Re: [IFWP] [awpa] An Internet Awakening

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Greg,

>It started in the 1920s, but the passage of laws that regulated what
>the broadcasters could do happened in 1934, with the passing of the
>first Telecom Act and the establishment of the FCC.

I believe that occurred with the passage of the
Radio Act of 1927 - which was principally targeted
at radiobroadcasting regulation and resulted
in the creation of the Federal Radio Commission
from which the FCC morphed.  Much of this was
the initiative of Herbert Hoover as Secretary of
Commerce - which had had jurisdiction over US
radio regulation since 1912, but found it's
jurisdiction challenged by broadcasting interests.

There were all kinds of interesting things occurring
at that time.  A treaty conference met in 1927 to
establish the CCIR and the first set of international
radio standards.  The following year, the League of
Nations held an international conference for
"Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace" and actually
adopted a treaty signed by a few countries (not the US).
It instituted the first provisions concerning broadcast
media content control - which unfortunately shoved
much of the broadcasting infrastructure in subsequent
years under Ministries of Information or the PTT,
worldwide.  As one of the more interesting historical
footnotes, the old Soviet Bloc in the late 70s
resurrected the treaty and sought to push it via
UNESCO to establish content controls on DBS and
emerging data communication services.

The attitudes and tendencies remain the same; only
the technologies change.

-tony

Re: [IFWP] Re: Echelon keywords

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 02:17 PM 3/15/2000, Michael Sondow wrote:
>The following is a list of keywords reputedly in use by the U.S.

Amusing conjecture.  How many of them are domain names? :-)

--tony

Re: [IFWP] Key quotes and ideas from ICANN membership roundtable

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Andy,

>There was also a wide-ranging discussion of the idea of restricting
>membership to domain-name holders. Several people pointed out the
>potential skews: domain-name holders don't have the same interests as
>users, some are huge (aol.com) while others are tiny, many hold
>multiple domain names (give speculators a big voice in the Board!),
>there are costs in most places for holding domain names, and the
>U.S. has many more domain names than other countries.

Thanks for the great notes - which from my sampling
via the webcast - appeared to capture the moment.

The general hostility to business and users was rather
disconcerting.  They seemed to duck the fundamental
question of why some casual user with no stake whatsoever
would bother to participate in any of this, and whether
you want a scheme where non-stakeholders control half the
board.  This seemed typified in your summary, above.
Ultimately, the only legitimate function of the organization
is to facilitate cooperation and coordination among those
parties directly dealing with domain names and IP addresses.

--tony

Re: [IFWP] .EU (& European Union threats?)

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 10:29 AM 2/3/00 , you wrote:
>My understanding is - and I don't know this first hand - is that the EU
>has threatened to run their own root servers and have used this
>as a bargining point to get all sorts of things going back to the
>creation of ICANN.

Isn't that what they effectively did not so long ago with
X400 the EARN bitnet?  Maybe it's their destiny. :-)

-t

[IFWP] cudos to Bill Semich

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Bill Semich deserves congratulations in moving forward
with establishing the principle that the formation of
domain names is a business matter and should be left to
each registry and the marketplace to sort out - not ICANN
or its staff opining to the press with purported authority.
By the way, hte new NU names work great!

--tony



 >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 >Subject: Announcing .NU Domains using Ö, Ä, Å, Ü, Ñ - And More
 >Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:00:00 -0500
 >
 >
 >Hello;  January 6, 2000
 >
 >NU domain now has a new, exclusive service available - Support for your local
 >language character set in any .NU Domain name you have already registered.
 >
 >You can pre-register today at http://www.nunames.nu/customers/secure
 >
 >Technical staff at .NU Domain, working under the guidance of
 >Dr. Paul Mockapetris, the inventor of the Internet's Domain Name
 >System (DNS), are developing an updated version of the DNS software
 >used on the internet which allows .NU Domain to provide this unique
 >service. Although the service is in its Beta or early test period, .NU
 >Domain will now accept pre-registrations of domain names that use
 >Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, German, French, Spanish and a wide
 >range of other European character sets in any .NU Domain name.
 >
 >Examples which we are currently testing include:
 >http://SödraKärr.se.nu, http://FöreningsSparbanken.se.nu/,
 >http://domän.se.nu and http://tillbehör.se.nu/
 >
 >For more information on this test, and the current limitations of the 
service,
 >please see http://www.nunames.nu/ISO-8859-test.htm
 >
 >NU domain is now giving all current customers an advance opportunity
 >to pre-register for this service, for a one-time fee of US$35. Since
 >the service requires that you already have an "English Alphabet" .NU
 >domain name registered and active (using only ASCII characters
 >a-z, 0-9), we have decided to postpone public announcement of this
 >new European character set  service in order to allow our existing
 >customers to get first choice to pre-register their preferred domain
 >names using Swedish or other European language characters such as
 >Ö, Ä, Å, Ü, or Ñ.
 >
 >To pre-register now, and to qualify to take part in our test of this
 >unique new service, please go to
 >http://www.nunames.nu/customers/secure and log in to modify your
 >current .NU domain name to add this new service. Current policies
 >expect that your pre-registered domain name will be similar to your
 >current .NU domain name, with the addition of a Swedish or other
 >language's character(s) (for example, domain.nu and domän.nu).
 >
 >We will start accepting public registrations for this new service, which
 >will require registration of an English alphabet .NU domain name as well,
 >starting next week (January 10, 2000), on a first-come, first-served basis.
 >
 >And remember - no other Top Level domain in the world offers
 >this unique service. So we expect public interest - and registration 
rates - to
 >be very strong once we announce the service.
 >
 >Although we are not yet offering pre-registration for Asian names (using
 >Japanese, Chinese and other characters) we expect to also support those
 >language sets in the near future. Customers in Japan may want to contact
 >NU Certified Registrar, Kurosawa.net, http://www.nihongo.nu, for more
 >information (email [EMAIL PROTECTED]).
 >
 >If you have any questions about this new service, please contact our
 >support desk at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or email me directly.
 >
 >Many thanks for your continuing support for .NU domain!
 >
 >Bill Semich
 >President and Founder
 >NU Domain Ltd
 >http://whats.nu
 >

Re: [IFWP] ICANN openness

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Michael,

What would Linda Wilson know or care about it?
She's one of the
She promised rather visibly at the Los Angeles meeting
that she would attempt to effect substantially greater
openness.  She deserved the benefit of the doubt. 
However,
clearly things have gotten worse, not better.


What is an "editorial group"? For
all we know, this is a euphemism
The Editorial Group was intended as the prime
working body of the Ad Hoc Group activities.
It was to be broad based and open.  Clearly
it is not.


The ICANNers have gotten away with
indiscriminate posting, or no
posting. No one has made a meaningful protest (i.e. lawsuit for
big
One would think that there are enough Internet experienced
people involved that they would realize that a better work
product is achieved through openness - as well as diminished
liability to causes of action in the long run.

--tony

[IFWP] ICANN openness

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At the last ICANN meeting, the Board promised
greater openness, especially Linda Wilson.  
However, the opposite seems to have occurred.  
Consider the following.

1) No indication of any kind concerning developments
related to the ICANN Ad Hoc Committee over the past
two month period.  There is reference to activity
in the recently posted 9 Dec ICANN Board minutes

  Mr. Kraaijenbrink reported on progress 
  in identifying an editorial group for 
  the discussion forum of the Ad Hoc group 
  chartered in Resolution
99.138. He indicated 
  that the editorial group's membership was 
  nearly completed and that he expected to 
  begin operations near the beginning of 2000.

Where and how is this all occurring?
 

2) No consistent listing of ICANN communications
has occurred, including the May 1999 communication
from the European Union raised at the Los Angeles
meeting.  Indeed, there are no communications of any
kind listed for the last three months since 27 Sep 1999.



--amr

[IFWP] p and q domains

[A.M. Rutkowski]

In case anyone missed it, piiq.com spent a bundle
to advertise on major US TV networks that there was
new business domain consisting of the algorithm of
p[anything]q.com  It was a takeoff on the old saying
to "mind your p's and q's."

So they effectively created a quasi new TLD buried
within the COM domain by sandwiching any desired
word between p and q.  One wonders how many others
are going to arise like this.

Innovative.

--tony

Re: Dyson's reply RE: [IFWP] Representations to WTO Conference

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 10:55 AM 11/24/99 , you wrote:
>I did not conclude that all is lost, so long as I see some progress. The
>alternatives scare me too. So that is where we disagree.

Hi Tamar,

What progress have you seen?
A larger board?

What realistic alternatives do you fear?
Consider that the whole big Internet world
out there exists...and has long successfully
existed...marvelously well without an ICANN.

The fact of the matter is that any organization
constructed like ICANN - where every interest and
constituency is simply grafted on to create an
unfathomable labyrinth - is unlikely to succeed
in any field.  Indeed, for most interested
parties, a "good ICANN" is one that does nothing
or disappears.  About the only exception, is the
introduction of new TLDs.

Some discussion of these matters would be useful.

cordially,
tony

Re: [IFWP] new ITU proceeding

[A.M. Rutkowski]

>Tony. I tried to get
>
>http://www.itu.int/itudoc/gs/council/c99/docs/docs1/051.html
>
>and was asked for a TIES user name and password.
>
>what am i doing wrong?

Gordon,

As I indicated in the note, most of these documents
controlled by the ITU, but are provided on the WIA site.
For this document, just click on C99/51 under Sec. 3
of the site.

--tony

[IFWP] new ITU proceeding

[A.M. Rutkowski]

The ITU General Secretariat has launched a proceeding
on its role involving the Internet and DNS.  This was
contained in a 21 Oct 1999 Circular Letter from the
ITU Secretary-General to the ITU's Member governments.

It touches upon a great many areas and implicates
a number of fundamental issues concerning the ITU's
jurisdiction and authority.

The US Dept of State is recirculating the circular
information and soliciting inputs by a yet undetermined
process.

Most of the material is non-public ITU material.  However,
everything can be found under Sec. 3 at the wia.org site



--tony 

[IFWP] Crashing the GAC

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 12:42 AM 11/8/99 , you wrote:
>Who was that southern bell you crashed the GAC meeting with?  And I
>understand the Irish delegate allowed you to speak - what happened there?

It's a wonderful story with a happy ending.

The three activist lawyers in LA - Nader's
Theresa Amato, Cleve Thornton representing
Tajikistan, and myself decided we would
insist on our rights under the ICANN Bylaws
to open meetings of the GAC.

So, on Tuesday morning at the appointed hour
of the GAC, we stood in the room as all the
good GACsters stared and wondered who we were.

The GAC Secretariat representative - a slight
young Aussie - came over and insisted that we
leave.  We respond with a polite "no," that we
were going to stay and watch.

She went and huddled with her boss, Paul Twomey,
and then came back and re-iterated her order.
Cleve then looked down and in a polite southern
drawl, and said "young lady, if you want me to leave,
you're going to have to pick me up and move me."

To appreciate this sight, one has to see Cleve.
He's about 6 ft, 5 inches, tall and must weigh
300 lbs.  He also ran the ACLU in Alabama during
the heydays of the civil rights movement, and
is quite experienced in passive resistance.

More huddling with Twomey.

Meanwhile Theresa went to the tables and found
a list of attendees.  It listed several "observers"
at the bottom.  We then approached Twomey and asked
if we could be observers.  He responded that we
needed the sponsorship of a governmental representative.

So we went over to the US government representative
and formally asked to be observers.  She firmly
declined.  However, the representative of Ireland,
Aidan Ryan, overhearing our plea, came over and
offered to make us accredited observers of Ireland!

So we returned to Twomey with this arrangement.
However, the response was "no can do - you need
your own government representative."

So then we noticed that ICANN staff were present,
and questioned the appropriateness of a double
standard.  At this point, Paul Twomey to his credit
relented and established a new rule for everyone
that as long as there was a non-governmental person
in the room, it would be an open meeting.  As a
result, both the ICANN report and subsequent ccTLD
dialogue portions of the GAC became open, and a
new, more open general rule was established.

What was particularly amusing, however, was that
a few minutes later, one of the most powerful U.S.
Congressmen in Washington, Chris Cannon, and his
legislative assistant Todd Thorpe, unexpectedly
strode into the room and sat down prominently up
front.  When it came time for us to leave, the
US GAC representative quickly added Cannon and
Thorpe as observers, and were not asked to leave.

During the open ccTLD session, Twomey even volunteered
to distribute the Internet Rights Coalition brief
to the GAC and allowed a short presentation on the
legal issues.

--amr

[IFWP] GAC confidential material on ccTLDs available

[A.M. Rutkowski]

The GAC confidential document on ccTLD principles
is now available in html at:

http://www.wia.org/icann/GAC/GAC_cctld-principles.HTM

The entire set of related materials from the
iATLD, CENTR, and IRC can be found under Sec. 8
of the default page at http://www.wia.org/

--tony

[IFWP] Re: [names] 63-character SLDs

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Jay,

So, despite ICANN's claim to bring
"stability" to the 
Internet, and to protect the Intellectual Property of
legitimate trademark holders through a UDRP that was
rammed down the Internet Community's throat, we find 
ICANN has actually accomplished exactly the opposite.
Which is good.  The term "Internet stability" is
an oxymoron.  In the spirit of L.A., one can argue
that ICANN may actually be a "good thing" by bringing
together everyone concerned about stability, share
their fears, and talk their way through the syndrome...
a sort of Stability Anonymous.  In the meantime, Internet 
chaos - like life - will go on.

Internet 101 should begin with the keynote speech given
on this subject on Thursday by PSI CEO and father of the
Internet ISP industry, Bill Schrader, at the annual CATO 
Institute conference.   

