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Interestingly, this act itself proves that whilst the US DOC was, and claimed, to have moved ICANN to international ownership [1], it is in fact still under the

Interestingly, this act itself proves that whilst the US DOC was, and claimed, to have moved ICANN to international ownership [1], it is in fact still under the control of the US government. As long as the Internet namespace, or DNS, is governed by US (California state specifically) law, the Internet itself will be operating under the same jurisdiction as DNS is generally considered critical to the function of the Internet. This is a very strong reason that, just like currency [2], the Internet namespace is also ripe to be decentralized to distributed ownership by the people [3]. The internet deserves to be owned by the people - not any single government. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN [2] https://weusecoins.com https://weusecoins.com [3] https://handshake.org https://handshake.org

qeternity 7y ago
And like currency, it turns out that it's almost impossible to have a fully decentralized, trustless system for all but the most basic functions. Maybe you prefer that to the current system, but it's not like handwavingly suggesting blockchain makes any of this better. There are all sorts of real-world issues that you can't handle on-chain.
- rasengan 7y ago
  > There are all sorts of real-world issues that you can't handle on-chain. There are definitely a lot of issues that aren’t working in the ICANN system as we all know [1][2][3]. What are the issues that can’t be handled in the Handshake blockchain ecosystem? [1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/registrars-raise-alarm-over-proposal-for-big-com-fee-hikes/%3Famp%3D1 https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202... [2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/we-need-save-org-arbitrary-censorship-halting-private-equity-buy-out https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/we-need-save-org-arbit... [3] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/09/symantec-issues-rogue-ev-certificate-googlecom https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/09/symantec-issues-rogue-...
  - acdha 7y ago
    It’s easy to say that a hypothetical system will do everything you want, similar to how Bitcoin salespeople spent most of a decade saying it’d be better than cash and credit cards before trying to claim they’d had different goals all along. You first need a system which works and scales to plausible levels before we can say anything about whether it’s a viable solution for anything. In particular, it’d be important to have real cost and control information to show that it wasn’t trading ICANN for a different group which has similar control — and the inherent inefficiency of a blockchain means that there’d be more of a likelihood that power would consolidate in a few major players. (As an aside, Symantec screwing up does not seem relevant to a discussion about ICANN. Perhaps you could explain why you believe it to be?)
    - rasengan 7y ago
      > similar to how Bitcoin salespeople spent most of a decade saying it’d be better than cash and credit cards before trying to claim they’d had different goals all along. As someone following Bitcoin for a long time since just after genesis, I can assure you that replacing cash and credit cards was never on the original agenda but instead a byproduct of the goal. Make no mistake, the goal was always to decentralize currency and give the “power” of money back to the people. That said, in a decentralized system, there can be more than one goal and goals do not need to be unified across participants. That freedom is one of the beauties of decentralization. As long as a third party central authority controls our money system, we will always be subject to the whims of the few. Bitcoin is helping to liberate us and it’s absolutely working. > it’d be important to have real cost and control information to show that it wasn’t trading ICANN for a different group which has similar control This exists by virtue of our trust in cryptography - which for me is absolute. > As an aside, Symantec screwing up does not seem relevant to a discussion about ICANN. Perhaps you could explain why you believe it to be? Less directly and more by way of overall system architecture, the separation of DNS and “truth” has caused many issues to the Internet. It’s relevant because Handshake finally combines DNS and truth [1] by essentially completing the once incomplete DNSSEC. [1] https://github.com/handshake-org/hdns https://github.com/handshake-org/hdns
ocdtrekkie 7y ago
It's under US law like any other entity operating within our borders, but it's not really under US government control anymore, which seems to have been to everyone's detriment.
- michaelt 7y ago
  Some organisations are granted special status - for example, CERN is built straddling the frano-swiss border and can issue its own diplomatic vehicle registrations. Not to mention things like the UN building in New York. If for some reason the US thought ICANN shouldn't be subject to US law, they could do something similar. Being inside a country's borders doesn't always mean being subject to its laws. Of course, the corruption in the .org selloff doesn't make me feel ICANN needs less oversight. And it's questionable whether the US can grant independence it cannot revoke, at least from an international realist perspective.

qeternity 7y ago

And like currency, it turns out that it's almost impossible to have a fully decentralized, trustless system for all but the most basic functions. Maybe you prefer that to the current system, but it's not like handwavingly suggesting blockchain makes any of this better. There are all sorts of real-world issues that you can't handle on-chain.

rasengan 7y ago
> There are all sorts of real-world issues that you can't handle on-chain. There are definitely a lot of issues that aren’t working in the ICANN system as we all know [1][2][3]. What are the issues that can’t be handled in the Handshake blockchain ecosystem? [1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/registrars-raise-alarm-over-proposal-for-big-com-fee-hikes/%3Famp%3D1 https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202... [2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/we-need-save-org-arbitrary-censorship-halting-private-equity-buy-out https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/we-need-save-org-arbit... [3] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/09/symantec-issues-rogue-ev-certificate-googlecom https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/09/symantec-issues-rogue-...
- acdha 7y ago
  It’s easy to say that a hypothetical system will do everything you want, similar to how Bitcoin salespeople spent most of a decade saying it’d be better than cash and credit cards before trying to claim they’d had different goals all along. You first need a system which works and scales to plausible levels before we can say anything about whether it’s a viable solution for anything. In particular, it’d be important to have real cost and control information to show that it wasn’t trading ICANN for a different group which has similar control — and the inherent inefficiency of a blockchain means that there’d be more of a likelihood that power would consolidate in a few major players. (As an aside, Symantec screwing up does not seem relevant to a discussion about ICANN. Perhaps you could explain why you believe it to be?)
  - rasengan 7y ago
    > similar to how Bitcoin salespeople spent most of a decade saying it’d be better than cash and credit cards before trying to claim they’d had different goals all along. As someone following Bitcoin for a long time since just after genesis, I can assure you that replacing cash and credit cards was never on the original agenda but instead a byproduct of the goal. Make no mistake, the goal was always to decentralize currency and give the “power” of money back to the people. That said, in a decentralized system, there can be more than one goal and goals do not need to be unified across participants. That freedom is one of the beauties of decentralization. As long as a third party central authority controls our money system, we will always be subject to the whims of the few. Bitcoin is helping to liberate us and it’s absolutely working. > it’d be important to have real cost and control information to show that it wasn’t trading ICANN for a different group which has similar control This exists by virtue of our trust in cryptography - which for me is absolute. > As an aside, Symantec screwing up does not seem relevant to a discussion about ICANN. Perhaps you could explain why you believe it to be? Less directly and more by way of overall system architecture, the separation of DNS and “truth” has caused many issues to the Internet. It’s relevant because Handshake finally combines DNS and truth [1] by essentially completing the once incomplete DNSSEC. [1] https://github.com/handshake-org/hdns https://github.com/handshake-org/hdns

ocdtrekkie 7y ago

It's under US law like any other entity operating within our borders, but it's not really under US government control anymore, which seems to have been to everyone's detriment.

michaelt 7y ago
Some organisations are granted special status - for example, CERN is built straddling the frano-swiss border and can issue its own diplomatic vehicle registrations. Not to mention things like the UN building in New York. If for some reason the US thought ICANN shouldn't be subject to US law, they could do something similar. Being inside a country's borders doesn't always mean being subject to its laws. Of course, the corruption in the .org selloff doesn't make me feel ICANN needs less oversight. And it's questionable whether the US can grant independence it cannot revoke, at least from an international realist perspective.