I wasn't going to write anything here at all today, because the continuously unfolding tragedy in Southeast Asia (more than 150,000 dead) makes everything I do seem irrelevant.

But I witnessed some mild, irrelevant, continuously unfolding misery tonight and I've decided to talk about it anyway.

It happened to this guy:

He wasn't even around to defend himself.

Things started out fine.  It is a mild evening here in NYC, and the huge crowd in this beautiful place was content and calm:

That's St. Bartholomew Church, at 51st and Park.  Fine place.  But a disaster happened here tonight.

Very kind and very skilled musicians played all six Brandenburg concerti, led by a virtuouso harpsichordist named Anthony Newman.  Newman's personal web site says he's the "High Priest of Bach." 

He may be the High Priest, but from the audience's perspective he was a maniacal, driving, clanging half a measure ahead of the group the entire time.  Look, I'm sure this was no one's fault, and I'm sure the people up in front of all of us thought they were playing together.  And they probably were at some point long ago, before the church's sound system took over.  I think what happened is that the harpsichord was separately miked (that's the kind of treatment High Priests get) but no one accounted for the fact that everyone else's sound would take a looong time to get to us through the hugeness of the church.  People actually started to walk out, like it was the Rite of Spring or something.

Not only was High Priest perceived to be (by us, the audience, and don't we matter?) way ahead of everyone else, but the mike was also powerfully responsive to one particular note the harpsichord played.  So there was a big resonant WHOMP every time this note showed up -- any old time, in some big-deal flurry of passage work, or at the end of a run, you name it -- WHOMP.

Between movements, the High Priest said some things that no one could hear.  The people around me waved their arms and said "WE CAN'T HEAR YOU."  And then he would talk louder for a few moments before completely fading out again.  After the last inaudible announcement, the woman next to me (a continuous candy-unwrapping type) said, exasperatedly, "What-EVUH!"

Six complete, entire, whole concerti, six of everyone's all-time favorite pieces, and almost every moment was anguish, mud, WHOMP, and despair.  That maniac at the keyboard was off, anticipating everything, and nothing fit.  It was like a frighteningly crowded intersection with six VW Bugs trying to fit into one lane, jockeying and buzzing and WHOMPing.  Every once in a while the sky would clear when the harpsichord shut up for a while, and there were moments of real beauty -- we all felt that.  In the slow movements there was enough time for unanimity to happen now and again.

But otherwise -- a continuously unfolding, minor, irrelevant disaster, right there on Park Avenue.  Someone get St. Bart's a sound guy.

Happy new year to you, too.

Thanks to a pointer from Dave Winer, I just read a longish piece from the Boston Phoenix about podcasting.  And tonight at dinner it seemed as if podcasting was dominating the conversation -- how to book the guests, how to keep them slightly (mentally) off-balance as you interview them on your couch, whether to interview avatars or not (and in what setting), how often to send out your podcasts, what signature jingle to use -- and I know I'm falling down on the job here by not podcasting.

What's my hesitation?  It took me longer than it took Bret to start blogging, and I'm clearly waaay behind him when it comes to the pod.  Is this just late adoption?  Or is something else going on?

I have a confession to make.  Just between you and me.  I haven't listened to podcasts.  I just haven't.  I ... like .... text.  I like scanning Joi's text and Joho's text and everyone else's text.  I even like fonts.  Maybe I don't want to be on someone else's timescale -- maybe I only want to read the first lines of paragraphs and not wait for their stories and music to roll out.  But I do love This American Life. 

Maybe I'm really an old-media person pretending to be enthusiastic about new media.  Maybe a blog was just enough old-new to be palatable for me.  Dave Winer actually said this about me (publicly) at the Berkman podcasting session:  "You don't have a port for podcasting."  Ouch.

Watch.  In a few months I'll finally figure it out, waaay after Bret.  Again.

Susan Sontag died today. 

I particularly remember her essay about meeting with Thomas Mann after she read The Magic Mountain.  She was 14 and a huge fan.  She found it difficult to talk to the great man, but observed many things.

"In America" won the National Book Award, but in this book interview Sontag talks about many things that interested her - including illness, an interest that started with Mann but became more personal as time went on.

From The Times's obituary:

Over four decades, public response to Ms. Sontag remained irreconcilably divided. She was described, variously, as explosive, anticlimactic, original, trendy, iconoclastic, captivating, hollow, rhapsodic, naïve, sophisticated, approachable, abrasive, aloof, attention-seeking, charming, condescending, populist, puritanical, sybaritic, sincere, posturing, ascetic, voluptuary, right-wing, left-wing, mannered, formidable, brilliant, profound, superficial, ardent, bloodless, dogmatic, challenging, ambivalent, accessible, lofty, erudite, lucid, inscrutable, solipsistic, intellectual, visceral, reasoned, pretentious, portentous, maddening, lyrical, abstract, narrative, acerbic, opportunistic, chilly, effusive, careerist, sober, gimmicky, relevant, passé, facile, illogical, ambivalent, polemical, didactic, tenacious, slippery, celebratory, banal, untenable, doctrinaire, ecstatic, melancholic, humorous, humorless, deadpan, rhapsodic, aloof, glib, cantankerous and clever. No one ever called her dull.

Ray Kurzweil invented the first synthesizer that sounded just like a real piano.  He believes that computers will soon be smarter than humans.  And now he wants to live forever.  From The Times today:

"I am serious about it," said Mr. Kurzweil, a wiry man with few lines on his face for a 56-year-old. "I think death is a tragedy. I think aging is a tragedy. And going beyond our limitations is what our species is all about."

Kurzweil's suggestions:  take a lot of supplements (he takes 250 pills a day), don't eat a lot of carbohydrates or fat, meditate, exercise.  Not surprising.  But the goal is to live for another 50 years.  If you do that, Kurzweil confidently suspects you may be able to live forever, thanks to advances in technology.  That's surprising.

There's no limit to the advice you can get on this topic.  Eat almost nothing (you'll be irritated, but you'll still be alive).  Be Sardinian.  Drink a lot of red wine.

Last week I was a guest at a birthday party thrown by the host for himself.  He got 180 friends together and sang all evening to us -- songs from his past, not songs he had written -- and it was really something.  It was not pathetic and self-serving, although it easily could have been.  It was a great evening.  Two guys next to me were grousing about getting older ("it's all downhill, it's so awful").  It seems to me that if you can still sing (or do something else -- write software?) and still have some friends around, it might be fine to live forever.

Personally, though, I'm not sure I'm willing to give up on bagels to get there.

The Post's Michael Dobbs describes his morning swim; the BBC's Roland Burek says he never felt the earthquake.

Today's post was going to be about Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev (and, in particular, their pairing in Romeo and Juliet in the early 1960s).  And I thought a little Renee Fleming moment would be worth writing about, and I was going to link to a Handel-Halvorsen duo for violin and viola that seemed important earlier today.  These are all beautiful and highly-structured things.

But there is nothing quite as awesome as a magnitude 8.9 earthquake.  Indian authorities didn't even consider that tsunamis might follow -- nothing like this had ever happened there before.  There is beauty, and then there is terrible beauty.

Contnuing to work through the "internet as giant complex adaptive system" theme.  The great thing is that our cells are subcritical -- they're not given to bursts of chain-reaction creativity.  (This allows us to avoid fusing with our food.)  The universe as a whole is supracritical (chain reactions feeding into chain reactions -- very creative place).  Communities of cells will evolve to the boundary between supra-sub, always yearning to stay whole but wanting to be connected and fused at the same time. 

All of this life-creation happens spontaneously -- you just need enough density of diverse chemicals and an infusion of energy, and then order emerges.  It's this spontaneously-arising order on which natural selection operates (or so says Stuart Kauffman). 

