Hi, Jim! You wrote:
> Karl's obligations are those of any director of a California > corporation. He is obliged to make sure that ICANN is acting in > accordance with the law. If it isn't, he is obliged to take steps > to bring the company's actions in accordance with the law. Since ICANN obviously isn't acting in accordance with the law, what it boils down to is the same old story that no one seems willing to take ICANN to court. I've never really understood why this is so, but perhaps Karl, Michael Froomkin, and the other oppositionists simply don't have the money and time. In any case, not taking ICANN to court amounts to shirking one's obligations, at least in the case of a director, since ICANN never will, of its own volition, act correctly. No patching-up of ICANN's policy-making will be sufficient, though. ICANN's original sin - being organized by the fiat of unknown persons - is too great. Having the least disinterested person in the world - Vint Cerf - as Chairman of the Board is proof. But expecting democracy in ICANN, or any other organization created by the USG, is a pipedream. The US government no longer has any commitment to democracy, as the recent sidestepping of Congress and the Constitution in revoking habeas corpus and other fundamental democratic rights demonstrates. Why should we expect that the Internet, a relatively unimportant matter so far as the government is concerned, be treated any differently from anything else going on here? When a government regulator like the US Securities and Exchange Commission allows a company like Enron, responsible for one fourth of all energy trading, to have as its accountant the former employee of its "independent accountants" charged with the Enron dossier, how can we expect fair play or democratic procedure from anything under the USG's aegis? ICANN will continue to exist and to infringe the law so long as the government agencies protecting it continue to be used for illicit purposes, and neither Karl Auerbach nor anyone else can change that. M.S.
