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US' Capitol Hill on the Internet
Anguirel writes "Wired has a few stories from the Hill. First up, ICANN gets a hearing before the House to answer questions about proposed fees. Next, House Majority leader Dick Armey denounced the UN e-mail tax saying it's just the UN being greedy and trying to profit from the Internet. Finally, Y2K conspiracy theories gained some credibility as a conference on the President declaring martial law was held by the US Reserve Officers Association. "
I find it interesting the number of government, quasi-government ond international bodies that actually think they have some authority over domain names (and the number of individuals who think they're right).
DISCLAIMER: I'm not saying anything about ICANN here (yet), but feel free to take this as a bash of WIPO, NetSol, the Clinton administration, etc...
DNS is set up by convention and volentary adherance to RFCs published by the IETF. The many parties involved volentarily go along with this because it's already in place, standards in general are a good thing, and peer pressure to do the right thing. This is as it should be.
If our current DNS system gets FUBARed by the powers that be, there is no law saying another system can't be put online by the people and businesses that use the net. Anybody with a big enough server can run DNS as long as they don't interfere with the operation of the current system. I can serve the domain www.aint.Igreat if I choose to. You can configure your system to use my server if you want to (just set your named.conf to consider my server authoritative for the .Igreat zone)
There are a few of those now, and a few Wins and other resolvers that can be accessed as well. They remain fringe servers because they're too small to handle a large load, and not everybody can access them. That could change if the current DNS gets FUBARed. The current system has no basis in law, and new systems are not prohibited (or prohibitable).
Posted by patg:
They'd tax the air we breathe if they could...
They always argue that "oh, but it's only one cent per 100 emails... that's not that much..." and try to instill some sort of guilt about being greedy.
As soon as there's a tax in place, it'll just go up and up, always with the same argument - it's incrementalism at is best (worst).
The story about people's fears about martial law was almost amusing. I mean, the people there were spinning scenarios and the author didn't really work to counterbalance that, unless mentioning the person reading the Roswell book was supposed to do that. I don't know anything about the organization that held the conference, but, geez ... I mean, how much credibility is added to the idea that "the big creep" might declare martial law by this story?
Sorry, you'd see mobilization of troops well before New Years Eve anyhow. Clamping down on the US is not a small operation -- even with all the weaponry at the disposal of the military, I'm sure the Michigan Militia will be able to save us all. Failing that, there's always Michael Moore as a backup.
But, 'tis almost the silly season ...
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
"...with a beer in one hand,my woman in the other, and a .45 on my hip."
.45? Sounds like you have both hands full already. ;)
How are you planning on drawing the
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Little known fact... If you doubt me, take a look at the flag behind prez. C. You will notice a nice little gold braid all the way around it. For those people who know flag protocol, it means Martial Law.
From what I understand Martial Law was declared back in the early 1900's and just never repealed. So since it already is in effect it would be eaiser to do something about it...
I personally don't think Y2K is going to be the end of civilization. Just trying to share some facts.
It's not quite that simple. They aren't just printing money to have more money in the economy - that would cause inflation. They are printing currency to cover the amount of money that is already in the economy. All of these bills get distributed through the Federal Reserve system so that if there is a bank run, people can easily convert their "virtual" money (the numbers you see on your bank account) into hard (well, paper really) currency. But if there isn't a bank run, they'll probably end up destroying the extra bills that were printed, or saving them for the next time that this might be a problem. So the worst case scenario is that we all have lots of $$$ under our mattresses, but prices should stay about the same.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
It's true that the military is trained to follow orders. However, their oaths are not to the President or Congress. The military is sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution, the same as the President and Congress are. Now I'm not saying that any of these groups aren't above bending the rules if they can get away with it. But we're a long way from the military slavishly following blatantly treasonous orders from the President (especially this President - he's not highly regarded in military circles, in case you hadn't noticed).
