSI's control over the major TLDs, and ICANN has been hobbled by tremendous amounts of naive and uninformed criticism (along with some that they deserved) that was encouraged by NSI.
If we tried to tear ICANN down and start over, the same people who worked so hard last time around to make it ineffective would also work hard trying to make the new organization ineffective. For instance, Verisign would see this as an opportunity to regain control of the root and the major TLDs, various folks in the US government would assert (once again) that the Internet belongs to the US and should be under US government control, and ITU would probably insist that they should control it by virtue of international treaty. None of these represent the interests of Internet users.
It may not be possible to "fix" ICANN to the extent that we would like. There are too many politically powerful folks out there who are bent on destroying it, or controlling it, for their own greedy or power-hungry purposes. Right now we have a tentative agreement to work with the ICANN structure, and an uneasy balance of power between the factions that would like to control it. Folks are trying to make it better, and I think it's slowly improving. It's far more likely that we can get better results in the long run by making small incremental changes to ICANN than by tearing it down and starting over.
Problem is that ICANN is trying to change it without really trying to change it. Despite the introduction of these new TLDs, they are still giving trademark holders a monopoly over them because of the domain name dispute arbitration via WIPO. What difference would it make if we had 2 TLDs or 2,000 TLDs if there will be no variety between them? Unless there's strict restrictions on what TLDs can be used for what purposes (like .edu, for example), the abuse of the domain name system will continue forever.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
I never understood why any one organization had control of this stuff in the first place. Microsoft has full control over Windows and its official "components", and in a way, ICANN is doing the same thing. Look up monopoly in the dictionary (from http://www.m-w.com) 1 : exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action 2 : exclusive possession or control 3 : a commodity controlled by one party 4 : one that has a monopoly By these definitions of monopoly, that is exactly what ICANN has, is a monopoly on all names on the internet. However, we CAN do something. Don't forget AlterNIC...just switch your DNS's to theirs. I am. --Strangel aka Jim Morris--
I'm pretty sure that the numbers aren't anymore as high. of course, the point is valid: there's no reason why people who don't even use the net should have influence over it.
Not to mention the fact that Internet was created by the US government, so they should really be able to do what they like with it n'est ce pas?
Now that is bullshit. Like claiming that because an Englishman working at CERN invented the WWW, he should really be able to do what he likes with every website on this planet.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Second, some of ICANN's Board of Directors was actually elected by internet users, and while that election may not have been organized very splendidly, those who say it had been rigged are full of it, because otherwise, the European representative, a member of the CCC would never have been elected.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
As for the rest, perhaps you should read a basic CS text on how hierarchical structures are the only way to efficiently organize large amounts of data, and also something on how DNS works.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
As for the current taxonomy, that's totally a matter of debate. It does work. And anyway, what kind of system would you prefer? A more restrictive hiearchy or a less restrictive one? Can't have both.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
The Internet can be divided into those who say ICANN and those who say ICANN'T ;-)
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
I'd like to see locations where DNS ops can obtain replacement cache files for their DNS servers. Even something as crazy as a homegrown root zone delegating authority for known TLDs is better than all this talk and no immediate way to switch a DNS server over.
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
The biggest reason DoC goes along with almost anything ICANN proposes is that largely, DoC is tehcnically illeterate. Since they have little technical background, they go on the assumption that the members of ICANN know what they are talking about.
How do you expect DoC to question ICANN if they don't even know which questions to ask?
----- "A people that would sacrifice rights and freedom for a bit of safety deserve neither freedom nor safety."
Fortunately, my area isn't slated for getting cubed. Hopefully by the time they do any floorspace reorganization on my floor, the VP who pushed cubes into the site will have moved on, and his/her successor will come up with a nifty new productivity improvement idea - move from cubes to offices.
I recently found that my new boss is a reformed Doom addict. I'm trying to figure a way to recast a whole-department deathmatch into a morale/teambuilding exercise.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I know people get upset over ICANN, but things could be a LOT worse. At least ICANN pretends to be doing the right thing.
