[At-Large] Opera now lets you ditch boring web links and use emojis instead

[Evan Leibovitch]

On Mon, Feb 21, 2022 at 6:19 PM Barry Shein via At-Large <
at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:


> As I've said for decades: Notice that WIPO, USPTO, et al don't allow
> you to just register and squat on interesting strings. Or have rules
> which make that a useless endeavor ("use it or lose it", etc.)
>
> That's not due to a lack of imagination.


And yet ICANN knew better, deliberately avoiding the same ethos. Here, any
collection of symbols is a commodity suitable for rent-seeking (both
literally and figuratively). Barry even demonstrated this point by
indicating that the new unregulated emoji system is ripe for exploitation,
a necessary element truly to bring it inline with everything else in
today's DNS.

That was my first clue coming in that ICANN's main non-technical policy
function was (and still is) to legitimize the grift. Unfortunately it took
me nearly a decade to figure out that At-Large as currently constituted,
cowed by budget restraints and the need to be loved by the grifters,
provides cover for them while perfecting the art of bikeshedding. What I
thought was a glimmer of light last year -- funds allocation to do an
end-user survey about trust -- has been co-opted by this culture and (at
the time I disengaged) had mutated into market research for Universal
Acceptance. So much for hope.
Just my opinions of course.

- Evan
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