Jay Fenello <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Frankly, I don't why this story has not been covered. >All that I know for certain is that 1) it *hasn't* been >covered, and 2) "confusion" is an explanation that simply >doesn't work for me (especially when I have personally >described, in no uncertain terms, my perspectives to >many of the reporters writing these biased pieces). I have some experience with why the story is *not* being covered. 1) When we did cover it at the ISOC meeting last year in Geneva in 1998 for the Amateur Computerist the reports I wrote on line and in the Amateur Computerist -- see Report from the Front at http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACN9-1.txt but we were denied press passes to attend the next INET meeting INET '99. 2) I was invited to write an op ed for one of the computer trade magazines. I wrote something on "Is ICANN out of Control?" after Congressional hearing was announced. The editor in charge said the article was accepted but he would wait till after the hearing before deciding in what issue to print it. After the hearing he told me to totally rewrite it in 2 hours answering very narrow questions he asked, despite the fact this was my op ed and he had already said he was printing it. He then rejected the new version he had requested. For an op ed one would expect that the views would be different from the views regularly expressed in the newspaper or magazine, and that the writer would be allowed to express his or her own views. I found that wasn't the case. I was asked to totally rewrite my op ed after it had been said to be accepted. The questions I was given were very narrow questions and then what I did was rejected anyway even though it had already been accepted. Obviously there is pressure on publishers and reporters to tow the administration line on the story. 3) After a reporter wrote a helpful story about what happened at the November ICANN meeting for the online version of the paper she wrote for, an ISOC member criticized her story on Farber's I P list, and then Esther Dyson criticized the story. The following Monday a different story was run in the print version of the newspaper taking out some of the dissent that the reporter had originally reported in her online story. 4) After a story was printed in a German online journal critical of ICANN, the writer got an email from an EU official asking who he was and what he did and complaining about the article, with the complaint also sent to the editor of the journal. 5) It seems that either stories critical of ICANN are to be moderate if allowed to be printed at all and officials of ICANN or other official entities take care to watch what is being printed and to complain to the reporters and editors etc. 6) I asked to put a statement into the record for the "Is ICANN out of Control?" hearing at the Commerce Committee subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation. I was told to go to my local Congressman because I would have to have a committee member swear me in to submit testimony. I spent two days trying to contact my Congressman and he contacted the committee minority and they refused to let me submit anything as did the committee majority staffer. 7) The witnesses who were allowed to present testimony at the hearing in Congress on July 22 were for the most part either in support of ICANN claiming that what can one expect as ICANN is learning. Or the witnesses represented a very narrow spectrum of the large spectrum of those who recognize that ICANN is not a legitimate entity and can't be as it is being given government functions to do and public property, and it is neither an entity that has government oversight mechanisms nor an entity that can protect or will protect public property. Thus the Congress needs to hear from the broad spectrum of those who understand there is a serious problem with ICANN, but it seems the political pressure from those who see their fortunes are to be made off of the abuse of the Internet do all they can to keep that from happening. 8) Government has mechanisms of saying that way is being done is illegal and unconstitutional. These include the Office of Inspector General of the NSF's report of Feb. 1997, the Government Corporate Control Act, and a number of other internal government processes or checks and balances. A Congressman at the hearing on July 22 said that they had suspended using some of these to set up ICANN. ICANN thus will have none of the safeguards that can provide the needed oversight to prevent the abuse of the Internet. The U.S. government needs to utilize all of its procedures and checks and balances to figure out what is the way to safeguard and protect the Internet names, numbers, root server system, protocols, etc. These are the nerve center of the Internet and they are being treated like extraneous baggage to be given away to the strongest bully. 9) It seems that in the U.S. policy is made by some entity and then the parties and political entities fall in behind it. That is a very dangerous situation in general, and particularly when something as important as the Internet and its scaling mechanisms are at stake. 10) The lack of coverage of the story of what is happening with this giveaway by the Executive Branch of the U.S. government of essential functions of the Internet to an institution that is totally inappropriate is similar to how the newspapers and other means of mass media in the U.S. deal with important stories where there is a lot of wealth and power behind a particular desired outcome. Instead of the needed discussion and debate, there is a public relations campaign on behalf of what the U.S. Executive Branch or other powerful entity has chosen to do. The public discussion is needed to figure out what to do, but the administration seem to use their power to keep that from happening. Some thoughts on what is happening. Other observations and experiences welcome. But essentially this all flies in the face of how the Internet has been built where the debate and discussion among those with differences was seen as precious and welcomed. And so ICANN is clearly *not* any inheritor of the traditions of the Internet. Ronda
