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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.
There's a saying that's popular with defense laywers ... "When you don't have the law, you argue the facts. When you don't have the facts, you argue the law. And when you don't have either, you persecute the prosecutor"
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
---"These people are the Internet equivalent of the Nike-store-smashing-anarchist juveniles. They need to grow up and realize how the real world works."
I wouldn't say that the first sentance is true, but the second certainly is. EFF is a so-called polictical activism committee. Well, they whine for money for court cases that usually are doomed to the very start. Why dont they usually win? Well, they don't give enough money to overturn the laws as they're made. All other PAC's do heavy lobbying and giving of heavy amounts of money to opposing officals.
The EFF is a reactionary orginazation. These do NOT work. Instead, I'd rather put money (from anon sources) into a pool requesting program X to be written. So what if the program is deemed "Illegal". If it's out there (source and all), no company/government/grassroots campaign can take it away. For my example, look at the 200K being offered to hack the X-Box for Linux. That's exactly what I'm suggesting.
In addition, Gilmore has some particularly spooky things to say about the history of Network Solutions, and what he estimates the *real cost* of maintaining a domain's registration to be (less than 1 cent/year).
---"That might be a nice way of doing things, but I don't think it would work. People might pay up a fair amount of money once or twice, but not after that. (I, for one, think the Linux-XBox thing is a hoax.) Call me a cynic."
Actually this isn't the first time money has been ante'd for free stuff. There was a guy (not anon, just forget name) that was offering 10K for soft-modem drivers. Still, nobody's made it.
And yeah, the Linux X-Box does seem hoax-ish.. But it's a great way to get on Slashdot. But still, if Linux on XBox is possible, the 200K might pay for a little of the legal fees. I bet, though that he does have the money (whoever it is), but bets that nobody will be able to.
The only way see that Linux can get onto the XBox without hardware mods, is by hijacking a legit program with unsecured binary code. Smash stack, gain control and run Linux. Then you have to deal with infringement of the hijacked game. All in all, a platform I'd rather not buy, or touch.
Just a minor correction. It's not Gilmore who can't see the books that's the issue, rather that Karl Auerbach (the NA elected representative) can't see the books. Check out Karl's saga at http://www.cavebear.com .
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
Debacle? How was it a debacle?
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
As was said in a previous slashdot comment,
ICANN will now be known as UCANT
(Universal Controller of All Network Traffic)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Actually, it sounds very similar to the shenanigans at FIFA where the CFO went up against the CEO on the basis of some very dodgy payments and accounting practices that he had authorised. The CFO was forced to resign, alledgedly through the use of bought influence (In FIFA, Tonga has the same number of votes as Germany).
Lets just forget that it is the Internet and just look at other organisations involved in coordinating things internationally. I mentioned FIFA, we also know about the Olympics committee. Other organisations closer to home, such as CCITT tend to be bureaucratic and inefficient but not particularly corrupt.
Is it possible to have a minimalist organisation that is cheap, efficient and honest that can manage something like the Internet?
ICANN't, Can you?
In Australia we used to have the benevolent dictatorship of Robert Elz. He was the instigator of the .au domain until he was thrown out by the ICANN lap dog that is auDA. There was a huge amount of negative press about his 'unnaccountability' and the 'arrogant' way he dealt with people. There were press stories that if he refused to give up the name then they would have to force him via the courts. Throughout this Robert kept a dignified silence. When he released the name to auDA ICANN released this statement
.au.
"Whereas Robert Elz has devoted over 15 years of selfless and dedicated service to the global Internet community as the registry founder and operator of
Resolved that the ICANN Board on behalf of the global Internet community extends its deepest thanks to Robert Elz for his profound
countributions to the evolution and stable performance of the global Internet."
We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants
You call me a pedant? I prefer the term "correct"
This first saw this idea kicked around on slashdot a few months ago. I actually had sit down with one of my professors (who actually helped invent the internet, and I don't mean that in the Al Gore way) He said, IIRC, that for such a setup, effeciently updating dns entries would become a nightmare very quickly. Remember - there are only 12 root dns servers. I'd imagine that if you did the math, the sum total of all DNS entries would be on the order gigabytes (or maybe even tens of gigabytes) of data. Broadband simply is not at the point where it can cope with such a load.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
http://www.icann.org/financials/.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
FWIW, here is a transcription of the statement that included the publication of Gilmore's e-mail to Vint Cerf, transcribed from the PDF image from the link linked to by the article.
It looked to me that Vint was doing everything he could legally do, to do the right thing.
-----------
I, Vinton Cerf, declare:
1. I am the Chairman of the Board of Defendant Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ("ICANN"). I have personal knowledge of the matters set forth herein and am competent to testify to those matters.
2. Mr. Auerbach has never, pursuant to Section 6 of the ICANN Inspection Procedures, requested full ICANN Board review of the Audit Committee's determination regarding the arrangements for his inspection of the corporate records.
