> Regulation of the Internet is both legitimate and proper. The question is
> by whom, over what, what the regulations shall be, and what processes are
> used to apply them.
It seems that some people are mis-interpreting this.
Sure, I believe in regulation. I believe in government regulation. I
believe in government regulation of the Internet.
But only when appropriate.
I don't believe that the DNS needs to be regulated - there is an
artificial scarcity created by the single root concept coupled with
ICANN's inability to open the ICANN-franchise root to any, much a
reasonable number of, new TLDs - and that if these artificial limits were
removed, economic forces would provide adequate control. And there are
plenty of adequate laws on the books to protect mark holders.
I don't believe that we need any regulation over disputes between
standards bodies over "protocol parameters" - it is something that has
never happened in the entire 30 year history of the Internet.
I do, however, believe that IP address prefix assignments need to be
regulated to keep our routing working.
As for who shall do that regulating:
ICANN has become, in my mind, exactly the wrong kind of body to apply
regulation - from its septic conception to its present secret cabalistic
operation, ICANN has demonstrated itself to be unfit to be a regulatory
body, whether private or governmental.
Kent's right - I don't want a noisy mailing list governing any part of the
Internet. But then again, I don't want a secrecy-oriented, nearly
continuously insolvent, non-"public-benefit" corporation that is
accountable to no-one and responsive only to monied interests to be
governing the net either.
--karl--
