What seems to happen here is that a person uploads a movie to Archive claiming that it's public domain and Archive does whatever research they do and decide whether to distribute it.
Another post points out that the Copyright Office database says Plan 9 was registered in 1958 and renewed in 1986, so the reasonable assumption would be that it's still covered unless the owner places it in Public Domain.
Archive's page for the movie says the uploader's site is at www.k-otic.com, a site which is basically an uploader's blog which does claim to have uploaded it.
The person who uploaded it doesn't seem to really do any research on movies' copyright status before uploading; (s)he says in a post about another upload that:
"the problem is that there is no really reliable source list/search engine on the internet where you can go and find out
but the people at the internet archive check all uploads and when they say it`s ok...
it`s ok"
This does not really lead me to believe that the uploader contacted whoever owns the rights to Plan 9 and arranged for the film to be placed in the public domain.;-)
Summary: there's no reason to believe Plan 9 actually is Public Domain, since the first person to make the claim (the uploader) admits that (s)he has no way to be sure about the status of the movies (s)he uploads and Archive gives no evidence to support the claim except the uploader's original assertion.
Welcome to/dev/null/nethack 2003! If you have any issues or problems, please email us. (And a special welcome back to EIT who, as far as we know, are the first folks to ever have put together a NetHack Clan.
The tournament offers players the option of recording their games as VT ASCII animations, and the option of making these files publicly available.
Once we've launched, you can go to the gamefiles section to see whether any of the mor successful players have this turned on and (if so) you can re-run those games as terminal movies. Some of them can be incredibly edifying.
We could do it by pre-examining returns from Verisigns servers and modifying results that come in with their hijaack IP number. We would have to change how our root zone is structured to do it (since you're right that external TLD queries are referred directly to that root's own servers).
Whether we should is the question: is it actually correct for one root to fiddle the data supplied by a TLDs authoritative server?
Their certification policies vary. I'm familiar with two of them (Thawte and InstantSSL) and they are actually certifying different things.
InstantSSL: They certify only that you are the actual registered controller of the domain name involved; they do this by a challnge/response process involving sending email to the domain's administrative contact address. This guarantees at least that the cert is being issued to someone who can send and receive mail at an address registered as cntrolling the site's domain name.
Thawte: Thawte's process, as of two years ago, was more involved and made an attempt to certify the Real World identity involved. In addition to the email, they also required a fax of legal documentation backing up the claim to be the owner of the domain name (such as of your Articles of Incorporation). While not actually establishing that you are who you claim, this does make it more _likely_ that you are. So a Thawte cert certifies that you are the domain's registrant and are _probably_ the legal entity listed as the domain registrant.
For a web server SSL certificate, it should be adequate merely to demonstrate and certify that the server is authorized by an appropriate contact, in the manner InstantSSL does. Fortunately for a free CA, this can all be automated.;-)
Other, more extensive, certifications are more omplicated. What Nathan and I are working on is essentially a free user-run service which will certify anything about its users which can be proven to be true, with the understanding that some certifications can't be done until the project grows wuite a bit (things involving significant research or cash investment to prove, for example, will have to ait a bit but SSL certs are easy and can be done immediately).
Until this is ready to start issuing certs, those of you on OpenNIC domains can get free certification from the OpenNIC CA (there are brief instructions on the web site or email ).
As Nathan said, we've both been _really_ busy, and setting up a new general-purpose CA (especially as a user-controlled democracy like OpenNIC) is very time consuming so we can't give a launch date yet.
Anyone who's interested in getting involved can (of course) email either of us and we'd be happy to have some more folks involved in the original setup.;-)
I don't this that would affect OpenNIC users. When I re-wrote OpenNIC's root build script this summer, I made a few changes to is that should prevent this from affecting our users:
1) we have a list of the ICANN root servers' IP numbers (just as an DNS server does in its cache zone file) from which we download the names and IP numbers of the TLD servers
2) we assign new names to those root servers, rather than using the names we're given, to prevent exactly this sort of cross-root pollution
3) we have the A records for the TLD servers' IP numbers in the root zoner itself, which means that an ICANN.biz name _can_ appear in our root this way) so, though you will be able to resolve that name, it's a bug; we should replace the names for the TLD servers as well to block cross-zone pollution as well.
