Re: [ALSC-Forum] Feedback on Draft Report

[Kent Crispin]

On Fri, Aug 31, 2001 at 11:30:29PM +1200, DPF wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 30 Aug 2001 10:05:02 -0700, Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
> wrote:
> 
> >In fact, I used to think like you do, and, when I was a member of the 
> >MAC or MITF, or whatever it was, I was in favor of the postal address 
> >verification scheme.  But working on the election quite changed my 
> >mind:  it never pays to understimate how clever people can be.
> 
> Fair comment.
> 
> However will requiring a domain name make much of a change?  I suspect
> introducing a membership fee will be the larger deterrent.

I believe that using domain name registration as the only criteria would
be equally susceptible to essentially undetectable fraud.  In theory
there is a requirement that you provide a valid address for contact
information, but there is no way to verify the address that is less
expensive than sending a physical letter -- and sending a physical
letter doesn't provide any significant guarantee.  If the domain name is
paid for, then you have the potential of other kinds of checking -- you
could require that the registrars to correlate credit card information
with contact information, and provide ICANN with a cryptographic hash of
the credit card number.  But of course, my wife and I use the same 
credit card, and why should we be discriminated against?  This scheme 
would also say that you must have a credit card to vote...

I said "if the domain name is paid for" above because I would not be
surprised to see nationalistic ccTLDs offer free registration for 
voters -- 

    If you want to vote in the ICANN election you can have a
    FREE-FOR-LIFE domain name like
    "PROUD-TO-BE-AN-AMERICAN-icannvoter2046389388.us"

Since there would be no other checks, I could register my cat, my dog, 
my canary, the hummingbirds that come to my hummingbird feeder, 
because they are all Americans, right?  And why shouldn't they have the 
right to vote, anyway?

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain