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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.
Which you'll only be able to examine after a long lawsuit, and you won't be able to copy or leak to anyone without a 10 day opportunity for injunction.
Judging from their financial records history at least....
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. ;-)
Sir, ICANN has created a rule that favors the Public Good over their corporate sponsors.
Good GOD man! You there! Take the chopper and go swine hunting, You over there, start taking bids on subteranean cold food storage.
---------
Or maybe we can all just put our wallets out, bend over, and get it done with.
-GiH
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.
I'm not a huge fan of ICANN (is anyone?) but I'm distrustful of verisign even more. Anything that Verisign wants is probably not in our best interests. Could this be a power grab?
God is real unless declared integer.
It's the same link. Read the whole article.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
Disclaimer: No, I did not read the article.
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.'
"Hello, pot? Yes, hi there, pot. This is your old friend, kettle."
"You're black."
"That is all. Goodbye."
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
No, "evil" is something else. ICANN leaders are just unprincipled.
No link needed since most of the article is ICANN's viewpoint.
"The record doesn't even begin to support that," Lynn said of the assertion that ICANN has gradually taken on more power than it was authorized to wield. "This is rhetoric by someone who runs the biggest registry -- by a factor of four -- in the world," Lynn said of VeriSign.
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. Very private. Kickass knives, too.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
Here is proof that raw, unrelenting, undiluted greed can cause people to do, not good exactly, but things with a net beneficial effect.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
"We want to to scale back their power, and give it all to US "!
www.eFax.com are spammers
Need a UNIX/Linux/network guru in the Boulde
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
Okay I admit it I am extremeley lame and I live in a an isolated box somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
/. and I just don't get it.
Would someone please help me out and explain this kettle telling the pot that it's black comment for me? I've heard it a few times here on
I would appreciate it.
Thanks,
--
Garett
P.S sorry for being OT but this has been bothering me...
Does anyone but me find it ironic that the most influential gripe about ICANN is coming from the registries that gained most benefit from ICANNs excesses? Of course they only gripe about the price cap since this is one of the few ICANN policies that bites the registries harder than it does the domain owners.
The registries are as evil as ICANN in their own way. The only spark of interest in this is that Nominet joined the party - Having dealt with administering domains in .com, .ac.uk and .co.uk I found that of the new crop of domain barons, Nominet were the most true to the way it used to be. (probably because when they took over .uk the fastest backbones in the UK were still in the hands of the academics, so they messed with .ac.uk at their peril)
I had a
England's dot-uk is the fourth largest Internet domain with more than 3.5 million registrations.
I'm pretty sure they do for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and some smaller Islands as well. In fact uk probably stands for United Kingdom, altough like most things United it isn't (I'm sure thats someone's Law)
Grumble, grumble, whinge, whinte.
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
ICANN is bad. They do little about its problems. Let us take whatever we wan't for domains and run our services without interferance. Give us millions of customers on a market closed to anybody else.
Great idea.
Look a monkey!
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
Thousands of slashdot readers spontaneously combust, unable to pick a side involving an underhanded, unscrupulous entity and... an underhanded, unscrupulous entity.
;-)
I'd just like to state that there were never such debates back when we were all using Gopher.
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 ($6), or substantially changing the way it runs the domains.
At VeriSign, domain names are six bucks wholesale; thirty-five bucks retail. This makes the bottled-water business look positively low-margin. The actual cost of service provided by VeriSign (less overhead for executive salaries, Aereon chairs, and Napoleonesque offices) is less than a dime. The markup on domain name registration is already expressed in scientific notation. But of course, even when you have a monopoly (as VeriSign has), everything is never quite enough.
The history of VeriSign (and its predecessor, Network Solutions) and of ICANN is a textbook story of the effects of greed and commercial selfishness vs. political and parochial power-hunger upon the internet. Check it out yourself. If you want to see the future of the net, you need only take a look at its past.
What I don't understand is why ICCAN has authority over the whole international dns system. That made sense when the internet was all in the usa, but it is now international. It seems to me that the US congress lacks the legal jurisdiction to give ICCAN the authority it has.
The only really legal way to set up such an organization would be by international treaty. You could make it part of the International Telecommunications Union or the United Nations, or set it up independently. Maybe someone should challange ICCAN in international court, or through the WTO, to get its international power stripped away.
