>Date: Sat, 27 Nov 1999 02:48:10 -0500 (EST)
>From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Re: [netz] Some Analysis of ICANN from the IFWP mailing list
>Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>At 09:50 AM 11/23/99 , [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>>Jones Day would not have lent its foremost international antitrust lawyer
>>to create ICANN for any other reason than that ICANN should be the
>>communications tool for the trade hegemony of its transnational clients
>>through the WTO and GATT. The DOC would not have gone to the lengths it
>>has to protect ICANN, even to violating its own charter, nor would it have
>>run the risks of dissembling in congressional testimony, for a lesser purpose.
>>
>
>It is interesting to consider why the Jones Day Lawfirm has been brought
>in to transform IANA and the IETF into an e-commerce entity in the hands
>of certain large telecommunications and computer companies.
>
>Who is doing this and why?
>
>I came across a description of the Office of Telecommunications
>Policy set up in the White House during Nixon's Presidency.
>
>The office was to centralize power over telecommunications in
>the hands of the President. The counsel was from a lawfirm
>Jones, Day, Cockley and Reavis.
>
>(Now the Jones Day lawfirm has a different is called Jones
>Day Reavis and Pogue so the relation isn't exactly clear, but
>it seems like they are probably related.)
>
>A little booklet that I found about the Office of Telecommunications
>Policy (OTP) put out by the Network Project at Columbia U in 1973
>said that this office would become "the most powerful voice in the
>formulation of national commuications policy." (pg 3)
>
>The booklet mentions a White House report prepared by Peter
>Flanigan, the laison to the corporate community and his
>assistant Clay T. Whitehead. And it described the duties
>of the office to include national telecommunications policies
>and "U.S. participation in international telecommunications
>activities."
>
>It was also to develop executive branch policy on telecommunications,
>including regulatory policies.
>
>I wonder if anyone knows if the NTIA has now taken on these
>powers?
>
>I remember at Geneva last year listening to the lawyer from
>Jones and Day saying that all power of ICANN, according
>to the bylaws, would reside in the board, and that the councils
>would be under the board.
>
>The point of all this is that it seems that it is somehow U.S.
>government policy to create this so-called private corporation
>to have centralized in it all the power that result from
>the ownership and control of the essential functions of the Internet.
>
>>Why has the Antitrust Division of the DOJ refused to investigate and
>>pursue ICANN? Merely because Joe Sims used to work there and is a friend
>>of the Division's counsel? If that were so, then Scott Sacks, to whom I
>>supplied the same information I gave James Tierney, and who is supposedly
>>beyond the influence of the Division's counsel, would have acted on it,
>>and the same goes for the Division's director, Joel Klein, and Janet Reno,
>>who have been apprised of the situation by Tom Bliley. Yet nothing has
>>been done by them to change it.
>>
>It seems it is more likely a situation where it is executive branch
>policy (U.S. govt policy) to be setting up ICANN and not to allow
>the anti-trust division to investigate.
>
>It seems as if ICANN is being protected by the President's office.
>
>I recently read an article about another effort of the US government
>to privatize an important public function. The article is
>about the effort to set up the Research Board for National Security
>in 1944-46 in a what is a nongovernment body, (though one set up
>by government) - the National Research Council.
>
>The effort in this other instance was to put the basic research for
>national defense into this nongovernmental entity.
>
>There was a disagreement in the US military about whether or not
>this was advisable, with one of the branches of the Services preferring it,
>as this as it would give them control over what happened by their providing
>the funding, while another branch of the Services was against it as they
>felt they wouldn't have enough control over the research for their
>mission.
>
>The Bureau of the Budget at the time was not happy with the fact
>of entrusting public responsibility to private hands.
>
>The U.S. Code prohibited agencies established by Executive order
>from spending governmental monies without explicit congressional
>authorization.
>
>Also there was a concern in the Bureau of the Budget that it would
>involve appropriations to a private agency whose officers were not
>subject to confirmation by the Senate.
>
>In this situation the President's office was won to the fact that
>it was harmful to put public responsibility into private hands.
