ICANN Releases Reform Plan 130
If you've followed the history of ICANN at all, you know that it was originally set up to have substantial representation from the general public (known as At-Large representatives) - 9 of 18 board members. The original unelected board immediately set about undermining that, only electing 5 members and keeping on four "board-squatters" from the original unelected bunch.
The elections of the five At-Large members had two flaws from the point of view of ICANN's unelected board:
- There were assorted technical issues with the voting process, due apparently to incompetence from the contractor who handled it.
- Two of the five new board members who were elected did not represent the same corporate interests as the rest of the board.
Of these two flaws, the second was by far the more severe. The board risked losing control of ICANN to people who might run it for the public good rather than for the good of the corporations represented on the board. They started backing away from having any sort of elected representation whatsoever. In February 2002 ICANN President Lynn floated a reform proposal which would eliminate the At-Large representation - or rather, it would keep something called "At-Large", that would no longer be elected by the general public but instead appointed by the Board itself. Instead of the general public picking new ICANN Board members, the ICANN Board would pick new ICANN Board members. This was followed by a vote which confirmed ICANN's commitment to eliminating elected representation.
Now the reform proposal is out. There would be two classes of board members:
- approximately eight ex-officio members (members holding the board seat due to some other title or position they hold)
- approximately five to eleven members picked by a Nominating Committee (the Committee to be chosen by the current Board) and perhaps confirmed by the Board
It is important to note how thoroughly captured this process is. Many of the ex-officio seats accrue from positions that are selected by the ICANN Board. So the ICANN Board picks someone to be chief dogwalker, and the chief dogwalker gets an automatic position on ICANN's Board.
The seats selected by the Nominating Committee are also extremely vulnerable to capture. Let me use a real-life example of how nominating committees work to show what I mean: my credit union.
My credit union has a board structure very similar to the one proposed for ICANN: several ex-officio members, and a number of seats elected by the general populace (everyone who has an account at the credit union). This structure is actually more flexible than that proposed for ICANN, since ICANN does not plan any direct elections at all. However, the credit union membership picks from among candidates selected by a Nominating Committee. Every year or two, I get a ballot in the mail. I can choose from among all the candidates selected by the Nominating Committee, and I can check boxes for the candidates that I prefer, up to the number of open seats available on the Board.
I never return these ballots. Why, you might ask? Because the number of candidates is usually identical to the number of open seats. Three empty seats, three candidates to choose from. Six empty seats, six candidates to choose from. I think one year they might have had more candidates than open seats, but it was an aberration.
This system apparently works well for credit unions: would you believe that they pay interest on my checking account? What it does guarantee is that all future Board members will represent the same biases that are present in the Board at the instant the system was instituted. In my credit union's case, this guarantees "fiscal responsibility" or "fiscal conservatism".
For ICANN, what it would do is institutionalize the biases currently present. Whatever biases are there right now, will be there forever, as the system becomes a self-reinforcing feedback loop with no external controls.
The Board's current biases are toward:
- expanding ICANN's mission from a purely technical body to one that is willing to govern the Internet - taking on assorted social/political issues as it sees fit
- running ICANN for private profit rather than public benefit
Neither of these two traits needs reinforcing. Karl Auerbach, one of ICANN's At-Large directors, has his thoughts on a possible ICANN structure.
Domain Names (Score:3, Interesting)
saves letters too, slashdot is 4 letters less than slashdot.org
bling bling!
Re:Domain Names (Score:1)
Re:Domain Names (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, how does google help with email? Do you really want bob@sdoiyfkah12esdc.com?
Re:naked chicks??? (Score:2)
It's kind of sad that, even on Slashdot, the first comment on a story about the dismantling of the free internet is a pun. Hopefully, the rest of you are too busy crying to reply quickly.
not so crazy? (Score:1, Troll)
But then I reconsidered. It occured to me that corporations have one thing that the Internet lacks: stability. Because the growth of the Internet relies upon widespread standards, there needs to be a central, solid body on which to base new technologies and policies.