I was serious about the beneficial effect. If legislators see a consensus that ICANN is "bad" - from civil liberties groups, from the domain registrars who are ICANN's clients and provide ICANN with funding - then ICANN is unlikely to be given the total domination of the www that they desire.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
I have to disagree with one part of your post.
;^P )
"the reality is, almost any business would run the same way as M$, 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.
----
Enter VeriSign, a corporate giant, and ICANN, a nonprofit service that thinks it is a private -- and profitable -- corporation.
VeriSign (shouting offstage): Hey government, ICANN is taking our business!
ICANN: But you are just trying to racketeer and price gouge.
VeriSign: That's not the point. You are racketeering and we want more of the pie. Er, you are outside your jurisdiction on those matters, and are avoiding the issue.
ICANN: But we filter our money through IANA and other profitable corporations, I mean, nonprofit public benefit groups.
Two small groups, Nominet and DENIC, enter stage right.
Nominet and DENIC: But what about us? We want to work closely with VeriSign because then we can get all the names that aren't taken with .com, .net, and .org. If VeriSign can price gouge, we should be able to also.
VeriSign: You guys all wanna step into another room and we can discuss this rationally?
all step into dimly-light back room, talking. Also in the room is a demonic figure in red, with horns, a tail, and a pitchfork. All of them laugh, join hands, and become a New Entity.
New Entity: We have reached an agreement. We are now VeriSign-Nominet-ICANN-DENIC, or VeriSNIDE for short. Our new registration fee is $15000 per domain, or highest bid. Because we are Internet based, we will no longer report to any government or public entity. We will do all business from our fleet of personal yachts around the world. Please see our Lawyers and Accountants on the way out.
exit stage left.
----
Okay, so it won't be a blockbuster play, but it sure seems like the entire corporate world is following this model.
frob.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
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.
Why does the US feel that it should own the Internet?
.com domains, but their corporate site will be at .fr. Similar for Japan, Germany, Britain, Canada, Australia, and pretty much every company in the world. Only the US, with a virtually nonexistent .us domain, has all its companies have .com domains.
Countries have different laws. That's a fact, and a good thing; I don't think anybody wants that Hague treaty that lets people sue Swedish porn producers in Saudi Arabia, for example. So having global domains only invites problems.
A French's company may have
What we really need to do is eliminate the three-letter TLD, and have every single domain name end in a country code. Then. as part of getting a domain, the owner agrees to abide by the laws of the country controlling the domain, and no other laws.
Whether ICANN exists or not, the US government tries to enforce its laws on the whole of the Internet. By more clearly enforcing existing political boundaries on the Web, all sorts of disputes can be resolved and avoided.
Oh, I thought you meant they were fighting after the prey is already dead, and can't possibly escape. The two t rex's fighting wouldn't make a difference then.
Oh, VeriSign's just mad because ICANN rejected their WLS proposal and
"ICANN leaders have "very, very creatively interpreted their authority to get into areas they were never authorized to get into,"
sounds suspciously like VeriSign's own business practices...
Their both just giant evil entities anyway.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
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
Not true, and if it was, it would be a really bad idea to have them all in the same place. RFC 2010 [faqs.org] gives the standard requirements for the servers.
.org, .net] SLDs) are made. If it's lost it can be restarted from a backup or mirror. But changes made since the last backup or flush will be lost.
I think you're confusing two issues.
- There is one canonical root database. This is where the decisions about what is registered and what is not (at the root level, the TLDs, and the significant [.com,
- There are a number of root servers. These are all effectively mirrors of the contents of the root database as of the last snapshot.
The issue is who maintains the canonical database, which provides the data for the servers, not the servers themselves.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
i don't particularly care for ICANN either, but in regards to what this article is about i basically support them.
Verisign and the other registrars want control over how much they can charge per domain instead of being capped.
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 ($6), or substantially changing the way it runs the domains.
how much you think they would want to charge for their Ultra-Premium DOT.COM domains if they were free to choose their own rates... they made their deal to charge that price, let em stick with it
is no more meaningful than a 3-letter TLD. Both are meaningless in today's Internet. As are the www prefixes on so many of today's webpages. As are the '.' notation...
