In online debates a decade or more ago, I remember people, including myself, used to defend American control of the domain system by pointing out the altruistic and independent nature of the ICANN and their history of being good stewards of the DNS infrastructure thus far. That seems to no longer be the case. This whole deal calls into serious question their current integrity.
From https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/national-geog...
> On Wednesday, the iconic yellow-bordered magazine, beset by financial issues, entered its own uncharted territory. In an effort to stave off further decline, the magazine was effectively sold by its nonprofit parent organization to a for-profit venture whose principal shareholder is one of Rupert Murdoch’s global media companies.
I was buying the mag because I was happy that the profits went to the researchers in jungles all over the world etc.
I loved the nature and antiquity and exploring stories that used to dominate.
Steadily through the 2000s I found more and more stories that I skipped because they felt political and us-centric.
And then the sale? That was enough.
It was one of the sub-magazines that proliferated (probably as they were trying to keep the print business alive). Grabbed a couple in an airport, but they seemed more interesting and focused than the main one.
.org prints money - they have almost no overhead, and a basically guaranteed revenue stream. This isn't a public good that has no other options to survive - it's a bunch of shady board members attempting to enrich themselves at the expense of the public good.
Wasn't Verisign a problem before ICANN became a non-government entity?
As long as the Internet namespace, or DNS, is governed by US (California state specifically) law, the Internet itself will be operating under the same jurisdiction as DNS is generally considered critical to the function of the Internet.
This is a very strong reason that, just like currency [2], the Internet namespace is also ripe to be decentralized to distributed ownership by the people [3].
The internet deserves to be owned by the people - not any single government.
There are definitely a lot of issues that aren’t working in the ICANN system as we all know [1][2][3].
What are the issues that can’t be handled in the Handshake blockchain ecosystem?
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202...
[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/we-need-save-org-arbit...
[3] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/09/symantec-issues-rogue-...
You first need a system which works and scales to plausible levels before we can say anything about whether it’s a viable solution for anything. In particular, it’d be important to have real cost and control information to show that it wasn’t trading ICANN for a different group which has similar control — and the inherent inefficiency of a blockchain means that there’d be more of a likelihood that power would consolidate in a few major players.
(As an aside, Symantec screwing up does not seem relevant to a discussion about ICANN. Perhaps you could explain why you believe it to be?)
As someone following Bitcoin for a long time since just after genesis, I can assure you that replacing cash and credit cards was never on the original agenda but instead a byproduct of the goal. Make no mistake, the goal was always to decentralize currency and give the “power” of money back to the people. That said, in a decentralized system, there can be more than one goal and goals do not need to be unified across participants. That freedom is one of the beauties of decentralization.
As long as a third party central authority controls our money system, we will always be subject to the whims of the few. Bitcoin is helping to liberate us and it’s absolutely working.
> it’d be important to have real cost and control information to show that it wasn’t trading ICANN for a different group which has similar control
This exists by virtue of our trust in cryptography - which for me is absolute.
> As an aside, Symantec screwing up does not seem relevant to a discussion about ICANN. Perhaps you could explain why you believe it to be?
Less directly and more by way of overall system architecture, the separation of DNS and “truth” has caused many issues to the Internet. It’s relevant because Handshake finally combines DNS and truth [1] by essentially completing the once incomplete DNSSEC.
A bold claim without evidence. In fact, the opposite may be true [1]. This is but one counterpoint; another notable problem is the centralization of bitcoin mining in China [2].
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-08/the-bitco...
[2]: https://thebitcoinnews.com/study-argues-chinese-mining-centr...
> [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-08/the-bitco...
The same can be said about any money system in a capitalist economy (e.g., 1% owns 40% of the wealth in the US [1.1]).
> This is but one counterpoint; another notable problem is the centralization of bitcoin mining in China [2].
I'm not sure this is 'looming' today as the article boldly claims, but centralization is definitely a risk. It's important for everyone to participate in the system as they can for a more equal distribution of ownership - akin to how one should exercise their vote in US elections.
[1.1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...
Bitcoin emerged from the Cypherpunks crowd; while nobody has positively IDed the 'real' author of the paper, the ideological motivations are rooted in anarcho-capitalist thought. The operative theory is really not that different than Grover Norquist's; attack the tax base and the state withers. Grover is just less ambitious.
The flaw in the bitcoin thesis is that the internet is powerful tool of centralized control and reinforces authoritarians, not the opposite.
The only thing I would disagree with is the disagreement about the claims about effectiveness.
