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The Internet Your Rights Online

ICANN Meeting off to Shaky Start in Uruguay 112

Posted by michael from the arm-wrestling-for-global-control dept.
JoeGee writes: "Reuters is reporting that the quarterly meeting of ICANN got off to a very shaky start in Montevideo, Uruguay on Friday September 8th. Protesters claim that ICANN's domain registration policies are creating a "digital divide". A special telephone party line created for members who could not be present at the meeting went unused. ICANN seems to be internalizing the turmoil that has surrounded the non-profit corporation since its inception in 1998."
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ICANN Meeting off to Shaky Start in Uruguay More

ICANN Meeting off to Shaky Start in Uruguay

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  • telephone line? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by foonf ( 447461 )
    A special telephone line?

    Why don't they use VoIP, and practice what they preach. Or is the purpose of their screwed-up policy to drive people off the internet and back to the stable technology of the past?

    • Re:telephone line? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by geomcbay ( 263540 ) on Saturday September 08, 2001 @09:34PM (#2269649)
      VoIP just isn't a particularly viable medium for mass communication yet. Its good in certain niche markets, but installing the software, setting up speakers and microphone, etc, is so much more of a pain than just using a phone (though VoIP is, generally, cheaper).


      In any case, I'd guess that if their 'call-in' line was VoIP other people would bitch and moan that they were shutting out members from less-industrialized nations who might not have the Internet infrastructure to support decent VoIP.


      Not that I'm defending ICANN. Does ANYONE actually support the existence of this group of people? Have they actually accomplished ANYTHING in practice, other than alienating Internet users? They seem to exist solely for the purpose of holding useless meetings in exotic places -- good work if you can get it, but a waste of our time and money in the long run.

    • Because sound cards suck.
  • isn't that an oxymoron?

    • Nope (Score:2, Informative)

      by Planesdragon ( 210349 )
      a "corporation" is a legal person that can bring suits, and works in the business world. It pays taxes, obeys the law, and is a real "thing."

      a "non-profit corporation" is any artifical person that exists for some reason other than the profit of its shareholders. The most popular and well-known non-profits are charities, such as United Way, the Boy Scouts of America, and the Salvation Army. Non-charitable non-profits also exist, used often to manage something a business wants done (such as Java.)

      I believe a church is something different. :)
      • I believe a church is something different. :)

        What about the Church of Sc... oh no, Xenu is in my head -- must... get... audited....... NO CARRIER

        • Now now, they CoS is a church like any other.

          If we allow Atheists, Unitarian Universalists, and Satansists (both real and "Gothic") religious protection, then we sure as heck should extend that to the CoS.

          Of course, they "should" also play nice, too. :(
          • Depends... Germany decided that the CoS was a business and is taxing them accordingly. And when was the last time the Catholic Church tried to infiltrate the IRS? (Yes, the CoS tried. Partially succeeded too... some of them are still in jail, AFAIK.)

            Kierthos
            • Hey, I never said that they *should* be considered a church. I personally don't think that kids getting together for orgies and drugs should count as a "coven"*, nor should someone have the religious freedom with regards to satanism.

              The gov't shouldn't make any law declaring "one true faith", but declaring some "not true at all faiths" isn't that far off--especially if they just let the "tyrrany of the majority" do it by peer pressure**.

              ____
              *: I have many close friends who are devout wiccans, and some of which have actually gotten NYS recognition--but only after they proved that they were more than some punks getting together to rebel.

              **: By this comment, I mean that the gov't should enforce the laws that protect any other body (like, oh, the laws that keep a church from being burnt, or a religious person losing their job because of their religion), but that they shouldn't provide special protection for smaller religions. The Catholic Church should have every protection from the state that Wicca or Atheism have.
      • As a general rule, a church isn't any different than any other charitable non-profit corporation, at least on the federal level. (I think there's a distinction between non-profit and not-for-profit ... hmm?) Churches are likely classified as 501(c)3 or, iirc, 501(b)2 (don't have my book handy) non-taxed entities.

        On the state and local level, being classified as a church usually entitles the organization to a couple of perks, not the least of which is the ability to build facilities on land to which they have the right, regardless of zoning. Many municipalities have limits on that, such that a 30,000sqft church can't come and plop themselves right in the middle of a residential development made of up comparatively tiny houses.

