Trevi Fountain, Rome, Italy. Taken during the ICANN meeting in 2004. Posted for no other reason than I’ve been going through my old photo’s and liked this one. Click the image for a larger version.

(I'm cleaning off an old computer today and came across this. I wrote this over a year ago - didn't bother to finish it for some reason. There are a bunch more of these. I'll post the more finished ones over the next few days...)

To borrow a phrase from the software industry, ICANN's GNSO has a big ole' hairy bug in the design of its constituency structure. The problem lies with its recognition of the Intellectual Property Constituency as a legitimate constituency of the GNSO.

Here's why this is a problem. Here's a list of the current constituencies that make up ICANN's GNSO;

a. gTLD Registries (representing all gTLD registries under contract to ICANN);
b. Registrars (representing all registrars accredited by and under contract to ICANN); \
c. Internet Service and Connectivity Providers (representing all entities providing Internet service and connectivity to Internet users);
d. Commercial and Business Users (representing both large and small commercial entity users of the Internet);
e. Non-Commercial Users (representing the full range of non-commercial entity users of the Internet); and
f. Intellectual Property Interests (representing the full range of trademark and other intellectual property interests relating to the DNS).

- ICANN Bylaws, Article X, Section 5

The Registry and Registrar constituencies are a special class of business - these are the only "providers" of registration services in the GNSO tent. The rest of the constituencies, loosely, are the "user" constituencies. The Internet Service and Connectivity Providers constituency (ISPC) represents the interests of telco's, the Commercial and Business Users constituency (BC) represents the interests of commercial users of all stripes (small and large businesses) and the Non-commercial users constituency (NCUC) represents non-profits, NGOs and other similar non-commercial interests. The Intellectual Property Interests constituency sticks out like a sore-thumb in this structure; even its title, reflects the problem.

The IPIC is an issue driven constituency. Each of the other constituencies has organized around a very different dimension - what they use the DNS for. The IPIC on the other hand, takes a different tack and has been organized around the very narrow concern of "intellectual property interests relating to the DNS".

(Added to summarize the rest that didn't get written: So why is this a problem? The IPIC is issues based - their entire reason for being is to look out for intellectual property interests. Lots of different players have intellectual property issues - Tucows has patents, copyrights and trademarks for instance - but because we're not a part of the IPIC, our views on these subjects are marginalized. Having an intellectual property issues constituency makes about as much sense as having a religious issues constituencies.)

Now playing: "Devil Baby" from the album "The Ragpicker's Dream" by Mark Knopfler.

Does anyone know off the top of their head whether or not I can get rid of my Rogers Cable subscription but keep my Rogers Internet service intact?

I’ve been thinking of migrating from cable TV to iTunes TV – the television portion of my cable bill is over $80 per month. In AppleLand, that same cake will get me 40 or so television shows. Suffice to say that the cost/benefit picture doesn’t look great for the cable operators in this new world order.

I’d consider moving to Bell DSL, were it not for the fact that I’m using Vonage and have no Bell service to the house (also on cost grounds). If I could get Bell DSL w/o having to use Bell dialtone, that might be an option to. Neither the Rogers nor the Bell website have any information on this – why would they want me to make an informed decision.

If you have any thoughts, please leave me a note in the comments. Many thanks in advance.

Dave tackles the issue of who invented RSS head-on.

In the dustup over Microsoft's RSS patents, some of the mainstream press brought up, once again, the issue of Who Invented RSS. But RSS doesn't have an inventor. It wasn't invented. Something else happened, something harder than invention, imho -- an activity that we don't have a word for in the English language.

- via Scripting News

Reading this, it occurred to me that he's right. RSS wasn't invented. RSS was collaborated.

Anyone with an english major will cringe at my use of an intransitive verb in this way, but I suspect that they will be outnumbered by the rest of the folks that see the beauty of abusing our dear evolving language. ;-)

Here's from us to you, hoping that the coming year is even better than the last.

I don't normally blog about world politics, but screw it. This is bugging me.

Someone asked me yesterday why some Iraqi's would be denouncing the execution of Saddam Hussein and others would be rejoicing it.

I responded that he controlled a multi-ethnic state through fear, repression and hate, and those that opposed him were tortured, terrorized or executed while those that agreed with him (generally those who shared his ethnic background) were mostly left alone and enjoyed a comparatively good lifestyle.

"But didn't he only kill 140 people?" was the next question. So I explained the Kurdish massacre and his other atrocities.

"He was," I finished. "As ruthless and terrible as Hitler, but far less successful."

I'm blogging this because I think that we've lost sight of something important. Somewhere along the way, Bush's atrocities have take a more prominent place in our minds. Bush is guilty of his own sins, and the world will be a better place when he is out of office, but I don't think he deserves to be deposed and hung either. Saddam Hussein was not the pathetic old man hiding in a spider hole that we've come to remember him as. He was a tyrannical despot that deserved to die.

The world is a better place without him.

I got an invitation to a birthday party today from someone who lives in the valley/bay area. I've known this person for a few years - we're not close, but certainly not adversaries either. This person is definitely a frienda, a colleague, an associate - that kind of a relationship. The kind of relationship where you make sure that you break bread together if you are ever in the same town at the same time because you know the conversation is going to fun, smart and definitely challenging. Exactly the kind of conversation I love with lunch.

I was pleased to get the invite, but I had to turn it down. The whole distance between here and there thing would have made it near impossible. Actually, I'm kind of bummed I won't be able to make it.

And impressed a too. A lot of times, valley events are valley events - i.e. if you aren't in the valley, you don't know about it until afterwards, never mind get an invitation ahead of time. It was nice to get an invite *beforehand*. I really wish I could be there. It'll be a great time - fun, smart and definitely challenging.

Exactly the kind of conversation I love with birthday cake.

Eric Rice is getting all hot and bothered about one of his Christmas presents...

Yup. Got a Sony Reader for Christmas, and it is *bad ass*. It looks like a book, feels like a book, reads like a book. And it takes PDFs, JPGs, MP3s, AACs, and RSS feeds.

Don’t try and compare this to phones, laptops, or any other computer device.

Compare it to paper.

- via Eric Rice, "The Official Site"

Being a red-blooded geek myself, this got me all hot and bothered too. Of course I had to check into what the heck a "Sony Reader" is. I'd never heard of it until I did my annual check on Eric's blog (I only need to check him once a year - he's timeless :)

These things do look pretty sick. Great looking display, nice form factor and a touch of elegance that you don't usually get in handheld devices of this ilk.

I got a bit of a shock when I clicked the "buy direct" button though - $349. I'm used to devices like this being subsidized by the book sellers (you know the old "buy a subscription, get a cheap/free/discounted reader" trick?)

$349 is a lot of cake to spend on paper.

Even though they do have a couple of rebates and discounts available (in a flash page I can't link to), I think I'll be sticking to the real thing until I can find someone as nice as Eric' benefactor to give me one ;)