Politech mailing list archives
FC: More on .union top level domain and SEC Internet monitoring
From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Date: Tue, 04 Apr 2000 11:28:22 -0400
[I am in Toronto for CFP this week. --Declan]
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2000 18:46:37 -0700 To: declan () well com, politech () vorlon mit edu From: Lizard <lizard () mrlizard com> Subject: Re: FC: Jamie Love on .union organizing meeting last weekOoo! I want to register holy.union and then sell it to some company selling bridal supplies!(Am I the only one who feels that forcing the Internet to set aside a domain which you need 'permission' to register under is a bit scary? The comment that 'the AFLCIO could prevent people' from registering is rather disturbing...contrary to the bizaare fantasy world Mr. Love lives in, unions today aren't about helping poor oppressed workers fight the evil robber barons, they're about giving large campaign contributions in exchange for kickbacks and contracts.)He is correct about one thing, though -- the system can handle a lot more TLDs, and it should start doing so. There's no real need for a central repository -- all DNS does is match an IP number (the only thing on the net which truly must be unique) to a convenient 'handle'. Therefore, ANYONE can, in theory, provide a lookup, and it would probably be best to dump ICANN entirely and turn the entire process of linking names to numbers over to the unregulated market.Glass of water for Mr. Love!
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2000 15:02:57 -0400 (EDT) To: declan () well com, love () cptech org Subject: Re: .union domain From: kragen () pobox com (Kragen Sitaker) Jamie Love writes: > The first would be to provide a way to indicate if a domain was > controlled by a bona fide union, just like .gov or .edu does for the > government or real higher degree granting educational institutions. You mean, like gop.gov, a political party, and aa.edu, a high school? ICANN, registrars, and existing unions should not be in the business of deciding who is and is not a bona fide union, much less which union gets control of the putative nike.union and when it changes hands. It is likely that their decisions will be inconsistent, as in my examples above, and it is dangerous that they will be capricious. ICANN is in the business of ANNs, assigned names and numbers. The sole virtue of ANNs lies in their stability --- they are not at the mercy of day-to-day or year-to-year fluctuations in network infrastructure, organizational structure, or --- until recently --- political climate. They make it possible to build networks of interlinked people and information that continue to work in the face of change. This is why aa.edu still has its domain --- this was IANA's basic operating principle. Domains are not about policy; they are about long-term naming. Injecting political policy into domain-name discussions ensures that domain names will be at the mercy of political policy, which changes with the wind. The inevitable result will be the undermining of the grassroots Internet and Web; the only entities you'll be able to count on finding in ten years will be IBM, Microsoft, and the US Government. Deciding who is and who is not a legitimate labor union is a very difficult task. Are the Teamsters? Remember when they "represented" the grape pickers in California, just before the grape boycott? Was Solidarity a legitimate labor union in Poland in 1985? I know that a century ago, here in the USA, working-class unions were disdained by the craft unions, and immigrant-accepting unions were vilified by the chauvinistic more-mainstream immigrant-barring unions of the day. Had there been a .union TLD then, with admission controlled by the mainstream unions, the AFL and the CIO would probably not have been able to get .union SLDs. Perhaps that would have killed them. I think the labor movement in the US is a little more unified today, but I suspect that struggles like these are not altogether over. -- <kragen () pobox com> Kragen Sitaker <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/> The Internet stock bubble didn't burst on 1999-11-08. Hurrah! <URL:http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/bubble.html> The power didn't go out on 2000-01-01 either. :)
From: "Thomas Leavitt" <thomasleavitt () hotmail com> To: declan () well com Subject: Re: FC: SEC is creating Net-surveillance system, and a response Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 17:44:38 PSTso, every government agency imaginable is going to create redundant giant electronic databases of everything every citizen has ever said in printed form that might somehow be relevant to a future prosecution?and I thought the FBI's file keeping habits under J. Edgar Hoover were badmaybe we should just have the government mandate that every email and news client and forum software program cc "bigass badly designed bureaucrat database () mis governmentagency gov"?!? that would certainly make their lives easier and be really excitingi say, that we organize a counter demonstration, and deluge the SEC and other agencies with 1,000,000 FOIA requests in response, demanding to know what information they have on file about us, and the opportunity to correct itthomas
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 08:28:25 -0800 From: Jason Lindquist <jlindqui () babylon5 figure1 net> To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com> Subject: Re: FC: SEC is creating Net-surveillance system, and a response Reply-To: Jason Lindquist <linky () see figure1 net> X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i X-Examined-For-Subversive-Content-By: Night Watch <nightwatch () earthforce int> Organization: SETEC Astronomy X-URI: <URL:http://web.figure1.net/~jlindqui/> X-Also-By-Jon-Katz: The Music Industry, Kids and Oppression In our last episode, Declan McCullagh expounded: [Quoting a letter by Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA)] > To use an analogy based on current practices, the fact that telephones may > be used to commit fraud does not entitle the FCC, the FBI, or the SEC to > engage in wholesale monitoring of all telephone conversations. This isn't a very good analogy. Tapping a telephone is eavesdropping on a point-to-point communication whose participants have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Sifting web sites and newsgroups is examining public speech. There's no expectation of privacy--indeed, the whole purpose is to speak to whoever wishes to listen, isn't it?. I fail to see how this proposal is any different from sifting dead-tree open literature for insider tips and fraud. Now, if the SEC were proposing intercepting private e-mail, *then* we'd have problems... -- Jason Lindquist <*> "Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They linky () see figure1 net have a word for people our age. They call us KB9LCL children and they treat us like mice."-- Valentine Wiggin, _Ender's Game_ (Orson Scott Card)
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- FC: More on .union top level domain and SEC Internet monitoring Declan McCullagh (Apr 04)