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IP: Old Internet Thinking RIP
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 18:34:49 -0400
As usual, comments appreciated. Dave ------ Forwarded Message From: "Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <froomkin () law miami edu> Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 15:34:00 -0400 (EDT) To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu> Subject: for IP? Old Internet Thinking RIP http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=927 Carl Malamud, one of the sponsors of the IMS proposal for .org, has posted his response [1] to ICANN's tentative decision to give .org to an as yet non-existent body to be created somehow or other by its good friends at ISOC.[2] The essay demonstrates why IMS's hopes, and the rest of us probably, are doomed. See, the problem is that Malamud's entire essay is consumed with irrelevant Old Internet considerations like running code, technical merit, and whether it makes sense to evaluate a program without ever looking at it. This IETF-style approach to the problem of finding reasonable solutions to problems has no place in the Brave New Internet of today where expensive consulting firms decide that proposals produced by expensive consulting firms have the most merit, where merit is defined as producing familiar-looking paper. Only a dinosaur would have failed to notice that "the ICANN .ORG review mechanism literally restates the ICANN new open gTLD contract award order." [3] Only an ostrich would fail to see that ICANN has learned nothing and forgotten nothing from the gTLD rollout debacle. Recall that mere factual errors were no reason to upset the gTLD allocations.[4] Read Malamud's essay.[1] Don't miss the Grrrrrreat slides. [5] Weep or gnash your teeth. There's not much else you can do now that the ICANN Board is preparing [6] to undermine just about every form of outside accountability that might be brought to bear on it.[7] It is possible to argue that ISOC will do a perfectly competent job on ..org. It just won't have the lowest prices. And, if Malamud is to be believed (I am not competent to judge, but he is), it won't have the best technology. And it certainly won't do anything to increase competition in the market for providers of registry services. But you can't have everything, can you? And no doubt we'll have the comfort of knowing that ..org is in safe and familiar hands as soon as ISOC actually gets around to telling us who will be involved in running this new corporation they are planning to set up Real Soon Now. I'd feel somewhat less bad about that argument if ICANN would release the data [8] that might back it up. Unless of course the data show something else. Assuming it exists. Notes [1] http://not.invisible.net/signals/bin/000270.shtml [2] http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-19aug02.htm [3] http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=922 [4] http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=22 [5] http://trusted.resource.org/Grrrrrrr.pdf [6] http://www.icann.org/committees/evol-reform/links.htm [7] http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=575 [8] http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=923 -- Please visit http://www.icannwatch.org A. Michael Froomkin | Professor of Law | froomkin () law tm U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA +1 (305) 284-4285 | +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax) | http://www.law.tm -->It's very hot here.<-- ------ End of Forwarded Message For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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