If ICANN goes the "open" route, then we risk introducing the volatility of the Internet into its heretofore pristine foundation. And that, my friends, is not an action that will be easily undone.
I love the Internet. And I don't want to lose it.
Re:not so crazy? (Score:1)
Let's let large, stable corporations define the standards for the future of the Internet!
Mandatory DRM!
Watermarking!
Approval of domain names, and an arbitration panel that _always_ sides with the copyright holder, regardless of site content!
The internet has no pristine foundation. It is a combination of openly developed standards put together over time.
ICANN is trying to put itself in a position where it can order people around as they wish, according to the requests of the corporations they represent.
By eliminating all public input, and limiting it to a select group, such one sided moves are far easier to push through.
Re:not so crazy? (Score:4, Insightful)
With the recent collapse of so many corporations and related scandals, I'd say it's time to have a closer look at what we consider to be stability and strength. With only a glance at the TV you would find that corporations are anything but stable right now... moreover, they're irresponsible and self-serving. Since Microsoft is the popular "bad corporation" example, look at the recent situation with their accounting practices. For some reason there was no fines or formal accusations and while they agreed to change their ways (yeah, right!) they admit to no wrong doing.
Okay maybe I'm just reacting to a troll and... oh well, my bad then... or maybe it was supposed to be funny, in which case, I'm trying to laugh but I just can't.
Re:not so crazy? (Score:1)
Re:not so crazy? (Score:2)
Open/Closed and Stable/unstable are very different beasts with little or no correlation.
What threatens stability is the percentage of people who are unhappy.
If a lot of people are unhappy with the current situation, then you have things like revolutions.
Appeasing the masses is good policy.
Sadly, good policy is something that ICANN seems to be in short supply of.
-- there are no real email addresses here [mailsiphon.com]
Re:not so crazy? (Score:2)
Now, I know this goes against the party line... (Score:1, Insightful)
It's been said on here before: the only force that can really act against spam is the government. "There oughta be a law", in so many words. Every day our inboxes are packed to the eyeteeth with ads for diplomas, penis pumps, and vitamins from Korea. No technical solution has proven itself, so it's obvious that we need outside help. I think we're all agreed on that.
But our individual governments can't do anything outside of our borders (some exceptions apply, of course). We need a governing force capable of applying unilateral legislation consistently, without possibility of loopholes, in order to stop offshore spam. Who better than ICANN, really?
I'm with you that we need a couple of seats to represent our interests, but unfortunately we need the entrenched interests to have power to stop the net from collapsing into a puddle of anarchy and unsolicited commercial e-mail. It's not your father's Internet anymore.
Re:Now, I know this goes against the party line... (Score:2, Interesting)
But this is a case where the sorta-governace is trying to:
a) make itself the one and ONLY authority as to how things on the internet will go and,
b) eliminate any say by the people who use it, aside from the compaines they represent.
Thus they eliminate the publicly elected Representative At-Large program, thus removing any public oversight of what they do.
Re:Now, I know this goes against the party line... (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, governments can already do something about spam--pass a law against it, and choose to enforce it--and slowly that is happening, as people begin to understand that freedom of speech doesn't mean an unlimited license to advertise. Governments that don't regulate spam will simply find themselves blacklisted at routers.
So I'm thinking, is "Stop the Spammers" going to be the rallying cry for giving up the internet commons to corporate interests? Is this the latest slogan in the long line of "Stop the Commies!/Save the Children/Make the World Safe from Terrorism!" slogans to steamroller the public good?
To a corporation where control==profit, anything they don't control is "anarchic".
Re:Now, I know this goes against the party line... (Score:1)
It's been said on here before: the only force that can really act against spam is the government.
Actually a LACK of a government would have the same effect.
Think of this scenario;
Some bright ass gets the idea to start up a massive Spam campaign, so he gets a dual channel ISDN line (Business DSL, whatever) installed to his house through his local Telco, pays for his IPs and his mailing software and. . .
sends out assloads of mail to a few hundred thousand recipients. Or even more.
