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The Internet

ICANN At-Large Candidates Nominated 100

Posted by timothy from the don'tcha-hope-it's-not-all-a-shell-game? dept.
drbonzo writes: "On Aug. 1, the ICANN Nominating Committee announced a set of 18 nominees for the 5 At-Large Directors of the ICANN Board. For details, see the announcement and the list of nominees. Note that there will be a member-nomination process that will run through August. Let's get ready to vote, people! But first, let's discuss the announced nominees (who include among them Lawrence Lessig), and consider getting behind one or more member-nominated candidates."
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ICANN At-Large Candidates Nominated More

ICANN At-Large Candidates Nominated

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  • I've got you beat -- I signed up July 14, and still don't have my PIN.
  • Use http://www.opennic.unrated.net/.

    ICANN closed the Membership process.

    158,000 people to represent the future of the net as voters... yeah right.

  • What I like with the ICANN is their democratic system. To propose a new TLD, you must pay 20 000 $US. How can they stay serious when they speak of democraty ?

    ICANN "democracy" is basically a farce, although I wouldn't let that stop you from voting (if you've registered) and getting at least one or two intellegent voices of dissent into the loop.

    If you want a truly democratic approach to domain name registration and TLD management, check out
    Opennnic [unrated.net].

  • Re:How many /.ers are politically active in ICANN? (Score:3)

    by bfree ( 113420 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @04:01AM (#865598)
    As I was reading through the list of nominees I had a horrible thought, could there have been a motive to the overloaded server? Could they have been trying to modify the "demographics" of their voters? Now I know some one will say that they couldn't, but simply put if they had 10,000 members before people could register, and then they let in another 1,000 during the "overloaded server" period they would have essentially kept their original membership with a pretence of an open system. Alternatively, a firewall applying a few rules to decide if you get the "overloaded server" or the chance to register could be quite effective at tweaking the users to (for example) ensure that the voting balance is heavily distrorted to a geographical region (IP addresses means perfection would be impossible but.....).
    When a nation has an election, and especially a nation under constant threat (they have only recently been put in power after the old guard was overthrown AND many of the countries are rebeling against them already) the U.N. or someone similar will be having a good close look to ensure the election is legit, and if they say it wasn't the new government will not be recognised. Who was watching ICANN? and where is their report?
  • The ICANN page http://members.icann.org/nom.html [icann.org] at the beginning of this article has links to the self nominated candidates, too.

  • Karl Auerbach (Score:3)

    by Froomkin ( 18607 ) <froomkin&law,miami,edu> on Thursday August 10, 2000 @05:41AM (#865600) Homepage

    Here's an interesting platform by an interesting candidate [cavebear.com].

    His endorsement page is here.

  • Another point to add in why there are few female representatives ont the board, dispite the validity of the otehr comments.

    Most of the ICANN to Be's are older then most of us, and they have probably been around since the 70's.

    Now, even though there were femenists lining the halls of Universitities, I serously doubt that many were there to take Computer Sciences or Electronic Enngineering.

    It is not a prejudice. I would say outside factors kept them away, but it did happen. These days, women are more encouraged to go inot the field's that they really like, and more women are finding a place with computers.

    Although There might be a lot more women in the industry than the nominations reflect, they only nominated older (more distinguished) individuals.
  • Got this off of the jwz site. Here's a link to his bookmarks [jwz.org]. The movie of the whale blowing up is under the heading of "Silliness" and under the sub heading of "Blowing Shit Up." Hope that satisfys your blubber craving.

    Is there anything at ICANN related to whales? Mascot?

    Even the samurai
    have teddy bears,
    and even the teddy bears

  • Lessig is formerly Harvard, now Stanford.
  • ICANN has been rigged since it's inception. It exists solely to protect Trademark, Government,
    and big business interests that conrol the board.

    The facts have been painfully documented by Gordon Cook of the Cook Report [cookreport.com] Here [cookreport.com], Here [cookreport.com] and regularly in his Monthly reports [cookreport.com].

  • Well, I'm registered, I got my PIN, and I've confirmed online.

    I wrote a short article [technocrat.net] pointing out some interesting statistics [icann.org] on Technocrat.net [technocrat.net], but didn't get much of a response.

    In short, although the US has the largest 'Internet Population', other countries are far overpresented in the ICANN registration.

    BTW, Lawrence Lessig seems like the most interesting candidate for N. America, what do you think?
    --

  • I registered online, near the end of the registration period, but I'm still waiting for the package they said they're sending me by snail-mail. Will I get it in time to cast my vote??

  • Point, and exactly what motivated us to set up OpenNIC [unrated.net]. And, contrary to the other reply to this post, you don't need mondo boxes and wide pipes to start out. If you get enough volunteer servers spread widely enough around the globe, you'll never need more than that.
  • As a resident of Maryland for a number of years, I have watched Donald N. Langenberg [ums.edu] do an outstanding job with the University of Maryland System. [ums.edu] Another plus is his background in the sciences, and hence the scientific method, which should help cut through some of the political bullshit going on at ICANN. By Ghu, now I've got a reason to join! With no disrespect intended to Mr. Lessig, this man is a more qualified candidate.
  • freebe is a troll.
    technos is a karma whore.