        • also, being classified as a church brings up the whole religious freedoms business. churches have more constitutional rights under most regimes than do non-religious charities.

  • Uruguay? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Not that there's anything wrong with choosing Uruguay, but that seems an unusual place to hold an ICANN meeting. Why go there?
    It's not exactly a tech hub, is it?

    • Re:Uruguay? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by glitch! ( 57276 )
      Not that there's anything wrong with choosing Uruguay, but that seems an unusual place to hold an ICANN meeting. Why go there?

      The official answer is probably that it is a symbol of the fact that they represent all nations, blah, blah, blah.

      I believe that they just want to keep out the "rifraff" (that's you and me), and that by making the meeting places inconvenient, the representation will have an automatic bias towards the corporations or political entities that don't care about cost.

      They may have chosen Uruguay because Easter Island would have been too obvious.
    • It is not a tech hub, but domain name issues concern the entire planet, not just the tech hubs. It is still rather sore to some folk that TLDs like .com, .net and .org are seen as belonging the the United States. Holding ICANN meetings elsewhere in the world in rotation allows others to participate in this process, thereby not depriving citizens of nations who sometimes cannot afford airplane tickets and hotel stays in large cities.

      Irrespective of where it is held, ICANN has always provided for participatory input from others not physically present thru the web. I have had my comments typed into IRC read out aloud to the General Assembly as well as being displayed on the large screen at the assembly itself.

      • Um.. the US did start things with Arpa and Darpa nets.

        We were the ones who started it (and others realised this is a good concept).

        Thats why we have .com/.net/.org ..
        • No one's taking credit away from DARPA/ARPA and the other good folks who started the internet. But let's take a good look at the state of the internet (and its namespace) today. The other nations have a stake in the process as well, and a lot of internet initiatives are also funded by non-US concerns. Additionally, getting back to the core of the internet as a bunch of cooperating networks, it is clear that it no longer is the sole domain of the US.

          Global consensus is that the ccTLDs represent country specific interests while the gTLDs represent cross-planet presence. The lack of interest in .us is glaringly evident, since most prefer the .com/.net/.org. At the same time, registrars/registries are run by US concerns with very US concentric ways of doing things. This leaves other national interests by the wayside. Look at the way UDRPs are panned as being too trade-centric.

          I'd like to see a truly global body representing the gTLDs, with ccTLDs including .us managed by the nations themselves.

  • Digital divide (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by !recycle ( 467325 )
    Alan Levin, a South African activist who ran unsuccessfully for a board seat last year, pointed out that of the roughly 40 million registered domain names, only one-fifth of one percent were held in Africa, and the vast majority of those were held in just one country -- South Africa.

    "It smacks of potentially legislating the digital divide," Levin said.

    Bildt took offense at the charge. "There are limits to the amount of rubbish I can take," he said. "Close to half the world has never made a telephone call. I would not tear down the telephone system of the U.S. because of that."


    Well gee i wonder why South Africa holdes the majority. The rest of Africa is off in a civil war and is too buty to care about the internet, and evel less about that telaphone line set up for people to call in. They need to go kill the white facists pigs. Bah to a democracy, we must controll the speech of our people, which means no internet.
  • Their report, due to be presented for discussion on Saturday, also recommends placing limits on the power of the board and setting up a bill of rights for individual users.

    I wonder what will be in that bill of rights? What sort of rights should we have to domain names? I don't know how I would write it.


    Just you wait until my registration of *.* comes through. Then you'll all be sorry.
    • You have the right to try to use dark cable.
      You have the right to tech support. If you wish, a customer support tech will be appointed.
      You have the right against unreasonable search of your computer, unless we want to.
      You have the right to be fsck'ed by large corporations with the DMCA.
      You have the right to remain silent by unplugging your network conection.

      Well, that's more of a computer Miranda than a bill of rights.
    • I wonder what will be in that bill of rights?

      don't worry, someone else is working on making those rights obsolete right now.

