Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 220
Netizens-Digest Friday, December 4 1998 Volume 01 : Number 220
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
[netz] Re: Users need to be able to speak for themselves
Re: [netz] ICANN membership advisory applications?
[netz] Re: ICANN representing us "users" (pt 2 of 3)
[netz] Re: Interesting articles in Forbes and Chronicle of Higher Education
[netz] Re: [ifwp] Re: Interesting articles in Forbes and Chronicle of Higher Education
Re: [netz] ICANN membership advisory applications?
[netz] Re: ICANN membership advisory applications?
[netz] Re: [ifwp] Re: Interesting articles in Forbes and Chronicle of Higher Education
Re: [netz] Re: [ifwp] Re: Interesting articles in Forbes and Chronicle of Higher Education
[netz] Re: Interesting articles in Forbes and Chronicle of Higher Education
[netz] ICANN membership advisory application
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 16:02:33 -0400
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] Re: Users need to be able to speak for themselves
Esther wrote,
> The real impact,
> if it works, will be to encourage citizen participation, to make people
> feel that they can influence the discussion. Instead of choosing from
> what's on offer, they can actually make suggestions and arguments of their
> own. If you think a politician is brain dead, you can say why instead of
> just giving your vote to someone slightly more alive. People want to
> contribute their ideas as well as their votes.
What do you suppose she means by *if it works*? A) If it manages to resist the
Shopping Channel Syndrome, or b) If the administrators take care to maintain
the options so that SCS is not the only 'viable' 'competitive' 'efficient'
model for our favorite entity, the nebulous public, to practice its sense of
coherence on?
Never mind the politicians; what is the Internet feeding back to prevent a brain dead public?
kerry
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 16:36:46 -0400
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: Re: [netz] ICANN membership advisory applications?
Ronda Hauben wrote:
{ I wondered what folks on the Netizens list felt about this and
{ whether we can figure out if anyone should apply.
Is there a better place to begin than at the beginning?
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 13:00:41 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: [netz] Re: ICANN representing us "users" (pt 2 of 3)
Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com> wrote:
>I have done several papers about different online forms and it seems
>when the need was there they were developed if necessary.
>It seems to me that if it was possible to form Usenet, and the
>mailing list form, if those forms aren't adequate, others can be
>developed.
>But it is to explore the existing forms first.
There is nothing wrong with forming mailing lists or newsgroups (as
this list is). However, these lists tend to attract people who
already know the issues fairly well. Usenet and the Internet
technical community-oriented lists are still very much "underground."
The common user knows little if anything about the existence of these
forums. You need an already well-established mass medium to reach
these people if you are ever to get a statistical sampling of their
opinions.
>However, my experience has been that a mailing list or newsgroup
>doesn't have to be moderated, but there does have to have a constructive
>purpose to have something useful going on on it.
True, however, ultimately, the list's functionality depends on the
people who contribute to it. If they are willing to discuss ideas
calmly and rationally, stick to the subject, and not make public
nuisances of themselves, moderation isn't necessary.
>Also the NTIA Nov. 1994 online forum was an example of a valuable
>online form.
True, but like I said, it doesn't go far enough; you don't reach the
millions of people who might be affected through a single conference.
You need to do some sort of mass distribution.
>The only probelm was that it was ignored by the NTIA, who didn't
>even, to my knowledge, write any report about what happened,
>and made *no* recommendations based on it. So that is a disincentive
>to participation.
I can't speak for the NTIA here, but it could just be that not enough
people know about the places where they can express their opinions.
It could also be that those who know about these forums either don't
have time or any interest to contribute. This list is very small
compared to the number of people I know who are Internet
professionals, for example.
>There were a number of NSF officials on the mailing list, some of
>whom were active on it at different times. This was also a period
>when there was an AUP in place on the Internet, and this mailing
>list functioned on the Internet, yet when an attack was waged
>against any questioning or discussion over whether or not the
>NSFNET backbone should be privatized.
>Also, the NSF Office of Inspector General, in a report they
>issued during the period commented the NSF officials for there
>participation with the public on the com-priv mailing list.
OK, but this doesn't mean that the USG had any control over individual
list participants. If other people on the list were flaming and the
NSF folks were participating constructively (ignoring the flames and
focusing on the topic at hand), it makes sense that they'd be
commended.
>As the NTIA online conference in Nov. 1994 showed, there were many
>people who felt that the NSFNET should *not* be privatized,
>and there was a reason to have a serious public discussion on the
>issued, but the com-priv list prevented that from happening
>by the way the issue of privatization was assumed to be the
>answer, rather than an issue to hear the pro and con about.
