Lawrence Lessig wrote:
>
> As I said in my initial statement, (1) I don't think the birth of ICANN was
> "legitimate" in the moral sense, whether or not it was legitimate legally,
> but (2) I don't think that is an issue to be resolved.
This says it all. Evil and wrong have been accomplished, but nothing
is to be done about it.
> It is here
Like the governments of Pinochet, Videla, Hitler. All were here.
> it is
> functioning
Evil is not stupid. It knows how to function.
> it has the support of the strongest governments in the world
There is only one government which is strong, that of the people's
consent. Dictators have found this out to their cost. The question
is whether or not the people who use the Internet support ICANN.
> any effort to stop it based on its illegitimacy would take years to > resolve
Where have we heard this argument before?
> and meanwhile -- while this point about paternity was adjudicated
Oh, no. It isn't a point about paternity. As one of the members of
the Congressional Committee that interrogated Sims and the ICANN
board said, it is the crucial matter in the creation and continued
existence of ICANN. Who made it, and for what purpose?
> -- bad
> things would happen while our attention was focused elsewhere.
Bad things are happening while your attention is focused elsewhere.
> Our attention
> should be focused where it can do some good -- on what the organization is
> doing now, and should be doing now.
If your attention was focused that way, you would see that ICANN
cannot be reformed and will never do anything but evil.
> As for individuals within the organization, my mistrust is not transitive.
> There are of course things that the organization has done that I disagree
> with, but I don't attribute all disagreement to moral causes. I have stated
> my grounds for skepticism about Sims.
No minor matter, as you pretend. Sims appointed the board and wrote
the bylaws and all the agreements and contracts. What ICANN has done
is what Sims has done.
> And I have stated in one of the posts
> I made to a question that I don't believe any single organization ought to
> become a permanent, captured, supplier to ICANN.
For example? (What does "supplier" mean here?)
But in my dealings (few
> though they may be) with the others in this zoo, I have not been given the
> same reason to mistrust or question their integrity.
Mr. Lessig trusts in the integrity of Michael Roberts. Mr. Lessig
does not mistrust Esther Dyson. Mr. Lessig believes the
representatives of IBM, AT&T, MCI, the telcos, and the banks, on the
board of ICANN, to be good people.
> The past is not the future, though it is the reason to be concerned about
> the future.
If Mr. Lessig thinks that the past does not become the future, he is
living in a diferent dimension from the rest of humanity. Probably,
when the Earth becomes uninhabitable due to the indifference of
people like Mr. Lessig, he will go off to the dimension from which
he came, accompanied no doubt by Vinton Cerf.
> I am eager to engage about how ICANN goes forward, for again, as
> I have said, that is the only important test of its legitimacy.
Horse-pucky. That is like saying that nothing is wrong or bad or
evil because it can, in some distant future, theoretically be
changed from its nature. That was the argument of the appeasers in
the 'thirties, and the argument of everyone who has stood by and let
evil prevail.
> My "basis"
> for going forward is not as the "loyal opposition" -- that is a waste of
> time. My basis for going forward is to do whatever I can to get this
> organization to live up to the values that you and I share
There is, unfortunately nothing you can do, if those are the values
of honesty, hard work, respect for your fellow man, and democracy in
government. ICANN has been conceived to destroy those values, by
people who hate them.
> and to keep
> itself restricted to the small domain that is its proper concern.
This requires no comment. If Mr. Lessig is going to start that
hackneyed nonsense about ICANN just being there to run the servers,
then there's no point in listening to anything he has to say. It's
just Crocker/Crispin all over again.
Michael Sondow
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