A few of those recipients get pissed off.
They track the spammers location down, they find out his Telco, they break into the Telco's database, they get his address,
I am sure you can work it on out from there. (Yah, Hia, Mr Spammer Dude, you are being arrested for 10 felony drug charges and for killing your ex-wife. . . . ^_^ )
Currently real life governments tend to fuck this up a bit, you do anything like that and you would be in assloads of trouble.
Which is good AND bad, good because it helps to keep innocent people from accruing an FBI file every time they get into a flaming match with the wrong dude online (though hopefully anybody capable of the thought necessary to get anybody else in serious enough shit would be smart enough to realize that abusing that power is not a good thing to do and would not do it), but bad because;
well;
hell;
Mr Spammer Dude really should have a "Peer to Peer" meeting with JailCell453_Buba.
Re:Jon Postel is Spinning in His Grave (Score:2)
I really do think Jon Postel would be tremendously upset by this. Yeah, he ran the predecessor to ICANN as a one-man dictatorship, but he believed strongly that any successor to his leadership would have to be completely democratic and open in nature.
I am pissed that otherwise incredibly intelligent people like Esther Dyson and Vint Cerf are not standing up and crying foul as ICANN becomes a corporate plaything. Maybe they are getting paid off. Who knows? Certainly they know what's going on with the tech sector and probably consider this their best shot at maintaining themselves in the style they have been accustomed to. I don't know.
If this continues, the Internet will become nothing more than computerized television in the hands of a few companies.
Perhaps it's time to look closely at alternative namespaces and maybe even an alternative, 100% open governing body for names and IP addresses. It would be a schism, true, but it would be infinitely more interesting than the direction the Internet proper is being hijacked towards.
Re:Jon Postel is Spinning in His Grave (Score:2)
I was going to say the same thing about Postel.
I am pissed that otherwise incredibly intelligent people like Esther Dyson and Vint Cerf are not standing up and crying foul as ICANN becomes a corporate plaything
What do you mean? Dyson and Cerf *ARE* corporate types.
Hypocritical (Score:2)
Both are deciding things for a community, and none are elected. Hypocritical to complain about one and not the other, don't you think?
Re:Hypocritical (Score:2)
There is no such option with ICANN.
Re:Hypocritical (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, nobody really supports OpenNIC names. But if you try and fork the kernel, it's not going to have any support from the big names either. In either case, it's going to take serious abuse on ICANN or Linus' part to make an alternative viable.
Re:Hypocritical (Score:2)
If I fork ICANN I have domain names that no one can see.
One is a lot easier than the other.
Re:Hypocritical (Score:3, Insightful)
ICANN, on the other hand, is supposed have stewardship over a public resource, which they are coopting for personal gain.
If Linus suddenly decides to close the Linux kernel source and sell it under MS-style license, your comparison would be reasonable. Until that happens, you're effectively trying to say that apples are oranges.
Re:Hypocritical (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference lies in the fact that you can choose what OS/Kernel/distribution you want to use, but you can't choose not to use ICANN if you want to use the Internet. ICANN controls the NANA, which means they control the IP addresses, and they control who manages the TLDs.
If you have a problem with the direction that Linus and the Linux kernel developers are going, you can (1) fork the kernel, (2) use Free/Open/Net BSD, (3) use some variant of Windows, or (4) find something else. If you have a problem with ICANN's policies, you're stuck. They've got a monopoly, and they're using it with an agenda. You may or may not agree with their agenda (I don't), but their proposal for eliminating elected board members means that they're eliminating any hope that you or I could influence their agenda short of completely overthrowing the system.
Even dictators have to pretend to have laws and courts...
Re:Hypocritical (Score:2)
Typo: change "NANA" to "IANA" in paragraph 2, above.
