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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 212
Netizens-Digest Friday, November 20 1998 Volume 01 : Number 212
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
Re: [netz] Re: Is Netscape filtering sites?
[netz] Re: [ifwp] NEWS RELEASE: AN ACCOUNTABLE ICANN?
[netz] Need for public ownership of essential functions of the Internet
[netz] Ronda's concerns
[netz] Re: [ifwp] Re: NEWS RELEASE: AN ACCOUNTABLE ICANN?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 18:07:16 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] Re: Is Netscape filtering sites?
Kerry Miller wrote:
>Arent we confusing two senses of the word? The popularity of a given
>final destination is entirely distinct from the popularity of the
>menu which *people who don't know how else to get to that
>destination* will use.
I meant that the menu site will need to be visited very often because
it has information that people need to get to the CBS sites (including
the Columbia Broadcasting sites).
>San Jose may be a popular vacation spot, but we dont say the roadmaps
>and transportation schedules that reference SJ are popular for that
>reason.
But for this reason, a lot of maps and transportation schedules for
San Jose will be bought or otherwise acquired, as they are references
to vacation spots in San Jose.
>Your uncertaintly points up the difficulty of the issue: people have
>utilized networks of all sorts for years, but they did not involve
>individual expression, nor have they had to 'scale' indefinitely.
If you feel the DNS does not have to scale at least to the number of
people that want to communicate amongst themselves, there's very
little I can say in response. This requirement comes from users of
the system itself.
>If we had an electrical engineer involved in this discussion,
>however, I'm sure she would stand amazed at our trying to 'reinvent
>the wheel,' and not getting any further with our stone axes
>than the simplest model of all -- top-down centralized hierarchical
>domain administration -- and then scratching our heads, admitting all
>sorts of problems on one hand, and denying that there could be any
>alternative on the other.
Electrical power, water, etc. systems have to operate within the same
general types of constraints as the Internet does. The systems must
scale to their intended use.
Also, I never said there are no alternatives. I said that since the
DNS is required for today's operational Internet, you can't make
changes to it without a long process of careful planning.
>What does it take to get someone with your experience to *collaborate
>in the description of a distributed administration?
I'm open to discussing any suggestions you might have, but as part of my
training in computer science, if the suggestions seem unwieldy because
they don't scale, are administratively cumbersome, are difficult to
understand or use, or would take a long time to deploy, I'll say so.
I think most people with computer science backgrounds will give similar
responses (for example, Dave Crocker).
>If you look back through the archives of this list, you will see that
>I didn't *propose* anything -- surely by now it's quite clear that I
>don't know enough of the details to offer any sort of 'model' -- but
>you insist on responding as if finding the compelling arguments is up
>to me, and if I cannot rebut your criticisms then the status quo wins
>the argument.
I'm not sure what you are saying here, but at any rate, the responses
I have given you are just explanations of how DNS works and why
certain types of modifications to that model are not scalable in an
operational Internet. It seems as if you are actually questioning
some fundamental assumptions of how the Internet might be used. I
cannot predict how people will wish to use the Internet in the
future. My common sense tells me that most people will not wish to be
very inconvienienced by underlying details, such as maintaining a large
number of mappings of host names to IP addresses. I could be wrong. We
will just have to wait and see. But if you want to make fundamental
changes to naming services on the Internet, you will have to convince
millions of software developers, network administrators, and other
individuals that your ideas are worth implementing.
>On the contrary, I simply *asked* why such and such wouldnt work. After
>quite some time, it appears that we can boil down some particulars:
>> *Scalability*, [specif. the size of lookup tables becomes unmanageable]
Not just the size of lookup tables, but their maintenance.
>I would say it's an example of equilibrium or homeostasis. If
>Consumers get tired of looking, then the 27th or the 61st Producer
>will think twice about choosing the name CBS.
In this case, they could just register in today's DNS as something
other than www.cbs.com. Many are already doing that and do not feel
inconvenienced.
>The problem is no longer how to give every site an easy name, but how
>to set up a system so that names distribute themselves more or less
>equably.
One could just assign names randomly in the existing DNS. However,
the most "popular" (in terms of having resources that people want to
use for whatever reasons) sites will get the most traffic. So those
names will become sought after, in a commercial context.
>Yes, of course they do -- as long as the DNS is there for their use,
>they'd be fools to duplicate it. But suppose the search engine sites
>were registered 'mirrors' of the DNS - wouldnt their internal
>workings then give the user an even faster and more convenient
>response?
