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."
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.
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.
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.
I though ARIN was in charge of IP's?
http://www.arin.net/
Other than the fact that ICANN was more or less created by the US government*, No I can't. I think they are slow and dilatory, but basically OK.
People seem to really dislike the "taint" of the US on anything. But it doesn't always make those things bad.
*(through several intermediate steps, yes I know)
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
I'm not sure if there's actually a problem with US-centricism. In fact, I'm sure there isn't, because there's a ton of foreign companies and individuals with ostensibly-US domains, which is to say, those with a three letter top level domain. (The fact that "three letter domain" and "top level domain" compress to the same acronym will prevent me from using it for either...) The problem that I would like ICANN to address is domain squatting. The first step? Stop doing business with Verisign. Verisign has been shown time and time again to be utterly corrupt and they should be cut out of the system, along with all the other squatters. ICANN is not actually designed to do anything - ICANN != IWILL. (And jokes about taiwanese computer hardware manufacturers shall go ignored.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Has there been much discussion about the development of peer-to-peer domain name servers? Is this even possible.... perhaps something to work towards?