Pete Farmer wrote:
> Can ICANN establish a fee on domain names to cover administration
costs?
> Yes -- that's within its charter. Can ICANN impose a fee whose proceeds
> would be used to bring Internet access to schools and libraries in
> sub-Sahara Africa? I don't think so -- it's clearly outside of ICANN's
> charter.
What "charter" is that? Becky Burr says after next year, ICANN
will be a free agent.
> It might "encourage" the governments to act in this way. Possibly ICANN
> could even play a role as significant as that of the National Conference of
> Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, which draws up the Uniform Commercial
> Code (UCC) in the US. But the UCC isn't law unless the states decide to let
> it be law.
Isn't the major power of ICANN related to control of the A root
server,
and the conditions that it can place on anyone who wants their domain
identified?
If it was impossible to replace the A root server, than this would
give ICANN the power to anything it wanted. If it is merely hard to
replace the root, then it would have considerable power, but not
unlimited.
> I recognize that reasonable people have reasonable concerns about ICANN. My
> impression of Mr. Cook's contributions, however, is that they simply play to
> people's paranoia of back-room conspiracy. (In another time, we could
> substitute "Trilateral Commission" or "Elders of Zion" for "ICANN.")
>
> It's a seductive way of maintaining the status quo -- and NSI's monopoly.
I look at the NSI like Bell Atlantic or other poorly regulated
monopolies --- something to worry about, perhaps an opportunity for
more accountability or some competition, but mostly about money,
for that firm.
I look at the ICANN process a little differently. It isn't really
a substitute for NSI as much as it would be a substitute for the
government.
I can imagine good or bad things coming from this new cyber
goverance organization. Suppose, for example, that ICANN actually
gave ordinary people the abilty to elect the board of directors,
and it could not be controlled by big corporate interests.
Suppose further that privacy advocates ran a successful campaign
to elect board members who promised to require every .com
domain to post its privacy policy. I actually asked
ICANN if this could happen, and I believe the answer is yes
(not that such an effort would succeed, but simply that
the board could elect to do such things, if it wanted to.
So much will depend upon who will control this organization, and
how much "lock-in" occurs around the main root.
Ralph Nader and I are meeting with Esther on Wed, and we'll be
talking about these things further.
Jamie Love <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
--
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
I can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED], by telephone 202.387.8030,
by fax at 202.234.5176. CPT web page is http://www.cptech.org
