Folks, arguing with Jim is a pure waste of time. I don't suggest
that you killfile him, but I do suggest that you not worry about
replying to every argument he brings up.
Regardless of his wishes, rough consensus is in the gTLD-MoU as the
means by which PAB will arrive at decisions, and therefore we are
compelled to follow that model. We are not going to change the voting
policy unless *we* decide that we should. Such a consensus clearly
does not exist, and, with the speed at which Jim is making friends,
there is no possibility it ever well -- clearly, Jim's idea of
consenus involves him having a very large club in a crowd of otherwise
unarmed people.
Jim asserts that the whole MoU effort will die if we don't follow his
lead. This is false. A large influx of signatures would be nice, but
it is neither a necessary or a sufficient condition for the MoU to
survive.
Far more important is to send comments on the Green Paper.
There are several very large problems with the GP that you could
consider incorporating into your comments.
First: It perpetuates a monopoly that, according to recent legal
decisions, may actually be illegal.
Second: It ignores the fact that the MoU has a legitimate lineage,
coming out of IANA, and that it did go through a protracted public
development.
Third: The GP itself has no legitimate legal status. IANA has de
facto control of the root zone; the USG does not. The fact that IANA
*was* funded by the USG is immaterial -- the USG abdicated some time
ago. Besides, there is a distinction between funding and control:
it is quite common for an activity to seek funding from various
sources. Those sources may later decide to stop, but that just means
you must search for other funding. It doesn't mean you must give
over control.
Fourth: Despite lip service, the USG has ignored international
opinion. The recent EU announcement is evidence of that.
Fifth: The GP perpetuates US economic control over the DNS
by installing a subsidiary of a large defense contractor as the
permanent monopoly over by far the largest TLDs.
I would be interested in more things to add to this list, more
details, and so on. Please comment.
-- Kent Crispin, PAB Chair "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
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