And we may already be seeing spontaneously arising, pluralistic order (lots of different communities of cells, vibrating at the edge of criticality) online already.  All we can do is describe it; we can't predict what will happen next. 

The crucial step (the causally important step) has got to be that initial fusion of energy and diversity, plus the existence of a few semi-permeable cell walls.  So what's "energy" online?  I think it has to be information.

And then there's Christmas.  

Blogging will be (has been) slow for a few days.  Here is a poem to read that someone emailed me recently. 

I made a big mistake earlier today.  I announced proudly that someone was from State X when in fact that person is from nearby State Y and held a key public office there for a decade.

Ouch.

I want to clear the air right now and tell everyone that I'm sorry for doing that.  My excuse: I'm from California.  Enough said. 

Jay Rosen tells us: 

On Friday, Dec. 17, the News & Record, daily newspaper in Greensboro, NC, owned by Landmark Communications, announced that it was looking to overhaul its website (www.news-record.com) and enter a period of invention, including rapid evolution away from the standard newspaper site-- into more of an online community, a public square, or something equally "transformative" in nature.

The newspaper is actively looking for input, and comments are due by Dec. 24 -- Friday.

Newspapers have been very slow to do anything online that's different from...what they do offline.  The brand is so important, and the editor's role is so important, that papers can't imagine changing the "product" (and loosening the editorial reins) but branding it as their own.

Here's an idea:  how about (in addition to replicating the paper online, which is a valuable resource) having an entirely different community site that is branded separately but relatedly.  That might help management relax.  Then aggregate blogs, hold forums, have polls, have very-local-weather reports, review movies, have the best possible community events calendar, create (simple, low-barrier-to-entry) virtual worlds, assign stories collectively, have photo contests, whatever.  But in a slightly different voice. 

One model I like is the Time Out New York offline setup. It's got the voice of an informal blog, with regular columnists, plus all possible information about all possible events.  It's overwhelming, but I can imagine that the online Greensboro version might have a more manageable amount of information.  Time Out Greensboro plus The Aggregated Voice of Greensboro -- with revenue coming only from large concerns placing listings.  No subscriber fees or "premium" content that's hard to get to -- the friendly craigslist model. 

Milton Mueller (together with a large distinguished team of academics) has put together a very short paper [pdf] suggesting that a framework of norms and principles be established for internet governance.

The team's paper should be taken seriously.  They make the provocative suggestion that "The [internet governance] situation is very similar to that which was faced in dealing with climate change in the 1980's," and so therefore innovative institutional ideas are needed -- for climate change, the UN established a "framework convention" that set some key groundrules, and some similar effort (the team intimates) should be started here by the UN.

Hmm.  Climate change.  According to the UN,

"The average temperature of the earth's surface has risen by 0.6 degrees C since the late 1800s. It is expected to increase by another 1.4 to 5.8 degrees C by the year 2100 -- a rapid and profound change. Even if the minimum predicted increase takes place, it will be larger than any century-long trend in the last 10,000 years. . . .

The current warming trend is expected to cause extinctions. Numerous plant and animal species, already weakened by pollution and loss of habitat, are not expected to survive the next 100 years. Human beings, while not threatened in this way, are likely to face mounting difficulties. Recent severe storms, floods and droughts, for example, appear to show that computer models predicting more frequent "extreme weather events" are on target."

The internet is like the climate in that it affects everyone and doesn't obey geographical boundaries.  There's a problem with the climate -- it's getting hotter because of industrialization.  So we have to cooperate to figure out how to turn the heat down.  That's a hard problem.

But what's the "problem" with the internet?  Doesn't suggesting a hybrid institutional approach modeled on climate change assume that there's a problem?  And doesn't suggesting a "framework" suggest in turn that someone should be in charge -- and that someone is the UN?  

So -- just asking questions here, guys -- okay, the internet is a dynamic biosphere, fine.  But I'm not convinced the internet biosphere is in trouble other than from well-meaning efforts to "govern" it.  And I'm worried that the internet is more susceptible to international "governance" (closing-down) efforts -- all in the name of security and protection against IP infringement -- than the climate is. 

We need World Net Day. 

So what happened to ratification of the Council of Europe's Cybercrime Convention?  We had a cheery hearing in June, but since then there's been senatorial silence, as far as I can tell.

The Convention makes the US domestic efforts on CALEA look tame.  Puppy-like.

Each ratifier of the Convention is required to "empower its competent authorities" to "compel" service providers, "within [their] existing technical capability," to cooperate and assist the competent authorities in the interception and recording of both "traffic data" and "content data" in realtime of  communications transmitted by means of a computer system.   And service providers are to be obliged to "keep confidential the fact of and any information about the execution of any power provided for" in these surveillance provisions. 

These are broader requirements than any possible reading of CALEA -- which specifically deals with non-content data and does not gag service providers -- would support.  

The Convention does say that service providers can be compelled only within their "existing technical capabilities."  As we have seen in the DOJ response in the FCC's CALEA proceeding, however, any innovator's reliance on such "existing technical capabilities" language would be misplaced.  Law enforcement agencies will want pre-launch approval discretion.

Moreover, law enforcement authorities in countries that ratify the Convention undertake to provide online wiretap assistance (for both content and traffic data) to their treaty partners in the form of a "point of contact available on a 24 hour, 7 day per week basis in order to ensure the provision of immediate assistance for the purpose of investigations or proceedings concerning criminal offences related to computer systems and data, or for the collection of evidence in electronic form of a criminal offence."  The FCC may believe that because the Convention is about to be ratified it should provide the means for assisting law enforcement to carry out these international obligations.

So -- is the Convention about to be ratified in the US?  I have a feeling the pressure was taken off for the election period and that we'll see it come up rather quickly early in 2005.  BSA, ITAA and a bunch of other trade associations recently issued supportive press releases.

It's all too much for me. I am going off to read a volume of Proust, slowly. 

On February 22, there will be a hearing on the FCC's jurisdiction to adopt the broadcast flag rule.  (That's a really big day in my life already, because Clay Shirky is coming to talk to the advanced cyberlaw seminar that day.) 

Michael Geist told us this several months ago, but I went back today and soaked it in.  Canada, our sane neighbor to the north, is interested in adopting the flag regime.  I poked around online and found this "priorities for 2005" [word doc] document from the Radio Advisory Board of Canada (note cheery radio guy in picture) blithely noting that they'll be working on a standard for "recognition of the broadcast flag."

Meanwhile, Jamie Love and Manon Ress have been bravely following and reporting on the WIPO broadcasting treaty talks.  (This article is a good report of the confusion and alarm that filled the room in November when the chairman decided to ram things through and call for a straw vote so as to isolate dissenters.)

Here's my understanding of how these extra-US events fit within the strategy that brought us the November 2003 flag order:  Let's do everything everywhere to make sure that no unauthorized online transmissions of our stuff can easily occur.

Let's pass state laws that prohibit the attachment of unauthorized devices to broadband networks.  Let's have federal regulations that prohibit the manufacture of "noncompliant" devices.  Let's have services be contributorily liable for copyright infringement.  Let's promote the creation of closed circles of safe machines, all stubbornly refusing to interoperate with those unclean, unauthorized devices. Let's have our closest friends adopt the flag as well, so it comes to feel like a global inevitability. Let's create a treaty making online transmission of a particular stream of bits the exclusive province of webcasters -- whether or not they had a hand in creating the material in question.  With those exclusive rights in hand, and with a worldwide agreement establishing the illegality of circumventing any efforts a broadcaster/webcaster makes to protect content, we can get manufacturers all over the world to build "compliant" devices. 

