Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 268
Netizens-Digest Saturday, February 6 1999 Volume 01 : Number 268
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
[netz] Re: A little off topic
[netz] Re: Round robins
[netz] MsgGroup Talk this Monday room change
[netz] FYI: my posts re: THEYCANST
[netz] Re: Round robins
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 11:41:58 -0400
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] Re: A little off topic
At 07:57 AM 2/4/99 -0500, Esther wrote:
>Trying an anaolgy:
>
>The character string is land; the name is akin to real estate
> improvements.
>You should be able to own the improvements to the land you have
> made - the
>value you have created - but what about the underlying land? How do
>you/Should you - keep them separate? Is there a public right of way?
>
>Where does the metaphor break down? How does it work? (And note that
> there are lots of arguments about land, too!)
The tempation to bring in data-mining rights is strong ;-)
===========
{ Tamar Frankel <tfrankel@bu.edu>
{ Subject: Re: A little off topic
{
{ I am not an intellectual property maven, but will say this anyway. In
our
{ discussion "property" is not the thing itself but the legal relationship
{ relating to a thing. One of the rights of an owner of property is the right
{ to exclude others from the use of the property.
Isnt this where the land metaphor fails? Land is local and bounded - and
the extent of those bounds is public record. The rights of ownership of a
trademark likewise are bounded by the sphere of trade it pertains to.)
Otoh, a string of alphabetic characters in the DNS is global and -- so
far as it has meaning in a 'lingua franca' (lit. free speech) --
unbounded.
{ Some property rights are
{ long-term, some, like copy right and patents are for a shorteer duration.
{ Intellectual property is a broad concept including a unique song and
{ performance and a name.
Broad indeed, and its possible the DNS mess will prove its undoing.
{ The question is whether we should create a new type of property in a DN (I
{ assume beyond the propection granted today to a trade mark).
Isnt it equally 'the' question whether DNs should remain in the public
domain? Registrants pay for a unique IP address, and more power to em if
they want to make 'improvements' to it, but if DNs become property (or
names at all, as you slid into the intellectual property concept), can
such a policy avoid say, someone who mistypes a URL getting charged for
'use'? And if they look up the name in the yellow pages to be sure they
have it right, then that directory not only is (_properly) entitled to
charge for the service, but has to pay 'royalties' to the sites it lists?
{ Justifications?
{ Esther suggested creative contribution to value. We might add the cost of
{ the creation: the higher the cost the more entitled should the creator be to
{ compensation in order to give him or her incentive to continue and create.
Aren't you conflating the 'land' with the 'use of the land'? That is, the
cost of a domain name is $50/ yr, straight across, for everybody. What
that name *points to is another thing altogether.
{ There are other justifications. Question is whether they apply to DNs. There
{ are contrary arguments: The investment in name creation is usually tied to a
{ particular business. That is why we protect trade marks. Such protection is
{ also needed to protect the public against fraud (mistaking one business for
{ another).
Can 'fraud' exist if everyone is equally able to search and select for
themselves among all the Por*.* sites, say? Mistaking one *name* for
another is not the same as mistaking one *business* for another -- the
recourses for which are well established and need no emendments from
ICANN or anybody else. That is to say, protection on this level is no
different than Netnanny on another level.
Arent we back to the issue of convenience? -- market rhetoric
notwithstanding, at *some level of polity, there has to be a public
domain. Personally, I cant see how there can be one without the other: it
may be convenient for the 'property owner' to define the permissions and
restrictions, the terms and conditions, of its use -- but there wont be
anyone to permit or exclude if its not *at least as convenient* for the
passers-by to *choose to approach or avoid the boundaries of that
property. In simple terms, if we dont hold the Domain Name System as a
*public domain*, in which whois and nslookup are inalienable free rights,
then we wont have a 'continuing and creative' Internet.
kerry
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of
body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
-- Th Jefferson, 1816
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 19:15:53 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: [netz] Re: Round robins
Kerry Miller wrote:
>I think we are learning to hold a conversation. [...]
OK, I think I see where you are coming from.
