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ICANN Updates
ICANN is meeting in Bucharest next week, which means they're floating all their usual smoky-room schemes just prior to the meeting. leto writes "The three RIR's, ARIN, APNIC and RIPE-NCC have just released a joint statement that basically tells ICANN that their
Evolution and Reform plan is unacceptable, and tells ICANN to go play elsewhere, and leave the address space in the hands of the well working bodies." An interesting mailing list debate has been going on between ICANN's critics and ICANN's extremely well-paid and extremely sleazy attorney: critic, attorney (sleazy!), critic again, another critic, attorney again, critic's response, still other critics. And finally, note that the .org TLD is up for bids - the New York Times has a story, Newsforge has another.
And just how exactly are we going to set up some kind of election to vote on these issues? A poll somewhere? And I'm so sure that no one is going to vote multiple times. Not to metion the logistics of trying to have some sort of rational debate before hand with the millions of people who actually care to discuss this.
ICANN is a failure, yes. But, it doesn't mean that there isn't some central authority needed to take over for ICANN. The internet is too big now to not have some sort of almost hegemonal group in charge. Yes, there should be community input, but it has to be structured. Maybe take a page out of the US Constitutional framers book and set up some sort of internet electoral college, and have each region elect their rep. And then those reps go and make the decisions.
But in no way can there be a true democracy on the internet, it worked for the Greeks because there weren't millions upon millions of people trying to get their voice heard.
The problem with this idea is that its completely impossible to implement. There are no reliable ways of making sure that one person=one vote, no way of guaranteeing even participation geographically, economically, or any other way. Internet users nowadays are mostly people who log in to ISPs to use email and chat. They don't know what ICANN is, and don't care. Are you suggesting that voting on issues that affect so many naive users should be reduced to a tug-of war between nerds and corporations?
We also know that a purely private organization, without the support and
involvement of governments from around the world, will not be able to carry
out thes mission assigned to ICANN (if you believe that mission requires
the agreed participation of all the relevant infrastructure
providers). ICANN has no guns, and no soldiers; it has no coercive
power.
Something tell me before too long we can expect to hear dark rumors of ICANN building a droid army to deploy against the shining republic of the IETF.
Seriously, though, it is shocking how poitical they can try to make a system whose entire job is to associate names and numbers. For something that is essentially a hack (put the fate of the internet on the backs of a handfule of individual servers, yeah, good idea), they sure seem intent on turning it into the basis for a UN-scale political swamp.
<garfield>Big, fat, hairy deal.</garfield>
Really, who cares? As long as people can register domain names, and have them appear in the DNS servers, the rest is just three-year-olds arguing over a toy.
NAMES ARE NOT THE THINGS THEY NAME!
Fundamentally, it makes no difference what domain name a site has. With the advent of the search engine, it's all moot anyway.
Really, folks...there are a lot of good people putting in lots of time and effort on something that's basically a triviality. Why not work on something that means something?
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
How about
To access a web site, type its IP address. If you don't like typing IP addresses, build a database. If you don't have the time/inclination to build your own database, subscribe to one.It's not a technical problem. It's not even an implementation problem. All popular operating systems allow you to specify the IP address of your DNS server, and there are already alternate DNS servers out there. If you don't like ICANN's, find another.
Go for anarchy and ICANN becomes a non-issue.
ICANN's extremely well-paid and extremely sleazy attorney
I credit the Slashdot editors for aggregating most of the topics that I find interesting -- however, I don't think that I'm going to be accusing them of jounalistic integrity any time soon.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
And finally, note that the .org TLD is up for bids - the New York Times has a story, Newsforge has another.
:shakes head:
Oh, alright. I'll do it. I guess.
I mean, if someone has to, and no one else wants it, i'm not really doing much else this month and i've got some free time. I swear though, you people.. seems sometimes like if you wanna get something done around here, you have to do it yourself.
Uhh.. do I have to set up BIND now, or something? Hm. Could anyone point me to a HOWTO..? I'm running slackware, so i can't do an RPM install..
--super ugly ultraman
You can't prove to a judge that he's sleazy.
Sure I can.
"Your honor, he's an attorney. I rest my case."
ChicagoFan
The notion that not enough happens at ICANN in public, and that the answer to ICANN's problems is more transparency, illustrates a profound lack of understanding about what ICANN really does, and how it really does it.
Did it ever cross anyone's mind over there in East Timbuktu, or whatever remote jungle ICANN is meeting at this month, that if ICANN were more transparent, people wouldn't have so many questions about what it does and how it does it?
Hmmmm?
Edith Keeler Must Die
Nobody's yet explained why it takes a raft of lawyers, eighty million dollars, and meetings all over the world to accomplish what Jon Postel did in his spare time on his office workstation.
The Internet has gotten bigger, but damitall, IP addresses are still IP addresses and DNS is supposed to be a hierarchical, delegated system. What's the big problem? Jon just ran a root server and kept backups like it was the most obvious and natural thing in the world. What else is there to do?
All except the first can be found at www.----.net. An IP is attacking you, and you want to find out who it is registered to? Look it up at the various RIRs.
Perhaps the time has come to employ the philosophy behind that phrase. ICANN keeps whining on and on about how "hard" their job is.
How about just find the individual - and I'm sure there is one - who can just say "What? this? just do 1, 2, 3, 4.... there - done." - and give them ICANN's job? Given enough DNS experts, ICANN's job MUST be shallow.