| Terminal.Failure@Internet.Monopoly |
by Malcolm Dean (July 30, 2002)
ICANN, the Infofascist organization which rules the Internet with more effective power than any government, was told yesterday to 'fess up and show its knickers to reform-minded Board member Karl Auerbach. Contributing Editor Malcolm Dean interviewed Auerbach at the Los Angeles Superior Court . . .
Terminal.Failure@Internet.Monopoly
Malcolm Dean
If the Internet has been a collective work of genius, bringing countless wonders and benefits, those wonders and benefits clearly stop where the process that created the Internet ceases. As a new and tiny academic network, the original Internet could be managed by friendly collaboration. As a mass multimedia platform, it has become a cesspool of Intellectual Property lawyers determined to milk it for hefty fees while enabling a global regime of Infofascism.
The Internet has more than one 'last mile' problem. All the committees and standards that worked so brilliantly together somehow came to a crashing halt when facing management of the naming system and the root servers that dispense names upon request. True, there are naming standards. There are protocols for disseminating names. But when it came to objectively describing how humans would manage the Internet, the brilliance ended.
A simple example is the ridiculously limited set of 'dots', such as 'dot com', 'dot org', and (hold your breath, now) seven new Top-Level Domains. In a day when even files in most OSes can have lengthy names and suffixes, this entirely artificial limitation has created a huge and corrupt industry devoted to the enrichment of trademark owners. The committees and technical designers of the Internet have left us with a system that manages technically, but fails to breach the gap with its human endpoints.
Into the breach dove the politicians, never a crowd intimidated by their lack of suitability for the task. They quickly recognized familiar features: The problem is international, requires human management, and has the potential for political manipulation. Call in the bureaucratic clowns.
The result was an ideal fascist solution, the same solution usually 'offered' to budding new democracies: Tell the technicians that their work will henceforth be managed by a central authority composed largely of representatives of corporate interests. Screw democracy. It's too inconvenient. Like the Internet, we just don't get it.
The central authority became ICANN, a non-profit, private-sector California corporation located incongruously in decadent Marina del Rey. In a leap of logic that only makes sense in Washington, D.C., it was deemed more suitable to have a distant, secretive, private California corporation managing the global Internet for all nations, whether they like it or not, than a democratic government with existing formal diplomatic relations.
Failing persistently to reform itself, ICANN has become what any government-granted monopoly inevitably becomes: a money machine for insiders. Just as the Hudson's Bay Company was granted the right to exploit the natural resources of most of North America, at tremendous cost to the existing population and environment, ICANN views the Internet as some uncharted continent, simply waiting for exploitation by the creation of fees, taxes, and rules favorable to its members, and their hit squads of trademark and Intellectual Property attorneys.
This was obvious to anyone attending ICANN's third annual meeting in Marina del Rey, November 2001. Amidst heavy security, many of the sessions were closed to anyone but special interest groups, and interested observers were actively told they were not permitted to view the discussions. The halls were thick with representatives of enterprises making a fortune from the domain name game.
Karl Auerbach was elected to help reform ICANN, but the Board has consistently frustrated attempts at making its activities transparent and accountable. Though it lost in court yesterday, ICANN has already issued the threat that it may appeal the court's decision. Since Auerbach and his allies will end their terms on ICANN's Board this October, justice delayed will be justice denied.
ICANN was recently served notice by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce that the Memorandum of Understanding which granted its Royal Monopoly will expire on September 30, 2002. The Department of Commerce is assessing whether to renew, extend, or modify this agreement, a process occurring with the same secrecy and lack of objective technical rigor that created the mess in the first place.
Now you know what happens to the 'last mile' when the technical community decides to drop its tools and walk away. The physical 'last mile' is being completed with devices and legislation designed for the sole benefit of major entertainment and communications interests. Systems are being designed that will satisfy the needs of fascist states for monitoring and control of Internet content.
It's time for technological leaders such as Tim Berners-Lee, Linus Torvalds, and dozens of others to speak up. The result of leaving the Internet to bureaucrats and politicians is not only dangerous to your freedom, it's dangerous to the countless wonders and benefits you're taking for granted. And that's a bottom line even a politician can understand.
Auerbach's case was supported and presented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), devoted to 'Protecting rights in the digital age'. To maintain the defense of your cyberfreedom, dial http://www.eff.org/perl/join and donate generously.
AUERBACH: In a historical perspective, ICANN is part of the erosion of governments around the world. Multi-national corporations have withdrawn the power of governments to regulate within their borders, and ICANN represents a granule of this erosion. It's a piece of sovereignty, and because it's affecting literally billions of dollars, we have to ask, "How will these things be governed? Will they be oligarchies which rule from above, or will they have public input?" ICANN is an institution of governance, and it has been proposed as a model for future institutions.
In a smaller context, we have Enron, Worldcom, ICANN... how are corporations to become responsive to the people? ICANN is a public corporation that obtains many benefits from its status. What is it returning? Part of that is supposed to be accountability. How can it benefit the public if the public has no role in its decisions? That's what this case is about. Can a person elected by the public have enough information to make well-informed decisions about how this corporation is run?
DEAN: Why has ICANN delayed for months your access to its official documents?
AUERBACH: It's obvious from their filings that they don't like me. They can't ground their fear in my votes, because I've voted with the majority 60% of the time. If they had given me the information when I requested it, the results of most of these votes would have been the same.
DEAN: Was ICANN's resistance to the At Large Committee, or to you personally?
AUERBACH: I am the most vocal person, so, in either case, I would have been the recipient. There are a total of five publicly elected Directors. Some of them have a corporate background; others come from areas where democratic principles are not nearly as well-formed. They don't believe in a public vote, because they believe their countries don't have the democratic foundation.