Thanks for pointing the bug on 3) out, though it's a different one from what you were speculating about.;-)
Actually, we don't blanket accept ORSC's data yet (though, as usual, discussions are continuing). We _do_, however, have many parts of their root from our peering agreement with PacRoot, so much of it is available through OpenNIC.
I'm not certain about their future, since I haven't heard anything about them possibly shutting down. Their mailing list traffic's been low lately, but so has OpenNIC's and I view that as a good sign, in the sense that it means the system is working well enough that it doesn't need constant tweaking.;-)
There are two search engines up on OpenNIC's namespace now; perhaps you could talk to their admins about doing one specific to your artistic interests?
We can add game servers on the fly during the Tournament, so it's no rush from that perspective. The contact info is in the tar file containg the game server code (at that, at least, was linked on the new web site).
Ah the joys of bringing it up on a new server this year.;-)
The Tournament code can add new game servers partway through a Tournament and all accounts will propagate to it on the first connection from the control server.
This is basically why we re-install the OS on our game server before and after each Tournament *and we'd encourage volunteer boxen to do this as well).
The Tournament software does only create accounts within its own UID range, and does a pretty good job of blocking the player from doing anything other than play NetHack, but we can't guarantee it.
It does really mean that it's best done on a dedicated box, though.
Actually, it's strung up in my living room as a mobile too.;-)
I'll post some pictures later, once the launch furor dies down.
The P133 can actually handle 25 easily, but I've set its max up to 50 this year, so we might find it bogging. Fortunately, several Slashdotters have emailed offer to set up game servers now, so we'll at least get some distribution across the U.S.
Here's a clue for you folks who might ever submit an article: don't do it if you're running a default BSD kernel.
After booting a few times and getting killed immediately, I booted with no net connection and built a kernel with maxusers, NMBCLUSTERS and NKMEMCLUSERS goosed beyond any reasonable amount and it seems to be holding up now.
I had not anticipated _that_ many immediate requests from an article ablout NetHack.;-)
There are lots of different ways of run a root system and many, as you seem to be suggesting, do function by adding new servers in without modifying the ICANN root's base data. We choose to do it a different way, but by no means do we want to tell you what to do on your own servers.
The "mainstream" and ccTLDs are in the root zone because you pretty much have to have them to function. Any DNS system in which you can't get to google.com or theregister.co.uk isn't very functional. So, those are necessary. And we do peer data with two other root operators (AlterNIC and PacRoot) and no, we don't care about any of these peoples' legal histories any more than we'd care about your in deciding whether to peer your data. And there's only one.porn in the root zone; I have no idea why you'd think there are two.;-)
I think it is ORSC who support about 200 and name.space which includes over 500.
Anyway, by all means drop the OpenNIC a note to let us know what TLDs you're operating and how. We don't think any one body should be in control of the DNS; it needs to be a federation of independent operators. And you can be one of them.
Well, for one thing (and unlike ICANN) every one of our users has explicitly endorsed our operation of a DNS root...;-)
To respond to a few of your other statements:
1) OpenNIC is not, and does not want to be, _the_ root operator. We want to be _a_ root operator, and we encourage anyone who doesn't want their DNS root to run the way we do to set up their own and discuss root peering with us. A global DNS run by a collaboration between hetrogenous operators is the best possible structure for something as varied as the Net.
2) Yep, we just decided we were a root and, lo!, we were.;-) That's the way it works: anyone with the technical competence and the equipmewnt can set up a DNS root. It's not really very difficult.
3) The complaint against ICANN is not that they did this (the U.S. government did it, not ICANN, for one thing), but that they did it without the consent of the users and that they refuse to cooperate with others. There are independant roots who don't cooperate either, and they're in much the same box as ICANN except, of course, that their users generally choose to use their system. (New.net is the more ICANN-like exception to this, since their agreements with Earthlink and such do mean the users had no real choice.)
4) As the only person with root on the box that tabulates our votes, I can assure you there was no tampering, but that's not really sufficient, is it? We are working on a PGP signed voting mechanism, but as the Software Libre world is well aware, these things take time to build for a volunteer project. We are concerned about this, and we are working on it. It'd be great if you wanted to help on that.