3. On March 18, 1002, I received an e-mail from John Gilmore, in which he asserts that he "contributed significant funding for" this lawsuit. Mr. Gilmore is one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the organization providing representation for Mr. Auerbach in this lawsuit. A true and correct copy of the e-mail from Mr. Gilmore is attached hereto as Exhibit 1.
I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of California that the foregoing is true and correct.
This declaration was signed on April 16, 2002 at Washington, D.C.
[ Signature ]
Vinton Cerf
[ Attached e-mail ]
-----------
I seems to me that Vint is pointing out that the decision was made by a subset of the Board of Directors, the "Audit Committee". It also points out that there is recourse available to Auerbach that he has not exercised, prior to filing the lawsuit.
It also seems (to me) that the statement numbered "3" was minimal, in not drawing any conclusions based on it. Thus the "terse statement" condemnation of Vint Cerf's statement in the article isn't really a very strong condemnation; it looks to me that, by leaving out the social context, Vint allows for interpretation favorable to the case.
This interpretation is bolstered by the fact that the statement numbered "2" seems to go out of its way to point out a way around the "Audit Committee", as if it were a tightly controlled minority clique of the full board, and in pointing out seems to imply success might be achievable via that route.
At the very least, Auerbach needs to try to avail himself of that route, so that if it fails, he can counter a motion for dismissal (i.e. it's arguable that this case is only a matter for the courts if all other reasonable recourse has been exhausted, which it has not been, according to this statement).
I have a very hard time believing that Vint would not have been as explicit or terse as this, were it not for the legal liability issue as the chairman of the Board of Directors of the Defendant.
-- Terry
> They whine for money for court cases that
> usually are doomed to the very start
> Why don't they usually win?
*cough* e-mail has as much protection as phone calls, requires a warrant to seize
*cough* Code declared free speech
*cough* CDA overturned
*cough* Dmitry freed
> I'd rather put money (from anon sources) into
> a pool requesting program X to be written.
*cough* the DES-cracker
*cough* any number of free software projects that Gilmore has personally funded.
Aim your bullets at the other side, kid. You're smoking up the mess hall.
Want to hear the other side of the ICANN story? Vint Cerf will be attending a round-table conference in my home country of Luxembourg on Thursday July 4 at 2:30pm CET (time zone convertor here) (it's just down the road from me, but I won't be able to attend to put questions to him, gotta work!). A live webcast will be available here, so tune in then. Check out the conference info page for some good links and background on Cerf.
---- scrm
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."
I would like to hear you ellaborate a bit about The Hague.
you might clue me in a bit about what the hell Mr Bush is whining about.
Noone else seems to have a problem, but to the US this is the biggest deal in the world, apperantly.
On the other hand the Bush administration (IMHO) tries to weasel it's way out of any and all international agreements.
What is his problem with agreeing to common rules and sticking to them?
All the world isn't texas you know, George.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
People keep talking about what the US Government should do about ICANN, but even the US Government is just a dubiously-implemented indirect representation of a small fraction of Internet users. The whole idea is ridiculous, because Internet users can directly vote for who should have that power, just by entering some addresses into their computers. Just pick a root who has the best policies and point to it. We don't need government involvement at all in this.
And yeah, when you're making that decision, OpenNIC stands out as the one who has the right idea.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
said again. If you don't like ICANN, just point
your DNS client to OpenNIC instead. Democratic
name service the way it should be.
It's easy to find and easy to use -- from ICANN-space, try http://www.opennic.net
You've made a good case that it would be difficult. Also that you couldn't use the current design.
This doesn't imply that it's not do-able. Or that it isn't worthwhile. My favorite scheme has local dns servers that register their own names as they choose, and can also probe for a global resolve. Not a tree structure, but a lattice, with each level going up connected via a ring (or series of rings).
This scheme would result in name clashes, which would tend to be resolved in favor of the more local site, but which could also get a global list of matching sites. To resolve the clashes, each name should have an optional short descriptor field. Perhaps 40-50 chars. When a name clash resulted, then the desired site could be picked from a list.
This approach would still have large sites that mainly resolved names, and also small local sites that did the same. Breaks at one level would route around and up through an alternate link on an as-needed basis. Direct resolution would still be via TCP/IP id. If you asked for a site, you'ld tend to get the most local site that matched. If that didn't work, you could ask for a global resolve, and select from a list (which would be free form text, but short).
And there wouldn't be any central registry of names. There would instead be several central caches of names that were regenerated on a periodic refresh basis. Name assignment authority would be local.
I don't see why this would be any more compute intensive than the current system. Possibly slightly less. The local systems would only need to cache the sites that they served (as now) and, additionally, the sites that they registered.
What happened what that the original internet was designed at a time when there were many fewer computers, so the design was based around that. When hosts became too cumbersome, and improvement (DNS) was designed. And it was an improvement. But this sure doesn't make it perfect. One of the faults it that it depends on a centralized name registry. This limits the expansion, and leads directly to ICANN (choke points attract controling personalities). So any redesign needs to avoid this weakness. This means rethinking the means of name assignment. If you don't, then your professor is almost certainly right.
