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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 348
Netizens-Digest Friday, December 31 1999 Volume 01 : Number 348
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
[netz] Re: HMO sues
[netz] New Domain May Unite Europe (EU)
[netz] Yet another thought of Christmas
[netz] The Internet, Netizens and a New Millennium: Past as Prologue
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 12:20:34 -04
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] Re: HMO sues
> Health Net... registered two Web site addresses in 1996, healthnet.com
> and healthnet.net, [but] only recently became aware of the healthnet.org
...
> If SatelLife had done a trademark search before naming the site [in 1993],
> there would not have been a problem, Haines says.
In any other climate, it would be laughable. On the Net, who knows, but
I should think if there was ever a reason to take a stand on the original
hierarchical domain concept, this is it.
Either stick with it, and force the *legal issue to be whether a .org is
doing commercial things with the site (which is itself a very sticky
issue) -- or let's reconstruct the entire DNS.
Of course I dont mean fiddle with *this one! There's no need to "create
confusion" by forcing everyone to change names (and of course by
"getting the word out to thousands of workers" in cyberspace! -- I mean,
what's the g.d. net for?) I mean, make the *legal case that an
alternative, parallel DNS is the less intrusive solution. People who dont
like to play by .com/.org rules can go off and be
2HealthWithU.MakeMoneyTheEasyWay.
kerry
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 00:12:05
From: John Walker <jwalker@networx.on.ca>
Subject: [netz] New Domain May Unite Europe (EU)
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- --------------------
New Domain May Unite Europe (EU)
by Joanna Glasner
3:00 a.m. 20.Dec.1999 PST
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,33156,00.html
In the brand-obsessed world of Internet domain registration,
European companies have often found themselves in a quandary.
While their US counterparts have been busily gobbling up every word
they can attach a dot-com to, Europeans setting up shop in their
native countries have had to grapple with nation-specific domains. A
European company headquartered in Germany might use "company.de," a
French one "company.fr," and so on.
The codes work for a company doing business in a single country. But
to those plying their wares to the whole of the Western Europe, the
plethora of country codes can be a marketer's nightmare.
The European Union has proposed a solution: adding a new domain to
the list, dot-eu.
A new European Commission communication on Internet technology
policy says it "will support creation of a dot-eu top-level domain to
encourage cross-border electronic commerce within the EU."
The proposal follows years of lobbying by EuroISPA, an organization
of European Internet service providers that has lobbied for
government backing for the dot-eu domain. Although European companies
are eligible to apply for dot-com or dot-net addresses, they've
generally been overshadowed by their US counterparts.
"Although dot-com was intended originally as a global top-level
domain, it's turned into an American top-level domain," said
EuroISPA president Jim Dixon.
As a result, many companies whose primary business is in Europe are
mistakenly taken for US businesses when they take on a dot-com
address.
Although there is a domain expressly for the US -- dot-us --
American companies haven't taken to it. That's probably because it's
not as simple as going out and registering amazon.us, said William
Sommers, president of the Association for Internet Service providers.
Sites in the dot-us domain have to include a state and typically a
city code in their name, something more on the lines of
amazon.seattle.wa.us -- not the kind of thing customers flock to.
But Amazon.eu -- now that's a different story.
"There are a lot of businesses whose scope of business isn't any one
European country, but Europe as a whole," Dixon said. "Dot-eu would
be a perfect fit."
If and/or when a new domain will actually get approved, however, is
anyone's guess.
To get a domain established, the European Union needs the approval
of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to add eu
to a list of established country codes. So far, the ISO has shied
away from doing that.
"The European Union, of course, is not a country, but a grouping of
countries," ISO spokesman Roger Frost said.
Still, the ISO has considered the request, and has reserved dot-eu
for Europe, even though it hasn't approved it as an official country
code.
Even if it gets a country code, the EU needs to get the green light
from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
before it can start registering Internet sites.
"Policymakers would need several months to consider making any
addition to the top-level domain name pool," said ICANN president
Michael Roberts. "ICANN has yet to receive a proposal to add dot-eu
to the domain name," he said.
In the meantime, ICANN is gearing up plans to pick up the top-level
domain issue next year, when it will consider adding new domains to
the current roster.
Links:
http://www.iso.ch/
http://www.icann.org/
- --------------
Also in this issue:
- - Leveraging The Internet Underground (US)
If you are one of the few people who haven't yet heard of Mahir, let
me tell you about the guy.