Re:Hypocritical (Score:1)
Oh Really? [alternic.org] Are you sure? [opennic.org]
Re:Hypocritical (Score:2)
Really. I use OpenNIC for my DNS services, but there are still areas where OpenNIC is in dispute with ICANN (and other alternate DNS providers). For example: .info was only recently approved by OpenNIC, and .biz still hasn't been approved, since there's already 1 or 2 other .biz registrars, besides the ICANN approved vendor.
More importantly, even if you use an alternate DNS provider, you're still stuck with getting your IP addresses from ICANN (by way of your ISP). There's NO Internet-compatible way to get around that.
Re:Hypocritical (Score:1)
With the Linux kernel, you have an object that is owned by an individual. That individual has set up an organizational structure for it's further development, and that structure allows for input from anyone with a computer. Linus doesnt have to allow people to contribute to the codebase at all.
With ICANN, you have an administrative body that was appointed by a department of the U.S. government to manage some administrative duties relating to the internet as a whole.
Some people question the basis of its authority just on that.
As a government agency, it's controlling authority for the portions of the superstructure of the internet that it is supposed to maintain, is granted to it by the people for the purpose of maintaining it in the interests of the people.
This reform removes any oversight the people have by removing the election of at large members and guarantees bias in that the only people becoming board members are people the current board members approve of.
This is compounded by ICANN's history of overstepping its charter and trying to take more control over the internet that it is given.
One other important distinction with respect ot the Linux kernel is that if you disagree with how the kernel is built you can modify it for your own use or use any number of alternative kernels in its place. With the ip address system and the dns root servers, you dont really have a choice. There are alternative DNS systems, but I dont think they are accepted enough to be genuinely viable as a replacement. (i could be wrong about that, i havent really been keeping a close eye on them)
Re:Hypocritical (Score:1)
I admit it, the reason I hate ICANN is because they're doing it all wrong. If they did it right I'd let them keep their little dictatorship.
It's not a lack of democracy that pisses me off in this case, it's a lack of competance.
ICANN Board (Score:1)
The fable of the "independant ICANN" is getting awfully threadbare, what with DOC and Congress claiming ownership. I expect the UN to announce their control at any moment...
Re:ICANN Board (Score:1, Flamebait)
There are several agreements between ICANN and the US Department of Commerce. Those agreements come due for renewal this summer. Several groups - including ICANN's own "General Assembly" have advocated that the US Dept of Commerce hold an open selection among applicants for the job now held by ICANN. You may want to discuss this matter with your Congress critters and with the folks at the US Dept of Commerce.
Sometimes it's useful for an organization to split itself up into distinct and separate parts - AT&T split into various parts - Lucent and several AT&T companies. HP split into Agilent and HP.
In that line of thinking, I have suggested that ICANN consider a six way split -- http://www.cavebear.com/rw/apfi.htm [cavebear.com]
As a general matter I consider ICANN's r"evolution" proposal to be nothing short of a disaster for the Internet community - we lose all forms of public participatio. Accountability to the public simply evaporates.
What can be done. (Score:2)
What is an ombudsman? Is it something slashdot, as an organized body could file complains to?
-Pete
Re:What can be done. (Score:1)
You're joking, right?
Re:What can be done. (Score:1)
A man who investigates complaints and mediates fair settlements, especially between aggrieved parties such as consumers or students and an institution or organization.
A government official, especially in Scandinavian countries, who investigates citizens' complaints against the government or its functionaries.
Open NIC (Score:2, Insightful)
You can get free domains, on their tlds,
Re:Open NIC (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Open NIC (Score:1)
"Friends don't let friends use alternate roots"
Re:Open NIC (Score:1)
OpenNIC is free, so if you dont get universal resolvability, you haven't lost anything either. I disagree with their conclusion, A single alternate root such as OpenNIC (which is a well organized project), would be better to be large than small. What would be bad is if we had many small alternate roots, so that nobody knows what dns roots to use for going to a site.
Shift (Score:3, Insightful)
Yay! Another win for democracy!! (Score:3, Interesting)
If ICANN is no longer supporting its original intent, then it's clearly a rogue organization and should no longer enjoy its position granted to it by the powers that gave it power.
