Is the government coming?

[GreyWing]

OK, my assumption that people here understood domain names was misguided.

Oh no, that's where we have been going wrong. I knew there was something I was missing. Is there any courses we can go on to get to your level?

 

[tifosi]

Ok, Paul was being a bit of a smart-arse there but he has a point.

Nominet's remit is tightly focussed on the running of a registry body maintaiing the .uk namespace, not as a defender of the IT / broadband / digital infrastructure which is the remit of ISP's and companies like BT who in general are significantly larger bodies.

That's where the crux is as well. Government don't know / care / understand this differentiation as well and are quite happy to get on their soapbox and tout their soundbite politics on whichever cause celebre of the day, here knowing the general public will also not have a clue of the underlying techical issues but will jump up and down crying yes, please! It's all about votes just as the digital economy bill was at the end of the last parliament, and we know how crap that was.

We will get far more of this as we get towards the hustings phase of the next General Election.

 

[Lucien Taylor]

We will get far more of this as we get towards the hustings phase of the next General Election.

Exactly. And that is interesting to discuss isn't it? This is a forum, can't we have a chat.

My post speculating about whether the government is starting to turn and board capture was not focused enough because it had nothing to do with direct.uk and it didn't offer an easy letter for people to write?

 

[PaulGregory]

I find your quote disrespectful to those of us that have put a lot of work in.

I should perhaps clarify my reference. "No-solution spleen-venting" is what the narrator of the R.E.M. song Ignoreland admits his preceding vitriol is. Obviously there are not many parallels between US politics and Nominet.

I should also point out that I do tend to play devil's advocate.

I do admire and respect people who actually put work into changing something. This does not mean I approve everything the people on their side say; I will pick holes in arguments I agree with.

Look, the first post got my attention. I was out of the loop.

There is so much going on in the background (off the forum), just because it isn't done in the open, doesn't mean it isn't going on. The problems have been defined ages ago, lack of transparency and lack of accountability.

Yes, I hadn't seen any of the non-visible work on the lack of transparency.

They used to be accountable to members, the job Government thinks (says publically) the members are doing it, we know members can't do that because of the weighted voting, the electioneering bias and cosy dinners with the top 20.

Well, to play devil's advocate, the bigger members have more say. That will sound fair to many in Government. Nominet are quite accountable to the big players who really drive this industry. Small countries aren't in the G20, so why should the tiniest members be at the cosy dinner?

A letter would to the Government / MP's would be something simple as please force them to be more transparent and please hold them accountable. Listen to members concerns. Bring Nominet before a select committee or similar.

The solution to "X is crap" is rarely "Dear Mrs MP, please make X be less crap".

This Govt seems to love select committees though, so that actually sounds viable. "Dear Mrs MP, please argue the case for a select committee, and maybe some bloke can write a big report that would cost several million and then get ignored."

That has all been done and the Government has ignored it publically up to now. I'm sorry that you don't follow all this, this has all been done.

I note the "Up to now". So the point of the first post is that Times Are A'Changing, and the silver lining of the porn names scandal is that it might be a good pretext for a select committee? Given recent events, a wider committee on "Online trolling and pornography consumption" could bring in all the key players in the UK Internet industry - including Nominet and the top 20 registrars.

So how does one get a seat at this committee? Can we collectively pick a champion of smaller Nominet members, who would logically be called to give evidence? Is there a union of smaller Nominet members already? I would probably join such a thing.

 

[PaulGregory]

Oh no, that's where we have been going wrong. I knew there was something I was missing. Is there any courses we can go on to get to your level?

A course on comprehension and understanding context would be useful.

If you can't work out that my comment about people not understanding domain names was a lead in to the quote from someone talking about stopping spam (not a personal dig at yourself), and that I meant "some people" and not "all people", then you're not ever going to be my pick for underdog champion.

--

Let us return to the questions posed in the first post, now that we have a defined problem of "poor transparency and accountability".

How can we bang the heads of the top 17, and get them to consult with us, the wider membership to resolve Nominet's problems? To attend fewer dinners laid on for the elite, and more round tables? To work with their fellow owners? To self-regulate?

So, we want to tell the top 17 that they should take on board the opinions of the smaller members because our votes are worthless and they have all the power. In particular they should use their might to force Nominet to be more transparent.

Do I understand that right now?

On a wider note, transparency and accountability are only a problem if Nominet isn't doing what we want it to do. So in turn, is the main problem with Nominet that we don't know what it's doing, or that we can't stop it doing what we don't want it to do?

 

[GreyWing]

A course on comprehension and understanding context would be useful.

If you can't work out that my comment about people not understanding domain names was a lead in to the quote from someone talking about stopping spam (not a personal dig at yourself), and that I meant "some people" and not "all people", then you're not ever going to be my pick for underdog champion.

Shame that you can't see that I was also being devils advocate. I also like to sometimes pick holes in people's arguments when I agree.

 

[websaway]

Where I do agree with the Paul Gregory theme is that the argument is becoming entirely subjective and is therefore losing objectivity.

The whole Nominet issue is becoming like the opposition strategy to the government of the day ( as much mud as possible and see what sticks) and it gets very boring as the objective becomes increasingly blured.

 

[GreyWing]

The whole Nominet issue is becoming like the opposition strategy to the government of the day ( as much mud as possible and see what sticks) and it gets very boring as the objective becomes increasingly blured.

Perhaps you could give us an example of this mud being thrown? What are you referring to?

 

[PaulGregory]

Oh dear, GreyWing! Do you not understand simile?

 

[websaway]

Perhaps you could give us an example of this mud being thrown? What are you referring to?

I said "it's becoming like" so perhaps you are taking it out of context.

 

[GreyWing]

I said "it's becoming like" so perhaps you are taking it out of context.

Jeez come on, your context was quite clear, Mud being thrown is mud being thrown, it doesn't "become", it is or it isn't.... you don't half throw it for goodness sake. When you or anyone else get's an example of someone throwing mud to see what sticks, you post it in here.

 

[websaway]

Jeez come on, your context was quite clear, Mud being thrown is mud being thrown, it doesn't "become", it is or it isn't.... you don't half throw it for goodness sake. When you or anyone else get's an example of someone throwing mud to see what sticks, you post it in here.

Read it again tomorrow.

 

[PaulGregory]

@GreyWing That is a spectacular inability to understand the point.

 

[GreyWing]

@GreyWing That is a spectacular inability to understand the point.

Nice, my personal troll, always wanted one. Come on man seriously, when Nominet want to troll me, they put £150k into a QC and at least troll me properly. I'm sorry but to troll me, I'm going to have to demand some kind of effort or you just ain't going to get my attention

 

[Lucien Taylor]

Update on Registration Policy

... and the letter from Vaizey hits the mat. And Nominet arranges for an independently-chaired review - which I support BTW provided the hearings and evidence can be presented in a way that is open and transparent.

I personally will focus on the conflicted interests of Nominet's power brokers and board capture, because I personally believe that the abusive registrations issue is a non-issue, that Nominet has an abusive registrations policy (which nobody can find any more), but that Nominet has a 'trust deficit' right now, and that it is struggling to reassure its key stakeholders that it has the public interest at heart.

I am aware that others will try to argue that it is all about domainers and that handing all of the secondary market to SEDO and 123-Reg will solve the 'problem'.

I am aware that others will want to talk about direct.uk and I have no problem with that.