Dear Senator Reid,
Mr. Robert Connelly, a member of CORE, wrote to you recently
claiming that ICANN, the organization poised to take over control of
the Internet infrastructure, is a benign and community
consensus-founded entity whose only opposition comes from Network
Solutions, Inc., the company has had monopoly control of the
Internet A root server. Mr. Connelly's statements in his letter to
you misrepresent the situation.
Contrary to what Mr. Connelly claims, ICANN is not a product of
Internet community consensus. It was created and is dominated by
CORE and its ally the Internet Society. CORE is a special interest
group of a few Internet registrars that has been trying to gain
unmerited power over the Internet infrastructure since 1996, and has
succeeded in capturing the domain name policy committees of ICANN.
Indeed, the unelected ICANN board was put in place by CORE and ISOC,
displacing the Internet consensus process begun last year by the
Department of Commerce. ICANN is CORE's creature.
Network Solutions is far from the only entity in opposition to
ICANN. All those who have been displaced and brushed aside by CORE
and ISOC oppose ICANN, including the end-users of the Internet, who
have been excluded from ICANN's councils. There is no user
representation in ICANN, yet ICANN is making policy that will affect
us adversely. We were promised an equal place in Internet governence
by the DOC's White Paper, but CORE and ISOC, through their creature
ICANN, have denied us our promised place.
Representative Tom Bliley has begun investigating ICANN because of
the myriad complaints about ICANN's lack of democratic process, its
favoritism of special interests, and its anti-user policies. Mr.
Bliley is rightly concerned that the changes underway in Internet
governance do not result in restraints on free enterprise and free
trade, dangers which are sure to come to pass if ICANN in its
present form is permitted to continue its unpopular policies. An
ICANN monopoly is no less inimical to the well-being of the Internet
than a continuation of the NSI monopoly, probably more so, since
ICANN has arrogated to itself powers of regulation that NSI never
dreamed of exerting, for example making domain name registrants
financially liable for the litigation of registrars and registries,
and a tax on domain names, to mention just two of ICANN's anti-user
regulations.
Representative Bliley's Commerce Committee is not the only part of
the government concerned with what ICANN has become. The Department
of Justice is scrutinizing ICANN closely because ICANN is acting in
ways that make it a target of the anti-trust laws. A private
corporation like ICANN, whose domain name policy-making committees
are dominated by such special interests as CORE and ISOC, may be
illegally regulating commerce, and it has no legislative mandate to
do so, nor could it have, as there are federal laws that prohibit
this. The anti-user domain name policies that ICANN is promulgating
will deter the continued free expansion of e-commerce, not to
mention their detrimental effect on the non-commercial users of the
Internet. Such anti-competitive activities as ICANN is undertaking
are in violation of the Sherman Act and the Federal Trade Commission
Act, and cannot be permitted to succeed.
Recently, Ralph Nader's organization has entered this process by
sending a series of questions to Esther Dyson and the ICANN board,
questions not unlike those contained in Tom Bliley's letter to them.
Does Mr. Connelly pretend that Ralph Nader is in the pay of Network
Solutions, or that he and his organization are in connivance with
the CIA? My own organization, the ICIIU, was created to give the
Internet users a voice in this governance process, and has as little
to do with the CIA as it has with Network Solutions, but that does
not stop us from criticizing ICANN. Mr. Connelly has been
disingenuous in his letter to you, and is using the same old
prejudicing and defamatory tactics that his organization CORE always
uses to denigrate its opponents. Please don't be taken in by them,
Mr. Reid.
Yours,
Michael Sondow
============================================================
International Congress of Independent Internet Users (ICIIU)
http://www.iciiu.org [EMAIL PROTECTED]
============================================================