.org anyway, when we're talking about commercializing the Internet and can't make anything but pr0n pay? Bunch of freeloaders!
.... cubicles.
Instead, how about if domains were handled like frequencies, or any other semi-commercial venture. You know, auction off domain names to the highest bidder, trademarks be #$%&ed. Who needs
As bad as ICANN may be, it can clearly get worse.
The Guys At Work were griping about their offices and furniture a few weeks back. I suggested they not gripe too hard, because the OBVIOUS solution to their office/furniture problems would be
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
- The (undefined) ammount of money lost because of the (undefined) number of people that left the company earlier than expected because of the (undefined) decrease/lack-of-increase of happyness due to not having DVD players and 3d boards
- The cost of X DVD players and X 3D boards
Saving/gaining money tends to be chosen instead of non-measurable things like employee satisfaction.<RANT>
Unfortunatly most managers tend to think in the tactical sense (immediatly justifyable actions) instead of the strategic sense (looking at the bigger picture)
</RANT>
Where the hell did that info come from?????
The internet started as a cooperation between the military and educational institutions. These are not "for profit" organizations. The fact that the internic turned into network solutions was an abomination.
Network Solutions turned an infinate resource, attached (enforced) arbitrary artificial limits on it, and started charging for this false scarcity. It's like saying that all names of cities must end in "y" or "p" - no other letters are acceptable. Further more, all cities must pay NSI $50 or their city won't be listed on any maps.
ICANN / Netsol should all be put in the pokey. This is extortion. Organized crime. Racketeering.
First, you failed to respond to the fact that we don't effectivly HAVE a hiearchy due to the fact that it is basically flat. How many .com's also have the .net and .org? A good chunk. For the ones that don't there is continual confusion by users on which one is the one they really want... Everyone is mishmashed in .net, .com, and .org. There is NO standards on who can register under which zone (their used to be, but NSI stopped enforcing them years ago as the .com space became overcrowded.) (Also note that I am deliberatly ignoring .us which is SO fscked up that its use is quite limited - usually schools and local governments.)
.biz is basically like the first library adding a "Fiction part 2" category as their collection expands rather than breaking it down like the traditional library. This is why the current taxonomy is broken.
.com dump we have today.)
If the current taxonomy works, how come EVERYONE including ICANN is trying to change it? (Of course ICANN's version sucks, but that's beside the point.) I believe you are confusing the term taxonomy with hiearchy - they are different.
Basically you can improve the taxonomy and hiearchy at the same time. You do this by increasing the width of the structure in an organized manor.
Let me try plain english.
Let's say you have two libraries. One lumps all books into fiction or non-fiction, children or adult. No other organization is performed. This is much like the current ICANN taxonomy.
The other library is the traditional library, and also has fiction, non-fiction, children's and adult, but also sorts by author, topic, etc. based on the type of book. Fiction may be divided into romance, sci-fi, mystery, etc. But wait! There's more! Modern libraries now have tapes, videos, CD's etc. The old taxonomoy had to be modified and expanded to handle this. Same goes for the internet.
Adding
So if you re-read my last post, my ideas were in the hundreds or thousands of TLD's - not infinite. I would also like to see the registration system enhanced to handle a multi-level hiearchy as opposed to the two level current system (which is mostly the single level
Your point misses the point, and is not in line with the facts. It does NOT cost $35 / year to keep the slashdot.org dns entry working. There are Massive economies of scale involved, and everything is automated. ICANN has given NSI the ability to rake in massive amounts of cash for delivering VERY little. The registrar business is VERY VERY profitable.
.com space hierarchical?
.biz and .info will fix this how?
.restaurant .music .games .news .personal will screwup the hierarchy and efficency in what way? What "technical" barrier in DNS limits TLD's to 200 instead of 20000? Why is it OK for 20,000,000 names in .com?????
