Jim Dixon wrote:
The IFWP represented a genuine opportunity for compromise. For the
first time all the warring factions came together in one place, for
the first time there was genuine progress. For whatever reason
certain elements chose to kill off the possibility of peace. They
did everything they could to prevent progress; they contrived to
shatter the emerging consensus and blocked the IFWP wrap-up meeting.
As you say, they created more problems and more delays until finally
things fell apart.
This is where we are today. One of the persons most responsible for
blocking the IFWP wrap-up meeting and destroying compromise is president
of ICANN. He sits on a board that cares nothing for progress, that
every day displays its contempt for the Internet community, that seeks
to impose an iron grip on everyone everywhere. The Internet has until
now been an agent for universal progress; ICANN sees it as an
opportunity to create a new imperium, the first truly global law.
COOK,
Ah I remember it well Jim. It was taken by Dave Farber, dripping with
Roberts contempt and served up to Farbers Interesting Persons mail lisit.
I will cite it momentarily. After doing so I will publish another Farber
IP post of a Crocker effort to assist Don Heath and ISOC in their efforts
to paint what became IFWP as evil. But I will precede those by a copy of
Tony Rutkowski's june 9 invitation to Heath, Farber, Cerf, Postel, Bradner,
and kathy Kliemna to join the July 1-2 Reston meeting.
[Note before getting into the details let me give credit where it is due
and say that Dave Farber does continue to take steps in the right direction
having announced today that he will wear a grey ribbon in singapore joining
in the campaign to force ICANN to open its board.]
Remember that Educom was a founding member of ISOC and that Roberts has
been assocciated with Educom nearly since its inception. One of the parts
of the tragedy that has given us ICANN is that ISOC, under the "leadership"
of Heath has been determined to impose its will on the rest of the internet
since Heath inserted himself in the process at the Harvard conference in
the summer of 1976 and helped to launch the MOUvement.
So by all means lets savor some Robert's venom and then go on to the
posturing of early June. ISOC and the MOUvement knew that they had ICANN
in the bag and that the IFWP process that started out as the GIAW was the
only thing that could derail them. You will see Heath on june 10th , the
day after he received the invitation to the Reston meeting planning with
*HIS* backers how to derail the IFWP process. And finally you will see
Farber's publication to his IP list of Dave crocker's attempt to discredit
the Reston meeting. Of course when the Reston meeting was successful, one
of Heath's next major moves was to jump on *you* Jim and declare YOU a
traitor to the cause in early July. yes. i remember it well.
Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 19:58:16 -0700
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Dave Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: IP: "Ratification" - the IFWP Emperor has no Clothes
Mime-Version: 1.0
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The following is sent WITH permission. For those of you who don't know
Mike, no one would ever characterize him as a flamer or a radical. It is
worth reading and thinking about.
Dave
From: Mike Roberts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: "Ratification" - the IFWP Emperor has no Clothes (fwd)
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 17:40:35 -0400 (EDT)
Forwarded message:
From: Mike Roberts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: "Ratification" - the IFWP Emperor has no Clothes
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 15:06:21 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I'm appalled at the convoluted and narcissistic thinking behind
the so-called "ratification" meeting. Let's review the bidding,
shall we?
- we'll hold the meeting immediately after the yet-to-be-confirmed
final-negotiating meeting of the yet-to-be-determined number of
important White Paper stakeholders that we have 100% conviction
will lead to an accepted legal structure for the new IANA corp.
- even though the cumulative probability of the previous item
is in the range of 30%, we'll find some gullible soul with
a high limit credit card to start signing financial
commitments for the meeting even though we haven't come close
to paying our bills for previous events
- the close conjunction of the ratification meeting with the
final negotiating meeting is so tight that no one outside
walking or driving distance of the site will attend on less
than a full fare airline ticket and a full fare at a fully
booked hotel. This is designed to ensure an open and
inclusive participation in the meeting.