If what you're suggesting is that search sites store DNS mappings,
that basically makes them slave servers. However, slave servers are
not guaranteed to give authoritative answers. In fact, this is a
problem with search engines today: those that index pages referred to
by IP addresses (or even hosts that are unreachable or otherwise out
of service) are confusing to users who follow links that result in
connection failures, timeouts, DNS lookup failures, etc.
- --gregbo
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 22:14:25 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] Re: [ifwp] NEWS RELEASE: AN ACCOUNTABLE ICANN?
>Milton Mueller <mueller@syr.edu> wrote:
>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
>GOVERNMENT SEEKS GREATER TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY FROM
>NEW INTERNET CORPORATION
>NEW YORK (NOV 19) - At 10 a.m. EST, members of the Boston
>Working Group (BWG) participated in an hour long teleconference
>with Ira Magaziner (Senior Advisor to President Clinton for
>Policy Development), J. Beckwith Burr and Karen Rose, of the
>National Telecommunications and Information Administration at
>the request of these Department of Commerce officials.
>Magaziner and Burr will meet with the Executive Committee of the
>Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
>today. The BWG learned today that the Dept of Commerce is
>drafting a collaborative agreement to design, develop and test
>procedures to transition Internet management functions to a
>private, not-for-profit entity. This process gives them the
>flexibility to work with ICANN but also to require modifications
>in its structure and even to withdraw its collaboration if ICANN
>doesn't perform adequately.
So none of the issues raised at the Saturday Nov. 14 meeting about the
public resources that are being taken over and given away were raised?
The public is to be left out as are the users?
The public resources are to be given away to the private sector
for its CommerceNet to *exclude* the public from the fruits of
their tax dollars and contributions?
The scientific development of the Internet that is needed is
left out.
So the agreement was to give away the public resources?
Despite the fact that the public hasn't been consulted in the process?.
The CommerceNet is to engulf the Internet?.
So the Chairman of the Board of the CommerceNet can continue having
her "fun".
And those who have worked to contribute to and to spread Internet
and to encourage the spread of the global communication it makes
possible are to just be "quiet" and silently accept the fact of
the big boys and girls have reached out their hands to say that
they want the public Internet for their CommerceNet.
The meeting on Saturday Nov. 14 made clear that "private" is the
problem and that an international public internet needs to
have an administration that is public *not* private.
A private corporate board will be *private* and under the control
of those who continue to pull the strings from behind the scenes.
The consequences will be significant as the killer application
of the Internet is email and this is a primary application for
all the communities and people online, including businesses,
hobbyists, scientists, students, medical people, etc.
And since communication is to be subordinated to "competition"
and "ecommerce" in the creation of this new private corporate entity,
the communication that the Internet makes possible will be
substantially diminished under this new CommerceNet Board and
corporation.
Ronda
ronda@panix.com
Netizens: On the History and Impact
of Usenet and the Internet
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
in print edition ISBN 0-8186-7706-6
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 23:21:43 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] Need for public ownership of essential functions of the Internet
Dear Becky Burr,
Your response to the proposal I submitted to the NTIA in September, 1998
showed a fundamental misunderstanding and lack of examination of
my proposal.
Following is your email to me with my comments:
>Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 18:29:09 -0400
>From: Becky Burr <bburr@ntia.doc.gov>
>To: ronda@panix.com
>Cc: krose@ntia.doc.gov
>Subject: DNS management
>>Dear Ms. Hauben:
>Thank you for making your submission in response to the National
>Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Statement of
>Policy entitled Management of Internet Names and Addresses.
You never examined my proposal nor discussed it with me. You merely
called me and asked me what I would suggest for the privatized
corporate monopoly that you are giving these public and cooperative
assets to.
My proposal provides for a way to have cooperative international
ownership and responsibility for these assets. This is important
because whoever controls them essentially obtains control over the
Internet.
Your lack of any due process to my proposal raises the question:
is there any concern by the NTIA under the U.S. Department of
Commerce to act in a responsible and constitutional way regarding
these taxpayer created public assets worth billions of dollars.
>The public comments received by the Department of Commerce, in
>response to your submission and others, generally support moving
>forward with the structure outlined by the Internet Corporation
The public comments didn't support any movement forward. The
public comments were restricted to a very short period of time
with very little public notice inviting people to comment.
And there was no newspaper coverage of this situation until after
the comment period was over and then very little public media
coverage.
This shows that there is indeed no effort to even inform the
Internet community of the great giveaway you are currently
carrying out, let alone provide them with any due process in
considering what should happen with the ownership and control
of the 4.3 billion IP numbers, the root server system, the
domain name system and the protocols and other central
points of control over the Internet.
If you did have any interest in exploring how to create an
international public administration of these vital public
and cooperative resources and assets, you would be supporting
the implementation of my proposal for an international cooperative
prototype to administer these resources.