- - New Domain May Unite Europe (EU)
In the brand-obsessed world of Internet domain registration,
European companies have often found themselves in a quandary.
- - Writing Compelling Copy - Part I (US)
Ask just about any salesperson what components are essential to
closing a sale, and he or she is bound to tell you that one of the
most important is the ability to establish rapport. A very basic
premise, to be sure... and one that can (and should) be applied to
the email channel.
- - Writing Compelling Copy - Part II (US)
Having touched on the overall "tone" of an email message and how it
should speak "to" instead of "at" your prospects, we now dive into
one of the most powerful components of an email promotion: The
subject line.
- - Net brings the old folks home (UK)
The thousands of miles separating Agnes and Owen Davis from their
grandchildren in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado are being melted
away this Christmas by the marvel of e-mail.
- - Happy hours of seasonal surfing (UK)
Enormous directory of Christmas sites
- - Running on Net time (US)
Most business people know there's time and then there's Internet
time.
It appears that the federal government recognizes this too, judging
from the latest report on the digital economy provided by the White
House on Friday.
- - Registrars race to profit from longer domain names (US)
It did not take long for San Diego attorney Michael Eddy to jump
into action when he learned that longer domain names are now for
sale.
- - Digital vandalism hits Irish websites (Ireland)
Fiachra ÓMarcaigh on the outbreak of widespread attacks on websites
earlier this month
- - Seattle battle showed Internet's populist power (US)
Web brought together WTO protesters, now tells their stories minus
media filter
- - New Lists and Journals
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- -------------------------------
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- -------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 1999 22:07:42
From: John Walker <jwalker@networx.on.ca>
Subject: [netz] Yet another thought of Christmas
Yet another thought of Christmas
This
Christmas
end a quarrel.
Seek out a forgotten
friend. Dismiss suspicion,
and replace it with trust....
Write a love letter. Share some
treasure. Give a soft answer. En-
courage youth. Manifest your loyalty in
word and deed. Keep a promise. Find the
time. Forgo a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Listen.
Apologize if you were wrong. Try to understand.
Flout envy. Examine your demands on others. Think
first of someone else. Appreciate. Be kind; be gentle
Laugh a little. Laugh a little more. Deserve confidence.
Take up arms against malice. Decry complacency. Express your
gratitude. Go to church. Welcome a stranger. Gladden the heart
of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth.
Speak your love.
Speak it again.
Speak it yet
once again.
Happy Holidays and all the best in the New Year.
John Walker
CSS Internet News
http://www.bestnet.org/~jwalker
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 31 Dec 1999 21:08:09 -0500 (EST)
From: ronda@panix.com
Subject: [netz] The Internet, Netizens and a New Millennium: Past as Prologue
What will the new Millennium mean for the Internet and for the Netizens
who have emerged with the development of the Internet?
J.C.R. Licklider's research in the 1950s recognizing the importance
of the question of what should be the relationship between the human
and the computer set a foundation for time sharing and interactive
computing. He proposed that the relationship should be one of
human computer symbiosis, that is the human doing what the human
could do best and the computer doing what it was most suited for
in the partnership.
Licklider then was invited to work at the Advanced Research Projects
Agency (ARPA) in 1962. He set up the Office of Information Processing
(IPTO) which spearheaded many of the outstanding changes that we
have witnessed in the development of computers and networking and then
internetworking in the past 40 years.
Not often in people's lives do they witness the significant events
that have occurred in the past 40 years of our past century. This includes
the development of time-sharing and interactive computing with Project MAC
and of other centers of excellence projects in the 1960s. These made it
possible to replace the form of batch processing that was the computing
paradigm until then with interactive computing and time-sharing.
The work on time-sharing also led people like Donald Davies in
Great Britain and others thinking. Davies realized that multiplexing
could be applied to the transport of computer data as well as to the
organization of an operating system.
Davies had the idea for packet switching along with others like
Paul Baran. By the later part of the 1960's Larry Roberts had
been brought to IPTO by Robert Taylor. Roberts spearheaded
the developments at ARPA that would make it possible to create
the ARPANET as an early and outstanding example of packet switching
technology and that would make a new form of computer and communications
possible.
The marriage of computers and communication by the early 1970s had
countries and researchers around the world excited about the potential
that computer networking.