.com is a straw man. If other countries don't like the cruft which comes with a .com address, then they can freely not take a .com address...
...)
Saying a 2-letter _ASCII_ (e.g. Latin characters) country code in any less US-specific than
What we really need is a change to a global character set (a la Unicode) which will allow native characters in the URL... Have you looked at ASCII approximations of Korean Hangul or Japanese Kanji lately?
At the same time, it would probably be wise to have an international group redesign the registration system entirely. (making it more automated, bypassing pointless "registrars", moving copyright battles into normal courts, dumping the TLD concept entirely,
The reality is, almost any business would run the same way as M$.
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.
Choose the one you prefer:
1. a) Attila the Hun, b) Genghis Kahn
2. a) Stalin, b) Hitler
3. a) headcheese, b) haggis
4. a) trial by ordeal, b) trial by secret tribunal
5. a) death by hanging, b) death by firing squad
6. a) ICANN, b) Verisign
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
Really? In the United States? Who?? And are they still around? Or have they been bought up by some other larger, unethical company (like Phillip Morris).
Please back up your assertion.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
If there's one thing that's a "natural monopoly" it's insuring there are no collisions in a global name space.
True enough, but the monopoly would be miniscule and virtually powerless compared to what we have today if it was done right. There shouldn't be limit on the number of top level domains available to be registered. There's no technical reason for it. We should have thousands of TLDs and dozens, if not hundreds of registrars (I think this is pretty much what you're suggesting as well). Preventing collisions is not difficult, and should not be subject to monetary or political influence. First come first serve. If there's a dispute over trademark or copyright, take it to court or an independent arbitrator. Secretive, unaccountable, and special-interest controlled agencies should not be a part of the process.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Allowing this to be a monopoly is a mistake. Making it a monopoly is the easy choice, but it's the wrong one.
A natural monopoly is something like building city streets. Not selecting a server. A natural monopoly has a small cost of providing the service, and a very large start-up cost, that keeps competitors out. If you need government regulations to keep out the competition, then you aren't a natural monopoly.
Also, even natural monopolies need to be given a hard look. Frequently even something that would naturally tend toward becoming a monopoly can be channelled away from that with only a slight change in the operating requirements.
But ICANN doesn't seem, to me, to come close to being a natural monopoly. They needed a special law from the government to keep out the competitors. That's pretty much proof in and of itself, without looking farther. And, natural or not, they've been an abusive monopoly.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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. ;^P )
You seem to give too much credit to humanity
No sig for the moment.
Considering what it costs me to register a domain through verisign and the foul tricks verisign gets up to in order to get you to reregister the domain (spam mails warning about some theoretical domain loss) I can only laugh at this letter. Can you imagine what the prices would be if the 6$ wholesale cap were removed? $250 for personal use and $10000 if you're a business or some other Microsoft kind of price.
Perhaps private citizens of the world should get together to form a monopoly on businesses. Then every time a large corporation wants to speak to me via mail or advertising they can pay for the privilige.
Others have already commented on Nominet's non-profit structure.
DENIC operates under the very strict German rules of a "licensed cooperative". Every ISP (a few simple technical criteria determine what an ISP is) is entitled membership in this cooperative, it has a clear, open fee structure and has served the German internet community extraordinary well for last few years. It may not be a model for ICANN itself (since there is no real user involvement) but it certainly is a model for an effective, community driven registrar.
When ICANN's Stuart Lynn comments (from the article): he is purposefully distorting the truth with respect to Nominet and DENIC
A natural monopoly is something like building city streets. Not selecting a server. A natural monopoly has a small cost of providing the service, and a very large start-up cost, that keeps competitors out. If you need government regulations to keep out the competition, then you aren't a natural monopoly.
You are confusing economics and politics vs mathematics.
Domain name assignment is not a possible "natural monopoly" because of any economic or political issues.
It is a possible "natural monopoly" becuase (in the absense of a new solution to the distributed update problem - a fundamental computer science conundrum) the process of:
determining that a particular domain name is unassigned and
assigning it to a SINGLE applicant
is indivisible.
This means:
it must occur in a single database
the operator of that database becomes an "authority" over whatever part of the namespace his database assigns and records.
the only known multiple-authority solution that is "decicive" is to divide the namespace into regions and have a separate single authority for each region.