As for your lecture: how is the flat
And
So the addition of
BTW, I'm QUITE well versed in DNS, thank you. Are you? The taxonomy of the current DNS system is BRAINDEAD. It made sense when there were hundreds of sites on the net. When there are millions, it is TOTALLY BROKEN as it does NOT efficiently organize names. Even if ICANN added 20 new TLD's, it DOESN'T FIX THE PROBLEM OF HAVING A SHITTY TAXONOMY.
http://www.media-visions.com/icann.htm a very good analysis of why ICANN is bad and what we can do about.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I suppose it depends what you mean by legitimacy.
I would suggest that legitimate is whatever most people use.
I'm not arguing that ICANN has any technical merits, I'm just saying that they've got the loudest voice.
Think of it as democracy. He with the most users wins regardless of technical merit.
As an aside, I think an alternate root needs between 5% and 10% of internet users resolving its names before the count for much on a global scale.
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
I've made your point myself in the past, so I shouldn't poke holes, but I just realized something.
.AOL have?
WHY would AOL want it's own tld?
What's wrong with AOL.com ?
What clear advantages does
I think the lack of a compelling answer to those questions are the reason it hasn't been done yet.
Corporate pride just doesn't go as far as it used to I guess...
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
Forget everything else. The biggest thing that makes ICANN legitimate is that practically every ISP in the world follows their lead.
I support OpenNIC, but the fact remains is that I am in a VERY small minority. Until that changes, ICANN is "in charge".
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
Heh, I can see it now. Watch out whoever has the numbers that translate to 1800-MACCAS; the McDonalds lawyers are coming, and they're carrying hot coffee.
And for the US, though the situation might look to us, to a USE politician it does at least look like they've annexed the whole shebang: will DoC willingly concede control to something as hateful to (most) US politicians as the UN?
And, finally, that ICANN appears to be playing big coropration / monopoly games is not necessarily anything like anathema - so long as it is an American monopoly.
Sure it needs reforming; its more than amazing that things have got this bad this quickly. But I'm not holding my breath :-(
Well... I guess I'll be the optimist (this is an unfamilier role, so please bear with me).
.sigs are for smoking.
Albert Einstein once said: "If you can't explain it to an 8-year old you probably don't understand it."
Writing the whole thing off as a loss is a sure way to watch things change for the worse. Of course the unwashed (illiterate) masses are uninformed, but I'll bet that no revolution has ever been started without a bit of work by those that were in the know. If you don't know you're being screwed, then you don't know to bitch.
The Einstein quote by the way, may not be by Einstein, but I get a kick out of thinking about ol' Albert trying to explain relativity to an 8-year old.
After all, in a weird way it is trying to impose US sovereignity over other nations. I am sure that someone can make a big stink over this.
I am sure that these concerns should at least be looked at and sorted out by international treaty, instead of ad hoc for the benefit of the members.
Consider the panic if Bill Gates were a member of the ICANN board. or one of his underlings. Obviously Gates would never personally belong to such a low level organization, but you get the idea.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Then came the lousy job of self organization. Ok, I can tolerate this if they actualyl get things done.
Then came the voting fiasco. Sure you can register to vote for the At Large members! It doesn't mean you can actually VOTE, but you can register!
Then the process for proposing new TLDs. What? $10,000 just to PROPOSE a new TLD?
Then came the final decision on TLDs. EVERYONE expected .biz and .sex or .xxx. TLDs such as .web and .info, were all widely expected as well. What did we get? Crap like .tel and .news. Talk about useless. Last I checked, the .com TLD wasn't exactly overcrowded with news sites or sites devoted to telephones. And another slap in teh face was that the control over these new TLDs would remain solely in the laps of their proposers. Oh, did you think new TLDs was to expand potential web real estate? Silly you! No, of course not, it was to create more registrars! Oh, you thought they'd pick TLDs based on usefulness? Silly times two! No! They were picked on the basis of how capable the registrar is! Be thankful NSI didn't try to propose .NSIisyourfriend.
