Slashdot Mirror
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
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."
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.