Ronda Hauben on Sun, 6 Jun 1999 19:34:36 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> Open Letter on ICANN to Elliot Maxwell - U.S. DOC |
>Date: Sat, 5 Jun 1999 20:11:36 -0400 (EDT) >From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com> >To: bburr@ntia.doc.gov, emaxwell@doc.gov >Subject: Open Letter to Elliot Maxwell of U.S. DOC about ICANN An Open Letter to Elliot Maxwell, U.S. Dept of Commerce My proposal to the NTIA in Fall '98 provided for an open process and for computer scientists from the U.S. and other interested countries to contribute to making that open online process into a reality. This was the first necessary step in determining what cooperative means were needed to porotect the essential name, number and protocol functions of the Internet. That proposal should have been funded by the U.S. government and any other country that cared to help create a cooperative process for protecting these vital Internet functions. That is still the challenge to all, but primarily to the U.S. government, and to Elliot Maxwell, who supposedly replaced Ira Magaziner as the person determining Internet policy in the U.S. but who has been carefully hidden from view. I am requesting that Elliot Maxwell join the IFWP list and the Netizens Mailing List and begin to participate in the discussion of what is happening and what should be happening with regard to creating appropriate institutional forms for these crucial functions of the Internet. Ronda Below is an important discussion with comments that occurred on the IFWP list on May 25 while many were involved in the conference in Berlin and thus may have missed these comments on the IFWP mailing list. "A.M. Rutkowski" <amr@netmagic.com> wrote on May 25, 1999: >Karl, AMR>It's obvious that you and a few others on this list AMR>have alternative ideological constructs of the universe AMR>surrounding Network Solutions. Those of use who were AMR>actually part of this activity and dealing with these AMR>issues since 1992 have a different set of experiences AMR>and knowledge base. AMR>I think most of us can agree, however, that Network AMR>Solutions is only one of many players, and the real AMR>problems here surround those claiming to be king of AMR>the mountain, and the activities in which they are AMR>engaging. The institutions, regulations, taxes, AMR>licensing, and claims being advanced by ICANN and AMR>its GAC are broad and far reaching. They are what AMR>threaten the Internet, not NSI. AMR>--tony >From the above comments I thought that perhaps Tony Rutkowski had acknowledged and recognized that ICANN is a serious problem that must be taken up to be challenge by anyone who is concerned about the present and the future of the Internet, but the more recent posts by Tony seem to say that this was a mistaken conclusion from his posts as he is once again claiming that ICANN is the only possible way forward for the Internet. Also on May 25, 1999 "A.M. Rutkowski" <amr@netmagic.com> wrote: At 10:16 AM 5/25/99 , Karl Auerbach wrote: KA>>I certainly find it hard to justify allowing NSI to retain its unfair KA>>advantage on the basis that after a great deal of investment and work, a KA>>big competitor may possibly, maybe arise. AMR>Unfair? It was NSI's risk, investment, and entrepreneurship AMR>over the past six years that built their segment of the AMR>business. They've agreed and are proceeding rapidly to AMR>open most of that segment up to 5, then 29, then other AMR>companies to harvest the market segment that they built. AMR>Frankly, I regard that as unfair - but they're actually AMR>doing it anyhow in the belief that a rising tide raises all AMR>ships. AMR>When the various NSFNet cooperative agreements were terminated, AMR>I didn't see MCI-IBM, Sprint, and the regionals (now largely AMR>Verio), give up their networks, addresses, intellectual property AMR>and customer bases in a spirit of largesse emanating from the AMR>"unfairness" of their market segments. They walked with billions AMR>in assets and revenue streams. AMR>Maybe we want to list all the several thousand companies and AMR>institutions that received NSF awards and agreements, figure AMR>out what that's worth, and ex post facto divvy up their assets AMR>in a grand spirit of fairness. AMR>--tony And Dave Crocker responded: >At 10:54 AM 5/25/99 -0400, A.M. Rutkowski wrote: AMR>>Unfair? It was NSI's risk, investment, and entrepreneurship AMR>>over the past six years that built their segment of theM AMR>>business. They've agreed and are proceeding rapidly to DC>NSI had no risk and made no entrepreneurial investment. DC>By the time they finally decided to treat this as a real business, DC>they had a massive, government-protected revenue stream, with fees DC>set to be 3-7 times too high. DC>This extra money provided all the investment funds. DC>NSI did not go out and create a business plan, acquire investment money and DC>then try to create a new business. THAT is entrepreneurialism, Tony. (You DC>should try it sometime; it's quite exciting and rewarding.) DC>What NSI has done is to feed at the government trough. And they did it DC>based on an existing service built by others. They can't even take the DC>credit for creating the service they now profit from. (...) DC>Dave Crocker But all of this is a fight it seems over who will get which piece of the carcass of the Internet. In Tony's first post that I cite here, he acknowledged that there is a problem with ICANN. However, it didn't seem that he acknowledged that ICANN taking over ownership and control over controlling functions of the Internet such as the root server system, the domain name system, the IP numbers and the protocols is a very big power play. And as Elaine Kamarck, a former advisor to Gore, and a political scientists at Harvard, acknowledged at the Berkman meeting in January over the membership question for ICANN, there is no machinery to oversee or punish any abuse of power in a "non-profit" corporation that is intended for other kinds of purposes, *not* for the purposes that ICANN is being created for. Elaine pointed out that government was created and has mechanisms to deal with the kind of conflict of interest economic power that is being vested in ICANN, and a membership or non membership non-profit organization where all one can do is throw out board member, doesn't have such machinery. Tony and Dave, do either of you have any idea of the importance of the Internet to people around the world, both those who are online and those who hope to one day get online? And I have the same question to the others on the IFWP list where this discussion is going on. If so, I wonder how you can be quibbling over who gets which piece of an Internet carcass that it seems those grabbing are trying to create, rather than considering what harm is being done by the current creation and development of ICANN. Is there any way either of you can recognize that ICANN is a fundamentally flawed model and should be dumped. That it is supposed to be a "design and test" situation and the test has failed and thus the U.S. government should be acknowledging the failure and stopping the damage before it gets any greater. The U.S. government has *no* authority to give away the cooperative and public assets and functions and policy making processes that are being offered to ICANN. There do need to be ways found to protect these essential functions of the Internet from abuse and to administer them in a way that provides for the well being of the Internet and its users and the scaling of the Internet. There is plenty of good experience to build on in the cooperative processes of a number of nations and of computer scientists from around the world in building the Internet. Therefore isn't it time to get on with dumping this cherade that is ICANN and beginning to explore what is needed by the Internet community and the public around the world in terms of supporting the current and future development of the Internet?. Ronda ronda@panix.com ronda@ais.org Proposal is at http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/dns_proposal.txt --------- See Cone of Silence: ICANN or Internet democracy is failing by John Horvath URL: http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/2837/1.html and Amateur Computerist issue 9-1 http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACN9-1.txt --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl