October 20, 2002
The Yellow Kids
It would have been nice if the editors at ICANNWatch had actually called out the other side before they posted their take on the dotSU "de-delegation". As it stands, it is an unfair indictment that still begs for "the other side of story". In the Wired article, Herbert claims he was talking off-the-record, Mary indicates that the matter still needs to be considered by ICANN and Sergey (the author) suggests that this will be a matter for discussion at the Shanghai meeting. Michael immediately jumps to the conclusion that this is a done deal, an insider conspiracy and yet another example of the illegitimacy of ICANN.
I've never been quite sure what the ICANNWatch agenda is. I used to think they were a necessary check in the eco-system. Now, I'm not sure. Regardless of what their goals actually are, their potshot criticisms have become shrill and counterproductive. Readers of the National Enquirer crave this style of journalism. Personally, I expect more.
Google points to some 33,300 websites related to the topic of "journalistic integrity" - we need a few more that point to ICANNWatch.
My First dotINFO
I came across my first newTLD today. What I mean is, during the regular course of careening about the Internet, I came across a resource that is using a dotINFO domain. I wasn't prompted to go there because of something I had read (ie - registry propaganda), I wasn't merely typing in an address to see if it worked (ie - nic.info) and I wasn't using a resource that belonged to me (ie - rader.info). This was a real live, flesh and blood resource that was sitting out there waiting for someone like me to use it¹.
Now, I don't know if this means that the new TLDs are taking hold or whether this was the result of some statistical phenomena (someone who uses the Internet as much as me was bound to come across a website using a newTLD sooner or later) but it does show me that there are regular Internetizens that have adopted a newTLD to hang their shingle on. A lot of people put a lot of extraordinary time and effort into seeing that the concept of newTLDs became reality - its cool to finally see that it is paying off.
¹Now that I think of it, TR's blog was probably the first newTLD that I came across, but Thomas is part of the loop, so I can't in good conscience count him as a "regular" Internetizen. Sorry T. :)
Minor changes...
Moved Radio from the desktop to the laptop today. If the SMTP publishing feature wasn't so flaky, I could probably just live with that - but given that it periodically crashes the upstreaming requiring a relaunch of Radio, I didn't want to live it to chance that the system would stay up during extended absences. I'd rather take the entire kit along with me and cross my fingers that the Internet access at my destination would be good enough to support some of the upstreaming functions. SMTP posting isn't that great anyways - no support for headlines or cat streaming...which basically means that every time that I post something via SMTP, I still have to sit down at the console and edit it manually...sigh. Hopefully this is a better arrangement. The laptop seems to be a little bit underpowered when it comes to rendering the entire site, but it hasn't been too bad on a post-by-post basis...
Anyways, the deed is done - now if I can just figure out a way to blog straight from my new e740 :) (yes, the blackberry is dead. Long live the blackberry.)
Root to drop dotSU?
I didn't see this on any of the official agenda's yet, but I haven't read them that closely yet either :) - according to Wired, the "de-delegation" of dotSU is supposedly under consideration. This conversation might yield some interesting precedents. For instance, under what circumstances will ICANN intervene in the operation of TLD, will they let them fail, will they force some to fail, etc. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this one - stay tuned.The Spinal Cracker
I'm catching up on some reading tonight - everything from fog making FAQs to some recent press on the dotORG redelegation. One of these articles touched on a point of view that has never quite made sense to me. Dave Farber says that one of the problems with the PIR plan for managing dotORG lies with the proposal to divert some of the profits towards education and outreach. He says, "The danger is, the money from .org will be used to fund your favorite little projects. I have never thought it reasonable to 'tax' Internet users to fund somebody's particular interests."
Elisabeth Porteneuve makes a similar argument in a thread currently unravelling on the GA mailing list. "The question then arises: are that $67 million per annum collected by gTLD Registries from the non-US Registrants a tax? I guess some users and now governments feel concerned by something which looks like a planetary tax.Why ICANN maintain that enormous $6 cap fee per domain name in extra-judiciary international space? Why ICANN does not use that money collected worldwide for the benefit of international domain name Registrants?" she states.
These aren't taxes we're talking about here folks - it is revenue. And revenue always goes to fund someones particular interests. ICANN cannot be in the business of directing how cash generated through private enterprise is used (or not used). The fascinating thing about these two statements is that they come from people who otherwise argue that ICANN needs a narrower focus, that ICANN needs to stay out of local matters that do not concern them, that ICANN should only deal with matters of technical coordination.
My suggestion? This critical energy could be much better devoted to solving some of the real problems faced by the community.