While we may not have "replaced money," make no mistake, we have entered a new era - bitcoin was not stopped even though they tried.
Bitcoin has succeeded. It is our symbol of proof - proof that we the people can control our own money.
It's so volatile it's useless except for speculators.
Greed ruined it, I feel, like it does with everything else.
We probably disagree on other things bitcoin-related, but right here I think it is only about how we're defining 'success'. I agree that it is an existence-proof for decentralized currency, and am not trying to downplay the significance of that.
As someone who was also there, I stopped reading at this point. The things getting circulation were bold predictions about replacing cash and credit cards in daily life and anyone who questioned that inevitability was dismissed as not understanding it. Everyone knew it was an attempt to dress up “use your money to make me rich” in a more noble guise but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
From the handshake FAQ: 'There are no social or technical guarantees with the renewability or ownership, this is an experimental system, please read the code to see details of how it currently works'. That's below the bit where they auction them off to the highest bidder. There are plenty of issues with ICANN, but it isn't a toy with a short term profit-maximization scheme attached...
The blockchain auctions domains off to the highest bidder thru a blind Vickrey auction [1] wherein the winner pays the amount of the second highest bid.
After the auction completes, the coins are burned (provably destroyed).
Both the legacy ICANN system and new TLDs on Handshake [2] are working together in harmony.
To be clear, everything on the internet including the internet itself started as an experiment.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction
[2] https://dns.live - Domain Adoption
The hns paid for winning an auction are destroyed.
> There are plenty of issues with ICANN, but it isn't a toy with a short term profit-maximization scheme attached.
Handshake is anything but a short term profit-maximization scheme! The Handshake developers took $10 million of VC money and donated it to free and open source foundations: https://handshake.org/grant-sponsors/
If for some reason the US thought ICANN shouldn't be subject to US law, they could do something similar. Being inside a country's borders doesn't always mean being subject to its laws.
Of course, the corruption in the .org selloff doesn't make me feel ICANN needs less oversight. And it's questionable whether the US can grant independence it cannot revoke, at least from an international realist perspective.
Decentralization has so many downsides compared to centralization when things are going "right" that centralization has competitive advantages over decentralization.
It’s not about making sense. It’s about making dollars.
Now it started making sense!
Selling off some or all of an asset that has become unexpectedly valuable can fund the organisation’s wider mission with a windfall endowment.
No one buys such an argument in this case because, just as sports are a big part of school, so too is it ICANN’s core mission to provide equitable access to names in TLDs — or at least that’s what most people would say it is.
(Apologies if this ruffles the feathers of anyone fighting a school playing field sell off battle, especially if you also own yourschool.org too.)
1 .org is not a non profit and is not just for us style "non profits"
2 What ICANN (or ICANT as those of us that have had dealings with them call it) stinks to high heaven.
What should happen is a proper transparent biding process which is how it used to be done.
It makes sense for both parties because for the seller the investment gains from the capital they're getting from this transaction will be similar to what they're making from running the registry. But they no longer have the headaches of running the registry.
For the buyer, well, it's a monopoly so the sky is the limit. Even if current seller is able to raise the prices, they might not want it due to the backlash this would cause. Current buyer is less constrained by this.
with the possible exception of .gov (and local equivalents), people should not be encouraged to use TLDs as a positive signal of credibility. imo, the only things that matter are that domain should point to the expected entity (eg, wellsfargo.com points to the bank, not a phishing site) and that disputes over who gets to use a specific domain get handled in a reasonable way.
There is no perfect solution of course, but generally speaking ORG domains have been used to signal that you are an organization vs. a corporation, and potentially a non-profit.
That said, just like in the real world, individuals are encouraged to do their research and confirm that one is what they claim to be (just like door-to-door charity workers) before engaging.
this is the convention, but I don't think it's ever been enforced by the registrar. see questions 5, 7, and 8 on this archived faq: https://archive.is/20120716084313/http://pir.org/get/faq/gen...
what I'm getting at is: if ICANN never enforced the convention in the first place, and they are selling it to someone else who also doesn't intend to enforce it, what should I expect to change?
when it comes to security in particular, conventions that are usually (but not always) followed are often worse than having no convention at all. it sets dangerous expectations for lay people.
I think the biggest concern with this sale is around pricing more than "correctness of use", where I agree with you the ship has long sailed.
Selling PIR to a for-profit company, a private equity firm no less, means you can pretty much 100% guarantee that in the future pricing would be increasingly profit-driven.