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ICANN - WSIS Worlds Continue to Converge
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In the early 16th century, a devout monk from Germany visited Rome. He was awed to be at the very seat of Christendom. Then he looked around and was appalled at what he saw. He, and then Germany, and then much of Europe, awoke to the abuses of an institution that was claiming a monopoly on the right to mediate the relationship between man and God. The Roman Catholic Church of the time was selling indulgences (purporting to reduce your time in purgatory, for a fee), then spending the money on grand parties. Luther realized that there was nothing in the sacred texts themselves that gave any intermediate institution the exclusive power or right to stand between individuals and salvation.
It’s time for netizens to come to a similar realization about their direct relationship with the empowerment offered by the internet. None of the core principles that produced the net give any set of clerics – even the original engineers, or ISOC, much less ICANN – the right to prevent innovation at the edge. Indeed, the sacred texts of the net explicitly empower decentralized action. The internet arose because everything not prohibited was permitted. Now, ICANN is itself holding new TLDs, and even new services from existing registries and registrars, in purgatory – occasionally deigning to accept high fees to let some proposals proceed. (Registries and registrars both provide services at the edge, running their own databases on their own servers.) Instead of acting appropriately to define (and ban) sin, the clerics of the internet are seeking to set themselves up as intermediaries who must be pleased and paid before anyone can do anything new.
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Oh crap, hopefully we're close to the conclusion of Jim Fleming nailing his 95 feces to the door. -g
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