ICANN throws in towel
Jun 27th, 2008 by Mark
Listing under the weight of it’s own ineptitude ICANN has thrown up it’s hands and said:”aww, to hell with it!” Yesterday ICANN decided that instead of being good stewards of the domain name space, they will let insanity reign.
they are called ICAN’T for a reason
ICAAN has decided that instead of doing it’s job and managing what top level domain names (TLDs) exist, they will let anyone with a crackpot idea have one. Why you may ask?
Icann has been working towards opening up the 25-year-old net addresses for nearly six years. It was one of its founding goals in 1998.
Simple, they have failed to do it themselves. Remember these are the same idiots who have not been able to handle managing the system to date.
It’s the money silly
Oh did I forget to mention money? Oh darn.
The organisation has already spent close to $10m on the proposals - set to rise to $20m - and needs to recoup the costs.
Hmm, this sounds vaguely familiar. Government runs up bills and then demands that we pay higher taxes to feed their addiction err failure to be good stewards.
“The costs of developing and implementing this policy will be borne by the applicants,” he said. “But we’re certainly not setting this up for profit.”
What he means is, that you and I will pay for it in access fees, and lawsuits that will cripple the Internet.
See how good we are
Beyond that they are no longer targets of people who demand they be good stewards, or so they think.
The net’s regulator, Icann, voted unanimously to relax the strict rules on so-called “top-level” domain names, such as .com or .uk.
The decision means that companies could turn brands into web addresses, while individuals could use their names.
It also means that speculators can use brand names to attack companies, which I suspect is one reason this was done. Remember the ICAAN delegates tend to be very liberal and anti-West.
More fuel for the bonfire of destruction
They also decided that letters other than Latin (the characters that English uses) can now be used. This strikes me as another shot by the pan-anti-American crowd at the West.
A second proposal, to introduce domain names written in Asian, Arabic or other scripts, was also approved.
No one knows how this will work, if at all.
Many have pointed out that because of the scale of the plan, its introduction and effect will have to be monitored closely.
“I am concerned about spending our TLD name inheritance for future TLD users,” said Dave Wodelet, also of the Icann board.
“I certainly don’t want future generations to look back at us with disdain for not being good stewards of this limited TLD resource.”
However, he said, on balance, he felt that technical and administrative hurdles could be overcome.
The upshot of all this is another ‘gold rush’ that will cause a backlash and ultimately the demise of ICAAN. Good riddance. Sadly the damage will be done, and the Internet users will suffer.
“The major issue with the potentially large number of new TLDs is going to be for brand owners who will want to protect their trademarks,” said Mr Eggensperger.
“For a major pharmaceutical business, the cost of registering all of their trademarks when a new trademark is released runs into hundreds of thousands of pounds.”
Others point out that some generic domain names - such as .news or .sport - could become subject to contention and a bidding war.
Which has happened previously and ICAAN failed to deal with it.
“On balance, the board feels that adopting this resolution is in the best interests of the internet and the public at large,” said Icann board member Dennis Jennings.
No, you clowns are failures and don’t want to deal with the issues.
bye bye net neutrality
I also think this will be the undoing of “net neutrality”, as ICAAN seems to be only about collecting fees and pandering to the usual collection of idiots that have nothing better to do besides hate the West, and/or protest anyone and everything.
It’s clear that the idiots at ICAAN have no clue the repercussions they have unleashed.
Icann has said that it was “aware of all of the concerns” and that it had “considered them very carefully”.
Yea right. Anyone want to revisit the dot XXX domain issue? Well it’s coming, again.
Tags: net neutrality, ICAAN, TLD, domain, Internet
I wonder how this will effect the internet’s delicate porn to meaningful information ratio?
*lol* I am looking forward to the SPAM vs Porn cage match myself. Comment SPAM will no doubt skyrocket, as well.
Can you imagine the TLDs this will spawn? *lol* I can’t even put here the ones I can think of, off the top of my head.
Actually, this appears to be a particularly noxious response to the US Government requiring ICANN to validate and publish the “whois” information. If they can sufficiently obfuscate that issue with forcing the namespace to be 16 bit characters AND administered outside of US laws, then it is trivial to open the net to High Dollar fraud sites and your favorite Tattooed Druggies. Imagine trying to stop the imitation Viagra selling sites under these new “rules”. It will certainly eliminate the FBI “sting” operations so prevalent nowadays.
I suspect, from your comments that you’ve already read Lauren Weinstein’s take on this, but just in case,