Yet another propaganda piece artfully and deceptively designed to
reassure those who haven't been paying close attention to facts of
what this unsuable unaccountable clique is doing. The pattern of
deception continues. ISOC, Vint cerf, Patrick himself, Roberts,
Dyson continue to manuever into place an organization that is
absolutely unaccountable.
Note Patrick's silken assurances below. Contrast his frank statement
on June 8th of this year to VCs when he tried to get money for
ICANN. Patrick: "ICANN is trying to get the policy, technical and
financial aspects of the Internet moved successfully from U.S.
government to the international private sector. Everyone thinks this
is a good idea. In fact, I would say that the future of the Internet
is dependent on the execution of the plan."
POLICT TECHNICAL AND FINANCIAL aspects of the internet. There you
have it. Privately in Patricks own words June 8th 1999. Not as he
says below just coordinate the internet plumbing.
Patrick to the Venture Capital ists on June 8th. "Not sound
alarmist, but if ICANN fails e-business/e-anything is in jeopardy.
This means your future investments and your past ones."
Now I and others including Pat Townson as moderator to 65,000 readers
of Telecom Digest have asked Cerf, R oberts, Dyson et al to come up
with a real scenario rather than a sound byte as to why the internet
is in trouble and e-commerce will fail if ICANN fails. Not one of
the ICANN clique has come forward with anything except the statement
that if ICANN fails, the net will be accountable to politicians who
in turn are directly accountable to the electorate. (That apparently
is seen by the ICANN power brokers as unacceptable.) If you lift the
self serving bed covers and look at the naked ICANN beneath you will
see that ICANN is accountable to no one and certainly not to its
membership which is not yet and installed and from which the ability
to sue ICANN is being prophilacticly removed.
You Dave Farber were asked for your own scenario that explained why
the Internet is in danger if ICANN fails. About 7 to 10 days ago you
said you were very busy and promised one when you got the chance.
One would think, if these assertions were correct, that the Internet
really would fail that Cerf, Dyson, Patrick, Roberts etc, as the core
operatives of the ICANN/GIP, would have had well worked out arguments
that they could publish, and that they would use these arguments to
defend ICANN as the solution. One might have thought that they would
trust the rest of us to come to our own conclusions. That they
offer instead nothing but one or two sentence prophecies of gloom
and doom while saying that we should trust an organization that can
and does continually change the legal rules for its operation (its
bylaws) bespeaks their healthy contempt for the rest of us.
This is what Cerf says in private on June 7 1999. Compare it to
Patricks smooth assurances: "If IBM and MCI Worldcom can come up with
$1M in "bridge" funding, to be paid back at a later time under
reasonable terms that will not harm ICANN, then perhaps we can begin
a new fundraising campaign knowing that we have the ability to back
up the campaign with a rescue effort in the short term. It will be
easier for John Sidgmore to make the case to the MCI WorldCom
management if IBM is willing to go into this with us and split the
$1M cost. Is it possible? I would then launch a campaign with GIP,
ITAA, Internet Society, and other interested groups on the basis that
ICANN must succeed or Internet will be in jeopardy. This ought to
play well with any company whose stock price is dependent on a
well-functioning Internet." "Thoughts?""
and 48 hours ago from Jon Cohen head of ICANN's intellectual
property constituency:
"a new, secret candidate who may be announcing his intention
to run [for the ICANN Board] and he apparently already has, or will
have the support of
business, ISPs and most Americans. I spoke to Steve, and he
immediately informed me that this candidate is likely former
Congressman Rick Waters, from the Pacific Northwest, who is
apparently very well known and has worked in this area."
R ick White will be ICANN's chosen "fixer/lobbyist' to reassure the
US Congress that it should no longer question Icann's intentions.
The fixing will go on while ICANN will own all domain names and can
remove anyone's name for any reason that it so chooses. Quoting
ICANN: "You agree that your domain name may be canceled, deleted or
transferred at any time."
Take a look at the complexity of pattrick's monstrosity at
http://www.wia.org/icann/after_icann-gac.htm
you decide.
>[please note this is from John Patrick from IBM not me (some IPers
>assume everything they read comes from me :-) djf]
>
>
>Dave, recently there has been a lot of discussion about ICANN and the role
>IBM plays in the organization's efforts. A lot of what I have read is
>inaccurate and I'd like to use this posting to clarify what's really going
>on.
>
>Let me start with my strong belief -- shared by IBM, government leaders
>and many technology organizations -- that the Internet is rapidly becoming
>the global medium. Not a medium. *The* medium. We already see that
>e-business is dependent on the Internet, and we're starting to see people
>around the world relying on it for education, disease management,
>entertainment, real-time communications and collaboration, and even
>government services, to name just a few uses. In fact, it's hard to see
>what won't be dependent on the Internet. So what makes the Internet work
>and who is responsible to ensure it will continue working in the future as
>the growth continues? That's the role that ICANN was designed to play.