--tony

I'm beginning to feel sig-deprived.  So many other
wonderful people have ever growing sigs that tell
all kinds of marvelous things about themselves and
their ventures where if you spend lots of money you can
actually pay for their words of wisdom and rub shoulders
with them and their friends in exotic places.  Much
more clever and fun, however, are animated sigs. 

 
___ 
M. Hope Aguilar 
NEUVILLE & AGUILAR   
 

Courtesy of Hollywood attorney activist
Aguilar

[IFWP] Honk if you're for anarchy

[A.M. Rutkowski]

This needed to be said at the ICANN meeting:
Robert Lucky on Anarchy and it's role in the Internet's success
http://www-flash.stanford.edu/~heinlein/lucky.html

If you want to know more about Bob, see
http://www.bellcore.com/research/whoweare/staff/robertlucky.html

--amr

Re: [IFWP] From the ICANN front - November 3 update

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 07:51 AM 11/7/99 , Esther wrote:
>Esther DysonAlways make new mistakes!
>chairman, EDventure Holdings
>interim chairman, Internet Corp. for Assigned Names & Numbers
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>1 (212) 924-8800--  1 (212) 924-0240 fax
>104 Fifth Avenue (between 15th and 16th Streets; 20th floor)
>New York, NY 10011 USA
>http://www.edventure.comhttp://www.icann.org
>
>PC Forum: 12 to 15 March 2000, Scottsdale (Phoenix), Arizona
>Book:  "Release 2.1: A design for living in the digital age"
>High-Tech Forum in Europe: October 2000, where would you like it?
>Barcelona, Edinburgh, Istanbul, other?
  ^
How about somewhere near Amadeu? :-)

Great sig to message ratio...or as
Marshall McLuhan might say, the sig
the message. :-)

just in fun,
-t

[IFWP] Re: Tony Rutkowski's announcement of legal brief filed with ICANN

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Rhonda,

Can you explain about why this brief in being
filed with
ICANN?
It is a set of comments in a "careful" style.
If you look at the cover letter, you can see that other
actions are being requested such as establishing an open
public comment process on GAC (or any other significant
filings) to ICANN.  This is in direct response of Esther
where we appeared together on the recent CSPR Conference
panel.  She asserted that GAC was "just another
committee."
To which my response was that if it was just another 
committee, there should be some means either to participate
or to comment on GAC "findings."


Would you file a legal brief with other US
nonprofit entities?
If they purported to have government and intergovernmental
powers, certainly.


However the filing a brief with a nonprofit
entity seems to
give the impression that it is endowed with the powers of 
a government. Do you feel it is?
Plainly.  This issue was raised last year by Larry
Lessig.  Anyone even glancing at ICANN-GAC realized it
is a private corporation masquerading as a very regulatory
oriented government agency.


Is there some reason the brief wasn't filed
with the US government?
ICANN was the lowest appropriate venue.


I wondered about the rationale behind filing a
legal brief
with ICANN? What do you see ICANN as that you treat them 
in a way that government's are treated?
Others raised this issue - i.e. whether the style doesn't
indirectly raise ICANN stature.  I think not.  The 
purpose
was simply to encourage a reply and comment process where
arguments and statements had some significant citations to
authority.  This should be compared to the GAC's 
pronouncements
where Twoumey just waives his hand in the air and makes 
statements.

--tony

Re: [IFWP] Re: [names] Image Online Design on ICANN

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Esther,

>It seems to me that if you read   eachword   very carefully,
>  he's saying:  no *monopoly* TLDs, not "no competitive TLDs."

As an administrative executive of a decision making
entity, he probably should not be saying anything.
Only three of the 250 TLD zones are not "monopolies" and
unlikely to change significantly.  ICANN seems intent
on holding on to its monopoly root zone.

So clearly we're dealing with a mixed environment
where the best stance of an ICANN spokesperson is
neutrality on the matter.

--amr

[IFWP] Internet Rights Coalition Press Release

[A.M. Rutkowski]

The Internet Rights Coalition
i-rights.org
950 Herndon Pkwy #240
Herndon VA 20170
USA
tel: +1 703.925.0282


PRESS RELEASE


INTERNET RIGHTS COALITION FILES LEGAL BRIEF WITH ICANN
ON GOVERNMENT SOVEREIGNTY CLAIMS TO DOMAIN NAMES,
REQUESTS OPEN PROCESS

Herndon VA,  28 October 1999. --  The Internet Rights
Coalition as a new Internet legal advocacy group
focussed on fundamental rights of Internet users, has
filed a legal brief with the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).  The brief opposes
recent declarations made by ICANN's semiautonomous
Government Advisory Committee (GAC), that the entire
"Internet naming and addressing system" is a "public
resource," and that Internet domain names with country
symbols were subject to the sovereignty of national
governments based on international law.

The brief thoroughly examines the GAC assertions and
describes why they are in error - with extensive
citations to authoritative legal references.  The
Coalition also notes that national governments already
have their own established "de jure" domains under the
root system of a U.N. intergovernmental agency -
independent from those devised and used by the private
users that constitute the Internet's networks and
services for naming their computers.  It is violative of
fundamental user rights and unlawful for governments now
summarily to assert sovereign dominion over the name
expressions and systems of private Internet users. GAC
governmental representatives should not be advancing
these kinds of propositions, and they should be
dismissed by ICANN.

The brief also notes that accepting the notion that
Internet domain name expressions can be the subject of
national sovereignty creates unnecessary legal and
political complications in conjunction with Top Level
Domains for entities with uncertain stature such as East
Timor or Palestine.

The Coalition requests that the Coalition brief be made
available as part of an open, public proceeding on these
issues - beginning at the Los Angeles ICANN Public Forum
on 3 November.  It further requests that the ICANN
should comply with its mandate for openness and
transparency by requiring that GAC meetings be open to
the public.  At present, all the GAC's processes and
meetings are closed, without meaningful opportunity for
other affected parties to be heard or to provide
alternative views.  The Coalition states that ".in
allowing the GAC to undertake such initiatives, the
Corporation has an obligation to hear and meaningfully
consider those of all affected parties on these
matters."

The brief and cover letter - pending availability on the
ICANN Website - is accessible at:
http://www.wia.org/icann/irc_cover-letter.htm
http://www.wia.org/icann/irc_gac_brief.htm

[IFWP] ISPs boycott the ITU

[A.M. Rutkowski]

There appears to be more to Bill Shrader's
statement about the ITU than meets the eye.

The loudest and strongest statement of all on
the ITU appears actually to have been sent by
the ISP industry.  It was heard through the
grapevine that they decided to boycott the ITU's
Telecom'99 Tradeshow - and in apparent retribution,
the ITU Forum'99 people failed to include a single
ISP person on its speaking agenda.  About the only
exceptions were those companies that market to
telcos, or are themselves telcos.

Check it out yourself at http://www.itu.ch/

This is worth some major trade publication
reporting.

[IFWP] handy reference: ICANN's Resolutions

[A.M. Rutkowski]

I've attached a handy compact version of ICANN's resolutions.
It's the same contents that are on the ICANN Watch site.

This was suggested to ICANN's rulers many months ago to
increase transparency and the efficiency of its own affairs.
Ideally it should be indexed.

--tony 
 ICANN_resolutions.zip

Re: [IFWP] Schrader tells it like it is

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 01:18 PM 10/15/99 , J. Baptista wrote:
>If I remember correctly, Tony Rutkowski during his tenur with the ITU
>advised them that if they failed to get involved, then the ITU would in
>fact disappear.  This happened some years ago.  They didn't take his
>advice then, and now I think it a bit late to back peddle for the ITU.

Hi Joe,

Actually it was former CCITT Director Theo Irmer
and I who said it'll still be there, but it will
have a "PTT Museum" sign hung on it.

There is a game being played here by the ITU
and its PTT constituents.  The ITU is basically
divided into 3 parts: radio, development, and
telecom norms/standards.  Radio consumes more than
half of the ITU's financial, staff, and meeting
resources, and that isn't about to change anytime
soon, as it performs global coordination of spectrum.
Another 25% goes to helping developing countries with
various kinds of projects.  That's not about to change.

The final 25% goes to ITU-T (former CCITT) telecom
standards and norms (e.g. use of leased lines internationally).
That's what this battle is about - who controls and shapes
the standards and the operation of public telecom networks.
It's a high stakes game where large, old guard players
use the ITU to achieve strategic advantages, and Utsumi
is their "man."

The key word here is "public," since the ITU only deals with
public networks and services.

So the endgame here for as much Internet turf as possible
to be shoved under the "public" rubric which then allows
a certain set of players to achieve strategic advantages
by jiggering the standards and operations norms in the ITU.
It's a 150 year old game with a new Internet gloss on it.

That's why Schrader has it right!

--tony

[IFWP] Schrader tells it like it is

[A.M. Rutkowski]

This should be subtitled: Utsumi selects
group who tells him what he wants to hear
and attempts to suppress other views.
(Bill fortunately found the press.)

It's also disingenuous because only States
can be ITU "members," and it is only the
members that have any power in the ITU.

--amr


=
Utsumi's CEO think-tank to shake up ITU By
David Molony

04 October 1999

The secretary general of the International
Telecommunication Union has unveiled a major
initiative that will involve chief executives
from the telecoms sector helping him to
determine the ITU's future.

In a hard-hitting interview with
Communications Week International, Yoshio Utsumi
has warned that a failure to adapt to the
modern communications environment could mean
that the ITU will disappear.

As part of a plan to secure the ITU's future,
Utsumi is establishing an advisory panel made
up of top-level industry figures to advise on
the "direction the ITU should seek." The first
meeting is due to take place during Telecom
'99, the ITU's flagship industry exhibition.

"If the ITU cannot find a means to cope with
the present situation, it will disappear," said
Utsumi.

However, the plan has not met with a friendly
reception from Internet service providers, who
say they have no interest in sustaining a
monopoly-based industry.

"I don't think I can imagine a circumstance in
which PSINet would be interested in joining the
ITU," said William Schrader, chief executive of
PSINet Inc., Herndon, Virginia. "Nor do I think
I can imagine any changes to the ITU's charter
or style that would occur in a fast enough
time-frame to be relevant."

Schrader said he was not one of the industry
executives invited to the meeting.

The secretary general would not give a
comprehensive list of who will sit on the
high-level advisory committee; nor can he be
sure that the committee's advice will be taken
by the membership at large.

But Utsumi did say that it would consist of
"top people" from America, Asia, Europe and
developing countries. So far about 20 people
have agreed to attend the first meeting,
although the final tally could be as many as
40.

And some of the executives he hopes will join
the panel are from companies and organizations
outside the ITU. These, said Utsumi, are
"potential members," and for that reason he is
as concerned to get their opinions about the
form and direction of the ITU, if it is to
become relevant to their needs.

This is not the only advisory committee the ITU
has ever called on, but it is the first to be
drawn substantially from senior private sector
business people. The chief executives from
service providers and equipment vendors would
be supplemented by regulators, including a
senior representative of the Federal
Communications Commission, Washington DC.
Internet

interests will be represented by Don Heath, the
president of the Internet Society.

Utsumi said panelists would be drawn from
beyond the conventional telecoms boundaries and
would include the presidents of Sony Corp.,
Tokyo, and Japanese broadcaster NHK. "You can
think that the ITU is a club for BT or Deutsche
Telekom. Today it shouldn't be like that. The
ITU should become for those people [in the]
broader sense of telecoms."

In fact, some U.S. industry representatives
have given Utsumi's plan a cautious welcome.

"The idea has potential, but only if the work
of the group is constructive and taken
seriously," said Eric Nelson, vice president,
international affairs, at the
Telecommunications Industry Association, a
mainly vendor-based organization in Washington
DC. "Advising an inter-governmental bureaucracy
can be frustrating because they have a number
of different reasons for doing the things they
do - not all of them logical."

The move to set up the advisory committee is in
line with Utsumi's election pledge of making
the ITU more business friendly.

As part of the preparations for Telecom '99,
consultants Ernst & Young, London, polled
nearly 100 chief executives and other senior
executives about the way the industry is going
(CWI, 7 June, p.3). The results clearly
indicated a perception that the telecoms sector
must broaden its horizons to understand what is
going on in computing and entertainment
sectors.

"We made it clear that it was going to be fed
into Telecom '99, and many of the participants
were delighted that the ITU wanted to listen to
their views," said Hugh Jagger, head of the
European technology, communication and
entertainment practice at Ernst & Young.

The consultancy also has been charged with
devising sessions for the Telecom show's
forums, which have a strong commercial
orientation: "How do you get shareholder value
out of customer relationships rather than what
what makes ADSL a good technology," said
Jagger.

Utsumi said he is trying to make Telecom more
open to economic and social policy-makers, not
just telecoms experts. "We have asked many
ministers and international organizations
besides telecoms or

[IFWP] oh really

[A.M. Rutkowski]

David McGuire of Newsbytes reports that White's supporters
maintain:

  While the four supporters in question - Jean Cantrell,
  Stanley Crosley, Sheila O'Neill and Ken Whitaker -
  do not appear on any of the General Assembly lists,
  they are employees of companies that maintain
  corporate memberships to the DNSO. Since members
  of the DNSO constituencies are considered to be
  members of the General Assembly Cantrell, Crosley,
  O'Neill and Whitaker may be able to claim de facto
  membership in the body.

That's quite a remarkable implementation of corporate
proxy.  "de facto membership"  Cute.

