More About The .org Reassignment

Joel Rowbottom writes: "After ICANN 'awarded' ISOC with the running of .ORG in the Draft Staff Report, public comments regarding the process are starting to come out of the woodwork. Eric Brunner-Williams has commented on the flawed scoring and ICANN allegedly using the process to financially shore up ISOC and Afilias; the dotORG Foundation have posted some comments and questions (quote: 'we are perplexed by the Academic CIO Team's rating of our bid's technology as marginal'); Carl Malamud has posted the IMS/ISC response; and Organic have posted a rather damning indictment of the process as well (disclaimer: I work for Organic Names). For the $27,000 it cost each bidder to 'participate' (and that's just the entry fee), we'd have expected a little more professionalism than just getting some 'free' t-shirts! Comment to ICANN today org-eval@icann.org and make a difference."

Comments

Will This ever end

[ResQuad]

They keep complaining and whining about ICANN, why doesnt someone actually get their butt in gear and do something?

Re:Will This ever end

[Anonymous Coward]

"why doesnt someone actually get their butt in gear and do something?"

You mean somebody else, right?

Why don't YOU get YOUR OWN ASS IN GEAR and do something?

Maybe whining on /. will fix it, right?

Write/call/fax your congresscritters, tell your friends, start a website, whatever.

If you really give a shit about icann & .org it's YOUR problem. Quit complaining and help.

Armchair quaterbacks, backseat drivers, .....damn

Re:Will This ever end

[YoPt]

I wonder sometimes about the /. moderating. How does the parent post to this get a 5:insightfull? My Karma is crap on a stick for what I thought were decent shots at humor or my own insightfull thoughts, MUCH more insightfull than than the parent post. Yet I get modded down left and right and a post like this get a 5? WTF?

Re:Will This ever end

[BrookHarty]

Why dont all the people who put in 27K get together and do just that.

Re:Will This ever end

[Anonymous Coward]

Do what? Complain to the Department of Commerce? Try to arrange for alternatives? Try to have ICANNs memorandum of understanding with the DoC withdrawn? Try to have the board replaced? Try to get the processes changed? Try to find damning documents from ICANN by suing them for access?

People have been trying all of the above for a long time. If you have any suggestions for workable approaches to getting ICANN out of the way or reforming them, a lot of people would be very happy.

Re:Will This ever end

[limivore]

Centralized governing bodies will always become corrupt.
Any arguements?
Solution: Distributed governing bodies.

We should abandon trying to manage this language of names. The managing bodies will always rot and end up feeding us poison. Let the language evolve naturally. It works for english, etc.

It works like this: I get a name for a domain or a web location or some other thing. Maybe I made the name up, maybe I got it from a friend. If I find the name useful I'll use it. If I don't then I'll use some other name (slang). I don't have to use the names you use, but it would be convenient to, right? If I'm new to the language I'll get a copy of the dictionary from my neighbor (peer). If conflicts between my naming system and that of other people causes me inconvenience then I'll conform.

Alternatively: How would you like to speak a language designed by Disney/Cocoa-Cola? Not designed for effective communication or reality-rendering power but to maximize corporate profits.
It's happening right now.

---
P2P swarm-logic naming system NOW.
---

And so it goes

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have to pay $27.000 just to participate in something, you can be damn sure that you will not get anything apart from a free t-shirt.

Re:And so it goes

[Anonymous Coward]

But the t-shirt IS free, right?

Does that constitute a proper reacharound?

Inquiring trolls want to know...

first

[Anonymous Coward]

suck it bitches!!!

Dot-Org was so yesterday.......

[YoPt]

As a financial expert I can personally tell you that dot-com and dot-org's are sooooo not where you want you're money anymore. dot-TV is where you should be. For those with onions bigger than GW attempting to use a big word I would highly suggest splitting it 50-50 with dot-Biz

The fact of the matter of the whole dot org

[Anonymous Coward]

situation is that No One Gives A Shit!

Can someone answer a simple question for me?

[jfedor]

After all those reassignments and reorganizations, will they let me keep my .org domain if I'm not a non-profit organization (I'm not a for profit organization either)?

Has it been decided yet? What if I paid for many years in advance?

Thanks.

-jfedor

Re:Can someone answer a simple question for me?

[wfberg]

You're not an organisation? The bar is usually pretty low for being an organisation; under the guise of freedom of association - for example, in the Netherlands it's sufficient to have more than one person to agree on being an association and, voila, you're an association-with-limited-rights (significantly, boardmembers are responsible for their own actions and the association can't beget property) - a (timely) registration at companies' house is legally required, but not registering doesn't change the fact that an association was formed, de facto, as it were.. (After all it can't be illegal not to register a non-existent association, therefore the association has to exist prior to registration.)

You can even found an association with two people, upon which the other person leaves the association, and you have a single-member-association!

The moral is.. check out the law where you are, you might be surprised.

BTW, since organisations can register multiple domain names (any one see that changing? surely vericannfilias want to make money?) you could probably found a foundation with the sole purpose of registering domain names for individuals' use - with proper safeguards etc.

Come to think of it, the Universal Light Church (be ordained now! it's free) might be up for doing something like that ;-)

Seriously, I think there is NO incentive to make .org for (non-profit) organizations only..

Re:Can someone answer a simple question for me?

[chip rosenthal]

There is nothing in these proposals to change .ORG's status as an open TLD.

Re:Can someone answer a simple question for me?

[Com2Kid]

Come to think of it, the Universal Light Church (be ordained now! [ulc.org] it's free) might be up for doing something like that ;-)

My word they have grown, I can remember when I first encountered them on my Juno account (this is before Juno charged money and was an e-mail only service, many people without the Internet just had a juno.com e-mail address, rather nifty actually)

Too bad I didn't print out my cert then, earlier dates are always better and all that. :-D

Re:Can someone answer a simple question for me?

[karl.auerbach]

At the March 2002 ICANN board meeting in Accra (Ghana) there was a resololution about .org. My notes might help answer your question. (See http://www.cavebear.com/icann-board/diary/march-14 -2002.htm [You'll need to search for ".org"]):

I made it clear that I felt that .org should remain an open TLD, that no conditions be placed on those who wish to enter new names into .org or to renew existing names. I would have preferred that this policy be written directly into the resolution. However, board appeared to agree that rather than taking the time to amend the resolution that the board express its sense that ICANN management follow that expressed policy. We will soon find out whether ICANN's management follows that expression.

And ICANN's "staff" would never try to do something behind the back the members of its Board of Directors would they?

Simply put - Urgh

[Komrade S.]

The $27,000 dollar/free t-shirt issue is just a further slap in the face to the true non-profits who "bid". It's further evidence of the current corporate "non-profit" (except for the board members, they get profit!) domain structure being entirely corrupt and disfunctional. I hope people get used to typing IPs in the future, because eventually it's going to come tumbling down... But IPs are another problem entirely. Viva La Gopher!

Re:Simply put - Urgh

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about 15 minutes of fame! Whoever that woman is sporting a free T-shirt is getting more than her share of fame today. ;)
Now that gives me an idea... hehe... (starts designing T-shirt of his own...)

Misread?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me that read their E-mail as evil-org@icann.org?

Re:Misread?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read it as evil-organ.

Gave me a warm, tingly feeling.

Oh well, back to hell I guess.

Why not do this for .com ....

[saskboy]

This is completely unprofessional. The Internet needs some guidance, but I don't see it coming from large corporations. I don't think an Internet run by the government is the best thing either. Any ideas people?

Re:Why not do this for .com ....

[shrdlu]

This is completely unprofessional. The Internet needs some guidance, but I don't see it coming from large corporations. I don't think an Internet run by the government is the best thing either. Any ideas people?

My, my, my. Yet another death of the internet as we know it moment. I don't necessarily agree with the choice made by ICANN, but it's not a popularity contest, folks. If you think that the Internet is something that works without large corporations, you need to pay attention a bit better.

Try a traceroute from somewhere to anywhere else. See all those funny names on the routers? Who do you think owns them? That's right, big corporations. I have a dot org, and I'm not worried in the slightest about anyone changing the rules. The world didn't fall over when some of the root servers moved out of the US, and it won't fall over if management of dot org is by a for-profit organization.

Hey, anything that's not Verisign is fine with me.

Re:Why not do this for .com ....

[saskboy]

My mouth hit the floor when I saw your signature line. Letting the Interent be run primarily by companies that have the bottom line on their mind, is not the way to foster freedom on the Internet nor in anything else. Why do you advocate large corporate CONTROL of the net, if you want to maintain your liberties?

Re:Why not do this for .com ....

[shrdlu]

My mouth hit the floor when I saw your signature line. Letting the Interent be run primarily by companies that have the bottom line on their mind, is not the way to foster freedom on the Internet nor in anything else. Why do you advocate large corporate CONTROL of the net, if you want to maintain your liberties?

I don't ordinarily answer this sort of thing, but I suppose you deserve it. I can see that you are young, and that you may not have a clear idea of how things actually work. You are a user of the resources that make up the Internet proper. The Internet[tm] is "run primarily by companies that have the bottom line on their mind(sic)..." If it was not, who do you think would move those packets?

Certainly not the majority of the denizens on slash dot, amusing though most of them are. Freedom is measured larger than you are looking. I am far more concerned with the erosions of liberty in the US since 9/11 than I am about some silly turf war over who manages a TLD. Sure, I'd have liked to see Carl Malamud and company get the administration; I have a lot of respect for Carl. Still, life goes on.

Get a little perspective on things. I survived the great renaming. Everything else is easy.

Re:Why not do this for .com ....

[zangdesign]

Letting the Interent be run primarily by companies that have the bottom line on their mind, is not the way to foster freedom on the Internet

At best, and worst, the internet should be neutral to all ideology. It's not the job of the administrators to make a determination on who's right or wrong, we have government, the people, and their consciences for that.

A commercial business is no worse or better than a non-profit until it is proven in a court that they have broken the law. A non-profit is driven by ideology, which may be hostile to other ideologies, which (at least under our laws) have the same rights to speak and be heard.

Having a commercial company run a registry is a good way to ensure that the registry keeps running, as opposed to a non-profit, whose funding levels change at the whim of government and contributors.

Let the internet serve up information and leave the ideology to those who provide the information. Proactivity in a registrar can only lead to worse problems.

Sour Grapes

[Anonymous Coward]

We see this with every decision made in the computing world. When Rihndael won the DES competition, a small horde of Bruce Schneier fanboys began instantly to shoot their mouths off about conspiracies because Blowfish didn't win, never mind that it was last in the running.

Like it or not, ICANN's decision was entirely sensible. It may not sit well with the free software community, but it isn't at all surprising that someone would prefer to give this job to a for-profit company. The first reason is that companies are better at looking after their infrastructure. The question posed by the dotORG Foundation regarding technology is loaded with half-truths. Certainly, they are using the same software platform as the registerORG bid, but commercial bids are more able to guarantee stability and scalabilty in hardware terms as demands increase. Open Source simply cannot do this.