In short, what would it take to revoke ICANN's powers entirely in favor of something more fair and impartial?
Re:Yay! Another win for democracy!! (Score:2, Interesting)
ICANN was "blessed" by the US department of commerce to run the DNS.
If you want to get something else, then you'd either need to convince the DoC that ICANN isn't doing what the DoC wants, or convince the people who use DNS that they should use another body to make policy for the DNS.
Alternic [alternic.org] is trying, but IMO they are shooting to low, trying to organize the end users.
The end users are ultimately the deciders, but they don't for the most part care about network issues.
Much better is to try and reach the ISPs and network administrators.
That's a difficult group to define exactly, but a reasonable approximation is anyone with an autonomous system number.
ISPs are in the business of running the internet.
If you convince enough of them to adopt a different root, you win.
For that, you only need to write some reasonable policies that would make the internet a better place for ISPs if they were followed.
Note though, most ISPs care a lot more about stability than about correctness.
Any policy that means making a change is going to be bad in their eyes.
You want change, so you're going to need to overcome that.
One solution would be straight cash bribes.
I.e. Force registries to pay them.
This could be justified by calling it a fee for the ISPs DNS service.
Another possibility is greater control.
Democracy is a great system for giving people the illusion of control - One AS, One vote.
-- there are no real email addresses here [mailsiphon.com]
Re:Yay! Another win for democracy!! (Score:1)
Convince Google to spider pages on those TLDs. Then, when Joe User searches google, gets a hit, and then has DNS failure he'll complain to his ISP. Enough complaints, and ISPs will support the alternate services just to keep the noise level down.
Re:Yay! Another win for democracy!! (Score:2)
ICANN controls every single IP address in the public domain. If you are given an IP address, it was given to your ISP from an upstream provider from a regional deligation company that is liable to ICANN for technical changes in how things are done.
To limit ICANN to just DNS would be shortsighted.
The Numbers part, Really (Score:2)
Almost, not quite.
ICANN stands for "Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers [icann.org]". It is a non-profit set up a few years back to take over the duties of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.
One of these is the clerical duty of assigning /8 blocks [iana.org] of global IPv4 address space and /16 blocks of IPv6 address space to each Regional [arin.net] Internet [ripe.net] Registry [apnic.net] as needed. The users of the address space decide policy, and it's this policy that the RIRs implement.
Another duty ICANN took over is maintenance of the DNS root (which has been the controversial part), and a third duty is maintenance of the list of protocol numbers (imagine a link to your /etc/services just here - something's stopping me posting triple-slash).
What about an alternative? (Score:4, Insightful)
I know this has been discussed before, but it seems that now is an appropriate time to bring it up again. It seems high time for an overthrow of ICANN.
Yes, we have alternate registrars with alternate TLDs, but I don't mean that. I mean that there isn't anything stopping anyone from setting up an alternative to ICANN, with all its constituent committees and groups. Give the new organization several key features, such as a charter that can't be changed at the whim of the leadership of the day, a clear method of representation for Internet users and a straightforward method for choosing reps, and a progressive method for selecting new TLDs that doesn't take decades to work through. Make it everything ICANN isn't, and then make a play for control of the root nameservers. If the new organization can't get them directly, then it could set up its own. The best part of this strategy is that if the alternate organization starts to gather support, ICANN, the DoC, and Congress would be forced to acknowledge it or risk breaking the DNS system as the two organizations take divergent paths.
This may not work, and it'll probably be messy as hell, but it'll be fun, and it'll scare the hell out of some people and groups who desperately need the hell scared out of them.
Re:What about an alternative? (Score:1)
Re:What about an alternative? (Score:2)
I hear you, and I definitely appreciate what you're trying to achieve. However, before you launch wholesale into such a world, I would ask you to consider this.
Believe it or not, the object of ICANN was to try to create a body that could succeed IANA [heanet.ie] and continue to allow us to make the decisions that needed to be made through consensus - the way we'd been doing it all along. The "rough consensus and running code" attitude of the IETF and other groups is what has turned out the useful stuff on the internet today - little things like TCP, SMTP, DNS - stuff like that.