It gets better

   "It's clear that the intent of the DNSO election
   rules is to assure that candidates for the board
   have at least a minimal expression of interest
   from the DNSO community," Schalestock said. White's
   position as a front-runner in the race for the
   third and final board spot makes it clear that
   he meets that test, Schalestock added.

That's called ex post facto surrogate approval.
Since when were any of these folks ever involved in
anything related to domain names?

These are truly remarkable times.

ref: http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/99/137816.html

[IFWP] ITU Sec Gen promises major DNS/governance role

[A.M. Rutkowski]

GENEVA - The International Telecommunications Union
(ITU) has pledged to involve itself in the governance
of the Internet.
.
"The role of the ITU will become
much more important." Itsumi declined to say how the
ITU should be involved in the Internet, but said it
was the subject of a report being prepared within the
ITU.

"The council [of the ITU] is very proactive in
getting ITU involved in all aspects of the Internet,
including domain naming. I have instructed staff to
prepare for greater involvement," he said.

http://www.eet.com/story/OEG19991011S0024

See also:
http://www.edtn.com/story/biz/OEG19991011S0095-R

Re: hello dave farber Re: [IFWP] Vint Cerf's and John Patricks House of Cards - the ICANN NSI Cartel and DOC authority

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 11:24 AM 10/2/99 , you wrote:
>perfect, offers stability.  If there was some kind of cyber-revolt, most
>likely the USG would step in and instruct the net to take their DNS from
>sites that present the same level of coordination they currently enjoy.

Greg,

Sorry, no USG agency has this authority.

Most likely, the major operators would coordinate suitable
root (or roots) to which they would point.


--tony

[IFWP] public comments

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Anybody know why:

1) ICANN's "community feedback" site doesn't have
comments posted since 24 Sept (i.e., for the
past week)

2) it's not possible to be a recipient of comments
filed to ICANN's community feedback site

3) despite the fact that with respect to the new
agreements, ICANN's site says "the public
comment period will be thirty days; comments
should be submitted by October 29, 1999," the
public comment site has been and remains
non-functional with the statement "will be
available shortly."

4) will this new mechanism provide any ability
for people to receive notice of the comments
as they are submitted?


--tony

RE: [IFWP] Repost: [names] New gTLDs

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 12:51 PM 9/27/99 , [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The former was a draft, and is now buried in oblivion, while the second is
the current (as today, 1999-09-27) statement of policy of the USG.

Roberto:

   "UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Management of Internet Names and Addresses
Docket Number: 980212036-8146-02
AGENCY: National Telecommunications and Information Administration
ACTION: Statement of Policy

   "This general statement of policy ...does not contain
   mandatory provisions and does not itself have the force
   and effect of law."
   http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/6_5_98dns.htm

These are the views of the U.S. Dept of Commerce -
one of many agencies of the U.S. Government - and
one which exists within one of three government
branches.  One of its functions is to develop such
views as one among several agencies.  See Executive
Order No. 12046.  It does not have the authority to
self-enact those views for the US Government. Ibid.




--tony

RE: [IFWP] Repost: [names] New gTLDs

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 01:03 PM 9/27/99 , Jay Fenello wrote:
>The White Paper is *not* quoted,
>only referenced.  If you can find
>where the White Paper decides the
>business model question, then by
>all means, please post it.


It's worth noting that the "White Paper" has no
force or effect in US law or policy - which
is explicitly noted at the outset of the paper.
It exists as an NTIA staff report by two of its
staff members.  This was underscored by Ralph
Nader on Saturday at the CSPR event - by the
way.

None of the three NTIA documents in the proceeding
contemplated the establishment of business models.


--tony

Re: [IFWP] date of new york times quote on esthers inter est in doing real work? and to hell with process??

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 11:42 PM 9/25/99 , you wrote:
>In a recent New York Times article, Esther Dyson
>was quoted as saying "With all due respect, we
>are less interested in complaints about process"
>and more interested in "doing real work and
>moving forward."

The quote was publicly raised with Esther on the
panel yesterday.  She didn't deny it.


--tony

[IFWP] useful reference aids

[A.M. Rutkowski]

I believe these are the first reference aids for parsing
the organizations for Internet Names and Numbers before
and after ICANN-GAC.  Most of the object titles in the
chart are html links to the source reference sites.
Here, a picture is truly worth a thousand words.

Because each different entity in the organization spawns
its own structures and substructures, it's own charters,
it's own processes and practices and constituencies and
diversification requirement, ICANN seems destined for
the Guinness Book of Records as the most complex
organization per unit of bureaucracy, as well as
an organizational emulation of a mutating virus.
Something to be really proud of.

Enjoy,


 before_icann-gac.zip
 after_icann-gac.zip

--tony

[IFWP] Free the ITU Final Acts

[A.M. Rutkowski]

If you want to get your free copy of the Final Acts of the
ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, it's available temporarily
at:  http://www.itu.int/itudoc/gs/test/57570.html  Click
on download.  After that, there will always be a free copy
provided by the WIA as a public service at
http://www.wia.org/ITU/final_acts_pp98_e.zip

The ITU otherwise is attempting to rip off 48 Swiss
francs ($31.15) for a downloaded copy.

The Final Acts contain the changes to the ITU's
Constitution and Convention (some of the provisions
of which apply broadly as public international law),
together with resolutions adopted at the Plenipotentiary
Conference.  The three particularly relevant to the
Internet are Res. 100, 101, and 102.  The first
effectively killed the gTLD-MoU, the second applies
broadly to Internet developments, and the third
applies specifically to Internet names and numbers.

In the United States, the Final Acts constitute
a treaty instrument, and therefore a public document
and freely distributable.


--tony

RE: [IFWP] Jim Rutt Should Resign

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 10:41 AM 9/15/99 , Gordon Cook wrote:
>yes of course from his position at NSI.  he presented himself as someone 
>who knew and cared about the Internet as well as about his shareholders.

Gordon,

I have no idea whether an agreement will be signed
or not.  However, no matter how Jim Rutt feels about
this, NSI is in a difficult position vis-a-vis the
Dept of Commerce and shareholders.

It's difficult and inappropriate for NSI to be the world's
primary policeman for broken Internet institutions.  It's
time for others to get involved.

Note also, that given ICANN's fatal flaws, it's destined
to succumb irrespective of any contemporary agreement.


--tony

[IFWP] Re: [bwg-n-friends] As sent to IP: Would the U.S. Government regulate the Internet? And how will this come about? by Richard J. Solomon

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Dave,

Fascinating and imaginative hypothesis by a wonderful
friend and colleague with a lifelong passion for railroads.
With that said, however, the hypothesis plainly doesn't
hold together.

[Great stories about the rise and fall of railroads omitted.]

>that any such infrastructure with the threat to completely influence 
>society and change power relationships - as advertised by the Net's own 
>hypists and promoters - can possibly avoid entanglements with the 
>Government. To think that cyberspace doesn't follow the rules of political

To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever argued that
there will be no entanglements.  The facts are quite the
opposite.  The FCC in the late 70s - market by Steve Lukasik's
arrival at the Commission - took an extremely aggressive
regulatory role constructing some of the most far-reaching
regimes in the agency's history - designed to enable the
emergence and growth of the Internet and other computer
networking technologies.

What *is* the issue, is whether this far-reaching and highly
successful regulatory regime over the past 20 years will be
somehow profoundly reversed.


>In the long run this well-meaning but anachronistic law served to enforce 
>network monopolies and restrict technological innovation. Yet an earlier 
>effort by the Federal Government to manage a

It is this 100 year experience with a broken regulatory regime
for radio (that was actually cast at the 1903 Berlin Conference)
that argues loudly against a similar manifestation for computer
networking.



>The dinner party is over. The Government has guns - the computer firms 
>(unlike the railroads) do not. We may not like it and I think it will be a 
>tragedy if not a travesty, but governments will intervene when crises 
>erupt - their constituents will demand it. And as American history shows, 
>constituencies can be quite strange and come out of nowhere with little 
>warning. Republicans more often than Democrats bring key anti-monopoly 
>actions; Democrats tend to finance innovations (and revolutions); either 
>way, strange events and bedfellows are hard to predict, or avoid.

Nice rhetoric, but this is all that's said here - and it neither makes
the point for reversing a highly successful basic regulatory regime, and
certainly doesn't make the case for a railroad regime.


>1) money: e-cash, e-shares, e-taxes, and variations thereof. Governments 
>must control the money flow. It's their essence.
>
>2) scary content - use your imagination, there's lots to be scared of. 
>Take disinformation as a starter.
>
>3) The inability for the chaotic Net to sustain basic operations - IP 
>addresses, hostnames, & things that make no sense but make a good story to 
>motivate politicians.
>
>4) attempts by lesser entities than the state to move in and take control, 
>and then abuse privileges that come with monopoly rents - money (again), 
>offensive content (offending the monopoly, for example), etc.
>
>5) attempts by extraterritorial entities to gain control (we still have 
>strong anti-foreigner laws about content, more ignored than enforced, but 
>on the books).
>
>6) something no one has thought of, and therefore most likely to creep up 
>on us, like Munn's hoarding of grain during a famine. What essence may the 
>Web hoard?


Every one of these hypotheticals are compartmentalized and some cases
highly abstract, abstruse developments, that have come and gone (or
remained) in conjunction with every communications medium.  It also
fails to deal with a fundamental fact - most of the resources are
highly dispersed and autonomously maintained in private hands.  The
last time the government asserted control over the use of privately
held, widely dispersed public communications equipment was in 1917.


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Business Group Sets Internet Proposals

[A.M. Rutkowski]

>Formed in January, the GBDe includes more than 100 companies from all corners
>of the globe. Along with Bertelsmann's Thomas Middelhoff, Time Warner Chief
>Executive Gerald Levin and Fujitsu Ltd's Michio Naruto also serve as
>co-chairman, providing representation at the top from Europe, the U.S. and
>Japan.

Hi Dave,

Is this the same GBDe:

1) with the somewhat minimalist "Comité de Pilotage"
cross-section at http://www.gbd.org/conference/participants-e.html
and rather vague existence and process at
http://www.gbd.org/gbde.html, or

2) with the conference paper on Consumer Confidence (that's
inexplicably not on their website), that promotes ICANN, stating:

  Governments could play a role in creating
  awareness of the new global body responsible
  for the assignment of domain names, the
  Internet Corporation for the Assignment [sic]
  of Names and Numbers, ICANN.

The statement itself is misleading, since ICANN is
responsible for coordinating the assignment only,
not for the assignment itself, and only at the root
zone level.  This is reflected also in the name
attributed to ICANN.

3) with Monday's conference being conveniently juxtaposed,
collocated, and coordinated with the GIP-European Commission
conference on "Next Generation Internet Policy Workshop"
conveniently bringing together key ICANN-GAC folks.  It's
not very public, but see: http://rpcp.mit.edu/itcnet/
(userid: conf   password: 99*go)  The good news is that
the ITC (which morphed from the Internet Telephony Consortium
to the MIT INTERNET & TELECOMS CONVERGENCE CONSORTIUM so
fast that it forgot to change the home page name :-) )
is a good group of folks.  See http://itel.mit.edu/

Please don't mistake my note as paranoia about players -
only a criticism of closed processes among select parties
with self-similar perspectives - that dissuade scrutiny and
alternative views.



--tony

[IFWP] ICANN's orientation

[A.M. Rutkowski]

ICANN's web site prominently advertises:

  To register a domain name, please
  contact one of the ICANN Accredited
  Registrars listed here.


Of course, those registrars for the
most part, only register in 3 of
the 250 Top Level Domain zones in
the legacy root of interest to ICANN.

Questions:

1. Isn't is rather skewed to be promoting
only these three domains?

2. Isn't this an affront to all the country
domain registrars and country oriented domain
communities worldwide?

3. Doesn't this represent a restraint of trade?
Shouldn't ICANN be promoting all Internet names
of any kind and in any root equally - instead
of only those sold by their own "accredited
registrars?"


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Re: November Cook Report - intro and part 1 ISOC's critical role in enabling ICANN

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 07:26 PM 9/10/99 , Diane Cabell wrote:
>The amount of trademark-friendly legislation that has sailed through
>Congress recently is certainly strong evidence of that.

That's entirely separate from "Internet governance."
The major intellectual property players in Washington have
always played a dominant role irrespective of the technology,
and will continue to do so.  Any Internet related regimes
will be determined by Congress and the Judiciary.  Nothing
else matters, so it may as well be partitioned off, and
forgotten.  They are also not the problem.


--tony

Re: [IFWP] please give us substance and not assertions Re: November Cook Report - intro and part 1 ISOC's critical role in enabling ICANN

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 05:20 PM 9/10/99 , Greg Skinner wrote:
>fall as well.  Then we might very well be subject to laws that are the
>result of the laissez-faire regulatory policies governments like the US
>seem to employ that favor big businesses.

Like what?

Even the telecom industry doesn't have anything as pathetic
and wrong-headed as ICANN-GAC.

The "process" we're dealing with here is in fact something
cooked up within the Beltway and whatever encircles Brussels.


--tony

RE: [IFWP] Latest on the Australian censorship

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Roberto,

>... which may give another reason for ICANN using the ITU list.
>If there's an obligation to inform, and this task is delegated to the ITU,
>it seems reasonable that the contacted people be the one on ITU's list.

On the other hand, formation of the GAC is a
*really dumb* way of implementing the provision
that can be attributed to the inexperience of the
people involved - if this was a factor.

