"A.M. Rutkowski" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >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. It's helpful you point out that the GAC is functioning as a secret activity of governments and one that is ignoring the checks and balances that government is obligated to recognize. It is that the U.S. government ignored and bypassed its own checks and balances and obligatory procedures in setting up ICANN and the problem is being multiplied many fold as the U.S. government is encouraging all other governments to do the same in the name of ICANN. (...) >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. (...) And the Internet is not the telephone system. The Internet has grown up under a different development that the telephone system did and has had a way of having international participation in its development. This needs to be understood and built on. This was what my proposal to Magaziner and then the NTIA instead of ICANN was about. It's online at http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/dns_proposal.txt >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. And the last 30 years of the development of packet switching networks and then of the Internet. This has grown up with a very different history and an important role for government, but one different from that of the phone system. That has to be seriously examined and understood. And I agree that the secret meetings by the governments as part of ICANN are as insidious as its own secret activities which include how the Board of Directors was determined and all previous and subsequent decisions they make. Furthermore, they violate the basic tenent of a how to manage a scientific activity, which is what the names and numbers of the Internet and the protocols are, which is that they have to be under the direction of scientific management, *not* business management. >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. Nor to a business directed body as ICANN is. My proposal offered a means for international collaboration of scientists supported by governments. That is the unique history of how the Internet has been developed, and needs to be the mechanism of protecting the essential functions of the Internet like the Domain Names, IP numbers and protocol process, root server system, etc. Ronda
