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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 333
Netizens-Digest Tuesday, August 17 1999 Volume 01 : Number 333
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
Re: [netz] danger, safety, power.
[netz] Ramos: Gambling is not commerce
[netz] Re: danger, safety, power.
[netz] Re: danger, safety, power.
Re: [netz] danger, safety, power.
[netz] Commercial motives in any guise
Re: [netz] danger, safety, power.
Re: [netz] Commercial motives in any guise
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 11:41:50 -0700 (PDT)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] danger, safety, power.
"Jamal Shahin" <J.Shahin@selc.hull.ac.uk> wrote:
> Does the DNS system *need a single point of authority?
If names are to be unique, there needs to be a coordinating body to
ensure this. You might call this a "single point of authority."
> If so, why are there nine (??) servers?
There are multiple root servers for redundancy.
> Does *every request to view a website go through
> one computer somewhere in the world? (I don't think so!)
No. In fact, DNS is designed hierarchically with caching in order to
minimize the number of root lookups.
> How is the DNS system affected by the work of those at AlterNic and
> eDNS (now defunct, right?)?
Those defunct groups are (more or less) a part of ORSC now. At
present none of the ORSC TLDs are in the IANA roots (what I believe
you are referring to as the DNS system). Some of them may be added at
some point in time.
If people in the Internet community wished, they could reconfigure
their machines to point at ORSC-compliant DNS servers, thus making
those TLDs (and everything under them) accessible.
> Why is there a gTLD? [...]
I suggest reading the namedroppers archives from 1983-85 to understand
how the early development of DNS came about, and why certain
conventions were adopted. They are available at
ftp://ftp.internic.net/archives/namedroppers/1980s/
> I think that you can see that all these questions require answers
> the posit one argument against another (maybe there is a third or
> 'n'th argument involved, but I think the process is the
> same). Dichotomous (or perhaps binary) thought.
Certainly arguments can (and have) been made for multiple positions.
Most of the DNS controversy has arisen out of the means by which
registration privileges were granted to companies and other
organizations.
> We will actually get somewhere if *honesty and *openness are shown
> in people's answers. And it might be that there won't be many facts
> in the answers that this list receives, but at least there maybe
> something to hang on to.
I think one problem with the DNS controversy is that there are
different expectations of honesty and openness among various groups.
To people who came up from the ranks of Internet software developer,
sysadmin, etc., things were hashed out "in the open" on newsgroups,
mailing lists, etc. The lack of input from people on the ICANN board
is considered by said folks to be a violation of the Internet way of
doing things. However there were also people who were more involved
in administrative, political decisions regarding infrastructure who
generally did not participate in those lists and newsgroups (but they
participated on other lists). In this controversy the various camps
have come face to face, and what you see is the culture clash.
- --gregbo
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 17:56:34 +0000
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] Ramos: Gambling is not commerce
TRICKY ISSUE IN GAMBLING CASE**
Issue: E-Commerce
Justice Charles Edward Ramos of the New York State Supreme
Court ruled that operators of an Internet gambling casino based in
Antigua violated New York State and federal anti-gambling laws.
Regardless of where the computer server is located, an online
gambling site creates a virtual casino within a local user's
computer terminal which can be penalized by local and national
laws which prohibit the promotion of gambling. This ruling could
also impact other forms of electronic commerce.
Jack Goldsmith, a law professor at the University of Chicago says
it raises the question of how far a Web site should go to protect
itself. "What kind of precautions do content providers need to take
to avoid liability [in a state and from unauthorized users or buyers]
and make business flourish?" If a Web site, for example, makes a
good faith effort to screen out unauthorized users, then local law
should not apply to its actions, says Goldsmith. It will be up to the
courts now to follow-up with Ramos' ruling, however, and decide.
===
Is Goldsmith's the only question? Is protecting the Web site or the
innocent customer the more important issue? If ICANN wants to
require uniform dispute resolution, why not also require a uniform
symbol of *what a visitors chances are* of getting something for
their money? A registrar somewhere in the name-server business
could keep the records of complaints of non-fulfillment vs total hits
(or better, total numbers of SSC serves) on a site, and provide the
odds on request.