Participation by individual government representatives
as users (which is what is specified in the White Paper)
in existing supporting organizations, would have amply
met the requirements of Res. COM5/15.  ICANN could even
have facilitated this by sending information to the ITU
General Secretariat for participation to its Members

There was nothing in the Resolution that called for a
special, autonomous intergovernmental body to be established
for this purpose based on the ITU PTT/telco regulatory Members
and that operated in secret.  Ironically, if such a committee
had been established in the ITU itself, it would have been open
to participation of private-sector representatives.


--tony

RE: [IFWP] Latest on the Australian censorship

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Roberto,

>Nevertheless, I keep the part of my point about ICANN not having any
>obligation to contact individual governments that do not participate in the
>GAC.

However, they may be effectively obliged by the "invites 1" provision,
Res. [COM5/15], Constitution and Convention of the International
Telecommunication Union, Minneapolis, 1998.  That provision - which
by virtue of its being part of a treaty instrument signed by about
185 Member States, "invites" those States to "participate in and follow"
the ICANN work.  On the other hand, the US Government - which by virtue
of hosting ICANN would be responsible for implementing the provision -
typically does not regard ITU Resolutions as compelling, and in any
case, any obligations to inform individual governments under COM5/15
could be delegated to the ITU.


--tony

[IFWP] your spam

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Since the address used for this mailing could only have
been culled from my email messages - generally only to
this list - I'm curious if anyone else on the list
has been Esther spammed.

It's somehow "poetic" that in 8 months she has never
once chosen answer a single query or engage in a
substantive discussion, yet we exist to be cultivated
for her advertisements.

Who else believes that this is the "industry's most
stimulating and networked event of the year?"

--tony


>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Esther_Dyson)
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Esther Dyson invites you to EDventure's High-Tech Forum
>Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 13:15:23 -0400
>X-Mailer: Allaire ColdFusion Application Server
>
>
>Dear Tony,
>
>Please join me October 24-26th in Budapest for what promises to be the 
>industry's most stimulating and networked event of the year.
>
>Until recently, conventional wisdom put Europe about two years behind the 
>United States in high-tech activities. Now Europe is coming into its own, 
>not so much from behind as from a different direction altogether. European 
>Net technology companies generally still feel a need to go to the US to 
>get "established", but Net-based companies are beginning to find a 
>receptive market at home.  Ventures selling products or services to 
>consumers and businesses, rather than companies selling technology to 
>other companies, can find customers at home and can often serve them 
>better than foreign marketers. Venture capitalists are eager to invest, 
>and more and more people are willing to work for or with a start-up. Best 
>of all, the emerging European market is learning to tolerate mistakes - 
>giving entrepreneurs the freedom to take risks and learn from the results! 
>However, Europe is a challenging market because of the diversity of 
>languages and cultures and a more complex regulatory environment than in 
>the free-wheeling United States. With these developments as a backdrop, 
>our agenda will explore today's driving issues in a workshop-style format.
>
>We've lined up a great group of speakers, including:
>
>Judy Balint
>COO & President
>E*Trade International
>
>Gabor Bojar
>President
>Graphisoft
>
>Sven Lung
>Founder & Vice President, Business Development
>iMediation
>
>Kurt Kammerer
>CEO & Co-founder
>living systems
>
>Gerry Montanus
>General Partner
>Atlas Ventures
>
>Stephen Nachtsheim
>Intel Corporate Business Development
>
>Stephan Roever
>CEO
>Brokat Infosystems
>
>Martin Sorrell
>CEO
>WPP Group
>
>Jerry Yang
>Co-founder and Chief Yahoo
>Yahoo!
>
>This is one event where the attendees are as important as the speakers.  I 
>look forward to hearing more about what you're doing and to introducing 
>you to the other participants. For more details and to sign up, please 
>visit our web site at www.edventure.com.  See you in Budapest.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Esther Dyson
>
>

RE: [IFWP] Latest on the Australian censorship

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Roberto,

The way I understand it, there is no
obligation from ICANN to consult the
governments (in particular those who choose not to participate in the
GAC).
au contraire (sorry I don't know the Italian).

  The Board will notify the chairman of the Governmental 
  Advisory Committee of any proposal for which it seeks 
  comments under Article III, Section 3(b) and will consider 
  any response to that notification prior to taking action.
  See Art. VII, Sec. 3.a, ICANN Bylaws.

Art. III, Sec. 3(b) includes just about everything of a substantive
nature.


--tony

Re: [IFWP] GAC: mandatory or advisory advice?

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Mark, you missed my point.  ALL GAC
advice is advisory; none is mandatory.
The ICANN Board is free to give it whatever weight it (the Board) feels
it
deserves.  I note again that any national government is free to
participate
in the GAC; if they choose not to, that is their choice, not ICANN's or
the
GAC's.
Hi Joe,

I think you probably missed my counterpoint from your
last note.  It bears reiteration:


I think you've overlooked the interlocking provisions of para. 4 of 
the Articles of Incorporation and Art. VII, Sec. 3.a. of the Bylaws. 
As you may recall, it was the EU that insisted on these interlocking 
provisions during the drafting effort. This is an effectuation of 
the EU model spelled out at the Washington 8 Oct 97 CILP meeting that 
significantly predates your involvement.


We are in agreement that strictly speaking the ICANN Board may ignore 
the GAC findings and recommendations. On the other hand, considering 
the GAC purports to be a constituted body of States collectively 
effecting agreements on these findings and recommendations, and 
considering their representatives have stated they "give
legitimacy 
to ICANN," their so-called advise is rather compelling.


Clearly what is being crafted is a new species of international 
law, but one which bypasses normal checks and balances, and 
constitutes a serious undermining of the international legal system. 
That it is also autonomous and self-defining in its jurisdiction, 
authority and processes is also a cause for considerable concern. 
I'm certainly not alone among legal scholars (and many others) in 
this view.


The GAC was not constituted by random self-organization. With only 
a couple of exceptions, the ITU's member list became the basis for 
GAC membership. These are typically the PTT and PTO regulatory 
ministries in each country - who typically have strong hostile
interests 
and preconceived views about the Internet and the role of government. 
These are the troglodytes of the telecommunications field.


You comments ignore the last 20 years of telecommunications 
and information policy and law, as well as the actual experiences 
in dealing with these players. It also ignores the tenets of the 
White Paper which calls for the the involvement of government staff 
as peer users in the various activities of NewCo, not as a collective 
independent intergovernmental body meeting in secret among themselves 
to promulgate findings and agreements.


There is nothing about the coordination of the names and numbers 
for private shared networks and network resources that should give 
rise to the need for a permanent intergovernmental body.





--tony

RE: [IFWP] Latest on the Australian censorship

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Roberto,

different choice, picking a different
"initial list", but I don't think it
is really ICANN's duty to select in each Government the person that
is
supposed to represent best the "real" Government Internet
interests: it is
The process didn't require a lot of intellectual prowness.

The really intelligent way to do this was to contact the
Internet communities in each country - even using the ccTLD
contact list - and simply asking who the best choice of government
agency or official was.  It actually appears that this may
have been done for France - which was one of the couple of
obvious departures.  An alternative no brainer would have
been to use an "Internet friendly" list like the WTO GATS
list, or the OECD, to chose the agencies in each country
that have forced telecoms liberalization and legalization
of the Internet.  Instead Twomey simply grabbed the ITU
list and started writing. This is the "clueless Twomey" 
scenario.

I suspect what actually occurred, however, was that someone
associated with the US cluelessly made a deal at the ITU 
Plenipotentiary Conference to create and constitute the GAC
with ITU constituents as a quid pro quo for changed wording
to the COM5/14 and COM5/15 Resolutions.

When was the last time you wrote a letter to a government
PTT official and told her/him that you represent the Internet
Community, and would they please give up their position on
a government Internet oversight committee along with all their
other PTT friends, in favour of another official - in the 
interest of the Internet? :-)


--tony

RE: [IFWP] Latest on the Australian censorship

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Roberto,

I appreciate the thoughtful comment.

Even supposing that the initial list was
biased at the certain point in time
(which I disagree, but is not the point under discussion), it seems to
me
that if a Government cares there's nothing that prevents it to change
the
contact person.
Unfortunately it's not that simple.

Countries and their governments are a composite of many
different ministries/agencies and individuals.  All of
them have overlapping responsibilities in the Internet
law and policy subject area.  Quite frequently, these
entities have very different perspectives - often by
design.  By virtue of the GAC selecting only one kind
of entity in each country, it significantly predetermines
the resulting perspective.

For examle, one of the regulatory strategies originally 
employed in allowing the Internet to emerge internationally, 
was to effectively build a second international regulatory
regime using the GATT organization to pull together all
the more liberal finance and trade ministries, and effectively
bypass the restrictive ITU and its PTT ministries.

Just consider the US.  There are several different agencies
that have a constant tension with eachother.  The FCC 
is an independent Congressional agency that typically 
represents the private-sector and market solutions, whereas
the Dept of Commerce is an Executive Branch agency that
represents the interests of the White House and other
government agencies.  Who gets to represent the US in 
the GAC?  Who gets to state what the US policy is and to
enter into GAC agreements?   There is yet a third branch
of government in the US - the Judicial Branch - plus
multiple specialized agencies for consumer interests,
trade, etc.   You will recall that in the DNS proceeding,
the FTC staff actually separately filed extensive comments
dealing the DNS non-profit issues.  How do they get to
participate in the GAC?

Whether by naivete or design, the GAC's construction
is fundamentally broken for this reason in addition to 
the many others.

 
I confess I don't understand the first part of
your comment.
As for the second part, you seem to assume that the USG is either
against
the GAC, or has changed its mind about the White 
Paper.
Let me explain. The basics are straightforward.  The Internet
in large measure occurred the FCC around 1980 crafted a 
fundamental regulatory doctrine - that computer networks and
services were not the proper province of regulation or even
regulatory policy involvement.  It even went to far as to
forbid
individual States in the US from being involved.  The policy
was also evangelised internationally and it produced many
changes in policy around the world.  (That policy in
substantial
measure was due to 1970s DARPA head and "Internet
godfather"
Steve Lukasik coming to the FCC as Chief Scientist in 1979.)

That policy wasn't always popular, by the way.  Even in the 
US,
other government agencies like the Dept of Commerce strongly
resisted - moving forward, for example, with attempting to
de jure make OSI networking specifications and administrative
arrangements the law of the land. 

The White Paper states that governments should not be kept
out of NewCo as users.  

  ...the U.S. continues to believe, as do most 
  commenters, that neither national governments 
  acting as sovereigns nor intergovernmental 
  organizations acting as representatives of 
  governments should participate in management 
  of Internet names and addresses. 

The GAC as it has emerged is exactly the opposite of this
White Paper specification.   


Last comment, I see that you like the
expression "meeting in secret", which,
to my limited knowledge of the English language, is a different thing
than
"meeting behind closed doors". Whereas the first is more
colorful and
evocates sects and illegal activities, the second one is more
appropriate
for the case under discussion.
It's not only the meetings.  There are no minutes other than
"Executive Minutes."  The lists, all communication and
ongoing
work are all in secret.  The interactions with ICANN are in
secret.  GAC requires participants to maintain secrecy. 
The
word secret activity (which does not impute any legality, only
degree of conduct) seems clearly appropriate here.


I understand your position, against any type
of intergovernmental and/or
standardization body - I guess it is inconsciously connected with the
metric
system having been chosen instead of the foot-and-inch
;>).
I don't oppose government involvement in all Internet
related activities.  There are many kinds of Internet
conduct that clearly invoke involvement.  What I utterly
fail to see is a need for a permanent intergovernmental
body associated with the coordination of names and numbers
that promulgates related global policy and law.

The GAC has recently promulgated an intergovernmental agreement
declaring that all "the Internet naming and addressing system 
is a public resource," and on that basis decreed that all 
ccTLD registrars

Re: [IFWP] Latest on the Australian censorship

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Joe,

Glad to see you back on the list.

bylaws make no mention at all of GAC having
anything at all to do with
ICANN's "legal obligations", and they are perfectly clear that
ICANN is not
required to follow any GAC advice.  Now, it is theoretically
possible that
I think you've overlooked the interlocking provisions of para. 4 of
the Articles of Incorporation and Art. VII, Sec. 3.a. of the 
Bylaws.
As you may recall, it was the EU that insisted on these 
interlocking
provisions during the drafting effort.  This is an effectuation
of
the EU model spelled out at the Washington 8 Oct 97 CILP meeting
that
significantly predates your involvement.

We are in agreement that strictly speaking the ICANN Board may
ignore
the GAC findings and recommendations.  On the other hand,
considering
the GAC purports to be a constituted body of States collectively
effecting agreements on these findings and recommendations, and
considering their representatives have stated they "give
legitimacy
to ICANN," their advise is rather compelling.

Clearly what is being crafted is a new species of international 
law, but one which bypasses normal checks and balances, and
constitutes a serious undermining of the international legal 
system.
That it is also autonomous and self-defining in its jurisdiction,
authority and processes is also a cause for considerable concern.
I'm certainly not alone among legal scholars (and many others) in 
this view.

On your question, since any national
government can join GAC by simply
saying so, the GAC is by definition those governments that care
enough
about these issues to participate in it.  
The GAC was not constituted by random self-organization.  With
only
a couple of exceptions, the ITU's member list became the basis for
GAC membership.  These are typically the PTT and PTO 
regulatory
ministries in each country - who typically have strong hostile interests

and preconceived views about the Internet and the role of
government.  
These are the troglodytes of the telecommunications field.


are simply recommendations to the board. 
Why it is that the notion that
ICANN should not try to involve interested governments in its processes,
so
that they feel invested in and (hopefully) protective of ICANN and
its
consensus-building efforts, is somehow threatening to anyone is beyond
me.
You comments ignore the last 20 years of telecommunications
and information policy and law, as well as the actual experiences
in dealing with these players.  It also ignores the tenets of
the
White Paper which calls for the the involvement of government staff
as peer users in the various activities of NewCo, not as a
collective
independent intergovernmental body meeting in secret among
themselves
to promulgate findings and agreements.


