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Why Talk About Internet Governance?
andyo wrote to mention an article on the O' Reilly network entitled Why They're Talking About Internet Governance. The piece goes into the history of how things came to be in the first place, as regards the distribution of internet domain space. From the article: "Having established commercial beachheads on the Internet, corporations wanted to own the whole terrain. Through the World Intellectual Property Organization ... they were designing a new regime for handling domain names. It was nicely suited to large corporations ... Within weeks of the successful conclusion of the Global Incorporation Alliance Workshop, a lash-up of Internet leaders, Network Solutions, and other back room forces popped a proposal of their own on a surprised and unprepared Internet community. The proposal ... ultimately led to ICANN. Most stakeholders were left out of the decision--even many large corporations were angry--but the Commerce Department approved the proposal, happy to wash its hands of the issue. "
I would say when a topic is repeated this often that nothing be modded Flambait or Offtopic, just to liven things up a bit...
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
5th time in two weeks
LINUX ONLINE POKER: Linux Poker
66.35.250.150....The Artist formerly known as Slashdot
...then when you hijack someones domain, people wearing little blue hats and driving Nissan Patrols will come knocking on your door with a resolution number. Then you can ignore it and do what ever you want thinking "I just got a visit from the internet police!"
But serious, whoever runs it should let everyone in the world should have a say, not just a US company.
And internet police would be a good idea also. But make them wear polkadot hats. Red ones, with black dots. That would be nice.
If only there was some group of Nations that were United, they could run things. I wonder what we would call this group of United Nations.
Echoes my sentiments exactly
"The whole domain name problem could have been solved in a way that would have eliminated strife over domain allocation." Maybe your next entry should explain how.
~jennifer.k~
None of the of the above.
If anything all goverments should be barred from having anything to do with internet. Lord know's that one of them will find a way to fuck this up too.
M$ it's whats for diner!!!!!
It may be a trollish thing to say, but people tend to confuse "the FBI looking for child pornographers" with "the government keeping us down and invading our privacy". They're different in that one is vauge and the other is not. The FBI or whoever should have complete authority to bust those out there who are overtly harmful, to the extent that net hubs should be under the control of government and can be trawled for - specifically - child porn and dirty old men trying to lure teenagers into cafes for "friendship and more". The devil is in the details, as in any government bureau's remit should include to the letter what it is and is not looking for. "Anything inciting violence" is too vauge, but "online cocaine transactions" is not. To successfully battle internet crime, this distinction should be made.
I think that change in Domain governance will occur inevitably. As far as I remember, the world is running out of IPs, and eventually everyone will have to start using IPV6. This change may or may not become a significant oppurtunity for governments or corporations for make tremendous changes (In my view there is an oppurtunity for change). In my utopia, domain name registration (governance, as the article stated) would be managed by a world wide governing body which would commit to free (as it $$$) and fair distribution of domain names (so that no one can profit off of taking a range of names and forcing others to pay for them). The UN is however is not such an organization; never has not never will be.
I have finished this thread for you:
>It's not broke don't fix it. (+5, Insightful)
>>Yea but America controls it and I don't like America. (+4, Interesting)
>The UN IS CORRUPT (+4, Interesting)
>> We can just have some countries control it, then (+5, Insightful)
>>> Most of those countries already censor the internet! (+5, Interesting
>>>> At least they don't bomb people! (+4, Funny)
>>>>>We saved your ass in WWII. STFU (-1 Troll)
>>>>>>Arrogant Americans. Just like all Americans. All Americans are ignorant and generalize. (1, Redundant)
>I hate microsoft (+5, Off-Topic)
There is the world cup for football (soccer), and it is world series time, so let us have a playoff format.
Nude mudwrestling anyone? Nethack? Darts? Beer Pong? Cricket on donkeys?
There isn't any reason not to have some fun while we are doing it.
I am concerned if the EU or UN is able to take over control that we will suffer due to censorship. Free speech and interchange of ideas is part of who we are. It is the reason we now have an Internet. I would support forking instead of capitulating.
Just as regualation destroys free trade, it will make the internet crawl to a halt. It is only a matter of time before more governments get their hands on it and destroy the free nature of the net. It is only a matter of time. The UN and the EU want to get control of it, you can ensure that it will become highly hampered, even taxed to use to give it to those that can afford it in good socialist fashion.
I think you're comments show exactly why some of us Euros don't think the US should be in control (of anything). I thought maybe with all the military activity the US national geographic awareness may have risen a little...
You can visit the ICANN site and listen to the meeting, informative to say the least. Many sound like they have poor memories, some you can almost hear then snore over the mics and likely many had too much to drink before the meeting.
Someone didn't want ICANN making much decisions so they stacked it with people who would paralyze any further development. This is clear.