Not having been on the list at the time, I speculate that most of the
particpants at that time were in favor of privatization. I have read
some of the archives, and it seems there were a variety of opinions
even from the very beginning. Some people were concerned about how
privatization would bring spam, for example. But maybe by the time
you joined the list, most of those people were no longer on the list.
It happens. High volume mailing lists and newsgroups take a good deal
of personal time.
>In the research I have done I have seen the battle on early ARPANET
>mailing lists between those trying to challenge some bad commercial
>practices, and those who tried to not allow that to happen. And the
>fact that the AUP was in place (or an equivalent) helped those who
>were trying, for example to complain about the lack of a programming
>language for an early Xerox work station, or the poor keyboard of
>another company. The companies therefore, despite their reluctance
>had to take the complaints seriously. And the companies actually
>benefitted, as they got real criticism of the problems.
I don't think it was so much an AUP as it was how the list particpants
acted towards each other and what they thought of the situations they
encountered. I know of several lists and newsgroups I was a member of
during the 1980s that had very different participant characteristics.
Behavior ranged from the academic atmosphere of the ietf mailing list
to the vociferous net.flame.
- --gregbo
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 13:43:42 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: [netz] Re: Interesting articles in Forbes and Chronicle of Higher Education
"Richard J. Sexton" <richard@vrx.net>
>If you know where one .com server is you can stick that one single
>nameserver address in your root.cache file (instead of those
>cumbersome 13 root servers) and most of the net will still work for
>you.
Provided, of course, that your connectivity to that server is
uninterrupted. Multiple root servers provide redundancy.
>If you stick in pointers to all the tld servers, then all the
>net will work, and you don't need the root servers.
>If eveybody did this, there would be zero need for the root
>servers.
OK, how do we convince everybody that they should do this? And what
do we do for those users whose ISPs refuse to do this? They are
either stuck, forced to switch to another ISP, or forced to run a
platform that lets them run their own DNS server. It is easy for us in
the technical community to propose this because we have a much greater
understanding of the infrastructure than the common Internet user.
- --gregbo
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 15:46:51 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: [netz] Re: [ifwp] Re: Interesting articles in Forbes and Chronicle of Higher Education
"Richard J. Sexton" <richard@vrx.net> wrote:
>In practive you'd have a couple of pointers to each tld
>server, of corse. These correspond to the primary
>and scondary servers for the zone.
So for a TLD space of 10,000, we are talking about a local cache file
that is on the order of 20,000 entries.
I'd like to see this proposed on a mailing list or newsgroup of ISP
operators, e.g. the inet-access list, to see how they feel about it.
Why not propose it there, and see what they say? Personally, I prefer
the current approach to the "nightly download," but I'd like to know
how others feel about it.
- --gregbo
------------------------------
Date: 04 Dec 1998 03:34:05 +0100
From: Carsten Laekamp <lakamp@capway.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] ICANN membership advisory applications?
Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com> writes:
> My initial response is that it is a problem as the Internet is
> not for "members" but for a new form of citizenship, and this
> thing for members doesn't take that into account.
Erm, could you please be more explicit about the difference between
"membership" and "citizenship" ? For me, the latter is just a
particular case of the former....but this might just be a difference
in culture (?)
(OTOH, an "AOL member" is not a member but a client, for me... were you
thinking along those lines ?)
- --
Carsten Läkamp
claekamp@mindless.com
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 00:34:27 -0400
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] Re: ICANN membership advisory applications?
Ronda Hauben wrote:
{ Following is the annoucement of the ICANN call for membership advisory folks.
{
{ I wondered what folks on the Netizens list felt about this and
{ whether we can figure out if anyone should apply.
{
{ My initial response is that it is a problem as the Internet is
{ not for "members" but for a new form of citizenship, and this
{ thing for members doesn't take that into account.
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/proposals/comments/scanned/Lessig.ht
m
8 Oct 98 comments by Berkman Professor Larry Lessig:
... ICANN will be more than a technical organization. Its decisions will affect
far more thin network engineering. And to assure that, in the long run, it
remains responsive to the views of the internet community generally, it needs
an outside check similar to the check of Supporting Organizations. Another
perspective on the net - a perspective to balance the perspective of the
Supporting Organizations - needs to have the same ongoing input into the
decisions of the board. The review of the California Attorney General - the
only external check on the activities of this board - is not enough.
How that check might be crafted, however, is a hard question. Making ICANN -a
membership organization is one possible solution, though of course, that alone
is no guarantee of its success. Structuring the proper balance of interests is
a complicated process; -and the board will need time to develop a sensible
proposal. Others have suggested different structures to the same end-my
colleague, Charles Nesson, for example, has proposed a form of election to add
a check to the board. But whether membership or election, we are both aiming at
the same end: Some means to provide an on-going external check on the actions
of the board, in the same way that technical interests, through the Supporting
Organizations, do.