    Can you even tell the fucking difference? I can't!!
  • So nominate yourself, James! OpenNIC [unrated.net] is aiming to have candidates with a single platform running in all 5 regions and we don't have a Euro candidate yet. Check out our site and then the stuff on my candidacy site [devnull.net]. If you agree, jump in and we'll all be publicizing each other. "In unity there is strength" and similar ...

  • I can't let that go by without mentioning that I'm also a candidate [devnull.net], could I? ;-)

    Karl, however, also comes into this from the alternative DNS community, so of all the current nominees, I'd choose him for the position if I weren't running. He knows his stuff and I mostly agree with the sorts of things he'd do on the Board.

  • Yup! I got mine. It took about 4 or 5 weeks. I also registered in the very first wave when it was announced. You'll get it eventually, but it might be too late to participate in the nomination process.

  • I could not register so I think ICANN is a sham. Thats ok with me. I'm just not going to play their game. I will add a top level zone for every TLD they come up with and point it to where ever I feel like so if some large company decides to pay out and buy a top level name they can be assued that their potential customers that use my dns will happly get their competittions web site.

    I do not support any new TLDs until the .us domain is made usable by us companies.
  • Let's be honest about ICANN: 1. The acronym itself is an ironic pun. 2. ICANN can barely fund itself with its ridiculous requests for fees, 3. ICANN usually proves that bureaucracy is alive and well whenever situations that call for tough decisions arise, 4. ICANN has proven itself absolutely toothless regarding NSI's monopoly. NSI still does whatever it wants, whenever it wants to do it, and ICANN has no power to change that. Even though I'm not in favor of monopolies in general, it was almost better when it was just NSI. --mr
  • Let us not forget the wonderful design of the website and member edit-able fields. Let's see...membership number, 6 char password created by the system, 6 char pin....all unable to be customized by the member. Good Idea Poor Implementation strikes again.. ./bot

  • Thanks Tripp! (By-the-way you forgot to mention that I helped build the original Internet toasters - yes, real toasters that toasted real bread - way back in 1988. ;-)

    If anybody wants to take a look at my campaign materials, they are up on my server at http://www.cavebear.com/ialc/ [cavebear.com]

    (I suspect that many /.-ers might be more interested in my catalog of bogus network products: http://www.cavebear.com/cavebear/catalog.html [cavebear.com] )

    As for ICANN - I'm pretty much in ICANN's "loyal opposition" camp - although I suspect that several ICANN folks would drop the "loyal" part.

    I'm not an anarchist - I think that in many regards we are going to end up with an Internet that is more regulated than some of us might want. But from what I've seen so far, the tendency is for an entity like ICANN to swing very far in favor of organized commercial interests and very far against individuals and small groups. I don't like that.

    Another thing that bothers me about ICANN is that those who are making the decisions don't really know how things work. I doubt that many ICANN board members really understand how DNS works or why aggregation of IP address allocations is complicated.

    I'm basically a techie who happens to have this peverse notion that policy and law are interesting. I would hope that I've had enough contact with actual networking and computers to avoid doing the equivalent of defining pi as 3.

    Tripp - by the way, you missed the early Interop show nets where we arrived at midnight with spools of thicknet and several dozen routers and we had to have a running show net by 8am running IP, OSI, DECnet, and IPX. Now, that was seriously harrowing.

    --karl--

  • If you are in the Australia/Asia/Pacific [icann.org] region and are a geek then you have someone [icann.org] that will listen.
  • Yep. I got my snailmail in May.

    Steven E. Ehrbar
  • You've misstated the number who got their memberships by an order of magnitude; 150,000+ people were sent their letters with PINs.

    Steven E. Ehrbar
  • Note: -- I gote the PIN on Friday, August 11.

  • While they're currently more-or-less running the show as far as the TLD game goes, it's been pretty well proven that anyone can start a competing namespace fairly easily. They may have corporate backing, but corporations traditionally haven't been the ones driving the bleeding edge. Likewise, I don't foresee the ICANN making any major changes, evolutionary or revolutionary. Most likely technology will pass them by and they'll end up being marginalized in a year or two.

  • Re:Voting at ICANN (Score:3)

    by Elvis Maximus ( 193433 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @04:10AM (#865623) Homepage

    Are you kidding? That's way less than it costs to buy a Congressman! It's barely enough even to keep out the riff-raff.

    -

    1. Out of all the nominees, only one happens to be female. Is ICANN just another "Good ol' Boy" group?
    2. Who is Lawrence Lessig (sp?) and why is he in here?
      <sarcasm>
    3. You'd think Al Gore would be nominated; after all, he invented the Internet and all. :)
      </sarcasm>

    Perhaps you meant to put the sarcasm tag around the second as well ? Lessig is a law professor (formerly Harvard, now Yale), famous for:

    being appointed by Judge Jackson as a friend of the court in the Microsoft trial because of his expertise in the legal issues of cyberspace (dumped off again by the appeal court);

    his book "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" [amazon.com] (Sorry about the Amazon link). Well worth a read by ... well everyone really ;)

    All round bright guy, and one of the few laywers to have given a lot of thought to internet issues.

  • Why not elect Cmdr Taco, I think /. has enough votes. Who says you need to be some old Professor - Chancellor? From my experience, academics need to stick to research, not administration.

