RE: [wg-review] Intake from the GA ML

[Jefsey Morfin <jefsey@wanadoo.fr>]

Dear Marilyn,
the problem you rise is important. But it should be approached in a
clean sheet manner. What is wrong with the iCANN is basically Joe Sims
(and as a result Louis Touton). This is nothing personal, to the contrary:
the problem is they do an outstanding job and are brilliant pros while their
job assignment is wrong.

Let understand. For historical reasons - linked to the ARPANET ancestor -
the USG believe the responsibility of managing the Internet belonged to
them. The mistake has been to transpose the ARPANET understanding
(a true private network) into the Internet (a totally open relation of nets).
If the ARPANET belonged to the USA, the Internet belongs to none.

This confusion has been extended by the very poor use of ".us" making
US users to use the international gTLD as US sub-TLDs.

The confusion also comes from the death of Jon Postel at a time he was
still the key person (and the iCANN is still now an alter ego for Jon) and
he was correcting these mistakes (he planned 150 TLDs to be open and
hen 30 per years).

Now, if you want to sort the things out:

1. GAC. Govs are not interested in the Internet as such. They only want
     to protect their country rights at cyber level as they do elsewhere. The
     French, US, UK, Japanese Govs do not want to rule the Oceans, they
     want the French, US, British, Japanese ships to sail freely, their
     sailors to be protected and controlled, their goods protected, etc...
     Go vs are not at all concerned with the area of influence of the iCANN,
     they are concerned with what is happening in the Internet and are not
     that happy when Louis Touton is making the ICANN a duopoly with
     VeriSign to over protect US TM holders.

2. iCANN is responsible for Protocol. This is of NO interest to Govs
     except again if some protocol/technical development is used to
     favor one country as it may be the case withe the M$ 200 by VRSN.
     I suppose that the very limited involvement of the iCANN/PSO
     could be given to he IEFT without any one noticing it.

3. iCANN is responsible for IP addressing. This dramatically impact
     on Govs because it will be more and more accepted that it will
     impact on everything on earth as it will provide unique addresses
     to everything from goods to persons. The social and political impact
     and errors in allocating the addresses are top political, economical,
     innovation, social, organizational issues.

     The complexity of the IPv6 implementation is such that only
      international conferences at various social, industry, user, IEFT,
      government level may establish a framework. IMHO the job will
      be necessarily given to a special task force of the ITU.

4. iCANN is responsible for the management of the legacy TLDs
     DNS. As such it is a non cooperating root system of larger
     usership but of similar attitude as Name.Space. Until now the
     Augmented Root participants where polite neighbors on the Name
     Space. iCANN has decided to be arrogant and to take away
     others' business. This lead to investigations. Now New.net is
     creating challenge and real technical confusion. New.net is
     the best proof that iCANN failed: its job was to prevent this
     from happening in fostering competition and real innovation.

     This calls for two conclusions:

     -  iCANN should here support only the interests of the
        Internet International community to foster competition and
        innovation : an net keeper servicing the local and market
        Internet communities and being built as the association of
        the ccTLD/gTLD NICs

     -  iCANN should here permit innovation as per the RFC and
        help the emergence of now concepts, new services,
        instead of obliging to a unique TLD model as it does. This
        should be thru a true membership to global associations
        like the TLDA (should we eventually succeed in making
        them understand its own charter :-)  ).

