Dear Dave Dave Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >I do have an strong opinion of what is going on that I will be soon >sending out to my IP list as a Editors Opinion clearly labeled as such. It will be good to see what you send out. To add to ISOC's activities with regard to ICANN I want to bring to your attention ISOC's refusal to grant editors of the Amateur Computerist a press pass for this coming INET '99. We wrote a criticism of what happened at the IFWP meeting last year and also an article about INET '98 pointing out that there was a narrow agenda for the topics for the confernece. Apparently, those in the press who are critical of ISOC's narrow agenda lose the right to press passese to their functions. We were encouraged to apply for the press pass and to send an issue of the Amateur Computerist. After the issue was received, our application was rejected. I have attended two previous ISOC conferences on a press pass INET '96 and INET '98 and reported on both conferences in the Amateur Computerist and in accounts that went out over the Internet and are in various other online or periodical journals. Thus I fulfilled the obligations of a press pass, but am being denied one along with another editor of the Amateur Computerist. ISOC's narrow agenda of support for who knows who is a sad situation and the mess of ICANN is a sign of the problem that ISOC is. One of the reasons that I have been told that a press pass was denied is for participating in the IFWP meetings (chaired by David Mahler) after the INET '98 meeting. At the INET '98 press conference all the press were invited to participate in and cover the IFWP meeting which followed INET '98. Also I had talked with Jon Postel after the press conference about some problems I had with the fact that users were being disenfranchised by the plan for the new IANA. Jon told me to go to the IFWP meeting and to make my concerns known. I tried to do so. The response by an official of ISOC was that I was told that I wasn't allowed to participate in the IFWP meeting or that I would have to give up my press pass. That was a criteria distinctly different from what had been announced at the press conference and also from a criteria applied to anyone else from the press. ISOC it seems has enpowered people to make up the rules as they go along and to try to deprive the press of any right to a critical reporting of what happens or else one will lose ones press pass. Dave I wonder if you feel it is appropriate that those who write with their honest criticisms of what is going on be deprived of press passes by ISOC. Also we have asked for a way to appeal this denial and have not been given any procedure to do so. Ronda For the issue of the Amateur Computerist reporting on INET '98 see http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACN9-1.txt