The UN is not much different for the most part.
The internet naming is already fragmented and less standard. China for example is using DNS to filter content. We can expect this fragmention to continue.
Ultimately the Internet belongs to the people. And it will be run by the people if necessary. If something becomes popular, ICANN nor the UN could stop it. The Chinese are already creative, using proxies outside their country to bypass the government.
I for one welcome the idea to ban dislexics on the internet.
The net in its current state is mostly unrestricted, except in countries like china where the government wants strict control of what their people see. Whenever there is a group of people made up of leaders from different organizations (or countries) they are going to make demands that the others will compromise on. This may include 1 country saying 'I want all my people to not see websites about and I'd like to pass a bill that all ISP's have to block access from ip addresses coming from my country'. Now things like blocking contents should be managed by the country/org and not by the 'world'. By having the UN step in we'll start to see the internet become a more restricted place which could prevent innovation, and access to information to those 'really needing it'.
From TFA:
Should bloggers, for instance, meet the same standards for accuracy as professional journalists?
You're proposing a law requiring bloggers to misquote people, get key facts wrong, present nonsense in the name of "balance" and generally make stuff up? Well, sure, if you're going to pay them for it.
Have you ever heard the saying, "The Internet views censorship as damage and routes around it"? I'm not sure who said it, but he/she was right on. To expand on this, we need to look at governance in the same way we look at censorship.
.com, .org, and .edu management to some sort of NGO (ICANN for example), with the purpose being for multi-national corporations, organizations, and institutions of higher education who do not associate with any particular nation (for example would be icrc.org)
If you have never read World of Ends, I recommend you do so now.
The solution to "governance" over the internet is to remain true to the foundations it was developed under. The internet as an agreement cannot be governed. It can only exist while there is compromise and consensus. So, here is what I believe is the best solution to this problem:
1. For the time being, maintain the status quo of having ICANN responsible for the assignment of IPv4 addresses.
2. Transition into IPv6 by assigning blocks of IP addresses to all countries. Perhaps leaving some addresses for space stations, the moon, mars, etc. Do this though multi-national treaties. This is where the United Nations can help out, but the UN should only be a facilitator. Remember, the Internet is an agreement among nations.
3. Have each country be responsible for assigning its block of IP addresses, and for the management of their TLDs.
4. Transfer
The important thing is that the internet remain decentralized. This seems to be the point that everybody is missing. It doesn't matter who governs the internet, because nobody should govern the entire internet. Its works best as an agreement, and that is how we should proceed.
Here's my #1 problem with governments: the committee. These mini-groups tend to debate over what is best for them, not their constituents.
Example of typical bad true Democracy: 51 out of 100 people love large bananas. They vote to regulate bananas, and now only large bananas are available.
Example of typical bad representative democracy: 5 representatives of 100 people form a banana size committee. 2 of them have friends or family who grow medium sized bananas. 51 of 100 citizens prefer large bananas. The 2 reps convince the other 3 to set the definition of 'large' as equal to the medium sized bananas, in exchange for adding pork to the law that helps the other 3 reps.
Example of free market democracy: 51 out of 100 people like large bananas. 30 like medium, and 19 like tiny. Banana growers grow all 3 sizes, selling them at a price set by the supply of certain sizes and the demand for those sizes.
The first two forms of democracy are, well, bananas. Nuts! This is how we live today in the US. The UN is even worse,with almost zero input by the constituents.
Internet governance is best delegated to corporations and individuals. Profit is merely a reflection of a company's ability to meet the demands (price, quality, performance) of their customers. Profit can not be demanded. Profit can not be stolen. Profit can not be fraudulent for long. Except when a company is given monopoly power by government mandate (schools, roads, etc).
The Internet is a group of individuals who pick an ISP. The groups of ISPs choose a backbone provider. The backbones choose to interconnect.
Why is governance needed? If a backbone decides to break away, customers and ISPs will choose another backbone. If an ISP decides to censor or charge too much, users can select another ISP (except when government forces zero choice).
There is zero need for government involvement, except to tax, regulate, censor and control.
I'm sorry, but this looks like a power grab by control freaks. Taking advantage of anti-US sentiment (Iraq/Kyoto) to feather their own nests. Worse, I suspect they intend to provide a great deal more regulation than the minimal needed.
The Internet is collaborative and largely decentralized. Sure, ICANN's in charge of the root domain servers, and different organizations run the top level domain servers. But nothing's stopping your or your ISP from getting DNS from another source if you're dissatisfied with how the official DNS sources are doing. ISPs can largely offer Internet connectivity however they want, and consumers can choose what kind of services to buy. The free market ensures that the entire system will work as well as possible.
