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ICANN vs. ccTLDs in Geneva
Gallowglass writes "The Register is reporting on an interesting meeting in Geneva. To quote from the article, 'Why the huge fuss? Because the meeting threatened to turn into a caucus where rising resentment against ICANN and its attempt to stamp ultimate authority over the Internet could have escalated into international agreement and action.' Didn't quite, but the natives are restless. The article has links to all presentations given at the two day meeting, and also an audio of the event at the bottom of the article. It's also a good summary of the controversy and of its history."
Do they ever stop harassing and stopping Name Resolution? Hell, they KEPT DOCUMENTS FROM THEIR OWN PRESIDENT, and he eventually quit.
OH, and how many 'public' members are still on the ICANT^HN?? None.
Okay what do _you_ want to see replace ICANN, what would make _you_ happy.
Then look at the real players at this event and think. Is the issue that ICANN has too much control or that...
These people, corporations and goverments want a slice of the pie and to dictate it all themselves.
Now given how these things tend to go I wouldn't bet large amounts of Turkish Lira, let alone Dollars, Euros or Pounds that if ICANN is toppled that the resulting quango isn't just a collection of "interested parties" aka "the usual suspects" who try and define the rules for themselves. Lets face it this goes in with the copyright issues in the US, the WTO "screw the 3rd world" and corporatisation of politics and policy.
ICANN might be total and utter nutters and a total pain in the arse. But are you REALLY sure that what comes next won't be worse ?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Translation: The Internet has spread expanded and been encouraged, and ICANN has no doubt helped, but at the same time it's enormous fuckups have engendered massive ill-will in the Internet community.
I and many others voted for him in the open elections specifically so that he would be there to fight the good fight in discussions like these. Submitting a paper and then having ICANN read a synopsis an then disclaim the paper would seem to do more harm than good.
Having said that, its probably worth adding "Force ICANN to reconsider its policy regarding cc TLDs" to the list of impossible things to do before your breakfast!
A little planning goes a long way...
Consider this quote from the article: Many country domain managers are furious at ICANN's constant efforts to get them to sign up to a new set of ICANN terms and conditions - often under threat of withholding vital services - that would effectively hand over control of their domain to the organisation.
This an issue that people all over the world face , both collective entities and individuals, as more and more centralized authorities attempt to both aggregate and control information, as well as any associated privileges it may confer.
While some might argue that a centralized authority is necessary for an organized, well-structured effort, I'd point out that centralized authorities are a form of power and control. Human nature being what it is, this often leads to an effort to acquire more of the same, regardless of its effect on any initial objectives. ICANN should be looking for ways to centralize control over matters related to manage a set of general guidelines within which each member must operate, while still allowing them an appropriate degree of autonomy. It all boils down to an issue of sovreignty, and how this will manifest itself with respect to the internet.
Do you trust such an agency?
See for yourself. http://www.itu.int/
The UN is ineffective; the simple reason is that for major decisions, it requires unanimity of the security council to send UN troops anywhere.
Look at the current Iraq issue: any member of the security council can veto any resolution. So even if there is unanimity, minus one... no action.
Basically, this means that the UN can't even vote to censure a security council member's behaviour, because that member would veto the resolution. Thus the top level people effectively have carte blanche: even if everyone in the UN wanted to stand against them, they would have to do it as individual nations, without organization.
All in all, it's pretty toothless. Which has been both good and bad historically (e.g. no UN peacekeepers landing in Waco, Texas, or in Alabama after Brown vs. The Board Of Education, or in Berkeley, CA, etc., during the Vietnam War).
But for an organization which *has* to make decisions on protocols or assignments of address blocks, or dispute resolution, the ability for one member state to render the whole organization indecisive really can't be tolerated.
-- Terry
You are porbably addressing the exact arguments of the ccTLDs with your statement! What if a country does not wish to have a whois service? Your approach is that they must, the countries is that it is up to them to decide whether or not they want to implement it. Look at this page to see how EU laws regarding data protection made the Irish domain registry remove whois. If we have one world government to rule them all then perhaps we can start to allow ICANN (or their replacement) to govern all the TLDs but until then each ccTLD should be allowed to run intself under any rules it desires. If China/France/Namibia chooses to make their TLD incompatible with the rest of the world why not? DNS is not TCP/IP and as long as a network complies with TCP/IP standards then it is on the net regardless of whether or not they use a DNS system at all or even one which is compatible with the rest of the net. It is up to each hostmaster to determine how they want to progress and whose rules they wish to submit to for any dns resolution they may require.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source