[governance] How Do Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility Plan to Change the Laws of Physics ?

[Jim Fleming]

The following statement recently appeared in one of those groups of clueless
well-meaning
hand-waving people who seem to make a career of traveling around being "Root
Groupies".
Maybe they should be called, the Grateful Root road-show ?

"5. Possible fracturing of the address space

5.1  The GNSO will continue to support a domain name system that
consists of globally unique identifiers that ensures two users in
different parts of the Internet using the same application would
experience the same application behaviour when using the same identifier
(predictability), and that this behaviour is repeatable at different
times of the day (reliability).
- <insert summary of current status of alternative roots etc that may
not be consistent with this objective>"

With respect to the above statement, here is a question.
How Do Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility Plan to Change the
Laws of Physics ?

"experience the same application behaviour" ?

How do millions of people on a big island laced with high-speed broad-band
services travel to some remote island with a dial-up equivalent for the
entire island and expect to "experience the same application behaviour" ?

Are people expected to only use the Least-Common-Denominator services ?
(text email, IRC chat and text-only browsing ?)

Also, where is it required that content providers ensure that people
"experience the same application behaviour" ?

If someone wants to serve a local market with different content than remote
markets, that is not allowed ?

Also, what does any of that have to do with "alternate roots" ? Anyone that
thinks any root is required in this day and age is very out of date. Roots
generally refer to domain name spaces and the above talks about address
spaces. Do people even know the difference ? Are people aware that DNS is
not required to operate the Internet ? Are people aware that binary
addressing is required, and more importantly routing (or forwarding) ?

Returning to the laws of physics, if places in the world are not routable,
because they do not have the band-width to support the "application
behaviour" then why would that place be allocated address space ? and also
why would ISPs and carriers attempt to route (or forward) there when they
know that the laws of physics are not going to change and the service will
not work ?

Do these various "governance groups" understand how silly they look when
they propose the equivlent of saying they want to stand on a high hill and
demand that everyone be able to hear their voice on planet Earth ? with no
concern given about the way sound travels, the shape of the planet, etc. It
becomes even more silly (and ironic) when one hears that governments are
going to travel great distances to decide on topics that would negate the
need for that travel if they had the band-width that would allow the meeting
to be beamed to them rather than transport them to the meeting.

It is really amazing that year after year, meat-space people spend more and
more time and money and raise more taxes to travel around to discuss
governing a medium they largely do not understand or use. Meanwhile, the
Internet community continues to grow and routes around the meat-space
Grateful Root road-show which certainly does not represent the Internet
community.

For people in the Internet community, who also pay attention to the laws of
physics, here is a tid-bit to show there is some hope beyond the meat-space
nonsense:

 "Skype pioneered free Internet phone calls and our rapid growth has
recently jumped to more than 170,000 new users signing up everyday. We are
sure our new relationship with Linksys will boost this rate further by
giving people worldwide the opportunity to cut phone bills and enjoy the
convenience of making and receiving free Skype calls on the CIT200 wherever
they are, in the home or office, away from their computer,"

"170,000 new users signing up everyday", they must be finding something that
works and holds their interest. Do you think they are having meetings ?


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