- also designed to ensure the broadest participation of
all concerned Internet citizens, we will arrange for a
electronic vote on the final document, using a system
whose features are unknown to essentially all of the
proposed participants. In the interests of time, we
will forego any attempt at verification of the votes
with actual living humans and we will not be overly
concerned if the agreed upon final document is neither
sanctioned by governing boards of the parties to it
in time for the vote, nor that the vote commences before
it is even posted.
- in view of the fact that the hosts of the negotiating
session and several of the known major players have firmly
rejected the notion that the agreed upon document is
actually open to revision by the Internet community
at the ratification meeting, we will arrange for
moderators to paper over any dissents that emerge.
The Chair of the meeting will call for a voice vote
and declare that he/she hears more ayes than nays,
thus sanctioning the decision reached before the
meeting.
Thanks but no thanks. My organization will have nothing
to do with such an unrepresentaive, undemocratic,
uninclusive gathering.
- Mike Roberts
EDUCAUSE
COOK: lets go back then to the issue of where the GIAW _ IFWP process
really came from. here with Tony rutkowski's invitation to the insiders
including 3 of the mighty five.
>Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 16:39:05 -0400
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED],
>From: Tony Rutkowski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Incorporation Workshop
>Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
> [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>Don, Jon, John, and Dave,
>
>I wanted to touch base with you directly and establish
>a dialogue concerning the incorporation workshop now
>set for 1-2 July, head off anymore adversity in the
>press, and see if real cooperation and collaboration
>can't occur.
>
>I'm just helping, and this isn't my show. The last few
>days were just spent getting the basic logistics set so
>people could begin to be contacted.
>
>It's critical now to really bring everyone together to
>construct a corporation or trust with the right attributes -
>that provides for diversity, balance, safeguards, and meets
>the interests and expectations of everyone.
>
>This workshop happened because a lot of people were
>talking with a lot of other people about how to proceed
>if the government wasn't going to itself form a corporation,
>and what form of legal creature should be brought into
>existence.
>
>From a public policy if not legal standpoint, it is
>inappropriate for any single person, group, or contractor
>to proceed with this, and the US government officials
>involved made it clear to everyone that this should be
>a broad, diverse, and cooperative effort. In the final
>analysis, it the difficult issues are primarily legal ones,
>industry, and public policy ones, and everyone must work
>together or the self-governance effort will fall apart.
>
>The seminal beginning of the workshop effort emerged
>from Kathy Kleinman. She knew Prof. Tamar Frankel as
>her corporate law professor and perhaps the world's
>foremost expert on the whole area of corporations, trusts,
>fiduciaries, with decades of experience in getting
>contentious parties cooperating under self-regulatory
>organizations in the financial field. She brought Prof.
>Frankel to Becky Burr to discuss options - which include
>a non-profit, a for-profit, or a trust. Each has its
>pluses and minuses.
>
>Everyone was so captured by her knowledge, and how
>the options play out under the laws of other countries,
>and most of all her friendly, almost motherly style
>of getting people thinking and talking - that she
>was asked if she would undertake the difficult task
>of heading an open industry workshop to meet the
>objectives of the Policy Statement. She holds dual
>citizenship, has authored the leading reference works
>in the field, is cited in major court opinions in
>multiple countries, has worked and lectured many
>different places in the world....and is about as
>neutral a person as is possible to find.
>
>In typical Internet style, lots of different people and
>groups over the past few days have been talking with
>eachother and throwing in resources. The real biggie
>was Covington & Burling - one of Washington's biggest
>firms - providing legal supports and interns. Originally
>Covington was willing to make their conference center
>available, but they had a conflict so it was moved out
>to the Reston Hyatt. The other biggie was administrative
>support - which NSI volunteered in the form of an
>administrative assistant. The intent is to pass the
>hat among ten companies or organizations for lunch,
>cookies, and coffee. A number have done so, although
>ISOC, USC, and others are welcome to throw in a grand.
>Indeed, if anyone wants to share interns or administrative
>help - that's great too.