The strategy is still in place, but there are some frayed bits around the edges.  Some of the state laws didn't pass.  Despite the MPAA's best efforts, Tivo managed to get a content protection technology approved by the FCC that permits a copy of a broadcast to be sent to a computer over the internet.  Sure, the computer has to be wearing a dongle, and it's a shriveled, pale imitation of free-flowing bits, but it's something.  Geist is on the case in Canada.  Some influential WIPO members aren't so sure they need a broadcasting treaty, and don't like being rushed.

It's far too early to feel optimistic about February 22, so all I'm doing here is thanking Michael, Jamie, Manon, and everyone else who follows this issue around the world.  We're all in this together.

Let's say you're dividing your time between weeks in the jungle exploring Mayan ruins and addictively surfing the net from your Manhattan apartment -- but what you'd really like to be doing is writing the Great American Novel. Or let's say you're interested in becoming a well-read person while trying to turn out newpaper columns and commuting and keeping up with your family (and addictively responding to email from your office).  Or maybe you just want to get some long law review article written that will change the world, but you keep wondering whether someone has been trying to get in touch with you online.

Maybe even now you're waiting for peace and focus to descend on you, and you're wishing that you had a long plane flight ahead - anything, anything at all to keep you from being distracted.

It's clear that speakers can't take the attention of their audiences for granted.  But it's also apparent that knowledge-workers (or whoever it is that might be reading these words right now) can't take their own attention for granted.  This focus can be split in a hundred pieces across a dozen tasks every day.  We can be deeply embedded in a hundred different online communities.  That's all fine. 

But what's happening to our ability to do longterm work?  Do we now have to go to greater lengths than earlier generations did to get anything done?  Is there a cost to this fractured attention, or are we just getting better at processing information -- so that we really can listen to a podcast, write an email, open a chat session, and write the Great American Novel all at once?

Gotta go.  Someone's IMing me.

In their November 2004 comments [warning -- enormous pdf] in the CALEA proceeding now pending before the FCC, law enforcement has made clear that they want everyone to ask permission before launching. 

This is a big deal.

All IP-enabled services that might be covered by CALEA and that don't want to go through some post-launch "deficiency" proceeding with the FBI (ark! our service has been enjoined!) will go through pre-deployment review for "compliance" with unstated requirements. 

That's right -- the DOJ doesn't know exactly what information it will require, or what form it will need to be in, or who should do what to get it.  All of that will be worked out behind closed doors, with people who are anxious to launch.

That means prior approval of internet services by DOJ.  If you don't go through such a process, DOJ will penalize you. In DOJ's view, any service provider must submit their proposed new application to FCC and FBI review "well before deployment of the service in question"; and "DOJ would certainly consider a service provider's failure to request such guidance in any enforcement action." (all of this is on p.38 of the huge pdf).

Now, everyone is already required to help law enforcement execute wiretap requests.  That's built into the federal criminal code.  And there is no evidence that DOJ is having trouble getting these requests carried out.  Zip.  This is a back-door design mandate -- negotiated design mandate -- that DOJ could never get through Congress.  (I hope.)

This is like the "interim process" set up by the FCC in the flag context.  There, as here, FCC set a broad framework, saying it wanted to protect DTV.  (Here, FCC will say it wants to protect us against terrorists.  Piracy/terrorism -- one big group of Bad Guys.)  There, as likely will happen here, FCC threw up its hands when confronted with the hard details -- what exactly do you want us to do? -- and gave over control to another actor.

In the flag world, that other actor was and is the MPAA, which persuaded several content protection technology developers to give up on allowing content to traverse the public internet -- even though the line maintained by the MPAA was very different than the standard set by the FCC (which talked about indiscriminate online distribution). 

All of this dampening effect on innovation is incremental.  So our machines are a little broken. So our online services have been designed with law enforcement in mind.  All of this happens in a negotiated, soft way, with no real public scrutiny.  Why should we care?

We should care because both of these steps, now being echoed around the world, will have (if successful) deep effects on the openness of online life.  Both of these are initial, baby steps that may lead to much more serious incursions. 

Back in 1984, John W. Patterson contributed an essay called "Thermodynamics and Evolution" to a volume of scientific responses to creationism. 

Creationists have claimed that the second law of thermodynamics ("The Entropy Inventory of the World Tends to a Maximum") conflicts with evolution.  How could evolution to higher, more ordered, forms of life be possible when the universe tends towards disorder?  The answer is an elegant one: 

1.  Yes, there are many spontaneous "downhill" (towards disorder) processes going on all the time in the universe.  The universe, as a whole, is a closed system to which the second law applies.

2.  These downhill processes provide the energy fluxes/differences that prompt uphill (towards order) developments.

3.  As long as the downhill flows exceed -- overall -- the constructive processes of evolution, the second law is not violated.  Entropy increases, on the whole.

4.   But inside open systems like the earth's biosphere (or an ideally end-to-end internet), order is increasing.

5.  It turns out that energy and entropy are subject to being transferred from place to place in the universe.  Remember, although the universe as a whole is an isolated system, many things inside it are not.  No organism is an isolated system. 

6.  Patterson uses a metaphorical walled-off courtyard to represent the universe.  It is open to the sky, and snow is falling.  The snowfall represents the entropy inventory.  Within the courtyard, however, wind can create deep local furrows -- these are examples of increasing order in open systems.  That entropy decrease can occur as long as it is coupled with compensating (or overcompensating) entropy increases nearby.

7.  Localized entropy reduction is very common.  We get "order for free" all the time, as long as the system in question is open to outside energy and is at a critical state (what Prigogine calls a "dissipative" system).  These dissipative systems have had heat or other forms of energy applied to them, have become unstable, and have therefore undergone a phase change into highly ordered configurations. 

8.  All of these dissipative systems have to do something with their excess entropy.  A dishwasher puts out heat; so does a laptop.  Inside, order reigns -- as long as more entropy is expelled than is ingested. 

9.  This local order emerges BECAUSE the outside area is becoming increasingly disorganized.  The vast majority of mutations are discarded or disappear.  Meanwhile, the energy requirements of living systems are derived from all of these things flowing "downhill" -- towards disorder.  As long as the dominant tendency is downhill, creating tensions and differences that provide energy, small uphill steps are made possible by the feedback loops in dissipative systems. 

10.  Patterson notes that "entropy" has been a useful term for creationists to use (evolution violates the rules of entropy!) because no one understands what it means.  Indeed, Claude Shannon was advised by Jon Von Neumann to call his "uncertainty function" by the name "entropy."  Von Neumann said, "No one knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage."

Here is Patterson's conclusion:

"In reality, ... the 'uphill' processes associated with life not only are compatible with entropy and the second law, but actually depend on them for the energy fluxes off of which they feed.  Numerous other kinds of backward processes in simpler, nonliving systems also proceed in this way, and do so in complete accord with the second law."

This all ties to internet governance.  A sufficiently open net will tend towards order, not chaos -- and will do so on its own, with no external pilot.

(Thanks to Seth Schoen for the pointer.)

The Geico case against Google is in open court in the Eastern District of Virginia beginning today.

I don't get it.  Say a drug store is selling, oh, Old Spice.  If the drug store allowed someone to stand near the counter with a sign saying "Low-Price Colognes For Sale Here," with a map to locations where you could find the other resources, would that be trademark infringement?  What's the consumer confusion?  Consumers know that Old Spice is different from competing colognes (or whatever Old Spice is categorized as these days).  If they're searching for Old Spice, they'll buy that.  Seeing another advertisement won't dissuade them.

Google's service is no different, in my view.  You don't "own" a string of letters the way you own a house.  You can't just stop other people from using those letters or even making money off of them.  All you can do with a string of letters is prevent passing off or other forms of unfair confusion.  If a keyword search term is triggering competing ads, that's not confusing.  That's competition.

