ICANN Delays .ORG Sale Approval
icann.org
icann.org
I thought ICANN was supposed to be the good guys? You know, the responsible managers of the Internet and providing solid governance which serves as the best argument against any kind of government intrusion? I'm hoping they didn't just grow bored with it and decide to get rid of it. As though it was some sort of dearly loved Google service with mild profitability and little-to-no opportunity for internal career development. ;)
The harm they do to society is on a much bigger scale.
Time to do something worthwhile with that enforcement power.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radic...
It died with sustained US pressure at the UN as the last gasp of Harry Anslinger, supporter of prohibition who had already given the world Reefer Madness and a load of invented racist "evidence" for the harms of marijuana in the 1930s. His team brought sustained pressure for the globe to adopt a war on drugs. Oh, and there a doctor who single handedly prescribed tens of thousands of prescriptions making a bit of an impact, single handedly, in London sixties drug culture.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2010/08/...
In this case, ICANN is the body governing all domain names. There are individuals who have moved from employment at ICANN to those organizations involved in the sale of the .ORG tld. Link contains dramatis personae[0].
The movement of individuals between regulator entities and regulated entities (both directions), is often considered a sign of regulatory capture.
There is a common tension, perhaps inevitable, in regulation: Those most familiar with an industry, and therefore with the best knowledge to regulate it, are those who work in that industry. Thus, the best people for a regulator to hire are those who have worked in the industry.
Similarly, those most qualified to advise on matters associated with regulation are those who have crafted the regulation. Thus, the best people for an entity in industry to hire to manage regulatory compliance are those who have worked for the regulatory body.
This wicket becomes sticky quickly.
[0] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/11/isoc-pir-...
Source? I'm interested in reading about this
You could say that about every government, yet there's widespread corruption in most (or all) countries[1]. There's even corruption in democratic governments that are directly accountable to their citizens every few years (via elections). Given the way the ICANN board is appointed is... indirect at best, thinking that ICANN are the "good guys" is wishful thinking at best.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
At least the goal of the public sector is to serve the public whereas the goal of the private sector is to serve the interests of there shareholders.
If this was a private company on both sides wouldn't we just be hailing it as a big win for shareholders and/or demanding the government step in and intervene?
If you believe that, hypothetically the best choice would be some sort of private nonprofit, independent of the government but bound to inaction by charter.
Whether being directly controlled by government would be an improvement is somewhat debatable - would lawmakers be reasonably hands-off, like they are with things like GPS and NIST time services? Or would the opportunity to block pornhub/piratebay/wikileaks prove irresistible?
1. It doesn't deliver the claimed increase the supply of domain names, as no-one would build a business or brand on whatever.info without securing whatever.com
2. It does shake down domain registrants for cash - if you already own whatever.com you'd better get whatever.info and whatever.sucks before someone else squats them.
3. These factors mean .info domains and suchlike are a stereotype of sketchy sites, which is a negative feedback loop.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ICANN&oldid=93014...
That's probably too extreme, but I love it as a starting point / baseline!
Goal, yes. In the abstract. Unfortunately, humans run everything. Most humans are decent and will try to uphold the public good. Some get into positions of control and decide they can profit off of it, so why not?
Society's constant struggle is to keep these greedy F*'s from screwing the rest of us. Just like freedom must be paid for, so must we constantly root out corruption and greed.
Imagine if this kind of 'accountability' was applied to the rest of society. Oh, you robbed a bank? Well, you're banned from this branch for 4 years! Don't do it again!
Through the lens of ultra-capitalism, "the good guys" are a market imbalance to be exploited. A variation on "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain"
In hindsight, the fragility of overall Internet governance was incredibly obvious. Even if this .org sale goes ahead, the governance is still fragile because there are many other aspects to the Web / Internet that are still run by "the good guys" and therefore likely to already be in the sights of the morally bankrupt.
The question is, what can we do about it? How do we react to the .org sale to ensure that inevitable future shenanigans will be met by increasingly profit-negating blowback?
The long term fragmentation effects this may have on the web are... difficult to predict.
That's actually through two lenses: it's the image through lens of ultra-capitalism through the lens of Marxist thought. The mainstream economic position would be that "the good guys" are neutral as far as the market is concerned, which is mainly interested in satisfying the average of the goals of whoever is spending money. In this case the domain owners are spending the money, so this scandal would be "uncapitalistic" in the sense that the buyers aren't being served.
Maybe if you look at the market "blueprints", a static template not taking into account the dynamics of the actual system.
There are at least two ways the markets will work to erase those moral values that do not directly contribute to profit. One, moral values held by people are strong preferences, and as such they'll be exploited, as GP said. An ethically sound option will command a premium over the default state, because people who want it value it more, for non-monetary reasons. Two, given a mostly amoral demand, companies that compromise morals to lower costs/increase profits have a competitive advantage over those with integrity, forcing the latter to either abandon their principles or risk getting outcompeted.
You can also connect those two points together by noting that individuals are also competing - against each other for status, against the ever rising costs of living. The end result is such a low ceiling on morality as we observe. You can't possibly, at the same time, care about or even afford getting clothing made without slave labor, food made without extreme animal cruelty, jewlery and electronics that don't have blood of innocents in their supply pipeline, smart technologies that don't abuse people's privacy and prop up surveillance. Also note note that, when people are willing to express their ethical stance on any of those issues, a whole mini industry pops up - willing to sell you purportedly ethical goods at huge markup.
Yes, the market is as morally neutral as an internal combustion engine is a hunk of metal that's carbon neutral when it sits on the shelf. Things change when you fuel it up and turn it on.