>
>The highly successful Chris Varney/ILPF workshop method
>on contentious issues seemed to most who had been through
>that exercise as the right one. Prof. Frankel also has
>her own ideas about preparatory questions and methods
>from her previous experiences. Certainly all existing
>work like David Johnson's work gets vetted in this process.
>Everyone who filed major comments in the NPRM proceeding
>and corporate/trust experts will be invited. Everyone
>thus far contacted as a diverse sample of interest, has
>said they would participate.
>
>To maintain neutrality, yet product a critical, substantive
>result, the workshop construct was chosen as opposed to
>an incorporation meeting. The intent is to agreement among
>groups on all the important details of a charter, but not
>actually do it. Incorporation will be a separate event by
>some set of players as yet unknown and undetermined - and
>perhaps grow out of the workshop.
>
>Please, let's get this show on the road and make diversity
>and self-governance work. In case anyone is wondering,
>I'm bowing out as soon as this gets underway.
>
>best regards,
>
>
Cook: and here is Heath 24 hours later, squirming and trying his damnedest
to keep the ball from being taken from ISOC and POC's hands.
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 17:03:15 -0400
From: Don Heath <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: iab-adm'aisi.edu, [EMAIL PROTECTED], Trustees <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
cc: Tom Gable <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Susan Davis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
core-excor,,@corenic.org
Subject: Conference on DNS Self-Governance
By now everyone knows that nsi/dnrc/sernovitz/fenello/ambler/rutkowski
are putting together a "workshop" to work the "new corporation" issues.
It's scheduled for 1-2 July 1998 in Reston.
Maybe it's legitimate, maybe it's a stacked deck. Regardless, they
are claiming to invite all who responded to the green paper. I must
confess that I am skeptical - only because the primary people behind
the workshop are those very same people who have been so disruptive
and contentiousj as well as having ~ownersh p" of a portion of the
net, as their goal.
OPTIONS
1) However, assuming this is leqitimate - Then participation should
be encouraged. However, it seems to me that this early date (although
having some powerful potential positive political pr) makes .t very
difficult to get appropriate representation. I mean, it's hard to
arrange international schedules so quickly for the kinds of people
that should be participating.
2) If we are skeptical, but believe there is a potential for good
out of this workshop, then (because of this skepticism) we should not
only participate, but participate in such a way as to overwhelm it.
This, so that if there is a stacked deck, it could be thwarted by
having enough representation to counteract i
3) If we believe the workshop just isn't an honest attempt to arrive
at a consensus solution then it should be ignored.
I think there are a couple of real things to consider doing:
ACTIONS
l) The establishment of a venue (which I think needs to be in the US)
and an agenda for a well-founded (sponsored by an impeccable set of
organizations) objective to build consensus for defining the structure,
principles, functions, objectives, etc. of the new IANA.
2) This conference should be scheduled as soon as is feasible to
allow participation by the key players (which l do not believe the nsi
et al workshop does).
[COOK: one wonders whom Heath feels was being left out. one senses that
part of the ISOC
strategy was to deny the reston meeting legitimacy by making sure that jon
postel didn't
attend. Flying 2500 miles was too much of a burden because the control of
the reston meeting was in enemy hands. For the meeting that Heath could
control, he'd fly jon 5,000 miles.]
3) This conference must be founded upon an honest attempt to bring
international consensus to the issues. The participants themselves
and the sponsoring organizations will give it the needed credibility.
4) Timing of the conference (if it has the right participation)
becomes lees of a factor based upon l-3 directly above. In other words,
being first is not everything, if you don't have the necessary people
participating. Doing it right is important.
5) Any attempt to define the new IANA without the existing IANA and
Jon Postel in particular at its foundation, is not likely to reach
consensus.
6) Trying to overwhelm the nsi workshop is questionable and likely
to be impossible owing to the too short time table for its commencement.
I mean, if the necessary people who should be invloved can't make the
nsi meeting, how can they be marshalled to "overwhelm" it, as it were?
Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 10:53:48 +0900
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Dave Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: IP: Re: Internet Change Worries Groups
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Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 15:13:53 +0200
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Dave Crocker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Dave,
As usual, the media reports are getting fundamental facts quite wrong.