I understand that some are concerned that any membership structure would
displace Supporting Organizations, and thereby displace their technical
expertise. But a membership organization could be structured to avoid this
risk. As our Constitution protected the representational perspective of the
Senate from the populist power of the House, so too could a membership
organization insulate the Supporting Organizations from any interference by
membership bodies. A membership organization - or indeed, a membership
Supporting Organization - would be just one way of representing the interests
of the net. It would not need to be primary, or foundational to all others,
though it should have an equal role in selecting members of the board.
The complexity of designing a membership organization, however, should not
weaken the resolve to modify the existing articles to add some form of external
accountability. And while the ICANN document has an aspiration that the
Corporation move to a membership structure, it still requires that any
amendment of the articles of incorporation obtain a 2/3 vote. Thus, the
aspiration notwithstanding, the articles significantly entrench the existing
structure, and make unlikely any permanent change.
Consistent with the recommendations of the Boston Group, I would recommend that
the entrenchment be reversed: That the articles require that the Corporation
move to a membership organization within one year, unless two-thirds vote
against that change. This way, if indeed it proves impossible to craft a
membership organization, an escape is available. But by default, the board
would be pushed to effect such a change.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 10:50:33 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: [netz] Re: [ifwp] Re: Interesting articles in Forbes and Chronicle of Higher Education
"Roeland M.J. Meyer" <rmeyer@mhsc.com>
>As I said earlier, many ISPs do the nightly, or weekly, download
>anyway. It's the backup system when the InterNIC loses sanity, which
>happens more often than we'd like. Anyway, it has been discussed on
>NANOG recently. I don't know about newsgroups, MHSC doesn't do UseNet
>for spam-related reasons.
The point I was trying to make was that for a system of thousands of
TLDs, this is not efficient and is error-prone (imho). It is
acceptable as a backup measure for the number of TLDs we have today.
How does the ISP community feel about using this method for thousands
of TLDs?
- --gregbo
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 20:56:18 +0100 (MET)
From: Ingo Luetkebohle <ingo@devconsult.de>
Subject: Re: [netz] Re: [ifwp] Re: Interesting articles in Forbes and Chronicle of Higher Education
On Fri, 4 Dec 1998, Greg Skinner wrote:
> >As I said earlier, many ISPs do the nightly, or weekly, download
> >anyway.
That statement is unproven.
In my personal experience, very few ISP's do. Its not worth the hassle.
- --
Ingo Luetkebohle / 21st Century Digital Boy
dev/consulting Gesellschaft fuer Netzwerkentwicklung und -beratung mbH
url: http://www.devconsult.de/ - fon: 0521-1365800 - fax: 0521-1365803
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 13:05:32 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: [netz] Re: Interesting articles in Forbes and Chronicle of Higher Education
Ingo Luetkebohle <ingo@devconsult.de> wrote:
>On Fri, 4 Dec 1998, Greg Skinner wrote:
>> >As I said earlier, many ISPs do the nightly, or weekly, download
>> >anyway.
>That statement is unproven.
>In my personal experience, very few ISP's do. Its not worth the hassle.
Please check attributions. I didn't write that. Roeland Meyer did.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 17:14:52 -0400
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] ICANN membership advisory application
4 December 1998
To whom it may concern:
> The ICANN Board will select the committee with the goal of assembling a
> diverse and broadly representative group. Expressions of interest to
> participate are to be directed to msvh@icann.org, by midnight, 5
> December, 1998, US west coast time. Applicants are requested to state
> what contribution they would expect to make towards the work of this
> committee; such statements need not be more than 100 words.
On 8 October 1998, the following comment by Richard Alston, the Australian
Minister for Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts was submitted
to NTIA:
(http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/proposals/comments/scanned/alston.h
tm)
"It is important for the credibility of the new organization in developing
markets that the interests of developing countries be seen to be *represented*
in its formation. Further, the balance between European and total Asia-Pacific
*representation* on the interim board should not be equal. Users in the Asia-
Pacific account for 15% of global users of the internet, while users in the
European Community account for just over 17%, (North American countries
accounts for 60%). It's important that the board *representation* reflect the
global nature of the internet."
On 13 Oct, June Portch of the Commercial Internet eXchange Association wrote,
(http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/proposals/comments/10-13-98a.htm)
"To be sure, the fifth revision provides for a possible membership corporation
to which the board would be responsible and accountable, but at this time such
a relationship is not guaranteed. The absence of true accountability and
responsibility is a fundamental deficiency that vitiates transparency and
openness, for these qualities are meaningless without accountability...
