[ga] On being democratically global
The Internet goes everywhere, right? All you need is phone lines (or cable, satellite, etc.), right? Well, here's a couple of models: 1) There are no TLDs, but only "domain names." That's how it started when under the NSF, and before it became commercialized and thus fell prey to NSI and the big money interests. Some little bunch of gnomes has a master server (with satellites all over the world for security purposes), and what these gnomes do is keep the list up to date, with those who want to get or keep domain names paying a periodic fee that pays that little bunch of gnomes and buys some servers. Simplicity itself, and various entrepreneurs could do a land office business in providing WHOIS data and other supplemental services that would help people in finding who they wanted. IPv6 could handle it. 2) There are TLDs, but they are all country codes. You have to be in country X in order to register under that .cc. So the gnomes have created files; one for .de, one for .us, one for .fr, and so on. Same story, only slightly more complicated, but would surely cut down on the search times if, say, one knew that the company being sought was located in the U. S. rather than Germany or Japan or China. Under either scenario, all the big "policy" decisions would disappear, as would the destructive, undemocratiic results of commercialization. The "bunch of gnomes" (not ICANN or any similar such trolls under the bridge, but some internationally agreed upon little bunch sitting out, perhaps,on some isolated island protectorate of the U.N. that needs the money). KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) :-) Bill Lovell
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