We can't wish them away, and since they are
governments, they have the
power to pass laws that could be inconsistent with the
private-sector,
consensus-building approach of ICANN.  Under those circumstances, I
would
think that the best way to minimize the risk that governments might
act
inconsistently with ICANN is to make sure they are fully involved in
and
knowledgable about ICANN, and have a way to make any concerns known
within
the ICANN structure.
There is nothing about the coordination of the names and numbers 
for private shared networks and network resources that should give 
rise to the need for a permanent intergovernmental body.

regards,


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Will you ever have a vote?

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Eric,

I understand that voting will only occur when
5,000 people
sign up for
membership.  A small  fraction of that number
have
The whole scheme was concocted to allow ICANN
board and staff to control the election of their
replacements and, more importantly, to reduce
any means of accountability through derivative
actions.  See the Jones Day analysis document.

Tamar Frankel sounded the warning a year ago.


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Esther live (NOW)

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 05:37 PM 8/26/99 , Richard J. Sexton wrote:
>Esther Dyson at 4:14pm ET
>Our authority comes from the Net itself. That's why our
>proceedings sometimes look fractious! We need to foster a
>consensus, then adopt policies reflecting that consensus,

I wonder if we occupy the same reality. :-)


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Re: [bwg-n-friends] Can we really afford ICANN ?

[A.M. Rutkowski]

>My other point is that ICANN says it has limited staff, limited funds and
>limited time.  All three of those things would be *less* limited if ICANN
>would *focus* on the right stuff.  Financials, membership structure,

As well as holding its meetings at low-cost locations that
facilitated the maximum number of interested parties, instead
at places that diminish openness, attendance, scrutiny, etc.

Apparently the DNSO GA "consensus" was decided largely
decided by Chilean students who happened to be there.
That is not to say they are not interested parties, but
there are others


--tony

Re: [IFWP] I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-dnsind-iana-dns-00.txt

[A.M. Rutkowski]

"A country code for a territory with a generally
recognized acting government should be considered
part of the territory of that government. Decisions
by said government as to who should control the DNS
for that TLD are final and unappealable. "

Now that's a unique concept - a code is "part of
the territory...of government."

Guess this is part of the Internet's OSIfication.


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Internet Governing Body Declares Only Concerned With Technical Parameters, Sanctions Edicts Of Governmental Legislative Internet Bureaucracy

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Craig,

I ask again, without the NTIA, just what could
the Internet community do
about NSI?  Someone please say that nothing needs to be done about
NSI...
What needs to be done about Cisco,...about MCI Worldcom
about Microsoftabout concentration in the provisioning
of search services

These are basically antitrust issues in the provisioning of
private information services and products for private networks
that are dealt with by antitrust agencies and law.

You don't declare the Internet to be a public resource
or place it under telecoms for the purpose of applying
common carrier regulation to MCI Worldcom or manage the
global router market.


--tony

[IFWP] archive unavailability

[A.M. Rutkowski]

 >Real Audio, Video and Chat for the ICANN meetings at
 >http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/santiago/realtime/broadcast.asp
 >

However, the real time scribe notes, archive video, and communique
from the GAC are not available.


--tony

[IFWP] GAC throws press, Nader rep out of meeting, nationalizes Internet identifiers

[A.M. Rutkowski]

NYTimes
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/08/cyber/articles/25domain.html

CNET
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,40894,00.html?st.ne.fd.gif.f

In addition, the GAC apparently formalized their declaration
that the Internet Name and Address System is a public asset
(in international law, public equates to government) and that
that so-called ccTLDs were the sovereign assets of the associated
State.

For an overview on GAC developments in the current Com Week Int'l
magazine, see
http://totaltele.com/secure/cwiview.asp?Target=top&ArticleID=23485&Pub=cwi


--tony

[IFWP] funding ICANN

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Some of us believe that it would be useful to
begin a dialogue about funding ICANN.  The
following ideas have been anonymously contributed.

A bake sale

a cooking show featuring Esther

selling tickets to their funeral

get the Franklin Mint to do a
commemorative medallion of Esther as
netgoddess that each dns registrant would be
obliged to purchase and hang on their monitors,
like the trustee seal

any other contributions to the cause?


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Latest on the Australian censorship

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Mark,

If NSI can use its business model to build the
same value for others as 
it has done for itself, why the necessary opposition to GAC? They'd do

While I agree that the NSI business model can be cloned and
bring the same the same value to others, it's unclear how this
is facilitated by GAC that not only has the antithetical
perspective,
but which is composed of the most Internet hostile possible set 
of players.  The GAC institutional membership reads like a
who's who of those who have targetted the Internet for destruction
over the past 20 years.  Having them define for ICANN or DNS
service providers or ISPs what constitutes Internet law and 
policy is not helpful.



include people and make it very boring to gain
total legitimacy, perhaps 
some kind of equivalence with the coverage of the ccTLDs. What percentage

of governments need representation for their decisions to have effect

that GAC's recommendations be forwarded to ICANN as constituted by a

consensus of approriate sovereign opinion? Maybe it's in the
bylaws?
GAC is an autonomous self-defining body.  They can establish
any process they wish, and in secret, and they have.


--tony
 

Re: [IFWP] Latest on the Australian censorship

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Michael,

The more interesting issue and question is whether Twomey
will act as a global cats paw for the sponsoring minister
behind all this - who is also Twomey's mentor and sponsor.

The GAC's purpose is to make findings on the legal obligations
of ICANN - which is effectively obligated to honor those findings.
One wonders how long it will take GAC to recommend that all DNS
registrants be subject to a requirement to honor a law such
as the Aussie's have adopted as condition of registering a
domain name.  Since the GAC's membership is drawn from the
more rigid, controlling ministries and agencies in every country,
they can do a lot in their secret meetings, and just promulgate
it.


--tony

[IFWP] Re: Esther Dyson on Media Bias

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Jay,

>Excerpts from the essay at:

These same things could be said about every
significant communications medium development
that has ever occurred.

Perhaps the essay could be compressed down to a single
crisp nugget: "Esther is the message."  :-)


--tony

Re: [IFWP] What new institutional form is needed to replace ICANN?

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 09:08 AM 8/16/99 , Ronda Hauben wrote:
> What Institutional Form is Needed to Replace ICANN?

Useful question to raise.  However, it should have been
plural - i.e., forums or fora.

ICANN is an experimental replacement for IANA -
which just coordinated activities in three
relatively disparate areas.  Clearly there is
no need to have the same institutional forum
for all three areas.   Indeed, doing so is bad
organizational practice, since it exacerbates
the tendency to centralize control with no
positive benefits.


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Open and closed

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Craig,


> Furthermore, ICANN's Articles of
Incorporation and Bylaws
> were written in such a fashion as to obligate ICANN's Board of
> Directors to "...carry...out its activities in conformity
> with relevant principles of international law and applicable
> international conventions..." as "advised" by
ICANN.
X GAC.

could carry out its activities in
contravention of relevant principles of
international law and applicable international conventions, but
entities
which do so find that they can't do it for long.  Maybe your point
is that
there *are no* relevant principles of international law or
applicable
international conventions, not that they should be
contravened.
My point is that no known organizations of any kind have
such provisions and tie-ins in their basic instruments.
These are usually Complex of Law matters that are considered
by the organization's General Counsel in the course of real
cases in controversy.  Instead, we have an intergovernmental
body established to make findings and promulgate agreements
on any matter it decides.

By any standards, this is not good jurisprudence or good
organizational practice.



much direct influence over ICANN's
decision-making, then I might be with
you, but if the complaint is rather that there is a GAC at all, that
nations
have any involvement with Internet governance, then I
disagree.
Please indicate to me what about the coordination of names and
number among private networks and computer hosts - formerly 
effected
by two-part time researchers - portends of such matters of
"Internet
governance" that it requires a free-lancing intergovernmental
body
of potentially 200 some sovereign States??

There are plenty of other forums for sovereign States - with 
considerable attendant checks and balances - to deal with
"Internet
governance." 


I am yet to hear an explanation of why
something as important as the
Internet should operate outside the oversight of public authority. 
No one
Who is saying this?  There is patently lots of "oversight"
occurring.
What is there about Internet names and numbers that requires its 
own
specialized, permanent, free-lancing intergovernmental body? 
Inquiring
minds want to know.


thing, particularly in infrastructure-based
network industries.  The GAC
folks (the majority of whom I agree probably don't have a clue) are
just
looking out for the public interest, which is, I'd venture to 
claim,
relevant here.
The question is whose interests are the following clueless looking
after?  

Argentina   Undersecretary
for International Trade
Armenia Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications

Australia   Department
of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts
Austria Federal Ministry for Science and
Transport
Bangladesh  Bangladesh
Telephone and Telegraph Board
Belgium Belgium Institute of Post and
Telecommunications Services (IBPT)
Brazil  National Agency for Telecommunications
(ANATEL)
Canada  Industry Canada
Chile   Undersecretary for
Telecommunications
Cyprus  Ministry of Communications and Works
Czech Republic  Ministry of Transport and
Communications 
Denmark Ministry of Research and Information
Technology
Finland Ministry of Transport and 
Communications
France  Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Gambia  Ministry of Works, Communications and
Information
Germany Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology

Ireland Department of Public Enterprise
Italy   Authority for IT in the Public
Administration (AIPA)
Japan   Ministry of Posts and
Telecommunications 
Korea   Ministry of Information and
Communication
Latvia  Ministry of Transport
Libya   General Post and Telecommunication
Company (GPTC)
MalaysiaMinistry
of Science, Technology and the Environment
Mexico  Telecommunications Ministry
Morocco State Secretariat for the Post and
Information Technology
Netherlands Ministry of
Transport, Public Works and Water Management
New Zealand Ministry of
Commerce 
Norway  Norwegian Post and Telecommunications
Authority
Papua New
GuineaPapua
New Guinea Telecommunication Authority
PeruMinistry of Transport,
Communications, Vivienda y Construcción
Singapore   Telecommunication
Authority of Singapore 
SloveniaMinistry
of Transport and Communications
Spain   Ministerio de Fomento
Sri Lanka   Council
for Information Technology
Sweden  Ministry of Industry, Employment and
Communications
Switzerland Federal office
for communications
Taiwan  Directorate General of
Telecommunications
Tonga   Prime Minister's Office 
Tuvalu  Ministry of Works, Energy &
Communication
United Kingdom  Department of Trade and
Industry
United States of
AmericaDepartment
of Commerce 
Vatican City
State  Computer
Department
Vietnam Department General of Posts and
Telecommunications (DGPT) 
Yemen   Ministry of Communications

APT 
EU  Directorate-General
XIII
ITU General Secretariat
OECDDirectorate for Science,
Technology and Industr

Re: [IFWP] Open and closed

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 09:48 AM 8/13/99 , Kerry  Miller wrote:
Why then has the issue been put on the
Governmental Advisory 
Committee agenda? Does the GAC originate "advice" for the BoD?

Is there a record of the BoD asking the GAC for this advice, against

the recommendations of "staff"? 
The GAC is an autonomous intergovernmental body
and can do whatever it wishes.  The ICANN Board is obliged
to confer with the GAC prior to taking any significant
decisions, and the conversely the GAC can otherwise 
compel the Board to consider any matter the GAC cares to
raise.

Furthermore, ICANN's Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws 
were written in such a fashion as to obligate ICANN's Board of 
Directors to "...carry...out its activities in conformity 
with relevant principles of international law and applicable 
international conventions..." as "advised" by ICANN.

How does it feel to be under the boot of GAC?


--tony

Re: [IFWP] More hypocrisy from ICANN

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 01:19 PM 8/12/99 , Jay Fenello wrote:

The article is plainly wrong about NSI caring
beyond transferring the trusteeship to the
appropriate entity - which could be Educause.

However, this is a TLD that includes a significant
worldwide constituency, and is something that
minimally deserves discussion in the appropriate
open forums, and an attempt to see what organizations
or companies might be willing to do the registrations.

Has the DNSO discussed it?  Of course, as you note,
Mike Roberts must recuse himself from any involvement.


--tony

RE: [IFWP] News

[A.M. Rutkowski]

>I thought it was a brilliant and necessary piece. Telling everyone a bit of
>home truth.
>Tony's response is typical of the arrogant NSI approach: whatever we do,
>we're always right, we never made a mistake.

Hi Ivan,

Bad day?  Do you communicate with another "Tony?"

Here is what I said:

>Who is he?  What gives him special
>insight or stature? (Other than some
>people agree or disagree with him. :-) )


How many of you have participated in other significant public
policy debates?  Frankly, this one's comparatively mild compared
to most.  What strikes you that's particularly "brilliant"
about Randy's piece?


--tony

Re: [IFWP] News

[A.M. Rutkowski]

>randy barret. ignorant fool

Who is he?  What gives him special
insight or stature? (Other than some
people agree or disagree with him. :-) )

cheers,


--tony

RE: [IFWP] The rough consensus in Berlin and ICANN's bylaws

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 11:11 AM 8/9/99 , Ivan Pope wrote:
Oh, come ON. NSI imposed an NDA on what was
supposed to be a public learning
process. It doesn't take much to work out that it was imposed to ensure
that
it is as hard as possible for newcomers to compete. 
I fail to see that.  The NDA seemed intended to provide
endless public grandstanding and complaining.
There have certainly been enough committees, lists, and
hand holding involving testbed participants.
In retrospect, however, considering how everyone
likes to spin this stuff, maybe


--tony

RE: [IFWP] The rough consensus in Berlin and ICANN's bylaws

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 10:19 AM 8/9/99 , [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>BTW, I know that the complaints Ken and Richard Lindsay (among others) made
>were real, as at that time I was a member of CORE and participated to the
>testbed.

