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Internet Society told to halt .org sale by its own advisory council

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Internet Society told to halt .org sale by its own advisory council

#21

Post by naringas »

jude- wrote: post #16
mxuribe wrote: post #9

This whole situation is ridiculous. We need an alternative to all this centralized control, and we need it now.

I'd argue that the problem is corruption, not (the degree of) centralized control. What we need here is a governance system for TLDs that is hard for a handful of well-connected profit-motivated bad actors to corrupt.

I would argue that centralized control lends itself to corruption more easily and distributed control.

After all, if there exist a central authority, only that one authority being corrupt messes up everything.

On the other hand, a distributed scenario makes it more difficult for a handful of well-connected profit-motivated bad actors to corrupt the entire thing.

But a distributed set-up is more complex (and more expensive), that's for sure

Re: Internet Society told to halt .org sale by its own advisory council

#22

Post by mxuribe »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #10
mxuribe wrote: post #9

This whole situation is ridiculous. We need an alternative to all this centralized control, and we need it now.

The alternative is your ISP suddenly decides that google.com directs to one of their servers.

My isp (Verizon) already"conveniently" provides a landing page whenever I typo a web address(or there us some dns miss, etc.)...so your concept is (sadly) here-and-now, and not a far off thing.

Re: Internet Society told to halt .org sale by its own advisory council

#24

Post by mxuribe »

blowski wrote: post #14
squiggleblaz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is your ISP suddenly decides that google.com directs to one of their servers.

I'm pretty sure there's more than one alternative.

I've heard of handshake...but were you referring to something else? If so, please share, I'm genuinely curious.

Re: Internet Society told to halt .org sale by its own advisory council

#25

Post by matthewheath »

metaphor wrote: post #5

So if I'm understanding this correctly...even if the Chapters Advisory Council formally recommends NOGO on the sale (which they haven't officially voted on yet), ISOC would not be legally bound in any way to bend the knee, and a hypothetical board decision to move forward with the sale anyways--assuming ICANN blessings--would risk organizational implosion stemming from the rage of its chapters followed by unfolding o…

Yes.

Re: Internet Society told to halt .org sale by its own advisory council

#26

Post by mxuribe »

anoncake wrote: post #23
mxuribe wrote: post #9

This whole situation is ridiculous. We need an alternative to all this centralized control, and we need it now.

No we don't. There has to be a single DNS, otherwise names are ambiguous which defeats the point.

To clarify: I think we need something different __instead of__ the current centrally control system, and not something __in addition to__. We need change, and not addition.

Re: Internet Society told to halt .org sale by its own advisory council

#27

Post by jude- »

rasengan wrote: post #19
jude- wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when Ethos starts running their own mining software (or bribes existing miners) in order to jack up prices for .org?

In Handshake, rather than renting your domain from .org or .com, you own your tld. This means that nobody will be able to charge you for using your own name. No more rent seeking or getting taxed by a pseudo government of the internet.

Ah, so the owner of .org in Handshake is completely unbound by any rules or regulations, and can charge whatever they want for any domains beneath it? Isn't that the entire problem of the .org sale -- the wanna-be new owners want to buy it and then rent-seek on it?

Re: Internet Society told to halt .org sale by its own advisory council

#28

Post by kazagistar »

mxuribe wrote: post #20
jude- wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that the problem is corruption, not (the degree of) centralized control. What we need here is a governance system for TLDs that is hard for a handful of well-connected profit-motivated bad actors to corrupt.

In concept, I believe you're 100% correct. I really, really do. But in real life, I feel it's just enough control and power (that they wield currently) that many people in the same role would be subject to temptation of being corrupted. Hence, not unlike general governing, what we need is control by the many, and not by the aristocratic few.

I agree, and will add that radical transparency, in addition to democratic oversight, can counteract corruption. Control by the many, but subject to secret manipulations by the few, is fairly vulnerable to corruption.

Re: Internet Society told to halt .org sale by its own advisory council

#29

Post by mxuribe »

rasengan wrote: post #12
mxuribe wrote: post #9

This whole situation is ridiculous. We need an alternative to all this centralized control, and we need it now.

> We need an alternative to all this centralized control, and we need it now. The Handshake Naming System [1] provides a decentralized option, works directly with the existing legacy system so there will be 0 difficulty in the transition, and it’s usable right now [2]! Just install hsd [3] and point your resolution to localhost to join the movement to an internet owned by the people. [1] https://handshake.org [2] htt…

Welp, then I hope the effort and associated protocol takes off, and is successful in providing us a little liberty from these centralizos (a plural term I've started using for referring to "centralization bozos").

Re: Internet Society told to halt .org sale by its own advisory council

#30

Post by jude- »

naringas wrote: post #21
jude- wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that the problem is corruption, not (the degree of) centralized control. What we need here is a governance system for TLDs that is hard for a handful of well-connected profit-motivated bad actors to corrupt.

I would argue that centralized control lends itself to corruption more easily and distributed control. After all, if there exist a central authority, only that one authority being corrupt messes up everything. On the other hand, a distributed scenario makes it more difficult for a handful of well-connected profit-motivated bad actors to corrupt the entire thing. But a distributed set-up is more complex (and more expe…

I would argue that a rich actor can more easily corrupt a large number of small autonomous feifdoms by a combination of bribes, equivocations, and good ol' divide-and-conquer strategies. A low barrier to entry to acquire absolute control over a small but critical piece of Internet routing infrastructure may democratize that infrastructure in theory, but in practice it also lowers the barrier to entry for corruption without some additional system-wide checks and balances. Otherwise, a not-so-rich but enterprising corrupt actor could incrementally buy up the small pieces and use them as leverage to acquire more and more pieces until they own the majority of them.
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