If you "fork" ICANN, as it were, this is means a couple of things. One is that it's tantamount to an admission that consensus based decisions can't be made at this scale. Whether true or not, this would be a great pity IMO, and I'd like to see every avenue exhausted before we abandon such a great system for something less effective (like, say, democracy - something which is damn good, but despite best efforts seems to leave some people feeling a bit left out).
Also, when people are forced to make an exclusive choice, there is no guarantee that the "better" choice will win (FSVO "better" - cf. Betamax, Apple, etc etc). Further, if such a choice is forced, you may assume that the number of competitors will not remain at 2, and that some of the choices will be particularly powerful bodies that might not have the best interests of the network at heart.
If DNS names were no longer universal, do you assume that all browsers [microsoft.com] would continue to use DNS for lookup? What if they instead implement their own keyword search as a preference (perhaps giving free 1-year keyword licenses to all domain holders as of $DATE) so that "our customers get a consistent experience"? Might they succeed? If they did, would that be a positive thing?
Working within the system is often boring and frustrating. However when you are railing against perceived corporate takeover, remember how our actions, regardless of anyone's intentions, might give a company the opportunity to exercise their own "corporate takeover" at another level. It is absolutely within your rights and within your means to propose an alternative root. However, there is much to be lost by such a move, and there is much to be gained by, at least, trying to follow the backwards-compatible path until no other option remains.
This is IMPORTANT (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, all you folks can find 50,000 things to say about Microsoft's OS, but when it comes to the hard core, backend, technical issues, ALL of you dry up. You aren't informed! Well, now is the time for you to get over it. Microsoft is going to quietly sneak in the back door and take over the internet, if we don't get off our collective behinds and put a stop to it. ICANN was supposed to represent the users and it's been hijacked by corporate interests, Microsoft among them, who intend to use DNS as a means to "own" the interent.
Perhaps you aren't familiar with DNS, which I find hard to swallow on in a community this technical. DNS says that your site exists and this is how people find you. It also controls email via the MX records in DNS. If you like to surf and read email, then you have a stake in this. When you start tinkering with the very basic addressing of the internet, you start exercising a LOT of control over what is allowed and what isn't allowed. Who wants that in the hands of a bunch of corporate sell-outs?
This is going to shape the internet for generations to come. We are laying the ground work for all kinds of things. IPv6 is coming, which will replace the current internet addressing scheme. What about voice over IP? How's that going to work? Will it work for cell phones? New routing protocols are coming that will be purely optical. Do you really want the implementation of ALL of this in hands of the corporations who stand to profit out of finding extra ways to make you pay to use all this?
Let's take a trip down memory lane about previous ICANN policies. Rememeber with Internic (now Register.com) was the only name registrar and they screwed up EVERYTHING!! There were so bad, in fact, that Congress stepped in and made ICANN allow other registrars. If you have a domain name that's registered, look at your inbox and how much spam you get related to your domain name(s). That's another fine ICANN policy in action. Don't fool yourself, these people are not there to look out for the public good.
Well, unless you want a lot more of the same for the next few decades, I'd suggest that you all write your representatives (here the the good old usa - http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/) and start squealing now. You need to get your family to write. Get your friends and co-workers to write - even if you have to write the letter and get them to sign it.
You know, you have to fight the fight while it can still be won. We are still within our window of opportunity, people.
Re:This is IMPORTANT (Score:2)
In addition, ICANN has nothing to do with the domain name related spam you receive. In fact, the WHOIS agreements ICANN requires explicitly forbids the use of Whois data for commercial email purposes.
In addition, the beauty of our DNS architecture as it stands today is that whatever protocols we want can develop and be completely uninvoved with ICANN. All ICANN has to do with DNS is their operation of the roots, which means a small number of NS records delegating to the TLD servers. It would be extremely difficult for them to do something really evil with them.