Roberto,

I think we both observed these developments.
It's not apparent that anyone has suggested there
were no "real" problems.  Real systems developments
tend to have such problems.

What's been bothersome is how the NDA - which
was meant to protect all testbed participants
against snipping public remarks - has been used against
NSI, with constant innuendos that all
problems arose only from NSI, and that
somehow NSI wasn't responsive, when this plainly
was not the case.


--tony

RE: [IFWP] The rough consensus in Berlin and ICANN's bylaws

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 09:39 AM 8/9/99 , [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>"Poor management of the testbed by NSI?"  I know that there have been lots
>of emotionally based claims to this effect but would be interested to see
>some objective facts.

Especially considering Roberto was at the last testbed
advisory committee meeting and I don't recall that either
he or anyone else made such an assertion...  :-)


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Internet stability

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Once the vague 'authority' of the USG is
withdrawn from IANA in Sept. 2000,
what will take its place?  How do we account for the
fundamentally
cooperative nature of the Internet, yet avoid the awful p-word? 
Isn't it
just possible that what makes this whole damn thing work is something
a
little more than private?  We don't have to use the dirty word
'public,' but
can't we find some way to account for the cooperative action which
the
Internet needs for all of our benefit?
Hi Craig,

The USG is irrelevant to this.  IANA helped coordinate three
disparate administrative functions that are predominantly
done by others.  You can look at the Internet as something
akin to the economy.  It works because there is a common
incentive to make it work, and everyone finds ways to 
accommodate the various disparate systems.


Everybody seems to deny the importance of the
USG-funded predecessor
networks, but nobody can convince me that what we now know as the
Internet
Who denies this?  Sure it was important.  However, what
does
this have to do with what we're discussing here?


Here's a question, without the predecessor
networks, whose basic
architecture we still use, just how would something like the Internet,
as
opposed to something like AOL, have arisen?
AOL was a single private network.  The Internet is not a
network at all, but a means of sharing resources across
networks - largely due to the vision of Bob Kahn.  That
paradigm is what's important, and what the wannabe controllers
don't understand.


Think about the instant messaging war going on
and think about how far
'private network' thinking will get us as we try to defend the Internet
from
the @Homes, AOLs, and Microsofts of the world, who have a lot more
money
than any of you private network owners out there.
ditto the paradigm.


--tony

RE: [IFWP] Internet stability - ICANN Creditability

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 10:44 AM 8/4/99 , [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The comments made by Dr. Twomey concern me as
well, but in fact I don't
think he was threatening anybody, but simply state a belief, which is
that
the most likely event in case of a failure of ICANN is that the whole
matter
will be ruled by an international organization operating under a sort
of
international agreement.
Of course he intended it as a threat.  Ever since Paul took
over the NOIE organization for Alston and tried to find a
life in Aussie politics by becoming Internet relevant, he's 
leveraged a string of threats.  Try doing some search engine 
trolling and you'll find them all.


My personal opinion is that this is exactly
what is going to happen. There
is no way you can convince the governments not to step in if the
ICANN
solution will fail. Whether the outcome will be an international body
with
specific intergovernmental status like ITU, FAO, or other UN
organizations,
or a different type of body like ICAO, InMarSat, etc., is open to
debate,
but the direction seems pretty clear to me.
Roberto - this "threat" has been around for the last 20
years.
Many of us spent some of our careers dealing with it.
Under much more favorable circumstances to these players,
they tried and failed spectacularly.  That's why they are
trying to reinvent themselves playing the same game.  There
is no way - let me reiterate, there is no way - they could
pull it off with an aggregation of 1 million private networks,
50 million hosts, and several billion server applications
shared via tcp/ip - - which is what the Internet is.

The real threat is in the area of Internet taxation, and all
this DNS stuff is just a quid pro quo.



--tony

Re: [IFWP] Internet stability

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 02:09 AM 8/3/99 , you wrote:
independent cable-TV as well. My father was an
amateur radio
operator when radio first got started, and his stories about the
fight to stop amateur radio station licensing sounded very much 
like
the present struggle.
I'm more than familiar with those struggles.
This why you want to avoid the characterization
of being a public resource - and why conversely
the GAC has adopted an international agreement 
stating Internet Name and Number systems are
public resources.  Being a public resource
means that governments will ultimately control 
it.

The radio spectrum was progressively made a
public resource and brought under increasingly
more extensive regulatory regimes by the ITU
beginning in 1903 and the US Dept of Commerce
in 1912.  (In fact, my call sign was the 18th
issued by them in August 1912.)

ICANN's regulatory regime bears a striking
similarity to what ultimately occurred with
respect to the use of the radio spectrum.

--tony
  W3AR (and President of the Detroit
Amateur Radio Association. 1964-65)

Re: [IFWP] Internet stability

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Dear Rhonda,

And the Internet isn't "private computer
networks".
...
The Internet is an internetworking of networks -- that
is
I have juxtaposed two of your sentences.  One of the
constituent networks - 206.5.17.0 - is mine.  I assure,
it is private.  Most others are.


The essential functions of the Internet aren't
"private" at all.

They are part of a public medium, *not* a private
entity.
Is routing an essential function?  How does it occur?
Is there anything public whatsoever about this essential
function?


The Internet is a communication medium and its
*not* something private.
Can't a private medium be used for communication
among the general public?


--tony

Re: [IFWP] European Commission to investigate NSI

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 04:31 PM 8/2/99 , Werner Staub wrote:
>correct - but they do not seem to be sincere since you act as a paid
>advocate for a monopoly.

OK, I confess.  I just can stop it.
I'm actually a monopolist myself.  I have
about 12 domains for which I am the monopoly
registrar.  Would you like to register in
the CHAOS.COM domain?...or maybe NETMAGIC.COM?
I'll give you a monopoly too.

Forgive me father, for I have sinned.
mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Who is the father of all monopolies? the
legacy root, or BIND?  Does she forgive?


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Internet stability

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Craig,

By what authority did NSF give NSI's its
monopoly?  Why does NASA run root
servers?  I'm a little confused about the USG's involvement in this
network
The same authority that gave "monopolies" to the root and all
the other
15 million domains, to MCI-IBM (NSFNet), to MFS et al. (NAPs),
Sprint
(ICM backbones), to the regional networks, to (3000 other
awardees
of various infrastructure pieces with attendant intellectual
property).   
It's was a private shared user network, even when it was
substantially
funded and controlled by the US Government.

.com) is the VHS tape, the 3.5" floppy,
the Windows of the Internet.  NSI
should scare the hell out of multiple root supporters, but instead it
has
emerged as something of a hero in the battle against top-down
regulation.  I
don't think Commerce has any authority here whatsoever, but I prefer them
to
NSI.
Glad to see we're in agreement on the law.  Call me
biased, but we're going to pick agencies without authority
to do the transition, my choice is the FCC as an independent
agency with a private-sector orientation rather than an
Executive Branch agency that represents the government's
interests.


>
> Does the Commerce Department intend to begin managing
> the operations of even more critical network functions
> of the
Internet? 
^'s composite networks and applications

If the Internet isn't a network, how could it
possibly have 'critical
network functions'?
See above.


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Internet stability

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 06:24 PM 8/1/99 , Dan Steinberg wrote:
Can you confirm that these events did occur,
and if so,
why the requests to make changes that would enhance the
stablity of the internet were denied?
I would go one further and ask why and under what
authority the US Dept of Commerce is involved in 
details of name server operations for an enhanced
information service on private computer networks. 

Does the Commerce Department intend to begin managing
the operations of even more critical network functions 
of the Internet?


--tony

Re: [IFWP] European Commission to investigate NSI

[A.M. Rutkowski]

>So you say that the EC has protectionist motivations in investigating NSI,
>and at the same time you acknowledge that there is no-one to protect.

Werner,

These are two entirely different topics.  The term
"protectionist" is synonymous with strategic industrial
policy and preservation of domestic markets.

There have been books written on the CEC and
predecessor strategic industrial policy activities
that go back about 125 years in this field.  That's
why y'all have different electrical connectors,
different telephone connectors, different TV
standards, different radio spectrum allocations,
OSI, etc.  Recommended reading is Ronda Crane's MIT
thesis that was published as a popular book in
the 70s.

best,


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Vixie to RBL NSI?

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 01:41 PM 7/31/99 , you wrote:
>for RBL.  If there are, then the enormous influence of RBL and its impact on
>interconnectivity and therefore freedom of speech can simply be ignored.
>There are lots of substitutes for RBL, aren't there?

Right now, it's effectively a monopoly, like BIND. :-)

Don't get me wrong, I support what Vixie and
his RBL "customers" have been doing.  There
appears to be considerable trust in the "product."

It's for this reason that it would be really
unfortunate to have a major incident occur
that would damage that trust.  In many ways,
that's a greater risk here than the potential
financial liability - which is limited only to
the actors involved.  The issue is a test for
making the call - and here where the evidence
clearly suggests a significant customer relationship,
the adverse action by RBL shouldn't be taken.

Perhaps what we need is an RFC on what constitutes
spam, and an associated judgmental test, e.g.,
preponderance of the evidence. compelling, etc.


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Vixie to RBL NSI?

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Mark,

Paul does a commendable job maintaining the RBL service.
What is his rationale for such an extreme position -
a complaint by a competitor?

The liability here is significant and goes well
beyond Vixie to include any ISP using the RBL service.
The potential consequential damages are pretty
dramatic, and the preponderance of the business
community will go ape if they know one person can
shut off their customer communications.


--tony

Re: [IFWP] European Commission to investigate NSI

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 01:58 PM 7/30/99 , you wrote:
>gTLD market share is at least 30% in those European countries
>where prices are comparable to those of NSI.

We'll see when Mark Lottor's new host/domain counts come out.
Actual COM, NET, and ORG use has not been anywhere near
that figure in any European country.


--tony

Re: [IFWP] European Commission to investigate NSI

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Werner,

Glad to see you're still around

[Irascible comment skimmed.]

>But could you clarify *whom* the EC tries to protect by investigating
>NSI, in your opinion?

You're asking the same question that I am!  Who in
Europe are they protecting when the domestic DNS markets
are so much more non-competitive, higher priced, delayed,
regulated there?  The net result is to drive customers
to use COM, NET, and ORG abroad.

One would expect DG IV to be investigating the domestic
European registrars, introducing competition, and otherwise
eliminating the undesirable attributes so the DNS sales
opportunities don't get bled off.  But then again, the
frequent tactic in the past has generally been to "level
the playing field" by inflicting all the bureaucratic
and regulatory malaise on the rest of the world.


--tony

RE: [IFWP] European Commission to investigate NSI

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Roberto,

The European Commission looks, of course, at
the global European figures.
Obviously, if the European ccNICs had the dominant position you show
as
hypothesis, the things would be different. After all, DG IV should be
silly
to bother for 0.01%, don't you agree?
Not necessarily - if the intent is protectionism.  If you
look at the original CEC Green Paper on Numbering back in 1996
(when the COM, ORG, and NET market share mas clearly minuscule)
the EU was clearly targeting NSI as a strategic industrial
policy move.

In dealing with market share, you also need to differentiate
between just registrations, and domains in use.  The
registrations
not in use are simply speculative investments having nothing
directly to do with the Internet per se.  It's the domains in
use that typically are comparatively quite small - and remain
quite small.  If you want independent verification try using
John Quarterman's MIDS services.


National PTT monopoly?
Lotta things happened since you left Geneva. Maybe you still have friends
at
the ITU that can keep you up to date ;>)
What's the current market share of France Telecom in the local
access market?  Interexchange market? :-)


Anyway, since you raise the point of
competition with NSI at a Registrar
level, don't you think that the protectionist attitude that NSI has taken
in
the last few months has played definitively a role in DG IV's decision?
Some
Like I noted above, the CEC's Green Paper targeted NSI for
industrial policy reasons in 1996.  It would be great to see
them focus a little closer to home and open up all those
domestic markets.  That would bring a lot more real benefits
to local users.  I suspect also that the hassle, bureaucracy,
delays and costs domestically are what are primarily driving
customers some customers to COM, ORG, and NET registrars.


I understand your bitterness, if I would have
been hit in my direct
interests I would feel the same.

Bitterness?  I was over there for 5 years and functioned in
that environment.  I was indeed bitter about all the
regulations,
bad service, high costs, protectionist tariffs, propping up of
PTOs and institutions.  I watched CERN lease circuits from Geneva

to New York to Lisbon because it was cheaper than going direct. 

I was the guy who was almost thrown out of ETSI because I mentioned
the Internet.   I get back every few months.  Things are
changing, 
but it's still slow.  


--tony

RE: [IFWP] European Commission to investigate NSI

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 08:43 AM 7/30/99 , Jean-Michel Becar wrote:
BTW there is also the fact that the market
share for the NIC's are not so
high than for NSI.
It could be ridiculous to open for example the registration for the
Luxembourg domain name (if it exsits, I have to check)
.
The market share of
ESTENA - the Ministry of Education Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg
is nearly 100% in Luxembourg.  The associated fee is only
a mere 2000 FLUX (US$53) initially, and 3000 FLUX (US$ 77.5)
annually.
The COM, NET, and ORG registration share of domain names in Europe 
is minuscule compared to the country registration shares, including 

Luxembourg.  By any measure, DG IV has clearly misplaced its
priorities.