A second reason is that ad-hocracies, which are what all well-meaning but informal NGOs are, are not reliable. ICANN could have gone with dotORG, only to find the principal operators of the registry losing interest over the next few years and handing the system over to college freshmen to run. They could change the primary operators of the system at random, in response to lame-brained internal pseudo-democratic structures. ICANN wants to have solid certainty that the guy the spoke to yesterday will be their contact tomorrow as well.

The internet isn't a toy for the geek community anymore, and it's time we faced up to this. The people who run the internet do not share our agenda, and for very good reasons.

Re:Sour Grapes

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah fuck off.

You are a johnny come lately. You are an incompetant fuck with no sense of what the reality of the situation is, comenting from behind the iron curtain of anonymity.

Fusks like you are worthy of flames and scorn.

Re:Sour Grapes

[mrobinso]

No kidding.

The entire internet is overrun with these ninnies to boot. Clueless fuckwads with ghants and flow charts and all manner of cheap uberBabble to help keep their puny little jobs doing sweet fuck all with technology they don't understand one iota.

Sad, and it'll get far worse before it gets better.

How could anything good come out of ICANN's involvement in any-fucking-thing?

Re:Sour Grapes

[Anonymous Coward]

"How could anything good come out of ICANN's involvement in any-fucking-thing?"

Well, rosen and valenti could have a meeting with the icann board, during which a tsunami could wipe them all out in one shot...that would be good.

I can dream, can't I?

Thank you for your time.
Please come again.

Re:Sour Grapes

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying, basically, is that anyone who disagrees with you deserves to die. Nice attitude.

Re:Sour Grapes

[numark]

ICANN could have gone with dotORG, only to find the principal operators of the registry losing interest over the next few years and handing the system over to college freshmen to run.

IIRC, ICANN still keeps a fairly high level of oversight over any group that owns a domain registry. I would highly doubt that they would hand over a perpetual contract to anyone over the .ORG domain space, and they probably (emphasis on probably) have some sort of say in changes in the main people behind the registry. I see this problem as a nonissue, myself.

Re:Sour Grapes

[greenhide]

I disagree that operations run by not-for-profit organizations are inherently inferior to those run by commercial entities. It is my belief that the best non-print news source in the US is NPR - National Public Radio, which is run by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a non-profit corporation.

The reason that not-for-profits *usually* do not have the stability of for-profit companies is that they have a small source of revenue--donations or membership dues. In this case, both the company and the organization would be receiving the same amount of money through registration fees. So they would have plenty of money to use for infrastructure and for scaling their hardware to meet increased demand.

Some of the best work is done by organizations or companies for whom what they're doing is more important than how much money they are making. For-profit entities are more likely to cut staff, or cut corners to ensure profits. On the other hand, non-profits are *required* to spend all the money they take in during a year.

Assuming that .org registrations will still require dues/fees, this indicates a huge amount of money that must be spent. In addition, there is generally a lot more attention paid to *where* that money goes in a non-profit organization. So, it is highly unlikely that they will just get a bunch of "college freshmen" to run the operation--they need to show expenditures, and that would mean hiring many skilled workers.

And finally, if this poster thinks that corporations (especially nice big corporations) are necessarily stable s/he has had his/her head up his/her butt for the past few months!

Re:Sour Grapes

[Com2Kid]

The reason that not-for-profits *usually* do not have the stability of for-profit companies is that they have a small source of revenue


Please do compare this to for profit companies, where by if they do not get at least at 10% increase in PROFITS each year the shit hits the fan and their ass ends up bought out. (yah yah an CGIR3_ but still. . . .)

Not for profit organizations do what they do and get it done, for profit organizations begin to cut corners the second they see their bottom line either being HURT or even just not increasing.

I mean hell look at verisign, they have stooped all the way down to illegal tactics in order to keep their profits from going all the way kerplunk, yah sure nice commercial entity there. . . . and the sad thing is that ANY corporation will sink to the same levels through the sheer pressures of capitalism.

Good for making money, sure, but for running something that the public as a whole depends on for information and knowledge? Hell no, get some people in there who will keep on doing their job no matter what the stock market / investors / board of directors say. Note that above all three groups are interlinked. . . . one goes to shit and bye bye goes the rest of them.

Re:Sour Grapes

[nzadrozny]

first, an aside...

the sad thing is that ANY corporation will sink to the same levels through the sheer pressures of capitalism.

Untrue. Corporations will sink to this level through the immorality and lack of accountability of the people that run them. Capitalism does not imply immorality. The two are completely unrelated concepts.

Second, a quick point, non-profits need less revenue because they strictly cover their economic costs. Level of profit or revenue does not imply anything about the quality of service. Anyway, it's irrelevant in this case since presumably the initial demand and revenue for either non-profits or for-profits will be the same.

Last, some opinions on who should run dot-org:

get some people in there who will keep on doing their job no matter what the stock market / investors / board of directors say. Note that above all three groups are interlinked. . . . one goes to shit and bye bye goes the rest of them.

Again, not quite true. The only things intrinsically linked in our market economy are buyers and sellers. One produces a good or service, the other consumes it. So in this case, it shouldn't really matter who provides the service in question (management of the dot-org registry), so long as they are able to provide said service to consumers.

Now, their policies will dictate what kind of service they provide, which is where we see advantages for choosing non-profits. Non-profits have no use for additional revenue once they have satisfied their economic costs (much in the way a firm running in a perfectly competetive market will operate at zero economic profit). This provides non-profits with the incentives to do two things:

1. Reinvest excess revenue back into the capital equipment of the service they are providing (managing dot-org)
2. Lowering prices, making their service much more attractive and affordable to the huge number of consumers in this market. Considering the democratic nature of the internet (and dot-org), I personally think this is important, as it lowers the barriers to entry into the internet namespace.