I don't know who the "Atlantic" is you're saying controls.net, so I can't answer the next two bits there.
From the above, you can see that I do think OpenNIC (if not the other independant roots) is a very different beast from ICANN. We have a 100% voluntary participation and a true democracy, rather than a captive usership and just enough of the trappings of community to disguise the fascist operation underneath. So, I think there are differences.;-)
Well, OpenNIC peers the original.biz (which is run by Atlantic Root Network) from the pacific Root. It's not an internal TLD for us.
The vote on whether to accept ICANN's new.biz is running on our members' Forum right now and it does look like the original will win out in our root.
Thanks to ICANN, their great fear of fracturing the namespace is to come about due to their own actions. There's nothing like consistency, is there?
-robin
Re:No one seems opposed to TLD expansion
on
ICANN Elections
·
· Score: 1
Hi Karl!
I'm glad you like OpenNIC's conceptual basis. We're discussing the legalities of it on our list right now. Big fun.;-)
It makes me much more confident that I should support you if I don't get on the ballot myself (I'm candidate Robin Bandy). Though I don't agree with you about the benefit of sheer volume of TLDs, and I really do think that what we need are more strongly chartered TLDs rather than just more, I think that a collaborative root is the only way to fairly structure the system.
Slashdot Mirror
What seems to happen here is that a person uploads a movie to Archive claiming that it's public domain and Archive does whatever research they do and decide whether to distribute it.
Another post points out that the Copyright Office database says Plan 9 was registered in 1958 and renewed in 1986, so the reasonable assumption would be that it's still covered unless the owner places it in Public Domain.
Archive's page for the movie says the uploader's site is at www.k-otic.com, a site which is basically an uploader's blog which does claim to have uploaded it.
The person who uploaded it doesn't seem to really do any research on movies' copyright status before uploading; (s)he says in a post about another upload that:
This does not really lead me to believe that the uploader contacted whoever owns the rights to Plan 9 and arranged for the film to be placed in the public domain.Summary: there's no reason to believe Plan 9 actually is Public Domain, since the first person to make the claim (the uploader) admits that (s)he has no way to be sure about the status of the movies (s)he uploads and Archive gives no evidence to support the claim except the uploader's original assertion.
-robin
Though it _looks_ like one. That's sorta the point of the Clan EIT: it's an ironic _representation_ of trollness. Or maybe that's over-analyzing.
;-)
At any rate: it's both on-topic and quite funny, but it's easy to see how someone not already familiar with it wouldn't think so.
-robin
Welcome to /dev/null/nethack 2003! If you have any issues or problems, please email us. (And a special welcome back to EIT who, as far as we know, are the first folks to ever have put together a NetHack Clan.
Now, let the games commence! ;-)
Cheers,
-robin
The tournament offers players the option of recording their games as VT ASCII animations, and the option of making these files publicly available.
Once we've launched, you can go to the gamefiles section to see whether any of the mor successful players have this turned on and (if so) you can re-run those games as terminal movies. Some of them can be incredibly edifying.
-robin
We could do it by pre-examining returns from Verisigns servers and modifying results that come in with their hijaack IP number. We would have to change how our root zone is structured to do it (since you're right that external TLD queries are referred directly to that root's own servers).
Whether we should is the question: is it actually correct for one root to fiddle the data supplied by a TLDs authoritative server?
-robin
Thanks for catching that; I didn't realise there were any absolute URLs left on the site.
Sorry,
-robin
Their certification policies vary. I'm familiar with two of them (Thawte and InstantSSL) and they are actually certifying different things.
;-)
InstantSSL: They certify only that you are the actual registered controller of the domain name involved; they do this by a challnge/response process involving sending email to the domain's administrative contact address. This guarantees at least that the cert is being issued to someone who can send and receive mail at an address registered as cntrolling the site's domain name.
Thawte: Thawte's process, as of two years ago, was more involved and made an attempt to certify the Real World identity involved. In addition to the email, they also required a fax of legal documentation backing up the claim to be the owner of the domain name (such as of your Articles of Incorporation). While not actually establishing that you are who you claim, this does make it more _likely_ that you are. So a Thawte cert certifies that you are the domain's registrant and are _probably_ the legal entity listed as the domain registrant.