The ICCC'72 conference in Washington DC not only was the event
that demonstrated packet switching would work to those who
attended from around the world. The conference was an interdisciplinary
event with papers from researchers around the world. A number of
those present realized that the significant developments in computers
and in communications on their own would bring great change to the
world. But the marriage of these developments would prove to be
an especially important development.
Among those at the conference, some predicted that computer networking
developments would challenge government officials and all other
institutions of society to make the promise they held possible.
And they questioned whether the public would indeed benefit from
these important developments or would only those already with the power
benefit?
Countries around the world were planning computer networks. Would
it be possible to have these different networks interconnect?
After the 1972 conference, Bob Kahn, was among those researchers
thinking about the problem of interconnecting computer networks or
Multiple Networking problem that it was then called. Working with
Vint Cerf, he took on to propose a philosophy and a design for a
way to solve the problem of linking up diverse packet switching
networks, without interferring with the technology of those networks.
The philosophy was open architecture.
Working to create a protocol that would make an Internet
possible, Kahn and Vint Cerf drafted their paper describing a new
protocol for Internetworking, for the creation of a protocol that
would be called Transport Control Protocol, or TCP (and evenually
TCP/IP). The ideas for the new protocol were presented at a meeting
in Sussex England to a group of researchers working on networking
problems in Fall of 1973. And their paper describing TCP was
published in May 1974.
Kahn went ahead and created an internetting project at IPTO,
by exploring how to link up a ground packet radio network and
a satellite packet switching network with the ARPANET so they
could all share resources.
By 1975 he had connected them in a way to know that they would
work, and by 1977 IPTO conducted a demonstrations of the TCP
implementations that had been developed and a demonstration
of internetworking showed it was possible to send packets
to Great Britain and Norway and back to the US using the ground
packet radio network, the satellite packet switching network and
the ARPANET.
By January 1983 there was a cutover to TCP/IP on the ARPANET. Actually
the cutover took a bit of time to carry out, but by October 1983
it was possible to split the ARPANET, into the MILNET and the ARPANET
networks and to have communication made possible across this
early internet.
Also by 1983 there had been a linking up of the ARPANET mailing
lists with some Usenet newsgroups.
In the mid 1980s there were Unix user groups around Europe
using UUCP and Usenet to explore email and online discussions.
And the Internet began to make communication possible among
these diverse networks of users.
By 1992 there were users around the world connecting to the
Internet. And online research exploring the experiences of
those users showed that a new social form was emerging online,
the social form of the Netizen. That there were people who
participated in the resource sharing that the Internet made
possible, and they were finding that there was a vibrant and
exciting new online community that was being developed. And
they took on to make this new online means of communication
available to others so they could benefit and contribute to it.
Much has happened in the past 8 years, much that has spread
this new medium of global communication around the world, and
much that has shown that the new medium has some who don't
understand its nature or the vision that has given it birth.
There are some who are out to try to limit who benefits to
those who feel that their money or power should give them
special privileges to determine what the future of the Internet
will be. But there are also those who are trying to carrying
out the original vision of pioneers like JCR Licklider and Robert
Taylor that access to the Internet should be a right for all
not a privilege for the few.
A contest is being waged. A contest that is tugging at the
essence of the Internet. One manifestation of the contest has
been the efforts by the U.S. government to try to turn over
the publicly developed and important essential functions of
the Internet like its protocol creation and development process,
its domain name and numbering system and its root server system
to a private corporation that has been created by the U.S.
government. This would take away the public protection that
is so important for these essential functions that can give
controlling power over the Internet to those who are able to
control this private corporation. And as one would expect there
is a fierce battle on trying to seize such power by those who
feel their gain is more important than the health and well
being of the Internet and the global community it has created.
There have been other contests in the developing life of the
Internet. Some of these contests included the passage by
the U.S. Congress of the Communications Decency Act (CDA)
which would have limited the right of people to the global
communication that the Internet makes possible under the
guise that adults are to be limited to what might be appropriate
to children. Online discussion and protest along with a lawsuit
led to a court decision overturning the CDA and affirming the
right of people online to participate in the global conversation
that is so precious and that the Internet has brought into the
world.
There are many other examples of challenges to the Internet that
have developed and many other examples of how those online who
recognized the importance of the Internet and the communication
it makes possible have been able to take on the challenges so
that the Internet could continue to grow and flourish.