If you are familiar with the applications, you'll notice that this is the position of the IMS/ISC proposal. This is probably one of the most important points, besides technical implementation (which IMS/ISC also seems very strong on; heck, they run a root server, maintain BIND and DHCP, and have the grit to make all their code Open Source and publically accountable). This point of where the money goes is important because when the money starts going toward corporate pockets and non-profit programs, you can bet you won't see your better service, lower prices, and lower barriers to entry in the future.

Two additional points:

• Funding non-profit programs (such as ISOC's) are important, sure. But I say let me keep the extra money from my dot-org beyond what it costs to maintain it, and I'll donate individually if I want to.
• ICANN and the current status-quo insiders must be discouraged. The provider of dot-org services must be fully responsible to its consumers alone, not its vested interests in the perpetrators of the current DNS-profiteering mess.

This is typical, isn't it?

[theonomist]

Who exactly oversees ICANN? To whom are they responsible? Anybody?

This is nothing compared to, for example, the UN's casual complicity in the massacres in Srebrenica a decade ago[1], but ICANN and the UN are the same kind of organization and inevitably you get the same result: A mess. This is authority without culpability.

God knows you can't trust the private sector any farther than you can throw them, but sooner or later swine like Enron at least go bankrupt. Of course, that's a bad thing when it happens, too: The immediate burden falls on innocents while Ken Lay walks away rich -- but at least Enron is gone. ICANN and the UN are here forever.

[1] Oh, but some poor jerk in the Dutch government resigned, so it's okay! They found somebody to blame! That means it's all fixed, right? At least from a public-relations standpoint, and that's what really matters. I'm sure the next-of-kin of the 10,000 dead feel much better now.

Re:This is typical, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The UN is responsible to its member states ... and those are responsible to their electorates ... and their electorates dont give their governments any shit about what happens to some moslims in some far away land. So ultimately its us who's to blame.

ICANN is a little worse, since they are trying to make it so they are only responsible to themselves.

Speaking of .org reassignment. . .

[Dunhausen]

riaa.org now belongs to some script kiddie.

http://www.riaa.org/storymain.htm

Re:Speaking of .org reassignment. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed so it seems.
How very nice of them to offer me some music.

Most unfortunate stuff this.

Re:Speaking of .org reassignment. . .

[optikSmoke]

Heh. I read a story about that three days ago (28th) on LinuxSecurity (the article is here). A copy of the site, in all its hacked-up glory, is also available here.

I'm kind of surprised, though. You'd think that three days would be enough time for RIAA's 1337 h4x0r5 to both (a) find the perpetrators and retaliate, and (b) fix their site!

Please up-mod parent. Thank you!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the first rational post I've seen on Slashdot in two years.

I'm getting kinda choked up here. No, really. Rationality always does that to me. Even on Slashdot.

The erosion of civilization

[Anonymous Coward]

Civilization is a fragile thing that starts from a high place, then falls and shatters. It's rebuilt higher than before, and then shatters with greater force each time.

What causes the falls? When the people who maintain the machinery of society discover their stewardship can be used for self enrichment. Like the organs of a dying man, shutting down one by one, the compartments of government stop serving the body of society, since their efforts are now
consumed towards enriching their corrupt stewards.

The shattered remains can then join the other failed societies in the history books, so future generations can have a detailed map of what is in store for them as well.

Re:The erosion of civilization

[akc]

Isn't this just what Hari Seldon predicted in his Pyschohistory Mathematics.

Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

Boycott the .org reassignment: Slashdot's address is http://64.28.67.150/

Greenpeace, the left, and many slashdotters lie!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

SATELLITES SHOW OVERALL INCREASES IN ANTARCTIC SEA ICE COVER

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020820souths ea ice.html

Even in the story about the electric cars, so many were wetting their pants about greenhouse gases and how all the ice is melting. Lies all lies.

What will it take?

[unsinged int]

Anyone who pays attention to this stuff has to know by now that ICANN is seriously flawed. What's it going to take for a large number of people (or just a few very recognizable and important ones) to ditch them and go with something like OpenNIC?

We really don't need ICANN. Get rid of it, please.

answer: you're an element of the empty set

[Anonymous Coward]

S = set of domain owners making profit.

intersect(S, complement(S)) = {}.

Re:answer: you're an element of the empty set

[jfedor]

No, I'm simply not an organization.

When was the last time you've seen an organization posting on Slashdot anyway?

-jfedor

Re:answer: you're an element of the empty set

[tot]

Ditto. tot

Full coverage of this issue at ICANNWatch.org

[Froomkin]

You will find full coverage of the .org issue at ICANNWatch.org. My personal take on what happened is in essays titled Old Internet Thinking RIP and ICANN to Give .org to ISOC: Insiders Win Again?. And then there's the .org song, It had to be you.

Or you can browse the whole ICANNWatch .org archive.

I'm sorry, but...

[Raul654]

...For all the evils of ICANN, they do have a point. Yes, they artificially keep the pool of available websites limited by limiting the number of TLDs. Yes, the process is corrupt, they are evil, and should all burn in hell. But, by the same token, all the proposed "solutions" that involved p2p root servers, unlimited TLDs, etc - as I see it, that would be the quickest way to "break" the internet - make it a big, nonfunctioning mess.

Re:I'm sorry, but...

[dh003i]

Tea, sure, whatever.

You and others like you who've cried about the potential instability of adding mny TLDs have never proven nor shown your point.

