Re: web.resource.org

[Carl Malamud <xxxx@media.org>]

Hmmm .... I had a long discussion with Brad about this.  It's the same
issue we faced when we freed lots of other databases: ITU, Patent, SEC
to name a few.  People like to sit on the sidelines and do the armchair
quarterback, but if you want to see this data liberated, somebody has
to roll up their sleeves and do the dirty work.

Here's the deal: if you want to liberate an artificially protected
database, somebody has to go do battle with MIS.  If your goal is
1000's of TLD's, the first thing you need to do is take the mystique
out of it: put the database on-line properly using non-proprietary
technologies and run it as a real service.

Once you've done that, you've punctured the balloon.  If Brad wants
to see thousands/millions of TLD's, the first thing that has to happen
is there needs to be a reference implementation.  That convinces
ICANN and the convervative factions that it can be done and it gives
the folks that want to do it a best current practices example.
"Death to ICANN" is a nice battle cry, but what if son-of-ICANN is
just as conservative?

Basically, Brad is doing the easy thing: painting a rosy picture of
the future.  I agree with his rosy picture in some respects, but I
also know that if we really believe that, it's going to take a
heavy-duty team dedicated to seeing this through.  Talk's cheap:
we're volunteering the next five years of our lives to make this
a reality.  That's why Brad and Larry should stop preaching and
see that they should be supporting us.  We need worldly philosophers,
but we also need people in court rooms and machine rooms.

Carl


> On Monday, July 8, 2002, at 08:33  AM, Carl Malamud wrote:
> > You going to spread the dot?
> Yep, I added it to my weblog a couple days ago. 
> http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/
> 
> > BTW, we tried to convince Larry Lessig that .org is an crucial test of 
> > whether there will be public infrastructure in the core Internet but he 
> > felt it was off-mission for both Creative Commons and EFF.  I disagree 
> > with him ... I think it's directly on mission when it comes to many of 
> > his interests, but it's hard to get people to see how bit pushing 
> > infrastructure has an effect on more general principles like the state 
> > of the commons.  Oh well.  :)
> 
> Yeah, it's an interesting argument you've been pushing that way... I'm 
> not sure I buy it, though. Why can't the infrastructure be developed the 
> next time the opportunity comes up instead of this time?
> 
> I've recently been trying to convince people that we should overthrow 
> ICANN ala http://www.templetons.com/brad/dns/ -- with a competitive 
> market for TLDs these problems wouldn't be so serious, you could just 
> run .ims. Seems like a somewhat more worthwhile goal than building 
> add-ons for the boob tube. <grin><duck /></grin>
> --
> Aaron Swartz [http://www.aaronsw.com] 
> 4FAC4838B7D8D13FA6D92EDB4145521E79F0DF4B
>