Those of you who follow this issue may want to read this opinion piece .....
I'm not knowledgeable to comment on either the original article or the
rebuttal.
Kathy
> Kathy E. Gill
> DCAC/MRM Production Visibility Support -- 425.234.2004, pager 425.568.0195
> Continuous effort -- not strength or intelligence -- is the key to
> unlocking our potential.
> ~ Liane Cardes
> Microsoft Exchange: the perfect name for its users' greatest desire!
>
>
> ----------
> From: Dave Crocker[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Reply To: Dave Crocker
> Sent: Monday, October 19, 1998 10:14 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Domain games: Internet leaves the U.S. nest
>
> At 10:54 PM 10/19/98 -0400, John Walker wrote:
> >Domain games: Internet leaves the U.S. nest
> >
> >October 16, 1998
> >Web posted at 11:45 AM EDT
> >by Elinor Mills
> >http://cnn.com/TECH/computing/9810/16/darpa.idg/index.html
>
>
> I thought you might want to see some comments about the report that Elinor
> wrote -- what was posted on your list was the same, or almost the same, as
> one published earlier in Infoworld. I I posted my comments to one of the
> mailing lists that focusses on this topic. (I sent her an earlier draft
> of
> the comments.) There is not question in my mind that she seeks to do
> responsible reporting. Further, this has proved to be an exceedingly
> difficult topic to report thoroughy or well, due to the complexities of
> issues, range of politics, and vehemence of participants. Still, her
> article had some serious flaws:
>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], IFWP Discussion List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Another perspective on the Infoworld article
>
> Concerning
> <http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?981013.widomain.htm>:
>
> Since there has been such praise for the article by Elinor Mills, I
> thought
> that it would be worth passing on a detailed analysis I sent her. She had
> countered my taking exception to her use of Jay Fenello's old/new guard
> kins of distinctions by saying that, after all, she was just quoting him.
>
> What follows is slightly modified from the version I sent her:
>
> Elinor,
>
> There are some basic issues in journalism at play here. I believe you
> intended a serious article, but I don't believe you succeeded.
>
> The choice of who is quoted, how extensively and where their statements
> appear in an article all have a strong effect on the point of view
> expressed in an article. You quote Jay but no one else when defining the
> constituencies. You quote him repeatedly. You quote him early in the
> article and you quote his use of this false distinction more than once.
>
> Do you now see the issue?
>
> It is always possible to find someone, somewhere, who will make one sort
> of
> statement or another, so the choices the reporter makes are very much
> relevant to the point of view of the article. Choosing someone with a
> clear
> (and acknowledged) agenda but not choosing anyone to balance it is simply
> poor reporting and that was what was done in terms of characterizing the
> constituencies. This is exacerbated by the fact that this particular
> source
> has no experience with Internet technology or operations, and had no
> contact with the Internet before last year.
>
> I also note that you have no substantive quotations from anyone having any
> other perspective on any of the IANA/ICANN evolution. For the pro-IANA
> side, you have some quick, glib quotations, but nothing substantive.
>
> You refer to the IFWP process as having fallen apart. Note that that is
> not
> a quotation from somebody else but is your own assessment. Unfortunately
> it
> is one that you took from others and it is not factually correct. If you
> inspected the IFWP web page you would see that its purpose was to hold
> some
> meetings and it did that. Some people have tried to claim that it had a
> larger and more formal purpose, but that its their fantasy and does not
> relate to the facts.
>
> Further you imply that IANA's not participating in the Boston meeting
> caused it to fall apart, but things were far more complicated and
> interesting than that. The fact that you attribute this interpretation of
> things to a particular person does not mean that you did an adequate job
> of
> reporting the facts, particularly since the assessment he made was
> considerable off the mark. I should also note that you cite Boston as "a
> fifth meeting" as if it were part of the IFWP process. If you wanted to
> communicate that it was an independent meeting, then you needed to note
> that there were other such independent meetings, for example one in
> Brussels.
>
> Further you claim that NSI was not involved in draft 5. I believe you do
> not know that for a fact, since I believe the fine-grained details of the
> interactions between NSI and IANA have not been made public. If you claim
> to have such fine-grained detail, you do not attribute it. Since that
> information is not widely available, attribution would be appropriate.
> As appealing as the claim that the IANA proposal has 'no accountability'
> is, it is factually incorrect. One can always debate whether it has enough
> and the details of resolving that debate ARE important, but it is simply
> not true that it has none.
>
> I believe that if you look more carefully at the ORSC position you will
> find that they do NOT want to "open registry responsibilities" as you
> state
> but, rather, want to permit exclusive, unregulated, for-profit control
> over
> individual TLDs by different registries (i.e., by single groups that
> control the registration data base for specific TLDs. They believe that
> having multiple such registries -- each having a different set of TLDs --
> constitutes competition, missing the problem of end-user lock-in after
> initially selecting a TLD (and its associated, exclusive) registry. Along
> with EVERYONE else, they are happy to have multiple registrars (sales and
> support agents) for the registries, but they are comfortable having
> exclusive, for-profit registries with the ability to exercise undue
> control
> over their customers.
>
> You should have researched Allistat's background a bit further before
> deciding to use him in the article, or at least you should have cited more
> of the relevant portions of his background.
>
> The article quotes Tony Rutkowski but fails to note that NSI is one of his
> clients.
>
> The article further fails to note that NSI and (some) trademark holders
> benefit directly from delay and that, therefore, constant criticisms to
> each and every effort at making progress has been beneficial to them. So,
> for example, one can quite reasonably view Rutkowski's statements
> concerning IP address as an effort to keep stirring the waters which
> thereby serves nicely as yet another effort to distract and delay. His
> views are in marked contrast to the view held within the Internet
> operations community that IP address assignment is working quite well and
> that it is essential not to mess with it.
>
> At base, therefore, the article fails to note that this topic has been
> remarkably successful at attracting a wide range of interest groups
> looking
> for a platform. It is a lightening rod for such people, most of whom have
> no experience in, or interest in, Internet administration and operations.
> Hence the topic for them is nicely academic and/or political, but it isn't
> practical, except perhaps as a potential for cornering a market or
> cornering a political constituency.
>
> There are serious and difficult issues, here, and they need serious and
> careful debate. It does not help that debate to quote everyone with no
> indication of their agenda, given how self-serving those comments are
> likely to be with respect to those agendas.
>
> The danger of jumping around according to the vagaries of these different
> theoretical, academic, and political positions ensures that the ball will
> stay in motion while no progress is made.
>
> And that serves the interests of some quite well, but not end users and
> not
> Internet stability.
>
> d/
>
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> Dave Crocker Tel: +60 (19) 3299 445
> <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Post Office Box 296, U.P.M.
> Serdang, Selangor 43400 MALAYSIA
> Brandenburg Consulting
> <http://www.brandenburg.com> Tel: +1 (408) 246 8253
> Fax: +1(408)246 8253 675 Spruce Dr., Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA
>
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