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Farber, Neumann, and Weinstein Call for End to ICANN
lapse writes: "PFIR's latest policy statement calls for bringing
an end to ICANN. Without assigning blame, it calls for immediate action, and suggests some possible paths forward. Let's hope that this clear statement from such a respected trio will lead to better times ahead for Internet policy management." Salon also has an interview with Karl Auerbach about his lawsuit against ICANN.
I think they're basically saying that ICANN is going to be destructive to peoples' interests, and so should be absolved of any power as soon as possible; hence the non-permanent, strictly stewardship basis.
I think that in the short-term an organization without political or economic interests needs to be in charge.
While many people may have legitimate gripes with ICANNs selection of new gTLDs, .kids and .sex were perhaps the two most controversial TLDs you could try for.
US Congress discussing .kids.us is a much more sensible approach, as it limits the scope. The US government already to a great extent has determined what is suitable for kids in the US through various regulation, and setting criteria for a .kids.us may thus be a lot easier than setting criteria for a global ".kids" where whats acceptable in one country would be considered illegal pornography in another.
(ObDisclaimer: I'm co-founded GNR, the company who got .name)
It's a wonder he even got the position with an attitude like this:
"That's why I want to look at the records, to find out where the money goes. Why does it take $2.4 million (47 applicants paid $50,000 each) to evaluate seven top-level domains?"
It goes against all the immorral business practices that companies get sucked into.
It's amaizing that a non profit organization can have a budget that's so high, and the people that they represent get representation like Auerbach who has the integrity to ask a question like "...Why does it take $2.4 million..."
I believe that this is a clear case of public interest being served sloppy seconds from a management commitee that pays out sallarries to anywhere from 50 to a 100 people supposedly working to do something that like everybody says, should take less than 20.
Non profit company = not for profit.
somehow with the numbers there talking about, ie 23 million, I think someone is making some nice paychecks.
As he says here:
"What kinds of alternatives are you offering? How do you think some of the problems, particularly with fraud, should be fixed?
First, get rid of management. Here are people whose primary belief is that elections will never
work, therefore they don't try. There's a lack of will here. Also, we don't have to have electronic elections. We can have good old paper elections, the kind that work for all kinds of nonprofits all over the world. You send people an envelope, they fill out the paper and send it back.
Is that so hard? Is that so extensive?
Why do you think these kinds of things aren't being considered?
Because it gets in their way of building an empire."
A non profit empire run by people who control the worlds access (in some ways) to the internet.
"And that's what ICANN is turning into -- bureaucracy upon bureaucracy."
And one last comment:
"As far as finances go, the thing is just naive. Here he is asking governments to pay. Who in the U.S. has been the most vociferous opponent to ICANN at the federal level? Congress. If anybody at ICANN would bother to read something simple, like the U.S. Constitution, they'd recognize that funds have to be approved by Congress; the executive branch doesn't print money and spend it. If someone's going to pay ICANN, it's going to have to be passed by Congress. And that certainly gives Congress a much stronger level to exert control.
And how are you going to get governments to agree? Governments are required, under the Lynn plan, to gather into clubs and select someone. But now, according to a recent clarification, they have to select from a list prepared by this council -- and then pay for the privilege."
Pay for the privilege?!
A non profit organization requiring people to pay for the right to have participation in the proceeding that the non profit organization was made for?
It just strikes me as odd that these people got away with anything like this for as long as they did, but I can understand with the current and past administration. Also without slashdot and other websited like them I'd be totally in the dark about these things, they're not in the news or the local paper. It seems like people are just ending over for anything these days.
I'm totally proud of Auerbach and his ability to cut to the chase. SHOW HIM THE MONEY!
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
One of the dates coming up on the ICANN calendar this summer or very early autumn is the renewal of the Memorandum of Understanding between ICANN and the Nat'l Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) [part of the US Dept of Commerce].
1 .htm This is due for renewal about now.
That MoU is the vehicle through which ICANN gains most of its authority over DNS. See http://www.icann.org/general/agreements.htm for a pointer to the MoU and its series of amendments.
Another vehicle is a contract with NIST for the "IANA Function":
http://www.icann.org/general/iana-contract-21mar0
That sounds to me an exact description of the International Working Party on the White Paper, the consultation process which led to the setting up of ICANN (and, which, incidentally, I took part in in Geneva).
What worries me is that if we do the whole thing again in the same way,
It's a shame Jon Postel went and died on us; we moaned enough about him during his lifetime, but he died this job far better than ICANN have. Short of finding another individual as unmoved by commercial pressures, and as essentially fair minded as Jon was, we are stuck with a bunch of extremely wealthy conflicting vested interests, and a lot of hungry looking lawyers. The horizon to windward looks stormy.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Why do we need to have some central group of people telling us what hints file we have to put in our DNS servers? Why do we need to have some central group of people deciding what TLDs go into some group of root servers?
The simple solution also lets the market decide about what TLDs survive, and what TLDs fail. Everyone who runs a DNS server gets to create their own root zone file, and put in whatever TLDs they want (I do recommend all the 2-letter national TLDs). They can even point them to whatever servers they want or even run some themselves for own, or their customers. Or they can just outsource it to whoever they want to let decide it for them.
A little chaos is a good thing. It's called competition. We don't all get our food from the same place. We don't all get our computers from the same place. Why do TLDs have to be any different. Sure, we might want to have the same TLD as someone else, and if so, then we can choose to do that. So we end up with people peddling root zone files. It's your choice.
And if you don't have a DNS server, you can simply use whatever want you want to (if they permit it). And an ISP can ever set up more than one if they have varying issues to give customers more choice about.
The big advantage I see to this is that it avoids a lot of the legal wars going on now over ownership of domains, and whether domains are subject to trademark rules, and such. Make it totally open there's no longer a target to sue.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
(I dont' remember the source of the story though I think it was news.com, it was about 2 months ago, and did try to submit here to /.)
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