A browser who does not *transact could care less whether a site is
a casino or a Ford Camino dealer. Otoh, any e-commerce worth
the electrons it recycles should want to know how much risk its
customers are prepared to run.
kerry
- ---------
**The Benton Foundation's Communications Policy and Practice
(CPP) (www.benton.org/cpphome.html) Communications-related
Headline Service is posted Monday through Friday. The Headlines
are highlights of news articles summarized by staff at the Benton
Foundation; in this case, from the New York Times (CyberTimes),
AUTHOR: Calr S. Kaplan]
(http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/08/cyber/cyberlaw/13law.ht
ml)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 18:04:47 +0000
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] Re: danger, safety, power.
>
> If names are to be unique, there needs to be a coordinating body to
> ensure this. You might call this a "single point of authority."
...
> There are multiple root servers for redundancy.
>
If names are to be unique *and its uniqueness to be
ascertainable before one enters a name in the DNS*, there needs
to be a coordinating body.
Redundancy: the hedging of one's bet that the once-and-for-all
solution will never fail.
But call them 'multiple root servers' and it then becomes obvious
that they each can accept new name entries, with uniqueness to
be ascertained by *then polling the others.
kerry
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 14:30:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: [netz] Re: danger, safety, power.
> But call them 'multiple root servers' and it then becomes obvious
> that they each can accept new name entries, with uniqueness to
> be ascertained by *then polling the others.
There is a master root server which the others take copies from
periodically. Thus there is, for all intents and purpose, one root
management system. The multiple machines are used in case any of
the servers are down or unreachable.
One could certainly change things so that there could be multiple
root servers with (possibly) distinct names in them. However, that
doesn't scale. (Sorry)
- --gregbo
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 15:48:12 +0200
From: "Jamal Shahin" <J.Shahin@selc.hull.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [netz] danger, safety, power.
Thanks Greg for answering my (very simple) queries.
On 16 Aug 99, at 11:41, Greg Skinner wrote:
> If names are to be unique, there needs to be a coordinating body to
> ensure this. You might call this a "single point of authority."
I remember reading about a Singaporean (I think) company, who had set
up an alternative system, that recognised a different character set. This
was to enable urls to be typed in a different script to the regular ASCII
one. Can anybody clarify this? And also can anybody inform as to the
consequences of this for the IANA root? Would this be the beginning of the
fragmentation of the net?
> If people in the Internet community wished, they could reconfigure
> their machines to point at ORSC-compliant DNS servers, thus making
> those TLDs (and everything under them) accessible.
What does this mean for ICANN? That the IANA root would not be the
authoritative root? Can anybody set up their own DNS server (to contain
all the IANA tlds for example)?
> I think one problem with the DNS controversy is that there are
> different expectations of honesty and openness among various groups.
> To people who came up from the ranks of Internet software developer,
> sysadmin, etc., things were hashed out "in the open" on newsgroups,
> mailing lists, etc. The lack of input from people on the ICANN board
> is considered by said folks to be a violation of the Internet way of
> doing things. However there were also people who were more involved
> in administrative, political decisions regarding infrastructure who
> generally did not participate in those lists and newsgroups (but they
> participated on other lists). In this controversy the various camps
> have come face to face, and what you see is the culture clash.
This is really interesting. So it seems that the problem is that the "Internet
way" of making decisions wasn't carried out by the politicians.. But what
was this "Internet way"? A lot of it seems to have been done (dare I say it?
- - oh go on..) by elite groups of technical gurus, with little thought for what
is now the most populous of Internet user: Joe Normal.
The truth is that the Internet suddenly became a "champion" of so many
different groups: telecoms, information services, e-business. In fact
anything with a service attached, essentially. It had exploded, and became
crucial to economic policies (witness the National/ Global Information
Infrastructure). Therefore politicians wanted to make it work their way.
Only fair, since their political careers were riding on it. (Not to mention a
sizeable amount of their national GDP.)
So, cyberspace met reality, and the culture clash has threatened the
stability of the Internet.
