Jim Dixon wrote:
On Sat, 23 Jan 1999, Darrell Greenwood wrote:Artificial persons Jim? Are you joking? Please define what[Dixon, writing about a larger vs smaller ICANN membership:]
> >I don't know if ICANN would be wiser. It would certainly have more
> >credibility. But the problem of verifying the identity of members
> >becomes more complex with increasing membership.
>
> Of course. But this applies regardless of who is enfranchised.This is simply not true. In most societies there are real, physical
people and then there are artificial persons, corporations.
an artificial person is. In detail if you please...
Corporations are legal entities of different varieties.
For gods sake
Jim you are ranting into some sort of fantasy realm here.
TheYes the existence of most corporations is not difficult to
existence of the latter is much easier to verify than the existence
of the former. The creation of a corporation necessarily involves
the creation of an audit trail; usually corporations are registered
centrally and their existence is relatively easy to verify, by law.
verify if you know where to look.
The ICANN needs not do any such thing. These processes on the internet> >I was careful in phrasing what I wrote. Your previous email said that
> >the right to vote would be based only on the registration of a domain
> >name.
> >
> >As I said, any competent programmer with access to the Net could create
> >any desired numer of identities under these rules. Step 1: create N
> >unique email accounts. I assure you that this is very simple on a
> >UNIX machine. It's a very short program, more complex if you want a
> >nice distribution of human names. Step 2: get a unique domain for each
> >of these at the InterNIC. This is moderately more difficult because
> >you need to invent more data. So now you have N candidate ICANN members.
> >Cost? Only your time.
>
> You have the right to vote in the local elections where you live.
> Exercising that vote requires a process that prevents fraud. So be it
> with ICANN.In other words, ICANN is going to create an international bureaucracy to
verify candidate ICANN voter/members. Have you costed this?
are already available and have been for some years now.
With all due respect, Jim, you didn't read the nyx.net home page[Description of the difficulty of verifying individual indentities in the
UK omitted.]> I have a shell account at nyx.net. Their method of moderately
> reliable verification of members from any nation on earth, works and
> is low cost... http://www.nyx.net/howval.htm.You don't go into this in detail, so I won't either. But while the
nyx.net system may work in the USA, the system described for other
countries is flakey. In the UK, for example, you are supposed to go
to a solicitor and make a statutory declaration.
very well. If you did you would have noticed the following,
"In the U.K., word has it that a solicitor can do this type of thing; some charge, some do not, and you are advised to call around. [But note, as of 10/93, a user in London is acting as a Nyx validater.] "
Well, to the best ofKeeping them on file with ICANN is not necessary. A central depository
my knowledge, that means that you write something up, go to a solictor,
sign it while he is watching, and he signs his bit certifying that
he saw you sign it. I have actually done this on occasion. One
problem is recursion: you have simply substituted the solicitor's
unverified signature for mine. There are tens of thousands of solictors
in the UK. Do you propose to keep all of their signatures on file?
in London already exists by which this can be easily and electronically
be verified.
This could be a problem, but certainly not difficult to overcome.
How will you detect forgeries? Another problem is that the solicitor
doesn't ask you for any ID.
Dam Jim, your paranoia is astounding indeed!!In any case the www.nyx.net system depends upon volunteers.
It is not zero cost. In the UK there is apparently one volunteer who
will vet applicants. That's nice. How do you know he is trustworthy?
Can I volunteer?
You have it all wrong here JIm. Derrel was just offering it and a potentialThis is an extremely porous system. It is also expensive and slow;
nyx.net says that people should expect the process to take weeks.
And it's not simple.However, the basic problem is that you are, as I understand it,
requiring the TLD registries to do all of this for you. That is,
you are asking them to take on large costs in exchange for nothing.
Look at things from Network Solutions' perspective: how are they going
to recruit people to operate this international system on a volunteer
basis? Why should they bother? How do they justify the costs to
their stockholders?
suggestion, certainly not a requirement. And it should not be. It is one
of many other avenues is all.
None, and they shouldn't nor is there a need to necessarily. Are youThen consider the ccTLD registries. Precisely what leverage does
ICANN have over the ccTLD registries that will enable ICANN to force
these registries to build these elaborate verification systems?
suggesting that the ICANN would need the force of some international
law here Jim?
