Re: [ALSC-Forum] Feedback on Draft Report

[Jeff Williams]

Kent and all stakeholders or interested parties,

Kent Crispin wrote:

> 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.

  Undetectable means it cannot be fraud, only a potential for fraud to
exist.  Hence this comment/statement has not legal or ethical value.
Ergo, in the context of the At-Large it is not usable.

>  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.

  Wanting guarantee's is a good thing, but it is not reasonable.  There
is no "Guarantee" than when crossing the street I am going to make it to
the other side safely or even alive.  Hence what you are wanting, it seems
here is not accessible, and therefore not reasonable.

>  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.

  All my credit cards are correlated to a PO Box address.  In addition,
some countries privacy laws, such as the US and many countries in the EU
would not allow for any such information regarding CC info to be sent in
any format without the owners written permission.  Other even more
stringent requirements are being considered presently in the US in this
regard as well.   In addition, with the huge amount of CC fraud going on
now, such information would hardly be a goo method of determining
anything of value for the purposes of the At-Large, other than simple
membership dues payment.

>  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...

  Yes.  And that would be far out of line.  Many countries do not even
allow for the use of a credit card.

>
>
> 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 --

  And this would be a good thing to do!  >;)

>
>
>     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?

  Uh huh.  Well Kent you have made this argument, unsuccessfully many times
in the past.  It is not more valid now than it was than.

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

Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup - (Over 118k members strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com
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