If the President can fire the people who can remove him from office, do you really think we would have had a near-impeachment a few months ago? Congress can remove the President, and the President couldn't do anything to stop them. Now that the independent counsel law has expired, the President could fire anyone appointed by the Attorney General to investigate him, but the independent counsel law didn't exist when Nixon was president and he was still impeached. A President who fires someone because they are investigating on behalf of Congress is going to be more likely to be impeached, not less.
The President definitely cannot suspend the Constitution. Yes, the President can declare martial law, and I suppose a really bad apple could try to take over the country by doing so. But even that use of force would not suspend the Constitution - in fact, I'm not sure how any group could suspend the Constitution. I suppose it could be done by a constitutional amendment, but that would require the agreement of both Congress and the states.
Perhaps you should have taken your own advice.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I'm not sure if you're referring to the U.S. debt to the U.N., or just the U.S. debt in general. I don't know about the back debt to the U.N. I did hear on the news the other day that the U.S. annual contribution to the U.N. was supposed to be around 300 million dollars. The source who was being interviewed mentioned that this was less than 1% of the U.S. budget. To be fair, the interviewee was a member of a pro-U.N. organization.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Regardless of the logistics or martial law or the willingness of our inept president to enact it, the Office of the President DOES have the right to take out houses, cars, guns, etc. Round us up into camps, take complete control over all private property and goods when they feel necessary. The real kicker is that congress is PREVENTED from stoping this.
Yeah, it's far fetched and probably will not happen, but what posessed Clinton to pass executive orders (laws the president passes to cirvumvent the normal checks and ballances system) that allow him this supreme power. Even it no one uses this power, why the hell does he HAVE that power?
It's just kinda scary in genneral that these laws exist.
FinkPloyd
We interrupt this program with a special bulletin.
America is now under martial law.
All constitutional rights have been suspended.
Anyone caught outside the gates of their subdivision sector after curfew WILL BE SHOT.
Remain calm. Do not panic.
Your neighborhood watch officer will be by to collect urine samples in the morning. Anyone caught interfering with the collection of urine samples WILL BE SHOT.
*shiver*
This sig is false.
Ah, excuse me, but where do these ideas come from? Too much TV and movies I think. Believe it or not, the military is NOT made up of a bunch of unthinking, uncaring war mongers and pychopaths. They are predominatly 18-24 year olds, who just got over missing their mommies and have no desire to destroy the U.S., their home, by the way. And as far as the top brass is concerned, they really can tell a dumb order from a sound one, and you can bet, that if the President were to make a dumb order the commanders in charge would make sure that it was carried out "soundly".
They can't kill ya cook ya and eat ya.
Among the topics being considered by ICANN? Whether or not individuals (as opposed to trademark owners) should be allowed to own domain names. Whether or not domain dispute policies should require court proceedings, with the loser paying all fees. Whether the domain name in dispute should be turned over to the trademark holder before the dispute resolution process is completed.
And all of this is being decided by a group of non-representative, non-elected lawyers, businesspeople, and others who stand to gain financially from such decisions. to this date, they have refused to allow a constituency of individual, non-commercial, non-organizational domain name owners to have representation in their proceedings.
The working groups deciding these issues are chaired by hand-picked members of the Domain Names Council, instead of elected by the members of the working groups.
The Domain Names council is stacked with officers of ISOC, CORE, and advisory board members from the gTLD-MoU advisory boards, all of whom have a decided financial interest in the outcome of certain decisions.
Decisions are made without any form of formal voting procedure, without regard to fairness, and without consideration for the group's lack of legitimacy and adequate representation. They are attempting to ramrod through a set of decisions before their own mandate requires them to replace the appointed officials with elected ones.
And they're doing it all in the name of the "net community".
Check the DNSO website to find the archives of the various mailing lists where this is occurring.
Check this link for a statement in which the chair of the gTLD-MoU proposes capture of the DNSO.
Check the Individual Domain Name Owners Constituency page if you'd like to get involved.
.@.