>
>>Clearly, ICANN is an integral part of the U.S. Government's plans to
>>control world trade through the pseudo-world government of WTO. Don Heath
>>is no doubt privy to those plans, as are also the ICANN board and the
>>Berkman Center. Why else would the DOC have allowed the ICANN board and
>>staff to give ISOC and CORE control of the DNSO and, through the IETF, the
>>PSO as well? But it is Vinton Cerf and MCI who are the key. Mr. Cerf's
>>characterization of the Internet as the device of world trade in the 21st
>>century, in his "Internet Is For Everyone" paper, was no exaggeration. In
>>the Western power-block politics of the cold war period, it was ITT that
>>provided U.S. communication and control; in the coming period of unopposed
>>U.S. domination, it will be MCI, through the Internet.
>>
>It is also helpful to remember that the Internet is a computer-communications
>medium. Control over such a communications media is very important to
>the US government, as it is to other governments around the world.
>
>The booklet I have on the OTA which is from 1973 says that the
>U.S. government's total investment in telecommunications is more
>than $60 billion and its annual investment exceeds 4-billion.
>That "the government's dependence upon the communications industry
>as supplier of hardware and services is matched by the industry's
>reliance upon government as financier of telecommunications advances".
>(pg 10).
>
>So it is helpful to keep in mind that the US government and its
>telecommunications industries might want to create a
>a situation where they dominate rather than including other
>countries in the decisions about what should happen with the
>Internet's essential functions.
>
>I had read elsewhere that US industry was not happy with organizations
>where countries got a vote, rather than just industry, as then
>US industry couldn't dominate.
>
>Unless governments are involved in an open way, and a way that
>is consistent with the development of the Internet, which is
>where the governments supported computer scientists to collaborate
>to create the Internet, then it seems that power politics rather
>than scientific and technical judgement will prevail over the
>decisions about these essential functions of the Internet, to
>the detriment of all but a few.
>
>The public interest needs to be maintained, but those with a
>private interest are involved in a contest to eliminate the
>public interest.
>
>>John Sweeney, because he has learned the effect of U.S.-controlled foreign
>>industrial production on American workers, understands what is at stake.
>
>
>At 04:16 PM 11/12/99 , Jay Fenello wrote:
>
>>The way I see it, we have a
>>confluence of activities that paint a very
>>interesting picture.
>>
>>Specifically, we have presidential candidate
>>and senator John McCain saying that soft money
>>is a legalized form of graft. And he's right,
>>especially if you look at the totally unfair
>>process used to put in place ICANN. But with
>>literally 100s of millions of dollars being
>>funnelled into Washington on behalf of those
>>supporting ICANN, what could be expected?
>
>But it is a contest. ICANN is the effort to privatize
>public policy, not only harming citizens in the US
>but around the world as well.
>
>With the effort to privatize government research activity
>into the Research Board for National Security, this effort
>didn't succeed.
>
>The fact that government machinery was involved in the way
>that the research was subsequently done by government entities
>helped to make it possible that the research efforts could at
>various times be protected against vested interests. (This also
>broke down at times inside government, but it is only inside
>government that it has the chance of succeeding. Only government
>has the ability to challenge the large corporate entities
>or other government entities that are the vested interests
>trying to impede the development of the new concepts
>and developments that are part of the computer communications
>revolution that are materialized in the development of
>the Internet.)
>
>
>It seems crucial to understand what the contest is about
>to be able to understand what will be a means of the
>public interest prevailing.
>
>Also it is crucial to understand the public and government
>role in the development of the Internet - that role was
>at its best, essentially the support for computer science
>research and development where the best scientific solution
>to a problem could prevail rather than politics preventing
>that solution.
>
>There is an effort to portray the Internet as the creature
>of some self organizing private force, but that is inaccurate.
>
>It is very much the result of government support for scientist
>who were able to provide scieentific leadership to a community
>of people and to learn from that community. This is the role
>played the ARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office.
>And there was a way that other countries provided similar
>support to scientists who worked collaboratively with
>scientists at ARPA/IPTO to develop the Internet.
>
>The lessons from this development need to be learned and
>applied to how to continue this development.
>
>Ronda
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
> Netizens: On the History and Impact
> of Usenet and the Internet
> http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
> in print edition ISBN 0-8186-7706-6
>
>
>
>
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