I will try and be a bit more succinct here so that a couple people may actually read the whole email.
Patrick, I don't think openness equals agreeing with you. I think your email proves MY point. You describe in great detail all the opportunities you had for input. There is NO requirement that you get your way or that people agree with you. With respect to alt root issues I don't.
Let's get to the meat of it. You say "Throughout all of this participation, I watched a small group of insular,
manipulative, back-room players succeed in gaining and solidfying control of what is arguably one of the most important resources on the Internet..". I have heard this numerous times. I want to have this point out here and now (and look forward to Jim Fleming taking my comments out of context and forwarding them to the world ;-)).
Who are the members of this group? Let's run through it. Is it Verisign? Well they lost the monopoly and have gone from 100% market share to about 17%. The future of their registrar business is in question. Register.com has also been in the press quite a lot recently. I can't imagine you are referring to them. Neulevel and GNR are not exactly experiencing massive financial success nor could anyone accuse them of being insiders. Afilias may now do well with PIR getting .org, but even there the benefits are quite diffuse and the point of the whole Afilias thing was to have it be open to ANY registrar.
So let's look at who has benefitted. In my view there are a few smaller players (of which Go Daddy and Enom are the largest) and us. Go Daddy and Enom have succeeded, IMHO, because they offer dirt-cheap prices and we have succeeded, IMHO, becuase we realized that webhosters, ISPs, et al are the ones that actually sell domain names. I also believe that all of these things have GREATLY BENEFITTED registrants who are WAY better off then they were. Now let me go further. I believe Tucows has been the single greatest beneficiary of this ICANN process. Not because of back room manipulation but because with a more level playing field doing the right thing pays off.
So let me ask you point blank. Patrick, am I an "insular, manipulative, back-room player"? Cause if I am, it aint all its cracked up to be!
There is much I don't like. I want more tlds. I think the UDRP needs work. The new CEO better make peace with ccTLDs and the RIRs. A reformed ICANN needs to be better at enforcing the contracts. But boy are things way better off then they were. And in three short years.
Looks like I failed at being succinct! Thanks for letting me make this point.
Regards
On Saturday, February 1, 2003, at 04:54 PM, Patrick wrote:
On Sat, 1 Feb 2003, elliot noss wrote:TIME OUT******Elliot,
Great discussion. I don't want to intrude. I just want to give you all
my position (which may or may not be the "official" Tucows position,
but is pretty close to it currently) on four things:
- I believe in a single, authoritative root within which all tlds exist
for the public good and that all registry operators are contractors
operating in that context (implicit here is a complete rejection of
first-come-first-served);
- My personal experience has been that ICANN is open and transparent,
in fact it is by far the most transparent generalist organization I
have ever seen and I say this both as the CEO of a public company (in a
world of Sorbannes-Oxley) and as someone who has been quite involved in
ICANN since its inception. It has been my experience that people who
are not agreed with or not (in their view) adequately listened to tend
to then complain about openness and transparency.
I think that you'll find some of the loudest critics have likewise been
involved in the process for quite some time and do not render their
opinions without experience or merit.
I followed the IAHC and it's aborted attempt to gain control of the root.
I submitted comments to the Department of Commerce on the Green Paper. I
participated in mailing list discussions. I attended numerous IFWP
meetings around the globe at a significant cost in time and money to both
myself and past employers, also serving as a steering committee member.
I spoke to Ira Magaziner. I met with Esther Dyson. I was part of the Boston
Working Group. I submitted comments to the D.O.C. on the White Paper. I
authored a letter to Ralph Nader&James Love in response to Esther Dysons'
response to questions posed by them which is recommended reading for at
least three law courses that I'm aware of. I attended several ICANN meetings,
including the one where new TLDs were decided on.
I participated.
Throughout all of this participation, I watched a small group of insular,
manipulative, back-room players succeed in gaining and solidfying control of
what is arguably one of the most important resources on the Internet
using the very openness and input offered by those participating in good
faith against them. This is no better exemplified by the fate of the only
real attempt at global dialogue and development of consensus-based
organizational documents, the IFWP. It was successfully tanked in large part
due to the masterful efforts of Mike Roberts who in his capacity as an
IFWP steering committee member voted to kill further drafting efforts, while
failing to disclose that he had already been selected to run an ICANN
based on a set of organizational documents already created by that same small
group(hi Joe Sims and friends.) That should speak volumes about the
character of the person chosen to head ICANN.