      I saw first this on Radio Free Nation [radionfreenation.com]

      The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act [216.110.42.179] (SSSCA), is set to be introduced by Senator Fritz Hollings [senate.gov] this fall. It makes it a civil offense to create or sell any kind of computer equipment that "does not include and utilize certified security technologies" approved by the federal government. It also creates new federal felonies, punishable by five years in prison and fines of up to $500,000. Anyone who distributes copyrighted material with "security measures" disabled or has a network-attached computer that disables copy protection is covered.

      As noted there, the Long Line of Idiots Theory [radiofreenation.net] is looking better all the time.

    • The right to a reasonable number of free domains.
      The right to choose a domain name without restriction.
      The right to not have souless corporations gobble up all the good names, before you are even allowed to register.
      The right to not have someone register a domain, just to keep it away from you.
      The right to run your nameserver off of any valid IP, not the ridiculous technical restrictions that prevent you from hosting your own site.

      Give me a little time, I'm sure I could come up with more.

  • Who the heck uses the internet anyway? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by generationcrm ( 516966 ) <generationcrm AT hotmail DOT com> on Saturday September 08, 2001 @09:42PM (#2269666) Homepage
    "In a report released last week, the committee recommended giving six board seats to "at large" users, with one each coming from North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and India and the Asian Pacific region." Just six? That is less than the majority of the body that makes up ICANN. ICANN seems to be doing a good job butting heads with the "users at large" The users at large should be defining the how we "navigate the internet". politics and technology have a long way to go still. More techies need to run for office!

  • Then I think ICANN will start to understand what the words: "slashdot effect" really mean!

  • Legislating the divide, indeed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NMerriam ( 15122 ) <NMerriam@artboy.org> on Saturday September 08, 2001 @09:44PM (#2269678) Homepage
    "It smacks of potentially legislating the digital divide," Levin said.

    Bildt took offense at the charge. "There are limits to the amount of rubbish I can take," he said. "Close to half the world has never made a telephone call. I would not tear down the telephone system of the U.S. because of that."

    After the meeting, Levin and Izumi Aizu of the Asia Network Research described Bildt's attitude as "paternalistic" and said they were not sure if his committee would take their concerns into account.


    Paternalistic, indeed -- nobody is suggesting we "tear down" the internet simply because most people on earth are too poor to afford domain names. They are suggesting that the poor be able to vote or run for office -- hardly a notion I would consider shocking.

    Bildt seems to think that instituting a poll tax with only landowners able to vote is the way to increase participation in this democracy? Which version of world history did he study that led him to believe this was at all acceptable in the 21st century?
  • Several complained that business interests, which control 80 percent of all ".com," ".org" and ".net" domain names, could potentially dominate a forum intended for individual users.

    Odd, I thought the charter of .org was for non-business interests. Can anyone point at an official charter for the domains?

    Bildt took offense at the charge. "There are limits to the amount of rubbish I can take," he said. "Close to half the world has never made a telephone call. I would not tear down the telephone system of the U.S. because of that."

    And the other half all have cell-phones, *sigh* (If I hear one more cutesy ring, usually in the middle of something important, It's Clobbering Time!)

    At ICANN meetings around the globe, Bildt said, "we're seeing the same people from the same countries turning up at different places. That's not quite global involvement. That's global presence, perhaps."

    So why does he keep turning up at different places? I wouldn't trust these people to set my VCR, never mind the standards we'll be stuck with for the next umpty years.

  • Focus (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sneakums ( 2534 ) on Saturday September 08, 2001 @09:46PM (#2269684)
    Am I the only one who cannot take this so-called "digital divide" seriously when we live in a world where millions of children die each year simply because they don't have access to basic foodstuffs and medical supplies? And meanwhile, millions of Westerners celebrate their affluence by entering the ranks of the medically obese!

    Let's concentrate on what really matters.

    • Ummm...that's the point of the 'Digital Divide': that while some areas are technologically affluent, others can't even maintian a basic social service structure, let alone any kind of technology or telecommunications.

      DD.
      • If you're talking about a society that suffers so badly from lack of infrastructure that it can't participate in the global economy, that's not a digital divide, that's a gaping chasm with nothing digital about it.

        Once you start stringing wires, then everything changes. Analog phone lines can nearly always support digital communications, even if it's limited to a few kilobits per second. Old and slow computing hardware is cheap, and even if it can't play Quake II without an unacceptably low frame rate, it'll still send email or even run a web browser. (Better uninstall those Flash plug-ins, though.)