And then there was their ignorant stance on trademarks and the like. Ignorance bested only by WIPO.
At this point, I'm totally unenthused about ICANN now, and frankly, want it either revamped from stem to stern and repopulated with people who are neither brain dead nor marketroids, or just destroyed.
--
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
What's with the legitimacy of ICANN?
Libertarian001, huh?
I'll show respect to your government when you show respect to my ass.
HeHeHe.
History happened as the History Book said it happened, huh???
Don't think so.
I believe it was the Department of Commerce that assigned the task to ICANN, and ICANN is accountable to the DoC (in other words, if ICANN does something, the DoC can reprimand ICANN, etc). This was part of the transition (correct me if I'm wrong) from Department of Defense control of the internet to privatized control of the internet (as far as domain names went, anyways).
So, you'd want to petition the DoC if you had a complaint regarding ICANN-- atleast that'd be a good place to start. =)
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
ICANN's sole power to regulate is granted by those who will follow them. Even in a vacuum scum will rise to the top. This is clearly something that should be accountable to the U.N., assuming the U.N. has its sh!t together.
I grant thee a .biz domain, thou mayest kiss my ring.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Yes, they could. But what if they don't? Then we'd have two separate, possibly conflicting systems. Or what if they initially open it up, but then change their minds and block outside users (sort of like they block AIM clones)? They'd be within their rights, since it'd be AOL's root servers that everyone would be using.
I don't think I'd trust any organization that tried to takeover. They could screw things up even worse, and who would they be accountable to? We don't need that. "Names and Numbers" on the Internet is really the kind of thing that needs central control. We should try really hard to reform or replace ICANN in one swoop, rather than slowly trying to usurp it and splitting the Internet.
Does anyone know who controls area codes, the closest thing I can think of to TLDs? Also, who controls the telephone system's country codes? Are these agreed-upon standards (if so, who allocates new codes), did the government step in (then what about country codes), or is there some benevolent organization which dictates these things? Prehaps we can learn something from the past . . .
If you CAN, then they CAN'T control you.
www.Beyond7.com Insane modern art water sculpture.
For that matter, a truly representative ICANN would do it's business in Chinese or some language other than English.
...
Seriously, though, ICANN was created by a few folks back before most country codes were even used, and may have outgrown itself. Supposedly the UN should usurp it's power, but then it will become even more political, and we'll soon have China revoking all Taiwanese registrations, and other such actions.
So, be careful what you ask for, you may get it. And you won't be happy with the replacement either
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
AOL Keyword: BADIDEA
First off, anyone can post an internet draft... Want proof just meet the requirements of http://www.ietf.org/ID-nits.html Now what does it mean to be a member of the IETF ??? Well self select yourself, join a few mailing lists and guess what, you are a memeber. Oh and by the way, last time that I checked (it has been a year or so now so my memory is dim) I believe that the IETF is actually the technical branch of ICANN... So don't make one persons political agenda into a fight between ICANN and IETF, I do not believe that can be held up... Now that isn't to say that A LOT of people in the IETF don't agree with what is going on, but that is just their personal opinions, not a formal statement from the IETF
The ITU is now a part of the UN but predates it by a few decades. It is the body that hands out frequencies, telephone country codes, satelite orbit slots, that sort of thing. It exists to do exactly the sort of beureacratic pen pushing that that type of task requires.
The advantage of having the UN control the root would have been that as a treaty organization it would be imune from the onslaught of lawsuits that the trademark owners threatened.
ICANN does not have immunity, nor does it have the funds to fight lawsuits. So it is little surprise that they act as the craven suplicants of the trademark owners.
The ITU is not exactly without critics but by and large it has far fewer critics than ICANN despite performing far more controvertial tasks.
The US invented ICANN to attempt to keep control of the Internet root. However in practice an attempt by the US to do something derranged would simply cause the root to pass out of their control. Imagine if the US decided to drop .uk or .de out of the root, the non-US ISPs would switch to an alternative root very quickly and most of the US ISPs would follow.
