[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And that comment about 'without any of the messy enforcement problems' got him in some hot water along with adding still more fuel to the fire in the ICANN controversy. ICANN has some very bizarre ways they want to deal with domain name disputes to say the least ... and without even the slightest, tiny bit of netizen input. Individual users and small commercial sites will have absolutely no say-so in anything that happens. Have you seen the agreement web sites will be required to sign off on in order to keep (or register) their domain names? Oh, I know according to some people around here we are not supposed to say anything bad about large corporations, and how they have 'every right' to be here and how they have the right to help set the rules and all that, and how we should not object because they want to make a profit on the sale of their newspapers, widgets or whatever, but things are getting way, way, way past that point. They are going to be the *only* ones who have any say about anything if ICANN gets its way. And please do not call me an old-timer who is galled because the net of the 1980's is not around any longer. If I had only purchased a computer a month ago, gotten on line and stumbled across Internet Society and ICANN by some accident, reading the tons of stuff that's been getting sent my way in the past couple days would still scare me badly. Those people mean business: they are trying to grab the net and run with it; the day congressional and/or Commerce Department imprimateur comes down on it -- if it does -- is a day, that as 'they' say, will live in infamy. I don't think, however, it is going to happen now. Far too many people on the net have been climbing all over them. Instead of me being a bitter, frustrated old man, Vint Cerf may find himself in that position when MCI-Worldcom wakes up sometime soon and realizes the half-million dollars they handed him a month ago was squandered by giving it all to a lawyer to pay his fee and then the whole thing still went down the tubes. Hey, wasn't that lawyer supposed to be pro-bono? That's what Vint Cerf and Esther Dyson told us a year ago when they hired him. MCI-Worldcom is never going to see a nickle of that five hundred thousand back which Cerf convinced -- or guilt-tripped maybe? -- them into handing over on the premise that the Internet was as good as dead unless he and Esther got their way. You know the routine by now, no money for Vint and Esther means no e-commerce, and no e-commerce means no e-anything. I do not think Cisco is too happy about losing 150-thousand in the same racket either. Tomorrow I have another installment for you in the special mailings I've been doing, with more of their antics. I think you will enjoy it as much as I will enjoy bringing it to you. PAT] **************************************************************** The COOK Report on Internet Index to seven years of the COOK Report 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA http://cookreport.com (609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) ICANN: The Internet's Oversight Board - [EMAIL PROTECTED] What's Behind ICANN's Desire to Control the Development of the Internet http://cookreport.com/icannregulate.shtml ****************************************************************