        Taking cash and throwing it at a project to run fiber through the jungle, and giving Pentium IV machines and free domain names to all the inhabitants, won't help the digital divide one bit. If anything it'd create a cargo cult of the uneducated worshipping the computers, knowing that they will bring prosperity, when in fact they do nothing of the sort. (Well, maybe they'll provide a little recreation, thanks to Solitaire and Minesweeper.)
    • Am I the only one who cannot take this so-called "digital divide" seriously

      How do you suggest we feed the people in those poor countries if they cannot develop their economies? Should we just keep sending them food and money, or actually make efforts to get them to be self-sufficient?

      These are largely nations that have little agricultural or other natural resources, which is (among other reasons) why they have been left behind during the agricultural and industrial revolutions. Now with the possibility of a digital economy being real, this is the first time that having smart human beings is by itself enough to generate wealth!

      It isn't enough to bring these countries into the 18th or 19th centuries -- they have to catch up to the rest of the world, not always remain a step behind. We can't feed everyone on earth, but we can at least try to help them get to the point of feeding themselves.
    • Seems this needs answering.

      First, a divide is important even if there are people worse off. Do I say "go away with your penut allergy because some people have cancer"? Do I say "you should drive a 5 year old chevy and not that Audi, because some people are starving"? Do I say "you cannot have that DVD player becuase people are landless in Zimbabwe"? Of course not. A rather disingenious argument.

      Second - it is very easy for the USA (is that where you are) or Europe to tell other nations that they should not care about this becuase there are people starving.

      Third: the whole point about that divide is that opening up the new economy to developing nations gives them a chance to do just that, develop, so they won't be hungry. This divide is something to be taken seriously.

      Cheers,
      Mike

    • The digital divide exists BECAUSE of famine, technological obselence, war, poverty, etc. The sad thing is a lot of the problems are the result of colonialist policies that destroyed the economies of Africa, South America, and parts of South Asia.

      Also, there's plenty of food to go around; it's really just a problem of distribution. Of course, overpopulation (because 3rd world countries usually have less educated citizens and lower standards of living,, so they have more kids to work/are educated to know to use a condom or other protected) doesn't help.

      There are a lot of root causes that aren't being addressed in all these issues. The solution to a lot of these problems - the resurection of 3rd world economies.

      F-bacher
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • -_-; (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 ) on Saturday September 08, 2001 @10:01PM (#2269717) Homepage
    Saying that effective monopolization of domain registrations is part of a "digital divide" is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. The US has pretty much monopolized the .com/net/org/edu root domains, but that cuts both ways; If you lived in South Africa, you'd tend not to browse .com domains simply because most of those companies don't do business where you live. You'd do your surfing with .co.sa or whichever domain range is valid where you lived.

    Also, frankly, vanity domains aren't extremely essential for business on the net. People get their URLs from friends and search engines and price bots, and in my experience nearly never go to "books.com" or "plumbing.com" to see what's there.

    I'm sorry, folks. The digital divide only exists in the minds of socialists^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hliberals who worry about the poor folk not having computers, when it's largely a matter of education, not wealth. And the real estate along the information superhighway is practically boundless.

    • Stupidest? (Score:4, Informative)

      by mwillems ( 266506 ) on Saturday September 08, 2001 @10:40PM (#2269788) Homepage
      It seems to me that you are overreacting. Socialists ^H^H^H^Hliberals? Not sure it's not just ordinary marketing, not politics.

      Sure, in the uk a .co.uk domain is not unusual. But that is becuase it's easier and cheaper, not becuase they prefer it that way. The .com domain is preferable for very good marketing reasons.

      • The browsers default to .com. Are you aware how many people start IE or netscape and type "sears" or whatever and wait for the browser to do the rest?

      • You are Aceme building and a competitor gets acmebuilding.com - does that make you havepy to have your .co.za domian or whatever? Methinks not.

      • .com is shorter and hence easier to remember. In marketing terms this is very important.