Its just a bunch of hogwash you made up to keep create an artificial and unnecessary scarcity on the net.

Even if we decide to keep ICANN, it shouldn't be run by the current set of crooks who run it. People like Vint Cerf and Stuart Lynn are crooks on par former executives of Enron and Global Crossing.

People I trust to do the right thing on ICANN include people like:

Karl Auerbach
Lawrence Lessig
Richard Stallman
Bruce Perens
and other recognized members of the Open Source / Free Software communities, or of the EFF.

Re:I'm sorry, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain how unlimited TLDs will "break" the Internet.

Re:I'm sorry, but...

[Raul654]

Large numbers of TLDs won't break the internet in the technical way that p2p DNS server would, but they would cause problems none-the-less. I mean, I think it goes without saying that people are very used to the major TLDs - .com, .net, and .org. To a much smaller extent, they accept the nation-specific ones (.uk, .it, .fr, .cn, etc), and might even accept the newer ones (.biz, .name, et al). But once you start throwing in large numbers of arbitrary ones (.opensource, .pizzaplace, .auctions, .computers, .lawncare, etc) then you are bound to create problems, because when you advertise, people not only have to remember your address but your TLD as well.

Re:I'm sorry, but...

[Raul654]

Please see my response to a sibling to your comment

Re:I'm sorry, but...

[mledet]

Whereas now they don't? You just listed quite a few tlds, shouldn't the "internet" be broken already? Damn.. We better hurry up and get rid of all existing tld's b/f the "internet" is rendered unfixable.

Re:I'm sorry, but...

[unsinged int]

People don't have to remember anything...

That's what Google is for.

Re:I'm sorry, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

[Having unlimited TLDs are bad] because when you advertise, people not only have to remember your address but your TLD as well.

This is a really silly argument. I run my own business, and when I advertise, I certainly don't expect people to remember my phone number, my name, my address, and my website address. These things are printed in the yellow pages, on business cards, and on brochures. If someone visits the site enough, perhaps they'll memorize the URL, just like with a phone number.

Are you aware that there are over 250 TLDs right now? When someone types in platypus.ee, do you think they're aware that .ee is the country code for Estonia? It could be "Electrical Engineer" for all the average user knows--the ending isn't important, it's what's on the site that matters.

People with no knowledge of the Internet at all don't have any trouble with unlimited TLDs, because they're not preconditioned to associate meaning with the extension, and think everything has to be a .com, .org, or .net. And people with a lot of knowledge are likewise unaffected by this "it's confusing" argument, because they know that the domain name is just a layer of abstraction over IP addresses. It seems to be only those half-educated few in between, who possess just enough knowledge to be dangerous, who get their feathers ruffled over the concept of unlimited TLDs.

When I was a kid, I lived in a small town where everyone had the same area code and prefix on their phone, and you could get away with dialing only the last four digits to reach people. It was hardly any great culture shock to be introduced to modern cities, where one had to remember 10 digits in a phone number? And these are totally random collections of numbers.

Seriously, this is a pretty weak argument for keeping monopolistic restrictions on TLDs.

Re:I'm sorry, but...

[0x0d0a]

You know, there are people (like myself) who don't approve of ICANN's decisions but *still* think that unlimited TLDs are an awful idea.

Frankly, I don't think even the new TLDs should have been allowed. The problem is not, and never was, a limited name space. It was "keyword space" in the .com area, domain name squatting, and companies buying related names.

The "keyword space" issue was Netscape's fault. However, *both* of the others were problems caused by registrars encouraging people to squat on domains and companies to "also buy the related .org and .net addresses with one easy click!".

Also, while I like the *idea* of OpenNIC (an alternative group of people doing things the "right" way), I've been less than impressed with the reality. OpenNIC seems to mostly devolve into political/ideological arguments reminicent of the HURD or Debian mailing lists, rather than to be terribly effective. Finally, my idea of the "right way" is to not add in bogus TLDs like ".biz" and friends.

Re:I'm sorry, but...

[0x0d0a]

I personally find there to be a great deal of value in being able to look up the geographical location that a name corresponds to.

I find your claim that only the "half educated few in between" want limited TLDs to be insulting.

Re:I'm sorry, but...

[sg_oneill]

Damn right. Some time ago, It really struck me that the traditional meaning of .com and .org etc as meaning "usa" ;-
(1)seemed to me real unfair to overseas folk because our tld's where second level really, or
(2)unfair to US folk because it hid the identity of US entitys.
Ultimately it's actually (2) that seems prevelant because no tld represents "multinational" and yeah theres no common use USA tld. Ie microsoft.com.us or whitehouse.gov.us . international bodies should perhaps get a amnesty.org.in or un.org.in (Or for a rofl for conspiracy heads un.gov.in)

yes

[ArchieBunker]

Transfer it over to joker.com because they don't care if you use fake contact info and it only costs around 12 euros per year. Its the choice of spammers everywhere.

RIAA website hacked

[Anonymous Coward]

dsfgousdfyg odfs gsdf osdfg sad ofusdgsdoaf dofgh os sg.

This is probably a really stupid question

[Tokerat]

What prevents somebody from starting their own TLD and just claiming it for use? Are there laws? Trust issues? Or is it just that everyone's DNS server would filter out/be incompatable with it? With all this trouble that ICANN('T?) seems to cause, I guess my real question is, who needs them?

I'm not too familiar with the technicalities of the whole domain thing...can someone elaborate?

Re:This is probably a really stupid question

[CodeMonky]

Unless the root servers list your tld no one will be able to find you (unless you use one the alternate dns systems).