Jamal
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 12:58:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jay Hauben <jay@dorsai.org>
Subject: [netz] Commercial motives in any guise
The netizens list is not the only place that John Walker's commercial
traffic has been opposed. Most societies today find a great pressure
exerted to push people into having a money bottom line. Once that bottom
line is adopted much of what such a person does is in service of his or her
money needs. I agree with Ronda that the netizens list is challenged to
find a mechanism for isolating and controlling attempts to introduce
commercialism onto this list in whatever guise.
Should the distribution of copyright material without the copyright
holder's permission be permitted on the netizens list? Isn't this
an abuse of the non commercial purpose of the netizens list? Or does
Mr. Walker now have permission to distribute for a fee the copyright
material if any that appears in his commercial newsletter?
The following was posted to the ONLINE-NEWS list on Wed, 14 Jul 1999, by
Martyn Williams (martyn@newsbytes.com), Japan Bureau Chief, Newsbytes
News Network.
- -----------------------
(http://www.deja.com/qs.xp?OP=dnquery.xp&ST=QS&QRY=%22CSS+Internet+
News%22&DBS=2)
- --
All,
The recent discussion of a couple of framing sites reminded me of "CSS
Internet News" and I thought it was worth alerting list members to this
"service." Chances are your material is being ripped off if it is connected
with Internet issues.
It's a mailing list that basically collects articles about the Internet and
sends them out each day. I stumbled across it a couple of years ago when we
found them sending out Newsbytes stories. A couple of e-mails later
established that the person behind it thought it was fine as long as our
company name and copyright notice was included and got quite angry when we
requested he stopped redistributing our material. In the end, he stopped but
continues to this day with material from numerous other sites including many
of the major newspapers and Websites.
Best of all, he charges for the service so is making money from it!
Here's the blurb:
"The CSS Internet News (tm) is a daily e-mail publication that
has been providing up to date information to Netizens since 1996.
Subscription information is available at:
http://www.bestnet.org/~jwalker/inews.htm"
The site doesn't have any sample issues but you can get an idea of what is
carried by searching through Dejanews for the sample articles he sends to
network news for advertising. Search for "CSS Internet News" and look for
the messages from "John Walker" or follow the link:
http://www.deja.com/qs.xp?OP=dnquery.xp&ST=QS&QRY=%22CSS+Internet+
News%22&DBS=2
cheers,
Martyn
- --
Martyn Williams | martyn@newsbytes.com
Japan Bureau Chief | Tel : 054-267-1180
Newsbytes News Network | Fax : 054-267-1181
http://www.newsbytes.com | Cellular: 090-8336-2882
A Division of Post-Newsweek Business Information
Free Asian tech news by e-mail!
Send "subscribe newsbytes-asia" to majordomo@genesis.newsbytes.com .
- -> ONLINE-NEWS uses Lyris mailing list software. http://www.lyris.com <-
- -> Change your list settings: http://www.planetarynews.com/online-news <-
- -> Online-News is archived: http://www.planetarynews.com/on-archive <-
- -----> SPONSOR: Content Exchange - http://www.content-exchange.com <----
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
The URL will lead you to an interesting thread discussing questions of
copyright violation.
Take care.
Jay
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 10:16:24 -0700 (PDT)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] danger, safety, power.
"Jamal Shahin" <J.Shahin@selc.hull.ac.uk> wrote:
> I remember reading about a Singaporean (I think) company, who had
> set up an alternative system, that recognised a different character
> set. This was to enable urls to be typed in a different script to
> the regular ASCII one. Can anybody clarify this?
I have heard about someone who's creating a DNS for an extended
character set, but I'm not sure if this is the one.
> And also can anybody inform as to the consequences of this for the
> IANA root? Would this be the beginning of the fragmentation of the
> net?
ICANN has not made any public comment on alternate roots.
[I earlier wrote]
>> If people in the Internet community wished, they could reconfigure
>> their machines to point at ORSC-compliant DNS servers, thus making
>> those TLDs (and everything under them) accessible.
> What does this mean for ICANN? That the IANA root would not be the
> authoritative root? Can anybody set up their own DNS server (to contain
> all the IANA tlds for example)?