Yet you have yet to provide a single verifiable piece of evidence to> Verification difficulties exist regardless of who is enfranchised. If
> you wish to propose to limit the enfranchisement to keep the
> individual members class to a small number you may, but I think that
> is a lousy idea.There is a term for this technique in debate, but I have forgotten it;
however, what just happened goes like this:* I say that administering a large individual membership is
fraught with difficulties
support your contention.
And you are. You have stated your opposition against a large membership* you ignore the problems raised and claim that what I really
mean is that I am against ICANN's having a large individual
membership
for some time now frequently.
Easy no, doable, certainly.In other words, the ability to see problems in anything is equivalent
to opposition to it. This is very poor logic. It means that all
civil engineers oppose bridges, and all aeronautical engineers are
against airplanes, because they understand that designing reliable
bridges and airplanes is far from easy.
There is only ONE class of membership Jim. That is the classIn actual fact, anyone who has followed this debate in detail would
know that I have always argued for a membership. In fact I have
fairly consistently argued that the new corporation (ICANN) should
start with an initial membership of individuals, but then develop a
set of classes of membership, in part because of the fundamental
difficulties in dealing with a large individual membership.
known as STAKEHOLDER.
No Jim, I don't believe the Derrel is saying that at all. Please don't read> >If you are going to rely on the TLD registries for "the registration,
> >documentation, and verification" phase, then you must understand that
> >the registries simply don't do this. So you are demanding that all of
> >the world's registries modify their procedures and drive their costs
> >through the roof in order to satisfy ICANN. This is a non-starter.
>
> I am assuming gTLD registries. The present registry of gTLDs has
> sufficient information for accreditation of members in whois
> (Administrative contact name, address, phone number). There needs to
> be no change or cost to the registry, in my mind, for the
> accreditation of members in ICANN. That will be an ICANN process.This is simply outrageous. What you are saying is that registration
in the American-operated .com/net/org registry gives you a vote but
registration under .uk or .fr doesn't.
something into it that isn't there.
The more members you have the cheaper this gets per member.> >And the same applies to my army of phantoms. Each has only one domain
> >name, and each has only one vote.
>
> I'm sure you would find you could not enroll your army of phantoms
> with membership in nyx.net, why should you be able to do so with
> ICANN?Please try to argue one position at a time ;-)
Under what appears to be your proposal, the gTLD registries are
doing all of this for you, not ICANN.> (The verification process was created to prevent anonymous
> 'crackers' from becoming members, they were drawn to a freely
> available Unix shell account like bees to honey... nyx.net currently
> has 1500 to 2000 members and no anonymous 'crackers')And how do you know how many anonymous hackers they have registered?
> >How do you know how many votes there will be? Kent Crispin assures me
> >that there will be 2,000 or so. You say 20,000.
>
> I grabbed a figure out of the air. The take up rate of membershipThe numbers do matter if you have to pay the cost of verifying membership.
Regards,> will obviously be higher if your dues are already paid by the act of
> paying for your domain and the costs and hassle of collecting dues
> eliminated. My objective was to have the highest rate of takeup of
> membership among those who were concerned, gTLD domain name
> registrants.I will ignore the outrageous assumption that only registrations under
gTLDs will be acceptable.What you are doing here is just sweeping the problem of costs under
the carpet. This is politician's talk: the registries will pay all
of the costs, not the registrants. In actual fact, if the registries
were forced to adopt this system, they would simply pass the costs on
to the consumers.> >> >These people, the ones who are seriously involved with the Internet,
> >> >will recoil in horror from your 'keep it simple' ICANN. They will
> >> >scramble to keep the core assets at risk -- the DNS, operation of the
> >> >root servers, IP address space, and protocol development -- out of
> >> >ICANN's grasp. They will make sure that no further responsibilities
> >> >come ICANN's way.
> >> >
> >> >A small amount of thought might persuade you that this process is already
> >> >well under way. The root servers remain with NSI. The root zone is
> >> >frozen. The RIRs, the regional IP address space registries, are thinking
> >> >things over. RFC editing has been moved away from IANA. The IETF isn't
> >> >terribly keen on the PSO.