>
>We all know that when you type "www.myfavoritewebsite.com," it has to be
>translated to an all-numeric address that the Internet infrastructure
>understands. Because the Internet is made up of many heterogeneous and
>separately-managed networks, the early Internet inventors and pioneers
>realized that a central third party was needed to manage the assignment of
>domain names and network addresses so that "www.myfavoritewebsite.com"
>always translated to the correct address, even though different users
>would consult different servers to do the translation.
>
>And because most of the early Internet development happened under U.S.
>Government auspices, that central third party was originally designated by
>the US government. But now that the Internet is a global entity, there is
>broad agreement that having one country be the ultimate authority is
>inappropriate. In fact, it's clear that the central third party needs to
>be a global, non-profit, private-sector organization. And, after a long
>and public design process, ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned
>Names and Numbers) was created to fill that role. IBM was one of the
>many private sector organizations that chose to provide input into the
>design process, and we felt then, as we do now, that a neutral, global,
>non-profit organization is the right choice to oversee the administration
>of Internet domain names.
>
>Once the ICANN charter was recognized by the U.S. and the European
>governments, the organization was quickly recognized as the legitimate
>manager of the domain names and numbers by more than 40 countries and many
>of the major private sector organizations with an interest in this area.
>The Internet Society, International Chamber of Commerce, Internet
>Engineering Task Force, U.S. Council for International Business,
>International Trademark Association, Global Internet Project, World Wide
>Web Consortium, and all of the Internet IP address registries (APNIC,
>RIPE, ARIN, etc) are just a few of the organizations that have publically
>supported ICANN.
>
>So who pays for ICANN? ICANN depends on fees charged to users of its
>services. But those fees will not be determined or charged until ICANN
>has a permanent board which will determine the appropriate fee structure.
>Right now, ICANN is in "start-up" mode, with an acting board of directors,
>and no income. As a result, transitional funding has been necessary.
>
>Toward that end, there have been some private sector organizations and
>companies that have stepped up to help out. The Global Internet Project
>(GIP) initiated a fund-raising program in July 1998, and raised
>approximately $400,000. (Note: I am the chairperson of the GIP.) Also,
>MCI and Cisco have made loans or loan guarantees to ICANN. IBM has
>announced (see following link to letter) a $100,000 grant.
>http://www.icann.org/correspondence/ibm-letter-24sept99.htm There are many
>others that have contributed and ICANN has posted the names
>of these donors on their Web site at http://www.icann.com. Considering the
>support for ICANN in the industry, I expect more
>companies will help with funding during this transitional period.
>
>Some people have questioned whether there needs to be an organization
>managing the administrative hierarchy; they'd like to see it handled by
>some distributed self-managing approach. And perhaps such an approach
>could work *if* we were starting with a clean sheet of paper. But with
>hundreds of millions of people and millions of computers using the Net
>every second, there is great risk involved with changing the model. It
>just isn't practical. ICANN plays a critical role in addressing a narrow,
>well-defined list of tasks that define the plumbing of the Internet:
>Coordinating the assignment of the top level of the domain name system;
>overseeing the root name server system; coordinating the assignment of
>parameters for technical standards; and overseeing the assignment of IP
>addresses.
>
>In many respects, ICANN is an unprecedented effort by the Internet
>community to create a globally representative, non-governmental entity - -
>one which will ease the transition of the Internet from a non-commercial,
>research network to the global medium. This transition, unfortunately,
>won't be without growing pains. ICANN has been very open to suggestions
>and criticism and has reacted positively to all constructive input. In a
>relatively short period of time, ICANN has taken significant steps to more
>effectively manage the core functions I described. Among its efforts has
>been the adoption of a new set of rules designed to reduce piracy and
>trademark infringement in the domain name system and the creation of
>competition for domain name registrations.
>
>The bottom line is that I believe - and IBM agrees - that ICANN is an
>essential organization to ensure the long-term growth and health of the
>Internet. If ICANN were to fail, I think that the likely result would be
>governmental agencies - subject, as always, to political influences -
>taking over the management of the Internet. Few people think this a
>good idea; I certainly don't. Neither IBM nor I have any official
>relationship to ICANN, but I am happy to say that when ICANN has asked for
>help, IBM has been responsive; we intend to continue to provide assistance
>and support to ICANN in the future.
>
>So what does IBM get from ICANN by helping them? Nothing more or less
>than everyone else who uses the Internet gets: stability of the Internet.
> We're helping ICANN through its transition because we think it's the most
>effective way to move the authority for Internet names and numbers from
>the U.S. Government to the global private sector - in fact, to the
>Internet community itself. And the sooner we can get through this
>transition, the sooner the stakeholders of the Internet - individual
>users, as well as institutions - can continue to take advantage of the
>Internet instead of arguing about it.
>
>John Patrick
>Vice President - Internet Technology
>IBM Corporation
>http://www.ibm.com/patrick
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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The COOK Report on Internet Index to seven years of the COOK Report
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(609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) ICANN: The Internet's Oversight Board -
[EMAIL PROTECTED] NEW - Incompetence or Duplicity? ICANN
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