ICANN Can't
By E.A. Barbour
What is ICANN? It's the special organization which is being
given control of all the domain-name assignments and technical standards which
the Internet depends on. It was created in 1998 out of whole cloth, because
original ARPANET sysop Jon Postel was "overworked". ICANN is
essentially a nonprofit government contractor which exists by fiat order of the
Department Of Commerce. The Net was opened to the public in 1994 and domain
names were handled by Postel and other ARPANET sysops for the first four years.
(Amusingly, right in the middle of setting up ICANN, Postel died of
"undetected cardiac problems".) And its first chair was Esther Dyson,
venture capitalist and one of the most connected women in Silicon Valley (plus
an early cheerleader for Wikipedia). A later chair was Postel's fellow
"Original Internet Father" Vint Cerf; whose display case at home is
bulging with bowling trophies given to him by the computer industry for his
magical awesomeness. His ass tastes like fine wine, judging by the millions of
kisses he's gotten since the 1980s.
For two decades the system for Internet domains has
more-or-less worked passably well. The US government, its contractors, and
other large corporations worked with ICANN to keep the DNS/IANA system running.
Although here have been complaints about large registrars like Network
Solutions/VeriSign, RegisterFly, and GoDaddy, nothing was deemed
"problematic" enough to call for major reform of the
"system". It was open enough to make open-source cheerleaders happy
and it was stable enough to keep corporations and other major financial
interests content (and profitable). New domains and systems were introduced to
keep things flowing. The gold-rush of the early Web insured that people were
willing to allow laissez-faire--until recently. When the US federal government
stated that it wished to get rid of all domain control, and have ICANN handle
it exclusively. Although little reported anywhere else in the media, these
Register articles give some pause.
This happened right in the middle of the US government
handing over the final governance controls to ICANN. Under the government's
relatively benign control since the 1980s, the Internet grew with a remarkable
level of free speech, openness and freedom from graft. These stories suggest
that when ICANN has full control over TLDs and governance, they will start
acting like FIFA or the Olympic Committee -- playing favorites, taking bribes,
and covering everything up. And the product will decline. (And most
"customers" won't care, as long as they get their damned football
games/websites.)
Thus:
Last month it was reported that the transition of the IANA
to ICANN control is being fought by the Republicans. It was even put in the2016 GOP official platform.
Not many people noticed or commented on it. Of
course it's being blamed on outgoing president Obama, and of course it's
being
used as a "political football". Admittedly the GOP is full of shit and
this is merely a pretext. But one still has to wonder; once
domain-name controls are fully in the hands of ICANN, what will happen
to them?
No one seems to know---or care.
I suspect we have already seen the best days of the
Internet. Its future will likely be a dark, broken Third World chaos with
dominance by large corporations. Getting a domain name will probably involve
paying large bribes to creepy outfits with no fixed address. Legs will be
broken and heads will be chopped. And DNS lookup will get more and more
unreliable. Just like getting a Class A broadcast license from the FCC, or a
taxi license in New York City. The rot is inevitable when big money and monopoly
control is involved, and one small organization has the keys.
BTW, there's a Wikipedia angle here. The ICANN article
itself was greatly expanded in the last 3 years, mostly by a succession of
random-looking IP addresses and SPAs. And if someone tries to insert
information of a negative nature, an anonymous
administrator named "Cenarium" removes it. Cenarium is a vandalism patroller who evidently has some knowledge of advanced mathematics. A
very weird combination.
And that's not all. The WMF has very close relations with
the Berkman Center at Harvard (Jimbo Wales is a "Fellow" thereof),
the EFF, Creative Commons, and the Sunlight Foundation. The number of
"common friends" they have in these organizations is truly
remarkable: Berkman's Wendy Seltzer was an ICANN delegate, MIT professor Ethan
Zuckerman has connections to the EFF and is on the WMF Board of Advisors,
Jonathan Zittrain cofounded the "Chilling Effects" group with Wendy
Seltzer and is on the EFF Board. Rebecca MacKinnon and Peter Suber are on the
WMF Board of Advisors and also Berkman Center fellows. (MacKinnon edits her own
Wikipedia bio with apparent impunity.) Tamar Frankel, a lawyer who helped set
up ICANN in the first place, is also a Berkman fellow. All of these connected
people have Wikipedia biographies, which are carefully watched by Wikipedia
insiders.
More? Harald Alvestrand, a former ICANN Board member and
current Google employee, is a Wikipedia administrator AND has been allowed to
edit his own Wikipedia bio. Former WMF Trustee and current WMF Advisor Matt
Halprin (his seat was bought for him by his boss Pierre Omidyar) was also on
the Board of the Sunlight Foundation--with Esther Dyson and former WMF Director
Sue Gardner. On the Advisory Board at Sunlight: Jimmy Wales. Also on Sunlight's
Board, as well as the WMF Board of Advisors: Craig Newmark of Craigslist. And I
won't even get into the Google connections. You get the idea.
The WMF is already corrupt in third-world ways. Some of
these "free culture" Internet organizations have built-in conflicts
of financial interest. Is it really surprising that ICANN is likely to go the
same way?
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Comments:
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Comments:
metasonixAugust 19, 2016 at 3:41 PM
Plus: Vigilant, you suck. Ha.
ReplyDelete
He's trying as hard as he can.