Given sufficient interest, I could fill several pages detailing examples
of such malfeasence, and that's just the stuff I know about. We could
talk about how the board was selected, we could talk about how the
organizational documents were developed and by whom, we could talk about
the countless revisions to the by-laws made after ICANN gained D.O.C. approval,
we could talk about the domain dispute policy, we could talk about the TLD
selection process, we could talk about the board squatters, we could talk
about the laughably named "Internet Consensus Policy" manifestos, we could
talk about one of the few elected board members having to sue to gain access
to basic corporate records, we could talk about the contract for running
.com, we could talk about the killing of the General Assembly, we could talk
about the reduction of publicly elected board members from nine to ZERO. The
list goes on, and on, and on.
For the sake of argument, lets assume for the moment that all of the
issues mentioned above don't exist or that I'm just a lone malcontent.
What then is the current relationship of this obstensibly open,
transparent organization to it's subordinate organizations?
Well, there's the continuing inability to secure contracts with the
majority of ccTLDs who claim a lack of representation and appropriate
consideration of their positions of all things, we have the RIRs issuing
statements challenging ICANNs authority over them, and we have the
IETF/IAB making "ICANN evolution recommendations" that if implemented
would reduce control as well.
It seems then that beyond us mere domain-registrant serfs, there are
individuals and organizations under the ICANN umbrella itself that are pretty
darn unhappy with how things are run.
ICANN to its' credit has recognized this unhappiness and this paragon of
openness and transparency has taken drastic action to address these
concerns which to date has included killing the General Assembly, the
only possible organized voice within ICANN for individuals, and of course
completely eliminating publicly-elected directors.
What input was the public afforded on the issue of eliminating elected
directors? What input was the GA afforded in deciding if it wanted to be
killed or not? The answer to this like so many other issues is: NONE.
That's not the workings of an open, transparent organization. It's a
farce.
They never say "not open compared to....". TO what? To congress/parliament?Yes "they" have, but people continue to argue about the most
To the ITU? To the UN? To a public company? To a private company?
applicable label. ICANN itself has significantly altered it's charter in an
attempt to pass itself off as a "technical coordination body" vs. a
governance organization which would be held to higher standards of
openness, transparency, and representation.
With respects to just domain names, ICANN is potentially empowered to
determine wholesale cost(for any non-cctld,) the supply of names(what
tlds), the terms under which I can register a name, and the terms under
which it can be taken away. Also as a component of these terms ICANN
decides what rights I have related to the privacy of my personal
information.
IP addresses are even more important. As the RIRs are subordinate to
ICANN, ICANN theoretically has control over IP address pricing, terms, and
allocations. This means they potentially control the ability of people to
access the Internet at all.
Making decisons about my rights and my privacy is not the hallmark of
a "technical coordination body." By it's actions it is a
governance/regulatory body, and should have a structure appropriate to such a
role, except that ICANN decided to move even further away from that structure
as part of it's (de)volution. But you know something? None of what I'm saying
is new, or isn't something that has been pointed out repeatedly over the past
several years by far more impressive and eloquent speakers than me.
Many people complain about the meetings being held in remote locations andDave Farber made an observation at one of the early IFWP meetings that
refuse to see this as being global, but choose to instead infer this is
about hiding from the public. I hope ALL of those folks (that means you
Michael Froomkin) will be in Montreal in June for the first ICANN meeting
ever on the East Coast of North America. There is no excuse for any of the
shrill critics to not test openness (and please don't compare this to
the IETF process, which I respect and admire, but which is EXTREMELY
narrow in scope and subject matter. Try and "access" the IETF as a
non-geek);
proved to be prophetic: "This is all window dressing." It is truer
today than ever. While there may indeed be value in some of the
constituency meetings for members of those constituencies, no one
otherwise needs to be excused from what is otherwise a complete charade.
Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me ten or more
times and I should consider professional help for terminal stupidity.
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Patrick Greenwell
Asking the wrong questions is the leading cause of wrong answers
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