      • Unlike in the US, many companies abroad do not market locally. A typical Dutch company, for instance, sells to 5 or 6 countries. Holland is so small you can literally drive across it in 90 minutes. What good is a .nl domain? Think Germans know what that is? No way. But .com they understand.



      So, before you (maybe from a luxury position of being American?) tell others they do not need .com domains, perhaps allow them to decide this for themselves. I always thought it odd that some unelected company in Virginia doles out domains, 9-5 EST USA time.

      Cheers,
      Michael
      • You are Aceme building and a competitor gets acmebuilding.com - does that make you havepy to have your .co.za domian or whatever?

        Have you any idea how big the Republic of South Africa is?

        Unlike in the US, many companies abroad do not market locally

        Plenty of US companies don't even market to the whole US, even amongst the 48 states which actually cover one contiguious land area. But the US is the most reluctant to make use of geographic domains.

        A typical Dutch company, for instance, sells to 5 or 6 countries. Holland is so small you can literally drive across it in 90 minutes. What good is a .nl domain?

        In which case there is the .eu domain.

        Think Germans know what that is? No way. But .com they understand.

        Far more likely than your typical American to be even able to find Canada or Mexico...
    • No - South Africans surf .com/net/org as well.

      Why ?

      • Because South African companies like those addresses - makes them 'international'
      • Because hotmail doesnt have a .za address
      • Because google.com returns search results from the world, and the world is a .com place
      I know Alan Levin [futureperfect.co.za] because his office is next door to me - he is usually right in his pronoucements. The digital divide is very real in a country where my (internet) phone bill is the same as my rent.

      What am I doing about it ? See Wizzy Digital Courier [wizzy.org.za]

      • * Because hotmail doesnt have a .za address

        Sounds like a business opportunity to me!
        But the number of possible desirable hotmail.com addresses are limited, too. Does that mean there's a digital divide within that system, too?

        * Because google.com returns search results from the world, and the world is a .com place

        Yes, and that annoys me sometimes; if I'm looking for products to buy, when Google returns links for European firms it doesn't help me any. What's wrong with having a "popsearch.co.za" search engine that only looks for local companies?
    • Also, frankly, vanity domains aren't extremely essential for business on the net. People get their URLs from friends and search engines and price bots, and in my experience nearly never go to "books.com" or "plumbing.com" to see what's there.


      It's all for the sake of marketing. Something short and simple is going to be more effective in terms of branding and such.

  • What's that brown stuff? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08, 2001 @11:15PM (#2269846)
    What a complete load of crap.

    But at least the critics are paying attention. Participants here conceded that the issue of public involvement has failed to capture the public's attention.

    ICANN had set up a conference-call line so those not in Montevideo could participate, but an operator reported that no one had dialed in.

    Hello? McFly? I'm an at-large member, and I never heard of this... Of course no one called an unlisted, unadvertised number. You have to preregister to get the number. It took me a fair bit of searching to find that little nugget of information after reading this article. I'm on the announcement list they say has so few subscribers; I haven't seen any useful announcements.

    And if public participation is so low, why do they want to lower it? How many of the current at-large members will remain at-large members once they accept their internal version of the world? The At-Large Study draft [atlargestudy.org] doesn't give an estimate. Fancy that.

    Flamebait? You bet. They deserved to be roasted alive. This Bildt guy worked for RAND Europe. Hm. Niles is a US ex-Ambassador. Hm. Dandjinou is responsible for the African domain names mentioned in the article. Hm. Many have backgrounds that make me go Hm. Many of the agencies and groups mentioned throughout have ties that give conspiracy theorists major woodies.

    • Agreed. Everybody who did their research and has a vested interest in ICANN's outcome seems to be a board member of ICANN. At-large members get squat for information, and the board chair makes fun of them for not getting involved and coming to the "local" events that could possibly be over 1000 miles away?

      Bah! I smell political horse shit from a bunch of really really really smart engineers. They say that technical people make horrible leaders (business or national). So far, ICANN seems to be proving them all right.

      Of course, the dude from South Africa and his buddy from Asia seemed like they weren't power-hungry control freaks, so maybe there is still hope.

      At ICANN meetings around the globe, Bildt said, "we're seeing the same people from the same countries turning up at different places. That's not quite global involvement. That's global presence, perhaps."

