"Craig McTaggart" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: A.M. Rutkowski wrote: > At 12:53 PM 7/13/99 , Craig McTaggart wrote: > > >describes as ICANN making itself into an "International government for the > >Internet" is precisely what this whole process has been about: basing IANA's > >functions in an internationally-recognized, authoritative, stable, > >non-governmental body. > > There is an incredible range of options within those general > specifications. The "good NewCo" was that specified > in the White Paper. ICANN has emerged as the antithesis. It turns out there are *no* options except for the kind of prototype my proposal to the NTIA proposed. Who is it who is capable of cooperating on a basis of equality? Not corporations. They have a pecking order based on power and politics. Only the scientific community was capable of creating the Internet, essentially the scientific community backed by or supported by or who worked as government officials. Those folks are being blocked from being part of ICANN. Instead of studying the Government and scientific structures that have created the Internet and Usenet, these are being dismantled and some old world form of outmoded and political cartels is being proposed to replace the scientific institutional forms have made it possible for the Internet to function. >> Maybe this is inevitable when you move to a non-profit >> (government or private sector) orientation - only in >> the non-profit world you have fewer safeguards. Clearly The non-profit institutional form is not appropriate for the ownership and control of essential fucntions of the Internet. >> what we have here is little more than the gTLD-MoU >> regime moved from Geneva and the ITU to California and >> ICANN. The players, religion, and methods are all >> pretty much the same. I don't know much about the ITU but it is clear that that is part of an international body and ICANN isn't. ICANN's activity is secret government activity. The problem with what has been done is that instead of asking what needs to be scientific, what needs to be government, what needs to be other sectores, ICANN was created to void the legitimate examination of these issues. It was and is a power play of the worst kind by the U.S. government officials involved and their advisors whoever they be. Otherwise they would have been open to ask the legitimate questions and to find where the answers are to be found. . >Isn't it the "internationally-recognized and authoritative" part where >governments *have* to be involved in some way? The only way the White Paper >plan (which I liked) could work is with (a) the very active support of the >USG and (b) the recognition of most of the nations which the Internet >'reaches'. There are significant public policy issues involved now >(although i expect that is one point on which we disagree sharply) and it is >perfectly legitimate for governments to take part to ensure that their >citizens' interests are protected and, yea verily, even advanced. ICANN is >probably learning the contours of the support which it enjoys from those >many governments right now, support which it desperately needs (where else >is the next round of funding going to come from?) Well ICANN can't learn of contours of government support because it has been created to make that support in secret. While I agree that governments need to be involved, I disagree that this can be done without involving the scientific communities in the various countries, those communities who helped to make the Internet possible. >The halcyon days of the Interent's homogenous research-oriented user >community are over. This is serious business now and serious public >interest issues are engaged. It was never a "homogenous research-oriented user community" as you say here. It is important to find out what it was and whether what is was has to be built on rather than disgarded. The fact that serious buseiness and public intereset issues are involved are all the more reason that the computer science community needs to be involved. The Internet is not a "finished" entity. It is a complex human computer networking system that needs top scientific and grassroots science expertise involved in identifying the problems and helping to figure out the solutions. >However, the governance structures which we >have now are essentially identical to those of 20 years ago. They have >simply been scaled up and some contracted out. No the governance structures are *not* identical to the ones of 20 years ago. A crucial aspect of the governance structure for the first 12 years of the life of the Internet had to do with being a part of the IPTO institutional form. That institutional form is gone. That institutional form was very important in making it possible for key scientists who are the Internet's founding fathers to be able to do the work needed to create the Internet and to solve the many problems of helping it to grow and flourish. There needs to be some understanding of that institutional form to understand how to scale that form up. That institutional form made it possible for people of different nations to work together to build the Internet. How this was done needs to be understood and the needed lessons learned. > Aren't the old governance >structures simply incompatible with the Internet's new role? Clearly the The problem is the exact opposite. The old governance structures have been prematurely disgarded and instead ancient structures from non networking political ideological viewpoints have been transplanted as the future for the Internet. >proprietary-TLD people think so, because Postel wouldn't add their new TLDs. >In fact, aren't they the ones who pushed this whole reform process in the >first place? They want their new TLDs, but preferably not an effective new >governance structure which recognizes the Internet's global significance. No - it seems it is previous to that. That Postel as a government employee was told that he had to be part of privatizing IANA. Where did that directive come from? It is interesting that the Internet Society has rejected any of the papers that challenge the privatization which I have proposed to present at INET meetings where the issue of privatizing the Internet is a religion. Instead of the Internet Society being a place where the genuine questions of Internet development can be discussed, a small group of people carefully control what is allowed to happen. They are supported in this it seems by the U.S. government as U.S. government officials and funding help to make the INET meetings possible. o Other countries have had different views and when the INET meetings are in those countries, like the meeting in Canada in 1996, it is clear that the opinion of people is not for an only commercial and buying and selling future for the Internet. But the U.S. government policy circles making the decisions to create ICANN or to keep ISOC talking about privatizing all aspects of the Internet -- these are *not* places where the real problems are raised nor real efforts made to find what the solutions will be. Postel and IANA had means of taking into account global views that ICANN will never approach. He was not the problem. The investment community or whoever is behind the current U.S. governement policy plans is who is at fault. >I agree that the ITU is on one level a relic of an earlier age when national >cartels carved up the global telecom market for their own benefit, but at >another level they do know a lot about coordinating global networks for >global benefit. If the ITU regime is so unpalatable, how about the WTO >agreement on basic telecoms? Its Reference Paper While the ITU is *not* the model for what should happen with IANA just because IANA has to do with the Internet, while ITU had to do with a world wide telephone system, national cartels are not the horror that corporate cartels are which seems is Tony's model. Ronda My paper about the development of the IPTO institutional form is at http://www.ais.org/~ronda/arpa_ipto.txt
