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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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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.
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?
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?