The only reason for keeping the root small is that it preserves this ability to switch the root over should that be necessary. If the root had 2,000,000 names in it it would not be possible to transfer it.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
If you can get a reasonable number of people to agree with your proposal, then propose it to the DoC. Even if they don't agree, it's likely that the proposal will start moving things in the right direction.
For example,
Ha Ha Ha Hmm. Oh you were being serious.
i.e., anarchy.
Second, none of the registries get paid 70 bucks to enter anything in their databases. If you go to www.icann.org and look at the posted contracts and contract proposals, you'll find that the prices for the registries lie around 4-6 dollars per domain per year. (Also not that the prices negotiated between the registries and ICANN are maximum prices - the registries can lower prices but not increase them beyond that point)
Now, this is not just for registration, but to cover the infrastructure for modifications, whois lookups and the operating the DNS servers for the TLD under very strict quality of service requirements. The registries may loose their TLDs if they can't provide the level of service required by ICANN.
ICANN also impose restrictions on behaviour, business arrangements the registry may enter into, and requires that the registry gives fair and equal treatment to all registrars. All of this because the registries effectively get a monopoly on their TLD in the contract period.
When you buy a domain, you do so from a registrar. And the registrars, however, does not have any price limitations, since they aren't in a monopoly situation. Thus if you're unhappy about the price you get at a registrar, you can find another one.
(ObDisclaimer: I work for the company that got .name, but the above are personal opinions)
And (surprise), most people use the global root that is under ICANNs administration, because most people only care about being able to rely on a domain name getting them to the same place no matter where they type it in.
And since ICANN falls under the UN, which was created by Treaty with the US and other nations, ICANN's wishes override the Constitution by our own Constitutional definition.
Bzzzt!
Sorry, but you are incorrect. The ICANN has nothing to do with the United Nations. From the About ICANN page:
ICANN derives its authority purely from a contract with the United States government. Essentially, ICANN was created to replace IANA (John Postel r.i.p.) and ARIN.
The scary thing about ICANN is that they so quickly became beholden to Network Solutions and the other vested big-money interests, instead of paying attention to what's good for the Internet as a whole.
Recent revelations about secret deals to allow Network Solutions to hang onto the .COM databases essentially indefinitely should have woken up the US Congress to the degree to which ICANN has already been corrupted, but so far, there is no sign that anyone in Congress has noticed, nor do they appear to care.
We could do this, make exceptions for the traditional TLDs but otherwise sell the first 2 names rather than just one. Then, if people pick a second "name word" that has never been used before, it becomes a nes TLD equivlent just by the defauslt of the system.
Telephones exist because of a Canadian, should the Canadian government start a commitee to oversee the distribution of phone numbers all over the world?
Help find a cure for cancer!
Maybe ICANNot?
What you said is almost definitely true, since you seem to know your stuff, since you were involved in the biz, but in order to become a registered ICANN registrar, it costed about 20,000 bucks, last I checked, and you need to go through the whole approval process.. I think it should just be easier for your average person to set up a domain.. I realize it's easy, but it costs alot for something so simple, if you see where I'm coming from..
This bit of info was brought to you by the letter Q. Thanks, Q.
I've always wondered why ICANN seemed to have complete power.. I mean, if you think about it, they basically spend no money trying to buy products to enhance their business; they just enter stuff into a central system and make sure it doesn't already exist.. and get paid thousands of dollars to do so. How come it costed 70 bucks for somebody to enter a word into a system, instead of 5 or something? I just never really understood why.. maybe it's to discourage interest in domains by people who don't need them, but there's gotta be some other way, you know? Maybe it's just me, I'm not sure :) Just my two cents..
This bit of info was brought to you by the letter Q. Thanks, Q.
The government has been running the internet forever. Remember, they originally funded and awarded the contracts to manage the internet. They continue to maintain control over its operation despite large portions of it being sold (remember when some networks were sold to MCI?)