Instead you are merely carrying out a predetermined time table
for the give away of these public resources and assets to a
private corporate entity peopled by people who have claimed
their qualification for being on the Board of Directors is that
they know *nothing* about the Internet.
By these activities you are failing to carry out your public
obligation and due process procedures.
>for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The public submissions and
>comments received, however, also indicate that significant concerns
>remain about the substantive and operational aspects of the ICANN.
The comment period was limited to discussing how to privatize
these central points of control over the Internet. You invited
*no* discussion of whether there was a need for an international
public administration of these essential functions of the Internet.
The comment period didn't allow for discussion of the need
to have a public means of ownership and administration of
these cooperative and public functions of the Internet.
As the meeting on Saturday, Nov. 14 clarified, an international
public administration is what is needed given the vast amount
of power and assets that you are claiming you will turn over to
a private monopoly corporation.
My proposal demonstrates that it is indeed possible to have
an international and public administration, as that
is how the Internet has been built and has grown and
flourished.
I urge you to open up public discussion of this important
issue and to take the necessary measures to begin to set up
this public process as soon as possible.
> In this light, we have indicated to ICANN the need to resolve a
>number of specific concerns including accountability (financial
>and representational), conflict of interest, transparent decision-making,
>and country-code top level domains (ccTLDs). We are hopeful that a
You can't have any accountability or transparent decision-making
in a private entity, as it is only those who can affort to bring
law suits who will have any possibility of recourse from the
harmful decisions this private monopoly with vast power and
economic might will have once you turn over these lucrative
and strategic public assets.
Thus if you are indeed concerned with accountability, transparent
decision-making and preventing conflict of interest, you need
to recognize the need to create an international public, *not*
private entity.
I have proposed the means to do such and the Internet itself
is the product of such an international public cooperative
decision making process.
Thus this is the only way to achieve any appropriate change
in the nature of the decision making over these key functions
of the Internet.
>satisfactory resolution of these issues, leading to the creation of a
>broader consensus, can be achieved in the near term, in order that we
There is *no* broader consensus that can be achieved, as you
are leaving out the millions of Internet users from the process you
have created.
I have made every effort to participate in the process you claim
you are providing, but have only found that the voice of the user
and the user, himself or herself, is being disenfrachised by your
putting into the private sector these public resources.
(See for example my account of the so called "consensus" process you
created in Geneva in July, in "Report from the Front",
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/ifwp_july25.txt )
My proposal provides for an online process to involve the users
in the decisions that are needed to scale the Internet.
Your private process doesn't provide in any way for the users
to be involved, but changes the nature of the Internet to a
CommerceNet that will exclude users and their right to communicate with
each other from the future decisions that will shaping the network.
>may move forward with the transition process outlined in the White Paper.
The White paper grows out of a fundamental misunderstanding about
the Internet. It fails to understand that the Internet is a network
of diverse networks that allows for communication among the users
of all the networks. Instead, you are trying to change the
Internet into a CommerceNet. While the Internet allows for
a commercenet to be a network or several networks on the Internet, the
network you propose in the Framework for Electronic Commerce which
is the design behind the White Paper only provides for commerce,
not for communication. (See testimony to the U.S. Congress
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/testimony.107.txt )
Thus you are planning to change the fundamental nature of the Internet.
This is being done without any consultation or discussion over this
substantial change of policy. Your change of policy will create a private,
fantastically powerful, corporate entity to take over the essential functions
of the Internet.
>Although you do not agree with the privatization plan, we understand and
>share your concerns about preserving the Internet's potential to further
>scientific and research activities.
My concerns are not limited to "preserving the Internet's potential to
further scientific and research activities," as you state,
but have to do with the current and long range development and
scaling of the Internet in general. Public and cooperative
ownership and administration of the Internet is needed to continue
the functioning of the Internet as an Internet. In addition, to
scale the Internet, further funding is needed for research and
scientific development. The assets you are giving away provide
the means to help to fund this needed work, but instead you are
giving these to private interests who have no concern for the
development of the worldwide communication that is at the essence
of the Internet.
I request that you consider and support my proposal and the public
discussion and examination of these issues as there are great
public interests at stake which you are obligated to consider.
> We appreciate your thoughtful and constructive participation
>in this process.
I don't see any evidence of your even considering the proposal I made
as you never discussed any of it with me.