Thanks,
Matt
Re:This is IMPORTANT (Score:1)
You know, you have to fight the fight while it can still be won. We are still within our window of opportunity, people.
You're right. We could sit around here all day talking, passing resolutions, making clever speeches. It's not going to shift one ICANN lardass!
So, let's just stop gabbing on about it. It's completely pointless and it's getting us nowhere!
Right!
Re:This is IMPORTANT (Score:2, Insightful)
"Reform!" (Score:2, Funny)
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
It's Terrible! (OT, very OT) (Score:1, Offtopic)
If you don't believe me, here is the link [doubleclick.net] it gave, and here is the image [doubleclick.net] that poped up. I know it links to ad.doubleclick.net, but if you look in the URL you will see OSDNSlashDot. Slashdot has it's own image [slashdot.org] which is just a 1x1 image I'm guessing to count times it shows up, of course it could also be this other [slashdot.org] image that it displays with the ad code.
It's an abomonation! I can't believe that Slashdot would have an ad for Microsoft, or that Slashdot would even have any official dealings with the evil empire. I know they're hurting [slashdot.org] and all, but I would think they would still have some respect for the Open Source community they represent. Even if Slashdot themselves didn't do it and it was managed by OSDN, still, the Open Source Developers Network is on the opposite end of the Microsoft Developers Network.
*sigh*
Okay, I'm done ranting.
Moderators: Please don't mod this down, it was only posted on the story that happened to be at the top of the page when I got the ad. If anything, mod it up so the truth can be known to all readers.
Re:It's Terrible! (OT, very OT) (Score:2)
Get rid of three-letter TLDs! (Score:3, Insightful)
Eliminate all TLDs except those for country codes.
There is no such thing as a global web site. Every website is headquartered somewhere. The BBC's website is www.bbc.co.uk. The Toronto Globe and Mail's website is www.globeandmail.ca Only the United States, by default really, has no strong country-code, so US websites are run at
ICANN's reform proposal only needs to accomplish three things. First, provide for the immediate migration of
The only three-letter TLD not owned by the US is
All of ICANN's old responsibilities can then be transferred to the owners of the country-code domains.
Re:Get rid of three-letter TLDs! (Score:1)
Re:Get rid of three-letter TLDs! (Score:2)
Other countries can set up mirrors, so you could have nato.org.us in addition to nato.org.de, for example. Somebody living in Germany, a NATO country, would want a German version anyway.
Re:Get rid of three-letter TLDs! (Score:1)
Re:Get rid of three-letter TLDs! (Score:2)
I'm completely in favor of having ip6.co.uk, or ip6.fr, or ip6.eu, or all three, in addition to ip6.us. I just don't think that a site subject to the legal jurisdiction of one country should be considered an "international" site.
Open Root Server Confederation (Score:3, Informative)
You can still see the same ICANN-approved .com, .net, .org., et cetera, but with (the original) different .biz and .info, and with an additional thousand or so TLD's that the Open Root Server Confederation [open-rsc.org] supports.
It's important that we all remember that the internet is capitalist and cooperative -- we each pay our own way, and behave in a civilized manner to avoid gumming up the works. If enough of us opt to use the Open Root, then we can marginalize ICANN and take control for the public, the very same public that pays for the thing in the first place.
I like the Open Root Server Confederation [open-rsc.org] because they don't want to rule the internet, but to simply place control of the DNS into the hands of someone who will have the public interest at heart.
the ideal internet congress (Score:2)
I think there should be an internet "congress" with two bodies...a "senate" and a "house of representatives". The congress would be selected by the governments of each country of the world that has a public internet presence. The senate would have equal representation for each country, and size of the house would be based upon each country's population of internet users.
The governing bodies would meet several times a year to discuss and resolve various issues and creating mandates about how the internet should be implemented. Each country would be individually responsible for enforcing these mandates at their local level.
Something like this is highly unlikely, but I do think that the internet is a global entity that should have global representation.
Internet democracy ending... (Score:1)
Those days have finished!
Cheers...
