Gordon, Brock, and all,
Thank you Gordon for sharing this with us. It seems to me though
that this should have been released some time ago if possible.
Don't you think? Others?
Brock, How long have you had a copy of this E-Mail form Mr. Sims?
There is much in this letter that explains much that has occurred sense
March, when this letter was exchanged. It also points up some interesting
information that I had been getting through other DOJ sources as well.
Gordon Cook wrote:
> Given today's events, Jim Rutt better announce the formation of a
> Global Open Registry Association and solicit the 224 country code
> TLDs to join the Registry Association before the GAC makes them
> obsolete. The Registry Association better also form its own
> independent Root and invite the 224 country codes to enter that root.
> The Association should then announce that any new registry paying a
> reasonable performance bond can join and place its new TLDs in the
> Global Open Registry Association Root.
>
> Rutt, in his testimony, said "ICANN has, unfortunately, refused to
> negotiate [. . . ] and has insisted, instead, that we accept their
> "accreditation agreement," which would require NSI to give ICANN the
> unilateral right to terminate our business with 15 days notice and
> take over the ownership of our intellectual property, substituting
> the unaccountable judgments of ICANN's unelected board for those of
> an NSI Board which owes fiduciary duties to some 20,000 investors and
> five million registrants."
>
> Rather than negotiate in good faith with Rutt, ICANN prepared for the
> hearing by sending a copy of the March 31 1999 Joe Sims message below
> to committee staff who, according to Brock Meeks, released it at the
> hearing. It shows clearly that it is time for Rutt to fight or die.
> We thank Brock for sending it and giving us permission to disseminate
> it.
>
> From: "Meeks, Brock" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: sims email
> Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 16:30:04 -0700
> MIME-Version: 1.0
>
> The following e-mail was released during today's congressional hearing on
> ICANN.
>
> It's dated March 31, 1999 from Joe Sims to "Chair, JDICANN" and the subject
> is "t/c's" which I take to mean "teleconferences" (phone calls). The
> e-mail, which was not refuted by Sims, speaks for itself.
>
> 1. I spoke today with Chris Kelly, who is the DOJ senior person focused
> on NSI/ICANN issues. The thrust of the conversation was our mutual
> frustration with the lack of aggressiveness of DOC. Chris explained that,
> so long as the Cooperative Agreement was in place, the antitrust options
> were limited, which I of course understood, but said DOJ was encouraging DOC
> to push harder--and in fact had assigned DOC some economists to help with
> the price cap issues. I suggested that one thing DOJ could do is increase
> the level of pressure on DOC, by some form of formal communication or a
> higher-level contact; Chris said that was already under consideration. He
> also indicated that, while there may have been some legitimate basis of
> concern that a fight with NSI 6 months ago could destabilize the net, he
> thought that was less likely today, and that it would be useful for DOC to
> hear from significant organizations that they were perfectly willing and
> capable of stepping into NSI's shoes with little difficulty, [and]
> assuming access
> to the root files. This led to a discussion on how desirable it would be to
> get control of the root away from NSI, so that if necessary that transfer
> could be made.
>
> 2. A while later, Mark Bohannon called to set up a t/c with Andy Pincus
> [DOC Attorney] for tomorrow. As it turned out, we ended up having
> the t/c today.
> Pincus wanted to know from the horse's mouth what ICANN's view was of this NSI
> contract. I told him that we did not need a contract with NSI as registry
> at the moment, and that the recent discussions were all generated by NSI
> and/or Becky. What we wanted to now was to complete the registrar process,
> which required action by DOC; to accredit the test bed and accredit
> non-test bed
> registrars now; I told him we were doing to give priority to test bed
> applicants, but after that, we planned to process accreditation applications
> as fast as we could, and we did not plan to wait until some artificial time
> to announce open accreditations. Bohannon then asked if we were still in
> agreement that NSI did not have to accredited to participate in the test
> bed; I said that was a point of some controversy, and I didn't know where we
> stood on that officially; he said that if we changed our position on that
> and said NSI had to be accredited to participate in the test bed, that would
> be a big problem. I then told them that ICANN was getting impatient, and
> that while we would not do anything without checking with them and would not
> do anything at all for the next day or so, we were likely to become more
> publicly critical in the near future (a point I had also made with DOJ).
> There was a little back and forth about us working together and the call
> ended.
>
> The combination of these two calls gives me some hope that there might be
> some progress. I am encouraged that DOJ appears to be as impatient as we
> are, and I think we should steadily keep up and increase pressure on DOC.
> One way to do that is to start pushing on the root issues, where we have not
> pushed yet. We should think about whether there is an easy and obviously
> acceptable place to put A root server, and maybe start pushing to have that
> done.
>
> ****************************************************************
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Regards,
--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman INEGroup (Over 95k members strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Contact Number: 972-447-1894
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