Internet Governance; ICANN and Accountability

Contention writes: "The following policy was released by ICANN today (9th July), reiterating their commitment to 'A Unique, Authoritive Root for the DNS'. The document contains a stern warning to anyone '[working] under the philosophy that if they get there first with something that looks like a TLD and invite many registrants to participate, then ICANN will be required [...] to recognize in perpetuity these pseudo TLDs, inhibiting new TLDs with the same top-level name' while at the same time encouraging clearly marked, experimental alternate DNS roots." So ICANN says, unsurprisingly, that ICANN is needed to govern the domain system. Meanwhile, the Markle Foundation released a study of internet governance and accountability issues today. Read the study, or the NYT article about it.

Comments

Re:Protecting themselves from New.net

[Masem]

More likely, they're trying to fend off the problem that .biz is already in active use by an alternive system (I think opennic), particularlly now that ICANN's version of .biz is now open to registeration. (None of NewNet's names conflict with ICANN's system, though it includes ones that were considered buy ignored). If an ISP is using Opennic's as well as ICANN's root servers, what happens when a .biz address is requested? ICANN has a reasonable question in terms of that situation, but only because they let that situation happen (they were fully aware of the alternate .biz domain when they approved it).

Anybody read the NYT article?

[unitron]

The public thinks that they, the public, should control and direct the internet and how it is run.

Yeah, that'll work.

Re:Single Root is Required!

[ka9dgx]

A single root for the entire Domain Name Space is NOT required. It is only required for each TLD. If I want to get uniform handling of .COM, .NET, etc.. I just have to respect the conventions that have been agreed on so far by telling my DNS serves to use the existing root servers, for those TLDs. This is consistent with existing TLDs and doesn't break anything.

When I want to support a new TLD such as .BIZ, or whatever, and I don't agree with ICANN, I just update my root.db to reflect my own choice for that TLD, which does break things, but only for that TLD.

So, you can have your cake (interoperable .COM, etc) and choose your own icing (.BIZ, etc) instead of letting ICANN tell you what to do.

--Mike--

One possible trigger for this reaction...

[Chagrin]

http://new.net/ is currently selling domains under a wide array of TLDs (like ".xxx", ".shop", or ".mp3" etc.). They suggest to ISPs to add additional entries to their named.conf, of course, but for end users you can change your "search" in your resolv.conf and add new.net: domains like "www.guitar.mp3" will resolve correctly under "www.guitar.mp3.new.net".

ICANNs FAULT

[Garry Anderson]

Most of the current problems are due to the authorities perverted and twisted sense of protectionism towards big business trademarks.

What makes it bad - they know how solve this trademark and domain name problem.

The solution has been ratified by honest attorneys - even the honourable G. Gervaise Davis III, United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization panellist judge.

There is only one conclusion that could be drawn, for it not being used.

By not using solution, trademarks have priority, this stops free speech.

Fact: domain names were not designed to be trademarks - ask Paul Mockapetris, creator of Domain Name System. He was asked, "What do you wish you had invented?" - His reply, "A directory system for the Internet that wouldn't be controlled by the politicians, lawyers and bureaucrats."

Nor can they be used as such - reason: Most trademarks share same or similar name with many others e.g. Caterpillar tractors claimed 'cat' is 'their' trademark on the Internet - even though there are 1746 'cat' trademarks - IN THE U.S. ALONE. Conflict is IMPOSSIBLE to avoid.

They ALL legally have to protect their 'cat' trademark. For only one business to use, gives it dominant position over all the others. This is against 'unfair competition' laws.

What about free speech rights? The 'cat' was on this earth long before these tractors.

I thought the US Government were pretty hot on that - something you call the First Amendment, I believe.

The only logical conclussion that I can come to is - they want it that way. Amongst many other things, the legal profession get rich and corporations can abuse their trademark powers.

Please visit wipo.org.uk - for the easy solution.

WIPO.org.uk comments to World Intellectual Property Organization .

This link works better

[AdamInParadise]

http://www.paradigm.nu/icann/icannstage.html

Some Points

[Zeinfeld]

First off, those bashing on ICANN need to understand that new.net are not in the business of live and let live. What they really want to happen is for ICANN to include their TLDs into the ICANN managed root.

Do we want new.net to be the sole registrar for 30 pretty desirable TLDs just because they have a lot of venture capital from Idealab! to spend?

What ICANN is doing is stating up front that they are not going to recognise this type of tactic as legitimate.

People have always been able to set up their own roots, I do it myself on my home machine where I root the .test TLD for systems I don't want to register in the external Internet space.

Setting up your own TLD is a bit like setting up your own internal telephone area codes however. It is not a good thing if there are two competing companies handing out 1-800 numbers.

