Archive: Help OpenNIC make its plans

This is a post I wrote long ago on another site. In this case, it’s from Rusty Foster’s Kuro5hin.Org which has long since disappeared from the Internet.

OpenNIC is, I think, the only thing I’ve done that has a Wikipedia page? I haven’t been directly involved with it since I had kids, but I’m very happy that it still exists.

An old post of mine from Kuro5hin.Org, dated “Sun Jul 16th, 2000 at 05:28:31 AM EST”.

Now that the OpenNIC system is functioning, serving several new TLDs (“.opennic”, “.null”, “.parody” and “.oss”) and has even attracted some folks outside the US, we need to start considering the socialization and propagation of the project’s system. I want to ask the readers here at Kuro5hin to help us plan out how the OpenNIC should move out into the wide world.

So, loyal K5 readers, here’s a test of how we deal with material which does, in fact, have a promotional componant. The article below is my description of how the OpenDNS project can move into acquiring users and hopefully keeping from getting squelched by ICANN. It’s not intended to promote OpenNIC, of course, though it does. It’s a description of things I think an alternative DNS project can do to develop into something globally useful. I wrote it both for this posting and for the OpenNIC discussion list, so up to 8 of us may have seen it elsewhere, so it’s not even unique to K5. With all those potential “-” attributes, the reason I’m posting this here is that the OpenNIC grew out of a discussion here on K5 and I’d very much like to see what you folks can find wrong with this proposal and how you think it could be improved.

It is, I think, completely correct to point to adoption and the (potential) ICANN response as the big issues for any alternative DNS project. Though we do not aim to eliminate ICANN, which would probably not be a viable objective anyway, the project is likely to be perceived as doing so. And since they currently control the name server defaults, we are in a position where we have to convince each name server admin to support us. Quite the challenge.Getting Users

Let’s look at adoption first. I see four likely paths to pursue to gain users, and if you read my first post to the OpenNIC list about this, you’re definitely going to see some copy-paste going on in this part:

encouraging personal adoption, largely in the geek community, just because it’s a nifty ideaThe geek community is quick to adopt nifty new systems. I see OpenNIC as just that. Though it’s commonly known among DNS server admins to be possible, its simply a neat thing to see someone try to implement it. The neatness factor is very important in whether the geek world will adopt any new thing. Distributed systems are also nifty things, particularly when the administration or control of the system is distributed as well as its operation.Geeks, as a subculture, also tend to support the underdog, particularly trying to use technology to do something as they think it should be done, rather than as some corporations says it should be. By attempting to open the global DNS to direct user participation, we are placed in direct opposition to ICANN and NSI, two of the corporations (behind Microsoft) with which the geek community is most annoyed.The geek community, I think, can be expected to debate the project endlessly, but I also think we can expect a fairly large influx of users from the community after “announcing” the project’s existence. After all, many geeks run their own DNS servers on their home networks. The standard press release is probably not a very useful tool in this community, but coverage by the major web sites is vital; the project began on Kuro5hin, after all.For the core online community, who can be expected to be interested in any project like this, the most important part is simply making them aware of it. The challenge here is to identify community read web sites and other media which are likely to run a story about the project. Slashdot is an obvious choice, though it might be difficult to get a posting there despite the recent coverage of ICANN. Slashdot prefers links to other media, it seems. The appropriate venues here, I think, are the more “traditional” sites which cover the Free Software/Open Source world. I’m thinking here of 2600, Boardwatch, Salon, possibly even ZD or Wired. As a young project, thus far not aligned to any “established” person or group, it will probably be difficult to get coverage in any of these. With the recent controversy where many European national TLDs went so far as to refuse to pay the ICANN levy, it should be much easier to get coverage in the European press like The Telegraph.Another venue for this sort of publicity, oddly enough, is humor sites, which are quite popular. I have already emailed with James Baughn, the operator of Humorix, and he has already placed a link to the site under their “Supported Projects” category. I am also discussion with Leonard Richardson, an admin of Segfault, who is interested in adding the “segfault.parody” domain for their site. Perhaps if we added “.comics” as well, we could encourage Sluggy Freelanceand User Friendly to adopt the appropriate domains. This would spread the word quite far, as UF is getting over 12 million views-per-month on their site.And we shouldn’t forget that geeks do actually control the DNS for most network entities; after all, without them who could be found who could run it? So general geek adoption could be very important in expanding support to the ISPs and other network organizations from which the vast majority of Net users get their DNS. One administrator at an ISP could easily bring thousands of users simply by changing their company’s config.
encouraging ISC and the Free Software and Open Source Operating System distribution maintainers to change the defaults in their distributionsThe fact that ICANN controls the default root servers for every DNS server distribution can initially be approached most effectively by working to convince the ISC, who control the BIND distribution, to modify their installation to either make our system the default or to at least give the user the choice between systems at install time. I have yet to contact them about this, as I’ve read some rather vehement statements attributed to ISC folks at a conference this spring about BIND never supporting multiple domain hierarchies. But, as Brad Templeton pointed out to me, I haven’t actually spoken to anyone there to verify that this is their attitude.If the ISC is unwilling to support us in their distribution, we can still work with the Free Software/Open Source operating systems to either change the defaults for their distributions or, if they’re not willing to do that, to at least add an option in their installation. Considering that the various Linux’ are currently the most common server operating systems on the Net, the potential increase in the user base just from OS upgrades is remarkable. And OpenBSD has been making an amazing showing in both new adopters and in media coverage (not that they don’t deserve it; they do).Essentially, the free operating systems still dominate the Net server population. We should have a natural ally in the folks who produce these distributions and their support would also bring in not only many of the folks who run their OSs, but also all the users who receive DNS service from their machines.
involving the social activist community, because the project offers a better, more democratic, way to run the NetThe Net has really started to gain popularity amongst traditional activist groups, as anyone who watched the organization building for last December’s events in Seattle or this April’s events in D.C. can attest. This community is also a natural ally, as the anti-corporate movement is extremely large and broad and the issue here is exactly one of a non-accountable (and inappropriate) corporation being in control of a vital piece of Net infrastructure.IGC, therefore, should be interested in supporting us, as should the WELL and many other Net-activist groups who are not tied into the ICANN system (as the EFF, for example, which has not decided to oppose ICANN directly). There are quite a few publications, most notably Mother Jones but many others, from this community that have wide, educated and largely online readerships.
encouraging corporate adoption by asking well known corporations to sponsor (not administer) new TLDsThis, I think, is the track most likely to gain us widespread public recognition. The idea here is that, while OpenNIC will not allow a corporation to administer a TLD (or, in fact, to become members), we would welcome them as sponsors of specific TLDs. They, simply, would provide server and network resources (and hopefully some money to compensate the TLD admins for their time), in exchange for which the would be listed as the “official” TLD sponsor. Certainly, the first few to do this would receive immense publicity.There are two TLDs that spring to mind as immediately useful for this. We already have “.search” as a proposed TLD, though it has not been taken up by an admin team. We could ask Yahoo, Google or Jeeves to sponsor the TLD, which would get them immense press coverage (primarily beneficial to them, of course, since their business rest on brand awareness). The other is “.music”, for which Beatnik, eMusic and many others have been suggested as appropriate sponsors. And, of course, we hope to involve the Free Software Foundation as sponsors for “.gnu”, though if they choose not to we will naturally not publish that TLD.