What will be the future for the Internet and for the Netizen
in this new millennium?
The Internet and the Netizen are indeed some of what is
important that has been developed over the past few decades
that are prologue to the upcoming new millennium.
What will the new millennium bring? How will the contest continue
to unfold?
A herald of the future is a conference I was invited to in
Tampere, Finland in early December. The conference was on the
topic of the role of the citizen in the coming new millennium.
It was called citizen2000 and was sponsored by the European
Union. (http://www.citizen2000.net) The seminar I was invited
to participate in explored how the Internet can make possible
new means of participation in the affairs of government for
the citizen. The researchers who made presentations all were
exploring what was actually possible with the new medium, and
what were the benefits and the problems.
If the Internet is to grow and flourish there may well be a
necessity to explore how to increase the role of citizen in
determining what will be the role that government will play
in the future development of the Internet.
It was quite special to see this research issue being recognized
as important and explored at the citizen2000 conference in Finland.
Below is the description of the seminar that was held in Tampere,
Finland in early December.
I wonder what others thoughts are as we enter this new millennium
with respect to the important developments we are bringing with
us from the past millennium and the challenges we will face in the
next.
Ronda
Following is the description of the seminar held as part of the
EU Citizens' Agenda NGO-forum 2000 in Finland, December 4th.
E3. Civic Participation, Virtual Democracy and the Net
What are the possibilities for more intensive democracy and
participation while utilising internet and other new technologies? How
can the internet facilitate local democracy? Finnish NGOs,
Tampere-foorumi, Tampere Technology Centre
Tampere Hall, VIP-room
Languages: English
A Digital Neighbourhood? The Vision of the Netizens? Public Sphere? If
you are anxious to know more about these issues, take a closer view of
the thematical seminar 'Civic Participation, Virtual Democracy and the
Net'.
In this seminar the matter in hand is the social impact of the so
called information society. We will bring up for example the question
of how one can encourage civic participation and create an active net
community. We will also discuss the practices of virtual democracy and
the problem of access.
The seminar includes seven presentations and a panel discussion. In
addition, there will be an interactive exhibition - a place where
different kinds of net projects give food for thought.
Speakers and their subjects
Myrna J. Alejo:
Information Technology and the Production of Democratic Ethos: the
Philippine Case
- How the uneven penetration of information technology affects the
nature of "public sphere" in the Philippines; and how the philippine
civil society is dealing with the problem of access.
Ronda Hauben:
Is the Internet a Laboratory for Democracy? The Vision of the Netizens
vrs The E-Commerce Agenda
- Why it is important for Netizens to participate in the contest being
waged (as for instance: ICANN) over which strata of society will gain
the benefit of the Internet and how the Internet provides the means
for such participation.
Steven Lenos:
Networking for democracy: the digital future?
- How organisations can use the Internet for (international)
networking and how they are able to organise succesfull digital public
debats.
Jari Sepp
Net participation - what can the City offer?
- 10 years experience of work as a news repotrer in local newspapers
and national tv-news
- 12 years Head of Information of the City of Tampere, Finland
He has acted as the chairman for two committees founded by the
Association of Finnish Local Authorities, one creating the good
practise for municipal information and the other one guidelines for
municipal services presented over the Internet.
In his presentation he will introduce some practical examples how the
City of Tampere has developed civic participation via the Internet. We
will hear how the Internet enables plan presentation, dialogue and
lobbying, combined into the visual and functional opportunities
provided by new media.
Aija Staffans:
Netted but not trapped. Local stakeholders on a digital neighbourhood
forum constructing urban knowledge and planning
- The main issue is whether a digital neighbourhood forum is able to
bring together the municipality and local stakeholders (like
inhabitants, citizen organizations, schools, kindergardens,
shopkeepers etc.) in order to develop urban environment
Lasse Peltonen & Seija Ridell:
Citizen forums, virtual publicness and practices of local democracy:
- The case of Tampere-foorumi (Lasse Peltonen)
- Tampere-foorumi on the net (Seija Ridell)
- The main issue is to describe the attempts, achievements and
obstacles met by one local civic group in organizing opportunities for
public interaction and dialogue - both in 'real life' and on the net -
between city officials, politicians, economic actors and ordinary
citizens.
Civic Participation, Virtual Democracy and the Net
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End of Netizens-Digest V1 #348
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