Richard J. Sexton wrote:
>
> Do you really want to live in a world where icann controls the > namespace?
They probably do. CPSR - like CDT, EFF, Markle, et al - never
attempted to analyz the possibilities of Internet governance until
after ICANN had become legitimized. These non-profits are the
"faithful opposition". They will never stop hoping to change ICANN
from within, despite the massive evidence that this cannot be done.
They are more afraid of offending anyone than they are of the
Internet becoming the tool of IBM.
Your allusion to Chamberlain is perfectly appropriate. The policy of
appeasement that has been followed by CPSR, the other non-profits,
and even ICANNWatch, the BWG, IDNO, ACM, ad infinitum, is what has
permitted ICANN to get where it is. If they had opposed it from the
first, from the moment that the surreptitious Board appeared, we
would not be in the predicament we are today. But they will never
learn their lesson, and will be submitting "comments" to the black
hole, where they are automatically conveyed to the wastebasket,
until doomsday.
"Appease the dictators" is the byword of the non-profit orgs. "Don't
make the fascists angry" is the strategy of the computer
professionals for social responsibility. "We're all white
middle-class Americans, so let's be friends" is the lemma of the
ineffectual do-gooders who stand by and do nothing while the
unprincipled schemers take what they want.
Michael Sondow
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images on the screen, the mechanisms that produce them, or
the world that they are striving to represent."
--Oscar Kenshur, in 'The Allure of the Hybrid'
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