On Fri, 2 Jul 1999, Pete Farmer wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Perhaps the establishment of ICANN was the worst possible way to handle the
> situation -- except for all of the alternatives.
Churchill's original was better phrased and made far more sense.
People should not forget that what gave us ICANN in its current form was
the death of Jon Postel. Had he lived, ICANN would have made a certain
sense. It would have had an amiable but ill-informed board whose main
function would have been to deflect attention from Postel and friends,
who would be actually setting policy. This would have been a continuation
of the status quo, which worked.
You say that there was no better alternative. You are quite wrong.
The better alternative would have been that Jon Postel not die in
October of 1998. Then ICANN would be something that we could disagree with
but trust.
ICANN in its present form is an accident, a monstrosity, a thing
potentially of great power, but without any practical understanding of
the Internet or any vision of where it should go.
> My hope is that you not get all hung up in the "who knew what and when did
> they know it" story of how the interim Board was selected. The selection
> was at best messy and chaotic. No question. So it is with the formation of
> most new organizations.
In fact we must never ever lose sight of this essential question.
In fact while the formation of most new organizations may be chaotic,
where the organisation is of any significance it is usually quite clear
who is forming it and what its authority derives from. In this
particular case, the organisation is of global significance and many
of its proponents claim that it will govern the Internet, so these
questions are unusually important.
Insofar as ICANN is the successor to IANA, it is a body of quite narrow
scope and extremely limited powers. IANA was a focal point of cooperation
in the Internet. Its authority was moral authority, derived from trust.
Time will tell whether that trust will pass on to ICANN. So far the
evidence is that trust is limited.
Insofar as we are talking about the imperial ICANN, the one that wants
to regulate the Internet, the one that is trying to obtain legal authority
over all IP address space and the domain name system, it is of primary
importance that we know who the ICANN board represents. No one living in
a democracy can be at all comfortable with hidden manipulations, with
groups of great power created by shadowy forces without any clear legal
authority.
The essential problem is that IANA's moral authority, which was based on
trust and long experience, is to be replaced by legal authority vested in
ICANN, without any mandate for this transformation from the Internet
community at large or from the various political entities involved in the
transformation.
Gordon Cook claims that the "European Union" is behind all of this. In
fact the vast bulk of the people in Europe have never heard of these
issues and have no understanding of them. What you have instead is a
very small and loose grouping of middle ranking civil servants in what
everyone now understands to be a throroughly corrupt European Commission
claiming that their own policies are the policies of the European Union.
In other words, don't blame what is going on on the EU and don't claim
widespread political support for all of this.
> Instead --
>
> - Focus on the ICANN bylaws and the method for structuring the ICANN board
> **going forward**
>
> [more suggestions that we look away from ICANN's essential problems
> deleted]
> I think these are the issues that matter.
If ICANN is an organisation with very narrowly defined technical purposes,
as its articles of incorporation say it is, the issue that matters is
whether this woolly little group can carry out those narrow purposes.
My guess is that it can't, but if it can't, the Internet will just work
out another way or set of ways to carry out these functions.
If ICANN is to become the seat of global Internet governance, something
that IANA never aspired to, then the core issues are authority,
legitimacy, and trust.
ICANN claims ultimate authority over the Internet, without any
shred of justification for this claim. They claim the right to
control our name servers and tax our IP address space. There is
no basis in law for these claims, especially where this California
corporation claims to have rights over assets in foreign countries.
We have no way of knowing where these people came from or who they
represent. They have no mandate from the Internet community. They
may represent those who selected them. But we don't know who did the
selecting. That is, the ICANN board lacks any legitimacy.
The ICANN board refuses to conduct its deliberations in public. So we
also have no way of knowing how they reach the decisions that they lack
the authority to make. There is good reason to believe that they keep
their deliberations private to prevent the outside world from seeing
that certain board members never participate and from learning just how
ill-informed and partial this board is.
Personally, I think that the arrogance of the ICANN board is astounding.
Your insistence that we bow to it is incomprehensible.
--
Jim Dixon Managing Director
VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316
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Internet Services Providers Association EuroISPA EEIG
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