>Specifically, I hoped to open the prospect of alternative ways of doing
>things; to get you to think, if you like, instead of palming off truisms
>and miseries about how excruciating hard/ expensive/ time-consuming it is
>to change anything in this world.
I guess what bothered me most about this was that the types of
proposals you made to me and the lists were not the same type you
would make in your profession for similar circumstances. In other
words, you hold the Internet to different standards than the
surveying profession. I'll grant that the Internet is (among other
things) an educational tool, but even educational tools have to have
some sort of structure they can rely upon so people can focus on
learning. For example, it would not be proper to require everyone to
change to names as numbers because that would interfere with the other
types of learning that go on on the net.
It's reasonable to suggest that prototypes be developed that can be
studied in testbeds before transitioning them to the Internet at
large. (In fact, DNS first started out as a few people at a few
universities, then it moved to the ARPAnet proper, and eventually was
adopted Internet-wide.) It's not reasonable to expect that everything
should be fundamentally changed immediately.
>{ In my responses to you, I did not mean them to be "this is the way
>{ it's done, and we won't change because we like things the way they
>{ are."
>But it *sounds* like it when you say, Its too much to expect
>everybody to change.
I hope what I wrote in the previous paragraphs clarifies what I mean.
>Again, when a telco changes an area code, theres a promotional
>period, there is a transition period, there are help lines, and the
>consequences of forgetting are after all not fatal. In this case, for
>the transition, Id suggest *no names would be issued: get folks used
>to working with IP# directly.
I think if you had suggested this in the first place, your intent
would have been clearer. Then we could debate whether it was
feasible to carry it out. Keep in mind that the transition to IPv6
has been extremely painful, despite a vast amount of work being put
into it, and this would be yet another fundamental transition. Also
consider that the telephone industry is much more mature than the
Internet. They've figured out ways to make these types of transitions
much less painful than we have. Consider the "pain of renumbering"
issues that have been debated with regards to CIDR and provider-based
addressing. (Also consider that the way the Internet has developed
has not been easy on the telco industry and is itself a controversial
subject.)
>I have no idea *what* will be the outcome of the tension between domain
>names as a pointer and trademarks as a 'property.' However, I see two
>camps who cant talk to each another, because they do not share a
>language in which to describe their problem -- and *thats a problem I
>think my concept plugs in to pretty neatly. I feel raher confident that
>if we can get a couple hundred people *thinking about, say, what would
>happen to the conflict if those characters which have been conventionally
>used in formulating marks were to be *disused in DNS? Would mark holders
>*insist on a system which recognized their 'names'? Does it address the
>concerns of the other 150 mark holders whose 'name' is the same as Name,
>Incs? (Is the introduction of those concerns into net governance
>*attractive??) Would it disrupt the functions of domain names as
>pointers? -- *something will come of it, which is considerably more than
>we've got now.
Possibly. I don't know if ifwp is the right list upon which to frame
those discussions in that manner. I don't mind having this type of
discussion, but I think the ifwp folks are looking for something
that's perhaps more solution-oriented than identify-problem-oriented.
>As I say, have you got another idea about getting folks to see that
>theyre in a learning process? -- that (while Im at it!) the primary
>value ('highest and best use') of the Internet is *educational, and that
>this business of whose site is called what is just an example (and a
>picayune example at that) of problems that *could be solved by people who
> consciously understood what they were doing? Im all ears -- but dont
>look for my immediate agreement, please!
It may be the case that in fact there are some fundamental problems
that need to be identified before any useful solutions can be
developed. I'm willing to accept that, but I don't know how the other
ifwp folks feel about it. My general feeling is that ultimately, the
Internet is a technology that grew up very quickly (in terms of the
way people are trying to use it) despite the fact that it is still
very much experimental. Mature technologies tend to have many of the
fundamental problems sorted out. A lot of what has happened in the
past 10 or so years consists of trying to graft things into the
existing architecture in the hopes that they will work until the
better conceived architecture can be deployed. In this process some
fundamental mistakes in both technology and policy were made. But
there is a desire to keep everything working, rather than to wipe the
slate clean and start over. Thus, the need to figure out how to
transition to better architectures while at the same time keeping the
existing architecture functional and able to grow so it is still
useful.