To introduce new regulation by any politicians, whether they wear US, UN, or EU badges is largely meaningless, unless by regulation, you mean coercive restrictions, content filtering, and new taxation regimes. There is no ethical profit for anyone to gain from extra regulation, but it's a good recipe for less freedom, more red tape, and a less efficient Internet.
Ultimately, if some political body insists on hijacking the Internet and controlling it, people will make a new network and switch to that one.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
I am so fricking tired of people screaming censorship. How is it censorship when you have to get "www.notmyfirstchoice.com" instead of whatever you actually wanted? You're probably going to have to do that under the current system. Even if they don't give you a domain name, your provider will still give you an IP, and search engines will still index it, and it'll still pop up when someone searches for whatever you've got to say that you think is so damn important.
Okay? Everyone understand? These days names don't mean dick, and that is ALL THAT ICANN CONTROLS.
So lets move on to a more interesting topic, eh?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
In general they rationalize this decentralized governance by claiming the woes of spam, porn and of all things hardware costs. None of those things have anything to do with some administrative technical controls. Have no doubts representatives of the UN who are clamoring for some sort of control, want that control for only one reason and that reason is power.
If The Bush Administration Lied About WMD, So Did These People
"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." -- From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998
... is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed." -- Madeline Albright, 1998
"This December will mark three years since United Nations inspectors last visited Iraq. There is no doubt that since that time, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to refine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer- range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." -- From a December 6, 2001 letter signed by Bob Graham, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford, & Tom Lantos among others
"Whereas Iraq has consistently breached its cease-fire agreement between Iraq and the United States, entered into on March 3, 1991, by failing to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program, and refusing to permit monitoring and verification by United Nations inspections; Whereas Iraq has developed weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological capabilities, and has made positive progress toward developing nuclear weapons capabilities" -- From a joint resolution submitted by Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter on July 18, 2002
"Saddam's goal
"(Saddam) will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983" -- National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998
"Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement." -- Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." -- Robert Byrd, October 2002
"There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat... Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time. But the United States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we were before September 11th of 2001... He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn't have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we." -- Wesley Clark on September 26, 2002
"What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs." -- Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002
"The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will b
Wouldn't it be funny if the comments in this thread all reflected the one's the parent described?
Get to it!
Lord know's that one of them will find a way to fuck this up too.
Excuse me Mr. Fuckup, please meet my friend Bob. He has something you need to see.
he says that the US gov opened the use of the internet to comercial use.
It was obviouslt going that way, they just started to moderate.
We've all seen how letting the politicians ans business run things ends up.
Internic just worked(tm) when it was run by a cabal of geeks elected by geeks.
Instead of talking about turning management of the Internet to some governmental body, we should be talking about turning management of the world over to the technichians that actually have to make things run properly.
We can set up re-education camps for the politicians and businessmen that advance their companies through influence rather than competition.
VIVA EL GEEKO REVOLUTION!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Just out of curiousity, do we really need TLDs? If you think about it, most companies just register multiple ones anyway, slashdot.org AND slashdot.com for example. To be honest, I think it just adds confusion for the most part, if somewebsite.com is registered to a well know site, doesn't that make somewebsite.org pretty useless to all but squatters?
.gov, .gov.uk or whatever. But then they could just register the .uk. or .us. domain and sub-domain...
The only useful thing I can think of really is to group country specific services,
I agree with most things that Oram says in this article. I have one quibble and one major disagreement I will put in another post.
.xxx (assuming it gets popular) is of no difficulty since it is easily connected with important facts you already remember about the site. On the other hand when tlds don't have much to do with content adding more of them can have a negative effect. If you know your favorite blog is computationaltruth.???/blog/ knowing the content or other facts about the site hardly helps you distingush between net, org and com. Since most people and all corporations want to achieve easy memorability when there is no obvious content (or other already known information) based discrimination more tlds can either just increase the confusion encouraging corporations to buy CORPNAME.* for all possible options. Worse too many tlds means some may fade into obscurity and fads keep the 'good' names just as scarce.
.xxx, .edu and .gov. Org and Com and Net are necessery general purpose names but that model shouldn't be followed with things like .biz which just sow confusion (is that a .com or a .biz)? The important question is whether there are enough good new content related tlds and that is something I don't know.
The quibble is that freeing up more tlds won't necessarily solve the scarcity of good domain names. If done incorrectly it could even make the problem worse.
The point of domain names is to provide a quick and easy way to remember and communicate internet locations. So long as tlds categorize sites into content relevant categories they do work to relieve the demand for domain names. For instance if you want to go to fuckedchicks (made up) your favorite porn cite remembering that it is in
Or to put it another way too many non-content related tlds make all domains harder to remember and hence don't solve the problem but just spread out the pain by making every name slightly worse.