This is the same issue as deciding who is the owner of a particular plot of land - precicely the issue that led to the creation of governments. And because domain names are a resource composed of unique items of considerable value you have the same potentials for conflict as with land.
If you have (as a poster has suggested elsewhere):
two (or more) authorities issuing two diverging interpretations of who owns which parts of a unique divisible resource
the general population divided into factions, with only the opportunity to switch factions or start their own and recruit
the leader of each faction (root server operator) chosing which authority to obey
... natural or not, they've been an abusive monopoly.
you have a political situation. If the faction leaders for most of the population stick with the old leader you have a king or "benevolent dictator". If they desert to a new one you have a peaceful transition to a new king. If they split you have a war.
In this case it would be a "virtual world war", because the entire virtual world would, of necessity, be participating. And because it would be a fight over virtual things of real value, the potential for "collateral damage" is very real.
A peaceful, decicive, solution will thus have single authorities over each chunk of domain name space. That's what I mean by "natural monopoly".
Also, even natural monopolies need to be given a hard look. Frequently even something that would naturally tend toward becoming a monopoly can be channelled away from that with only a slight change in the operating requirements.
By all means let's try to find a better solution. If we do, we can map it directly onto the allocation of other resources and settlement of disputes over them. And thus replace the current forms of government with something better.
But I won't hold my breath - or hold up reforming the current monopoly decision-making system - waiting for it to be invented.
But ICANN doesn't seem, to me, to come close to being a natural monopoly. They needed a special law from the government to keep out the competitors.
That's just the current government (last-resort monopoly on dispute-resolution - natural or otherwise) exercising its prerogative of setting policy about something it thinks it created. With its usual efficiency. B-) The fact that ICANN's monopoly is currently propped up by the government doesn't say jack about whether it's "natural" and the government just picked the winner or whether it's imposed. It just says that it's currently imposed.
The US government selected our current "assigned names and numbers czar" and imposed the monopoly situation. And right now it's about the only group of people in a position to change it.
Now a grass-roots migration to an alternative registry might work for domain names - until a few companies whose names got "squatted" in the alternative registry file suit. But that won't work for IP number ranges. The whole backbone and all the ISPs have to agree on those because if any are in dispute their packets get lost.
Absolutely!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
But, if a large amount of the mirrors defected, quit accepting updates, etc, then they could gain control. Of course this would create a situation where you would randomly get two different results for the same lookup. If enough defected though, it may not matter.
Assigning domain names is the same issue as deciding who is the owner of a particular plot of land - precicely the issue that led to the creation of governments. And because domain names are a resource composed of unique items of considerable value you have the same potentials for conflict as with land.
If you have:
two (or more) authorities issuing two diverging interpretations of who owns which parts of a unique divisible resource
the general population divided into factions, with only the opportunity to switch factions or start their own and recruit
the leader of each faction (root server operator) chosing which authority to obey
you have a political situation. If the faction leaders for most of the population stick with the old leader you have a king or "benevolent dictator". If they desert to a new one you have a peaceful transition to a new king. If they split you have a war.
In this case it would be a "virtual world war", because the entire virtual world would, of necessity, be participating. And because it would be a fight over virtual things of real value, the potential for "collateral damage" is very real.
Earlier on you might have gotten away with a root-server defection. But now that the government has blessed ICANN, and large companies have registered valuable domain names with ICANN-blessed registries, or bought them from others for large sums, it's a new ballgame.
There's no point to going to a new root database unless it's different from the old one. That means some of the domain names in the new one will be assigned to different people than in the old. So if a root server switches, or an ISP's mail server switches to a new root server, some of the people owning domain names in the old root's registry would bring suit - against the owners in the new registry for "domain squatting", and against the root servers and ISPs as well. (Ditto if they ALL swtich at once, only more so.) That's how the virtual war becomes mapped into real-world money and real-world cops-with-guns enforcing real-world government court rulings.
Now inviting such trouble is NOT a profitable business practice. So don't expect ISPs to switch to root servers that point to a new registry or stick with existing root servers that switch. And don't expect operators of existing root servers to switch.
The same applies for essentially any attempt at a change that involves grass-roots abandonment rather than government action, now that the government has blessed ICANN. ICANN, its associates,and their customers won't let go lightly. Be prepared to face them in court.
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