At 05:58 AM 3/26/99 -0500, Jay Fenello wrote:
>NSI is being targeted financially, and its officers are
>being threatened with potential criminal actions. These
>tactics are being used to break NSI's resolve to fight
>for a competitive name space, and to force NSI to be
>subservient to ICANN.
That's pretty good. NSI as the protector of a competitive market.
Of course, we should not let the minor fact that NSI has no experience with
competition get in the way of the purity of its goals to act as the
free-market conscience of the Internet, should we?
Nor should we pay any attention to the fact that this sermon, on behalf of
NSI, was delivered to us by an unacknowledged, paid agent of NSI, nor that
that agent has no experience with Internet administrative processes but
proffers views that suggest expertise.
Yes, I'll spare you further commentary. The "article" doesn't warrant more.
However, the factual errors in the "article" do warrant correction, besides
providing more substantiation for the lack of expertise by its author:
At 05:58 AM 3/26/99 -0500, Jay Fenello wrote:
>NSI's stock plunged in response.
NSI's stock was plunging before the announcement.
>The U.S. Government, through various defense contractors,
>started the Internet. Over time, it moved into the research
The Internet, in the form of the Arpanet, began in the research community,
but with funding from the U.S. department of defense. As I recall, of the
first four sites, two were academic research and two were independent
research. None were military. There were some military sites added,
later. Eventually, they were partition into Milnet, when the Arpanet
became the Internet, in January 1983.
>community, finally ending up in the commercial realm. It also
>moved from a U.S. based collection of networks, to a global
>collection of networks. As these changes occurred, it out grew
The Arpanet and then Internet have ALWAYS had a significant component of
international participation, with the earliest participation being notable
from England and Norway, but quickly expanding to incude other
countries. Commercial involvement began in the late 1980's.
>The gTLD-MoU was controversial because it would have
>confiscated all generic Top Level Domains, not only from
IANA was ALWAYS in charge of domain name administration. The gTLD-Mou was
developed under IANA authority. As such, the inflammatory term
"confiscated" is factually incorrect.
>startups like IO Design (who had been running the .web
>registry for approximately one year), but also from Network
>Solutions. It would have established an authority control
>model of governance, and it claimed ownership over the
The authority structure over domain name administration was in place from
the inception of the DNS, with IANA in charge from the start. The gTLD-MoU
represented no change at all to that model, since the gTLD-MoU was
performed as an agency of IANA.
>After many complaints from the Internet community, the
>U.S. Government, through Ira Magaziner, intervened with
>both the Green and White Paper processes. The result of
>these processes was the White Paper, a document that was
>surprisingly supported by virtually the entire Internet
>community.
This piece of history neglects to mention Magaziner's first draft, the
Green Paper, which specified extreme micro-management of an evolution
process and the resulting administration, so the White Paper actually
represents a massive change in tone and direction by the U.S.
Government. Unfortunately, the most serious damage done by the Green Paper
was to destabilize the authority of IANA, which had been solid for more
than 10 years; we won't be recovering from that destabilization for some years.
>With these guidelines, ICANN has, in effect, claimed
>ownership over the entire gTLD name space. They have
ICANN authority is coming from the same place that we were just told had
all this support, namely the White Paper.
>IMHO, the problems we are seeing are directly caused
>by an overly aggressive ICANN trying to break the only
Overly aggressive?
Remember what the original motivation was? New names? That was FIVE YEARS
ago.
It's difficult to see something that should take 6 months instead taking
more than 5 years and calling the actions overly aggressive.
>What the spin doctors are conjuring up is a choice
The only spin doctoring we are seeing, here, is from this "article".
(Whoops. I promised no more commentary, except about factual errors.)
>NSI has consistently acted in a professional manner,
If you don't count their refusal to participate in any of the early, open
discussions, their refusal to participate in open discussion and review
about their precipitous changes to long-established DNS operations, and if
you ignore their periodic operational errors that render one or another
part of the DNS or its WHOIS database useless, then yes, NSI has been
wonderfully professional.
>On the other hand, the "Investment Research Company's"
>Report sure looks like it was written by ICANN's PR firm.
An this "article" doesn't look like it was written by NSI's???
d/
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Dave Crocker Tel: +1 408 246 8253
Brandenburg Consulting Fax: +1 408 273 6464
675 Spruce Drive <http://www.brandenburg.com>
Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