So far it seems that the country codes (and perhaps some even smaller geographic codes) are good (in the sense above) tlds as are the
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Microsoft hating never gets modded off-topic. Mark it +5 Insightful.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Im from the Us and dont think that we should be in control, and yes you are right.. everybody is just whining about this topic being repeated, why not just look it over and share more new views on it?
"They stole my lie"
Option D: We all get rich, and our culture is taken over by corporations "Dude! You gotta a Dell!"
;)
As it now seems, US and Europe are staying in current track, China is developing and joins club of rich and developed countries, and others are following. I also suspect that China changes their system to true democracy in sometime. And when you think a little bit, what is common with all rich democracys, is wanting to enjoy comfortable life and live in peace.
In the end, I believe that option D takes us into a world where you can't tell where one country ends and anothers begins, you got the same businesses everywhere and you can choose the lifestyle that you want, ranging from Feng-Shui crazy Californians to 'ghetto super star' chinease living like 50 Cent. Sounds good to me.
Now, if you excuse me, I will go to McD to enjoy fruits of global world.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
As I mentioned in an earlier post I agree with most of what Oram said in his article. I had one quibble about the solution for tlds but aside from that everything he said was correct. However, what he didn't say is even more important.
It isn't just commercial interests that make domain names such a hot topic. DNS is the only possibility for control and management of the internet and that makes governments all excited, especially totalitarian regimes and other countries who aren't big fans of free expression. Sure the internet itself may make complete censorship very difficult but control over the domain name system can make certain types of information practically impossible to access.
For instance imagine a body running the DNS system which decides to crack down on hate speech. They could deny a domain name to every site hosting hate speech (or if they wanted to go really hard core every site linking to hate speech by IP). Search enginge domain names are very valuable and a great deal of pressure could be exerted on google by threatening to take away google.com and give it to someone who promised not to link to offensive material.
While I'm not a big fan of hate speech I do think it is a great mistake to ban it. I think the suppression of racist speech in germany has only given neo-nazis an air of danger and mystery and spread the movement. Since many countries other than the US have laws against hate speech it is quite plausible a UN body might enforce such a scheme if they got control over the internet. Even more disturbingly is that a large number of countries would likely push to expand the definition of hate speech to anything which is sufficently critical of islam.
On the corporate front giving control of DNS to some UN body removes the first ammendment protections for parody and commentary from play. Right now there is some (minimal) legal protection for things like McDonalds-sucks. If it was run by a UN body it would not only remove the legal hurdles preventing the administration in the US (and other countries) from giving in to the corps but also make it so distant from voters that politicians could avoid any serious political harm from giving in (it wasn't me it was the global community).
Most ditrubingly is the fact that many of the biggest pushers for UN control over the internet are also countries with large censorship agenda's like china, iran and others (brazil is an exception). While a full on censorship scheme like I describe above is unlikely to be used against talk about democracy it could be against pornography. More likely, however, is that these countries will push to create a mechanism for per country censorship of domain names, e.g., DNS records will be required to include information about the type of content to allow easier censorship of their populations.
You can find analysis on my part and more facts/links .
Don't get me wrong ICANN is far from perfect but it is mostly incompetant and a bit corporate influenced which is a lot better than some of the possible alternatives. US record on free speech is also spotted, but then again so are most countries records, and the US has some of the best protections for speech the majority finds disagreeable. Moreover, I think DNS administration is safer in any western democracy than in some intergovernmental body where everyone can deny responsibility. I would rather just give the DNS system to england or germany than share it.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
The US becomes a has-been, the EU continues as a has-been, China implodes and becomes a never-was. We end up in a world without a viable "world power".
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Its pretty clear this isnt about just domain names. From http://www.wgig.org/index.html:
12. It should be made clear, however, that Internet governance includes more than Internet names and addresses, issues dealt with by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN): it also includes other significant public policy issues, such as critical Internet resources, the security and safety of the Internet, and developmental aspects and issues pertaining to the use of the Internet.
The really rediculous quote from the paper though is:
Internet governance is the development and application by Governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.
Whats this in their respective roles crap? Who is it thats going to define what ones 'respective role' is? Why should we accept some UN idiots labeling of different groups? What the hell is the difference between the private sector and civil society? If govt supposedly reflects the values of a society, what is the difference between governments and civil society? What moron wrote this rag?
If they implement the IP protocal with geocoded addresses instead of the IPv4 or IPv6, they wouldn't have such an argument to fight about in who controls the Internet.
The internet as we know it will come to an end if the UN is allowed to take control. The internet will be subject to politicians directly, which is a bad thing. China will have a say in how the internet is run, everyone knows what their position is.