Geico can go ahead and buy "geico" as a search term if it wants to.  Strangling the Google marketplace by requiring Google to pre-clear any sold search term (who owns "ford"?) isn't useful for society.

Peaceful picture below (non-ICANN, non-internet governance, non-FCC, non-democracy moment) from Byron Henderson, who makes his home in a beautiful spot -- Sooke, British Columbia.

This third day of the Berkman conference is dedicated to four tracks of group discussions about this and that.  This is clearly a better format than the panels and speakers we had yesterday. (See Jeff Jarvis on the same point.)  As one particularly articulate guy said this morning, "Our panelists suck!"  No matter how smart they are, most have failed to adequately prepare.  It's hard to speak off the cuff and well.  And the presentations haven't been mapped to one another -- there's X, and then Y, and then an off-topic Z.

It may be, however, that this crowd is impatient with anyone talking at the front of the room. We're willing to listen for, oh, maybe 10 minutes -- at the most. But after that we want to hear from other people in the room. We're enjoying the IRC back-channel, we're reading email -- we're all over the place.

Maybe some of this is just "conference ADD" -- another catchy phrase.  We're able to scan text so quickly now, reading a zillion blog feeds, deleting email at a glance, that a voice is just too slow and mono.

Theater in the round -- that's what we're willing to engage in, as long as part of the theater is Us.  This has deep implications for classroom learning.  Focusing by doing, by creating and editing, may be a more powerful way of learning than listening to the front of the room.  Is this too individual-centric?  Perhaps.

Attention is more expensive than it used to be.

The mainstream media did a horrible job reporting on the campaign, Dan says.  But there were some good things going on around the edges.  Journalism was evolving into a conversation -- and that means governments have to move much more towards listening and talking.

And journalists were being watched by the web -- witness Dan Rather.  Nevertheless, mainstream media still called bloggers those people in pajamas. 

But bloggers/citizen media having a big effect, and will continue to.  Let's use wikis to watch candidate statements.  Let's watch governments more closely.  Let's shadow them.

Great job by Dan, who has announced that he is leaving the San Jose Mercury News to have his own citizen journalism effort.

Question:  has Meetup solved the problem?

Nope.  Putnam says we don't need to go to concerts thanks to CDs.  A great loss.  We do it all alone.  How can the internet be used to build "real" face to face ties to other people?  These other communities are fictional, because they're virtual.

And then the IRC channel learned that the SCT had taken cert. in Grokster, and we lost focus.

I'm at the Berman Center's Internet & Society 2004 conference, Votes, Bits & Bytes.  The first morning session was a little slow, but things sped up with Tod Cohen's business panel (particularly with the very human Craig Newmark).

Now Scott Heiferman of meetup.com is up, talking about meetup issues.  Robert Putnam, who wrote "Bowling Alone," will respond to his remarks. I have a feeling that Putnam will say meetup is no substitute for full human contact.

But the IRC channel that Joi Ito set up is buzzing along.  I'm asking what happens to meetup 10 years from now, and someone mentions upcoming.org as a place to look.  I guess the idea is that calendaring functions will integrate meetup kinds of events -- it'll be built into the infrastructure.  Hmm.  I'd rather have lots of wildly non-infrastructure meetings going on. With pugs and ukelele guys.

As part of World Day (formerly known as Net Day, although gyrations are occurring about the name), Greg Elin had the bright idea that we should offer an Email Amnesty Day.

Here's the idea:  On one day a year, you are permitted (indeed, expected) to delete all the unanswered mail in your inbox.  Just wipe it out.  Start fresh. And everyone will understand.

No more shame or grief associated with email -- just for that one day.

A good session this evening (thanks, Andrew!), including two interesting things to talk about, one of which was XpertWeb and the other of which was about folding layered maps (hard copies) of cities.

Internet governance isn't everything.  It felt good to talk about inventions. 

On the way back from Cape Town last weekend, I was in coach in a seat that didn't recline. And the overhead lighting wasn't working.  But the guy across the aisle from me took pity on me and leaned forward so that the light above his seat would shine on the page of the book I was reading.  The book was "Long Walk To Freedom," by Nelson Mandela (warmly recommended).  In it, Mandela said he was allowed in prison (in the early days) to write only one letter of 500 words every six months.  Which made me sheepish about my feelings about the non-reclining/dark seat, and grateful for the kindness of the guy across the aisle.

Choose your words carefully.

The report of the second public forum is up.

I'd like to edit and extend my remarks -- there were some transcription issues.  Here's what I said:

Good morning, I'm Susan Crawford with Cardozo Law School in New York City.

I wonder how many of you remember the Spruce Goose? The largest airplane in the world -- designed at the time to carry two Sherman tanks across the ocean and 750 troops. Development dragged, and in fact, the airplane wasn't finished. It was planned to help out in World War II. It wasn't finished until after the war was over at enormous cost.

Now, the Spruce Goose's core mission was to fly. It didn't focus on that mission. It focused on flying big. And as a result, it wasn't much of a help during the war.

I believe that we are engaged in a titanic battle for the future of the internet right now. This is playing out in many fora across the world. Obviously, the WSIS process is a major part of this.

George Tenet, the former head of the CIA, announced yesterday that in his mind, only authorized users should be allowed to access the Internet. Only people who are worried sufficiently about security. How about that; right?

Pushed by law enforcement, intellectual property and sovereignty concerns, people are fighting about the Internet all over the world. And ICANN's role in this is a very small part, actually, but nonetheless a key part of the battle.

And I believe ICANN is on the right side of this battle. Netizens, if you will, are on one side versus authorities who seek to control the Internet on the other.

Listen carefully to the language of the U.N. They refer to ICANN as "the present arrangement." Something that can be reformed, should be reformed, so that new blood can come in and run the allocation of IP addresses and the insertion of domain names into the root. That language is key, and part of this battle.

Governments, in a sense, have an advantage over ICANN when it comes to regulating the Internet, because all they can do is pass laws. Otherwise, their inaction has no effect on how the Internet is used or what innovation occurs.
The consensus policy process was designed to give ICANN that same advantage, suggesting that some consensus policies would be created if they were supported by global consensus. Everything else would be left to local control.

ICANN should claim this advantage energetically with both hands -- claim this competitive advantage it has to allow innovation unless consensus policies exist to the contrary. Otherwise, the risk is we -- and ICANN is us -- ICANN will look worse than governments for its core mission, which is avoiding collisions in the root, handing out new Top-Level Domains, and allocating IP addresses.

So I have two suggestions. Just as the core mission of the Spruce Goose was to fly, the core mission of ICANN is to, in fact, expand the TLD name space. We had a dramatic discussion about that yesterday. It's clearly not easy, but ICANN could release a lot of the pressure on this conversation and help in this battle by setting up a process for regular insertion of new Top-Level Domains into the root. And I'm convinced that you're working on that. I see that happening.

But a second thing that hasn't been adequately discussed, I think, in connection with the strategic plan that's under consideration right now is that ICANN very clearly needs to tie its considerable financial goals to its inward processes. That is, as Mouhamet has said several times, its key functions of opening up new TLDs and allocating addresses. Those central things have to work right, just as the Spruce Goose really should have flown earlier.

I'm not convinced at the moment that the financial goals of ICANN as expressed in the strategic plan adequately tie to these core inward missions. Rather, they seem to be aimed at fighting this battle outwardly, setting up ICANN as sort of an alternative to other substantial intergovernmental organizations. I think that's a mistake and I hope there will be a lot of examination of that strategic plan.

You have many friends across the Internet, many people who care about your side of the battle. The question is are they going to align with you? Are they going to see ICANN as a failed experiment or as a timeless embodiment of net values, which is what it was supposed to be.

Will your friends, these other friends of the Internet, care if you carefully preserve the TLD string space so that nobody else can use it? I'm not sure they will.

