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more on ICANN - And here's who will be running the Internet for the next 3 years
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 08:38:21 -0400
------ Forwarded Message From: Michael Froomkin <froomkin () law miami edu> Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 13:43:30 +0100 To: dave () farber net Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com> Subject: Re: [IP] ICANN - And here's who will be running the Internet for the next 3 years 2 comments for IP. 1. I hope Russel Nelson is right about how limited ICANN's powers are. So far alas he's only almost right -- but ICANN's one foray into non-technical matters (its creation of de facto international trademark law in the UDRP) shows how it can leverage its technical power into social and legal issues. There are attempts afoot to do something similar with Whois data, and leverage it into, say, a copyright police database, although it's quite uncertain these will prevail. (There also used to be a danger that government officials would point to ICANN as a model of public-private governance and clone its mistakes into other areas. I think that danger is now pretty small, fortunately.) 2. As an editor of ICANNWatch.org, I think I'm known as something of an ICANN critic, but even I think Kieren McCarthy's article that started this thread was a little too harsh. (Compare http://www.icannwatch.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/16/1750242). I certainly agree that the process by which these new Board members was picked was needlessly closed, secretive and generally dysfunctional and not in keeping with the public interest. I also agree that the majority of the choices are insiders and business figures that can be trusted to vote with the crowd that captured ICANN. That said, I think Kieren McCarthy's article that started this thread was a little unfair to at least a minority of the people picked. I don't know them, but from their biographies I'd think that Veni Markovski and Njeri Rionge are likely to care about end-user interests. [And, of the returned board members, Ivan Campos has shown some concern about the issues I care about, although more in private than in any way that might really rock the boat.] Of course, I could be wrong about all this, and there may be other 'good guys' too -- although one consequence of a closed and secret process is that those of us outside the inner circle really have no idea what some of these new Board members think about anything related to ICANN. And, even if I'm right, the people who brought you the ICANN you've grown to love have entrenched and reproduced themselves in a comfortable majority. So, the situation is bad. The majority of the people picked are neither representative of the public interest nor, based on a first look, seem predisposed to endorse ICANN's more unfortunate policies. They existing domiant faction disposed of its internal critics, and replicated and extended its majority. Perhaps, though, some of the new Board members will be more open to dialog than some of their very bunkered predecessors -- although since they've got the votes, they certainly don't have to listen if they don't want to. Dave Farber wrote:
I strongly agree djf ------ Forwarded Message From: Russell Nelson <nelson () crynwr com> Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 15:21:45 -0400 To: Wdimitr () aol com, GLIGOR1 () aol com, dave () farber net Cc: karl () cavebear com Subject: Re: [IP] ICANN - And here's who will be running the Internet for the next 3 yearsAnd here's who will be running the Internetfor the next three yearsI'm sorry, but can we please reduce the nonsense level here? I keep trying to turn the knob down, but it's stuck. ICANN is in charge of the mapping from names to numbers. That's IT. That's ALL. That's ONLY. No more, and no less. One perfectly reasonably way to publish your web pages is to use a numeric-only address, such as http://192.203.178.8, and tell people "Google for Crynwr". Try it. Lo and behold, the very first match is for Crynwr software. No www, no com needed. Just "Google for Crynwr". Works for Russ Nelson, too. "Google for Russ Nelson". First hit. Now, in case you think that Google is just doing a www.ALLYOURWORDS.com search, it isn't. I got my daughter "rebeccanelson.com". Google for Rebecca Nelson and you get some actress and a few PhDs. ICANN doesn't run the net. They don't even control the only mapping of names to numbers. They only control one such mapping. You can: o Use Google. Domain names aren't a search mechanism anyway. o Use IP addresses. o Use domain.name/yournamehere. o Use tinyurl.com (or makeashorterurl or whatever). o Configure your nameserver to use an alternative root. ICANN has no real power. They can do irrelevant things, like create ...museum and .coop. If they try to use the power people have granted them, they will quickly find out how little power they really have.
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- more on ICANN - And here's who will be running the Internet for the next 3 years Dave Farber (Jun 22)