P.S.- I know that the plans haven't been aproved yet... but they will because money (and power) talks too loud for the common citizen!
Power comes from Mandate (Score:2)
Yes, they can play games with the 3ltr TLDs. Big deal -- the only ones who should care are the owners of those TLDs, and they _do_ care bigtime. Some smaller .com owners like EToy might get shafted, but then they should migrate to
more friendly registrars.
IP numbers are a bigger deal, but they are mostly sewn-up by the networks of ISPs. They also much less contentious, but potentially more troublesome.
The Internet is a cooperative structure, and such centralized control doesn't fit. ISP admins will decide what DNS they use, and howthey route packets. Not ICANN.
Create Abundance Don't Regulate Scarcity (Score:2, Insightful)
Instead of trying to invest in all of the political baggage to regulate something, they should be focused on an exit strategy of creating such abundance that regulation is unnecessary.
Re:Create Abundance Don't Regulate Scarcity (Score:1)
Euphemistic Language (Score:2)
This is not a reform. This is a throwback, a de-evolution.
How can anyone buy the idea that eliminating democratic elections for the representatives is somehow beneficial?
ALL members of a group deciding domain-name issues should be elected (like congressmen). There needs to be a constitution of sorts to resolve domain-name conflicts. Conflicts should be decided so as to respect indivual's rights and protect the public interest, NOT to benefit corporations. To ensure that the members of such an organization don't violate that constitution, there needs to be a panel which can over-turn any ruling the elected board makes as being unconstitutional.
Really, the problem is that ICANN is private. Private organizations DO NOT work well to benefit the public if they are monopolies and have no competition, as is the case with ICANN. If the government wanted to try a private solution, they should have set it up so that there is competition. Without competition, private solutions to "protect the public interest" invariably degenerate into protecting corporate and special interests, at the expense of the public good and invidual rights.
alternate DNS roots (Score:1)
Only hope: non-ICANN DNS (Score:1)
They see things like .com, .au, .uk and .za and they think becuase it is used in marketing slogans it can be made into something that that belongs to them them - with the site DNS-admin paying them $200 a time he make a change in his own zone files.
But it doesn't have to be like that: there is no reason why anyone should use the ICANN root.
What we need to do is set up independent roots and tld that are out of these people's graspming reach. The prospect of .za disappearing off DNS if the South African government can't accept that it is just not theirs to steal would be a start. But it is more important to start using competing roots now, so their is a diversity of choice for when the government/ICANN rentseekers come to take over your DNS server and pass laws about who you can resolve off. Then they'll have to back off..
Re: (Score:2)
ARIN Debate (Score:1)
With a minimum cost of $2500 for what was previously termed a "C" block (used to cost nothing) and a $500 fee just to attend their meetings, ARIN has all the markings of a wide range fleecing.
You see, when a company goes bankrupt or scales back their network or fails to utilized IP space, supposedly those IP blocks would be reclaimed and reassigned, however IP blocks are not currently reclaimed in order to justify the huge fees for the numbers because of the apparent IP crunch. (30% of the space is unassigned, notwithstanding)
When we look at ARIN's budget we see a payroll of $2.3 million dollars for 35 employees, with over $1 million in fringe benefits. Their office is in one of the most expensive places in the country in a brand new 2001 built office building.
Despite all this the supposedly non-profit organization budgets a profit of over $1.5 million dollars.
Maintaining an IP number registry is unlike maintaining the DNS root servers, there are no servers, just a list of companies and the blocks assigned to them. While there are many millions of DNS entries, IP number registrants are in the thousands.
How does this affect you? ISPs have to pay these ridiculous "taxes" and pass the costs on to their users. ERIN directors have said, "Users won't mind paying an extra 30 cents a year." Well, I suppose banks won't mind if someone borrows a few pennies from each account right? In reality small time ISPs are denied larger blocks, and couldn't "sell" that many IP numbers anyways, so they end up passing on the $5-$10 fee per IP we enjoy today.
make a difference (Score:1)
cya, Andrew...