That was hot.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I strongly feel that the US should surrender control of the root servers immediately to the UN. It's a lost cause. No other country is with us on this. We can bitch and moan all we want, sit in the corner with our toys in our hands.. But we're not an integral piece for the Internet to function, so if we don't want to play along, then the rest of the world will just go play without us. If the US does not surrender control, then our existing domain names will be pretty much worthless. Hopefully we'll have the opportunity to re-register them through the UN, or maybe they will come up with a new naming convention entirely. The internet is absolutely *NOT* an American thing. It's a global thing and we represent far less than half of all internet users, so why should anything be skewed in our favor? We can't terrorize the rest of the world like we can Iraq. Being an American this issue absolutely disgusts me and further increases my rage as I don't understand why Americans are so cocky and self-obsessed.
(assuming, of course, that they let me join too >.>)
...and let the individual country worry about what goes before that. No other
international agreement required.
What would Al Gore Do?
Never noticed it! However, email dice, dont post unrelated comments here.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
So : NAFTA, good or bad for trade?
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
Someone points out that Iran hasn't had a shah for over 25 years. Someone else points out that the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons is Israel. Still someone else points out that if an Iraqi assassinated some Iranian leader, there is bupkas the Iranians could productively do about it. If they tried anything bigger than infiltrating insurgent fighters (which they are already doing) the US military would kick them in the nuts.
If you want to consider large scale war in the middle east, suppose some Iranian militants detonate a WMD (likely nerve gas) in the west side of Jerusalem and takes credit for the act. The Iranian government refuses to condemn the attack and Israel goes nuts. They attack Iran (maybe with nukes, maybe not) and then everyone else in the Middle East (including Saudi Arabia and Egypt) declare war on Israel. Israel gives everyone the finger and any place that armies start to mass, there's an artificial sunrise. That's how you get a world war out of the Middle East.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but assuming that name resolution is handled so poorly, regardless of what institution is responsible for it, there is nothing stopping us from forking DNS. If Slash users don't like ICANN or the UN, why not start an alternative DNS? If I remember correctly, something to this effect was done when people wanted some TLD's early that hadn't been passed through. Why not split off from the whole thing?
Slash certainly has the usership and technical knowledge and resources to setup alternative Centeral DNS machines, this time with the name hierarchy done properly, and if a good amount of the tech sites go over, really what else would you need? If the businesses don't follow, good riddance, you can always go back to the polluted namespace with a simple config change, and if they do decide to migrate as popularity increases, they will have to play within the new rules.
Am I missing something here? Why NOT do this?
Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?
It seems that most people reiterated their opinions without RTFA.
The parent post is actually infomative. Wish I had mod points...
Mostly this article seems well reasoned. But his treatment of domain name squatters and "large corporations making ugly noises about owning trademarks" is just plain wrong.
His version of this is that savvy individuals went and bought up domains like "ford.com" and waited for companies like Ford to come looking for them, and then charged a lot of money for the transfer. This much is (rather obviously) correct. But he seems to think that it was completely wrong and unjust for these companies to sue these squatters, calling it the normal workings of the free market.
Well, I've got news for this guy....he needs to take "Trademarks 101" or something similar, and spend just a minute or two thinking of just what the fuck a trademark is good for anyway. Because the whole point of a trademark is to restrict other people from using a name for commercial gain. The idea is that the owner of the trademark has invested time and money in popularizing that trademark, thus giving the name itself value. So, if someone other than the owner of the trademark uses the same name for its own gain (without permission), that someone is basically "stealing" this value from the owner.
So, yes, the squatters were operating in a "free market." But they were also trying to make money by selling an address that contained a registered trademark. That's just as ridiculous as me opening my own restaurant called "Burger King" and trying to force the real chain to buy me out. It wasn't legal from day one, and it's standard trademark policy.
But I guess that doesn't fit well with the overall feel that this guy wants the piece to have....that huge corporations and governments have screwed up (and are screwing up) the Internet for us all. Nevermind that they gave it to us in the first place.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
In that article, he statede that the ICANN is not running things smoothly. How exactly are they not that someone else could do better? The only problem I see w/ the ICANN in US control is the fact that the US has like 60% (pulled out of my ass, a very bad guess) of the ip registrations, when we have nowhere near 60% of the internet population. And how's IPV6 fit into this? Has ICANN even worked with it at all, or no? That would seem like the perfect opportunity for the UN to seize control.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
I find it amusing that the UN - with the ITU, has controlled the telephone system and standards associated with telephony for a long tome now, with no complaints or issues. Amusing that no one here seems to understand how the UN actually works. It is doubly amusing that by demanding the Status Quo with ICANN they fail to see how unaccountable ICANN is.
/ 00990.html).
.fuck as a TLD. However I would see major US outcy of a UN body allowed .fuck to be intered into the TLD files.
Amazing that so many posters here decry the corporate pressures to control any and all domain names, yet are silent on the ties betwen WIPRO desires and ICANN actions.