Dealing with ICANN

Once the OpenNIC starts to gain users, it is quite like that ICANN will perceive it as a threat and take some action to shut us down. That would, of course, be a Bad Thing. The difficulty, being outside the current organization, is that we cannot predict how they will respond. Here are some things we can do to prepare:

Officially request the endorsement and support of such organizations as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, the Center for Democracy and Technology, The American Civil Liberties Union; the list could go on forever.Aside from the boost to perceived legitimacy in such an endorsement, many of these groups do pro bono legal work for threatened Net activists, which might come in really handy … 😉
Establish relationships with the registrars of other, existing, TLDs.There is always strength in numbers and, besides AlterNIC, many national TLD registrars are already fed up with ICANN. This seems to be mostly because ICANN derives its legitimacy as DNS controller entirely from an endorsement by the American government, and many think that this is not sufficient cause to let them control a global infrastructure. The OpenNIC is, at the moment, mostly in America (hell, right now it’s mostly SF Area) but we have started to get servers in other countries. We need to seriously pursue this, not only to establish our credibility with the non-American registrars, but also to protect the system from the risk of an American injunction bringing it down.
We need to incorporate widely.The OpenNIC will initially, since I’ll be putting up the money, be incorporating as a consumer cooperative in California. This is the best way to guarantee that the users keep ownership of the system. As soon as we can get admins in other countries, we should be incorporating OpenNICs in they’re countries and building the organization as an unbreakable partnership between these corporations.Considering the financial resources controlled by ICANN, and the expectation that they will perceive OpenNIC as a threat should we gain a sufficient userbase, we really should put some legal work into shielding ourselves and our project from the possibility that they will try some legal challenge. Though U.S. courts have ruled that American trademark law cannot be applied to TLDs (see the case about establishing “.web”, for example), that doesn’t mean they will necessarily follow that to its logical conclusion.The thing here is that Disney, Coke, Nike and such have put a lot of money into building a legal system in which certain structures of incorporation become immune to any single government’s pressure by simply moving their activities around the globe. We can, potentially, take advantage of this system to keep the OpenNIC DNS unencumbered by inappropriate nationalist interference by seeing that our infrastructure is as widespread as possible. This is what you might call a worst-case scenario response, since I certainly hope it would not come to having to shift the Tier 0 server to Sealand, for example.
Join ICANN.I, personally, have registered as an ICANN “At-Large” member and (unless someone else in OpenNIC decides to run; I’m not really that interested; I just think it would help if one of us were) will be nominating myself for the election next month to fill the five “At-Large” slots on the ICANN Board of Directors. I encourage all of you to register to vote in that election as well. If we can get people with aligning interests onto ICANN’s Board, even though it would not be a majority, it could be enough to bring them to cooperate with us, or at least to keep them from suing us … 😉

Discuss?

So, that’s where I think the real issues are in building up a genuine alternative to ICANN. The discussion on K5 was immensely helpful in designing the system itself and thinking about what it should be and do. Can you folks contribute something to help us get it done? Then, thanks. 😉