  • Consensus? On Slashdot? (Score:4)

    by alexjohns ( 53323 ) <almuric.gmail@com> on Thursday August 10, 2000 @04:20AM (#865626) Journal
    You want us to try to reach a consensus on /.? You want a majority of the people on /. to pick a candidate and vote for him/her? Boggle!!

    Question: Is this glass half-full or half-empty? (Shows glass, filled half-way with water.)
    10%: Half-full
    20%: Half-empty (there seem to be more pessimists on /.)
    12%: That's not a glass, it's a cup.
    15%: MS sucks.
    5%: How about a Beowulf cluster of half full/empty glasses?
    10%: Want to open source/copyleft/GPL the glass pouring/emptying mechanism
    10%: Karma whores and their supporters/detractors
    2%: Want to know if Jon Katz had something to do with this
    8%: Hot grits and Natalie Portman
    3%: This is an inappropriate topic for /.
    5%: Other inanities

    So, to reiterate, you want us to figure out who to vote for. Unless Ms. Portman is a candidate, I doubt you'll have much luck.

    I guess I vote for half-empty. (Pessimistic or Realistic? You decide.)
    --
    '...let the rabbits wear glasses...'
    Y2038 consulting
  • Isnt it a shame? There we are wanking about liberty, freedom, democracy, and how many of us have registered for the polls? 5000? 10000? Lets compare that number to the number of people that took the latest poll: 21350 at the time of writing! Same goes for the number of posts of course...

    Is the only way to get people to vote a one-click solution? OK, it was a pain to get registered, the whole process is screwed up, but its a first step damnit, and only by showing up in big numbers can we establish that there *is* an interest in the democratization in the first place. ICANN fared poorly in these elections, but I think the electorate (or rather, lack of it) fared even more poorly.

    I just cant get past the fact that the IP adress of my kitchen sink warrants a click whereas the future of the internet wasnt worth the 5 minutes it took to register for the majority here... :(

    PS: Apologies to those that tried to get registered but couldnt because of the traffic. I had no problem whatsover though.

  • June 29th and still waiting for my PIN. I'm wondering if ICANN is competent to run anything.

  • Although their server was overloaded almost constantly, it seems they were continuously registering people slowly.

    This was the classic Slashdot effect. Whenever ICANN was mentioned on Slashdot, I would remember, "Oh yeah, I should sign up" but the server would be too busy. Then there was a period where it wasn't in the news for a while, and I remembered, "Hey, I haven't seen anything about ICANN on Slashdot for a a while" and I popped over and everything went smoothly.

    Then I got my PIN via snail mail, and the server was too busy. But then I saw that there was a mention of ICANN on Slashdot or Technocrat or something. So I didn't finish my registation. Then, just yesterday I was cleaning off my desk and there was my ICANN letter and I remembered to try to finish my registration and it went fine.

    I'm glad I cleaned my desk yesterday instead of today, since there's an ICANN story on Slashdot today. I bet the server is awefully busy right now.

    Even if you didn't sign up, then making your voice loud and clear on forums such as /. will let the voting members know how to vote

    I'll second that. I'm going to vote, but I don't have a clue who to vote for, yet. Send me a $20 with your favorite candidate's name written on it, and I'll take care of ya.


    ---
  • I tend to agree...

    I'm personally a lot more comfortable with a guy like this whose bio includes things like "has been president and chairman of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science" I mean it really comes down to what type of voice we want on the committee... do we want the voice from a networking company, or an academic, or worse yet... a lawyer. True, the law is important in this cause, but does anyone really think that Lessig might have a clue as to how this should all work? I doubt it.

    Does anyone else agree with me on that one?

    Also, did anyone go through and look at the bio's [icann.org]? For North America, each candidate has at least 3-4 lines, with at least decent sounding qualifications. Except Lessig, he only has one... pity, it's almost as if they don't even think he's qualified.

  • I nominate CmdrTaco!
  • The internet has always been about individuals adopting or not adopting standards that work for them. As a node on the net, I can ignore as much of it as I want to (Except for the underlying TCP/IP protocol. You're pretty much stuck with that.) I might not be able to talk to everyone if I do that, but the assumption that I want to talk to everyone is a pretty big one anyway.

    If enough people start using a new standard, it becomes The Standard whether the ICANN or Microsoft or any other corporation agrees with it or not.

  • Lessig seems to be a good guy for the job from North America,

    Please don't be serious. Lessig is the kind of guy who would revoke tux.org's domain for not selling dinner jackets.

    being from Europe, I'm also curious about the European nominees.

    There is that one guy from the UK who has nominated himself for the North America area. I don't quite get that one.

    --
  • Wrong on both accounts.

    Although ICANN is making a concerted effort to have a fair and open election process, they have still come under serious fire form democracy advocates in the actual process of the elections.

    The price to apply registrar status of a TLD is $50,000
  • A good analysis of the group of candidates as a whole is in the latest Cyber-Federalist Newsletter (Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility and Internet Democracy Project):
    http://www.cpsr.org/internetdemocracy/cyber-fed/Nu mber_4.html [cpsr.org]
  • How many slashdotters bothered to sign up to be a member?

    I am an at-large member, as are many of my friends that read /.

    I would say that probably at least 10% of active /. readers are members.

    -k
  • ICANN is Government, boys and girls. And pretty bad government at that. They are totally, completely, and utterly dominated by thge intellectual propery special interests.

    Take back your government. Of course, I doubt that ICANN's by-laws will allow you much of a chance. A boycott might be a better approach.