Re:This is probably a really stupid question

[Kindaian]

a) You must have ip's;
b) you must have access to register to the root servers...

The answer for a) is simple... money... you can buy blocks of ip ranges at a fairly cheap price (unit cost... as the package is a bit expensive, because they are sold as blocks of large qt of them)...

For b) you must persuade the root server administrators to allow you to register your server as a source for updates... which means... yes... ICANN...

Of course, you can always request and then sue them for not allow it... better use an european court, because in the states you won't have a chance... (ICANN is mostly an american institution and they trully think they OWN the internet)...

Cheers...

Re:This is probably a really stupid question

[llywrch]

> Of course, you can always request and then sue them for not allow it... better use an european court, because
> in the states you won't have a chance...

Actually, I think a civil suit in the US might work better than in an European court for one strong reason -- due process.

As I understand it, for better or worse ICANN is acting as an agent for the US government. US Constitutional law has been very explicit about the importance of due process, & federal courts will force US agencies to restart the process when they are convinced this principal has not been followed. (Even though the current administration has been trying to make an end run around it ``for security reasons".)

What this means is that for the .org TLD to be managed by the non-profits, they may have to go to court & trudge thru litigation for years over this issue. Distasteful as it is, since ICANN refuses to be open or law-abiding maybe the best solution is to let loose the landsharks of war upon this cabal.

Geoff

Re:This is probably a really stupid question

[The_Guv'na]

The DNS system is basically a phone directory for the internet. It takes a domain name and spits back an IP number.

What prevents somebody from starting their own TLD and just claiming it for use?

The 8 [I think, or however many there are] big fat hot root servers sitting around the world at various hush-hush locations, the big hard doors they're hidden behind, and the fact that you are not authorised to go and fiddle with them.

Are there laws? Not exactly, AFAIK, but see above.

Trust issues? Yeah, we could never trust people to just make up new TLDs whenever they wanted. Oh, and we don't trust ICANN.

Or is it just that everyone's DNS server would filter out/be incompatable with it? To take a effect across the internet, it would have to be introduced by the root servers, then over the next few hours it would filter down to all the other DNS servers. They could be at ISP's, Uni's, or wherever.

With all this trouble that ICANN('T?) seems to cause, I guess my real question is, who needs them? We do, the same way we need governments. The DNS servers we use [that usually means the ones owned by our ISP's] update their info from the root servers. They could just as easily set their servers to update from somewhere like OpenNIC as well as the usual servers, but generally speaking, they just don't.

Ali

Re:This is probably a really stupid question

[swb]

What prevents somebody from starting their own TLD and just claiming it for use? Are there laws? Trust issues? Or is it just that everyone's DNS server would filter out/be incompatable with it?

I've always assumed its just the latter. We've run a totally bogus TLD for some time where I work due to the cryptically idiotic configuration of an application server to have a host name of "foo.bar.bar" (not the real host name, but you get it..). Even better, some of the client applications are configured with "server=foo.bar.bar". Rather than create a hosts entry on each machine, we just decided, WTF, let's be authoritative for the .bar TLD. The software (BIND and clients) didn't care it wasn't an ICANN approved TLD.

The biggest stumbling block is that most people's DNS servers wouldn't know where to find arbitrary TLDs, since they'd only be setup to use the "official" root servers. If some group decided they wanted a new TLD like ".bar" they could convince everyone that ".bar" was for real, announce they were hosting the root service for ".bar" and try to convince everyone to add the new root servers to their DNS server's hints list.

AFAIK this has been tried before and failed because ISPs and other key DNS providers didn't buy into it by including these DNS hints, rendering most of the new TLDs unresolvable. There may be some diehard groups that bought in and just don't care that no one else can resolve their TLDs, but... The lack of resolvability is the killer issue. ICANN can't really stop it other than to just not agree to put these new TLDs in their root servers, which pretty much ensures the lack of resolvability.

My own soapbox position on all this is that we need no TLDs; the 2nd LD should be the TLD (eg, slashdot not slashdot.org). The presumption that we need TLDs to categorize the net was a nice idea until Network Solutions sold .net, .org to anyone with a checkbook. Due to copyright/trademark reasons and corporate greed, a lot of domain names will be owned across mulitiple TLDs, limiting the "expansion" new TLDs are to provide. The marketplace for names would operate much more efficiently if there was a sense that scarcity of namespace was real.

I wouldn't eliminate all TLDs, since some organizations (.gov and .mil) use these TLDs essentially the way other smaller organizations use 2nd LDs, and some entities seem to like existing within country code TLDs.

Mod Parent +1 Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you.

Your sig...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you come up with a different acronym so people don't confuse it with Attack of the Clones? Your sig looks like a fucking eBay auction title. "4 Channel PCI Sound Card (Not Creative Labs Audigy Live)"

another potentially stupid question....

[wa1rus]

..How did ICANN actually come to be in the position they are in? How was this authority bestowed upon them? (Sorry, I don't know the full history of all this)

How about googling the IP addresses?

[chris_mahan]

Since googles crawls the web constantly and IP addresses are semi permanent, can't google actually replace the DNS system? All they need to mark is the IP address and point to that in the search answer.

Re:How about googling the IP addresses?

[Carlos Laviola]

Oh yeah, now tell me, how are you going to host 700 websites on a machine with 699 IP addresses? Oh, you need one more? What a shame, I'm already using the one you're missing to host all of my 700 sites! It's called virtual hosts.

Re:How about googling the IP addresses?