- --gregbo
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 12:12:07 -0500 (EST)
From: Jay Hauben <jay@dorsai.org>
Subject: [netz] MsgGroup Talk this Monday room change
The talk by Ronda Hauben on MsgGroup and Internet governance will be on
Monday Feb 8 1999. The room has been changed to:
NYU Loeb Student Center
Top of the Park Room (5th Floor)
LaGaudia Place & Washington Square South
(1/9 train to Christopher St or A B C D F Q to West 4th St)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 06 Feb 1999 13:32:36 -0500
From: "P.A. Gantt" <pgantt@icx.net>
Subject: [netz] FYI: my posts re: THEYCANST
FYI: Posted also to three educational and communication lists.
ICANN and ?Expertise? or ?THEYCANST?
====================================
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,373885,00.html
Source: Interactive Week Online
Internet Board: More Work Needed
By Todd Spangler
November 25, 1998 12:57 PM ET
Please read the above if you would like to know more
about ICANN which is the domain name assigning org.
Oh my my... things have been going downhill ever since <shudder>.
Worried here about how this diskoomberated bunch will effect
assignment especially of educational and .org domains. <scary thoughts>
Still debating how the membership and leadership
should be comprised and the qualifications of those assembled. <shudder>
Also see:
http://www.icann.org/list.html
Membership Advisory Committee Public Discussion List
The ICANN Membership Advisory Committee has established a public mailing
list, membership@icann.org, devoted to discussion of the issues involved
in establishing a membership structure to elect At Large directors of
ICANN.
(For more information about the purpose of the committee, see
http://www.icann.org/icann-pr25nov98.html
A related study effort conducted by the Berkman Center for Internet &
Society can be followed at
http://cyber.harvard.edu/rcs/
Caveat: [If you want to what havoc is wrought up close and personal.]
Not a pretty picture to be sure.
If you want to join this list, please send a message to
majordomo@icann.org with the line "subscribe
membership" as the body of the message.)
- --
P.A. Gantt, Computer Science Technology Instructor
Electronic Media Design and Support Homepage
http://user.icx.net/~pgantt/
mailto:pagantt@technologist.com?Subject=etech
http://horizon.unc.edu/TS/vision/1998-11.asp
Common sense is not common, and conventional wisdom is not
wisdom. But at least you can have conventional sense. ~~ Daily Whale
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 03:12:23 -0400
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] Re: Round robins
Greg,
{ ... the types of
{ proposals you made to me and the lists were not the same type you
{ would make in your profession for similar circumstances. In other
{ words, you hold the Internet to different standards than the
{ surveying profession.
Professional practice is concerned to maintain strict continuity with
antecedents which have grown up over several lifetimes (to say the
least). The idea of the Internet as any sort of legal entity is not even
5 years old. It astounds me that cases decided in (and out of) courts
which hardly had a clue what they were doing are cited as established
precedent, but is that what you mean by a different standard?
Professional practice addresses end usage: is this building safe? Does
that monument represent the best fit of property lines among all parties'
interests? The Internet is a medium, plain and simple except for the
fact that for the first time we have 'deconstructed' the way it operates
(as if somebody has to joggle the air molecules up and down in order for
us to hear). Is that a different standard?
{ I'll grant that the Internet is (among other
{ things) an educational tool, but even educational tools have to have
{ some sort of structure they can rely upon so people can focus on
{ learning. For example, it would not be proper to require everyone to
{ change to names as numbers because that would interfere with the other
{ types of learning that go on on the net.
I think you misread me. Im hardly interested in its institutional use
to pipe canned 'information' to naive consumers, but rather the exercise
of homo sap's ability to abstract from experience and to concretize those
abstractions in deed. The net itself is thus a learning experience, in
the same way that walking or talking is.
Maybe this is worth expanding: it is so, not just for 'kids' who have
never done it before, but for anyone who *enjoys* doing it - as distinct
from those who take it for granted ('adults' if you will). Obviously its
a fine and delicate line between whats 'fun' and whats 'workmanlike' but
I submit that the same tension runs between the libertines and the
puritans, as well as the trademarkers and the freelancers -- and that
whatever policy is followed in one venue will permeate the others.