Jefsey



On 04:39 09/04/01, Cade,Marilyn S - LGA said:
>Folks, whether one thinks that ICANN is too US controlled or influenced or
>not, there are serious matters for the GA to think about in terms of what
>alternatives exist in terms of governmental involvement.
>
>Let me try to identify: what options are there?
>
>Well, there's increasing the role of the government players via the GAC, and
>giving them more control.  So, we get into a "one country, one vote"
>scenario.  Since not all counties even attend the GAC, should we slow things
>down, while we wait for all the governments to show up?  Will that improve
>the ability of ICANN to make decisions, or slow it down even further?
>Ideas? I think on that front, maintaining the role of the GAC as advisory
>seems to be working to everyone's satisfaction.
>
>What about the ITU?  The ITU is controlled by/responsible to individual
>governments, with no input from individuals, and minimal from private
>sector, and none from NGOs' that I am aware of. Check out what it costs to
>be a sector member, as industry, and you'll soon get the sense that it isn't
>cheap.
>
>And, then, there is the issue that the ITU is primarily responsible for, and
>accountable for telecom issues, and fairly busy at that... Are they the
>right forum to deal with Internet issues and are they able to move quickly
>enough to deal with the issues facing ICANN.
>
>Or, maybe there's the WTO: well, they only do trade issues. And disputes...
>not a useful forum for fast paced decision  making. And each individual
>country has to first decide what the priorities are to bring a WTO case, so
>it's not clear what would rise to the level of a WTO case in the areas which
>ICANN now manages....
>
>Is the goal to increase governmental involvement?
>
>I think that however flawed, or imperfect one might find ICANN, it is better
>than the alternatives.  But, we should all be striving for improvements in
>ICANN.   I know we all agree with that.
>
>Marilyn
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Joop Teernstra [mailto:terastra@terabytz.co.nz]
>Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2001 8:52 PM
>To: Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M.; brianappleby@netscape.net; jo-uk@rcn.com
>Cc: Babybows.com; wg-review@dnso.org
>Subject: Re: [wg-review] Intake from the GA ML
>
>
>At 18:49 8/04/01 -0400, Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M. wrote:
> >
> >It might be a good idea to have one nation's legislature -- particularly
>the
> >U.S. Congress -- perform oversight of ICANN's current activities, but this
> >may not be a prudent long term solution, and we should be cautious in
> >considering the matter.
>
>Very cautious. In Europe the members of the European parliament are
>starting to take notice too. They are irritated about the delay for the .eu
>TLD.
>
>Newspaper comments about the just held "WHo governs ICANN?" meeting there:
>
>Nachdem der Giessener Politologe Claus Leggewie das Experiment der ersten
>globalen Online-Wahlen zum Aufsichtsrat der ICANN für gescheitert erklärt
>hatte, hielt auch Detlef Eckert, Leiter der Grundsatzabteilung der
>Generaldirektion Informationsgesellschaft der Europäischen Kommission, mit
>seiner Kritik nicht hinterm Berg. Wer die ICANN als "wahrhaft
>international" bezeichne, "liegt falsch", befand der Volkswirtschaflter Er
>beklagte ein "nicht ausgewogenes" Kräfteverhältnis zwischen der
>Europäischen Union und den USA im Bereich der ICANN. Auch für den
>Rechtsanwalt Michael Schneider, der aus seinen Erfahrungen im Names Council
>der ICANN berichtete, haben die USA die Strukturen der Netzverwaltung "voll
>im Griff". So beschäftige die ICANN nur einen einzigen nicht-amerikanischen
>Mitarbeiter. Außerdem übe der Justiziar des Unternehmens - natürlich ein
>US-Amerikaner - "mehr Einfluss aus, als er eigentlich haben sollte."
>
>
>Roughly translated:
>Political scientist Clause Leggewie declared the experiment of the first
>global ICANN elections "a failure".
>Detlef Eckert (leader of the IT dept of the European Commission) said ICANN
>is not "truly international" and complained that there is no balance of
>power between the US and the EU in ICANN.
>(this view  seems to ignore  the rest of the world --joop)
>Michael Schneider said that the US has a 'full grip" on  the structures of
>Net governance.
>ICANN employs only a single non-US citizen and the in-house Lawyer (of
>course from the US) have more influence than they should...
>
>of course Hans Kraijenbrink (who sits as lobbyist for the Dutch Telecom
>firm KPN in Brussels, and for whom ICANN is the most transparent
>Organization in the world)
>denied it all:  "I don't feel them breathing down my neck" and "what we
>have learned is, that self-governance is possible"
>
>Hans Kraaijenbrink, einer der am längsten amtierenden ICANN-Direktoren,
>verwies die Berichte von der permanenten Bevormundung der ICANN durch die
>US-Regierung dagegen ins Reich der Legenden. "Ich fühle nicht ständig einen
>heißen Atem in meinem Nacken", sagte der Niederländer, der als Lobbyist für
>die Telekommunikationsgesellschaft KPN in Brüssel sitzt. Auch die ständige
>Kritik an dem Netzgremium konnte er nicht nachvollziehen. "Was wir gelernt
>haben, ist, dass die Selbstverwaltung möglich ist", sagte Kraaijenbrink,
>für den ICANN die "transparenteste Organisation auf der ganzen Welt ist".
>
>source:http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-08.04.01-003/
>
>--joop
>
>
>
>--
>This message was passed to you via the wg-review@dnso.org list.
>Send mail to majordomo@dnso.org to unsubscribe
>("unsubscribe wg-review" in the body of the message).
>Archives at http://www.dnso.org/archives.html
>--
>This message was passed to you via the wg-review@dnso.org list.
>Send mail to majordomo@dnso.org to unsubscribe
>("unsubscribe wg-review" in the body of the message).
>Archives at http://www.dnso.org/archives.html

--
This message was passed to you via the wg-review@dnso.org list.
Send mail to majordomo@dnso.org to unsubscribe
("unsubscribe wg-review" in the body of the message).
Archives at http://www.dnso.org/archives.html