Will they support you and applaud you if you manage in a very careful way the business models of the registries and registrars who have contracts with you? I don't think so.

On the other hand, if you join with them to protect the net from the sources of control that seek to constrain access to the Internet and control what kinds of things can happen online, you have a tremendous group of people who will help you, who will applaud you and go into battle with you.

So don't let the forces of intellectual property, sovereignty, and just all-out greed destroy the net. Join with your colleagues on this side.

The Spruce Goose project was killed. The plane was kept in flying order until Howard Hughes died. It's now kept in Oregon.

I don't want to see ICANN fail. Thank you.

I got all excited about subway maps of law not long ago.   But Bret Fausett points us to this map of internet governance, and I'm getting off the train.

The map he points to has almost everything on the "infrastructure and standardisation" line (that's the yellow line, if you're watching where you're going).  Copyright, spam, arbitration, privacy -- you name it -- all of those puppies are mapped on one line.  In fact, just about everything except "gender" is on that line.  (I guess we're not facing a standards effort on gender, which is a good thing.)

Phooey.

Why isn't it possible to have multiple competing sets of rules on all of these things?  And why would we want to build rules about them into the infrastructure? 

Maps are useful to prompt thoughts about how things connect and flow together.  This one, though, points in a single direction:  harmonization of everything.  A single molten core, standardized and infrastructured carefully to serve all agendas.  I hope it's not a predictive map.

More on Net Day -- if you're coming to the Berkman Center fantasia on Thursday-Friday-Saturday of this week (it's free), please sign up to have dinner with me on Friday.  We're going to talk about how to organize mass online events. Events that may produce some different kinds of maps.

Elliot Noss responds to the anonymous Reformation article here. 

First of all, I didn't write the thing -- it was found nailed to the front door of my blog.  And it does seem to be prompting some discussion, which is worthwhile.

But even though I didn't write it, I don't agree with some of Elliot's criticisms of it.  I do think that ICANN's "everything not permitted is prohibited" default setting is the wrong way to go.  I don't think registries are monopolies -- no more than any one car brand is a monopoly.  Registries are competing -- hard.  I do think that the internet community can ban things if they want to, through consensus. 

But does every change a registry makes have to be approved in advance?  If Elliot thinks the answer to that is "yes," why does this apply to .biz but not .de or .uk?  If Elliot thinks registries need permission to do anything, who gave ICANN that power?  How is that power constrained?

These are, to some extent, religious questions.

There are no US journalists here, as far as I can tell.  One reporter told me, before I came here, that he'd asked his editors about covering ICANN and they just flapped their hands at him -- nothing happens there -- and gave him another assignment.  The distance from the US for most of these meetings is just too much for any rational reporter to sell to an editor.  Kuala Lumpur? You've got to be kidding.

So I feel an obligation to blog, not only for the US but for whoever else wants to listen.  The most interesting thing that happened publicly, by far, was the engineers v. innovators squabble of yesterday -- I did try to cover that.  It seemed to many of the people I talked to afterwards that the engineers are creating more controversy ("it's very dangerous to create new TLDs")  than is necessary.  Surely there is some process that would allow a few to be created a year.  With thin contracts along the "everything is permitted except things that are prohibited by consensus policies" line.

Here comes the open mike:

Wolfgan Kleinwachter:  When will the first At Large Regional Organization be created?  What's the connection between between ICANN and .gov and .int?

Vittorio Bertola:  No simple answer to the At Large question.  It's not clear that these regional groups will emerge -- very cumbersome process, in my view. -ed.  We're continuing outreach.  Individual membership is an old question.  We do have to involve users in ICANN directly, for specific policy issues.  People want to participate directly.  Take a look at WSIS.  We're thinking about setting up mailing lists etc. for other ways to participate in ICANN.

Roberto Gaetano:  Personal opinion is that if we at this point in time (in the middle of the effort of getting RALOs and more organizations up) open to individual membership and start creating confusion, we'll make work of outreach harder.  When the RALOs are in place with the critical mass of at large organizations as members, then we should talk about it.

Bruce Tonkin: About .gov and .int and .edu -- simple answer is No, we don't have involvement.  They're not generic or global -- they're US-based.  (Vint -- not necc. true of .edu).

Markus Faure (registrar):  CORE has been set up to bid competition to markets, so interested in strong ICANN.  But we have a problem with a $40 million budget -- Paul can't clarify assumptions right now, I understand that.  We have sent a representative to the budget advisory group and we'll work with ICANN.

Second point -- I love this place, but internet connection not so great. (poor guy).  ICANN should consider getting a refund from the local ISP -- help the budget.

Izumi Aizu:  The issue of individual users remains a very valid question.  I've had a lot of experience with this.  ALAC is making fair progress, but not doing as much as we wanted or expected from others.  Still have some doubt whether we'll be successful in setting up RALOs in five regions quickly, given the political climate around the world.  We're evaluating ourselves and the framework we're working with.  Question is whether there are really interested users out there who want to participate without a subsidy. This isn't the core business of users!  It's so hard to justify getting involved.  I'm not sure this is sustainable.  If it is difficult to self-organize, what should we do?  Does ICANN need the involvement of individuals? ICANN should decide whether it wants ALAC in the context of the WSIS process -- in which ICANN's legitimate right to represent the public interest is being questioned.

Milton Mueller:  Listened with interest to your review of registry service changes.  Any discussion of distinction between dominant/non-dominant registries? or would this apply to every registry?  is that even feasible? Are you just focused on VeriSign and SiteFinder?

Bruce Tonkin: What do you mean by dominant?

Milton:  That's for the regulator to decide -- the GNSO.  These distinctions are to some extent arbitrary, but have to be made.

Bruce:  Distinction so far is about sponsored v. unsponsored so far.  Sponsoreds have the view that they have their own internal process (not just the view, the contractual framework!) for registry services.  Real question is what is the result of the new gTLD process.  If we have thousands of them, we'll have lots of overhead, you're right.  As we get more experience, the controls may well be loosened over time. Right now it seems as if we need more control.  ("recent events" = SiteFinder).  If the contracts change, that will be different.  The plan is to have the new .net contract provide a template for every tld -- watch that contract. .75 per registration event to ICANN, plus .25 from the registrars -- ICANN gets a dollar a name.

James Seng:  Re individual participation.  ALAC has made great progress.  What's the measurement of success?  Will individuals actually have their voice heard? The discussion level is very very low.  Perhaps there's a tool that large committees should have.

Twomey:  Staff considers the voice of the consumer to be absolutely essential part of the ICANN construct and the ICANN philosophy.  We absolutely need the voice of the consumer.  But it's hard.  We're trying to do that.

Vint:  We do have public comment, but it's true people may not know about ICANN.  We do have an outreach/visibility problem.  Key is getting feedback from registrants who are affected by policies that are made by ICANN.

Marie Zitkova:  Makes clear that sponsors are in the registry constituency and represent a community.

James Seng:  Let's use some online tools.  (yes!)  Don't spend more money on participation.

Izumi:  Let's have both travel and more online tools.  Not mutually exclusive.  We have a challenge with ALAC outreach -- how do we explain this.  ICANN is so many different things.  ICANN needs to explain itself better, and explain At Large as well.  Not just At Large people should be explaining At Large.  I've been asked whether I'm a puppet of the ICANN board.  We need credibility, but it's difficult.  Who needs At Large?  If ICANN needs it, should support it.

Also, being "advisory" is a tough sell.  How can we convince people that they can directly influence policy?  How can we effectively involve users' voices in ICANN policy? 

Vittorio Bertola:  We still don't have privacy in whois -- people ask us about that, and we can't respond.  Organizations with limited resources choose not to participate in ICANN.  Also, online tools may not reach the At Large people -- not internet-savvy. 

