Who are you? What do you want? -- was RE: pgMedia/Name.Space Replies to Paul Vixie (fwd)
Robert Raisch
I believe it is most important in describing this problem to be as clear as
possible, since it affects the interests and future of the entire world.
What I find most interesting is that no argument I have yet seen presented
by the technocrats provides any clear technical reason why 'dot' cannot be
opened for free market competition other than '...because it would be bad.'
Each 'solution' so far presented appears to represent an ideological
viewpoint, not a technical one.
Contrary to the apparent position of others, I do not feel qualified to
impose my own beliefs of how the world must be run above all others, in this
or other matters. Through evolution or revolution, the world makes such
decisions for itself but I have neither the patience to await an
artificially chaperoned evolution nor the courage to foment some
catastrophic revolution. I simply wish to get on with my life.
It is my belief that the global Internet is laboring under the misguided
auspices of self-proclaimed custodians of the public good who continue to
impose artificial constraints upon its growth because they are afraid it
might become something other than what they believe it should.
I grow weary of hearing what is good for me from the mouths of those who
believe their vision of the future is the correct one.
So, I stand fiercely defiant between those who would shepherd the global
Internet to their own dreams of perfection and those that wish to tear it
apart so a better, stronger medium might arise from its ashes and demand
that both
GET THE HELL OUT OF OUR INTERNET!
We have new worlds to build and grand dreams to realize.
You are standing in our way.
</rr>
Michael Dillon
On Fri, 17 Apr 1998, Bradley Dunn wrote:
> > I register mikies.widgets with Winning Domains Inc.
> >
> > I publish tens of thousands of free web pages for widows and orphans
> all
> > over the world making my money by selling banner ads.
> >
> > Winning Domains Inc. goes belly up and the servers are seized by the
> > creditors. Suddenly I must scramble to stay on the air. My only
> choice is
> > to register in a new TLD. I have my choice of mikies.heaven,
>
> As a participant in a free market it is *your* responsibility to carry
> out due diligence on your key suppliers.
Hey, I didn't do nuthin wrong! It wasn't me what broke all those website
links to the widders and orphans home pages. Winning Domains Inc. didn't
do it, they just couldn't run a business. Now you see the chaos inherent
in the system. We've got to manage it to protect the poor widders and
orphans from being oppressed cuz the free market jest cain't do the job.
> No one ever said a free market protects you from being burned.
That's probably why the guvmint protects me from free market yahoos that
want to play with flame throwers in the street.
--
Michael Dillon - Internet & ISP Consulting
http://www.memra.com - E-mail: mic...@memra.com
Michael Dillon
On Fri, 17 Apr 1998, Eric Weisberg wrote:
> If we are designing a system from scratch and can provide protection
> against an otherwise naturally occurring disasterous phenomena, why not do
> so? In other words, why not (as Michael suggests) have a mechanism for
> continuing the existence of a TLD after the entity which undertakes its
> propogation ceases to function?
Actually, this is technically possible if we have rules that TLD operators
*MUST* abide by then we can require them to make their infrastructure
databases available, via real-time escrow, to a backup database system. In
the event of failure the root nameserver operators can point TLD requests
to the backup servers.
However, please note that the technical infrastructure and the overall
authority required would need a lot of details worked out and in the end
would be rather similar to what the gTLD-MoU folks have come up with.
This has never been explored because all those who were in favor of
privately-run TLDs wanted there to be no central authority of any kind and
were not willing to discuss escrows and backup arrangements. The people
who did believe that some sort of coordinating body was required basically
decided that rather than protect against failure they might as well build
a system in which that failure scenario could never develop.
David Schwartz
> No one ever said a free market protects you from being burned.
>
>That's probably why the guvmint protects me from free market yahoos that
>want to play with flame throwers in the street.
>Michael Dillon - Internet & ISP Consulting
As well they should, it's their street. If I owned the street, I
wouldn't let people play with flame throwers in it either. Most free market
advocates believe that when governments own things like streets and schools
(both those who believe they should own them and those that believe they
shouldn't) they should run them as much like a 'perfect' private industry
would as possible.
DS
David Schwartz
>Eric Weisberg <weis...@texoma.net> writes:
>
>>In other words, why not (as Michael suggests) have a mechanism for
>>continuing the existence of a TLD after the entity which undertakes its
>>propogation ceases to function?
>
>This can occur only if the "ownership" of the top-level domain resides
>with some government. If the "ownership" is with some private party,
>the status of the domain will be in limbo until the slow legal process
>completes and somebody else manages to acquire rights to the relevant
>databases.
This is only true if you define 'entity' in a very strange way. If the
ownership of the top-level domain resides with some government, how can its
existence continue if the 'entity which understakes its propogation' (that
government, presumably) ceases to exist?
Now, if you say, "no fair, governments don't propogate", I can respond
that a private arrangement doesn't have to do the propogation -- it could be
an affiliation of companies that hire another entity to do the propogation.
The answer to the complaint is -- with or without a government, if the
entity responsible for doing something or seeing that it is done goes away,
so does that something. This is a fact of reality. If there were anything
left to fix it, the real 'entity' wouldn't be gone.
Governments are not magic wands.
DS
Rahul Dhesi
"David Schwartz" <dav...@webmaster.com> writes:
>If the
>ownership of the top-level domain resides with some government, how can its
>existence continue if the 'entity which understakes its propogation' (that
>government, presumably) ceases to exist?
If the government collapses, all private property within that
jurisdiction becomes of doubtful status. Private property in any
jurisdiction is defined the way the existing government defines it. So
giving a private party ownership of a top-level domain does not protect
you from the situation where the government collapses.
But giving control of the domain to the government does protect you from
the situation where the private party collapses.
Governments collapse much less often than corporate entities do, by a
ratio of 1000:1 or more.
I see nothing wrong with private parties wanting to sell administration
services in the domain namespace. I see something very wrong with their
trying to get exclusive control of top-level names. No single private
entity should have exclusive control over common words in any language.
The people who want to administer top-level domains -- why do they pick
common words? Why don't they pick UNcommon words in which nobody else
has any interest? It's because they want exclusive control over
language. That is simply too preposterous to be permissible.
--
Rahul Dhesi <dh...@spams.r.us.com>
Bradley Dunn
---Rahul Dhesi <dh...@rahul.net> wrote:
> I see nothing wrong with private parties wanting to sell
administration
> services in the domain namespace. I see something very wrong with
their
> trying to get exclusive control of top-level names. No single private
> entity should have exclusive control over common words in any
language.
Ok, so you are arguing that the entire namespace is a "public good"?
If the entire namespace is not public, at some point in the namespace
you are going to have signle private entities controlling common words.
Whee, imagine having to get government approval before adding A records.
Bradley
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