[governance] Re: It's Time to Stop ICANN's Top-Level Domain (TLD) Lunacy!

[Mawaki Chango]

Yeah, I too was surprised that Karl stopped right there ;)

And more: there's something I'm not seeing from nearly all the
comments/reactions here. There are two parts in Lauren's main
statement/title: the infrastructure and the institution managing it. I read
"ICANN's Top-level Domain" (or ICANN's domain name system) as inseparable in
that statement. And even if s/he refers to search engines today as one
argument for contending that *that* DNS (and not necessarily *the* DNS) is
irrelevant, I still don't think s/he said enough *in that post* for anyone
to conclude that what is being proposed here is to take down the DNS and let
the search engines do the job.

Now I had a different thought after I read it myself, which relates to the
institution not the infrastructure (I didn't see hint of that in the IGP
post referred to by Milton, either. And by that I'm not saying none of the
parties here never raised these concerns before, but just that they haven't
in their comments to this blog post, except maybe Parminder.) Are we
witnessing the replacement of one monopolistic mindset by another one, the
replacement of a multistate-driven (or intergovernmental) monopoly by a
private monopoly, at the global level? (I guess both governments and ICANN
may claim to be "nonprofit" so I'm skipping that qualifier.) Yes, with the
private structure more people, private citizens get to talk, but who and
what really get to influence the ultimate policy outcome? Whose interests
are consistently attended to? Or do you folks mean to say that there is
nothing monopolistic regarding how ICANN actually goes about managing the
DNS?

I am wondering.

Best,
Mawaki

On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 6:39 AM, Meryem Marzouki <meryem at marzouki.info>wrote:

>
> Le 5 nov. 10 à 09:37, Stephane Bortzmeyer a écrit :
>
>
>  The mention of search engines is especially stupid: domain names
>> provide exactly what is missing with search engines, stability. Today,
>> "afnic" in Google goes (depending on your previous searches) to
>> <http://www.afnic.fr/> Tomorrow, it may suddenly goes to
>> <http://www.afnic.af.mil/> or to <http://www.tsatexas.org/>.
>>
>
> Agree and let me add that, beyond the stability issue, relying on search
> engines only would lead to many fundamental rights and democracy concerns (I
> mean even more than with the current DNS system subject to ICANN diktat),
> especially given lack of transparency of commercial search engines criteria
> and market dominance by a single player.
>
> I'm disappointed that Karl hasn't pointed to the source of all problems
> with current DNS scheme management: its unicity. In general, his booster
> shots on alternative DNS are most welcome -- by me at least;)))
>
> Best,
> Meryem
>
>
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