Stupendous that no one seems aware of how the IANA function passed from Postel to ICANN with no stops and with no real consultation and little input from any stakeholder. Bizarre that for so many years the entries into the TLD space and delegations of Country Code TLD's were in the hands on one man (Postel).
Sad that no one here seems to recall the hundreds of pending TLD applications that were sent into "space" once ICANN gave birth to itself (my application was one pending : http://www.gtld-mou.org/gtld-discuss/mail-archive
Accountability? None whatsoever with ICANN.
The ITU has done an acceptable job in ensuring that the international phone system and it's required standards tick over nicely.
The ITU should have received the IANA function when Postel agreed it should move. However everyone in government at the time was too ignorent to absorb the implications of ICANN power.
I am also stunned that people actually believe that censorship requires any control of DNS - I am based from time to time in Dubai and remember when they fired up their firewalls and proxy servers running filtering lists.......those that want to control the internet have all the help they need from Cisco and white list vendors in the US to have any need to play games with TLD issues.
I cannot imagine that an ITU type function under the UN is going to block the issuance of
The internet seems to have no history. Certainly 1998 when all the action when down and the debates were lost seems to be too long ago for most posters to remember.
Long and short - ICANN sucks and will continue to suck.
I think the biggest mistake underlying the domain-squatting issue is that entities are trying to use DNS as a Trademark Look-Up Service when it is clearly ill-suited to the task. The author touched on it briefly, but I think if more policy makers would acknowledge that trademark lookup should be handled by a different protocol ( tm:cocacola, tm:uk/apple ?), the internet would be a better place.
There's a wingnut on every street corner holding it down.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Trademarks only protect against other's use in the same market. Which is why Apple Records couldn't (successfuly) sue Apple Computers. You could write a kid's book titled "Burger King" about some king in the mythical land of Burger. Similarly, you could have a website called "ford.com" about all the best places to cross rivers.
Basically, you have completely misunderstood the scope and use of trademarks.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Nope, sorry; your argument, while grounded in correct facts, is based on an unlike analogy and doesn't correctly treat the issue of squatters.
Your hypothetical, the ford.com site about river crossings, would indeed be acceptable under normal trademark policy. However, that's not what a squatter does. We are not talking about people who bought domain names that happened to be trademarks and used them for unrelated purposes. We are talking about people who bought domain names for no reason other than to sell them to the trademark owners. In that instance, when you are talking about someone buying ford.com and trying to sell it to Ford Motor Company, obviously the commercial interest of the domain squatter is "in the same market" as Ford Motor Company. They are selling the domain to deal with the business of selling cars.
If someone buys a domain that happens to be a registered trademark, and uses it for unrelated purposes, this is acceptable. If someone buys a domain name that's a registered trademark for the sole purpose of selling it to the trademark holder, then by definition they are interacting in the same market and it qualifies as trademark infringement.
Thanks for bringing this up, because it does allow me to clarify this part of the issue, which I didn't mention in the first post. But do note that not only do you disagree with me, but you also disagree with the very well-documented views of court systems in many, many nations. Everyone who matters (a group that doesn't include either of us) has already decided that I'm right about this.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Yeah, the issue has been decided. People who buy up domain names just to sell them are using them illegally. However, there are plenty of cases of abuse by big companies. In any case, to me the issue is still questionable. You have presented a reasonable argument that selling a domain name to a company that owns that trademark means you are using that trademark in the same market. Another reasonable assumption is that it is in a different market, the market of selling domain names. Let me give you a hypothetical situation. Let's say my last name is McDonald. I make a television show called the McDonald's report. Should McDonald's be able to take my TV show from me? Even if it could be shown that I was just trying to get them to buy the rights to my TV show? I think not, they should have to pay fair market value. But in any case, it's a moot point. Government has once again sided against the little guy. But that doesn't automatically make this position the morally correct one. I'm not even claiming that I know what the morally correct position is in this matter, just that it isn't cut and dried.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
And I think I know why.
In spite of its virtues -- in spite of the fact that it seems to embody the very ideals that most individuals seem to hold -- OpenNIC isn't very popular.
The reason OpenNIC isn't popular, is that most peoples' nearests resolvers don't use it. Most people don't want to set up BIND (or its competitors). So they're going to use someone else's resolver, which will almost always be their ISP's machine. Thus, they defer the decision to someone else. ("If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." -- Rush)
The UN doesn't want to repeat this unpopularity. They're probably willing to leave it to the market or democracy, but only if they are guaranteed to receive the default vote. They don't want to be an "alternative root", they want to be "the" root, and let ICANN, OpenNIC, etc be "alternatives." And the only way to do that is to sieze control of the hosts that are already entered into everyone's BIND config files. There are a handful of specific addresses that they want to take over.
