Re: Anti Capitalism?

[Karl Denninger <karl@Mcs.Net>]

> > Certainly doesn't look like *competition* will be present in the
> >holding of those DBM tables.
 
Dave Crocker wrote:
> 	The repository functions clearly are specified to be a single
> operation.  To allow competition within the repository function requires a
> technology for assuring adequately syncrhonized data bases among mutually
> suspicious participants.  This is not available with off-the-shelf
> technology.  Shared access by mutually suspicious participants to a
> singled, shared data base IS reasonable to obtain today.

Without competiton in the repository function we're just moving the NSI
monopoly one step higher in the food chain, and making it even more
powerful.

This is less desirable to the users of the Internet in its possible
consequences than leaving NSI alone!

Further, it is FAR less desirable FROM THE USER PERSPECTIVE than either of:

1)	Exclusive TLDs with one registry per.
2)	Shared TLDs with competing, shared DBM environments which are
	managed by the registries in a mutually suspicious framework.

The IAHC draft actually leads to a MORE powerful monopoly than we have now!

It concentrates the power all in one place -- at the DBM owner level.  
There are no procedural safeguards defined to prevent trouble there.  In 
fact, unless that function is run as a PURE non-profit with completely open
procedures and books -- no benefit at all to the operator and run at bare 
cost (at which point one has to question who would want the job) the
potential to really rape not only the users but the registries is 
enormous.  

I do not believe that it is even *possible* to prevent this unless the above
happens -- and then one has to ask "who'd want the hassle and work?"

What prevents the owner of the DBM system from setting an arbitrary profit
margin and pricepoint to the registries for that function?  Nothing.  Open
books don't even prevent it.  I can find a thousand ways (like paying for
all my high-level staffers to take trips to Switzerland for conferences,
staying in the most expensive hotel in the country for a week) to exploit
such a system, and I don't even have to THINK about it!

There is no accountability process in the world that is adequate to protect
against this.  If it happens then every Internet user in the world pays for
it.  

Interestingly enough, its even worse than the NSI setup now, where NSI
controls all of it.  At least if NSI tried to raise the registration fee to
$5,000 you could get Congress involved and raise hell, since they're
ultimately responsible for the cooperative agreement.

You have to wonder who is being selected (or who has been selected) for that
function....

> 	The IAHC proposal presumes that the back-end operation is not that
> difficult, involving pure operations rather than policy.

That's a false assumption.  The organization that controls the DBM function
OWNS the entire process in the IAHC draft.  They are invincible in effect,
as there is no competition possible there.

Again, this is even less desirable than the existing situation.

> Also:  IAHC member, expressing strictly (or loosely) personal opinions

--
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Karl Denninger (karl@MCS.Net)| MCSNet - The Finest Internet Connectivity
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