Fwd: [governance] It's Time to Stop ICANN's Top-Level Domain (TLD) Lunacy!
Begin forwarded message:
From: Ian Peter <ian.peter@ianpeter.com> Date: 04 novembre 2010 07:11:23 GMT+01:00 To: "'governance@lists.cpsr.org'" <governance@lists.cpsr.org> Subject: [governance] It's Time to Stop ICANN's Top-Level Domain (TLD) Lunacy! Reply-To: governance@lists.cpsr.org,Ian Peter <ian.peter@ianpeter.com>
From Lauren Weinstein - copied from his blog.
The Executive Summary - "The DNS and the domain name infrastructure made sense in an era before the universal availability of search engines and online directories. But for such massive costs and complexities -- such as those inevitably stemming from the ICANN TLD expansion -- to be incurred simply to map names to Internet sites is now both technically and economically obsolete and abominable".
Internet co-founder Robert Kahn is one of just a number of people working on alternative resource discovery systems more akin to todays needs.
Ian Peter
Lauren's missive follows.
It's Time to Stop ICANN's Top-Level Domain (TLD) Lunacy!
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000776.html
Greetings. I'm going to keep this relatively short and sweet, since I've written of my concerns about ICANN's handling of Top-Level Domains (TLDs) many times in the past.
The existing Domain Name System (DNS) has been leveraged in multiple ways into something akin to a protection racket, with vast sums of money being funneled to existing and wannabe registries, registrars -- and to ICANN itself -- with little or no resulting tangible benefits to the Internet community at large. That is, unless you consider ever increasing levels of costs and confusion to be some sort of benefits. Dot-com is still the single TLD that most Internet users recognize as fundamental among the increasingly disruptive clutter -- and you haven't seen anything yet compared with the pandemonium about to be unleashed.
"Protective registrations" by trademark owners and other concerned parties in new TLDs have become an enormous profit center for various players in the DNS ecosystem, with boasting about the income that will be derived through such arm-twisting techniques now being commonplace.
The amount of money involved is staggering. In a few days, ICANN may release their new "guidebook" for upcoming TLD applicants ( http://bit.ly/9BZUNu [ars technica] ). The application fee alone for a single new TLD is reported to be almost $200K, payable to ICANN. The cost of running a new TLD if you're accepted? A whole bunch, likely including (but not limited to) big moola to ICANN every year.
ICANN plans to limit the number of new TLDs to only (only???) about 1000 per year -- maybe half that in the first year. Let's see, $185,000 times 1000 ... Nice chunk of change.
Of course, ICANN claims that these fees are justified by the costs involved in processing these applications. Assuming this is true, I can't think of a better proof that the entire process is rotten and dysfunctional to the core.
The DNS and the domain name infrastructure made sense in an era before the universal availability of search engines and online directories. But for such massive costs and complexities -- such as those inevitably stemming from the ICANN TLD expansion -- to be incurred simply to map names to Internet sites is now both technically and economically obsolete and abominable.
It's time to end the TLD madness. It will take both time and some heavy lifting. But there are alternative methodologies -- more efficient, extensible, and far more economical, much better suited to the Internet of the 21st century, and we need to start working on them now.
Vested interests -- basically the entire "domain-industrial complex" -- who stand to profit mightily by exploiting the continuation and expansion of the unnecessary, counterproductive, and obsolete domain name system, can be expected to fight any efforts at significant changes, using every weapon in their arsenals. Various other parties will also fight such changes -- since as we've increasingly seen the DNS provides an ideal mechanism for centralized censorship and heavy-handed intellectual property enforcement regimes -- through the disabling on demand of Web site name-based addressability.
Be that all as it may, this is a battle -- nay, perhaps a war -- necessary for the best interests of both the Internet and its global community of users.
Please let me know if you'd be interested in participating.
Thanks. Take care.
--Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com) http://www.vortex.com/lauren Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 Co-Founder, PFIR (People For Internet Responsibility): http://www.pfir.org Founder, NNSquad (Network Neutrality Squad): http://www.nnsquad.org Founder, GCTIP (Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance): http://www.gctip.org Founder, PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Google Buzz: http://bit.ly/lauren-buzz
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Sull'argomento c'e` una discussione interessante in corso sulla mailing list dell'Internet Governance Caucus (governance@lists.cpsr.org, non so quale sia il sito degli archivi, ma immagino che un motore di ricerca qualsiasi possa aiutare). L'annuncio di Lauren Weinstein mi sembra estremamente vago. Il fatto che Ian Peter lo colleghi al sistema sviluppato negli ultimi hanni da Robert Kahn (Handle, http://www.handle.net/) non e` molto incoraggianti, dato che Handle ha esattamente gli stessi problemi di governance centralizzata del DNS. Tempo fa avevo cominciato a cercare di capire perche` le ricerche e i risultati nel campo dei filesystem e database massicciamente distribuiti (ovvero senza "master", ma in grado di risolvere eventuali conflitti tra repliche) non fossero stati adottati anche per il DNS, in questo modo risolvendo almeno uno dei problemi di governance (l'esistenza di una singola zona "root") ma non ho mai veramente capito il motivo. Ciao, Andrea On 11/4/2010 7:28 AM, J.C. DE MARTIN wrote:
Begin forwarded message:
*From:* Ian Peter <ian.peter@ianpeter.com <mailto:ian.peter@ianpeter.com>> *Date:* 04 novembre 2010 07:11:23 GMT+01:00 *To:* "'governance@lists.cpsr.org <mailto:governance@lists.cpsr.org>'" <governance@lists.cpsr.org <mailto:governance@lists.cpsr.org>> *Subject:* *[governance] It's Time to Stop ICANN's Top-Level Domain (TLD) Lunacy!* *Reply-To:* governance@lists.cpsr.org <mailto:governance@lists.cpsr.org>,Ian Peter <ian.peter@ianpeter.com <mailto:ian.peter@ianpeter.com>>
From Lauren Weinstein - copied from his blog.