[sg_oneill]

Oh yeah, now tell me, how are you going to host 700 websites on a machine with 699 IP addresses? Oh, you need one more? What a shame, I'm already using the one you're missing to host all of my 700 sites! It's called virtual hosts.

Ok... Now you've lost me. Here I am still marvelling on how I've managed to host a whole buncha websites with diff domain names on my one IP adress, and you throw this curve ball at me telling me it's because I've not used up my 699 IP adresses, all of which just happen to be the same. Trippy dude.... Verrry trippy. And I thought that the virtual host section on that nutty old Apache server just wanted diff dns listings.

And I still don't get how this ties in to the original post. Or for that matter how google *would* replace DNS?

Re:How about googling the IP addresses?

[chris_mahan]

Easy:

IP v6

The reason why IP v6 is not coming along as well as it needs to is that the DNS system would no longer be needed. And ICANN would just go nuts, and ISPs would actually have to get better hardware because there would be alot more records. It would not be 40-80 million but rather billions. Heck, each browser could have a permanent IP.

Re:How about googling the IP addresses?

[Carlos Laviola]

You must be stupid. I was giving an example. If we were to have no DNS, we'd need one different IP for every website. Let me break it down for you: even if the guy had 699 different IPs, he wouldn't be able to host 700 different websites, whereas I, with a single IP, (700 - 699 = 1) could host all of his 700 websites today because with DNS, I can separate them into virtual hosts.

I hope you understand now.

That's way too funny...

[unsinged int]

I thought that was a joke as the site should be www.riaa.com....but they both have the same thing. Incredible.

Surprised?

[RWarrior(fobw)]

Why is anyone surprised that the process was rigged? This isn't Florida, guys. ICANN doesn't even make a pretense of being representative. This is not new, and it is no shock that ICANN has gone crony.

ISOC -- it ain't perfect, but it'll do

[iritant]

Want to get your document through the IETF process? Well, the IETF is going to need to scale. In order to do that, they're probably going to need money. And where will that money come from? How about those of us who benefit from their standards? Are we talking beaceaup bucks? Probably not, but I could certainly think of worse places for the money to go.

Re:ISOC -- it ain't perfect, but it'll do

[nzadrozny]

My money for my dot-org should go to its maintenance. Excess revenue should be reinvested into the infrastructure or returned in the form of price cuts. If I want to pay to support IETF and ISOC's services, I will. What I don't want is for them to tax me without my permission by exploiting their monopoly on dot-org. The same goes for whatever organization is awarded control of dot-org. In fact, the same goes to any organization, corporation, or government branch in general, but we'll get to those one step at a time...

Re:ISOC -- it ain't perfect, but it'll do

[iritant]

And I bet you also wouldn't want to pay to put out somebody elses' fire. But when it comes to YOUR house...

Re:ISOC -- it ain't perfect, but it'll do

[nzadrozny]

I don't think your analogy is quite accurate.

Yes, there are certain public services that apply to the entire public can only be financed by the entire public. Fire fighting pertains to me, because presumably at some point my house is at risk of catching fire.

Furthermore, I could see you extending that analogy by saying that ISOC provides services to all of dot-org that can only be financed through dot-org revenues. However, I say that this is flawed for two reasons:

1. Not all of ISOC's programs benefit all of dot-org. So why tax all of dot-org?
2. The ones that do benefit all of dot-org benefit more than just dot-org. So why tax just dot-org?

dot-org should be charged for the services that pertain to all of it: infrastructure and maintenance of the registry. Excess revenue should go toward price cuts.

As for the rest of ISOC's stuff, find the right people to charge.

Re:ISOC -- it ain't perfect, but it'll do

[iritant]

Alright, a couple of things:

Not all of ISOC's programs benefit all of dot-org. So why tax all of dot-org?

Since the vast majority of ISOC's programs involve the IETF and standards organization support, it's really hard for me to accept the above statement.

The ones that do benefit all of dot-org benefit more than just dot-org. So why tax just dot-org?

I have no objection to taxing other domains, but I don't see the mechanism necessary to do the job. Furthermore, I'm actually betting that ISOC can "tax" .org and yet come in well below the costs of other domains.

As for the rest of ISOC's stuff, find the right people to charge.

That's easy to say and hard to do. I would argue that since we all benefit from ISOC we should all pay a small fee, and so again I would accept the notion that all domain owners pay a small fee.

I would be happy to continue this conversation. To do so, disentangle my email address and feel free to mail me.

Re:This is typical, isn't it? - OFF TOPIC

[greenhide]

I'd never heard of the massacre myself -- obviously I don't pay enough attention to world news.

In any case, for those who want to know more about what happened, here are some links:
The Rohde to Srebrenica
Women of Srebrenica
US Congressional Hearing

Look at the t-shirt link first

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm willing to be my wireless, the guy on the left voted "I live with my parents."

Too Bad We're Late

[euphline]

Too bad this didn't get posted before the comment deadline:

Public comments on this draft report should be submitted by e-mail to org-eval@icann.org on or before 29 August 2002. A final version of this Staff Report, taking into account comments received, will be posted on 5 September 2002, and comments will also be invited on that final version.

Of course, IMHO, 10 days is an awfully short public comment period.

-jbn

We did. Ssix years ago.

[rs79]

http://support.open-rsc.org

Or use OpenNIC (but you wont get as many tlds)

But whatever you do dump ICANNs root zone and while you're atit dump BIND and run DJBDNS lest you be compelely mired in the 80s.

http://slash.dot anybody? Or are you really stuck on this .org thing?

Re:We did. Ssix years ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

>http://support.open-rsc.org [open-rsc.org]

>Or use OpenNIC (but you wont get as many tlds)

Those two are easy to add to my DNS lookup.

