Flutterby™! : Gated Communities 2002-03-27 17:32:15+00

Gated Communities

2002-03-27 17:32:15+00 by Dan Lyke 5 comments

I've been reading the Scary Devil Monastery again, and given the current attitudes at ICANN't I've been thinking about gated communities. One of the problems, though, is that I don't want to gate based on technical ability. I've been thinking about using the OpenNIC address space, and running a Usenet II feed, and there are a few other fairly easy to set up alternate spaces that I've thought about setting up my various networks to access, but it leaves the cool yet non-technical people out of the loop.

You won't just be gating based on technical ability, you'll also be gating based on personal decisions. I may be technically competant but I don't want to use OpenNIC because it will quickly erode trust in the Internet. Or, I may be technically competant but want to use one of the many other rogue root systems, which would mean that your gated community would be invisible to me.

At some point, in the very near future, I will need to pick an alternative secondary domain registrar, with the hopes of eventually migrating to it. Or domain names will become no more useful than IP addresses. ICANN't

is doing their best to make the latter come true. This isn't a "right now" argument, but if I don't make a decision now it will be more painful in a few years.

I had access to a Usenet II feed for about 2 years. It's very small, just a few messages a day. Never really took off.

I've been using OpenNIC. Maybe I should stop? phoffman: please explain why "eroding trust in the Internet" is bad. I mean this seriously: I do not *want* sheeple who will swallow whatever lies the corportation feed them on the Internet. Makes it too easy for corporations to grab control of the Internet. It seems to me that any erosion of trust will be mainly limited to the trust of sheeple, you know, the people who want the Internet to be more like Disneyworld or the phone network.