The Executive Summary - "The DNS and the domain name infrastructure made sense in an era before the universal availability of search engines and online directories. But for such massive costs and complexities -- such as those inevitably stemming from the ICANN TLD expansion -- to be incurred simply to map names to Internet sites is now both technically and economically obsolete and abominable".
Internet co-founder Robert Kahn is one of just a number of people working on alternative resource discovery systems more akin to todays needs.
Ian Peter
Lauren's missive follows.
It's Time to Stop ICANN's Top-Level Domain (TLD) Lunacy!
<http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000776.html>http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000776.html
Greetings. I'm going to keep this relatively short and sweet, since I've written of my concerns about ICANN's handling of Top-Level Domains (TLDs) many times in the past.
The existing Domain Name System (DNS) has been leveraged in multiple ways into something akin to a protection racket, with vast sums of money being funneled to existing and wannabe registries, registrars -- and to ICANN itself -- with little or no resulting tangible benefits to the Internet community at large. That is, unless you consider ever increasing levels of costs and confusion to be some sort of benefits. Dot-com is still the single TLD that most Internet users recognize as fundamental among the increasingly disruptive clutter -- and you haven't seen anything yet compared with the pandemonium about to be unleashed.
"Protective registrations" by trademark owners and other concerned parties in new TLDs have become an enormous profit center for various players in the DNS ecosystem, with boasting about the income that will be derived through such arm-twisting techniques now being commonplace.
The amount of money involved is staggering. In a few days, ICANN may release their new "guidebook" for upcoming TLD applicants ( http://bit.ly/9BZUNu [ars technica] ). The application fee alone for a single new TLD is reported to be almost $200K, payable to ICANN. The cost of running a new TLD if you're accepted? A whole bunch, likely including (but not limited to) big moola to ICANN every year.
ICANN plans to limit the number of new TLDs to only (only???) about 1000 per year -- maybe half that in the first year. Let's see, $185,000 times 1000 ... Nice chunk of change.
Of course, ICANN claims that these fees are justified by the costs involved in processing these applications. Assuming this is true, I can't think of a better proof that the entire process is rotten and dysfunctional to the core.
The DNS and the domain name infrastructure made sense in an era before the universal availability of search engines and online directories. But for such massive costs and complexities -- such as those inevitably stemming from the ICANN TLD expansion -- to be incurred simply to map names to Internet sites is now both technically and economically obsolete and abominable.
It's time to end the TLD madness. It will take both time and some heavy lifting. But there are alternative methodologies -- more efficient, extensible, and far more economical, much better suited to the Internet of the 21st century, and we need to start working on them now.
Vested interests -- basically the entire "domain-industrial complex" -- who stand to profit mightily by exploiting the continuation and expansion of the unnecessary, counterproductive, and obsolete domain name system, can be expected to fight any efforts at significant changes, using every weapon in their arsenals. Various other parties will also fight such changes -- since as we've increasingly seen the DNS provides an ideal mechanism for centralized censorship and heavy-handed intellectual property enforcement regimes -- through the disabling on demand of Web site name-based addressability.
Be that all as it may, this is a battle -- nay, perhaps a war -- necessary for the best interests of both the Internet and its global community of users.
Please let me know if you'd be interested in participating.
Thanks. Take care.
--Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com <mailto:lauren@vortex.com>) http://www.vortex.com/lauren Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 Co-Founder, PFIR (People For Internet Responsibility): <http://www.pfir.org>http://www.pfir.org Founder, NNSquad (Network Neutrality Squad): <http://www.nnsquad.org>http://www.nnsquad.org Founder, GCTIP (Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance): <http://www.gctip.org>http://www.gctip.org Founder, PRIVACY Forum: <http://www.vortex.com>http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: <http://lauren.vortex.com>http://lauren.vortex.com Twitter: <https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein>https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Google Buzz: <http://bit.ly/lauren-buzz>http://bit.ly/lauren-buzz
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participants (2)
-
Andrea Glorioso -
J.C. DE MARTIN