Also, ICANN has to think about its organization/structure for these meetings.  It's hard when everything gets rescheduled on the fly, and without things to read in advance.  This will help people who aren't insiders.

Keith Davidson (.nz):  Thanks for the meetings committee organization -- we'll be in Wellington, New Zealand in 2006.

Mohamet Diop:  I've heard from the African At Large people that ICANN staff is trying hard to forward the discussion at the regional level, but it's not enough.  There's a lack of awareness of what ICANN is and what it's doing at a national level.  People don't have information or a forum.  (ICANN does have a steep learning curve -- it should be blogging and teaching and explaining.  And it needs docket sheets.)  We need to leverage the presence of the ICANN staff to help people get the right information about ICANN.

Greg Ruth (ISPCP constituency):  Strategic plan: it's a welcome step forward, but proposal still lacks measurable objectives and detailed time lines.  No contracts with root server operators -- we'd like to see that.  We support IANA upgrade suggestions in the plan.  But reference made to ASO community "building global consensus policy governing IP addresses" is not supported by the demise of an independent ASO.  We're glad to see an ombudsman and an emphasis on compliance.  PDP process needs to be flexible and tailored.  What's up with this regional meetings suggestion?  We need more information.  Finally, ISPCP notes with dismay that SOs not consulted before the strategic plan was sent out.  This plan has real consequences for policy.

Vint:  Plan is open for suggestions at all times.

Elliot Noss:  Repeat some comments made in a different way on other occasions here:  Expired names market.  Two points to frame this discussion.  Back to my Rome comments in March about WLS, where I said that dealing with WLS would be irrelevant because the market would move past WLS.  I was right.  First, I want to identify two stages in the life of a name.  Registrant retains rights with existing registrars; second, when registry deals with expired names.  In dealing with this market, first stage is about $50, second stage is about $6-$50.  

Second comment:  I want to explicitly tell you that you have an interesting market to deal with.  The demand side of this market is very efficient.  Prices are at fair market value.  All of the problems are on the supply (registrar/registry) side.  Most important question to deal with for the Board will be who's entitled to the money generated by the demand.  We've been dealing with this since September 2001.  The party that is most entitled to the revenue here is the previous registrant. 

This comment was sent to me anonymously.

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.

Some have called for Internet democracy. Some have called for more involvement by governments in “internet governance." Neither is what is needed right now. What we need is a reformation – a general realization by decentralized actors that there is no need at all for any intermediary to stand between them and any changes they think will improve the internet. They don’t need an institutional indulgence – they just need to act cooperatively and vigorously to keep making the internet better. Some actions will still be appropriately considered wrongful – and these should be banned by either governments, or ICANN (through consensus policies), or both. But it’s time to stop sending money to ICANN on the theory that we need them to hire staff whose job it is to give us all permission to innovate.

Luther appealed to the secular leaders of the day to help resist the corruption of the church. Perhaps we will need the governments (maybe even the ITU) to help take the net back for netizens. But Luther’s wise appeal for support from German princes did not amount to abandonment of the central faith that drove him. He did not believe salvation was irrelevant – just that it could not and should not be bought from a self-appointed intermediary. We may need support from governments (particularly the US government) to take the net back from a corrupt central clergy. But we have to preserve the faith that gave rise to the internet in the first place – that the resources at the edge belong to individual actors, and that empowerment comes from decentralized, cooperative innovation, not from top-down regulatory prescriptions.

If there were a Luther for the internet, he might post (presumably on his blog, rather than on a church door) some set of theses that seemed to him self-evident but that few involved in the church of the day were previously prepared to utter. With apologies to the real Luther, they might look something like the following:

In the Name of Jon Postel.

1. The RFCs and standards that created the net decree that everyone at the edge shall be free to innovate unless they cause harm to others.

2. This principle cannot mean that such innovation must first receive approval from any centralized authority.

3. It also doesn’t mean that anyone is free to do anything they want – it must be possible for the community of netizens to prohibit harmful actions through their own decentralized acts.

4. Accordingly, it is right for every member of the internet community to cooperate with others and to abide by policies that have been established by consensus to prohibit harmful actions.

5. Aside from such instances, however, no central authority has any ability or right to determine what is “best for the net” or which actions should be encouraged or allowed.

6. The decentralized actions of netizens, to adopt or refuse new services and connections, are the only true judgments about whether a particular innovation is good or bad.

7. The cooperation that gave rise to the internet did not and could not grant to any institution the power to make decisions on behalf of all netizens.

8. Since there is no such power, any claim by any institution to a right to prevent innovation at the edge of the internet is inherently flawed and contrary to the most basic principles from which the internet arose.

9. ICANN purports to speak on behalf of the internet community. This is plainly not the case and represents an inherent contradiction – because the internet community can by its decentralized actions speak for itself.  Indeed, it can only speak in such manner).

10. Those who claim for ICANN the power to approve any innovation are ignorant or corrupt.

11. The claim that introduction of new TLDs will cause technical difficulties is plainly false and manufactured to increase ICANN’s powers rather than to assure continued innovative and empowering uses of the internet.

12. Before ICANN made such claims, the goals for internet governance were modest – to avoid conflicting names at the top level and to introduce competition. Neither the White Paper nor any earlier documents reflecting the purposes for which ICANN was created justify a general claim of a power to give or withhold permission for innovation.

13. There is no sound reason for ICANN to seek to regulate the business models adopted by those who offer innovative services on the internet.

14. ICANN has used fear of regulation by governments as a means of persuading netizens to recognize its unjustified powers. But, by doing so, ICANN has claimed powers that are more appropriately feared.

15. What is empowering about the internet is its devolution of power to the edge – to decentralized actors, provided that they do not harm others.

16. Therefore, the need is to prevent the rise of any central power, rather than just to make sure that governments do not assert such powers.

17. What was important about the original idea of ICANN was not that it was private (as opposed to governmental) but that it did not have any authority to impose its rules unless those subject to the effects of such rules agreed to abide by them.

18. ICANN has now abandoned this core principle of its origins, so as either to exercise unaccountable powers, or to raise funds by imposing non-avoidable fees in exchange for permissions and services that no netizens desire, and is therefore illegitimate.

19. In many cases, the problems that ICANN purports to be solving are entirely of its own making.

20. The internet would improve if ICANN were simply to disappear.

21. It is folly to attempt to preserve the domain name system in its prior state, indefinitely, as some of the original engineers who dominate the ICANN system appear to desire to do.

22. It is folly to attempt to predict in advance which innovations will succeed and which will fail.

23. ICANN meetings are attended by a small group of insiders who can afford to travel around the world (or who use ICANN fees to pay for this) and who enjoy such grand parties at the expense of netizens.

24. There is no reason to defer to the expertise of these ICANN hangers-on. They don’t actually run the net. They just talk about policy issues and prevent entrepreneurs taking the risks necessary to innovate.

25. It is time for all netizens to reassert their own collective control over the development of the internet – a control they exercise simply by deciding what connections to make, what new services to use, which identities to adopt.

26. So long as ICANN is allowed to to act as the sole source of recommendations for additions to the root zone file, and the sole source of accreditation for registrars, the power of netizens to make these choices will be destroyed.

27. The US Government, which purports to control the decision regarding what should be added to the root zone file in its capacity as a fiduciary for the global internet community should forthwith declare that it will accept recommendations for additions to the root zone file from any party -- and will deny such requests only when parties actually harmed by such innovations can affirmatively show why they should be prohibited. Parties who believe they are harmed should seek an injunction from a court.

28. All registries for top level domains should immediately begin to employ any distribution channels and business practices they believe will best serve the domains in questiion.

