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

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.