    --

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Well, here is the list of "campaign promises" on my candidacy page [devnull.net]:

    • disallow any closed-door meetings
    • require real-time broadcast of all meetings and immediate publication of minutes
    • all Board positions to be elected (beginning immediately)
    • create procedures for referendum and recall by the users
    • tie anti-spam enforcement requirements to new TLDs
    • withdraw the ICANN claim to global authority
    • form a collaborative body with the existing alternate DNS systems for global management
    • recognize the TLDs served by any alternate DNS root which will enter the collaborative arrangement
    • accept prior public use as the appropriate standard in deciding TLD authority claims
    • form an analogous collaborative body to manage IP address assignments

    Send me an email if you'd like any of these expanded or if you'd like my position on any other issues.

    Thanks for asking. ;-)
    -robin

  • Let's give this one election a try before we start talking about boycott. It certainly is rigged, but it is still possible for us to get a good candidate on the Board. As a candidate, of course, I'd prefer that you help publicize a radical candidacy than boycott the proceedings ... ;-)
  • Not sure when you were there, but did you have Zittrain? I'd rather see him. Lessig appears to be too much a poser.
    1. Out of all the nominees, only one happens to be female. Is ICANN just another "Good ol' Boy" group?
    2. Who is Lawrence Lessig (sp?) and why is he in here?
      <sarcasm>
    3. You'd think Al Gore would be nominated; after all, he invented the Internet and all. :)
      </sarcasm>
  • 1 - probably because of the major problems women have getting on in engineering and computing fields and the ones that have broken the glass ceilings are still just getting into the senior positions...

    2 - Professor of Law at one of the most prestigious law schools in the world, as was stated in the brief biog. Very important person to have on a bord which is involved in legislature wouldn't ya think ;-)

    A man who claiming to have invented the best distribution system for porn married to a censorious bitch. Ohh the irony.

  • Voting at ICANN (Score:4)

    by Vincent Bernat ( 218934 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @03:48AM (#865644)
    What I like with the ICANN is their democratic system. To propose a new TLD, you must pay 20000 $US. How can they stay serious when they speak of democraty ?

  • Opennic candidates (Score:4)

    by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @03:49AM (#865645)
    [shameless plug]

    Note: I am an Opennic user and supporter, but not an ICANN candidate.

    Opennic [unrated.net], an effort at democratizing the management of domains and TLDs, is putting forward ICANN candidates as well. I strongly urge everyone to support their efforts, as they are truly trying to make the entire domain management issue more equitable and democratic.

    We are using Opennic root servers where I work -- allowing us to resolve both ICANN domain names (.com, .org, etc.) and Opennic domains (.opennic, .null, .oss, .paroduy). Opennic has cooperative agreements with other alternative domains heirarchies as well, allowing those who use their root servers to resolve their TLDs as well (such as .xxx, .biz, etc.). It is a far more equitable and democratic arrangement than what ICANN is doing (e.g. anyone can start a TLD by submitting a proposal to the mailing list and getting more than 50% of the vote), and worthy of support by anyone who values the freedom and liberty of the internet, particularly those of us in the free software and open source communities.

    [/shameless plug]

  • Re: Miscellaneous points (Score:3)

    by ekmo ( 128842 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @04:22AM (#865646)
    For more information on Lawrence Lessig see his Everything node [everything2.com].
    Also see this article on Wired [wired.com] with more ICANN information...
  • I am a europian, so reading the list of people I get to choose from...

    Looking at the pool of people we get to pick from One professor, 2 telecoms people, 1 leader of a chamber of commerce (seems to specialise of being on advisory boards) and 1 domain name registar.

    And there was me thinging this was to stop big businesses having complete control...! France and Deutsche Telecom hmmm...! I think the tables are stacked enough already...!

    I guess Oliver Popov (professor) and Maria Livanos Cattaui (chamber of commerce and only woman canidate have my vote). As the look the most independant of a bad bunch.

    I WANT A VETO VOTE! At university we had a canidate called RON, Re Open Nominations..... very useful...

    I guess though we only have ourselves to blaim, just who can possibily afford to go to the meetings if you do not have outside backing to cover the costs and a flexible work to allow you the time.. Answer pretty much companies with visted interests! Fortunately the other Zones seem to have a better spread of acedemics who are the other group of people with the time....

    James
  • Information is available on The Register [theregister.co.uk].
    Or, if you are reading the 'alternative' conversation, see the BigBrother [terra.com] website. [smile]

  • Slashdot Poll! (Score:3)

    by Rupert ( 28001 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @04:27AM (#865649) Homepage Journal
    One for each of the regions/continents. Kind of like the US primary elections. Then we let the candidates know that they are "Slashdot-endorsed" and they can put that on their lawn signs.

    More seriously, while it is obvious that no one candidate can adequately represent everyone on slashdot (since Natalie Portman was not nominated), if a large group "gets behind" a candidate that every one agrees is "not too bad" they stand a much better chance of not having someone they hate elected. It sucks that it works this way, and this is the main reason that first past the post elections suck. But it's what we've got, so let's use it.


    --
  • I've got email confirmation, too-- but no snail mail. They were almost certainly unprepared for the load (wusses) and either:

    A. They're just behind on snail mail, or
    B. Their registration system managed to get us in, but failed to get us in the queue for snail mail, or
    C. They just don't like us.

