http://cookreport.com/icannregulate.shtml
there are some very revealing and 'what would be disturbing if you
weren't already completely dis-illusioned' sections about esther...
personally i think you only have to go as far as her
designated-board-of-directors-"net chick" 'resume'/credentials on the
ICANN site to know enough about how far around the bend she's gone...
but i had to laugh a crinkly kind of pinched/choked laugh at the la
times obligatory reference to her as 'internet guru'... guru?!?
whose guru? because of the breathlessly name-dropping glib totally
lacking in irony superficiality/ shallowness of her 'release 2.0'?
orwell would wince at how shamelessly devalued guru-hood has become in
the public discourse...
think i'll try to avoid the IBM infomercial for esther the cookreport
mentions... i'm sure there's a nice gauzy soundtrack though...
and in passing it seems not coincidental that her friends at EFF (an
internet 'think tank' apparently now to the same extent that esther is
an 'internet guru' ) have gone around the bend too:
(thanks to kenneth carson for the ref)
Putting a Price on Our Internet
Identities
By Renee Deger
The Recorder/Cal Law
June 14, 1999
In more moribund moments, many life insurance
policyholders have been known to joke bitterly
about how much they'd be worth dead.
Unfortunately, they have less of a clue of what
they're worth alive, says one longtime plaintiffs
lawyer.
That's too bad, because marketing and retail
companies are making a killing at dealing in the
habits and preferences of living people --
information people often simply give away,
knowingly or not.
That cloud of ignorance is about to clear, and the
average person may soon have a better idea of
what they're worth as individuals.
The San Francisco-based Internet think tank
Electronic Frontier Foundation is embarking on
an effort to put a price on the average person's
identity so that people can sue for damages if
their privacy is invaded -- especially their privacy
as Web surfers.
"An important part for an individual to negotiate
with a Web site is the total cost of ownership [of
themselves]," says Tara Lemmey, head of EFF.
Still in its infancy, the effort to value
individualism
will be based in large part on how much money
companies pay for customer information, and how
much companies score for selling it.
"How many times is [an individual profile of a]
person selling, what's the value each time it's
used, at what point does it decay -- that
translates to what it's worth to a consumer,"
Lemmey says. <snip>
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