Bill Lovell wrote:
> There are people in this group who are
>very sensitive to this sort of thing: the admixture of gray ribbons
>and book selling seemed inappropriate to many, including the
>one who sells the books. . .
Mr. Lovell,
I have participated on the this list since its inception and the domain
policy list since July 1996, long before my book was published. Most of
those on these lists know me not as "the one who sells books" but as
someone deeply interested in domain name issues and willing to commit
substantial time and energy in giving visibility to the changes affecting
this area of the Internet.
Yes, my domainnamehandbook.com site does lead to an order location on the
Internet. Yes, the site does include a Table of Contents so that potential
purchasers can see what they are getting before investing the grand sum of
$31.96 for the 645-page book. But my 50+ page website has a great deal of
other information, such as IFWP and DNS news reports, domain name disputes,
policies, and bylaws proposals. Among the most frequently visited web page
is the one that honors the memory of Jon Postel
(domainhandbook.com/postel.html). If you go to
domainhandbook.com/reviews.html, you will see a not-inclusive list of other
sites that cite my site. They don't do this because I sell books. They do
this because the content I provide is informative and useful.
Your late and loud arrival on this list, with complaints about my
involvement as a bookseller, gets no hurrahs from me. If your complaints
were evenly distributed, you would have to argue against the participation
of every registrar, attorney, web designer, and Internet service provider
who participates on the list but also maintains a web presence. The
services or products we all provide may be infused in our messages, may
often lend credibility to expertise on a particular topic being discussed,
but they aren't the message itself. That is what separates advertising,
and spam, from subscriber participation. This is what separates current
topics from an attempt to co-opt this list for IPv8 discussion, by telling
us all, by virtue of doing nothing, we have now joined that list. Sheesh.
The grey ribbon campaign is an advocacy statement. It has nothing to do
with commercialism, spam, or vested interest. It's merely a way of
focusing visible support for open ICANN board meetings. It emerged from
discussions on this list, and while I don't think it speaks for the entire
list membership, it's certainly an appropriate topic since the transfer of
DNS aministration to the private sector was supposed to be built on
openness and transparency. Many of us find those qualities lacking in
ICANN, and since the board has been unresponsive to our frequent complaints
about this, my approach is to let others in cyberspace know what is
happening. A grey ribbon campaign is a reasonable, informative, creative
way of doing so. N'est-ce pas?
Ellen Rony Co-author
The Domain Name Handbook http://www.domainhandbook.com
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ISBN 0879305150 *=" ____ / +1 (415) 435-5010
[EMAIL PROTECTED] \ ) Tiburon, CA
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