  • Would 'predictions and ruminations on how /. reacts' be contained in the 5% of inanities?

    --
  • All recent articles on the upcoming ICANN elections mention that ICANN was expecting only about 5000 people to sign up to vote but they got over 50,000 submissions if not more; only about 15,000 actually got processed before the server blew, well before the member sign up deadline.

    Oddly, ICANN and the press appear to just shrug and let the matter drop. I'm sure that the same would happen if, say, my and 10,000 others' voting registrations placed in July wasn't processed in time for the November election due to load. </sarcasm> ICANN should really have extended the process to allow all people interested to register prior to this vote; maybe make sure the server is running smoothly, and allow 2 weeks for people to reregister their information making sure that everyone gets to make their voice heard.

  • Anybody know Popov? (Score:3)

    by KjetilK ( 186133 ) <kjetil@@@kjernsmo...net> on Thursday August 10, 2000 @04:29AM (#865653) Homepage Journal
    Lessig seems to be a good guy for the job from North America, but being from Europe, I'm also curious about the European nominees.

    From the bios, it seems like this Professor Oliver B. Popov may be a good candidate:

    Dr. Popov is credited with being, along with a group of enthusiasts, the key person to bring the Internet to Macedonia

    I mean, being label as enthusiast when it comes to the internet usually means you are a geek, right?

    And, as I've called for before, any /.ers for member nomination? You've got 4 days...

  • There are tons of directory resources out there like X.500. I disagree with your statement that corperations drive the bleading edge. They do.

    We might think that individuals have the ability to run the course of the internet but it will be VERY hard for any individuals or non-profit groups (except ICANN) to take the rings of power from the internet.

    Admit it. I don't have $10,000+ a month to keep a fast pipe to the net and the servers / routers / redundancy / etc.. to keep a fully robust name server, which get nearly as much traffic as the root servers. I would if I could 8-),

    I can see that the opennic project has been setup effectively, but I would seriously doubt that they could handle NEARLY as much traffic that it takes to replace the ICANN root servers.
  • Stanford... Yale... they all look the same from this side of the water

    Thanks for the correction

  • Well at least it is better than the estimated 5000 people they were expecting to vote.

    ;-)
  • It hasn't loosened up. It has gotten worse.

    North America can only let three people into the ballot, so if four people ran, and I got 20% of the electorate to vote for me, I still might not get a space on the ballot of the three others got 25% each.

    It is even worse in Europe. They only have two spaces on the ballot open!!

  • Lessig is probably the best candidate on the list. He's got my vote.

  • I signed up. It was a painful wait.

    Now, I'd like to think that being an ALM counts as being "politically active", but right now it still feels pretty hollow. More like being politically contained.

    Anyhoo, let's hope we elect decent reps. I personally hope that a good number of member-nominated candidates win, or else I'll lose lots of faith in this whole At Large stuff.

    --
  • When those of us (and I'm sure many are) who are At Large Members of ICANN get the voting stage, I hope that we are able to make the best of the limited voice that we are given.

    Firstly, I would recommend that the idea of supporting the NOMCOM-nominated candidates be disposed of. I see no reason to support any candidate that was not chosen by the membership through a popular process. (Shameful that there was no popular nomination option, but self-nomination should provide enough of the same benefits of that.)

    Of course, ICANN does not seem to be performing much in the way of filtering this list of self-nominators. Amazingly, the list is fairly short, but I wouldn't be suprised to see it get immense over the weekend, as everyone and his brother decides that "if that guy can run, so can I". So, to avoid having to do that weeding out later, I'll go with the names that were on that list this morning (it has grown by four names in the past two hours).

    Secondly, we need to dispose of the notion that we can choose a candidate "who will represent all the users". This doesn't work. It doesn't work in government politics. It won't work here, and for the following reasons: One, who are "the users?" Are they everyone on the Internet? Everyone in the Internet technology field? Or everyone on the ICANN ALM? If you imagine a "user representative" being someone who periodically kibitzes with the userdom, and then returns to policymaking sessions armed with the opinions and decisions of the constituents, you are being far too idealist. (Even if such a situation were feasible, and desirable, we could do away with all representative government and replace it with direct democracy.) Besides, the only group which the ALM reps could realistically do this with would be the ALM membership.

    It remains then, that the best method of approaching representative elections is from the standpoint of which candidate is best able, without discussing it with me, of representing my views. In other words, choosing the person I most agree with.

    Furthermore, in terms of the effectiveness of the ALM voice, I think it's important that the candidate is selected by as close to a simple majority as possible -- i.e. agreed upon by as many people as possible. An election by plurality will weaken the effectiveness of the vote, as well as weaken the winning candidate's ability to say that s/he is representing "the users". I personally would want to see the winning candidate speak from as powerful a representative position as possible.

    Now, I don't know if anyone will agree with my opinions on the world of DNS, but I hold the following views about the domain naming system:

    1. The DNS registration system needs to be more tightly regulated -- i.e. certain restrictions should be made on the use of the existing domains. This includes gTLDs as well as national TLDs.
    2. The "domain name drought" is entirely imaginary, brought up only by marketers of large corporations who are simply jealous of those who had the sense or foresight to register similar names first, and themselves are too unimaginative to come up with, and market, other names.
    3. The development and cultivation of new domain names should be done by a thoughtful and open process by which a new TLD is approved solely on its merits as a categorizer of Internet sites (not just of Web sites). Such TLDs should also be added to the gTLD pool, not granted as exclusive property to individual registrars.
    4. We cannot dilute the TLD pool into a free-for-all, as it would make the TLD structure meaningless.
    5. Currently, ICANN is letting the DNS system fall apart into a big irreconcilable mess in these and other regards.