What I haven't figured out, is why ISPs still use ICANN's root. The big ones (e.g. Comcast), I understand: they have an interest in teaching people to just leave everything important to the megacorps. Being a Comcast customer is all about sucking the corporate teat. But as for the small ones, the universities, etc, I don't get it. I expect that the admins of these networks are educated enough about DNS that they understand the issue, so why do they still choose ICANN?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
1. Your example may work for bananas, but what about electricity or medicine? I buy out the supply and then sell it back to you at double the cost. Uh oh...
a p.html
2. I don't know what universe you live in, but my universe is finite - finite resources, finite capital, finite time, finite knowledge - this certainly limits the forms and types of investment. Your 70/30 figures are totally unsubstantiated. Futhermore if being in the bottom 30% doesn't concern you, then I will happily take any extra monies that you have that cause you to exceed the bottom 30% of income -- of the entire world population, by the way, not just for the U.S.
3. You naively assume that the consumer has time and resources to correctly find and procure the items that most benefits them. Unfortunatley, that is not the case. Nor can everybody make the initial investments to enter a particular market - telecommunications or electricity for example. This world of unlimited competition, easy entrance into the market and omniscient consumers exists only in your head.
In the end,
"Anarcho-capitalists are against the State simply because they are capitalists first and foremost. Their critique of the State ultimately rests on a liberal interpretation of liberty as the inviolable rights to and of private property. They are not concerned with the social consequences of capitalism for the weak, powerless and ignorant. Their claim that all would benefit from a free exchange in the market is by no means certain; any unfettered market system would most likely sponsor a reversion to an unequal society with defence associations perpetuating exploitation and privilege. If anything, anarcho-capitalism is merely a free-for-all in which only the rich and cunning would benefit. It is tailor-made for 'rugged individualists' who do not care about the damage to others or to the environment which they leave in their wake. The forces of the market cannot provide genuine conditions for freedom any more than the powers of the State. The victims of both are equally enslaved, alienated and oppressed."
source: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/dward/newrightanarchoc
The ITU in a Layer 2 and 3 control role?
... the ITU is a telco and big tech metal club run under the auspices of the UN that has a stunning record of failure in the arenas of standards setting (witness the multiple mutually incompatible ISO X400 and X500 standards for example), that is as undemocratic as the current ICANN (you can afford the huge membership fee ... or,dare I say it, ISO Standard fee ... you can be a member or have an ISO standard all of your very own), that has little experience is packet switched networking and was (and even this is debatable) suited to hard switched telephony, that has been seeking a raison d'etre since the internet (in which standards and organisation do mean something and can't be bought)made it redundant.
... and who did it for love rather than money - and have the gall to propose the ITU as the safeguarder of democracy on the Net!
... and would love to return to the 'good old days' of IANA/IETF control ... which was democratic, which was run by the geeks (ie. the technically competent) who created the network in the first place, in which decisions were made for sound technical reasons rather than political considerations or consensus.
... especially if it interferes, or make sit likely that interference will occur, with the ability of the devoted (and largeley speaking unpaid) network technicians and standards setters to run their network as efficiently and effectively as possible.
...
Get real
It is now essentially an organisation for (and comprised of) big telcos and big iron IT searching for a role in the new environment.
You criticise Jon Postel (the now deceased IANA boss) who set up and administered most of the Layer 2 and 3 governance mechanisms on the Net, who established the RFC process of standards setting, and who was one of two or three people who had the idea of creating the IETF
Much of your post reflects what the ITU has been trying to do since the Internet became the dominant network, of what it has engendered with this latest WSIS furore.
Personally I think ICANN sucks
And finally, network administration and standards setting do not lend themselves to democracy, or politics, or consensus or even (dare I suggest it?) in the ITU's case, financial considerations. Network administration and standards setting should be done solely on technical and network efficiency grounds. It should be based on science and empirical network efficiency and effectiveness criteria.
Any government oversight (including the US and other governments in ICANN, and the UN via the ITU) is inherently undesirable, unnecessary and unwelcome
A major reason for the success of the internet is that technical effectiveness, interconnectivity and performance are the criteria for the success or failure of an RFC based standard, and that once a standard is set it is not changed unless and until a better technical standard can be demonstrated.
With government oversight, politics and compromise this would all be lost
"Second, how hard would it be to keep the search engines in line? Just require that they list only results from places with valid domain names or they lose their DNS entry."
:-)
If you have one IP you may have the reverse domain to it. You can make subdomains of that in a pinch.
