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Tue Jan 16 01:12:22 EST 2001
From Kosova to ICANN?
The roving_reporter has been hearing the name Carl Bildt -- UN Secretary
General's Special Envoy for the Balkans, a former Swedish prime
minister, former EU Special Representative to the Former Yugoslavia,
former chairman of Sweden's Moderate Party, author of various
books, and general all-around "new economy"/IT-booster --
mentioned in connection with a job opening at ICANN (conceivably this one).
Bildt's CV is
impressive, but its relevance to a modest "technical coordination"
body is unclear. Luckily, ICANN isn't such an organization -- so his
extensive consensus-building experience (for example, with other
candidates for ICANN's top spots) could prove very useful.
In late 1999, Bildt was nominated for a DNSO
seat, as summarized
for the CENTR General Assembly Warsaw meeting (27-28 September 1999):
Eva Froelich suggested Carl Bildt, the ex-Prime Minister of Sweden who
had distinguished himself in negotiating for dispute settlements in
former Yugoslavia and had taken part in Swedish IT issues. She
reported that his only political work now was some consultancy for the
European Commission and she offered to approach him to see if he would
be willing to stand. She pointed out that with Carl Bildt, you would
get someone who would have an overview and not an agenda. We will have
votes so we have to consider what advise the CENTR/constituency will
give to the NC members on how to vote.
However, according to the New
York Times, his status as a peace negotiator in Kosova ran
afoul of ICANN's bylaws (V.5),
which "prohibit anyone with an active role in government or with a
governmental body like the United Nations from serving on the board."
In November 2000, Bildt gave the keynote speech at the
invitation-only Global Internet Project (GIP -- but see Gordon Cook's remarks here) workshop
"Security,
Privacy, and Reliability of the Next Generation Internet." The
attendees were a who's who of ICANN supporters: Raimund Trierscheid of
ICANN-funder
Deutsche Telekom, GIP Chairman and ICANN-funding
IBM Internet Veep John Patrick, taciturn ICANNWatcher Dave Farber, Vint
Cerf of ICANN's board and MCI/WorldCom (another ICANN-funder),
former ICANN MAL candidate Harris Miller of Information Technology
Association of America, and former ICANN chair Esther Dyson, among
others. At the workshop, the GIP released a statement on ICANN that is
both predictably and absurdly valedictory.
The possibility that Bildt might end up at ICANN casts a rather
ominous light on UNESCO's December decision to grant ISOC NGO status.
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Mon Jan 15 14:56:35 EST 2001
Correction: ICANN: MMF
One of the roving_reporter's trustiest sources (to whom we are
abidingly grateful) has pointed out, in detail, that ICANN CEO Roberts's
explanation of the windfall generated by ICANN's high
application fee -- that "the new TLD application fees are expected to
cover all the costs of introducing the new TLDs, a process
which is only partially complete" -- marks a sharp change in ICANN's
rhetoric.
Specifically, ICANN's 30 August "New
TLD Application Process Overview" stated:
2. The Application Fee
The application fee for each new TLD application is US$ 50,000. This
fee must be paid before ICANN will consider the application. It is
intended to cover ICANNs costs of receiving and evaluating the
application, including performing technical, financial, business, and
legal analyses, as well as ICANNs investigation of all circumstances
surrounding the applications and follow-up items. The application
fee is non-refundable and ICANN's only obligation upon accepting the
application and fee is to consider the application.
The specificity with which aspects of the review process are listed
hardly suggests that, oh, btw, "follow-up items" includes the
longer-term costs of actually introducing the TLDs. But lest
there be any doubt, ICANN's "TLD Application Process
FAQs" (last amended 10 October) expands on the logic:
FAQ #15: Why is the application fee so high? Aren't you going to
prevent non-profit TLD registry proposals by requiring such a steep
application fee?
As a small non-profit organization, ICANN must conduct its activities
so they are essentially self-funding, on the principle of
cost-recovery. For example, the accreditation process for .com, .net,
and .org registrars is funded through application and accreditation
fees paid by those registrars. Likewise, the new-TLD-application
process must be self-funding. This process will include very intensive
review and analysis of applications on many levels (including
technical, financial, legal, etc.). The application fee was set at a
level intended to cover all of ICANN's costs related to the process.
It would not be justifiable to require existing registries and
registrars to subsidize the process.
In establishing the fee, ICANN's Board was concerned that the
application fee might discourage some applications for special-purpose
restricted TLDs. However, a multi-tiered fee structure would mean that
some applicants would subsidize the application-review costs of
others. This would be particularly unfair because of difficulties in
distinguishing between for-profit and non-profit proposals in the
global context. Accordingly, a single, cost-recovery-based application
fee has been adopted for this year's new-TLD-application process.
