At 01:13 PM 5/24/99 -0700, you wrote:
>
>> They do not have any experience in the Internet's style of decision making
>> and they do not suffer from the delays they are causing.
>
>The "Internet's style of decision making", assuming that means the warm
>image of love, peace, and good vibes as exemplified by the IETF ...
>
>That style is no more reality than Disneyland's "Main Street" reflects
>real life in late 19th century America.
>
>Just as the 19th century America was a place of near revolution by
>industrial workers, disease, poverty, and political machines, that vague
>thing called "Internet style" is also full of things that we like to pass
>over or to forget.
>
>The IETF has had many major debates, red faces, sweat pouring out, people
>shouting, people screeming. I know, I was there doing some of the
>shouting.
>
>In other words it was the normal sort of stuff that happens when people
>disagree.
>
>The "Internet style" is really nothing more than a fanciful recollection
>of the best parts of a fortuitious happenstance that happened among a
>number of relatively same-minded people, all of whom were fairly affluent
>and with similar cultural backgrounds, to discuss somewhat objective,
>technical material.
>
>But we're now in the world of "Internet governance".
>
>Yes, there are those who adhere to the euphemism that we are just doing
>"technical coordination", but they are just engaging in self-deception.
>
>ICANN *is* Internet Governance.
>
>It is not "technical coordination" to adopt policies regarding the
>interaction of trademarks and domain names. It is governance, pure and
>simple.
>
>And governance brings debate.
>
>And this debate is not among a small group of like-minded techies about
>whether some protocol formulation is better than another as measured by
>some objective criteria.
>
>I reject the notion that the "Internet style" is something that is either
>appropriate or useful in these discussions.
>
>As for the delay that these discussions are causing -- well, yes, I am
>still paying $35/year to NSI for my domain registrations. But other than
>that, I don't see much harm in discussion.
>
>I see much more harm arising from an abrupt, almost panic-driven adoption
>of highly biased regulatory structures such as being proposed by WIPO.
>
> --karl--
>
True, true. And if you think the internet debates are bad, you should spend
a weekend like I just did reading about the point by point battle over the
drafting of the U. S. Constitution. Was it about liberty? Hell, no. Was it
about State's Rights? Hell, no. Was it one big massive grab for power?
HELL YES. And substitute cyberspace for real space and the dominant
issue of the "unoccupied territories" is indeed indentical, the Federalists
and the Anti-Federalists (who changed their philosophies more often than
they changed their shirts in a hot summer in Philadelphia) have their modern
counterparts in the factions we see on these pages, and there is nothing
new under the sun, although many who appear in these pages who think
they are some kind of "new frontier" and are going to invent government
probably need a good swift kick in the butt.
Bill Lovell
Bill Lovell