Looks to me like the LU domain monopoly could benefit from a little
registrar competition to lower those prices a bit.


--tony

RE: [IFWP] European Commission to investigate NSI

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 05:02 AM 7/30/99 , [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>therefore "eventually" competition will be allowed in the ccTLDs, but I
>share DG IV's POV that economically and politically NSI's monopoly in
>"general purpose" (not nationally restricted) TLDs is a higher priority.

Even though the AFNIC monopoly, for example, has 99.99 % of the
TLD domain market in France and Network Solutions may have that
0.01% ?  And, even though the national PTT monopoly has recently
become a registrar for COM, NET, and ORG?  That's a very interesting
anticompetitive perspective the EU takes.  It must be what makes
Europe so strongly competitive and a leader in the Internet field.

best,


--tony

Re: [IFWP] European Commission to investigate NSI

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 12:29 PM 7/29/99 , dibu wrote:
>Well, I think is not the same.
>
>NSI domain names are international, but country code based domain names
>not.


 From anticompetitive and functional standpoints, it is exactly
the same.  The market is the performance of registration/name
resolution value added services for the Internet.


--tony

Re: [IFWP] European Commission to investigate NSI

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Jim,

Have any potential registrars filed complaints with DG IV
to open up competitive registrar opportunities for the various
monopoly European country member domains?


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Analogical thought

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 03:05 PM 7/27/99 , Jim Dixon wrote:
>Insofar as you are commenting upon this, you seem to have missed my
>narrow technical point.  Roberto Gaetano asserted that an IP address
>uniquely identifies a domain name.  This is not true.  Sometimes a name
>corresponds to many IP addresses (as in round-robin DNS) and sometimes
>an IP address corresponds to many names (some Web servers permit many
>names to be associated with one IP address).  The domain name system
>is not really like the telephone system.

I just had an interchange with Jon Weinberg on this
as he made similar errors in his Congressional
testimony.  Since he was one of the more knowledgeable
behind the scenes players on loan to the US Gov,
it drives home the point that most if not all of
the government/institutional players going after
the "DNS meat" have essentially no understanding
about what they are dealing with.

As a result, many of the things now occurring are
simply based on vicarious personal conceptualizations
like the telephone system or political or personal
reactions.


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Block the Crock

[A.M. Rutkowski]

>Glancing through it does remind me of why I Block the Crock.

Jim,

You can get considerable relief also by visiting
the subject's site at http://www.dnso.com/


--tony

Re: [IFWP] What I would have said...

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 03:32 PM 7/23/99 , Jim Dixon wrote:
>While it may have been obvious to other people sooner, it has only fairly
>recently become clear to me that "a common root under public trust" is
>also a choke point, control of which permits control of the entire
>Internet.  The DNS wars of the last few years are the result: most of the
>various people, organisations, and governments involved in this dispute
>are there because they want control of the Internet.   The single root
>draws them like rotting meat draws flies.

The latest example is Twomey's reply to my op-ed piece
in Com Week International.  Twomey knows nothing about
the Internet, but conceptualizes it like a common carrier
network that's ripe for his taking via ICANN in the name
of "stability" for electronic commerce.  You don't need
to be a weatherman to see where he is heading - notwithstanding
the self-aggrandizement about how benign his intent.

>We don't need rule from above: we need an IANA that facilitates
>cooperation, not an ICANN that tells us what to do.

Probably three IANAs.  The "three functions in one ICANN"
could be rationalized when Jon was around as a means of
incorporating IANA.  Pulling the plug on ICANN would be
the best possible scenario.  It would leave a strong
IANA-IETF relationship intact.  It would allow the regional
IP registries and ISPs to continue coordinating among
themselves.  It would allow more flexible DNS root
management arrangements to come into existence.  It
would allow antitrust law to fully apply to all the players
as a means of moderating behavior.  Lastly, it would keep
government largely out of this.

This last point is where you get some folks playing
chicken little.  However, there is no effective way the
government can really do this for shared user networks.
They've been trying for the past 20 years under far
more favorable circumstances for that result with
zip success.




--tony

[IFWP] ICANN's "Internet Community" - Fact and Fancy

[A.M. Rutkowski]

FANCY


In Esther Dyson's reply to Dept of Commerce's Becky Burr
today, and copied to Commerce Committee Bliley, she used
the term "Internet Community" 10 times to justify various
actions and assertions.  Examples include:


   "...was adopted following a thorough process of
notice and comment, and was broadly supported
by a consensus of the community."


   "seemed to the Internet community a fair and
workable way"


"recognizing community consensus"


"ICANN is nothing more than the reflection
of community consensus"


Indeed, the term figures prominently into most recent
communications emerging from spokespersons for ICANN
and the Dept of Commerce.


FACT


As it turns out, ICANN actually has an official
"Community Feedback" site that contains an archive of
all the "reflections of community consensus."  It's the
only site, and it's at http://www.icann.org/feedback.html


If you go to this site and analyze all the available
feedback, you obtain the following ICANN community feedback
statistics:


1. Over the past 8 months, a total of 547 email note
comments have been filed as follows:


Nov-98  20
Dec-98  10
Jan-99  25
Feb-99  30
Mar-99  47
Apr-99  105
May-99  94
Jun-99  128
Jul-99  88 (to date)


2. Two-thirds of the community feedback messages were 3-5 kB -
about 10-30 lines of message text.  Only 7 were over 20 kB.


3. One person is responsible for 20 % of the comments.
Only 17 people have filed more than two comments.
as follows:


Michael Dillon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 110
Michael Sondow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  70
jeff Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  24
Karl Auerbach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>9
John B. Reynolds <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   8
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ron Bennett)   7
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ellen Rony)   6
Eric Weisberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  6
John D. Goodspeed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   5
Baumgärtner Alexander <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>4
Russ Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 4
Jim R. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   4
Ed Gerck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 3
Darren Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 3
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 3
Joseph Friedman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  3
Richard J. Sexton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   3



4. 463 of the email notes (85%) were on unique disparate
subjects.  Among the notes in which there were more than
three on the same subject, they were largely the notes of
the single dominant commentor:


Re: more netsol fun (fwd)   11
Re: Contact handles disappearing mysteriously from the whois database! 
(fwd)8
Re: more Internic nightmare (fwd)   7
Network Solutions   6
RE: [IFWP] Re: The Sims-Auerbach Correspondence 5
Re: [IFWP] Slanders and impostures  4
Re: NSI problems anyone? (fwd)  4
domain names4
RE: [IFWP] The Sims-Auerbach Correspondence (was: The CPT- ICANN 
Correspondence 3
Re: Network Solutions loses domain data (fwd)   3
ICC Message to the Board of Directors of ICANN  3
Re: More whois fun. (fwd)   3
Re: Clue? (fwd) 3
Re: whois changes (fwd) 3
domain name registration3
Re: NetSol on crack? (fwd)  3



5. Analysis.  ICANN's own "community feedback" files of record
reveal clearly there is no "community consensus."  Indeed, it is
preponderantly a chaotic randomness of topics and people combined
with one outspoken critic, and almost none of the material is
more than a few paragraphs long.

[IFWP] ICANN's "Internet Community" - Fact and Fancy

[A.M. Rutkowski]

FANCY


In Esther Dyson's reply to Dept of Commerce's Becky Burr
today, and copied to Commerce Committee Bliley, she used
the term "Internet Community" 10 times to justify various
actions and assertions.  Examples include:


   "...was adopted following a thorough process of
notice and comment, and was broadly supported
by a consensus of the community."


   "seemed to the Internet community a fair and
workable way"


"recognizing community consensus"


"ICANN is nothing more than the reflection
of community consensus"


Indeed, the term figures prominently into most recent
communications emerging from spokespersons for ICANN
and the Dept of Commerce.


FACT


As it turns out, ICANN actually has an official
"Community Feedback" site that contains an archive of
all the "reflections of community consensus."  It's the
only site, and it's at http://www.icann.org/feedback.html


If you go to this site and analyze all the available
feedback, you obtain the following ICANN community feedback
statistics:


1. Over the past 8 months, a total of 547 email note
comments have been filed as follows:


Nov-98  20
Dec-98  10
Jan-99  25
Feb-99  30
Mar-99  47
Apr-99  105
May-99  94
Jun-99  128
Jul-99  88 (to date)


2. Two-thirds of the community feedback messages were 3-5 kB -
about 10-30 lines of message text.  Only 7 were over 20 kB.


3. One person is responsible for 20 % of the comments.
Only 17 people have filed more than two comments.
as follows:


Michael Dillon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 110
Michael Sondow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  70
jeff Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  24
Karl Auerbach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>9
John B. Reynolds <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   8
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ron Bennett)   7
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ellen Rony)   6
Eric Weisberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  6
John D. Goodspeed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   5
Baumgärtner Alexander <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>4
Russ Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 4
Jim R. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   4
Ed Gerck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 3
Darren Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 3
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 3
Joseph Friedman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  3
Richard J. Sexton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   3



4. 463 of the email notes (85%) were on unique disparate
subjects.  Among the notes in which there were more than
three on the same subject, they were largely the notes of
the single dominant commentor:


Re: more netsol fun (fwd)   11
Re: Contact handles disappearing mysteriously from the whois database! 
(fwd)8
Re: more Internic nightmare (fwd)   7
Network Solutions   6
RE: [IFWP] Re: The Sims-Auerbach Correspondence 5
Re: [IFWP] Slanders and impostures  4
Re: NSI problems anyone? (fwd)  4
domain names4
RE: [IFWP] The Sims-Auerbach Correspondence (was: The CPT- ICANN 
Correspondence 3
Re: Network Solutions loses domain data (fwd)   3
ICC Message to the Board of Directors of ICANN  3
Re: More whois fun. (fwd)   3
Re: Clue? (fwd) 3
Re: whois changes (fwd) 3
domain name registration3
Re: NetSol on crack? (fwd)  3



5. Analysis.  ICANN's own "community feedback" files of record
reveal clearly there is no "community consensus."  Indeed, it is
preponderantly a chaotic randomness of topics and people combined
with one outspoken critic, and almost none of the material is
more than a few paragraphs long.

RE: [IFWP] Cross from IETF-Poised on PSO

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Roberto,

And in fact ETSI makes no claim.
ETSI could not care less whether the Norm becomes law in each
individual
country: in fact, what enforces the law, is not that the
standardization
work is conducted in ETSI, but that the NSO that adopt it enforce
it.

In other words, ETSI has no status to enforce anything by law, and
therefore
could not reasonably make such a claim. What enforces the law is 
the
adoption of a standardization work (done by ETSI) by the NSOs, that
act
under the authority of their respective national governments, and
their
common agreement on the rules of the game.

But the processes of producing a standard and enforcing a norm are
separate.
Understood.  But that's inevitably always the case.
I don't know of any standards body that has enforcement
powers.  Not even the ITU does.  It is always the case
that national governments enforce the provisions.

So if this is the interpretation, the "voluntary"
qualification is totally meaningless.

In practice, the term has been used for decades to
differentiate between standards organizations that
have a nexus to governments or intergovernmental
organizations who make the standards mandatory in
some fashion versus all other standards bodies.
It was also captured in the "de jure" versus
"de facto" standards dichotomy.


--tony

RE: [IFWP] Cross from IETF-Poised on PSO

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Hi Roberto,

Glad to see you are still usefully participating.

These are simply issues in law and policy, not a conspiracy.
Thanks for the helpful clarifications about ETSI -
although it appears from your explanation that some
of ETSI's standards are very much compelling.

Notwithstanding the handwaving, the requirements of
the PSO MoU are:

   Open international voluntary standards bodies are
   defined as international organizations that plan,
   develop or establish voluntary standards.
   An organization shall be considered open and
   international if its standards and/or specifications
   development process is open to any person or
   organization of any nationality on equitable terms.
   It shall be considered voluntary if it makes no
   claim to compel use of its standards and specifications.

The meaning is fairly clear on its face.  It says
"...is open to any person or organization."  It
doesn't say that, except for the the ITU and ETSI
who admit only organizations - and in the case of
the ITU, only if they are supported by the Administration
under whose jurisdiction they exist."

It also says "makes no claim."  It doesn't say "makes
no claim for some standards, but for those that we
call Norms, those are excused."  For the ITU is also
doesn't say "...except for the claim under Art. 1
of the ITU International Telecommunication Regulations..."

I seems y'all left out a lot of important exceptions...
or just conveniently implied them. :-)



--tony

[IFWP] Cross from IETF-Poised on PSO

[A.M. Rutkowski]

> > Both ETSI and ITU fullfill these criteria that were discussed in
> > POISSON already sometime ago.
>
>The criteria are rigged. ETSI and the ITU are being made part of the
>PSO because they are signatories to the gTLD/MoU. The PSO is nothing

Michael,

They conveniently overlooked some things.  The MoU has the
following requirements:

   Open international voluntary standards bodies are defined as
   international organizations that plan, develop or establish
   voluntary standards.

   An organization shall be considered open and international if
   its standards and/or specifications development process is
   open to any person or organization of any nationality on equitable
   terms. It shall be considered voluntary if it makes no claim to
   compel use of its standards and specifications."


The ITU as an intergovernmental organization, only allows
member governments to participate "of right."  Everyone
else must follow certain procedures in Art. 19 of the ITU
Convention.  Only governments have a final say on standards.

