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ICANN's Time Is Up, According To John Gilmore
EyesWideOpen writes: "Salon has a lengthy interview with Cygnus Software co-founder John Gilmore about why he feels it's time for ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, to go. Gilmore, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is currently helping to fund a lawsuit filed by ICANN director Karl Auerbach against ICANN. ICANN has denied Gilmore access to its financial information, providing the basis for the lawsuit. Gilmore states: 'I believe it's because there is information in there about how ICANN has misused its money, and/or has favored people who lent or gave it money.'"
He's right on the money with ICANN, too, although I'm sure I don't need to go into a spiel as to why. But if you aren't familiar with him, you might want to take a look at his other work if you want to see some cutting-edge concepts that are in need of an innovator.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Damn... Every time I run into something that John Gilmore has done I get this shivery feeling down the back of my neck. Here's a guy who has just got it all figured out, way ahead of the rest of us... or at least way ahead of me.
Err, but yeah. The reason I'm posting is because anyone who hasn't read Gilmore's letter to Vint Cerf really should... it's intelligent, funny and scathing. It's at http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=763 and it's brilliant.
I am the king... of No Pants! www.penny-arcade.com
I CAN, U CAN, we all CAN get rid of ICANN!
We need a P2P version of DNS. Of course it would be much worse in terms of performance but it's harder to buy thousands of people than it is to buy a dozen.
Any ideas?
I strongly disagree with that statement. The professor for whom I am currently doing research did in part invent the internet, or at least a few important cornerstones. He is in no way corrupted - he is a realist and sees the internet as it is. I would think most of the founders of the internet are like him - they tend to shy away from the polical issues, prefering instead to focus their energy into the engineering side of it. When that happens, you create a power vacuum, and it pulls in just the kind of people John Gilmore is railing against.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I do not know. However, if a board member begins to suspect that the organization is failing its charter due to, for example, over-spending on shady subcontracts, that board member has a responsibility and a right to check the books to see what's what.
This is the case here, and the management -- which is supposed to be subservient to the board -- is blocking a board member's request to check the books. That raises red flags for me and obviously the EFF, Gilmore, and others. I agree that this should be against the bylaws of an international organization responsible for managing a world-wide public resource.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
The domain names debacle needs sorting out - urgently. It is completely wrong
.com, .edu, .mil, .net, or .org. The names
.us top level domain. There is, I suppose, the argument that there are a few, .net was intended for this, but it seems to have been polluted in
.org space by hobby software projects is another case in .org .gnu or .oss?
that the administration of such an important trans-national medium as the
Internet is in effect in the uncontrolled hands of just so few people.
The 'Net is something of such international importance that no national
interest, commercial or otherwise, should have any control whatsoever other
than the delegated administration of the names registries of the
individual countries.
This, in effect, means that the only organisation which should be able to change
either the underlying protocols or the top level domains is the United Nations
My own feeling about top level domains other than the country ones is that they
should be simply removed. Absolutely every legal entity has a home in some
country somewhere or other. No more
which belong to organisations based in the United States should be using the
very few, genuinely international organisations which should have domain names
not tied to any particular country. The International Red Cross is the kind of
organisation which comes to mind as the type which has the moral right to the
irc.org domain name. Similarly there is a genuine need for a single
supra-national domain for the use of the Internet infrastructure as a whole. I
thought that
the interests of commercial gain.
The pollution of the
point. While these are certainly very useful and worthwhile projects, and the
groups of individuals are frequently located all around the globe, I really
don't think they have much in the way of absolute moral right to be in the
namespace. Perhaps they should have a fully international top level domain name
of their own. Is it
The administration of domains which have been given away or sold by their
countries should revert to the UN until the countries in question can do it for
themselves. The very idea that the whole address space for an entire country
can be traded away for the personal profit of an idividual is, in this author's
opinion anyway, just plain wrong, and should be corrected as soon as possible.
Similarly, while the enhancement of Internet security is sorely needed at the
moment, no particular commercial interest should ever be able to hijack the
whole exercise by introducing secret protocols protected by draconian
intellectual property laws. The overall effect of this will be to give the
particular patent holder the right to tax every Internet user, or indeed every
single message.
Is this really what we want?
--
Christopher Sawtell
So who is going to handle that then? The government?
I wasn't aware there were a world government...
oh, you mean the US should yet again directly control the root servers.
Well, if that is what happens, I won't be surprised.
The DNS system is the worst thing that has ever happened to the web.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Attacks against people like John Gilmore (or Richard Stallman) for refusing to be "reasonable" and compromise their principles remind me of this quote from George Bernard Shaw:
This is not to say that Gilmore or Stallman are right about everything, they are not. But their effectiveness is associated with their refusal to abandon principle.