The proposal is online at
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/dns_proposal.txt
> Sincerely,
> J. Beckwith Burr
> Associate Administrator (Acting)
Ronda Hauben
ronda@panix.com
Netizens: On the History and Impact
of Usenet and the Internet
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook
also in print edition ISBN 0-8186-7706-6
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 21:04:33 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: [netz] Ronda's concerns
I suspect Ronda's concerns are similar to the concerns of people like
William F. Baker and George Dessart, authors of the book DOWN THE TUBE:
AN INSIDE ACCOUNT OF THE FAILURE OF AMERICAN TELEVISION. The book
criticizes many of the choices that were (or were not) made that led
to the homogenization of American television. It should be noted that
many of these decisions were made in the name of the free market.
Baker and Dessart were high-ranking TV executives who became dismayed
at what American television became.
Anyway, I am anxiously awaiting Dave Farber's responses to Ronda.
- --gregbo
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 08:53:15 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] Re: [ifwp] Re: NEWS RELEASE: AN ACCOUNTABLE ICANN?
Tony Rutkowski <amr@netmagic.com> wrote:
Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com> had written:
>>The meeting on Saturday Nov. 14 made clear that "private" is the
>>problem and that an international public internet needs to
>>have an administration that is public *not* private.
>There is "an international public internet" that exists
>under ITU auspices and is built on formally approved
>OSI protocols, and has public administration under treaty
>provisions and domestic law.
No Tony, the Internet based on tcp/ip is a public network of networks.
Your effort to spread confusion on this is obviously motivated by
something that it would be better you clarify than trying
obfuscate.
I have long been on a public Internet. Aol has a private network
and also a way to connect to the public Internet.
Also there are many networks that are part of the Internet that
are part of the public sector or university sector.
To the contrary, for a long time companies like IBM had their
own private networks that they communicated via, but they
were *not* then connected to the Internet.
I recognize there is an effort to turn the Internet into a
private CommerceNet. But that hasn't happened yet.
And the public assets and taxpayer funds that have gone into
building the public Internet should *not* be seized by the
U.S. govt to give to a private corporate entity.
>There is also a shared user network of private networks
>built on IETF approved TCP/IP protocols that we are
>dealing with here.
No I can and have already cited RFC's about how the Internet
is a public network.
We are *not* dealing with any private network now. If so I wouldn't
be able to be on it, and I wouldn't be able to complain about
this givaway on it.
That is what I learned by logging onto and trying to post on
prodigy awhile ago. That was a private network.
I realize you want to take the public assets and make them
private and that is the reason for your obfusation of this issue.
>These are fundamentally different models and paradigms.
That is quite true.
But what is happening is that the public model and paradigm has
created a network of networks, while the private has not.
The private networks have not grown and flourished, but have
had to link up to the public Internet.
(For example compuserve and prodigy were private networks)
And the effort now is to stomp out the public network and replace
it with a private.
>You may be just in the wrong forums. Check out www.itu.ch
The ITU is not a forum at this point about the Internet.
So this is not helpful sarcasm on your part.
But what you say about the IFWP list is helpful, despite your
intent.
And that is that it is *not* a forum to discuss how to create
a shared (which would have to be public) international ownership
and control over the central functions of the Internet.
Instead this is a forum about how to privatize these central
functions.
This is a problem as it leaves out of the discussion the public
perspective and the public concerns and also means that
the problem of how they are to scale cannot be solved.
The privatization of the NSFNET led to the fact that businesses
got access to the Internet, but *not* the majority of the
American population.
Many people on the NTIA online forum in Nov. 1994 pointed out
that universal access to the Internet would be set back decades
by the privatization of the NSFNet backbone to the Internet
and it was.
And in the process junk was sprewn all over Usenet as the responsibility
of system administrations for their users was dramatically
altered by the way commercial services like AOL sent out disks
with no oversight over what their users did.
Instead of recognizing and looking at the damage caused by the
last privatization activity of the U.S. govt, you are encouraging
them to rush ahead and create an even more disastrous change
in the ownership and control of the Internet.
The Internet is not (as the new self appointed chairperson of
the Board of ICANN) tried to claim on Saturday like some country
whose economy doesn't function. To the contrary it is a cooperatively
adminsistered system that has functioned quite well until the
privatization efforts of the NSF (decided by who no one knows)
led to charging for domain names and allowing a contractor to
make millions as part of their inside contacts with the government.
And instead of an inquiry into these problems, there is the
move to take advantage of them and to give away the precious
but very lucrative public assets to a private secretly created
corporate entity.
I guess there are corporations who will roundly agree that the
Internet is private as they then can make off with their loot
with no consequences and no one looking.
>--tony
Ronda
ronda@panix.com
Netizens: On the History and Impact
of Usenet and the Internet
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
in print edition ISBN 0-8186-7706-6
------------------------------
End of Netizens-Digest V1 #212
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