29. ICANN is in breach of its many undertakings in the contracts with registries and registrars to enhance competition, act transparently, and to impose new policies only when based on consensus. It has given power to intellectual property interests even though domain names are not necessarily used as brands. It has disfavored privacy protections favored by users, solely in order to favor such intellectual property interests.

30. The contracts that ICANN sometimes cites as giving it the power to approve any changes in business operations of registries and registrars were imposed by duress and without the support of any consensus among the affected internet community.

31. Accordingly, ICANN’s contractually-based claims to a power to approve any innovations are unsupportable and may and should be ignored.

32. Only resolute action by netizens will prevent increasing growth of ICANN’s budget and illegitimate powers.

33. Concerted action by netizens to renounce ICANN’s false claims to power will certainly succeed and need not create any greater claim by governments to impose unwise regulation on the internet.

34. Failure of netizens to act together to renounce ICANN’s illegitimate claims to power would further embolden governments to impose even more centralized regulation and would ultimately destroy the most important principles that make the internet so empowering.

Vint Cerf just said we won't get to WSIS today.  Had we opened the mike on this subject, this is what I planned to say:

I wonder if you remember the Spruce Goose.  Howard Hughes created the largest aircraft ever built -- capable of carrying 750 fully-equipped troops or two Sherman tanks.

It took a long time.  And a lot of money.  And it wasn't finished until well after the war was over.

Finally, in 1947, with Howard Hughes flying the thing, the Spruce Goose took off.  For a mile, about 70 feet off the surface of the water.

That plane had a task -- to fly -- a core issue it was supposed to deal with.  At enormous expense, it finally dealt with that task, AFTER the war was over.

Here, the UN is styling ICANN as "the present arrangement" -- new blood to come later, when governments are in charge.

The thing is, many governments have an advantage over ICANN when it comes to regulating the net.  They only prohibit things by passing laws, not by failing to act.  ICANN was supposed to get this same advantage through the consensus policy regime -- adopting very few consensus policies, and leaving the rest to local control.  Plus, ICANN was supposed to have flexibility that governments don't have.

ICANN has a great opportunity now.  It needs to operate with self restraint.  The default setting has to be "everything not prohibited is permitted."  Otherwise, it will look WORSE than governments.  That would be an enormous shame.

Back to the Goose.  It's job was to fly, but that core mission got a little lost -- it tried to fly BIG. 

Two suggestions for you:  Stick to your job and have your finances tie to that job.

ICANN's job is to create a good, objective, yearly process for new TLDs.  That's not easy, as we've discussed.  And to run IANA well.

The financial goals of ICANN should be tied much more towards looking inward (less arbitrary processes, good at new TLDs) than going outward to fight with ITU (the enormous funds you're raising look like you're building another Spruce Goose).

Many people who consider themselves friends of the internet will align with you, but only if you act right.

What will the netizens think about you -- A failed experiment?  Or a timeless embodiment of net values?  This is the moment -- between now and 2006.

Will they thank you for carefully preserving the TLD string space?

Will they support you for regulating business models?

BUT:  Will they applaud you for keeping at bay all the forces that seek to control the net -- in the name of intellectual property, or sovereignty, or straight-out greed and control?  Yes, they will.

Congress killed the Spruce Goose project, and the aircraft never flew again.  The project was a failure. 

"You have not tried a free and market process.  You have done almost everything else.  You have shut the market down completely. You have tried trickling in additions through painful and laborious beauty contests.... However, there is a glimmer of hope...I heard Kleinsin say he saw no technical stability concerns about the addition of ten to 20 new TLDs to the root a year.  ...It's clear that these technical concerns go away if we add something in the neighborhood of tens of top level domains per year." 

"I submitted a paper a year ago calling for the annual addition of 40 TLDs.  Isn't this something we could agree to?  Something between 10 and 40 a year?  This is progress.  . . . The one part of this that doesn't fit into a smooth transition is the board's involvement in the content of a TLD.  My proposal talked about a trademark-oriented dispute resolution process for new TLDs.  You can set up a challenge process, and that can deal with a lot of the issues."

Kleinsin:  "From a technical restriction standpoint, I could throw my shoe at you.  [milton: you've done that]  There are a number of policy constraints that keep me from doing that.  The ability to do something technically is not a reason to do it."

We've been talking about new TLDs for some time today.  It's 1999!  Joe Sims is here.  Ken Fockler is here. Where is Chris Ambler? 

In response to a statement from Elliot Noss, Vint goes on [paraphrasing]: 

"The notion that DNS is a business was surely not in its original design.  Today it is.  As a business, it's very different from the engineering design.  But engineering still has to work.  I have different views because I'm worrying about it always working.  The architecture was planned to be very hierarchical." 

How many new TLDs would it take to break the net, Elliot asks? 

There have been reports, Vint says.  Kleinsin jumps in [paraphrasing]:  "There's a third dimension.  People say, "Gee, it would be great to experiment."  We don't want to turn the DNS into an experimental laboratory.  We can't justify that on a stability basis." 

Vint to Elliot:  all is not lost.  This is a discussion, not a decision. 

Elliot:  You're hesitating here, but you're not telling me how many will break the net.  Tell me. 

Kleinsin:  my personal opinion is that experimental allocations of domain names (ways of doing allocations) are frightening to me.  Even one is frightening to me.  There have been several pieces of advice to the community that indicate that in terms of preserving DNS stability it is safe to add chunks of 10 tlds without any effect on stability.  But, says Kleinsin, there are other people who worry about upper limits -- those are very large compared to existing numbers of domains.  We could do anything in the same order of magnitude of current domains without an effect on stability.  My distinction, says Kleinsin, is that I'd like to see more justification for doing this than Gee, there is an opportunity here. What we're being given isn't enough justification -- we need broad guarantees to make certain that an effect of failure is zero impact.  [so complete safety has to be assured] The more flighty an application seems in terms of its approach, the more I'd like to have to comfort me on the risk side of the equation. 

Vint again:  there's quite a difference between processing at top level and processing at second-third levels.  Reason:  amount of coordination and management of root zone.  Scaling is much harder there. But we could double the numbers of TLDs without much effect on stability. 

Mohamed Diop:  I'm not seeing destabilization of the DNS through expansion.  This is the only issue ICANN has full responsibility for.  No one will give us the chance to recuse ourselves.  We can't declare that we can't do this job.  Someone else will show up to take on this domain business.  A core value of ICANN is to enable competition and choice.

Ivan Campos:  We're getting applications to do things that the DNS was not designed to do.

Roberto Gaetano:  I joined this organization 8 years ago in the hope of creating new TLDs to compete with .com.  We've missed that train.  Com continues to be dominant.  Do we NEED new TLDs?  Of course not.  Nor did we need cars when we had horses.  But I haven't seen enough information to see market benefits of new TLDs.  Now, with the changed situation at the end of 2004, someone who is serious about launching new TLDs should come with reliable market figures.  I am still in favor of the introduction of new TLDs, but I'm more cautious now. One thing we need to make sure is that the introduction of new TLDs should do no harm -- I'm with Kleinsin on this.  How would new TLDs do harm?  Well, with excuse of innovation, they could bend the DNS to do systems that it wasn't designed for.  And they could put ICANN in a situation where not having well-defined rules for new TLD applications puts us at real risk.  Then we'll be forced to delegate thousands that are more or less of the same type, or we'll be at risk of litigation.  So that worries me.

Vint Cerf [paraphrasing]:  "I'm becoming concerned about what the philosophical basis is for new TLDs.  Why do we need any?"

I respect Vint, but this is really not his job.  Other people want to create new TLDs.  The market will decide whether they succeed or fail.  Artificial scarcity of new TLDs has gotten a lot of people awfully excited.

all comments solicited.

