Slashdot Mirror
ICANN's Contract Renewed
mrogers writes "The International Herald Tribune is reporting that ICANN's contract has been renewed for the next five years. This means the non-profit corporation, which is responsible for allocating IP addresses and administering the top level of the Domain Name System, will not become independent from the U.S. Department of Commerce until at least 2011. The contract is also available as a PDF."
ICANN't believe it.
.....sorry.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
For all of its faults, I do not think that there is harm in renewing ICANN's contract. I do not know if they should be renewing it for 5 years, though, as that is an eternity in Internet time.
Those who complain about ICANN cite generally now-resolved issues that have arisen but fail to demonstrate how another agency would have prevented them from becoming problems. On the flipside of the argument, eWeek has a detailed op-ed piece of ICANN's issues.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
These are the brilliant geniuses that brought us the completely useless domains of .aero, .museum, and .coop, not to mention the spam-haven of .biz! I wonder what sort of cr*p they can bring out in the next five years? ;-)
I don't quite see why everyone outside the USA (maybe its just the EU) is freaking out over this. ICANN seems to be doing good job of running the show so far. Why change it over to another organization where the possiblity for more political drama to occur?
If it ain't broke, no need to mess with it, right?
All the bellyachers out there are always perfectly free to just use the Internet as a layer-3 transport, and invent their own name-to-address mapping system and go play in their own sandbox by themselves or with whoever will join them there, but they need to realize that when they want to play in the 'big sandbox' where most everyone else is at, that they are required to abide by the big sandbox owner's rules.
Is there anyone who can step in right now and take over? It's kind of like wondering why Halliburton got all the contracts in Iraq. Who else?
I just thought of another "Missing Option" for the "What is Your Least Favorite Acronym?" poll.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I found this paragraph in the contract interesting:
The Contractor shall furnish the necessary personnel, material, equipment, services, and facilities to perform the following requirements without any cost to the Government. On or after the effective date of this purchase order, the Contractor may establish and collect fees from third parties (i.e, other than the Government) for the functions performed under this purchase order, provided the fee levels are approved by the Contracting Officer before going into effect, which approval shall not be withheld unreasonably and provided the fee levels are fair and equitable and provided the aggregate fees charged during the term of this purchase order do not exceed the cost of providing the requirements of this purchase order. The Government will review the Contractor's accounting data at anytime fees are charged to verify that the above conditions are being met.
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
kick someone's ICANN
ICANN needs to address domainers who acquire domain names essentially for ransom. Two months ago, while trying to purchase a cool domain name that had expired more than 45 days prior, we were told we had to submit a backorder request, which we did. On about the 40th day, we were told the then current registror had not yet released the domain name (they had just started a 5 day process of release). But the domain name never was released. Instead, a known domainer had somehow managed to get the domain name on the 5th day, just prior to release. What is annoying is that the domainer is also an ICANN approved registror, which makes one question the legalities involved.
Why are we suddenly supporting ICANN? Because it's an opportunity to attack the U.S.? Come on – wasn't this the same organization that held meetings on critical issues in Ghana so that critics wouldn't come?
Sorry, given the choice of ICANN control of root servers and U.S. control of root servers... I'll stick with the current well functioning system. One of the two is subject to political pressure from somebody.
In both the areas of military/support contracting and administering network address-space issues, it's not a question of whether or not there's someone else with equal experience, structure, stability, and readiness to step up. Just as much of the audience here would rather see some services go unprovided than have them provided by The Man (a large company that specializes in such things), some other spots around the world just can't stand that an operation friendly (read: "not hostile") to western/US interests is in charge of TLDs and address ranges.
It's the same reason that some extremists would rather have totally militarized, radicalized, corrupt "social services" management in southern Lebanon courtesy of Iran via their Hezbollah proxies than embrace western investment in some actually productive, forward-looking western-style democracy and economic productivity that would more quickly raise the standard of living. It simply doesn't feel as good to have someone you resent doing something useful that you're not ready/willing to do yourself. It's the same reason teenagers go through the "I hate my parents" phase... they have a hard time reconciling their dependence, the growing awareness that they don't know how to do everything, and the fact that doing it all yourself is actually very hard, expensive work. So, it's easier just to bitch about it, and let it keep working. Just like the teenagers that "hate" their parents are still happy to sit at the table and wait for Mom to scramble some eggs for them in the morning. Resentment is cheap and easy, and hey, Mom's making eggs (and address space) anyway, right?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If ICANN wanted to be independent, they would be. They have a CONTRACT with the US government. They aren't slaves or government employees (or any mix in between!). ICANN could go its own separate way tomorrow if it chose to, subject to whatever termination clause the contract has. They don't do it because they don't want to.