This leads to an important security issue, multiple DNS roots leaves companies open to the risk of having their DNS names hijacked. If I buy the name xyz.kids from the ICANN appointed registrar some smart alex could register xyz.kids at new.net and steal some of my trafic.

In the worst case there is no authoratative root and the site a domain name will resolve to will differ randomly depending on the ISP you select. To be frank the people who claim this is a good idea either have no idea what they are talking about or are paid shills of some alternate registrar looking to muscle in and make some quick cash.

If DNS addresses or IP addresses cease to have the uniqueness properties relied upon in the IP protocol then we no longer have an Internet, all we have is a patchwork of partially interoperable networks.

This policy raises a question

[President of The US]

Why do they need to vigorously defend their position in a community that gets to choose who they point their DNS servers at?

Their policy seems to be "We're not the only game in town, but we should be." Competition is one of the best principles of a free economy/society. Their position that "competition causes instability" is far stupider than any FUD Microsoft or any other monopolist would come up with. Think of it - "windows should be the only desktop OS because it would cause instability to have incompatible OS's proliferating among PC users". How fast would the anti-trust lawyers be on that?

Their argument is weak. If they could force admins to point their DNS at them or shut down "rogue" DNS for .com/.net/.org/.whatever else they decide to sell, they would. The fact that they cannot, that there is freedom to operate a whole new .com root DNS outside of their control, that anyone who does not feel that ICANN is playing fair can use that DNS -- this is the dangerous "instability" that they speak of. Democracy is chaotic; tyranny is usually more ordered.
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But they're NOT needed!

[Greyfox]

The ICANN just happens to be the biggest faction at the moment, but there's no reason you couldn't set up some root servers. It's easy to do. For that matter, you don't even really have to stick with the DNS protocol. You could hack gethostbyname et al and set them up to use LDAP or whatever you want to use. They have no enforcement power or any real authority except over their computers.

I'd like to see a distributed DNS system based on cryptographically signed keys. Hmm. I'll have to think about how one would implement one of those...

Re:Hilarious Excerpts

[Inti]

Here's one from the NYT article:

• "I've found people want democracy, but they're often unwilling to do the work, whether it's looking at voting records or taking the most basic measures to protect their own privacy," said Ms. Dyson, who serves on a committee that is trying to increase public representation in Icann. "Frankly sometimes you don't need democracy, you need a market where people understand what's being offered and choose what they want."

Esther Dyson, though no longer Chair of the ICANN board, sums up ICANN's approach to namespace governance. God, these people make me crazy. If you think that the namespace should, in fact, be accountable to its users, and not ruled by fiat, then start using an alternate root now. I recommend the OpenNIC.

Claim your namespace.

Protecting themselves from New.net

[jeffy124]

ICANN is trying to protect themselves from services such as New.net. New.net provides the ability to register domains under TLDs like .free, .games, and many others that ICANN has either rejected or taking their sweet time with. They provide a browser plugin for when people try to surf those sites so that their DNS servers are used as opposed to normal ones. Even without the plugin, you can still access those sites by appending new.net to the address: sitename.games.new.net

ICANN is trying to block and fight back at these types of services and re-establish themselves as the organization in charge of TLDs.

Hilarious Excerpts

[zpengo]

Here are some funny excerpts from the report:

• ICANN was subsequently selected by the United States Government from among several proposals submitted precisely because it was open, consensus-based, and rooted in the Internet community. (Consensus my left butt cheek)
• This commitment to a unique and authoritative root is a key part of the broader public trust - to carry out the Internet's central coordination functions for the public good - that is ICANN's reason for existence. (Is this a technological organization or a religious movement?)
• "As Internet names increasingly have commercial value, the decision to add new top-level domains cannot be made on an ad hoc basis by entities or individuals that are not formally accountable to the Internet community." (Now, if only we could get ICANN to be accountable to the Internet community...)
• The success of the Internet and the guarantee of Internet stability rest on the cooperative activities of thousands, even millions, of people and institutions collaborating worldwide towards a common end. (...yet ICANN holds all the cards).
• ICANN - in deference to its public trust - will continue to collaborate with these citizens of the Internet community to advance the notions of a unique root system as a prerequisite to Internet stability, and to ensure that community-based policies take precedence. (Translation: We only give TLDs to the highest bidder; Anything else would cause instability.)

Yeesh.

public interest

[spellcheckur]

From the article:
These decisions of the alternate-root operators have been made without any apparent regard for the fundamental public-interest concern of Internet stability.

ICANN has the best interests of the public in mind?
Next you'll be telling me the RIAA has the best interests of the artists in mind.