> >
> >The lack of any reply to these two paragraphs is interesting.
>
> I understand your apparent view above that ICANN may, (and should?)
> fail.Try understanding and replying to what I actually said. In fact, I
believe that IANA should continue, I believe that IANA has played a
vital role in the development of the Internet. Two years or so ago
I was arguing for the creation of a legal basis for IANA, one designed
to protect it from the legal disputes threatened by various
protagonists in the DNS wars.What I am saying is that ICANN is conspicuously failing. People are
transferring IANA's responsibilities elsewhere. This process will
only accelerate if ICANN's membership structure is unacceptable to
those who have serious concern for the operational stability of the
Internet and the power to do something about those concerns.> But ICANN does exist. It must have members. You seem to be
> arguing for a very limited membership.And you seem to be incapable of arguing directly. I have not argued
for limiting membership at all; what I have argued for is a diverse
membership organized in classes, a system that gives us the benefits
of a broad individual membership but minimizes the very real risks
of a large membership.> >Perhaps you should take a better look at Bishop Occam's razor. He says
> >that things should not be multiplied beyond what is necessary. He does
> >not advocating simplification by elimination of the necessary.
> >
> >A global individual membership for ICANN is indeed attractive and would
> >add greatly to ICANN's credibility -- but only if that membership is
> >real and responsible. What we have been talking about is the cost of
> >verifying that members are real and unique individuals, to get rid of
> >the phantoms. This would be very expensive. We haven't dealt with the
> >equally serious problem of armies of directed voters.
> >
> >There are many countries in the world in which governments or
> >organizations have complete control over real and unique individuals.
> >They can create small armies of ICANN voters at whim, and so can
> >control ICANN at whim.
> >
> >So the prognosis is not good. You seem to wobble between two models of
> >ICANN membership. In the first, which has reasonable cost, there will
> >inevitably be many phantom voters; if ICANN attracts the attention of the
> >hacker community or others with a similar sense of humor, there will be
> >armies of these among the membership. In the second model, which has
> >extravagent costs, you will have real, verified members, but all that
> >money won't protect you should my "directed" elements take an interest
> >in ICANN. What precisely do you do if 10,000 Hari Krishnas from all
> >over the world register and vote in an all Hari Krishna board?Once again, you simply ignore these arguments, choosing instead to be
able to divine my real intentions, and then argue with them instead:> I am not sure who you think should be enfranchised, you do seem to
> want to limit individual members in quantity and in other ways.No, I think that ICANN would benefit from a large individual membership.
However, I also believe that IANA's legacy is already being destroyed by
widespread distrust in ICANN, and that if ICANN's membership consists
only of individuals, then that distrust will grow rapidly, and whatever
value ICANN might have will be entirely gone.To recap my real beliefs:
* ICANN currently does not have the trust of the Internet
community* Only a broad and diverse membership that reflects the complexity
of the Internet community and has the power to replace the board
can give ICANN legitimacy* Some sort of system of classes of membership is necessary to
balance the interests of the various stakeholder groups* Individual memberships should be very valuable, but in the near
term at least it will not be practical for this to be the only
type of membership in ICANN or for this membership class to have
predominant power* If ICANN is to be responsible in any degree for the operational
stability of the Internet, if it is not to be just a debating
society, then those who now have actual responsibility for the
day-to-day responsibility of the Internet must be persuaded that
ICANN can be trustedIf the last point is too obscure, what I am saying is that if, for
examples, the ISPs who actually operate the Internet backbone don't come
to trust ICANN, they will ensure that ICANN's influence over their
operations is minimal. The ISPs don't need ICANN. But ICANN needs the
support of the ISPs.The same applies to the TLD registries. It is only NSI, the InterNIC,
that is at risk from ICANN. The ccTLD registries can walk away from
ICANN. Furthermore, there is nothing to prevent the ISPs from endorsing
an alternative set of root name servers, or some equivalent system.None of this is desirable. What is desirable is that ICANN continue
IANA's role as a focal point for cooperation in the Internet; one
requirement for this is that it have an acceptable membership structure.--
Jim Dixon Managing Director
VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316
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