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ICANN Ditches Public Participation
Ziest writes "The AP is reporting that ICANN, who is meeting in Shanghai, has voted to eliminate direct elections to its board of directors." See also does-not-exist.org. It's not as if this is recent change -- just the last step in a long process.
I'm not trolling, just asking what I think is a legit question.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
This is a part of the long term plan of the business community to appropriate the Internet after it flew in totally under their radar.
They want to turn the whole digital thing into push technology in the hands of a few - like TV.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Okay, this situation has become quite surreal. There isn't even any sneaking around on this thing they're doing. They're clearly going well outside of what they were created to do... way out of bound on this.
Frankly, I do not want to see people writing their senators on this one though. I want to see an internet-elected system that everyone has dreamed of and then MAKE IT HAPPEN. Once we have a respected and responsible internet name counsil created along with a good base set of servers, then we simply persuade everyone to switch over.
Okay... I see the first hurdle that will be difficult -- getting people to switch. It can be done people. If there is no interruption in normal usage, it can be done. Further, once we have a good strong and accountable body in place with all the rules and regs ironed out in such a way that everyone agrees it to be a fair system, THEN we start crying to our senators and stuff. Show them that not only is ICANN screwed up, but we have something created to replace them today. Once they see that we offer more than a complaint, but a solution, how can they easily say no?
We can make a huge petition to push this thing through. They have to listen.
Complaints alone will not correct this problem. If you leave it to someone else to fix it, it will not be fixed in a way you will appreciate.
Now I'm just wondering how long will it take for the board our our Government or someone to sell out vast proportions of available internet bandwidth or addressing to large media companies "in the spirit to increase the public benefit" much like what happened to another of our 'public' resources, the television broadcast spectrum. The last thing I want to see is "internet TV brought to you by MSNBC" and the rest of us getting 5 minutes of public access... The public should be involved in what direction public resources take, either directly or indirectly. Getting cut out of the loop means we're gonna get screwed somehow, somewhere down the line.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
Over the years, idealists and dreamers have talked about the Internet like it's a new country or community, and that We The People own it. Well, here's a test for that assertion. Now we have to get off our lardasses and go through the strenuous exercise of typing new numbers into our /etc/resolv.conf files. I know, it's hard.
When we throw off ICANN's rather loosely-bound chains, then maybe those Internet "Declaration of Independance" ideas will be more than mere pretentious and immature daydreams, and we'll be Real Men, like our forefathers who had the courage to implement the 1986 Usenet renaming. ;-) Until then, though, ICANN and others like them, have no reason to pay attention to rants on Slashdot. At most, they might look down into our little field and idly wonder what we are "baaah"ing about.
As for some ideas on how to get from here to there, I recommend Brad Templeton's essays on DNS. He has put some thought into this that goes deeper than, say, the OpenNIC project.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
There are plenty of bodies like ICANN that are appointed indirectly. The problem with ICANN is that first they don't appear to want to be accountable to anyone at all and second their decisions appear to be utterly clueless to every consituency they might be attempting to please.
One might think that they would work out a somewhat more cluefull approach to funding than to simply try to shake down the country TLDs for huge sums. ICANN has no credible threat to back its demands. If they drop .uk from the root the root moves for sure.
In fact the whole business about who controls the DNS really comes down to the DNS root server operators and in particular the ones with the serious servers for the task. ICANN do not own the IP addresses, the root server operators do.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
DNS is flawed. When designed, it no doubt made sense to limit the system to a fixed set of TLD's and root servers. Technology wasn't available at the time to allow for much else. Creating an artificially limited namespace was a necessity driven by the cost of implementation. And as a balance to that, there was no fee to register a domain.
o nths.com and the like. DNS names are the equivalent of addresses or telephone numbers. There is no one demonstrating outside the UN for more countries so they can get a postal address or banging on the ITU's door that more country codes are needed so they can get a phone. Country names and country codes are the equivalent of TLDs
The problem isn't with with the DNS, it's with misusing the DNS as though it is a flat namespace. Thus you get www.someadvertisingsloganwhichwillonlybeusedfor3m
My neighbor's uncle was there, and he assures me that Il Duce's train schedules bore the same relation to reality as Potempkin's villages.