Doug Barton puts on his IANA hat.  (Once, in Shanghai, Louis Touton actually physically DID put on an IANA hat in order to report on IANA.  Since he was answering all the phones, editing the web site, and generally doing all the work at ICANN, perhaps the physical hat was necessary.  Doug's hat is virtual.)

Doug shows a chart noting that of 197 requests received in 2004 for root management requests, 167 have been completed, and response time is shortening.

He now shows a dramatic picture showing how old the items in the queue are.  It looks like a mountain range.  The biggest mountains have to do with IPv6 glue requests.

"We don't want to rush to conclusion those items that require more deliberation."  But response time is going down.  And reporting is going up.

Note:  there has been no public comment -- so far -- on the strategic plan.  The room is very large.  I'm hoping that the size of the place and the monotony of some of these reports won't dampen public comment.

Kurt Pritz gets up to talk about the status of new sTLDs (sponsored top level domains -- current examples are .aero, .coop, and .museum).  They've received ten applications (including .xxx and .tel), and have had them reviewed by outside reviewers.  Two of these have moved right into negotiation -- .travel and .post.

The remaining eight are going through lots of commentary.  Of course, none of them has been formally rejected.  [No applications are ever formally rejected.  Even the applicants from September 2000 are supposedly still live. ed.]

When this process ends, someday, ICANN will publish results so as to "inform the implementation of the strategy for the formation of new gTLDs."

We really really need a predictable, "thin," objective process for new TLDs.  ICANN should be opening 10 a year, or more.  Some will fail.  We'll have a buddy system in place to protect registrants.  The existing process is very resource-intensive for ICANN and does not put the organization in the best light. 

Paul Twomey reports that ICANN staff is getting 145,000 emails a day.  "A lot of that is spam."

Also says that ICANN has "operationally gotten less responsive over the last six to eighteen months."  His suggestion is that "organizations tend to experience a tipping point where systems and processes are overwhelmed by the complexity that the organization faces."  So ICANN has to become stronger and larger.

Alex Pisanty introduces Frank Fowlie (fowlie@icann.org) as the new ombudsman.  Fowlie seems like a good egg.  He is not the same thing as the late lamented Independent Review Panel (still required under ICANN's contracts with registries), because he will have no ability to effect change directly. 

Pisanty says formation of the IRP was "tactically and practically impossible."  There's a lot of history there -- in fact, insufficient effort was put into making it work.  And there was a great deal of concern that creation of the IRP, which would investigate whether there was actually documented consensus behind a particular policy to be imposed on registries or registrars under contract with ICANN, would in effect create an "super board."  

Fowlie will not even be looking at that question -- he'll be (without staff support, as far as I can tell) taking on board whatever questions show up from people concerned about ICANN actions.

Tough job.

Fowlie is now speaking, emphasizing his independence and relevant experience (which is substantial).  He'll report to the Board as a whole, not to staff, and has to produce an annual report.  He'll have a web-based complaint-taking system.  He'll try to help parties to mutual settlements.  He'll have power to make recommendations to the Board. 

"How can a single practitioner office [do this]?"  He'll rely on his experience and he'll be independent.  And he'll be busy.

Christopher Wilkinson comes to the mike:  "I want to remind members of the WGIG that governments have been involved with ICANN steadily for the past six years."

Paul Wilson of APNIC made a presentation on behalf of the RIRs:

We feel that within WSIS, the principle issues are those of the independence and genuine internationalization of ICANN. The NRO has called on ICANN to continue its work in this area, not by building a monolithic multinational organization, but rather by increased cooperation and collaboration with its core stakeholders.
We’ve also called on ICANN to work with the US Government to publish a genuine, unambiguous plan for its independence after the current MoU,
and to commit to this plan before the conclusion of the second phase of the WSIS. This is critical, to provide the WSIS community with certainty as to
the future form and status of ICANN after WSIS, a question which is certainly still unclear to many.

Also as a critical issue of Internet governance, the NRO rejects any concept of an alternative Internet administrative model located within any governmental or intergovernmental structure. We acknowledge fully that there is a valid role for governments in the administration of the Internet,
however this can and should be placed in the context of the current model.

Recently, the NRO posted a public response to Houlin Zhou’s memorandum on Internet Governance, addressing the proposal for a national allocation scheme for IPv6 addresses.  Like others such as the Japanese Internet
Governance Taskforce, we have serious and very genuine concerns about the technical and operational implications of such a scheme.

The assertion of sovereign concerns in this case is a certainly powerful and legitimate argument, however there are mechanisms either in place now
or certainly feasible, which may address the same concern with far lower risk. For the sake of the stability and security of the Internet, such
solutions should certainly be explored.

Finally, in relation to the WGIG, I’d like to revisit some comments I made during the Geneva meeting last week. It seems that the definition of Internet Governance, which is the first of WGIG’s tasks, is being driven by negative aspects of the Internet, as a list of “problem areas” of the net.

Or in other words, as a list of bugs rather than features.

The point here is that many aspects of the Internet are not being suggested as topics of Governance, simply because they currently work well enough
not to be on the radar.  These include such things as the routing system (which is pretty stable), competition between alternate root servers (which
would certainly be an issue in the absence of the concerted efforts which have been made to avoid it), and the global interoperability of all parts of
the net (which is assumed without question but by no means guaranteed).

I suggested to the Working Group last week that these and other aspects of the Internet must not be taken for granted, and the famous principle of
“do no harm” should be borne strongly in mind.  I suggested that rather than seeing Internet Governance as a list of bugs, WGIG should consider features of the Internet which are to be appreciated and preserved, and include
this consideration in the scope of its work.  The risk of overlooking them, and this is a real risk, is to “do harm” to the Internet, and potentially
therefore, to leave a longer list of problems for some future Working Group to solve.

In a very serious UN-style room, with hundreds of rows of red-clad seats climbing steeply upwards, we're listening to Nitan Desai (chair of the WGIG, retired UN) and Markus Kummer (secretariat of the WGIG) introduce the WSIS discussion.  Kummer says:  "there are many who now already start discussing what institutional arrangements should come out of this," but that's premature in his view.  Translation:  the ITU is making a big push to take over ICANN, and attempting to focus the work of WGIG on exactly this issue, but Kummer is neutral.

Desai stressed developing nations' concerns, both about involvement in internet governance (translation:  ITU has convinced developing nations that ICANN is leaving them out) and capacity building (translation:  there is an idea that ICANN has something to do with connectivity worldwide, and connectivity is too expensive for developing countries).

Desai also referred several times to the kind of people involved in ICANN as those "responsible for the establishment and expansion of the internet."  The idea is that establishment has happened, and now governments need to step in and engage.  He said [paraphrasing], "you should worry about the interface between those who have established and expanded use of the internet and the future growth of the internet, most of which growth will happen in developing nations."

Desai outlined three major themes he sees emerging:

1.  importance of developing nations to the future of the internet.

2.  in these nations, use of the internet for egovernment will be much more important than ecommerce; governments are responsible for access in these countries; so governments will be more involved.

3.  convergence between internet and telephony will be driving the discussion.

We're now having presentations from a number of people who are active in African internet issues.

The titanic battle continues.  This isn't (really) just about ICANN, although the ITU may be taking the approach that takeover of ICANN is a top priority.  This is about coalitions being formed worldwide to push telecom agencies to be the home of all rules for the internet.  Whatever "rules for the internet" means. 

200 years from now, this entire battle will be described in one sentence.  Choose one:

a.  At the beginning of the 21st century, the world realized that facilitation of openness for the internet (including many choices of rules, devices, regulatory regimes, and end-user applications) would best encourage worldwide economic growth.  

b.  At the beginning of the 21st century, the governments of the world folded "internet" policy issues into an international telecommunications regime run by the UN.  This medium is no longer in wide use.