Underlying Ethics (was The TLD Report)

[David Collier-Brown <davecb@Canada.Sun.COM>]

On Friday, November 29, 1996 10:56 AM, Christian
Kuhtz[SMTP:kuhtz@ix.netcom.com] wrote:
> @ Hello:
> @
> @ It still remains very questionable whether this is ethical and at the very
> @ least proper business practice, thoughh
[...]

Jim Fleming wrote:
> I do not know of anyone in the business community that
> is advocating throwing ethics overboard. In fact, just the opposite
> is occurring, people are working together, signing reciprocal name
> server agreements, providing bandwidth for public name servers, etc.
> 
> On the other hand, the "good old boy" network of Internet Politicians
> continues to weave their own web, using their own Internet ethics,
> which they seem to make up, as they go along. I think that it has
> become clear to people that if the "rigth" people make up the rules
> (and ethics) then everyone bows down and blindly accepts those rules.
 
  I think we're going to have to agree to disagree:  I think
academic organizations, and I explicitly include the ISOC and IANA,
follow one complete, self-consistant set of ethical norms, often
called the ``guardian'' norms or syndrome.

  Commercial entities follow a very different one, simply aclled
the commercial syndrome, norms or ethics.

  And they don't mix real well.

  This was known to Plato, who commented on it in The Republic,
and was recently discussed again by Jane Jacobs, in ``Systems
of Survival''.

  They normally don't interact very much: one find oneself unconsciously
wearing one hat or another, not both. But when they do interact,
you get wonderfully bizzare behavior, usually known by such names
as political corruption, judge-buying and the like (:-))
  
  I strongly believe that the commercialization of what should have been
a not-for-profit service, the allocation of domain names in .com, was
the smoking gun.  There should have been an arms-length relationship
between a policy-setter (the NSF, I think) and NSI, who merely 
implemented policy.
  To let NSI set policy, or to let a policy-setter charge fees is
a breach of good public policy, and of both guardian and commercial
ethics.

  The downstream results are predictable: other commercial entities
trying to set policy (ie, one other than free competition) by
establishing their own internet ``states'', and the ultimately 
unsuccessfull attempts by Jon to create a new commercial zone to
offset the effects of NSI by extending and reshaping the former policy.

  
  If I were the Doge (king) of Romeo and Juliette, I'd probably be
tempted to call a plague down upon **both** your houses.  As it happens,
I'm not the King, so I don't get to do that.
   I do urge the IAHC to try to set a new policy that can supercede
that of NSI, immediately in new domains and eventually in .com.  And
I urge ISPs and other infrastructure providers to make cross-support
agreements so as to be able to profit from the necessary changes.

   But I do not urge the commercial interests to try to set up kingdoms,
nor the IAHC to let service providers create unregulated monopolies 
out of the namespace they manage.  

  Let the IAHC set the ground rules and the best player under them win: 
then I get to rain flowers on both sides.

--dave c-b
-- 
David Collier-Brown,  | Always do right. This will gratify some people
185 Ellerslie Ave.,   | astonish the rest.        -- Mark Twain
Willowdale, Ontario   | davecb@hobbes.ss.org, canada.sun.com
N2M 1Y3. 416-223-8968 | http://java.science.yorku.ca/~davecb