(Now, I'm not saying "markets are bad". But they do have perverse side effects that need to be kept in mind and accounted for, before they consume the very civilization they helped build.)
It is very unreasonable to expect any set of people in any setting at any time, whose views you don't know, to hold your interests or expectations.
"Good people" would be very different to you and a self interested opportunist.
If the rules have changed such that it is broken and the sale goes through then great. If that is what it takes to bring awareness to prevent the next. Sitting and hoping that your interests are considered never ever works.
I don’t think it’s really possible to live one’s life with a completely zero-sum cynical-interest model.
What can ICANN or any of us measure here that would block the sale? Trust? Former ICANN CEO is likely trusted is he not?
I have to admit that the last 2 paragraphs do sound like they are trying to weasel out of responsibility though.
Basically, someone "blows the whistle" and suddenly something that should have gone relatively under the radar blows up on your face. People start asking a lot of difficult questions and making a lot of noise.
So what do you do? You announce a private inquiry (or, to put it in ICANN's terms "We will thoughtfully and thoroughly evaluate the proposed acquisition to ensure that the .ORG registry remains secure, reliable, and stable.").
The point of the inquiry isn't to find out any new facts or correct any problems - it's to stall until this goes out of the public eye (people have short attention spans, and we are in the Holiday season which always helps with "forgetting"), to clear up their names of any wrongdoing (because they reviewed everything thoroughly and found no cause for concern) and to bury the evidence (because some of it will be "accidentally" misplaced into a shredder).
In a month or so, a report will come out saying that there is some cause for concern, but that the danger is either overblown or that their hands are tied so nothing can be done due to this or that circumstance (legal, financial, etc). It will come with a stern paragraph warning that internal guidelines (you know, the ones the public can't see) must be reviewed sometime in the near future (i.e., around the year 2050) to prevent this from happening again, but it will conclude that everyone did their due diligence properly and we were all just victims of circumstances.
In short, better luck next time.
Why yes, people have called me a cynic, why do you ask?
Not always. It's quite often a way of giving the organisation a formal out, a way of admitting 'we dun goofed'.
If that's the case, maybe the US government needs to reclaim authority over ICANN, which it had until a few years ago, and assert that authority to reverse this decision. There needs to be some kind of effective oversight.
I don't even agree with them having .gov, them regaining .org would be a disaster.
If anything, some sort of multi-national, strictly non-profit charity should be setup for this, or if not, the U.N. as a last resort.
Because they did until very recently.
> If anything, some sort of multi-national, strictly non-profit charity should be setup for this, or if not, the U.N. as a last resort.
That would take literally years, and would be too-little, too-late to deal with these shenanigans around the .org TLD.
That's not an argument. Any regressive policy could and has been justified in those terms.
Yes, it is. The US government has an institutional history of overseeing ICAAN, so it's the most practical organization to take on that role on short notice.
I think you're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Your preferred multi-national solution would likely take years to negotiate, which means it's not really even a solution at all, as far as .org is concerned.
Now that is not an argument. The majority of people don't <insert nearly anything>. The net did pretty well under American stewardship. Sure there was Tipper Gore, but everything worked out. Every time some faceless UN bureaucrat mused about taxing email, or charging extra for "long distance" routing - it was nice knowing that there was a historically sane hand on the wheel. You want something like the EU in charge? Their copyright legislation is the most nakedly corrupt barrier to entry I've ever seen. This kills the net.
They will in a month, or just after new year, issue a press release, that they studied/talked to all "relevant" parties (and information) and request one meaningless (in the long run) change in the deal and then bless it to go forward.
It's damage control.
I doubt the will would be there even if it were legal. But one can dream.
What facts?
Why were those facts not required?
Sounds like under the system in place there is little due diligence expected to be done by ICANN before a decision is made -- none of these public facts were "required", let alone anything non-public.
At least we know someone is reading the public announcements.
1. Create a non-profit to buy `.or` as a new gTLD. Legally carter it so that the stakeholders are distributed and it can never be taken private.
2. Pre-reserve `.or` domains for all existing `.org` domains.
Optional:
3. Give free lifetime registration to any org stakeholder that redirects their domain to the `.or` version and/or displays a banner about PIR's malfeasance.
4. Any new `.org` registrants are barred from registering a `.or`
5. Buy back `.org` when it becomes worthless and give it back to the stakeholders.
.gb and .uk are both functional, and .uk as a top-level domain is exceptional.
EU is also not an ISO code, but has been reserved, and is also a TLD as .eu.
`eu` is also exceptionally reserved in the ISO database, which is enough for ICANN.
The ISO states in their FAQ:
"You can use EU for the name European Union. Please note that this is not an official ISO 3166-1 country code. The European Union is not a country but rather an organization. As such it is not eligible to be formally included in ISO 3166-1. Recognizing, however, that many users of ISO 3166-1 have a practical need to encode that name the ISO 3166/MA reserved the two-letter combination EU for the purpose of identifying the European Union within the framework of ISO 3166-1."
Unbelievable. The brazenness of this heist continues out in the open.
It's not an unreasonable thing to contract out. Afilias runs multiple TLDs, and there are many operational things that would have a cost benefit from sharing; for example, running the anycast network of authoritative servers in as many points of presence as possible --- each PoP requires capital investment and time investment to setup and run, but servicing additional load may be possible at a much smaller marginal cost.
I do hear from contacts .org are more often not renewed when prompted for yearly fee, I did not either for my shelved .org domains.
The resulting shitstorm would be so enjoyable to watch.
But I was pondering the merits of eg: a regional block of ISPs declaring they'd like to try, and seeing the effect that had on the value of the 'legacy operators'