    (No, I am not a candidate.)

    In general, the perspective I take is one in which the current system has been allowed to be abused, and is leading into disarray. I want to see some better order in the DNS system, and I want it done with technical insight as well. I doubt many people share the above views, but I think in essence the perspective is shared.

    Going over the list of self-noms, I've done an assessment of how well each of these candidates are in tune with this perspective.

    I've skimmed lightly over most of the employment, qualification, and official status details, since although evidence of their technical expertise is important, their actual perspectives on the DNS system are most important to me. A lot of these candidates are saying boastful things like "I was here before there was TCP!!!", but that has no bearing to me on their perspective on ICANN. This information is best found in the Background sections.

    A few don't give anyone any reason to select them. The best example is Daniel Bowers, who offers the world nothing except becoming the first ICANN electoral troll in history. And Eric Lee lives in Europe, not North America, so I consider him disqualified for the North America position.

    Robin Bandy speaks in grandiose terms, referring not to personal views but to "the last remnant of a democratic system" on the Internet. She believes in the ideal direct-representation view I dismissed above; while its a nice idea, as all ideals are, I'm positive that Robin will fail in trying to meet this ideal, as so many others have.
    Terry Calhoun seems to espouse the same ideal, but more vaguely, with an added feelgood platform reminiscient of "Personal Power" tape #1. And Rick Wesson says the same thing, but almost as if transcribed from an grade school student council election. speech.

    Others don't espouse any viewpoint at all. Martin Goslar (Ph.D., that is) and Alan Herrell seemingly leave the question open. Leland Hardy, Sondlo Mhlaba, and Christopher Stewart don't mention anything at all about ICANN in their background explanations (though Chris does mention all the awards he won in high school). Teri Powell's reference page crashes my browser, so I don't know what he thinks -- but if his web page isn't reliably sound, I don't expect his ICANN views to be sound either. Finally, Robert Alberti talks mostly about MUDs, IRC, RPGing, and aikido, and only refers to "embracing change", without mentioning what change he has in mind.

    We're down to 3 candidates with something resembling content in their expression. Michael McNulty endorses gTLD dilution, and cross-TLD domain name exclusivity, which are both in opposition to my own views, but invalidate each other.

    So my decision (and recommendation) comes down to Karl Auerback and Daniel Chemko. Both seem to espouse an organized and logical-development view of DNS structure. Both seem to believe in ICANN fairness, responsibility, and egalitariance. They both seem to offer the viewpoints which can help keep ICANN on track and resist the current movement towards DNS chaos.

    Now, if you've not totally lost me so far, my recommendation is for Karl Auerbach. Daniel has a good platform, but is less technically experienced than Karl, and lacks any evidence of ability to handle organizational politics well. Karl shows both the ability and intent to act as a reasoning force on the ICANN board. Coupled with the fact that he shares some of my viewpoints, he's the best person to represent me.

    You of course, have to assess what is important to you in ICANN leadership and direction. Maybe you are AlterNic or OpenNic and you would love to see total gTLD deregulation, allowing the floodgates of meaningless TLDs to confuse the Internet. Maybe you are an executive of a large Internet corporation who wants the exclusive freedom to snatch up any domain associated with the name you happened to choose for your business. (Or maybe the idea of a lawyer-turned-geek warms your heart so much that you fall for Larry Lessig's act.) Regardless, there are still only a very few to choose from.

    I'm not going to argue the merits of my ICANN / DNS views over anyone else's, but I do hope that those on Slashdot, and those who joined the ALM, are able to have a coherent sense of what DNS structure would benefit the Internet as a whole the most. And I hope we can send a clear, strong message to the ICANN board when we choose a person to represent our views among them.

    --
  • Every time that something on /. would remind me about ICANN, I'd say, "Oh, yeah, while I'm thinking about it...," and try to register. And it would always be overloaded.

    The first time that I tried going directly to members.icann.org without proceeding from /. (i.e., /. was not the referring site), it worked.

    Naturally, I'm still waiting for the password and whatnot to arrive in snailmail.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Hi, RomulusNR.

    I'm Robin Bandy, the candidate. ;-)

    First, I get this a lot, so I'm used to it, but I am actally a guy. It's not a big deal, but I do like to see the correct pronoun get used.

    Did you go to my candidacy page [devnull.net]? I didn't put any detail in the form for ICANN because they said they would link if I provided URLS. I put several URLs in my post to them, and they are in the text, but they didn't actually make them links which diminshes their usefulness.

    If you do have any specific answers (rather than general opinion, which is what I put on the ICANN site) which I don't speak to on my site, please let me know.

  • I signed up on July 14th and still don't have the PIN either. Since I'm a candidate [devnull.net] as well, I sent them an email asking about it and basically was told not to worry. Heh.
  • Heh. Mine came in today, about 15 minutes after I'd mentioned here that I signed up on July 14th and hadn't received it yet. Nice timing.