For a web server SSL certificate, it should be adequate merely to demonstrate and certify that the server is authorized by an appropriate contact, in the manner InstantSSL does. Fortunately for a free CA, this can all be automated.
Other, more extensive, certifications are more omplicated. What Nathan and I are working on is essentially a free user-run service which will certify anything about its users which can be proven to be true, with the understanding that some certifications can't be done until the project grows wuite a bit (things involving significant research or cash investment to prove, for example, will have to ait a bit but SSL certs are easy and can be done immediately).
-robin
Indeed.
;-)
Until this is ready to start issuing certs, those of you on OpenNIC domains can get free certification from the OpenNIC CA (there are brief instructions on the web site or email ).
As Nathan said, we've both been _really_ busy, and setting up a new general-purpose CA (especially as a user-controlled democracy like OpenNIC) is very time consuming so we can't give a launch date yet.
Anyone who's interested in getting involved can (of course) email either of us and we'd be happy to have some more folks involved in the original setup.
Cheers,
-robin
I don't this that would affect OpenNIC users. When I re-wrote OpenNIC's root build script this summer, I made a few changes to is that should prevent this from affecting our users:
.biz name _can_ appear in our root this way) so, though you will be able to resolve that name, it's a bug; we should replace the names for the TLD servers as well to block cross-zone pollution as well.
;-)
1) we have a list of the ICANN root servers' IP numbers (just as an DNS server does in its cache zone file) from which we download the names and IP numbers of the TLD servers
2) we assign new names to those root servers, rather than using the names we're given, to prevent exactly this sort of cross-root pollution
3) we have the A records for the TLD servers' IP numbers in the root zoner itself, which means that an ICANN
Thanks for pointing the bug on 3) out, though it's a different one from what you were speculating about.
-robin
Actually, we don't blanket accept ORSC's data yet (though, as usual, discussions are continuing). We _do_, however, have many parts of their root from our peering agreement with PacRoot, so much of it is available through OpenNIC.
;-)
I'm not certain about their future, since I haven't heard anything about them possibly shutting down. Their mailing list traffic's been low lately, but so has OpenNIC's and I view that as a good sign, in the sense that it means the system is working well enough that it doesn't need constant tweaking.
There are two search engines up on OpenNIC's namespace now; perhaps you could talk to their admins about doing one specific to your artistic interests?
-robin
Well, the Tournament _does_ last a month (though that seems to be another one of the things our net web site didn't mention).
;-)
So you have plenty of time to waste at it.
-robin
We can add game servers on the fly during the Tournament, so it's no rush from that perspective. The contact info is in the tar file containg the game server code (at that, at least, was linked on the new web site).
;-)
Ah the joys of bringing it up on a new server this year.
-robin
There wasn't supposed to be. The links go live at midninght; that's what the lauchning the Tournament at midnight bit was all about ... ;-)
Now I have to go clear the logfile at midnight, since some folks have already taken advantage of this link.
No biggie.
-robin
The Tournament code can add new game servers partway through a Tournament and all accounts will propagate to it on the first connection from the control server.
... ;-)
So we can add game servers as we go along
-robin
This is basically why we re-install the OS on our game server before and after each Tournament *and we'd encourage volunteer boxen to do this as well).
The Tournament software does only create accounts within its own UID range, and does a pretty good job of blocking the player from doing anything other than play NetHack, but we can't guarantee it.
It does really mean that it's best done on a dedicated box, though.
-robin
Check the web page after midnight
Pacific time. The links will all be live then to let you create accounts, play and see the standings.
Cheers,
-robin
That's effing hilarious. ;-)
Thanks, I really did need a good laugh after this afternoon's doings.
Cheers,
-robin
Actually, it's strung up in my living room as a mobile too. ;-)
I'll post some pictures later, once the launch furor dies down.
The P133 can actually handle 25 easily, but I've set its max up to 50 this year, so we might find it bogging. Fortunately, several Slashdotters have emailed offer to set up game servers now, so we'll at least get some distribution across the U.S.
