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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.
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?