Kofi Annan’s comments yesterday have created a fuss. The BBC reports:

Authorities in the UK, Australia, Poland, Bulgaria and Japan also rebuffed Mr Annan’s claims.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard described the UN as a “paralysed” body and said it was incapable of dealing with international crises.

Clearly both Annan and Howard are right, but the UN’s paralysis is a symptom of a new era in US foreign policy – to “go it alone” against targets determined alone. Prediction: This era will be more unstable than that between 1914 and 1945 if it is allowed to develop.
new imperialism

Iraq war was Illegal and breached UN charter, says Annan.

Too little too late I fear. The UN is now irrelevant. This is a bad fact for the US and the UK who now need it to help them in post-war Iraq, but that’s really just too bad. The UN has been revealed as a powerless talking shop. The world we are moving into is far more dangerous, and the UN’s decline is a symptom of that. Not since those dangerous episodes during the 20th century has the human race been subject to so dangerous trends. Nations are not pretending to cooperate with each other, they are pursuing unrestrained self-interest. For now, with the US clearly the most powerful nation on earth, this mainly has consequences for those the Bush administration chooses to target. But as China, France, Russia and Germany [sometimes together] begin to develop a coherent opposition to US actions the future may be more ugly.

An amazing piece of journalism and a compelling story of the reality of Iraq.

The day after US helicopters killed many civilians – purportedly to save a Bradley fighting vehicle from being exposed to “the enemy” an eye witness, a British journalist from The Guardian, tells what happened.

It’s amazing to me that the Democratic nominee for President is being so craven in his support for a continued military presence in Iraq and an absolute failure in providing any opposition to the neocons (for that is who runs US Foreign policy today). The truth is that Iraq provides every argument you need to undermine the idea that a US led colonialism would be a good and stabilising force in the world.

Right now the Middle East is as unstable as I can remember – and I was 50 on August 27th, so I can remember a lot.

I can’t vote in the US election – I’m a Green Card holder, not a citizen. But if I could I would find it hard to vote for Kerry. He is a Bush in Kerry clothing as far as I can see. And the clothing ain’t that clever a disguise.

We’re moving house over the next two weeks. We sold our Aptos house and moved out on Friday.

We are going to a new home in Hamilton Avenue [close to University Avenue] in Palo Alto, but can only move in on 18 September. Meanwhile we are renting a beach house in Rio Del Mar.

Life is quite good I think

BUT … this server will be down a lot until 22 September when my new DSL activates. I run it from home and the transition will not be smooth. Sorry!

TUCOWS launched [ http://www.byte.org/blog/_archives/2004/9/7/136578.html ] an expiring names auction service today. The most interesting part of Ross’s post is this:

Today we announced Tucows expiring names auction service, a local implementation of the Perfect Information proposal (PIP?). What I mean is that it only realizes the efficiencies described in “Perfect Information” on a very local basis – i.e. it only works for names registered with Tucows. Because it is a “local” solution, it also lacks a few features that we set forth in “Perfect Information”. For instance, it doesn’t solve 100% of the problems faced by the registry and it doesn’t properly acknowledge the competitive ESP market.

These are very important aspects of the Perfect Information proposal that will only come about if *all* registrars can operate under a reasonably standard set of rules in a unified marketplace.We don’t have this today, but hopefully we will over time. In the meantime, Tucows auction service is our attempt to capitalize on some of the dynamics we recognize in the space while we work with the rest of the community on trying to sorting out the various moving parts that have to come into place before a global solution is realized.

I would say that this market is about to change very quickly into a more organized and rational one. For that to happen the registries and registrars need to come to agreement on a single solution. I do believe that will most likely occur now.

Steven Forrest’s Free2Innovate speculates [ http://free2innovate.net/archives/000399.html ] on the reasons for SnapNames move to an auction based model for the sale of deleting domain names. He points out that I am a director of SnapNames and as such may be able to throw some light on things.

A couple of points. As a director I really can’t talk publicly without Board and Management agreement. So sorry, no insight on this from me.

However, I guess it’s OK to talk about the general area. Ross Raider and Elliot Noss from Tucows – http://byte.org – posted an article [ http://www.byte.org/blog/_archives/2004/9/3/135064.html ] on this area late last week. Their point is that the market is still evolving and that ultimately the registrant will need to be part of the bargain when a deleting name is sold, wehther by auction or some other method.

There is a great deal of change in the market for deleting names. This change is generally market driven and generally good. I believe that there is more to come. I do not think that WLS is nullified by these changes. However, I do believe that the business model for WLS [by which I mean, generically, a registry level delivered service through which the deleting names can be offered for resale by registrars] will have to evolve as a result of what the market has taught everybody.

The rapidity of the change is also a strong element in understanding why ICANN should really stay out of business model issues. WLS really should just be an agreement to create a market for deleting names. the specific models should be a market decision forged by all those in the space.

A centralized system still makes a lot of sense. The business model that was implied in WLS is probably revealed as outdated by the efforts of Pool, Dotster, eNom and now SnapNames. But a coherent, TLD wide solution for the resale of deleting names is still logical.

The only real challenge is economics. How to structure such a system in a manner that all players [registrants, registrars, registies] are fairly rewarded for thier role in the process. This is a matter for negotiation between the three entities. I believe the registry is best placed to start this dialogue and Ross and Elliot have, in a way, opened the way for that.

The next step is rational discussion between all sides. Probably bi-lateral at first and multi-lateral later. ICANN’s role will be to recognize any consensus that emerges, preferably quickly, so that the market can get on with what it does best – commerce.

It’s 10 years since I co-founded CYBERIA, the world’s first Internet Cafe. Eva Pascoe, Gené McPherson (now Gené Teare, my wife) and David Rowe (my co-founder at EasyNet) were the 4 founders.

Here’s an NYT article (need to be a subscriber to see it – but it’s free to subscribe):

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/06/technology/06cafe.html

Eva, seems like you forgot to mention the rest of us