5 ms·

The money involved in IPv4 allocations - and name allocations too - really sickens me. It's a blemish on humanity and a testament to the limitless nature of hum

The money involved in IPv4 allocations - and name allocations too - really sickens me. It's a blemish on humanity and a testament to the limitless nature of human greed. IANA (and ICANN as a whole) is a corrupt, captured organization that I think represents the worst of the internet when it should have been the best of it. Removing price caps on .org, gold rushing outrageously priced gTLDs to anyone with the money (private corps), and the ridiculous marketplace of IPv4 subnets - I'm ashamed to have anything to do with this community. I'm loathe to extend my contempt to capitalism as a whole but it's crap like this which makes me wonder if the humanity of future centuries will look back at our greed-powered society with disdain.

amingilani 7y ago
I'm confused. You're blaming humanity because a marketplace developed following the scarcity of a commodity? Why was any of this bad behavior? I'm genuinely confused.
- MereInterest 7y ago
  He's blaming humanity for maintaining a commodity as scarce, rather than working to alleviate the scarcity.
  - jnwatson 7y ago
    We did alleviate the scarcity. It is called IPv6.
  - mindcrime 7y ago
    working to alleviate the scarcity That's exactly what ipv6 is...
- mbesto 7y ago
  Here's my take - creating a marketplace where a sole actor has control over a scarce resource (IP addresses) is exactly why anti-trust exists. A true marketplace assumes there is competition. How do you have competition when the underlying resource (1) has a clearly understood finite number (2) is controlled by one entity and (3) can't be differentiated in any way (e.g. 10.0.0.0/8 has no differentiated intrinsic or extrinsic value over 11.0.0.0/8).
  - wmf 7y ago
    In what sense are IP addresses controlled by one entity? IANA isn't setting prices.
    - londons_explore 7y ago
      If IANA were profit-seeking, they would rent rather than allocate addresses, and force people to pay $10 per IP per year, and roll in the billions of dollars they'd collect.
viraptor 7y ago
> gold rushing outrageously priced gTLDs to anyone with the money I'm actually happy about that one. For realistic usage, it mostly went nowhere. People with money paid lots and got something they wanted. It's like a crazy rich person building a castle because they can. I'm happy they distributed the money.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  the only person it gets "distributed to" is ICANN
  - viraptor 7y ago
    Unless ICANN keeps it all under a mattress, it has to reach further. Even bonuses for the leadership will get spent somewhere.
- solotronics 7y ago
  Yeah I don't see how to allocate resources more fairly. It's either money or some arbitrary board with their own agendas.
PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
Exactly. The whole TLD thing is a scam and, as you say, a disgrace. Canned TLDs should be eliminated altogether. There's no reason a domain can't end in any string; we should simply be able to register any domain we want except the ones that are truly limited, like gov and edu. We already have a mechanism to handle trademark infringement, so let's not raise that strawman. ICANN't is a rip-off and does nothing but bicker. Spend some time as a member, and you'll be sickened by the traffic on the mailing list. https://icann.blows https://icann.blows
southerntofu 7y ago
> it's crap like this which makes me wonder if the humanity of future centuries will look back at our greed-powered society with disdain. If there is any humanity left in the coming decades, they will for sure look down on us as monstrous greedy beasts killing each other for a little power. Because that's all that capitalism and private property brought humanity since their invention. But it's far from sure there will still be anyone alive to resent us given the very likely collapse of capitalist civilization (and most of life on earth with it). There's an excellent ecologist documentary specifically on this topic called End:Civ. You can find it in many good corners of the web/net for free :) In the meantime, we'll keep working on decentralizing naming authorities of the Internet, such as with tor, cjdns, etc..

amingilani 7y ago

I'm confused. You're blaming humanity because a marketplace developed following the scarcity of a commodity? Why was any of this bad behavior? I'm genuinely confused.

MereInterest 7y ago
He's blaming humanity for maintaining a commodity as scarce, rather than working to alleviate the scarcity.
- jnwatson 7y ago
  We did alleviate the scarcity. It is called IPv6.
- mindcrime 7y ago
  working to alleviate the scarcity That's exactly what ipv6 is...
mbesto 7y ago
Here's my take - creating a marketplace where a sole actor has control over a scarce resource (IP addresses) is exactly why anti-trust exists. A true marketplace assumes there is competition. How do you have competition when the underlying resource (1) has a clearly understood finite number (2) is controlled by one entity and (3) can't be differentiated in any way (e.g. 10.0.0.0/8 has no differentiated intrinsic or extrinsic value over 11.0.0.0/8).
- wmf 7y ago
  In what sense are IP addresses controlled by one entity? IANA isn't setting prices.
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    If IANA were profit-seeking, they would rent rather than allocate addresses, and force people to pay $10 per IP per year, and roll in the billions of dollars they'd collect.

viraptor 7y ago

> gold rushing outrageously priced gTLDs to anyone with the money I'm actually happy about that one. For realistic usage, it mostly went nowhere. People with money paid lots and got something they wanted. It's like a crazy rich person building a castle because they can. I'm happy they distributed the money.

throwaway2048 7y ago
the only person it gets "distributed to" is ICANN
- viraptor 7y ago
  Unless ICANN keeps it all under a mattress, it has to reach further. Even bonuses for the leadership will get spent somewhere.
solotronics 7y ago
Yeah I don't see how to allocate resources more fairly. It's either money or some arbitrary board with their own agendas.

PunksATawnyFill 7y ago

Exactly. The whole TLD thing is a scam and, as you say, a disgrace. Canned TLDs should be eliminated altogether. There's no reason a domain can't end in any string; we should simply be able to register any domain we want except the ones that are truly limited, like gov and edu. We already have a mechanism to handle trademark infringement, so let's not raise that strawman. ICANN't is a rip-off and does nothing but bicker. Spend some time as a member, and you'll be sickened by the traffic on the mailing list. https://icann.blows https://icann.blows

southerntofu 7y ago

> it's crap like this which makes me wonder if the humanity of future centuries will look back at our greed-powered society with disdain. If there is any humanity left in the coming decades, they will for sure look down on us as monstrous greedy beasts killing each other for a little power. Because that's all that capitalism and private property brought humanity since their invention. But it's far from sure there will still be anyone alive to resent us given the very likely collapse of capitalist civilization (and most of life on earth with it). There's an excellent ecologist documentary specifically on this topic called End:Civ. You can find it in many good corners of the web/net for free :) In the meantime, we'll keep working on decentralizing naming authorities of the Internet, such as with tor, cjdns, etc..