Remember however, they can only control what everyone has access to, but not what private groups can make available to the people they want to.
What happens when I create a VPN, with my own TLD name servers and my own domains. People connect to it with a machine on the internet, but anything that connects to the VPN from the other side of their machine only sees what's in the private network, which can be anything I want.
Maybe it's time to take control of our own networks.
--
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
Uhh, Al gore introduced the legislation that created NSFnet.
--
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
Just an idle question, but does ICANN also control IPv6 TLDs? If not, then who? If yes, why?
So many people seem to be focused on allocated domain names, perhaps forgetting in the process that these are simply aliases for IP addresses. I'd propose the following 'fix' for the problem which would require some modifications to DNS and browser software, but would make organizations like ICANN unnecessary:
- allow anyone to 'register' any domain name they choose, linking it to their IP address. They could do his with their local ISP through an automated process.
- Now there might be 1000 amazon.coms. So what? Have the local DNS return the 20 most trafficked name/IP combinations with the option to widen the search results. Any decent-sized IP will generally get the same results as any other, which means that the *first name on the list* will belong to the amazon.com online store, which is what the user was probably looking for anyway. The Nature Conservancy Amazon Rainforest project 'amazon.com' might be the 4th one down on the list. A short description could be added to the DN by the registrant so you could discern between different 'amazon.coms' by simple mouseover.
- there's no need for a central name registry as each ISP would forward DN lists in the same fashion that Usenet posts are propogated throughout the world, every 24 or 48 hours. You could even forward traffic analyses if you wanted at the same time, although this wouldn't be necessary unless you had a really small ISP with a bizarre subset of clients.
- the user, when adding to his bookmark collection, would simply extend the name to differentiate between two different amazon.com's, e.g., "amazon.com - bookstore".
The end result would be that real estate would be absolutely worthless - it only counts if it gets so much traffic that it ends up in the top 20 hits or so. IP addresses might *initially* be worth something, until users figured out that the much-trafficked IP address for amazon.com - the bookstore - has been sold for a tidy sum to amazon.com - the NC rainforest project. Which would take all of two or three days, making the sale pointless.
Ten thousand clueless users could register amazon.com with their ISP DNS and it would matter not a whit, because they'll never get the traffic required to put them within a reasonable search list. There's no way to 'drown out' the original amazon.com - the bookstore.
And anyone could have any name they want, if they don't care about traffic.
Combine this with IPv6 and you have virtually unlimited freedom in terms of names and addresses.
Note that this would still encourage originality for businesses, but the only way they get to 'keep' their precedence on the return list is through traffic. Squatting would be pointless.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
the collected comments i made on the previous icann item will suffice
think for yourself, you won't like the results if others do it for you.
DoD created the internet (w/ help of academia) through technical knowledge. They still have that technical knowledge, just look at modern military technologies.
I agree that DoC may lack technical knowledge required for ICANN proposals. Perhaps a solution would be to include DoD techies on the board that oversights ICANN? This would basically be shifting oversight to include DoD for technical matter and DoC for business matters.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
I say put the whole thing on ICAN-II and send them about 55,000 A.U. south.
After reading the IETF document http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-higgs-vi rtual-root-00.txt,
it's pretty clear that they are saying that 1)independent TLDs are not necessarily "destablizing".
2)However any "Virtual Inclusive Root" scheme is going to require SOME kind of conflict resolution mechanism and SOME form of structure/body to oversee it-- it would be like '1 level up' from what we now think of as ICANN/InterNIC.
They conveniently leave the details of such a structure for now: "The methods for allowing DNS clients and resolvers to resolve Virtual Inclusive Root will be described in a different document."
Anarchy is not a good model for providing structure to the internet domain name space. If ICANN can be improved, we should apply the pressure to make it happen.
However I think that trying to find an absolute alternative would probably be asking for a greed-ridden feeding frenzy and further affirmation of the Repiublican ideal that Money is Power.