The rest appear to require a software installation, so that I can use them. Why can't
the others just give me an IP address or two,
like those two do?

Abolish TLDs

[Anonymous Coward]

This wouldn't even be an issue if they simply eliminated the coveted top level domain naming system.

Quite simply, this is nothing more than a spectrum auction or a broadcast license; they're both a permit to print money.

There really is no longer any technical reason for top level domain naming. It's time to seek the abolishment of this arcane method of managing hostnames to IP address.

ICANN is responsible to DoC/NTIA

[rs79]

ICANN has a Momorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the US Department of Commerce (DoC) National Telelcomunications Infrastructure Administration (NTIA).

And yes, they ARE idiots.

Bingo

[rs79]

Google knows their place in the DNS. But they aren't willing to make a move yet. Keep in mind the guy that legitimized the alt newsgroups is now director of engineering there.

You could do worse than write to google and ask them to do something.

http://rfc1591.com

[rs79]

Oy. Tall order to fill in this timeline in only a few paragraphs, but since I was there here goes.

The National Science Foundation originally had a competition to administed names (domains) and numbers (IPs) and three companies won the award and ran it together: AT&T Ran "DS" directory services, Government Solutions ran "RS" registrations services and General Atomics ran "IS". I forget what IS stood for. RS was "the nic" and took it over from SRI; IS was supposed to create 50 additional NICS.

GA flaked out and GS took their job over and renamed itself Network Solutions.

In 1994 an article appeared in Wired where some clown registered Mcdonalds.com and tried to sell it to Burger King. From that day on the face of the domain name landscape was inexorably changed. Registration volume shot up expoentially and latency went from 3 days to 11 weeks at the peak.

The NSF was paying for all this and while they didn't mind subsidizing research and educational use of the network they were not gonna pay for deoderant.com and the like so they asked the FNCAC what to do. They recommended the NSF tell NSI to charge for domains. They did and everybody got pissed off.

The domain-policy@internic.net mailing list went asymtotic and the "new domain people" split off to the "newdom" mailing list; Postel was one of them and he made up 3 drafts, each successively worsr; the second one had a tithe to none other than ISOC and the third one crated IAHC.

In July of 98 (?) the US Guvmins shut down IAHC as being just too damn silly and began a series of interagency task force meetins (that an ex NSF staffer refers to as "the turkey farm") and Commerce kept saying they had all the answers so everybody giggles and said "Ok, run with it".

In 1999 ni Becky Burr's office, Kathy Kleniman and Mikky Barry suggested some conferences around the world to measure consensus. Rather than debate the contentious points, they were to find where there was consensus. Thus the IFWP meetings were born: one in Virginia, one in Geneva, one in Singaport. Ira Magaziner was at each one (although only on video tape in Singapore) and at each one stated "this is in your peoples hands. Postel himself told me at the Geneva conference that it was "all up to them" (pointing at the conference room) now.

Mike Roberts was on the steering committee for this represennnnting EDUCAUSe (who run .EDU now) and when plans for a 4th meeting to do a wrap up and define what the new company would be to replace IANA, he tanked the whole process.

At this time Ira had been running around with ROger Cochetti of IBM (now a Verisgn VP) picking a board and Joe Sims (now an ICANN attorney) wrote up bylaws and together these lot presented NTIA with a proposal.

Two ther proposals were offered: the Boston Working Group, what was left of IFWP and ORSC.

The NTIA picked the Magaziner/Cochetti/Sims plan and that's the ICANN we have today.

You can see all the early history at http://newdom.faq although you may need to visit http://support.open-rsc.org to see this domain. But it's all there. And it's ugly.

See also http://lists.ifwp.org, altough the CIX who ran this before it fell into my lap loast all the early archives.

Think again

[0x0d0a]

So I'd almost call this post a troll, but it has a point -- that maybe commercial types would do a better job.

However, you're missing one thing -- the informal group of volunteers and engineers that produced and have kept much of the administrative side of the Internet going for thirty years now *are* the open source/volunteer types that you're bashing so much. As a matter of fact, the commercial types are the untested ones, not the volunteer engineers.

Hmmm, makes sense!

[panck]

Comment to ICANN today org-eval@icann.org and make a difference.

While I have my email client open, I'm gonna send a message to billg@microsoft.com :

Dear Bill,

I would really appreciate it if you would stop those deceptive business practices.

P.S. Also, please stop being a monopoly.

Sincerely Yours,
Alexander Dumbass

ICANN screws up again, film at 11

[Tom]

honestly, did anyone here expect anything else? in its entire history, ICANN has been nothing but a catastrophic failure. in fact, so much that I wouldn't be surprised if there were some intention behind it. not that I knew which one, but I just don't believe anymore that someone with honest intentions could screw up so royally - not once or twice, but in a row.

looks a lot like DMCA to me. while the whole geekdom agrees that DMCA is the worst law ever, just last year congress published an essay saying, essentially, that they were very pleased and it worked exactly as advertised.

ICANN probably works exactly as intended, too. that's where I'd start to look if I could bring myself to care anymore.

The 'free' t-shirt says....

[garrettd]

I paid $27,000 to 'participate' and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

Can I Get A Witness

[thelizman]

So, aside from the usual (yet, richly deserved) ICANN bashing, WTF does this mean to me as an owner of a dot-ourgh domain?

RIAA's spelling troubles

[Anonymous Coward]

Got a 404. They can't spell: They have a news article from the Deseret News, but it's misspelled "Desert". Tried to e-mail them, but their ColdFusion is misconfigured.