And that is a good thing, because if ICANN did become independent, the US would be free to come up with something to replace it. National entitites are not forced to comply with ICANN. They do it for convienience and compatibility. And seeing as the US is a huge part of the IP traffic in the world, I don't think anyone wants it going off on its own. We definitely do not want W getting any more crazy ideas about "leadership" and "freedom".
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
I though ARIN was in charge of IP's?
http://www.arin.net/
for use as a survivable datacomm infrastructure during thermonuclear warfare. Everything else was just SPAM (tm) and Romper Room (tm). Maybe the originators still think the original scenarios are possible or likely after years of being overlooked.
If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly... MacBeth
Does this mean that it's needed to make the U.S. Department of Commerce independent from ICANN instead? Or turn time to 2011? Or just not care too much?
+1 Agree -1 Disagree
The whole problem with ICANN is reflected in many of the posts I'm reading here, divided over the usual baloney about whether it's good or bad and whether anybody else could have done a better job, bla bla. The Bushies have got you right where they want you - in the dark, as with everything else your government does (the smug tone is coming to you from Toronto, .ca).
It's easy to make a case that ICANN is dysfunctional because it's run by staff lawyers and held hostage by progressive sovereign states like China and Saudi Arabia. Or to make some opposing case. Or to wonder why they can't be more like the IETF. But none of that changes the fact that the whole campaign launched in 1998 was about the life-and-death importance of getting government the hell out of the Internet business and into the hands of the private sector, where it damn well belongs.
Phoney privatization was made possible by the secret deal cooked up by the then ICANN cabal and rarely discussed other party to the deal, the Ass't Sec of Commerce. You can call it a spade or not, but the Secretary got an effective veto over board decisions. This didn't come to light until the ".xxx" application was passed by the board - then mysteriously sank after Michael Gallagher wrote a polite letter to Vint Cerf saying, uh, I don't think so. The thousands of letters sent in to protest the application came mostly from a Bible-thumping, family values group of gay-bashers in... you got it, Texas! The Family Research Council, protecting Humanity from porn, homos and evolutionism.
Apart from the sorrowful sight of some pudding-faced, Beltway Bush lacky pushing around the, ahem, father of the Internet, ICANN is hiding a much deeper, more insidious case of political secrecy, cynicism and hypocrisy. Too bad that's not news around Washington any more. If only we could arrange to get Sen. Stevens over to the White House to convince them to stop worrying about TLDs and start worrying about how they're gonna make the Internet work like tubes instead of like a dumptruck.
The US government could have admitted that ICANN is broken, renewed the contract for one year, and started building a replacement during that year. But instead we get ICANN forever.
Dear Netkook-With-a-Persecution-Complex-and-Bloated-Sen se-of-Entitlement Troll,
I've purchased several servers, routers, switches and leased-line services from other providers to build an albeit very small corner of the Internet.
The equipment cost me well over a million dollars and I pay several hundred thousand more each year to maintain it. The circuits cost another hundred grand or so each year.
If you want to use my corner of the Internet to access the rest of it, feel free to pay me just like my other customers do and have at it.
Otherwise, screw you. I'm going home and I'm taking my network with me.
Sincerely,
Joe ISP
Point being, no matter how important the internet is to you, likely for pr0n, warez and OSS--in that order--it's no more public than your living room. Each small or large piece of it is owned by someone, and they have contracts with each other to connect their pieces together so that you can geek out in your parent's basement. The end.
So how do you become ICANN then?
A swine from the GOP, wriggling it a pit full of cash, cast forth his open hand showing that I Corrupt Bureaucrat was chosen to be ICANN. After the appropriate exchange of cash.
Listen, corrupt Republicans lying it a pit of cash is not a system of Government. I mean, if I asked for money for a political favor they'd lock me away.
Has there been much discussion about the development of peer-to-peer domain name servers? Is this even possible.... perhaps something to work towards?
You know, all I caught from this post was, "...asses.., like me."
The rest just reads "Crazy crazy loony netkooky kooky crazy..."
So the great question is, "Will the kook burn one of his precious two dailies on this one?" I can't wait to find out.