That is, certainly we can make an internet that is methodologically safe
and sound for *contemporary business -- but we also have to recognize
that prescribing the future rarely has the effect we want. Leave some
'slop' or your shay will seize up, sure enough.
...
{ I think if you had suggested this in the first place, your intent
{ would have been clearer. Then we could debate whether it was
{ feasible to carry it out.
You *will use words that I associate with 'following plans,' wont you?
Who am I that I should have a plan spring fully formed from my brow?
(Sorry, there's that Juno connection again ;-))
{ Also
{ consider that the telephone industry is much more mature than the
{ Internet.
Its interesting that those experienced in other media -- especially radio
- -- seem so scarce on the ground here.
{ Possibly. I don't know if ifwp is the right list upon which to frame
{ those discussions in that manner. I don't mind having this type of
{ discussion, but I think the ifwp folks are looking for something
{ that's perhaps more solution-oriented than identify-problem-oriented.
{
Im sure you're right. Philosophy and ethics always take a back seat to
getting things done - is that what you mean?
{ >As I say, have you got another idea about getting folks to see that
{ >theyre in a learning process? -- that (while Im at it!) the primary
{ >value ('highest and best use') of the Internet is *educational, and
that
{ >this business of whose site is called what is just an example (and a
{ >picayune example at that) of problems that *could be solved by people
who
{ > consciously understood what they were doing? Im all ears -- but dont
{ >look for my immediate agreement, please!
{
{ It may be the case that in fact there are some fundamental problems
{ that need to be identified before any useful solutions can be
{ developed.
Should we let that stand in the way of a good brawl? ;-)
{ A lot of what has happened in the
{ past 10 or so years consists of trying to graft things into the
{ existing architecture in the hopes that they will work until the
{ better conceived architecture can be deployed. In this process some
{ fundamental mistakes in both technology and policy were made. But
{ there is a desire to keep everything working, rather than to wipe the
{ slate clean and start over. Thus, the need to figure out how to
{ transition to better architectures while at the same time keeping the
{ existing architecture functional and able to grow so it is still
{ useful.
{
Well said. In this process however, I consider the 'fundamentals' to be
much deeper than, say, whether NSI should charge for domain registration.
(Has anybody tested that policy against the Westmark decision, btw?)
although it may or may not be a 'mistake' -- a mistake is only something
that makes you do something you werent 'prepared' to do, as the one
concept implies the other.
The notion Im *playing with is that every social structure that has ever
come down the pike has been as conditional on external limitations as any
trademark, be it geography or resources or nutrition or whatever.
We have thus been able to keep 'engineering' on one side and 'politics'
on another, *up to now*. The digital revolution however obliterates all
such boundary conditions: so far, for instance, we have noticed that the
'mass media' really do have societal consequences, and that money
management really does influence decision making, and that telephony is
essentially the same game as entertainment and publishing. Are we any
better positioned for all that, to deal with school=job for instance --
or are we still trying to deal with *existing conceptual architectures,
patching and plastering and behind the curve at every step? The way to
avoid mistakes is to foresee; that is, to pay attention to what does
*not* exist -- the potentio, not the act.
Does this imply 'starting over'? Not at all -- it merely implies that
one has to know where one is (what exists) if looking ahead is to have
any value in getting somewhere else. If youre stumbling around in a
swamp, trading one unknown location for another is not much help, nor is
merely hoping that one more step will suddenly bring you out on dry land.
Keep going, by all means, or else you'll sink -- but doesnt it seem wise
to use the change of position to change your *perspective? (Is there
moss on both sides of that thar tree?)
Does all this mean that ICANN is not merely "a narrowly focused technical
body charged with certain policymaking and coordination tasks,"
but has the *potential to seriously affect our lives? I think it does,
and I think we can grow it the way we would like it to be (e.g. a
legitimately elected government of cyberspace") and avoid being swamped
if we use the (engineering/ social) sense that God gave geeks.
Have fun ;-)
kerry
------------------------------
End of Netizens-Digest V1 #268
******************************
