[At-Large] ICANN Accountability Mechanisms
bzs at theworld.com
bzs at theworld.com
Mon Jan 3 00:23:34 UTC 2022
Parminder:
I think you play fast and loose with how you wish the internet were
run and how it actually does run.
The (former) president of the United States was deplatformed from
Twitter and Facebook, as was a US congressional rep today by Twitter.
Web sites are removed regularly from the DNS largely based not on some
great juridical or legislative process but by political pressure or
sometimes just the voluntary distaste of registrars and/or registries.
China runs a "Great Firewall" again not as a product of some broad
consensus, particularly not any which extends even one inch outside
its own borders.
The only illusion of any lack of "demi-gods" arises from the inherent
amorphous chaos of the net's activities, not some plan or intention.
On January 2, 2022 at 14:11 at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org (parminder via At-Large) wrote:
> No disrespect intended, but whoever thought and fantasied that demi-gods could
> govern the Internet and Internet-mediated reality were the original sinners :)
>
> I am happy there were and are no demi gods for domain names or anything
> subsequent ... The current 'we the good and responsible people' based
> institutions around Internet/ digital are bad enough. I wonder if these are
> inheritors of the 'demi-god' thinking, or at least justify themselves upon it
> .. What with multi-stakeholderists, the insane belief in the demi-god-ness of
> the start-up whizkids -- in developing countries they wish to and are often
> allowed to run IT ministries, and so on. I much prefer democracy of perfectly
> ordinary people, and leaders that believe in democracy of perfectly ordinary
> people. ..
>
> (Yes, good and capable people do matter everywhere, and they matter a lot. But
> right institutions may matter more.)
>
> parminder
>
> On 02/01/22 1:39 pm, Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond via At-Large wrote:
>
> Dear Barry,
>
> oh what a great trip into memory lane! Thank you! One thing you did not
> mention, though, is that back then there were Usenet demi-gods who used to
> be able to keep the whole thing sane and together. When these retired/moved
> on, Usenet started declining. I don't think there are net demi-gods in
> domain names, are there?
> Kindest regards,
>
> Olivier
>
> On 02/01/2022 07:31, Barry Shein via At-Large wrote:
>
> Re: TLDs and communities
>
> From: Evan Leibovitch via At-Large <at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org>
>
> I witnessed first hand the hopelessness and futility of those who believed
> that a TLD could define, sustain or create a community.
>
> Back in the days of Usenet, the 1980s mostly, which had millions of
> users and eventually over 100,000 discussion topics the issue of when
> to add a new topic was a constant, lively issue.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
>
> Discussion groups were "tree" organized so you had rec for recreation,
> rec.sports, rec.sports.baseball, etc.
>
> For a while there were only eight top level topics (rec, comp
> [computer], talk, sci, ...), plus many regional (ne for new england,
> uk, and so on), and quite a few informal, unblessed top level topics
> such as "alt" which existed outside the mainstream governance.
>
> (Note: There was earlier history, net.*, but it adds nothing to this.)
>
> It should sound a little familiar.
>
> How were new topics created?
>
> By an open discussion and vote on certain designated administrative
> discussion groups. Other than that there really was no governance
> structure.
>
> An important bit of wisdom gained was that you could not create
> interest in a topic by creating a group for it.
>
> The most compelling reason to create a new group was to split off
> discussion traffic which was overwhelming another, more general group.
>
> So rec.sports.baseball might sprout rec.sports.baseball.worldseries
> because the former was being overwhelmed with world series discussion.
>
> We knew from experience back then, the 1980s, that you could not
> create interest or community by creating a topic category for it.
>
> Attempts failed repeatedly until it became a governing principle.
>
> You (dear reader) may find that unintuitive but that was what actual
> experience taught us.
>
> P.S. An expression that arose from Usenet was "Eternal September":
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
>
> In simple terms students, millions, arrived every September, got
> access to Usenet, and began imagining what the rules for things like
> newsgroup creation were or ought to be. Every year.
>
> Then AOL added Usenet and it became "Eternal September", the academic
> schedule no longer throttled the flood of new accounts.
>
> Unfortunately some of these TLD discussions have that "Eternal
> September" feel to them.
>
> "I don't want to hear YOUR opinion! I want to hear MY opinon coming
> out of YOUR mouth!" -- some wag
>
>
>
>
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--
-Barry Shein
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