Tomatoes for Verisign at NANOG 29

Thu Oct 16 20:43:18 UTC 2003

At 12:45 PM -0700 10/16/03, JC Dill wrote:
>At 11:56 AM 10/16/2003, Chris Strandt wrote:
>
>>Maybe a "vote" at the end of the presentation would be better.
>>
>>After Verisign has to say what they want, it would be interesting 
>>to see what the participants think of starting Site Finder again.
>>
>>Its not as press worthy... but it lets Verisign have their say, and 
>>gives the community a voice right there on the spot on the issue.
>
>Have a vote with the tomatoes.  All those who oppose the wildcards 
>would put their tomatoes or tomato-substitutes in one pile, all 
>those who approve of the wildcards would put their token-of-choice 
>in another pile.

I'm not sure I really want to think about the 
alternate-token-of-choice. Let me stipulate that I was born and 
brought up in Northern New Jersey, started as a chemist exposed to 
the usual organic chemistry aromas, and STILL consider some things as 
smelling bad. :-)

>
>We need a *visual* way to make the point to Verisign, to ICANN, to 
>the press, to the Internet using public who do not understand the 
>underlying technical issue.  The press is not going to put this 
>story on the wire and carry it on the front page of newspapers 
>around the world if the story is "NANOG meeting attendees voted 417 
>to 3 to indicate disapproval of Verisign's wildcard scheme in the 
>.com and .net root server".  A photo montage showing people buying 
>tomatoes, holding tomatoes, placing tomatoes in a pile, a room full 
>of people wearing red shirts, etc. THAT is what the press needs to 
>get the message out to the people to shame ICANN into doing the 
>right thing.  Look at this as a photo-op for NANOG participants to 
>collectively make their point known in a visually graphic way.
>

 From experience back in my more general political days, either have a 
see-through bag or basket for the tomatoes. While a nice pyramid 
would be nice, without very careful handling, we will have tomatoes 
bouncing in all directions.