Open-Source Pioneers Make Bid for .org

wdb writes: "A NY Times article (free subscription required) describes the competition surrounding control of the .org domain, which Verisign coughed up in order to keep .com and .net from going to the highest bidder. Open source and Internet pioneers Paul Vixie and Carl Malamud have entered the fray; central to their bid is their announced intent to place all the software necessary to manage a TLD in the public domain. 'This shouldn't be a dot-com opportunity,' Mr. Malamud said. 'There has been a lot of smoke and mirrors, but what we need is actually a public utility that is well managed in the public interest.'"

Comments

Don't give dot.org to the Raiders of the Lost Net

[dh003i]

In reference to giving control of .org to Open Sourced Advocates, Jay Maynard said:

giving it to them just because they're open source advocates is a Bad Idea. Give it to the mif and only if they're the best qualified to do the job."

In contrast to the current system, where control of things is handed over to people paid for and bought by big business, who were given the job simply because they're advocates of business interests?

They may not be the best qualified to do the job -- but they're certainly better than ANYONE who's affiliated with a business or has special business/proprietary interests. Anyone affiliated with business will for sure screw over the netizens in favor of the Raiders of the Lost Net.

A simple rule for this should be that whoever's going to be involved in controlling dot.org should have NOTHING to do with business. The people running dot.org should be people interested in the ideals of the internet -- people like Lawrence Lessig -- not people who want to milk the internet for all its worth.

We the netizens -- and I distinguish netizens from neticrooks like ICANN, BSA, RIAA, MPAA, and other organizations who stand united AGAINST the ideals of we the netizens -- need to reclaim the internet from the corporate raiders.

The corporate raiders have won the first of the Internet-Wars: they already completely control the dot.com's. There are two more wars to fight: the dot.net's, and the dot.org's. The dot.net's seem to be at a standstill, and we the netizen's seem to have the upper edge on the dot.org's.

It was expected that the enemy neticrooks -- the internet-nazi's, the net-raiders, the spamalots -- would win the dot.com's: that's their home turf. Dot.com, as in commercial.

The dot.net's are more neutral ground, where the playing field is relatively level. There are many commercial interests in dot.net addresses, and many non-commercial interests in the dot.net addresses.

But the dot.org's, thats OUR home turf. That's OUR state, our town. That's a battle WE can not afford to lose. That would be as bad as when Al Gore lost his home state to GW Bush. If you have any shot of winning a war, you have to be able to defend YOUR territory. Dot.org is our territory. But the Axis powers aligned against us -- the spammers, the scammers, the net-raiders, the corporate interests, the RIAA's, the BSA's, the Microsofts, the MPAA's -- they have already begun to launch their invasion of our territory.

If we the netizens can't even defend what's clearly OURS, the dot.org's, and have them regulated by people concerned with the true ideals of the net; the ideals of freedom of speech; of privacy, communication, information, efficiency; if we can't achieve at least that, then we're doomed.

The dot.org's are, in short, Our Last Hope.

And we need to stand together in defending them. We cannot be concerned about petty differences among the different factions of the information-freedom movement -- i.e., the eternal conflict between OSS and FS, between Stallman and Raymond -- nor can we even be concerned about the major differences between us netizens, such as those between people at the Christian Coalition and at NARAL. If we're going to do that, we will be defeated from within from internal conflict. Nor can we invite traitors among our ranks simply to help us win the immediate battle -- i.e., RIAA.org, which does not really stand for the ideals of the net, despite being an "organization"; in reality, such "organizations" are really little more than businesses in disguise. What we need, as Netanyahu says in "Fighting Terrorism", is MORAL CLARITY.

We do not stop to ask "why the corporations want to raid and destroy dot.org". We do not try to understand it from "their point of view," nor do we get "touchy-feely" with them. We do not compromise with them, for any compromise with them would not be worth the paper it was written on; a compromise with such net-nazi's would be little different than the "treaties" signed with Hitler that said "ok, he would stop expanding now".

What these net-nazi's want is breathing room. And the more breathing room THEY have, the more difficult it is for US netizens to breath.

What we need to do is treat these Net-Raiders like what they are: parasites, virus', infections, plagues. And we are the host; we, the netizens; and the home we built, the Internet. And like parasites, these net-raiders, the stronger they get, the weaker we get; but we the host will not die -- a fate much worse is in store for us if we don't fight this infection. They are like a virus which infects its host and gives it extreme pain, taking away all its strength and all its capacity for pleasure, leaving only the capacity for pain, but does not kill. If we allow this infection to spread, the internet will not die -- it will live on in eternal torture and disfigurement: a fate worse than death.

So here's a simple three-step plan to reclaim what is OURS:

1. Fight off the onslaught of this plague in our capital, dot.org. We must eliminate every trace of corporatism from dot.org: both in the organizations and in its control/infrastructure. All regulations and protocols must be transparent. There must be a constitution similar to our own, gauranteeing the rights of the .org netizens. Any control of .org must be through democratic means. Those controlling it should be democratically elected via a 50/50 combination of "electoral votes" and "majority rule". One-time terms of 4 years ONLY will be given to those voted in, with a 2-year phase out while the next elected member if "phasing in". I suggest a system similar to the one in the US, w/ three branches -- the legislative, the judicial, and the executive. This keeps checks and balances in effect. Importantly, however, the number of people in the 3 branches should not total over more than 100, and each persons role should be unique and clearly defined. There should not be so many people in it so that accountability is impossible.

2. Reclaim the neutral zone, dot.net. Dot.net can be likened to a suburbs surrounding our capital.

3. Launch a full strike into the land the neti-nazi's stole from us, dot.com. By this time, dot.org and dot.net will be under our control. You'd think that would make taking dot.com easier: wrong. The more you take from the greedy, the harder they will hold on to what is remaining. The only way to reclaim dot.com will be out of the dying hands of the Net-Raiders.

Strategies.

1. Identify traitors in their ranks. It is important that we obtain some corporate allies. Not all corporations are Net-Raiders, greedily milking the gold-mine for all its worth. IBM may be an example of such a case. We must forge alliances with such corporate forces which are not netinazi's. Redhat's another good example, though their trademark gripe is questionable.

2. Make them fight amongst themselves. We must take advantages of differences between the netinazi's. You don't take on the most powerful economic forces in the world by yourself. You make them fight amongst eachother. We want the RIAA to sue the BSA for supporting clients who make programs which can copy songs; we want the BSA to sue the RIAA for having unlicensed copies of MS Windows. While they're doing that, we want to be taking shots at them from the site. The more resources they spend fighting amongst eachother, the less they can spend fighting us or defending themselves from us.

3. Retain moral clarity. In "Fighting Terrorism," Netanyahu said that the standard for entrance into the coalition against terrorism must be that "those nations entering the coalition must expunge the terrorist groups within their own nation". Similarly, our standard for entry into our coalition must be that all members must believe that the internet should not be controlled by special interests, and decisions should not be made for special interest (i.e., Intel Insite & Yoga Inside) benefits. Rather, it should be decisions be made in respect to the rights of netizens; and where those are in conflict, to benefit the net-community.

4. Remain united. If we allow our differences to become the focus, we will surely lose. There will be plenty of time for fighting out differences later, after the war's won; and there's even a place for airing differences while fighting the war. But when standing against the forces of evil -- the Raiders of the Lost Net -- we must be united.