Since you are interesting in communicating important information about this
topic, I assume that you will also want to communicate corrections to
inaccurate reporting.
At 06:40 PM 6/11/98 -0500, Dave Farber wrote:
> Internet Change Worries Groups
>
> By The Associated Press
>
> WASHINGTON (AP) -- The private company that manages a large
> part of the Internet under an exclusive government contract
NSI administers a few top-level domains and two root servers. This is a
very, very long way from managing "a large part of the Internet", no matter
how important its services are.
> But the behind-the-scenes involvement of Network Solutions
> Inc., widely recognized as a pivotal industry player but also
> widely resented for its influence, rankles some Internet
Not only is their involvement behind the scenes but the event is being
organized in a closed manner with restricted invitations, yet it is touting
itself as 'open' and definitive. Even more interesting is how many of the
major participants in this topic have not even been invited to participate.
[COOK: Note well the private invite from rutkowski sent on June 9th to
Farber and Cerf, and John gilmore, and Scot bradner and Don Heath.]
> insiders. The company assigns virtually all the World Wide
> Web's domain names, its Web site addresses.
I'm sure that the large portion of the domain name world that uses
country-based top-level domains is surprised to find out that they are such
a minority. As popular as .com and the remaining gTLDs are, we need to
remember just how important the rest of the domain name tree is.
> The anti-Network Solutions sentiment could threaten the
> fragile process, still in its infancy, by which the White
Rather than being in its infancy, this process has been under way for 3 1/2
years. What is in its infancy is the White House intervention. When one
compares the recent White Paper with the previous Green Paper, it becomes
clear that the White House had intended to conduct a major intervention,
changing processes that were already underway, but that it decided to back
off from that and let the natural processes proceed.
> Network Solutions, based in Herndon, Va., and others are
> organizing a ``Global Incorporation Alliance Workshop'' to
> begin July 1 in suburban Washington. The conference has a Web
> site, registered to a Network Solutions employee, and the
> company was the primary source for news about the gathering
> until the conference hired a public relations firm
> Wednesday.
For every month that NSI can delay the introduction of serious competition
into the space of gTLD registration, NSI probably gains an extra US$ 5M.
No, that number is not drawn out of thin air. They currently have no
competition and have revenues in the range of US$ 7-8M per month. Their
actual cost of operation should be a small fraction of that, so the rest of
(or should be) pure profit. Think of it as an impressive source of venture
funding for whatever NSI is REALLY going to do in the future, as the domain
registration market reaches commodity pricing.
> ``Any honest intent to reach a consensus, we would support --
> if it works out not to be staged,'' said Don Heath, president
> of the Internet Society, an international group devoted to
> maintaining and promoting the Internet.
>
> Network Solutions spokeswoman Cheryl Regan said the company
> is ``helping out administratively'' at the conference but
> declined further comment. Some Internet leaders defended the
> company's involvement.
The announcement does not state the price for attending the event. This
suggests that it is being paid for privately. Who's funding it?
[COOK: Rutkowski's invite of june 9 answered that question. $8,000 and th
hat was being passed.]
> ``NSI is clearly a part of the Internet community and played
> a leading role in the formation of the Internet,'' said
> Harold Feld, a lawyer with the Domain Name Rights Coalition.
> ``The idea that NSI shouldn't participate in any of these
> deliberations because there are a number of people who aren't
> happy about it just isn't feasible.''
No one said they shouldn't participate, so the comment is an odd one. What
IS being questioned is having NSI participate behind the scenes and for an
event which is so seriously flawed in its organization.
d/
***************************************************************************
The COOK Report on Internet 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA
(609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cookreport.com
NOTE: Contempt in which ICANN PRES. MIKE ROBERTS holds rest of Internet:
"Some of those people think the management [ICANN] should check with the
public [the Communities of the Internet] every time they make a decision,
which is crazy," Roberts said. "That's flat-out crazy." WIRED NEWS 2/4/99
***************************************************************************
