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Dyson Says: "NSI is stalling"
webmaven writes "Check out This story in which Esther Dyson accuses NSI of stalling the switchover to ICANN. "
What, you mean we have to give the internet back? How's
that fair? Poor NSI *cough*.
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I personally don't think ICANN is much better. It's really sad to see but the old Internet where the actual people who used it mattered is in on the verge of death. Some things survive, such as the open membership IETF working groups and their insistence on unecumbered standards, but I think this will rapidly become a rearguard action. Witness the rise of "standards" such as MP3 that are owned by corporations, and the growth of corporate dominated standards bodies such as the W3C. And the ICANN bootlicking of corporate trademark holders.
As much as people hate the guy, it's really too bad that Karl Denninger's AlterNIC never really took off. That would have been a real free market solution to the DNS problem: multiple, independent, competing name registrars. The ideas were right. Too bad the people were wrong for it.
The government can't make every little problem disappear, but its pretty damn good at making a lot of them appear.
The government wouldn't have had to protect us from the NSI problem if it hadn't caused it in the first place. The registration should've gone from the government funded organization directly to a non-profit organization.
Controversial? Yes. But I really don't think any of this is NSI's fault. They're a company, and a company at the verge of losing their monopoly and thus their massive profits.
The real fault here lies (as is usually the case) with the U.S. Government. They're the ones who allowed a private company to turn public databases into a propriatary internal corporate database. They're the ones that allowed a company granted a legal monopoly to take the facilities that were payed for and developed with taxpayer money and file for a public offering.
They're the ones who didn't forsee these problems.
But I doubt anyone should be suprised. This is a government that has shown time and time again to the US public and the world at large that it is grossly inept at dealing with change at the pace that the new information economy requires.
Some people put the blame on the administration, or congress, but the real problem is the hundreds of thousands of redundant government workers. Policies aren't decided by congresspeople or Presidents -- most of them hardly know that the box next to their monitor isn't called a hard drive. The problem comes from the people working under them that either don't understand the issues or deliberately manipulate the issues to said elected figureheads in order to protect their own interests.
Could be worse, there are other industries that are even more poorly impacted by government incompetance that represent greater problems for the general public than the information industries. Medical research for one.
So NSI may be manipulative, and using tactics that would make any elected official proud to spread FUD and keep control of name registrations, but does anyone blame them? They were taught to do that and told to do that by the people who suck up our tax dollars. Lets put the blame where its due.
One thing I remember from those presidential campains waged by Clinton and Gore was that there would be no technology have and have-not classes. The opposite is true. I see a leadership that is not leading, but taking credit for other people's work. and leading the internet into decay. The so called leaders do not seem to be a part of the community. Rather, I see monopolies that steal information from the communities that create it all under the protection of "Mr. I Invented the Internet." It seems like irresponsible polititions can really do much damage to community driven projects for their political gain.
If NSI registers domains under government contract, how can they claim proprietary ownership? For the public good? What kind of rationale is behind this besides greed?
Is the NSI trying to become the next Microsoft? Are the non disclosures really necessary? What intellectual property? I thought this was the internet where it was necessary to share the load and resources. It seems to me NSI is some kind of raging cancer out of control bent on eating any healthy competition. They need to cut that behavior.
I paid NSI $70 for the privilige of my information being freely distributed and they choose to lock it up, effectively stealing it. What gave them the right to own information I paid them to distribute?
I have been as vociferous a critic of NSI on the issue of the whois database as anyone I know.
But then something interesting happened. They hired someone I know, Jim Rutt, who was the CTO at Thomson, to run the show at NSI. Jim has been on the Well for the better part of a decade. In the early 1980s he worked at The Source, the primordial ISP. He knows the Internet in a way I'd bet most of the greedheads who currently run NSI can only dream about.
The accusations of ICANN having a "pro-corporate" bias fail on two counts: (1) ICANN has just begun its operations and it's hard to discern any such bias so far, arguments about the composition of its board and working groups aside; (2) corporations are, after all, the dominant driving force of the net these days, unlike a decade ago. Until real evidence of bias can be shown, I am writing off all such complaints as fearmongering by self-interested scribblers.
All of this is also a distraction from an issue that matters a great deal today: NSI's appropriation (daylight robbery) of the whois database. It is quite clear that it was never the Department of Commerce's intention for NSI to claim intellectual-property ownership of that data. They were hired to manage that data. They can't even claim they have added value, since from the user's perspective the whois database looks and acts just like it did before they took over in 1993.
Blaming "the government" for this is a cheap, lazy shot. Did it ever occur to those who fling such blithe accusations that maybe people in the government are trying to do a good, responsible job on behalf of the American taxpayer? No, it's easier to belittle something you don't care about and don't understand, isn't it.
The whole point being that the government as well as ICANN has made very strong comments contradicting NSI's current version of how they get to their claim over the whois database.
And that is where Jim Rutt comes in. I don't think any one individual can completely change a company, and NSI has evolved from a small tech services firm into a classic Beltway bandit, replete with self-aggrandizing management and sloppy and uninterested service (how about that, you government bashers! -- here's your sainted private sector at "work"). But the CEO does make corporate policy happen, and Jim knows how to do that.
I am betting he will do the right thing, which is to renounce the NSI claim on the whois database, which is and should be a public trust, and instead focus on cleaning up NSI's act and offering a better-mousetrap service that will have the world beating a dotcom path to its door. That's the only way to win in a truly competitive market. NSI has got to get off the quasi-monopoly gravy train, everyone knows it. I hope Jim follows that path.
So Esther Dyson's shot across the bow is designed to get NSI's attention. Realistically, that's what this is all about.
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Bill Gates Is My Evil Twin.
People are missing the entire point here (which is what Dyson wanted you to do, but...). In a nutshell, Esther Dyson and ICANN are doing a number of things to set major policies for the entire internet so that they will favor mega-corporations and totally exclude individuals from any participation in governing the internet. They're levying taxes, setting trademark policies, etc., while operating behind closed doors without individual input. The issue is rather complicated, too complicated for the amount of time and space I have here - do some research, as many, many people have protested ICANN's actions.
The letter which prompted Dyson's response was an accusation from two consumer advocates about ICANN's current policies. (See jya.com for Dyson's response, the original letter, and a parody response to Dyson.) Dyson's response, instead of making any real consideration of the issues, was to blow a lot of smoke and essentially blame NSI for all the bad things that have ever occurred in the history of the world.
Now, NSI is attempting to stake a claim on the .com DNS system, no doubt about it. And they shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. But most of the things which Dyson blamed on NSI are actually ICANN's - Dyson's - fault. ICANN is responsible for not opening up the .com registry to competition, not NSI. ICANN is responsible for approving trademark rules which will allow any company to unilaterally take away domain names from individuals without even having to notify them in advance that the name is being challenged. Etc., etc.
Don't fall for Dyson's misleading letter. Corporations see the internet as a tremendous source of income, if only they can establish sufficient control over it (which means keeping governments and individuals from having any input). ICANN is giving away the store to them instead of setting up democratic means of governance. NSI is attacking .com/.org/.net. ICANN's actions will affect the entire internet, DNS, IP allocation, everything. Which one is the greater threat?