Re: [IFWP] Corporate Sponsorship of NewCorp

[Sue Chooi/Woo Wei Xian(Zen) [Exch]]

Bill,
R U SAYING THAT ICANN SHOULD BE DEFORMED AN A NEWCORP SHOULD BE FORMED TO UNDERTAKE
THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF ICANN?

Bill Lovell wrote:

> At 01:17 PM 2/16/99 +1200, you wrote:
> >At 15:48 15/02/99 +0000, Dr Nii Quaynor wrote:
>
>         >>Can we realistically have an ICANN without corporate sponsorship? Why is
> >>corporate sponsorship considered harmful in this case? How can the perceived
> >>dangers of corporate sponsorship be contained?
> >>
> I'd suggest that the question is now whether we can have a NewCorp without
> corporate sponsorship.  I'd also suggest that if we do not, then the harms
> suggested  by Joop Teernstra will occur: NewCorp will necessarily become
> captive to those who pay the bills.
>
> In the U. S. and every other country, that has been the consistent history
> when any government operation is sought to be privatized. The government
> officials involved either (a) don't understand the marketplace forces at work,
> the struggle for survival in the business world, power struggles, and the plum
> being presented for exploitation of the "great unwashed," or (b) those factors
> are understood perfectly well, and graft and corruption abound: the powers
> that be make their choices and then with their proceeds go off to retire in
> Bimini or wherever.  I'm not suggesting that the latter is likely in this case,
> and here are other possibilities as well, but those two stand out.
>
> NewCorp must be adequately funded by the USG, as ICANN was not, and
> for a sufficient length of time that it can earn the confidence of the Internet
> community.  Given that result, NewCorp could become self-supporting not
> by corporate doles but rather by fees paid as a part of all domain name
> registrations and other services provided.  That is a calm, cool, collected
> way of doing it -- a way in which NewCorp will not have hit a gold mine,
> and those seeking to become NewCorp will have sought to do so as a
> means of perpetuating the Internet, not as a corporate get-rich-scheme
> or a power grabbing ego trip, i.e., becoming "Emperor of the Internet.
> Above all, NewCorp must be a dedicated non-profit, never to have its
> name in NASDAQ while pretending ownership of all that its initial USG
> funding permitted it to gather up, this latter of course being NSI, aka
> NETSOL.
>
> Again, as to ICANN, is it not understood that a possible result of the
> NTIA meeting is that ICANN will disappear?  The action that counts is
> now March 10 in D. C.
>
> Bill Lovell