Ejovi Nuwere

ICANN is supposed to be the organization that holds the internet together but I’m becoming increasingly skeptical about its ability to actually do anything. If you break an ICANN rule you don’t go to jail. And in reality prison or violence is the most effective mode of rule enforcement. ICANN has no real legal authority to enforce any of its rules. This is why I’m a firm believer in the eventual fragmentation (sounds better than fracturing) of the internet. The people who run it now will be completely ineffective when governments decide they have had enough and finally nationalize their own networks.

Let’s take for example the abuse of domain names by registrars. Registrars are businesses sanctioned by ICANN to legally buy and sell domain names for customers. But Bob Parsons explains how these registrars abuse this right to the detriment of all internet users. What has ICANN done to prevent this? Nothing. It’s impossible that a system like this could continue to function in the next 10 years.

This long vacation turned out to be very difficult for me. I can’t function properly if I don’t have something to occupy my mind or keep me distracted. I prefer to sleep with the TV on if I can. I prefer to train in the gym 6 days a week if I can. And I need to work during the day and it has to be fast paced and challenging. Maybe this is what attracted me to security, everyday was different. It’s probably the same feeling that made me become an entrepreneur.

The weather in NYC has changed and it’s really beautiful. But something is still missing. NYC needs more entrepreneurs. The smart tech people all work in finance (I used to work at Lehman) and make big bucks. In San Francisco all the smart people work at startups. It’s such a different mentality. How does a startup compete with financial companies paying six figures in NYC?

Being an entrepreneur is like being a comedian…you know what I mean right? When a comedian goes on stage everyone assumes he is going to suck. Then the comedian has to gradually win the audience over. Once he has won them over he has to keep their attention. Then next week he has to come back and do the same thing all over again. And of course he will need new jokes. Can we outsource joke writing to India?

What if Myspace asked each of its users to voluntarily donate $1 for charity once every three months?

Is meetup.com really social? Should it be called gang-up.com or mob-up.com?

How many technology companies make it part of their mission statement to give profit to charity? Yes, there is the Google Foundation and the Craigslist Foundation but what tech companies have said “We will give X% to charity every year” like Ben and Jerry’s or Newman’s Own?

If you create a technology company with a social aim, is it still a technology company?

I’m very proud to say that FON is making a lot of progress in preparing to deploy the Harlem WiFi project. An idea that I have been spearheading since I joined the company. If successful it will be my first large scale project that gives back to the community.

Airports sell exclusive rights to the companies who provide Wi-Fi service inside the airport. To acquire the rights companies participate in an open bidding process where companies bid to provide the service. Successful bidders (the highest bidder) would have the exclusive right to provide Wi-Fi service for a specific period of time. My guess is that the length of the contract is somewhere around 2 years, give or take. For airports, selling exclusive rights to provide service means they get more money upfront for the license. And whenever the contract expires, suddenly it becomes more valuable because the companies that were excluded the first time will want in. Exclusive rights contracts to an audience is all about money, exclusivity gives you a monopolistic business for a given audience which means you can charge pretty much anything you want, and it means more money in licenses for the seller of those rights.

Now this week I have been talking about the eventual fracturing of the internet. China has an increasingly growing market of internet users (mostly using mobile phones) and with a population of 1.3 Billion there will be no slowing in growth. Do Chinese users visit many websites outside of China? I don’t think so. If the Chinese government created a seperate internet for its citizens and companies inside China how much would a major US pay to have access to their market?

The issue eventually for governments will be their inability to tax internet commerce. By creating private networks and charging companies for access to their citizens they in effect guarentee tax revenue. If you do business in Japan or China and they feel you are breaking the law, Japan for example has government officials show up at your office with guns and shut you down on the spot. But perhaps licensing access to its citizens will in the end be more valuable?

David Weinberger posted a video on net neutrality. This is one reason why media companies need to become ISPs. Ask a ninja has a better explanation of net neutrality.

I predict that we will ultimately lose the battle for neutrality. I also predict that there will be more than one version of the Internet. One will be controlled by China; another will be controlled by a coalition of Middle Eastern countries and the third between a western coalition. Though their may be a lot more fracturing these will be the major players.

I predict that major internet companies will have a team of diplomats who negotiate access agreements that allows for example, users in China to connect to their website in the US. We have already seen corporate diplomats make these sorts of agreements with China but it will become more prevalent.

So what are the positive side effects of the eventual fracturing of the internet? I’m still thinking about that…