Jim Dixon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
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.
That's true. ICANN is taking over as the government entity to give
out Internet contracts. But ICANN isn't a government entity, has
none of the machinery or safeguards of a government entity.
As Elaine Kamarck from the Kennedy School of Government said at the
Berkman Center meeting in January about ICANN and whether a membership
structure could provide oversight, the nonprofit or any other corporate
form for such an organization is an inappropriate form for somethimg
that will have companies and people's economic lives in its control.
She said that was what government has been created to do, not
a nonprofit, membership organization. A nonprofit membership organization
is for a voluntary organization of people joined together to influence
governnment or do something else like that. It is not an appropriate
form for an entity that will control essential functions of the Internet.
>
>> 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.
Jon Postel was being used in the creation of ICANN. I was at the
IFWP meeting in Geneva and he sat outside the meetings for much of
the IFWP meetings that I saw him around. It wasn't his creation.
He was a contractor for the U.S. government and it was the U.S.
government that was creating ICANN.
And I wonder who you are referring to by Postel's friends who
would be setting policy. The point was that those around him
who were part of the IANA government advisory committee have
been pushing for ICANN and to control ICANN and are not folks
with a means of contributing anything useful at this point.
The problem is that no thought that considers the nature of
the Internet has gone into creating ICANN. If it had, my
proposal would have been taken very seriously. It was one
of the original proposals for what to do about figuring
out how to create an appropriate institutional form to
protect IANA. Its at http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/dns_proposal.txt
ICANN builds in the conflict of interest problems that
make it impossible to solve any of the policy questions.
And the U.S. government has no authority to give these
functions away to any private entity.
>>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.
No - Postel had thrown his hands up with this all. He is quoted
at a roundtable discussion at INET '98 (in IEEE Spectrum) as
saying something like Wall Street investment people and bankers
are getting involved in this now.
>>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.
It's no more an accident than the Nato bombing of Serbia was nor
the bombing of civilian populations in Germany by Great Britain
during WWII was.
It is an example of an ill founded policy decision. One that claims
objectives will be accomplished that are impossible to accomplish
by the means being taken.
For example, the British bombing of German civilian targets during
WWII claimed it would end the war. It extended the war, killed
British military folks as well as German civilians. This is
an example of a bad policy decision.
On the other hand the policy decision to develop radar before
WWII was a good policy decision on the part of the British
government.
The problem is to stop bad policy decisions from being made
by governments, especially where it concerns science and technical
issues. This means there needs to be a good mechanism of advice
for government officials who will make these decisions. This
process broke down in the U.S. with regard to the decision to
create ICANN, and it doesn't seem the problem is as of yet
being acknowledged.
On the other hand the creation of the Internet is the result of
the good policy decision to create ARPA and then IPTO and to
have government support computer scientists.
>> 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.
Yes I agree. It is important to know who was involved in the behind
the scenes manuevers to create ICANN and why.
It may be that that is what is crucial in order to figure out
what the obstacle is to create an appropriate protective institution
for the essential functions of the Internet.
>>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.
Yes - thought has often gone into creating an appropriate organization
or institution to establish the principles that it is being created
to promote.
My sense is that there is some plan for why ICANN is being created
and how, but it is being done in secret because it is something
the parties realize is a violation of existing law and also
the U.S. Constitution. The law I feel is being violated is the
Government Corporate Control Act which prevents the U.S. Executive
from forming private corporations to do government functions.
This law was enacted in the 1940's to stop the kind of unaccountable
entities that had been created to get around the kind of accounting
and oversight rules that government institutions had to adhere to.
>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.
But did *not* exist in a vacuum. It was a contract with ARPA.
And both IANA and ARPA were subject to rules and laws of the U.S.
government.
What my study of ARPA/IPTO has clarified is that it is because of
the nature of the entity providing the leadership of computer
scientist, that the grassroots were able to have democratic and
participatory processes. Take away the leadership and the responsibility
of the leadership and you lose the ability to have grassroots processes.
The trust that IANA had gained was because it had grown up as part
of an important government institution ARPA/IPTO and it functioned
according to the principles and procedures that that institution
had created.
Take all that away, and you are left with the battle of potential
and present government contractors for a bigger cut of the pie.
ARPA IPTO had been created to protect scientists against the vested
interests and their power plays.
Get rid of the government connection and all you have are the
power plays of the vested interests.
>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.
But it wasn't that IANA had a "moral" authority. It's authority derived
from the fact it was an entity doing a legitimate function of government.
And it was doing it as part of government.
>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.
I saw that the Federal Networking Council meeting in 1996 where there
was discussion of privatizing the domain name system mentioned bringing
in the EU. So I wonder which came first, the U.S. government ill founded
decision to privatize the IANA functions or the EU effort to get their
piece of the privatized pie.
Sadly it hasn't up to now seemed as if any of those involved early on
have said that the Internet is important and that it needs protection,
from the vested interests, not power plays over which vested interest
gets which piece of pie.
.
>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.
But ICANN is *not* an organization with any "narrow" anything.
The IP numbers, root server system, domain name system, and protocol
process are such that whoever controls them controls the Internet
and wields enormous power.
Thus it can't be that any by laws or articles of incorporation limit
this power, they are just a means of masking who is gaining that power.
>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.
Whether IANA aspired to something or not is not the issue.
What power does control of the IP numbers and other essential
functions of the Internet bestow on whoever controls these functions?
And then how can one protect the Internet and its users from
those who want to grab this power? This is the question that
the U.S. governments illegal decision to privatize IANA leads to.
>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.
ICANN is an illegal entity. It is *not* a charity but it is
incorporate under laws for charities.
But that doesn't seem to bother those who are behind the scenes
making their power play to grab control of the Internet.
>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.
They have no mandate from the Internet community. But why are
they there? Who are they and why were these people willing to
do the bidding of this secret process?
Why don't they reveal what they know?
They have no concern for the Internet. Otherwise they would
be letting the Internet community know where they came from
and helping to unravel the mess that put them on the board.
>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.
It seems those involved were picked because they represented
a conflict of interest, rather than that they were able to
act above narrow private interests in the internet of the Internet
and the Internet community.
>Personally, I think that the arrogance of the ICANN board is astounding.
>Your insistence that we bow to it is incomprehensible.
Yes it is incredible that after over a year of discussion
and clarification of what harm ICANN represents to the Internet,
the U.S. government and the other government entities who seem
involved such as the EU and Japan and Australia and France mainly the
U.S. that none of these seem to be willing to come out and say
that something is wrong with what is happening with regard to
ICANN and that the ICANN creation process needs to be stopped
and something healthy put in its place.
Ronda
Netizens: On the History and Impact
of Usenet and the Internet
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
in print edition ISBN 0-8186-7706-6