But if you redo the name assignment, then the browsers need adjustment or it will become difficult (the clash resolution list could be presented as a web page, created on the fly, but that would be less convenient than a drop-down list at the URL menu bar). And if you want to allow a request for a global name resolution (as opposed to a local resolution), then you need to provide some way to request it. Not hard, but requiring at least minimal adaptation.
These changes are a lot easier than some of the other changes that would be needed, but they would obsolete a lot more pieces of software. (All of the current web browsers.)
But this might be a very good time to start planning how to do this. IPv6 software is still being written, so now is when it would be easiest to implement. Or at least plan for implementation.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This is the same John Gilmore who we savaged for running an open mail relay and not backing down or compromising in any meaningful way.
Now, I fully support him in this endeavour, but let's not just slip into maudlin hero worship. Like an old fashioned preacher, Gilmore has gone from being representative, through conservative, until he's now an extreme fundamentalist, not because he's changed, but because the world has. Gilmore refuses to compromise his ideals one iota. Beyond a certain point that ceases to be admirable and just becomes stubborn and unrealistic.
Again: I agree with the issue, I think he's fighting the good fight, but I just have some reservations about his judgement. I've had the feeling for some time now that John Gilmore is living in the past, and he just won't let go.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I seems to me that Vint is pointing out that the decision was made by a subset of the Board of Directors, the "Audit Committee". It also points out that there is recourse available to Auerbach that he has not exercised, prior to filing the lawsuit
That may stop a judge saying "those crooks are hiding the records - throw them in jail", but I don't see how it would stop one saying "show him the damn records".
You can see an example of this at work at http://www.lloyds.io
They claim to have over 350,000 registered users, but I've never encountered a redirecting IO address in the wild, and it's not a very sexy implementation (imho). The other two examples they cite on their homepage, spicegirls.io and discman.io seem to tell the real story -- it may be fine if you're just redirecting to the index page of a domain, but when your IO redirector points at some page deep in the twisted hierarchy of your corporate website, well, that's just one more annoying (and unusual) thing for your admin to have to maintain.
When ICANN goes? The COURTS take over. Large corps with plans for domain name grabs are increasingly abandoning ICANN for resolutions because ICANN frequently sides with the current holders. When using the courts however. It's pretty easy to throw money at the problem and get your way. (It's ironic that this is being leveled at ICANN when it's already a known and oftenused practive in the legal system)ICANN at least provided a small hope that the name you registered would reamin yours... (I provide the resent "Easy* vs "Easi*" fiasco as proof)
The only part I agree with (And it's already been talked about) is that the US Gov. should take back control of ICANN (Or a global governmental body). For the reasons listed in the article. But even as it is, there had better be a MUCH BETTER plan in place before even talking about getting rid of ICANN. The alternative will be the ususal situation of being far worse off after the wolves have had their fun.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
IMO - I believe we know most of it:
"ICANN is secretive, slow, inefficient and, worst of all, firmly in the pocket of special interests."
From ICANN Forum: Vint has become crooked and does not answer emails any more.
ICANN wants more money to further increase their corrupt powers and for their Lawyers; JONES, DAY, REAVIS & POGUE.
Karl should be allowed to see the books, with gagging preconditions. ICANN are supposed to be OPEN, for flips sake.
ICANN use spin to say critics are just trying to tear down ICANN.
Personally, I have always said ICANN (or similar) is necessary - as John Gilmore says, "No, we're trying to make ICANN accountable to its public for its actions."
Those responsible should pay with time in jail for any illegal acts. Not fines like corrupt fat cats pay - money that will come from us - the consumer.
We learn some new things, like it cost less than 25 cents per year per name to run domain name registry - are we all being screwed or what?
It should cost should cost the huge NSI less than 1 cent per year to do the work. Screwing everybody harder still - car dealers would love that percentage markup.
Mr Mueller, Mr Gilmore and myself all agree on about trademark abuse of power by the greedy corporations:
Milton Mueller's account of Internet governance, portrays ICANN primarily as a tool for trademark protection.
John Gilmore says "I do agree that ICANN and domain name policy has been perverted from the start by the machinations of trademark interests. Actual trademark law gives zero power to cancel or seize domain names, prevent their issuance, etc. Actual trademark law lets hundreds of people use the same name, both in different jurisdictions, and for different kinds of trades (e.g., computers vs. soap vs. ships). Trademark owners only have power over others when the others misrepresent themselves as the trademark owner."
The authorities IGNORE National and Classification boundaries - this is unlawful - ask any (honest) Lawyer. These authorities know the solution to these trademark/domain problems - it is easier than using the telephone.
My fellow posters - these corrupt people in the US DoC, UN WIPO and ICANN are aiding and abetting this abuse. They prevent all registered trademarks from using their mark - an illegal act.
The Truth will win in the end - and the corrupt will be named and shamed.
Please visit World Intellectual Piracy Organization - Not associated with United Nations WIPO.org !
That's a pretty upbeat artical to have been posted on sept 11th...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.