There is no mechanisms for any person to participate, and
the terms of participation require annual payments that are
so great as to effectively preclude the participation of even
small companies.  In addition, the ITU requires that to
participate, the national administration having jurisdiction
over the organization must approve.

ETSI's requirements are not quite is rigorous, but participation
is hardly open, and I'm not aware in any case, it's open to persons;
and the financial requirements are significant.

In the case of the ITU, the International Telecommunication
Regulations - a treaty instrument in force - compels that
"administrations* should comply with, to the greatest extent
practicable, the relevant CCITT Recommendations."  See Art. 1
para 1.6.  In many countries, the ITU standards are obligatory.
Similarly, many of ETSI's standards are obligatory in many
European Union jurisdictions.  For that reason, neither body
has ever in the past been regarded as a "voluntary" standards
body.

But these are just additional examples of ICANN violating
their basic instruments and IETF conveniently looking the
other way.  It's misfeasance to matter how you cut it.


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Why fail on purpose?

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 12:45 PM 7/18/99 , Joe Sims wrote:
Since neither the legal nor the pr folks are
being paid, the comparison is
not very meaningful, is it?  If there is no money, any amount is too
much.
Ah, but the big question, Joe, is whether they are still 
billing -
especially while they are engaging in fund raising, lobbying,
and spinmeistering. :-)


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Re: Media Bias and the Takeover of the Internet

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Jay,

This and similar controversies have actually been
going on fairly intensively over the past 40 years.
It's the Internet and domain names right now, 15 years
ago it was OSI names and addresses, 20 years ago
satellite allocations, 40 years ago shortwave
radio frequencies.

You inevitably end up with two camps of politicians,
reporters, academics,...you name it.  They distill
into two diametrically opposed camps:

Common Interests:
o Names are "public resource"
o Limited for political reasons
o Use subject to accreditation license and regulation
o Dislike for-profit business models
o Desires/requires managed competition
o Seeks/accepts control for Internet governance purposes

Common Interests:
o Names are assets/brands developed by business
o Unlimited resource
o Use subject to provider-customer contracts
o Prefer for-profit business models
o Managed by market and antitrust laws
o Opposes control for Internet governance purposes

The first group tends to regard these as religious
issues of principle on which there cannot be any
compromise-only compliance with their orthodoxy.
The second group tends to be more pragmatic and
seeks to accommodate diversity.

In global political forums - which is what ICANN-GAC
has become - the first group has generally won the
initial rhetorical and numerical popularity contests.
The ICANN's GAC has already declared as a principle
of their constituent governments that Internet Names
and Addresses are the equivalent of the radio spectrum.

Because the first group is far more common outside the
US, while the second is more common in the US.  This
tends to skew the results in numerical based global
forums - which also is what ICANN-GAC have become.

The first approach is also popular among those who want
to manipulate economic systems for some perceived initial
advantage. In the end, however, the paradigm shifts from
the first to the second group because it is the only one
that really works and maximizes the benefits of the
associated technology.

For the moment, however, the contention will continue,
and the Internet simply experience the same wars long
experienced in other galaxies far, far away

cheers,



--tony

Re: [IFWP] Why fail on purpose?

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 06:03 AM 7/16/99 , you wrote:
>Diane, and I hope you continue; it is helpful.  One point I should make:  a
>very significant hurdle to any election process is the lack of money to run
>it.  It might well be a sensible strategy, especially at this stage of its
>development, for ICANN to have some professional election help, but it has
>no money to pay for that, and given the reaction of some to the effort to
>generate funds through payments by registrars, the prospects for any
>significant funds  soon are not  good.  There is a serious catch-22 here
>that for some ICANN critics is probably not coincidental:  complain about
>the lack of an elected Board, and simultaneously make it impossible to
>generate the funds to elect a truly representative Board.  I don't know
>what the solution to this conundrum is, but there is no doubt that the
>opposition to the creation of any regular source of funding is a serious
>impediment to devising and implementing a credible At Large election
>process.

It is plainly preposterous to suggest that you need
big bucks to hold an election.  This isn't a presidential
election campaign or the United Nations.  All the parties
that ever filed in the DOC proceedings, attended a meeting,
or even zinged off a one liner on an EMail list doesn't
reach more than a couple of thousand people.  Conducting
this is a part-time job for a couple of people who could
volunteered from a completely neutral organization.


--tony

RE: [IFWP] Re: personal attacks

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 02:39 PM 7/15/99 , Richard J. Sexton wrote:
>The Internet is not some vast public resource that is the birthright
>of every living soul. It's not, of course, it's a club of people that

The Internet happened as the antithesis of the traditional
public resource approach to telecommunications over the past
150 years.  It happened because individuals and private
companies had a common incentive and mechanism to create,
develop and share their own resources.

This is not meant to denigrate programmes that provide people
with the skills and capabilities for creating their own resources
and shared access capabilities.  However, there are no rights
involved, just important skill sets.


--tony

RE: [IFWP] Multiple roots...

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 02:59 PM 7/14/99 , Jon Zittrain wrote:
>Imagine if the 99.9% relied-upon namespace were wholly run by Netscape or 
>Microsoft.  Would that be a victory for the private market, or would 
>everyone be looking for ways to be fair about capturing the value of those 
>names instead of letting Netscape or Microsoft auction them off?  ...JZ

According to the GAC "multilateral agreement," this
cannot occur:

   1. The Internet naming and addressing system is a
   public resource that must be managed in the
   interests of the global Internet community;
   2. The management of Internet names and addresses
   must be facilitated by organizations that are global
   in character.

Is the authority of the great and wonderful GAC to be challenged?


--tony

Re: [IFWP] CATO on ICANN

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 01:50 PM 7/13/99 , Craig McTaggart wrote:

plan (which I liked) could work is with (a)
the very active support of the
USG and (b) the recognition of most of the nations which the
Internet
What part of the USG?  The views of the various agencies
and branches are very different on these issues.


'reaches'.  There are significant public
policy issues involved now
(although i expect that is one point on which we disagree sharply) and it
is
Yes.  I believe the real issues are primarily business ones.
This gets overlayed with significant religious and pseudo
public policy interventions.


many governments right now, support which it
desperately needs (where else
is the next round of funding going to come from?)
Uh-huh.That's special.


The halcyon days of the Interent's homogenous
research-oriented user
community are over.  This is serious business now and serious
public
interest issues are engaged.  However, the governance structures
which we
have now are essentially identical to those of 20 years ago.  They
have
No doubt that's why people are rolling out OSI solutions again.


simply been scaled up and some contracted
out.  Aren't the old governance
structures simply incompatible with the Internet's new role? 
Clearly the
proprietary-TLD people think so, because Postel wouldn't add their new
TLDs.
In fact, aren't they the ones who pushed this whole reform process in
the
first place?  They want their new TLDs, but preferably not an
effective new
governance structure which recognizes the Internet's global
significance.
You might want to look at places like
www.ilpf.org and see
how
"governance" is being approached for other Internet
sectors.
The "reform process" origins and dynamics are much more
complex
than you suggest.


I agree that the ITU is on one level a relic
of an earlier age when national
cartels carved up the global telecom market for their own benefit, but
at
another level they do know a lot about coordinating global networks
for
global benefit. 
The ITU was swept out of the "coordinating global networks"
role
about ten years ago.  Do you believe they know more than the 
commercial players that actually provide and operate those networks
today?


 If the ITU regime is so unpalatable, how
about the WTO
agreement on basic telecoms?  Its Reference Paper
(http://www.wto.org/wto/services/tel23.htm)
actually calls for more
government regulation, not less, by requiring each country to have
an
independent regulatory authority to facilitate competitive
markets.
Yes, for basic telecom services.  That's a legacy function
to prevent the PTTs from exercising complete control of
the domestic market.


Similarly, breaking NSI's monopoly (which is
now miraculously a good thing)
has required the creation of new regulatory structures.  The route
chosen
has been a chain of private contracts, and what some find objectionable
in
them are exactly the same kinds of things that public regulators have to
do
to create stable, competitive markets.  
Sorry, I don't buy the construct.  They have three of 250
domains.
I have a monopoly on netmagic.com  Ambler has a monopoly on 
WEB
Disney has a monopoly on Disney World.  I see no problem with that

kind of "monopoly."


--tony

Re: [IFWP] CATO on ICANN

[A.M. Rutkowski]

At 12:53 PM 7/13/99 , Craig McTaggart wrote:

describes as ICANN making itself into an
"International government for the
Internet" is precisely what this whole process has been about:
basing IANA's
functions in an internationally-recognized, authoritative, stable,
non-governmental body. 
There is an incredible range of options within those general
specifications.  The "good NewCo" was that specified
in the White Paper.  ICANN has emerged as the antithesis.

Maybe this is inevitable when you move to a non-profit
(government or private sector) orientation - only in
the non-profit world you have fewer safeguards.  Clearly
what we have here is little more than the gTLD-MoU
regime moved from Geneva and the ITU to California and
ICANN.  The players, religion, and methods are all
pretty much the same.


--tony

Re: [IFWP] Re: The gTLD constituency

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Jon

This is a good question!  At some point I
suppose you'd agree that some number is too much, no matter how large a
stakeholder we were talking about.  In your view should it just be
made simpler and NSI could have one rep with three votes as against
everyone else's one vote?
I think there are many ways to slice and dice this.  NSI
has made it clear that the only thing it wants is the requirements
of the white paper: uncaptured, diverse, fair and open process.
Instead it's captured and being run by the gTLD-Mou crowd,
there's little diversity, it's unfair and closed.  Just look
at what's happening in the Group C.  It's two gTLD-MoUers -
one of them acting as an Fascist chair twice over - against Ambler.


If you see ICANN as a sort of trade
association--a chance for otherwise-competing industry stakeholders to
get under one roof and get standards settled, for example--then I'd
expect NSI would be a large player.  If instead you see ICANN as
having a public trust function for the good of the Internet at large, the
notion is a little different.  Imagine if the FCC commissioners were
picked as "one by AT&T, one by NBC, one by Rupert Murdoch,"
etc.  It's not right, even though each of those entities are large
stakeholders with a lot to gain or lose by what the FCC decides. 
The whole constituency approach, where constituencies funnel into a names
council in equal measure, seems quite odd to me, especially since the
constituencies overlap so much.  It's particularly bad when there's
no vehicle for individual participation, either through a recognized IDNO
or through the non-commercial constituency.
Uhhh...we're supposed to be dealing here with one of 
the Internet's niche business - Internet identifiers -
not a Commission with the power to regulate all 
telecommunications and radio.  Yes, I believe the
model is that of a trade association.  Even in a
regulated industry with public telecon networks, 
NANBA is a trade association.

This whole thing has gone way out of control.  It's
time for Congressional and Judicial Branch intervention.


Sticking with "gTLD registries" as
the constituency, though, do you think its membership should include
representatives from .mil, .gov, .arpa, and .int?
The MIL and GOV guys said they could be bothered.  They're
going to do what they want.  As far as they're concerned
ICANN doesn't exist.  ARPA is effectively run by the
IP Address registries and will likely remain there.  INT
is in limbo.  You have Shaw trying to give the ITU an
operational
activity it isn't supposed to have, and for which it's a conflict
of interest because most of INT is TPC - which it Marshall T Rose
and Carl Malamud's fax bypass of the ITU's constituents' fax
networks.


The gTLD-MoU folk are a coalition of sorts
rather than a single corporation.  But I do believe the council
would be best served by having a variety of people and interests
represented there.  If it's not capture it can sure appear that way,
which is almost as bad.  ...JZ
They are signatories to an international agreement still under
ITU auspices that asserts a common view and creates several
implementing
bodies.  They collectively represent a strong common party of
interest -
and they have clearly captured almost the entire ICANN apparatus.
In fact, most of them assert that ICANN is simply a gTLD-MoU 
retread
done for "political purposes."  The notion of diversity is
anathema
to their approach.  It's a religion, not a process.



--tony

Re: [IFWP] Re: Rule of law vs. consensus

[A.M. Rutkowski]

Jon,

>All this said, I'm curious: how do we measure that elusive thing called 
>consensus?  And, on the merits, do you think any one entity, whether NSI 
>or MCI or CORE or anyone else, should pick three seats to the Names 
>Council?  ...JZ

The DOC Policy Statement established the following specification
for the governance of NewCo:

   Governance. The organizing documents (Charter, Bylaws,
   etc.) should provide that the new corporation is
   governed on the basis of a sound and transparent
   decision-making process, which protects against capture
   by a self-interested faction, and which provides for
   robust, professional management of the new corporation.
   The new corporation could rely on separate, diverse, and
   robust name and number councils responsible for
   developing, reviewing, and recommending for the board's
   approval policy related to matters within each council's
   competence. Such councils, if developed, should also
   abide by rules and decision-making processes that are
   sound, transparent, protect against capture by a
   self-interested party and provide an open process for
   the presentation of petitions for consideration. The
   elected Board of Directors, however, should have final
   authority to approve or reject policies recommended by
   the councils.

The operative standard is "...abide by rules and
decision-making processes that are sound, transparent,
protect against capture by a self-interested party."
Just about everything concerning ICANN, GAC,
and the DNSO are patently manifestations of capture
by one self-interested party.  It is the NewCo that
wasn't supposed to happen.

Network Solutions and its shareholders are the largest
stakeholders in the DNS business.  Is it not reasonable and
equitable for them to be able to select 14% of the seats
on a related policy council?  It's certainly far from
"capture."

Should the gTLD-MoU faction by contrast - which has
a very small stake - enjoy more than 50% of the seats,
the policy-making chair, the agenda making role, and
the predominant appointments to groups developing
policies?  Is that capture?


--tony