February 24, 2007

Roto Rooter for the Net

I, Cringley says David Harrison has an idea for cleaning up the Internet.

Abandon it.

Or at least route around it.

David, who is not American, sees the U.S.-controlled Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as an imperialist tool, which is also pretty much the way the Bush Administration sees it, too, though the Bushies are proud rather than upset. So David wants the Inet to first unseat ICANN from power. If users want to participate in the Inet, they have to accept the Inet's Terms and Conditions, which say that ICANN has no authority here, thanks.

Inet would operate its own DNS system parallel to the one run by ICANN. That's not really such a big deal, you know. Certainly a different DNS with different rules would not be hard to build from a technical or even a financial standpoint, and it could exist on the current network right alongside the current DNS system. The big question is why people would use it. They wouldn't at first, because without traffic and participating servers such a DNS would be useless, and that's why David proposes an Inet DNS filter as a crossover between the old/evil system the new/good one.

A free browser patch would install a virtual switch. Click on the switch, and you route your calls through the Inet DNS Filter, and if appropriate, Inet's own DNS system.

The Inet DNS Filter would operate for a transition period. During this time, any reputable domain name holder owning an Internet domain could ask for free registration of those same domains on the Inet system. Their site would be checked to see that it complies with Inet's Terms and Conditions, and if so, they get it.

....

The Inet's e-mail service would incorporate centralized anti-phishing and anti-spam techniques, and would block known spambots. All known spammers or phishers would, where identified, be banned from the system for five years or life. Anyone operating on behalf of a known spammer or phisher would receive the same punishment. Spam is not a free speech issue, it is a digital pollution and fraud issue and would be dealt with as such. Any fraudulent commercial service offered through Inet would similarly be dealt with (this relates to non-existent lotteries, selling properties that do not exist, multilevel marketing scams, etc.).

I like it.

Hey Now. I'm not sure I'm ready for this mighty migration and transition of pseudopower David envisions. But I do believe there will come a time when we've made such a mess of this other constellation we're populting that we can't get undo the mess.

That's when I'll come back and re-read this.