Anyone can set up their own DNS server (or set of servers) to contain
all the IANA tlds.
The ORSC root contains pointers to the IANA tlds as well as their
alternative tlds. So, one could argue that the IANA root may be
authoritative but is not comprehensive. But again, ICANN has not
made any public statement regarding alternate roots.
> This is really interesting. So it seems that the problem is that the
> "Internet way" of making decisions wasn't carried out by the
> politicians.. But what was this "Internet way"? A lot of it seems to
> have been done (dare I say it? - oh go on..) by elite groups of
> technical gurus, with little thought for what is now the most
> populous of Internet user: Joe Normal.
I'm not so sure you are using the word 'politician' in the way I meant
it. What I was trying to say was that there were different (sometimes
overlapping) groups that developed and/or oversaw parts of the
Internet that had different ways of interacting. The type of decision
making that was made by the Usenet backbone admins was different than
that made by the DARPA program managers, for example. With the
unification of all these groups in today's Internet, there is culture
clash.
- --gregbo
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 16:45:03 +0000
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: Re: [netz] Commercial motives in any guise
Martyn Williams wrote,
> Chances are your material is being ripped off [by CSS] if it is
> connected with Internet issues.
It's not clear from the rest of his message exactly what the 'rip-off' --
that is, the damage to Newsbytes -- is held to be. Is Mr Williams
able to document some loss of subscribers?
Jay Hauben added,
> The netizens list is not the only place that John Walker's
> commercial traffic has been opposed. Most societies today find a
> great pressure exerted to push people into having a money bottom
> line. Once that bottom line is adopted much of what such a person
> does is in service of his or her money needs.
The netizens list is not the only place one can find -jerk reactions.
The fact that most people have been pushed into 'having only a
bottom line' is another way to say the same thing; once one begins
to think uni-dimensionally or to hold only one standard of value,
then indeed, everything one does is conditioned by that perspective.
> I agree with Ronda that the netizens list is challenged to
> find a mechanism for isolating and controlling attempts to introduce
> commercialism onto this list in whatever guise.
I agree that every list has to strike a balance between what is
convenient for single-valued people and multi-valued people alike.
Isnt there an essential similarity between those who think that
money is the universal language and others who think that the
reply key is the only way to post a message? Whats the difference
to the reader or to the list archives between a 20 line sig or 5 or 6k
of (multiply!-) quoted traffic? Is a different criterion invoked to
distinguish signal from noise? Is any subscriber in real need of
having this criterion exercised on his or her behalf? If it is possible
to *educate one to this skill, is that process of education
something that falls under Netizens mandate?
> Should the distribution of copyright material without the copyright
> holder's permission be permitted on the netizens list? Isn't this
> an abuse of the non commercial purpose of the netizens list? Or does
> Mr. Walker now have permission to distribute for a fee the copyright
> material if any that appears in his commercial newsletter?
Should one cast aspersions on Mr Walkers ability to gain
permission from the copyright holders to 'bounce' their material,
without putting oneself on record that the opportunity to publicly
ask him was repeatedly foregone? (This is at least the third time I
have seen this possible slander on various lists; one might think
that a list owner would be *very concerned to regulate messages of
that sort. One might also note that what may have been the case
two years ago is as good as obsolete in Internet time.)
But suppose he is in contravention of some 'fair use' criterion --
does it help the Netizens list in any way whatsoever in finding the
above balance point? As far as I can see, the material itself would
*appear to be precisely the same and occupy the same disk space
- -- which is why I consider its none of my business. But I appreciate
that others base their judgement on such external criteria, and I try
to leave lots of slack for such one track minds, as they (of course)
are handicapped in seeing any pov but their own.
kerry miller
Disclaimer: Anything that is identifiably my original content in this
message is not copyright in any way, and the concepts embodied
therein have been dedicated to the public domain. Anyone is free to
use my language or express them in their own words in any venue I
am aware of. Further, one who feels the need to belong to an
organizational form in order to do so likewise has permission to
use Hundred Flowers Publications for the purpose. |{hm
------------------------------
End of Netizens-Digest V1 #333
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