But honestly, worrying about the DNS is futile. As long as you have your root password you don't care what they do in Geneva, New York or Marina del Rey, for the Internet is edge controlled and has no actual central authority. ICANN manages a list of name that goes in one server and is replicated. Make your own copy for crissakes. Then, all the root servers could fall over or burst into flames and you would't even notice. The TLD servers are important. The root servers really are not; you can replace them in less than five minutes by declaring yourself authoritative for ".".
Need Mercedes parts ?
At the end of the day in all practical terms all this comes down to is "who gets the money", and one point of view has it you can buy shares in a publically traded corporation and have have standing (in the legal sense). Try that with a non-membership NGO (like, say, ICANN).
Any plan that changes the nature of .com is doomed to failure. Netsol runs it and always will. Get over it. It's too late to take the names off the license plates.
Forge new territory.
Look at it in this perspective: in 1986 a guy in California invents a better way to name hosts on a military communicaitons network that's been used by around 100 poeple for 10 years.
Now as a Brit living in Canada I expect to have some say in this? Hey, I don't think so eh? China? Pardon me while I giggle uncontrollably.
More to the point, the actual NETWORK was very explicitly handed off from the government to the private sector and done very skilfully by Steve Wolff. He simply *forgot* to do this to the DNS, too. Oopsie.
So, it remains a service provided by the US government and its contractors.
If you don't like it, don't use it.
Need Mercedes parts ?
The Internet popularity boom of the 90s basically changed the way
the world communicates, and it happened too fast for the greedy,
power-mad corpo-government interests to recognize its lucrativeness
and seize it, and by the time the idea had come around it had already
grown out of the range of effective immediate control.
So, the main reason is that the usual suspects want to monitor and
control every productive and useful aspect of your human life, but
in this instance technology rendered them impotent. However, the
mass media has done a great job in rendering the masses impotent
as well in the meantime, and given Mordor its opportunity to
regroup and strategize.
The free, anarchic Internet is long-dead, and won't ever return.
These current Wild West days are also coming to a swift close.
Say goodbye to P2P, pron and free speech and say hello to Big
Brother. You love Big Brother. You always have.
Loons? There are some odd personalities to be sure, but a loon, to me, is somebody that bitches about a free service. I haven't used the legacy root servers since 1996 yet somehow I still get my email. Do you need technical support? Tried the phone?
.com name.
Keep in mind ICANN has millions if not tens of millions of $ to run the root. The half dozen alt.root clusters around have been doing this for almsot 10 years for nothing. Ironic when you consider we were accused back then of "doing this for the money". The money game is clearly in the ICANN arena, not in attempts to carry out Jon Postels vision for a 500 channel internet universe.
Enjoy your
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Currently, trademark owners have more rights in cyberspace than in the courts. The downside of this is, currently, domain name holders have less rights than they'd have in court.
For one thing, trademark owners cannot lobby courts with tens of millions of dolars a year per like they can the DOC or fledgling startup internet regulatory bodies.
At some point, some US judge someplace is going to defer to a WIPO decision, and at that point, bang, it's done. Some private contract through Geneve just trumped the law of a soverign nation in it's own country.
But, if you think you can do anything what a name "as long as I'm not in the same class of goods or service" then go register viacom or kodak, and read up on famous marks.
Need Mercedes parts ?
In that article, he statede that the ICANN is not running things smoothly. How exactly are they not"
They aren't awake often enough. Like during their meetings. I am not making this up. They're also capricous, arbitrary, non-transparent, non-open, in contradiction to all the priciples they claim to have and wre told to have bu the USG.
To cite one example, the only technical person elected to the ICANN board (who also posted earlier in this thread) had to sue to the see the books of a corporation he was elected director of. I was nomincated to some position and they simpy said "no" and changed the bylaws the next day to make it "legal".
In short, they're power hungry assholes. Now, lots of people will probably tell you I'm an asshole too, and they may be right.
But I can't be bought.
Need Mercedes parts ?
This shows what the real issues we should be focusing on are. The internet was originally created to be a peer-to-peer-like network in which any node could run client or server software as it pleased. However, ISPs, governments and others have set things up in such a way that the common person doesn't have nearly enough bandwidth to run a server, even if they spend the money and time necessary to get an appropriate box. People are charged extra for their Internet access because they'd rather produce content as well as consume it! This is what we really need to do something about.
At some point it will all come to a head and either the US congress or the UN will prevail as being "in charge". In the former case, nothing happens.
In the unlikely event of the latter case, the ICANNites simply flock around the UN, cut deals and all of a sudden the UN is in charge of the same people that run ICANN now, not Congress.
Recall in the ICANNites first run at this (IAHC) they had ICANN being run as a Swiss article 90 corporation in Geneva. ICANNN does, I believe, own a Geneva office.
Recall also the USG is currently blocking ICANN's moves (.xxx would have gone into the legacy root by now if it were not, literally, for Carl Rove).
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