While rhetorical acknowledgement is paid to diversity, in fact there is
nothing to ensure that substantial interest groups - most importantly the
world's business community of Internet users - will be appropriately
*represented* on the board. Diversity at all levels - from the supporting
organizations' nominations to the entire board - must be required."
These comments (with emphases added) serve to indicate that, even among the
most thoughtful contributors to the privatization process, the fundamental
nature of governance has been forgotten; that is to say, that 'diversity at all
levels' can only begin at the bottom, with the public -- the lumpen-usetariat,
so to speak. The _subsequent_ coalescence of 'interest groups' may then
develop, but the processes and procedures for their regulation (as well as for
their preservation) are well recognized. These work because everyone -- not
merely their 'stakeholders' -- understands where they came from and what
particular interests are being _re_presented.
The Department of Commerce, IANA and now ICANN seem to believe that first,
'nomination' of a Board of Directors, and then, the 'selection' of member
'representatives' is sufficient to
"create a diverse and open membership
without subjecting the corporation to undue risk of capture by any
particular interest group,"
-- but this committee, and I believe, this (dues-paying) membership, is as
susceptible to the same risks of manipulation as the Board itself.
That is, the fundamental _assumption_ of 'interest group' influence, whether on
a regional, national, or 'private sector' basis, implies that individual users
have no interest in Internet administration, and no amount of 'top-down'
procedural concoction can nullify or compensate for that implication. The
layering of 'representative' bodies in the absence of any clear acknowledgement
of the rights of the 'netizenry' not only "make[s] a charade out of the forward-
looking principles of the Green Paper/White Paper process" (Andrew Oram,
andyo@cpsr.org, appended to Ms Porch's submission), but embarasses the USA (and
many others) around the world for having entirely lost sight of its founding
principles of democratic government, only to replace them with corporate law.
I suggest that this assumption reflects two points: one, that domain names
themselves are considered 'interesting' (i.e. valuable property); second, that
the operation must be _transferred_ from governmental to private control. But
both points are _derivative_ from the way the Internet has been operated to
date; names are in no way essential to the operation of the Internet, and
nothing whatsoever prevented the DoC or the NSF from simply shutting down its
'grand experiment' and -- if others thought it worthwhile -- letting some other
entity start an 'Internet II' from scratch.
The question must therefore be asked, what is gained by the present procedure?
Is ICANN better positioned to satisfy the conflicts (trademark and otherwise)
arising from the use of 'human readable' URLs in place of IP addresses? Not so
far: the Bylaws explicitly pass the 'intellectual property' hot potato to other
"various" resolution fora, such as WIPO, while the 'free speech' implications
that may yet flow from the pgMedia suit against NSF are not addressed at all.
Does ICANN, while it maintains the continuity of global communication and (tax-
free) commerce, expect to compensate in any way for the loss of public
awareness that would have been generated by a shutdown? Not discernably;
accusations of "self-proclaimed legitimacy" and unilateral determination
continue to flow (and even these only in several small discussion groups),
while even this call for membership committee 'nominations' has been open for
less than two weeks. To quote further from Ms Porch's submission, "The values
of openness, fairness, balance, and accountability are inherent in Internet
self-governance, but these values are scarce, if not missing entirely, from the
IANA/ICANN approach." This approach apparently still prevails, as far as the
general population of Internet users (not to mention the public at large!) is
concerned.
Realistically, I accept that the net is not likely to be physically terminated,
even if it were possible under the Bylaws (where I see no mechanism by which
either the Board or the Net can be dissolved.) Rather, I will use this
opportunity to make three further suggestions:
a) that membership is not a matter of paying 'dues' (which could be
construed as a tax on Internet use), but is an inalienable function of being on-
line;
b) that, if a decision must be made that requires 'representation,' ICANN's
proper task is not merely to count essentially arbitrary 'votes,' but to
develop an effective and continuous on-line mechanism to enable any net-member
to identify him or herself appropriately with a specific representative at the
time of voting; and
c) that _pre-emption_ is the only way to avoid the process being "captured" by
interest groups: ICANN should simply designate what characterises 'interest.'
In lieu of geographical distribution, or numbers of users, or number of
dollars, and given the suggested mechanism, usage itself would sufficiently
define the categories; e.g.
i) entrepreneurs (profit and non-profit, ethical and pornographic), who
preserve the socio-economic status quo even as they claim to change it;
ii) public and political consciousness raisers (formal and informal
educators, administrators and volunteers), who work to change it, and achieve
its maintenance;
iii) skeptics, who do none of the above.
I now nominate myself as a member in this last "broadly representative group,"
and, if approved, will work assiduously to find a constituency.
Sincerely,
kerry miller
kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca
------------------------------
End of Netizens-Digest V1 #220
******************************