  • I've got to throw in a "me, too," here, as I'm listed on Karl's endorsements page :)

    I've worked closely with Karl for a number of years on the InteropNet NOC Team (when it was still a harrowing experience :) ). He knows his stuff in all the important dimensions - technical, philsophical, ethical, etc. He's very much been "in the trenches" (quote borrowed from his ICANN At Large Candidate Page [icann.org]), and has used that experience to formulate a set of very good basic values centered around the individuals of the Internet's population (ie: not the corporations).

    Karl has a long history of interest in issues that are only now being recognized as "important" to the continued freedom of the Internet (an Intellectual Property law degree can work against corporatism as well as for it :) ).

    Visit his platform page, though. Don't let me put words into his mouth.

  • You are certainly correct about OpenNIC [unrated.net] being unable to handle the scale of traffic the ICANN root gets. We are working on it, though in a slightly different direction.

    Our goal is to get mirror servers for our TLDs dispersed as widely as possible so that, unlike the ICANN system, we would not have to handle much direct user traffic at the core machines. So, given time, we should be able to grow to the point that we can take as many requests/second as the ICANN root does.

    I think it's doable, though the only way we'll find out for sure is to keep trying. ;-)

  • Certainly. Although I am not a working to directly compete with the established community, I still like to develop possible technologies that may parallel or run over them.

    If you need an (unfortunately slow)cable connection in Canada, just give me an email at the dchemko of feelthegrey.com, and I will see to it that you have another node in the wall.

    Now that you have set up a fairly open system, have you put any thought to transport anonymity, or are you just aiming at decentralized control from ICANN?
  • I got my PIN yesterday and have completed the online activation process. Yippee.
  • The first registration period to be a Member-At-Large of the ICANN closed recently. Although their server was overloaded almost constantly, it seems they were continuously registering people slowly.

    How many slashdotters bothered to sign up to be a member? That is the only way to vote on who you want to represent you in the wolves den of ICANN politics. Even though the whole process has been corrupted by greedy corporatism, a few good members elected could help a great deal to knowing what is really going on behind the scenes in ICANN meetings.

    Even if you didn't sign up, then making your voice loud and clear on forums such as /. will let the voting members know how to vote. Lets try to keep the internet open and free of total corporate control. Sound off here with well reasoned research into each of the candidates background and corporate leaning.

    the AC

  • Re:Miscellaneous points (Score:4)

    by nosilA ( 8112 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @03:51AM (#865671)

    Out of all the nominees, only one happens to be female. Is ICANN just another "Good ol' Boy" group?


    I just don't think this is a big deal though. Don't be so quick to call discrimination... just because a group is mostly one gender doesn't mean it purposefully excludes the other. The vast majority of people in technical positions are male, at the IETF last week, there were perhaps 10% women, and that's a lot better than say the cartel (AFS administrators meeting), etc, etc. IEEE is mostly male, etc.


    Being a female engineer, I usually find myself in groups of lots of males, and at most 1 other female, but they don't see me as "the girl," they see me as their coworker. So why should you look at this list, find only one female, and single her out. Just let her be!


    -nosilA

  • Welcome to the world of business. It isn't a bunch of college students sitting around coding or making links on their webpage to whales blowing up. It always seems that sooner or later the old guy who has all the business sense becomes the CEO of the company. Look at theglobe.com. All I heard about was the 18 year-olds who started the company and see a 50 year old man as head now. It's sad how everything just gets convoluted in the red tape of the stock market (make that ticker tape).

    To get to the point, projects will always get to the "business" point sooner or later, and one has to be prepared and have that in mind. Nothing will go anywhere in North America (well widely distributed) without it. TV and the NET will only go so far, so learn to live with how projects will go. If you can work with the consequences (as Carmack and Gates have seen), and I use the word consequences because most hate all the legal BS, we might get somewhere and get through all the complaining about this-and-that.

    Even the samurai
    have teddy bears,
    and even the teddy bears

  • I found this at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/lessig.html: [harvard.edu]
    I am honored by the nomination by the ICANN board to the at-large membership position for North America, especially because I have been a critic of the ICANN process. I do not believe it is appropriate, however, to "campaign" for the board election until after the self-nominees have been selected. I will therefore not answer questions or give interviews about ICANN until that part of the nominating process is complete. I am sorry for any difficulty this might create.
  • I don't know how you see democracy, but for me, the congress man is choosen by citizens directly or not (I am not american, I don't know how you choose congressman). At ICANN, you must have a personal treasure to put a TLD in a basket. Or you must be a decision taker in some business (and not a small). Sorry, but it is not very democratic.
  • Hey, fuck, Larry's a right guy, I guess. He used to lecture us on Torts when I was at HLS (or as we in the law biz call it "fucken Hah-vud"). The man had a few problems; his attitude to hip-flasks in the lecture hall seemed a touch abstemious, and his views on cocaine marked him out as an outright prohibitionist. But he could light his farts with the best of 'em, and he swung a mean fucken bar-stool on the annual law school outing to New Haven. He may have turned into a fag when he moved out West; I myself tend to find my ass wiggling slightly if I have to go much further out than New Greenperndt, but you can't blame that on a guy.

    Anyways, the fucken ICANN needs a good lawyer on the board, as does every company in the fucken world. Only lawyers understand Tha Law, man. And, as the Holy Bible says "Those lesser breeds without the law, they are fucked".