The remaining 14 Directors come from industry groups, particularly the Intellectual Property industry, which wants to protect Intellectual Property above all other rights. ICANN covers two distinct areas. One is the Domain Name area, but the other is a much larger, more intense area involving IP addresses. That's really where people should be looking. Right now, it's run by three organizations: ARIN, RIPE, and APNIC. They are allocating literally billions of dollars, directing where the Internet will grow, who will be a player, and who will not be. ICANN acts as an umbrella, hiding these organizations from oversight. They operate in secrecy, and they like that. These groups elect a block of Directors on the Board. And there is a third group that is the old-guard technical community, the IETF and IAB . . . these represent forces that don't really care about public input. They care about preserving ICANN has, over its lifetime, done nothing technical for the Internet. The Internet is worse off now than it was before ICANN. We are running with less control. ICANN has failed to co-ordinate the root servers of DNS, for example. It has created these hyper-complex business structures for domain names which have turned out to have business practices and ethics that would make a used car salesman blush. That's really the legacy of ICANN.
DEAN: Has the IETF failed the Internet?
AUERBACH: No. The IETF actually has a standard for root server operations, and it's not a bad RFC. But ICANN has never obligated that in a contractual way. The naming process is just chaos. After four years, we have only seven new Top-Level Domains. We could be adding thousands of Root Servers a year, but ICANN has turned this into a regulatory travesty.
The IETF and IAB recently sent a letter to ICANN saying 'we want the protocol parameter function back'. It's essentially a job of taking a number from a list and recording it in another list. Not very technical, mostly clerical. So many players in ICANN are actually asking to bail out. The only people who really buy into ICANN are those industries formed under ICANN, who make money under ICANN. Mostly domain name registrars such as Verisign. ICANN has created very complex marketing channels for these people, and they like it.
The Intellectual Property people like the UDRP, the most egregious thing about ICANN. It is a law of trademark that exceeds the law of trademark enacted by any nation on the planet. And it applies across all nations, under a judicial system created by ICANN in a process that, at best, resembles a kangaroo court, with built-in bias in favor of the Intellectual Property-owning plaintiff. If you believe you own rights in your own name, or your school's name, or your church's name, or the name of your deity, you don't have any standing before ICANN. Only if you own a trademark. It's been twisted to favor trademark owners. And it is a supra-national law of trademark. As I told U.S. Senators recently, ICANN can pass a law that supersedes any law they can pass.
Today's court case says that ICANN must stop being an obstacle to innovation. How we name things in a network is critical to the growth of the network. ICANN has a very dogmatic view of how this should be done, but it's not the only system. In fact, it's a very inappropriate system. ICANN's insistence that it shall be the one, the only naming system of the Internet has crushed innovation in an area where we need it very much.
Imagine going up to the gates of Versailles in 1700 and saying 'I want to petition the King'. That's about the same right as you have today. The ICANN Board gives very little credence to the public. It's very insular. I learn more about ICANN from the Web than I do from ICANN itself.
Copyright © 2002 by Malcolm Dean. Reproduced by DesktopLinux.com with permission.
About the author: Contributing Editor Malcolm Dean is a writer and IT strategist based in Los Angeles.
Talk back! Do you have comments or questions on this story? talkback here
(Click here for further information)
|
|
|
Approaching the Linux Desktop
The purpose of this paper is to help organizations evaluate the Linux desktop against their own enterprise needs and discover what benefits the Linux desktop might bring to their organizations.
Migrating To Linux: Application Challenges and Solutions
Several solutions exist to help organizations migrate in an orderly fashion from Windows to Linux desktops. This paper establishes the characteristics of an ideal cross-platform solution and reviews these alternatives in light of this ideal standard. The paper takes a closer look at the pros and cons of various solutions and outlines the business benefits that can be achieved.
Linux Advantages: Publicly Available Information on Linux Software
This paper offers a brief summary of readily-available Linux information to help businesses sort out this widely misunderstood operating system.
Top 5 Strategies for Managing Linux
Despite continuous evolution in the manageability of Linux, a 2006 survey cited manageability concerns as a top reason why organizations are hesitating to adopt Linux. Levanta believes Linux can be as manageable, if not more so, than other operating systems by following key strategies. These strategic recommendations were developed from experiences in numerous customer environments, both large and small.
Why Choose Novell for Linux?
This paper outlines the benefits of switching to the Linux platform and choosing Novell as a high-performance, enterprise solution.
Enterprise Linux Selection Guide
Considering moving your enterprise to the Linux operating system? Since there are so many similar versions, choosing the right one can be tough. This paper offers a clear process to help you make an informed decision and get the features, support, and cost that are right for your business and technical needs.
Overcoming Challenges in Managing Linux
Levanta has created a new administration model with innovative technology that breaks down the barriers to making the most of Linux systems. This paper will provide an in-depth look at the workings of Levanta’s product, the first Linux appliance of its kind.
SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 for Retail Businesses
Discover why major retailers have switched to SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop in the back office. SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 is a low-cost desktop that offers a complete set of productivity applications and interoperates seamlessly with the other Windows, Macintosh and UNIX desktops in your store.
Moving to a Linux Desktop
Migrating from Windows to Linux on the desktop can be a substantial undertaking because it has the potential for touching -- and perhaps disrupting -- every user in your organization. Unlike a data center (server and infrastructure) migration that is largely transparent to users, the cultural and administrative transitions and environment readiness required to support a Linux desktop migration are extensive.
Seven Good Reasons to Exchange Exchange
This paper describes seven compelling reasons why you should switch from Exchange to Scalix.
|
|
|
|
|
news feed