-robin
Not really. The game server and the web server are different boxes. We though at least _that_ far ahead. ;-)
-robin
Here's a clue for you folks who might ever submit an article: don't do it if you're running a default BSD kernel.
;-)
After booting a few times and getting killed immediately, I booted with no net connection and built a kernel with maxusers, NMBCLUSTERS and NKMEMCLUSERS goosed beyond any reasonable amount and it seems to be holding up now.
I had not anticipated _that_ many immediate requests from an article ablout NetHack.
-robin
About two minutes after this posted,the web server with the Tournament site on it kernel pacicked with an out of memory error.
;-)
It has 3/4G or real memory and over 1G of swap. I think it mis-handled something there. It's booting, so we'll see how long it lasts this time.
-robin
Yow, man; relax.
.porn in the root zone; I have no idea why you'd think there are two. ;-)
There are lots of different ways of run a root system and many, as you seem to be suggesting, do function by adding new servers in without modifying the ICANN root's base data. We choose to do it a different way, but by no means do we want to tell you what to do on your own servers.
The "mainstream" and ccTLDs are in the root zone because you pretty much have to have them to function. Any DNS system in which you can't get to google.com or theregister.co.uk isn't very functional. So, those are necessary. And we do peer data with two other root operators (AlterNIC and PacRoot) and no, we don't care about any of these peoples' legal histories any more than we'd care about your in deciding whether to peer your data. And there's only one
I think it is ORSC who support about 200 and name.space which includes over 500.
Anyway, by all means drop the OpenNIC a note to let us know what TLDs you're operating and how. We don't think any one body should be in control of the DNS; it needs to be a federation of independent operators. And you can be one of them.
-robin
Well, for one thing (and unlike ICANN) every one of our users has explicitly endorsed our operation of a DNS root ... ;-)
;-) That's the way it works: anyone with the technical competence and the equipmewnt can set up a DNS root. It's not really very difficult.
.net, so I can't answer the next two bits there.
;-)
To respond to a few of your other statements:
1) OpenNIC is not, and does not want to be, _the_ root operator. We want to be _a_ root operator, and we encourage anyone who doesn't want their DNS root to run the way we do to set up their own and discuss root peering with us. A global DNS run by a collaboration between hetrogenous operators is the best possible structure for something as varied as the Net.
2) Yep, we just decided we were a root and, lo!, we were.
3) The complaint against ICANN is not that they did this (the U.S. government did it, not ICANN, for one thing), but that they did it without the consent of the users and that they refuse to cooperate with others. There are independant roots who don't cooperate either, and they're in much the same box as ICANN except, of course, that their users generally choose to use their system. (New.net is the more ICANN-like exception to this, since their agreements with Earthlink and such do mean the users had no real choice.)
4) As the only person with root on the box that tabulates our votes, I can assure you there was no tampering, but that's not really sufficient, is it? We are working on a PGP signed voting mechanism, but as the Software Libre world is well aware, these things take time to build for a volunteer project. We are concerned about this, and we are working on it. It'd be great if you wanted to help on that.
I don't know who the "Atlantic" is you're saying controls
From the above, you can see that I do think OpenNIC (if not the other independant roots) is a very different beast from ICANN. We have a 100% voluntary participation and a true democracy, rather than a captive usership and just enough of the trappings of community to disguise the fascist operation underneath. So, I think there are differences.
-robin
Well, OpenNIC peers the original .biz (which is run by Atlantic Root Network) from the pacific Root. It's not an internal TLD for us.
.biz is running on our members' Forum right now and it does look like the original will win out in our root.
The vote on whether to accept ICANN's new
Thanks to ICANN, their great fear of fracturing the namespace is to come about due to their own actions. There's nothing like consistency, is there?
-robin
Hi Karl!
;-)
I'm glad you like OpenNIC's conceptual basis. We're discussing the legalities of it on our list right now. Big fun.
It makes me much more confident that I should support you if I don't get on the ballot myself (I'm candidate Robin Bandy). Though I don't agree with you about the benefit of sheer volume of TLDs, and I really do think that what we need are more strongly chartered TLDs rather than just more, I think that a collaborative root is the only way to fairly structure the system.
Cheers,
-robin