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VeriSign and Other Registry Giants Blast ICANN
rhwalker22 writes: "VeriSign, ENIC, and Nominet UK today released a letter to the U.S. Commerce Dept. urging Uncle Sam to 'scale back the powers of the body that manages the Internet's global addressing system,' according to this report on washingtonpost.com. ICANN, of course, has its own take on the Registries' letter..."
So after they make a fortune because of the ICANN does business, they want to change it so they can rape another group of customers?
They are not the ones I would listen to for policy changes.
What would the consequences be of Verisign, InterNIC, and the like addressing providers simply ignoring ICANN?
ICANN doesn't have physical control of any servers. They can legislate away but if the regulations they impose are so far fetched that nobody will impliment them, they've got no real power.
I don't think the USDoC would care that much, either, honestly.
Free clue to ICANN: When even spamming, fake-renewal-notice-spewing, domain-slamming scumbag registrars like Verislime aren't afraid to write the Commerce Department and call you scum, you've got problems. ;-)
Lovely. So now, Verisign and company are envisioning a new lightweight ICANN that Verisign can push around. This isn't going to be solved until a responsible group takes control, and until Verisign is out of the picture as well.
"We want to to scale back their power, and give it all to US "!
www.eFax.com are spammers
So basically we have these different groups arguing over who gets to be the big cheese monopoly If our government had more than about 3 brain cells dedicated to this problem, we wouldn't even have a monopoly in the first place. Look where we are now. We have institutionalized cyber-squatting. We have artificial scarcity in domain names. We have a couple of unaccountable organizations resolving domain disputes. We have ICANN removing even the pretense of democratic control, while attempting to prevent the public (and one of its own directors) from ever finding out what exactly goes on behind the scenes or where the money goes. I think things are pretty well screwed up now. Do we really care which group has the monopoly? Unfortunately, nobody seems to have enough clout to stand up to ICANN and Verisign and get changes made. Most people just don't understand the issues. Those few that do don't seem to get any attention. It's a sad state of affairs when the world's leading democracy puts a non-democratic, unaccountable entity in charge of the Internet.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
As a starting point, I assert that ICANN's role should consist of two jobs and two jobs only:
.com/.net/.org.
- Making sure that IP addresses are assigned and allocated on a fair and equitable basis and in conformity with demands of the the packet routing systems of the Internet.
- Making sure that the ICANN/NTIA root zone is expanded on a basis that is fair and equitable to everyone, that the root zone file is properly maintained and disseminated, and that its set of root servers are operated by persons and entities that have the proper skills, resources, and obligations.
We have plenty of national legislatures and treaty organizations that can handle those who claim that their commercial rights trump other rights.
It is an open question, and one that has never been debated, much less agreed upon by those affected, whether ICANN should have an additional role to act as a consumer protection body to protect those who due to historical circumstances are locked into
Heh heh, so ICANN and VeriSign are duking it out. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." The problem is, what if they're both your enemy? Then who's your friend?
Which brings to mind another aphorism. "When elephants fight, it's the grass that gets trampled."
Consider this quote from the article: VeriSign runs dot-com, dot-net and dot-org under agreements with ICANN that prevent VeriSign from raising the wholesale price of the addresses it sells ($6), or substantially changing the way it runs the domains.
At VeriSign, domain names are six bucks wholesale; thirty-five bucks retail. This makes the bottled-water business look positively low-margin. The actual cost of service provided by VeriSign (less overhead for executive salaries, Aereon chairs, and Napoleonesque offices) is less than a dime. The markup on domain name registration is already expressed in scientific notation. But of course, even when you have a monopoly (as VeriSign has), everything is never quite enough.
The history of VeriSign (and its predecessor, Network Solutions) and of ICANN is a textbook story of the effects of greed and commercial selfishness vs. political and parochial power-hunger upon the internet. Check it out yourself. If you want to see the future of the net, you need only take a look at its past.
I have to disagree with one part of your post.
;^P )
"the reality is, almost any business would run the same way as M$, given the chance and the resources. "
This is untrue. Most businesses in the US are considered 'small business'. They have a few employees, up to a couple hundred employees. They may be run from the owner's home, or have a storefront, or several locations in an area. These businesses have the same chance and resources that Bill Gates and company had in the early 80's.
The difference is most of these companies are run by people with a conscience. They have decided to conduct their business ethically, treat their customers well, and not use business deals as stepping stones to vast wealth and power. (The rest are run by incompetent people who, though greedy and unethical, are too stupid or lazy to actually follow Bill's lead.
While we see many stories of the corrupt big business, and think that is how MOST business are run, we tend to forget that MOST businesses never hit the media radar because they are too small to matter. And while the owners would like to be bigger, they aren't going to cut their competitor's throat to get more business.
Maybe the fact small businesses usually are not incorporated and have no public stock also plays a part in it. No need to hide financial matters like non-profitability from stock-holders.
Considering that the WTO was formed in order to allow companies to seek damages from governments who 'mess' with the markets (like banning dangerous chemicals, natch, but thats a whole other ball of wax) .. I can't imagine the WTO taking power away from the private sector and placing it in any kind of public body. That's practically counter to the reason it was put together.