    Larry L for president. Hip Hurray Hahvud!

  • I signed up July 20th.

    I have already received my PIN.

    I guess you'll get yours soon.
  • The glass isn't half-empty, and it's not half-full either.

    Come on. We're all engineers, engineer wannabees, or computer heads. What does this mean? You have twice as much glass as you need![*]

    Of course, this would fall under the 50% that complain about poll choices... you need to redefine your options to include that.

    [*] Unless you work at (NASA, a nuclear plant, pick one). Then it's a safety margin. If you work at Microsoft, you leave the glass the way it is but put holes in the side, hiding them with advertisements.
    --

  • Here is an analysis of the nominees (Score:4)

    by dialogbox ( 53438 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @04:51AM (#865678)
    If you would like a detailed analysis of the nominees, I strongly suggest you read this link [farber.net]. It is on Dave Farber's site, and the link is to an email Dave received from Hans Klein of CPSR [cpsr.org], Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.

    To quote the introduction of the message:

    "The ICANN Nominating Committee recently announced its nominees for the At Large elections. Here I offer some analysis of the nominees' backgrounds and assess their qualifications to represent Internet users.

    "In what follows I consider the following issues:

    I. Nominees' Technical Expertise

    II. Nominees' Qualifications to Represent Users

    III. Regional Breakdown and Gaps in the Set of Nominees

    "Let me first offer the conclusions: based on the limited information available to date, it seems that most of ICANN's proposed candidates reinforce the perspectives already present on the Board. Most come from the Internet supply industry, the intellectual property community, and the R&D community. Individuals from these groups possess impressive qualifications -- but not to represent Internet users. Only seven of ICANN's nominees seem appropriate to represent users, i.e. they offer perspectives that complement today's Supporting Organization directors. Some regions, most notably Europe, have *no* nominees with a clear user perspective. "
  • I signed up but as of this date I am still waiting for my PIN number.
  • Yes -- I received my PIN in the mail early last week. It worked fine.
  • from the don'tcha-hope-it's-not-all-a-shell-game? dept.

    I'll see your C Shell, and raise you a Korn Shell.

    (Insert sound of a thousand slashdot readers groaning here...)

  • According to the email I got last night, they had 138,000 registrations, far more than the 10,000 that they expected. I didn't have any problems with my registration which I did in June.

  • My wife and I both have received our snail mail confirmation. It took about two weeks.
  • How do you mean with transport anonymity? Like Zero Knowledge's setup? I think that the public VPN sort of thing is great, as is any form of transport layer point-to-point crypted link. But no, we haven't started looking at that yet. Too much other stuff to do, and we all have to make a living at the same time. ;-)
  • In an interview the day after he made his claim that he invented the internet, was asked of Gore:

    "Why did you make that ridiculous claim?"

    Said Gore, "I was tired from staying up all night inventing the camcorder."

    All this and more at The Al Gore Dance [algoredance.com], a site rife with jokes about everyone's favorite democrat.

    I'd rather be pepper-sprayed by a mountie,

  • "A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls."
    -- Vice President Al Gore

    All this and more Al Gore jokes, quotes, etc... at the Al Gore Dance [algoredance.com] web site... Oh my god, I've become a troll!

    I'd rather be pepper-sprayed by a mountie,

  • ICANN has made it as hard as possible for anyone to join. I only today completed my registration, after months of problems and waiting. What other organization expects you to have a Membership #, a password (chosen by them), and a PIN that they send to you...and then expects you to use them EVERYTIME!!

    They're clearly hoping that most of us will be too lazy or forgetful to sign up and participate consistently. The at-large memberships are for show only, so that they can pretend to be running it impartially.

    What a load!
  • The VPN side is part of it, but it is more like developing a routing scheme between seperate public like VPN nodes, and having the actual source of the transmission blocked, just a next hop type of thing.

    I know it would be a lot of work, but I see it having great potential...

  • I was pleased to see that the criteria for member nomination (once referred to as 'self-nomination') has been loosened up. 2% is still an onerous burden when you remember that you can't find out who your constituents are due to privacy rules, but it is much better than it was.

    Frankly, ICANN is at sea. We all know the issues they are facing, but I think we need to start thinking about the people from our community, and who can best represent North America in ICANN.

    Since I suspect that a large proportion of ICANN @Large members read this, I think we have a good chance of nominating and electing someone with the administrative skills, technical knowledge, and political savvy to really get something done out there.

  • I signed up on July 24 and am still waiting to receive my PIN via snailmail. Without it, I can't activate my membership.
  • After about two weeks of trying I actually managed to get registered... I got the confirmation email, but am still waiting on the snailmail portion. Has anyone received this yet?
    --
  • I want Mel to win - mainly so I can see more of her nakkid on the webcams... I also wanted her on the ICANN board (see this _is_ on topic), but only 96 other people backed me up. Not a large enough percentage apparently.
  • *laugh*

    did you count up the number of white guys too?

    Maybe there are more hispanics than any other race.

    Hmmm perhaps they are all older people and do not represent youth???

    SOUND THE ALARM!!! RACISM! SEXISM! AGEISM!

    Christ, get over it... your "prejudice finger-pointing" is SOOOOOOOO 1990's.

  • Here here, I second that motion. I like seeing her boobies to on the cams.

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