RE: Statements against new.net?

[Roeland Meyer <rmeyer () mhsc com>]

> From: Vadim Antonov [mailto:avg () kotovnik com]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 11:22 PM

> On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Roeland Meyer wrote:

> > It has to do with refresh rates, just like DRAM.
>
> It has to do with the way the redundancy is handled in the brain.
> Long-term potentiation is not a terribly reliable process.

If you ask my wife, she'll catagorically state that short-term potentiation
is equally unreliable (yes dear, I promise to remember the milk, next time).

> Actually i do not propose any new layers.  The "layer" in 
> question exists
> already, in form of address books, hyperlinks and search engines.

Okay, I'll grant you that.

> > up, you will be assimilated. You have been in retreat for 
> years. You just
> > didn't realize it. 
>
> Actally i am not in retreat. I just have a funny habit of 
> doing different
> things, seeing new things and trying to know what other people are
> thinking.

I just have a problem with being told what I can do, what I can see, and
what is correct to think. The Unified root theology has a bad habit of doing
that. 

> What i learned so far - if technology aims to change human nature, it
> fails.  It is very naive to assume that brotherhood of 
> technologists will
> stay cooperative when real money gets in.  I do not like it 
> any more than
> any other techie, but let's face reality.  The control of domain name
> space is passing from technologists to lawyers and politicos.

Only because there is a single point of control. We need a de-centralized
system.

> > The real answer was to stop the incursion of trademark 
> crowd into the DNS.
> > You can thank Dave Crocker, Kent Crispin, and their IAHC 
> for that smooth
> > move. 
>
> You can't stop them.  They are the guys who are making laws.  
> The only way
> to actually stop them is to organize revolution.  Can i opt out? :)

I disagree, as I have also disagreed with the ORSC in this. The ORSC has
opted out of ICANN involvement. I have not. BTW, there are laws that protect
existing business, even a TLD registry. I continually remind my self of the
result of Patrick Henry's boycott of the US Constitutional Convention. It
happened anyway and he wasn't part of it.

> > Now if you think that they'd stop just because you have retreated
> > behind yet another layer of abstraction, you are indeed naieve. They
> > will come and hunt you out.
>
> What i am proposing is to remove the contention point. When 
> "names" do not have intrinsic value, nobody'll fight over them.

An identifier on that level will always have some intrinsic meaning. Your
plan will only effect the degree of value.

> Now, the lawers will keep
> hunting trademark violators - but with nothing as tangible as 
> single name,
> they will have to prove the intent to defraud;  for now 
> courts think that
> just acquiring a well-known brand name (thus depriving 
> "rightful" owner of
> its use) is an ample proof of such intent.

Actually, existing is already that way. UDRP circumvents existing law with
contract law. You give up your rights to a court trail, with UDRP. UDRP is
administered by WIPO, not ICANN. UDRP decisions often run counter to US
trademark law, or anyone elses TM law. UDRP pushes the burden of TM
enforcement out to the ICANN, away from the legally designated steward, the
TM holder.

> > The inclusive root zone efforts, like that of the ORSC and 
> PacRoot, are
> > actually trying to keep the root intact. We saw the 
> probability of outfits
> > like new.net, years ago. We also recognised what it meant. 
>
> It means that the ICANN soapbox is only fine because 

> Microsoft has bigger
> fish to catch.  Now imagine they ship an OS with a resolver with
> "additional" functionality - conviniently pointing to _their_ 
> registry if
> "public" root didn't yield the result. You cannot charge them 
> with unfair
> competition because this is just an additional convinience to their
> customers, and besides they already do similar things with 
> keyword search
> and messaging. If i understand correctly, no O.S. vendor has 
> a contract
> with ICANN specifically prohibiting expansion of search 
> capabilities. I
> think the present new.net scandal is bound to attract their attention.

Actually, this has already occurred. Have you taken a good look at Win2K
yet? Pay particular attention to Dynamic DNS and Active Directory.

> > We spoke the warnings, we spoke them again at the Nov00 
> ICANN meeting

> > that it is okay to create conflicting delegations. After all, the
> > ICANN is doing it ... why can't they? There is no law that regulates
> > that.
>
> Because the current DNS has a single contention point, it is very
> vulnerable.  It can be very easily taken over by a large 
> corporate entity.

The let's design a better system.

> > There's a lot of other stuff behind that, but, I think that 
> you get the point.
>
> The Internet is successful precisely because it is 
> decentralized.  There
> is absolutely no reason to make the few "natural" central points
> vulnerable by having them to dispense what is considered intrinsically
> valuable property. (Thanks God, NAT made IP address 
> allocations somewhat
> less critical).
>
> And if you think .COM fight is nasty... in other places conflicts like
> that are sometimes resolved by means of sending goons with guns.  I
> personally was threatened over a domain name dispute, because of my
> affiliation with one popular community resource. Fortunately, 
> that time
> that was merely a bluff.