"Old man yells at systemd"
There are many things that I don't like about ICANN, but things like the limits they have on what the prime registrys can charge wholesale aren't one of them. I've had to deal with NSI->verisign refusing to allow me to transfer getyourassingear.com (which has now been taken by someone else). The last thing I'd want to do is make it even easier for them to stomp on their competition.
That having been said, ICANN does need to have it's wrists slapped with a two-by-four (along with the back of their collective head). If they're not willing to go back to being the open, accountable, etc. group that they originally promised that they'd be, then perhaps they should be given a 1-year extension, and work done to design something that does work properly.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Which country would that be?
... a lot.
It surely can't be the one whos DOJ effectively cancelled a trail against MS because of a change in government? Or the one which let the Media-indutry dictate laws like the DMCA?
THe general impression in Europe about US politics is that money talks
Why do so many people insist on separating the Internet by geopolitical boundries? Your idea is just as bad as the Hague treaty. Just like the treaty it puts the burden of proof on content providers that their content is for a specific group of people.
Your idea also does little to promote free use on the net. It would be much easier for governments like China to block out everything from the west. The way it is now someone in China at least has a chance of getting unbiased news.
If I live under an oppresive government, I should be able to choose whether or not to break a law. I don't want DNS set up in such a way that the govt would make it nearly impossible to do that.
The Anti-Blog
is no more meaningful than a 3-letter TLD. Both are meaningless in today's Internet. As are the www prefixes on so many of today's webpages. As are the '.' notation...
.com is a straw man. If other countries don't like the cruft which comes with a .com address, then they can freely not take a .com address...
...)
Saying a 2-letter _ASCII_ (e.g. Latin characters) country code in any less US-specific than
What we really need is a change to a global character set (a la Unicode) which will allow native characters in the URL... Have you looked at ASCII approximations of Korean Hangul or Japanese Kanji lately?
At the same time, it would probably be wise to have an international group redesign the registration system entirely. (making it more automated, bypassing pointless "registrars", moving copyright battles into normal courts, dumping the TLD concept entirely,
They have authority over DNS because almost everyone is using their servers. Europeans, for example, give power to ICANN every time a European uses ICANN's root to look up an address. That's all there is to it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The reality is, almost any business would run the same way as M$.
Bullshit.
There are plenty of examples of companies with firm ethical backgrounds. Big companies, sucessful companies.
Competing by offering a better product instead of using your huge bank account to absorb losses and drive your competitors out of business is the way most companies operate. MS is the exception and not the rule.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
If our government had more than about 3 brain cells dedicated to this problem, we wouldn't even have a monopoly in the first place.
.us and/or the domain system in general was handed off to ICANN rather than the patent and trademark office, and protocol numbers to ANSI, NIST, ITU, etc. That's what they DO for a living, after all. A domain name, for instance, is one of the best examples of a service mark I've ever seen.)
If there's one thing that's a "natural monopoly" it's insuring there are no collisions in a global name space. (It's probably more of one than being the court for people who can't agree on an arbitrator.)
If we're going to continue with the current domains I think we'll have to bite the bullet on this one, let a monopoly have it, and ride herd on them to keep them from being oppressive.
But IMHO "oppressive" includes charging an ongoing fee in the tens of US dollars annually for each name, rather than a (much smaller) one-time fee for assigning or transferring a unique name. (Imagine if you had to rent your personal name on the same basis.) It doesn't cost THAT much to maintain a database for assignments. The root servers can be maintained by ISPs as a (trivially-expensive) part of the service, if nobody (like MIL, universities, clubs, etc.) volunteer.
Now an alternative for domain names would be to establish a bunch of new TLDs, one for each competing registry, and let them compete. Country domains could go wherever the country in question wants. IP numbers are another can of worms - but at least with IPV6 you have so many you could hand off BIG blocks and never feel a pinch.
(By the way: I've NEVER understood why
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
> Oh, boy, VeriSign wants ICANN to give up some of its regulatory power. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
>
> Maybe the Swiss could do it; they seem like nice folks.
Heh. That's the rub.
We're all agreed that ICANN is doing a bad job of things. But who shall we replace them with?
Some department or body of the US government? I can't believe that the rest of the world would go for that very well. Same argument if we grant oversight powers to any national government -- be they the British, the Russians, Japanese or teh Swiss.
Set up a part of the UN to oversee this? At best you would have a crippled organization because some major country (e.g. the US, China, Japan, one or more European nation) decided NOT to ratify the treaty that enables this organization to work. At worst, you'd end up with something worse than ICANN: not only corrupt & self-serving, but without a clue of how the Internet actually works.
The best solution would be a group like ICANN only with more transparentness & accountability -- as well as a majority of outside directors elected in a representative fashion. The same fixes that Karl Auerbach has been fighting for. The same fixes I'd wager all of us would back. Once done, this body could eventually free itself from a close association with one nation, & become a truly global entity.
This dispute doesn't address that. It's an attempt by various regional registries to sieze power from ICANN, to increase their own little empires. If this action is successful, instead of one crew of thieves, we're going to have several crews. Not an improvement.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p