Gordon Cook writes: > ... It is a house of cards that a well timed and well placed > lawsuit will bring crashing down. All of which makes Mike > Roberts and Esther Dysons behavior even more bizarre. You > would think they would be looking for friends among us rather > than treating us with their Simsean created legal disdain. > Several folk have told me that the only legal authority that > ICANN can ever have is what the internet community is willing > to grant it. The Internet Community is an interesting term in a world where, increasingly, normal citizens are surging to utilize the Internet as just another part of everyday life. While some may feel there to be some sort of cyber culture it is my opinion that no such bird exists any longer (if ever). No. Correction. Once upon a time there *was* a sub-culture of the Internet. I remember what it was - odd, insular, male dominated, xenophobic, rabidly anti-commercial and polite in a sort of clubby way. But all that is over, gone, kaput. The reality is there is no community here that has not been disintegrated and replaced by the hundreds of millions of citizens of all nations who have taken over and now must control the internet. Through normal, standard, real-time processes. And yet there are persons in whose interests it is to prevent normal, civil procedures and preserve this silly notion of an Internet culture. With all of it's internicine and usually secret practices and policies. Why? The answer to this question unravels all of the events of recent years. A vast amount of money and power rides on all of these discussions. Money and power that is most effectively protected and further generated without scrutiny or oversight. Money and power in the hands of many of those folks fortunate enough to have been there before the rest of use. Folks who are resisting the loss of their power and money by wrapping themselves in the "bogus "Netizen" flag and all of the silly shite and obsolete ways of their netiquette culture. Well my response is that time will do our work. Time and the pressure of millions of citizens. Mere individuals, minor corporations and even allegedly all-mighty governments can't really resist popular tumult. I suspect it will only be a matter of time before ICANN, Roberts and Dyson are relegated to dim history. As well as these lists and all the fluff that is occuring on them. Relegated to little consulted archives the subject of obscure dissertations in the next millenia. The real events in International Government and the regulation of it's computer communications network lie in the future. How distant, I don't know. But it is not here and it is not now. A house of cards indeed. Waiting for the first good breeze to knock it all down. The show goes on... Bob Allisat Free Community Network _ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fcn.net _ http://fcn.net/allisat = http://robin.fcn.net [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________ To receive the digest version instead, send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To SUBSCRIBE forward this message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNSUBSCRIBE, forward this message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Problems/suggestions regarding this list? Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___END____________________________________________
