I looked to the whole ICANN deal with quite a bit of hope initially and have
since been appalled and dismayed.
I (like many others) had started to turn a skeptic that tiny domain name
holders could hardly do anything about the whole thing but yet unable to
give up hope.
That having been said...
It was extremely heartening to see ICANN and NSI at loggerheads at Berlin
(as many of you know was participating online. And at cost of repeating
Great job - Joop and Karl !).
It lid a tiny flame of hope that the fight between them would explode and be
hard, tough and really nasty.
They are two devils from hell and we, the mere citizens of internet, would
benefit enormously from there clash as they will now 'need' the support of
'real' stakeholders to score points against each other.
NSI has done all the damage it can do. It has in recent time taken quite a
few knocks and find control slipping out of there hands.
ICANN seems to be hell bent on moving them to the irrelevant role of being
just another domain name issuers and in process 'Surping' NSI's traditional
leverages of - policy implementation, root server control and domain pricing
- without subjecting themselves (ICANN) to any kind of accountability or
mandate what so ever other than some spin doctoring in media.
Make no mistake NSI is bleeding and needs us and our movementum, legitimize
offered by the act of endorsing us (among other factors) to regain and
retain some hold on their levers and hence this offer and there sudden
change of being reasonable lately.
As thing stand, right now, compared to ICANN - NSI seems to be an angel to
me.
(Especially as we already have some competition fastly coming in place to
NSI on domain name issuance.)
Its in our interest to keep both of them on equal footing and at each others
throats (and most important alive !). General internet community can only
gain from their individual thrust at each other for absolute control over
internet.
I very strongly support that we take this opportunity presented to us and
make most of it without getting attached to either of them.
Both Karl and Joop would make excellent representatives for us.
They will be pretty soon all kinds of noises once we take this seat.
We will need Joop's invaluable manuevouring skills to navigate the pitfalls
ahead - negotiate with other groups and modulate pressures from ICANN.
Sri
***
My Background (if you are interested !)
A couple of years ago I was a small time 'techie' - bought a couple of
domain names and was busy tinkering with my tiny linux box and apache server
to get somewhere on the internet.
Blissfully unconcerned of the whole deal of domain name vs. trademark,
internet goverance, etc - read a couple of articles on and off on net. But
that was it.
Then before I knew it - I got hit in face with a pretty eloquently written
legal letters, attorneys, tiny window of time to respond intelligently to
them and had come close to be at the receiving end of NSI domain dispute
policy and all nine yards.
(Hence the start of my involvement in the whole issue and the vengence to
seek some fairness for Individual domain name holders !).
(You could take a peek at some of my comments at
http://wipo2.wipo.int/dns_comments/rfc3/0190.html)
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