      Bzzt! Wrong answer, Mr. Bildt. That's vested interest and a lot of $$$$$. If you make the events less public, then you will limit attendance to the rich. That's what the other two dudes were trying to get across to you, but you were too thick-headed to consider that you might actually be wrong, so you spouted off like a 2nd grader and hoped your leverage and experience would make the other board members nod solemnly and agree with your (off-base) opinion.

      Of course, you didn't contemplate that your quote would be posted all over the internet, where your raving emotions have no effect on a semi-intelligent individual. So while your board members might have been swayed for the moment, the rest of us are not.

      Additionally, we don't appreciate your elitist attitude, and would prefer that you start marketing your presence to the general public through traditional channels such as TV advertising, Internet sites, and industry-specific written materials before you write-off the interest of the general public in your affairs. Thank you, and good day, sir.
      • > Bzzt! Wrong answer, Mr. Bildt. That's vested interest and a lot of $$$$$.

        Bildt is a scumbag. During the 1991-1995 Yugoslav crisis, Bildt got thrown out of Croatia and told never to return due to his shameful stint as UN ambassador there. How does someone go from "peacekeeping" to internet domains?
    • My understanding of the party line is that it was for committee members who couldn't show up in person. That none of these people bothered to call in seems to me to signify perhaps even the ordained members of ICANN's heirarchy realize their futility.

      Maybe I misread the story and the party line was for at-large members? Imagine, they never bothered to tell us. Are they afraid of what we would have to say to them, or perhaps the underutilization of such an expensive service gave all the attendees upgrades to first class air seating on their favorite airline?

      As far as I am concerned, ICANN can't ...

  • Problems Completing .BIZ Apps...anyone else?? (Score:3)

    by Ron Bennett ( 14590 ) on Sunday September 09, 2001 @12:11AM (#2269938) Homepage
    I've received two series of emails from Neulevel within 24 hours of each other saying that many of my .BIZ domain name applications conflict with trademark claims (most of which are dubious at best) that some other people have made.

    The Neulevel emails then go onto to say that one must login and "complete" their .BIZ applications very soon or they are automatically canceled (possibly as soon as Monday?). Seems simple enough, but it's not...and this is where things get interesting. Neulevel encloses the required Password in the email, BUT NOT the required Username. Neulevel says in their email that one is supposed to use the user ID they were assigned by their respective .BIZ Registrar.

    However, I can't login to complete my .BIZ applications and I bet others can't either...a .BIZ scam in the making...? Keep in mind that persons who made trademark claims paid approx $90 USD for each claim and thus Neulevel has an incentive to make things easier for them and more difficult for everyone else.

    In many instances the perspective .BIZ registrant has either forgotten their user ID, or was never assigned one by their respective .BIZ registrar, or inexplicably their so-called user ID isn't accepted by Neulevel's system.

    Perhaps Neulevel is counting on many perspective .BIZ registrants not being able to complete their .BIZ applications due to the complexity of their system - giving one their password and not their user ID is highly unusual and appears to me to be intended to make the confirmation process so difficult and confusing that many perspective .BIZ registrants can't do it...and even worse, many people won't even realize their .BIZ applications will NEVER be submitted because they never received any emails from Neulevel and/or couldn't understand the procedure.

    I sincerely hope that Neulevel sends out a followup clarification email that contains ALL the information that a perspective .BIZ registrant needs to complete their .BIZ application(s). Anything less is unfair and unethical.
    • I have been getting .biz'd and .info'd from several mock "registrars" the past week. "ONLY TWO DAYS LEFT UNTIL PREREGISTRATION ENDS" etc.

      On the bright side I notice that I no longer seem to be getting the "as the owner of f00.com we feel you should know that someone else has expressed an interest in f00.org and f00.net. Click on this link to purchase these domains before they are acquired by your competitors."

      I suspect a best tipoff that any pro-registration email was a scam would be that the legitimate holder of whatever.tld 's rights would probably not send out mass mailings. In addition if they were to do so chances are the emails would not have a return address of jim6969@hotmail.com . :)
    • The lesson here is: Don't buy .biz domains. They already collide with OpenNIC [unrated.net]'s .biz domain, which means that if OpenNIC gains any popularity, your domain name may not function.

      How much are you willing to bet that the internet will still be following a pigheadedly self-serving organization like ICANN five years from now?
  • "U R Gay.....hee hee hee!"
  • Considering that the same people show up at each ICANN meeting, moving it to obscure locations is silly. They should limit it to, say, the cities where the United Nations has a major presence: New York, Geneva, and Vienna. Or locations that have a root DNS server.
    • Location: palm trees, sunshine, peaceful country, and who in the hell has heard enough about ICANN to raise much of a stink?

      Location: most of the people who are concerned enough about ICANN cannot afford to get to an out-of-the-way place like Montevideo, Uruguay. Many of them don't even know how to say the name of the city, much less the name of the country.

      Location: ICANN hopes to win points (and silence critics) among developing nations by holding a meeting in one of their own.

      I think the supposed goal of the committee is to move the quarterly meeting from region to region with the lofty idea of bringing ICANN at its highest level within easy traveling distance of each participating locale. On the other hand there's a big difference between a meeting in Montevideo and a meeting in Rio. People in Rio might have actually noticed ...

  • The Open Root Server Confederation [open-rsc.org] and OpenNIC [unrated.net], among others, provide root servers that ICANN does not control. I can see domain names like Atlantic.Ocean [atlantic.ocean] -- can you?

    If not, you should!

  • At-Large Membership is a sham (Score:4, Informative)

    by securitas ( 411694 ) on Sunday September 09, 2001 @03:24AM (#2270196) Homepage Journal


    I've been an At-Large member since ICANN started the project. Although I am on the announcement list I haven't received a single e-mail about meetings, initiatives or what-have-you in months (at a minimum).

    I, for one, am tired of Esther Dyson's self-righteous elitist cronies telling the rest of us how the Internet should be.

    I was skeptical but had hopes when the At Large initiative started. I've now come to see it as it is: a sham that gives the illusion of openness and the air of democratic legitimacy to those who willingly turn a blind eye to the autocratic, business-as-usual attitude of the ICANN Board. By the way, here's the text of a relevant rejected post I sent in:

    Studies: Public Participation in Internet Policy (Your Rights Online, Internet)

    The New York Times informs us [nytimes.com] that two new reports from ICANN [icann.org] and the Center for Democracy and Technology [cdt.org] both say that more public participation is required in policy-making. DUH! The ICANN report says only domain name holders should have rights [atlargestudy.org], while the CDT report says the process should be open to all [naisproject.org] interested parties. We'll see what happens on Nov. 14 when the reports are tabled at the next ICANN meeting.

  • http://www.postel.org/remembrances/18postel.jpg
  • I don't get why those Third World representatives and their sympathizers are complaining about ICANN creating a digital divide. Those countries are sitting on a goldmine of barely used two letter domains. Subsaharann Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, South America there's a whole world of domains out there and if a country is savvy enough to open registration up to the rest of us, I would suspect there's money to be made.

    Most of the Polynesian domains ws, vu, nu, to, tv, sell for at least $35/year, making them more expensive than Internic registrations and certainly more than what it costs to register a .com, .org, or .net with discount registry.

    http://zc2zc3.org was already taken when I went to get a domain for ZOID CITY Community and Community Competition. Being avowedly uncommercial and DIFFERENT from other web site competition communities, I did not want a .com or a .net

    I went shopping and found .st which is Saotome and Principe. It was not cheap but I have the name for three years at $75.

    I think it was worth the shopping and worth the price. Sure everybody thinks .com but that makes .com common as dirt. An .st raises eyebrows. Having a short name to start with I figure http://zc2zc3.st is not hard to remember. Of course the eyebrow raising effect will die back as more people get these exotic country codes but for now it is nice to be the "first one on my block..."

    I think there would be lots of other folks like me if other third world counntries made it easy to register their domain names.

    Eileen H. Kramer/ZOIDRubashov/Roanna
    http://zc2zc3.st

  • Thought I'd take a look at the story. Clicked on the link, ended up at their:


    page.

    As it happens, I'm running Mozilla 0.9.2 on WinNT (yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what the company supplies me with). I may have told it to lie a wee bit about its, and my, identity, but is that any reason to cut me off from seeing those ads the customers are paying them to run?

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