Thanks to Gordon Cook for his recent report on what is happening with the NIST annoucement for giving the IANA contract to ICANN. However, I want to add some aspects that Gordon left out in this situation. The problem to me is *not* that the NTIA or NIST is sole sourcing this contract. The problem is 1) That it is holding IANA hostage to an illegitimate and secretly contrived plan to give away very lucrative assets to a private sector entity. These assets will give great power over the Internet and all who use it to those who grab control over this enitty. 2) That IANA is too important a part of the Internet to be held hostage in this way. It isn't that some other private sector business entity should get control of IANA through competitive contract solicitations, but rather that a U.S. government entity that is appropriate, like DARPA, should continue to administer the contract with IANA and pay the salaries of those who work for IANA while there be a genuine discussion and examination of how to create a protected environment for IANA to function that includes the public interest being dominant, not commercial objectives. 3) That the U.S. public and folks all over the world have contributed to the funding of the Internet and of its development and achievements. These folks should not be disenfranchised by this power play of the U.S. government holding the paychecks of IANA folks hostage to their trying to pass enormously valuable and power giving assets to some private entities. 4) I didn't notice the U.S. government having any problem paying for the big bills that it has taken to build the Internet (for the U.S. share of the bills), and the public interest needs to be protected now and the Internet needs a way to scale and to continue to serve as a unique new medium of worldwide communication. Therefore the U.S. government should stop hassling the IANA folks and should make sure that their pay checks are paid by the U.S. government. 5) For a long range solution, the administrative fees for IP numbers shouldn't be going for profits for various entities, but if needed could pay the what are minimal costs for IANA folks salaries. 6) The fruit of a poison tree is poison. The longer this power play by the U.S. govenrment goes on, the worse the situation will get. There is the need for an investigation into how this all happened and a plan for making the needed changes so that the public interest is dominant in what is happening, not someone's idea of how to convert the Internet into a plaything for marketeers. 7) When Ira Magaziner called me this summer he said there were 2 problems the U.S. government was trying to solve. a) the problem with trademarks and domain names b) the problem of international pressure for participation in what happens with the Internet. (I don't have my notes now from talking with him, but I will try to find them to see more specifically what he said.) However, subsequent to talking with him, I have seen the minutes from the Federal Network Advisory Committee meeting in 1996 where the U.S. government talked about the need to protect American commercial interests with regard to the Internet and began a process of encouraging the Internet Society and it seems others like the European Union, WIPO etc to figure out how to take over IANA. Though there are minutes of this meeting, there is no real indication of the discussion that went on to make this decision. Nor is there any indication that there was any concern for or interest by any of those present in what the public interest is in regard to the present and future of the Internet and how this would be represented in plans for giving away public assets and control over IANA to some private sector corporation. This meeting in 1996 is exactly the kind of situation that computer pioneers like Norbert Wiener and others like C.P. Snow warned against happening at the 1961 conference they held on Scientists and Decision Making at MIT. They described how there would be government decisions that had to be made regarding the future of the computer and it was very important that these decisions *not* be made by a few people in secret, but that they be the subject of broad discussion and debate. They pointed out that when such important decisions were made by a few people they would more likely be bad decisions, while the broader discussion by large numbers of people made it more likely that such decisions would be good decisions. The decision to transfer IANA and other key and controlling functions of the Internet and the assets involved with these functions is a bad decision. These are functions that need to be carried out in service of the public and they require public protection of the assets and the power so that it can be used for the cooperative purposes, not for some private purpose. The Internet is too important to be playing such power games with. It is good that Jim Flemming uncovered what is happening with the NIST giving ICANN a control to run IANA. (BTW any effort to write back to him bounces, and I don't know why.) But how to get the problem of what is happening out to as many people as possible is what seems to be needed and it would be good to have whatever help the press in the U.S. or around the world, or online or off line can give, as possible. In his talk at the MIT conference, C.P. Snow proposed the importance of as many people as possible knowing what was going on and being involved in the discussion of what should happen. This is what is needed now, and any help making that happen would seem to be of value. Gordon Cook <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: For the past 48 hours I have done nothing but research and write the following. Keeping IANA Paychecks Coming >The process last summer of setting up newco (IANA) essentially ran out of >time. Details like the coming October 1 unemployment of the IANA staff, >including Jon Postel, went into the month of September unsettled. They did >so presumably because the parties putting things together assumed that >Magaziner would have no choice but to bless ICANN on October 1 and hand >over keys to the kingdom to them as well as money for them to start doing >their work. When it became clear that this likely would not happen, >something had to be done about the paychecks of IANA employees. >Mike Roberts on behalf of ICANN made a deal with USC and ISI whereby they >(ISI) would enter a transition agreement with ICANN so that ICANN would pay >the salaries of the IANA employees (six people) effective October 1. >(Where ICANN gets the money is anyone's guess - likely from GIP - ie IBM.) >Thus Mike Roberts found himself in a situation where he had to scurry at Thus what Cook describes is a power play using IANA and the Internet as pawns. >agreement with ISI whereby the IANA employees remained legally ISI/USC Chapter 6 of Netizens "Cybernetics, Time-sharing, Human-computer Symbiosis and Online Communities" descibes the 1961 conference at MIT. The chapter is online at http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook Ronda [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________ To receive the digest version instead, send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To SUBSCRIBE forward this message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNSUBSCRIBE, forward this message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Problems/suggestions regarding this list? Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___END____________________________________________
