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Eugene
Kaspureff learned 8080
assembler language at age ten in
1975. Now acknowledged as a top
Internet programmer, he
established the alternative DNS
registry Alter.NIC to counter the
NSI monopoly. As a prank hack (or
an act of civil disobedience?) in
1997 he diverted NSI Internic
root inquiries to Alter.Nic. This
produced in November 1997 his
arrest in Canada on U.S wire
fraud charges. He awaits trial.
Are these charges political?
The
following has been edited from a
speech by Kashpereff
at the ISP Con in August 1997,
published here in Media
Visions with his permission
(March
1998).
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- Eugene
Kashpureff
- Internet
Consultant,
- At
your name service.
- Elizabeth,
NJ
- (908)289-2098
- mailto:ekashp@httpd.com
- http://httpd.com/
- (c)
1998 by Eugene
Kashpureff.
- Used
with
permission.
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The Internet is a
revolutionary communications tool, and
freedoms on the Internet are freedoms of
communication. The freedom to express our
ideas is the basis for all other human
rights... I have four children. The
Internet I work for is not the Internet of
today. I work for the Internet of tomorrow
that my children will use, and the cyber
space that their children will use.... The
responsibility we have today is to
developing an independent, democratic
Internet governance for those who will use
the Internet over future generations, and
to protecting their freedoms.
Current laws
attempt to govern aspects of the Internet
in various countries around the world. But
the Internet spans over those borders, and
all of the Internet's problems span across
those borders.... Most of the real power
to govern the Internet still lies with the
United States government, which first
started the ARPA computer network in the
1960s. The U.S. government still
administers the true authority of the
Internet, through the National Science
Foundation, and its various grants and
contracts, most notably to the Internet
Assigned Numbers Authority, (IANA) which
we're told is not an entity but a
'function' performed by the Information
Sciences Institute at the University of
Southern California.
Jon Postel of the
IANA at ISI worked hard to come up with an
equitable solution for the top level
domain name problem. Then he wrote
"draft-postel," which created in fall of
1996 the Internet International Ad-Hoc
Committee, the IAHC. Unfortunately, the
first thing the committee did was throw
out the basic framework for which Jon
Postel of the IANA had worked so hard to
develop a community consensus. Despite
wide objection from the Internet public
during the comment period last winter, the
IAHC finalized its new TLD plan last
spring as the "Generic Top Level Domain
Memorandum of Understanding," gTLD-
MOU.
The future of
domain name allocation, as well as IP
address allocation, are central to the
power of the root
of the Internet, and are the primary
issues of Internet governance facing us
today. Alter.NIC advocates the expression
of freedom in the domain name space by
primarying the root zone for yourself.
That is, if you
are operating your own name service, you
should be running a local primary copy of
the root zone file, whether it be the IANA
version of the root zone, the eDNS
version, the uDNS version, the AURSC
version,
or the Alter.NIC version of the root zone
file.
The top level
domain name issue and the implications of
its solution are very central issues to
the evolution of Internet governance. If
there is a time to start caring
about these issues, it is now. What can
you do to promote Internet governance? Be
active. Be informed. Follow the issues.
Find organizations whose ideas you believe
in, and support them. Write to your
politicians. Join some of the mailing
lists where these issues are discussed.
Take time
to be active, take time to care.
The Internet
needs its own governance, independent of
the geopolitical governments of our planet
-- a democratic governance with true
representation for every Internet user. A
governance with a legislative branch to
make fair rules for all Internet users, as
well as an executive branch to enforce
those rules, and a judiciary branch to
ensure that those rules are fairly applied
to all users, everywhere.
There are those
who say that the Internet is not yet
mature enough for its own governance. But
the path to maturity for cyberspace and
society is through an awareness of the
need to protect our rights to free
communication in this new frontier.
Democratic Internet governance will come
as the users of the Internet become aware
of the need for it, and demand it. The
future of the top level domain issue, and
the future of the Internet, is in your
hands.
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