On Sun, Jul 25, 1999 at 12:13:35AM -0700, Karl Auerbach wrote:
>
> > Earth to Karl: You get as many votes in NSI as MONEY CAN BUY.
> > *Every* vote in NSI is a BOUGHT vote. There is no required
> > representative structure whatsoever. Furthermore, the only entities
> > that have meaningful power in NSI are entities that control large
> > blocks of shares. That is, you have *precisely* as much power as you
> > have money.
>
> You obviously have never heard of a "derivative action". One share is all
> it takes to give standing to bring an action that can bring down the board
> of directors or officers who violate their duties.
Sigh. Precisely so what? You were the one who said that a share got
a vote. In any case, standing to sue in case of wrongdoing is a
vastly different matter than having a vote that affects policy matters.
> And in the right circumstances, the corporation can even end up footing
> the legal bill.
Utterly irrelevant.
> One share is all it takes to attend a shareholders meeting.
Irrelevant. Most business decisions are not made at shareholder
meetings.
> Zero shares is all that is needed to obtain the various SEC and state
> filings that NSI is required to file (and does file).
Zero shares are required to peruse the ICANN web site.
> Sure, more shares gets you more votes.
That is, large monied interests totally control.
> But that's a lot better than the zero votes that individuals and
> non-commercials get in ICANN today.
Not really. You crow frequently about how the BWG was able to get
the bylaws changed. Try to take your one share and get a word of
NSI's bylaws changed.
Furthermore, there is absolutely no doubt that ICANN has a lot to do
and very little resources to do it with. It can't all be done
immediately. ICANN's priorities are set by NTIA, so those are the
things it does.
> And the information you can get from NSI is a lot more information than is
> available from the opaque ICANN of today.
Hogwash. The information you get from NSI is a surface gloss. The
information of interest -- corporate strategy, plans etc -- is
completely hidden.
> ICANN publishing "donations" is not financial disclosure that even
> approximates what NSI has to publish. Compare the ICANN web page with
> NSI's 10K filing. That's one small page of disclosure for ICANN and one
> book for NSI.
But ICANN wasn't required to put up that donations page. Does NSI have
a web page detailing its revenue stream in quasi realtime? Nope.
And ICANN has been in existence for what? Seven months? It is
preparing its financial statemenst, and they will be available, by
law, just as NSI's are.
> As for the MoU -- ICANN's first priority is living up to its organic
> documents.
No, it is not. The documents are mutable, and can be modified by the
Board at will. Things were arranged that way PRECISELY so that ICANN
could fulfill the requirements set for it by NTIA. The MoU defines
a "domain name project" to *develop* a governance scheme.
> It is too bad that ICANN feels that it is more important to
> quash NSI than it is to establish an entity that is more a dictatorial
> Soviet with a life expectency beyond a few more months.
Karl, open your eyes. Dealing with NSI is NTIA's original priority,
not ICANN's. ICANN has absolutely no power to do anything at all to
NSI without NTIA's complete backing. There is a convenient myth in
the press that the war is between ICANN and NSI, and NTIA is a
worried den parent trying to keep the feuding children under control.
But look at the facts. ICANN by itself has absolutely *no* power.
If Jon Postel had lived it would have commanded a certain moral
authority, but now it has to earn that itself. In the meantime, NTIA
is the real power behind the curtain.
Up until fairly recently NTIA was trying to negotiate with NSI behind
the scenes. It's apparent that NTIA has given up on that tack --
That's why NSI pulled their congressman into action. Next NSI will
go to court, and run ICANN's legal bills up even more. And of
course, NSI managed to get ICANN's largest potential source of
funding eliminated by spreading a lot of FUD about a "tax"...
> But whether there is a MoU or not. ICANN is not publishing anything near
> the amount of information that NSI or any other publicly held for-profit
> corporation does, nor does it have external controls by shareholders
> or members that come even close to those given to shareholders.
>
> I can say "I told you so", and I will - I told you so -- In my Green Paper
> submission, I mentioned (as did many others) that the non-profit form that
> IANA proposed for ICANN was one that could easily lead to exactly what we
> have -- a closed, self-driven, non-responsive, opaque form of Internet
> Governance.
Yet more nonsense. We don't have yet have ANYTHING AT ALL in the way
of Internet Governance. In fact what we have is a tiny, underfunded,
powerless, non-profit being pushed by the USG against a ruthless and
clever monopoly with a huge wad of monopoly cash and an army of
lawyers and lobbyists. That's what we really have, when you blow
away the smoke. Oh. I almost forgot -- we also have a bunch of high
minded babble about Internet Governance to entertain us while the
only *real* prospect of honest, responsible Internet Governance is
crushed before our eyes.
--
Kent Crispin "Do good, and you'll be
[EMAIL PROTECTED] lonesome." -- Mark Twain