Our source concluded more eloquently than we ever could:
For any costs now incurred by ICANN in the negotiation process, the
prelaunch review of the operations of the selected TLD registries, or
monitoring of the testbed, the unsuccessful applicants are subsidizing
the costs of the successful ones.
But the question remains whether the excess revenues are
subsidizing not just the introduction of new TLDs but ICANN's
existence in the meantime. As we prophesied in this space on 6 October:
ICANN received 47 applications and, with them, a windfall of
over $2.3 million dollars. [Three applications were rejected,
leaving a total of 44. -- r_r] Assuming that their own
worst-case estimates estimates are valid -- and if they
weren't why are they in charge of this stuff? -- reviewing the
applications should cost somewhere between that amount and
$822,500 (i.e., ($350K/20)*47) -- leaving a potential surplus of
up to $1,527,500. Where will the extra money go? The
roving_reporter's five bucks says JDRP. It definitely won't
go to the underfunded-by-underestimation MAL -- that, ICANN
insists, is a "special project." But it could go to paying off...
ICANN's "bridge-loan into the
future."
And voila! As of this date, $1,734,446.33 remains
unaccounted for -- if you count a vote of the Executive Committee
rather than of the full board "accounted for." The
roving_reporter, whose budgeting skills seem to be better than
ICANN's, doesn't.
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Fri Jan 12 00:29:51 EST 2001
JDRP: MMF
Bret Fausett's superb ICANN Blog for 11
January notes that ICANN's Executive
Committee -- a six-person subset (Cerf, Kraaijenbrink, Kyong,
Pisanty, Quaynor, and Maximum Leader Roberts) of the nineteen-member
board -- approved payment of $465,553.67 to the law firm Jones, Day, Reavis, and Pogue for legal services
rendered during the months of October and November, presumably in
connection with the three lawyers (Joe Sims, John Funk, and Paul
Goldean) who participated in the gTLD application review process.
If the publicly available minutes of prior
ExComm meetings are accurate, this this the first time that the
ExComm (created 4
November 1999) instead of the full board has authorized any payment at
all, let alone one of that magnitude. By resorting to the ExComm to
make this decision, ICANN in effect circumvented the possibility that
any MAL-elected boardmembers could challenge, or even comment on, the
payment. In his campaign platform, MAL boardmember Karl Auerbach
bluntly stated
"Jones Day must go":
Over the life of ICANN, Jones, Day has been the the dominant
creditor of ICANN.
Even now Jones, Day continues to receive a lion's share of
every dollar that flows into ICANN.
And one of Jones, Day's partners, Louis Touton, left the firm
to become ICANN's Vice-President, Secretary, and General Counsel.
Initially, ICANN's justified
charging a gTLD application fee on a cost-recovery basis:
It is proposed that application fees be established to cover ICANN's
costs in receiving, investigating, evaluating, and acting on the
applications. Because ICANN has not previously conducted an
application process for those proposing to operate or sponsor new
top-level domains, it is difficult to determine the likely overall
cost with precision. The number of applications to be received is also
unknown, with only limited data available based on the (so far
relatively few) expressions of interest submitted. ICANN estimates
that the direct cost of receiving, investigating, evaluating, and
acting on the applications is likely to be in the range of US$150,000
to US$350,000. Assuming that somewhere in the range of 7-20
applications are submitted, to recover ICANN's costs this would lead
to a non-refundable application fee in the range of US$7,500 to
US$50,000.
ICANN settled on the higher $50,000 figure and received 44
applications, netting $2.2 million in the process; the ExComm's
approval of the JDRP payment leaves approximately $1.7 million
unaccounted for. Other recipients will presumably include Arther
Andersen (three advisers: David Nolte, J. D. Tengberg, Tom MacKinney)
and three individuals (Charles Neuhauser, Robert Olson, and Peter
Reiher) listed
as "outside advisors" in connection with the gTLD review process.
When ICANN first announced the $50,000 application fee, many
critics -- the roving_reporter among them -- theorized that ICANN's
bass-ackward guesstimation was a transparent attempt to cover
the budget shortfall precipitated by the ccTLD registrars' refusal to pay ICANN's unilaterally
assessed invoices.
ICANN has not yet responded to questions about the remainder of the
application revenues.
[ Clarification: One reader notes that Quaynor, too, is was elected by
the MAL. -- r_r]
[Addendum: Mike Roberts responded:
The new TLD application fees are expected to cover all the costs of
introducing the new TLDs, a process which is only partially complete.
The accounting people are keeping track of revenue and expense for
this project and reporting same to Board periodically.
Roberts also notes that the ExComm approved the JDRP payment
because its meeting was conveniently timed, and that this "had to do
with the size of the check, not the type of disbursement." But
see "Correction: ICANN: MMF," above.]
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Mon Jan 8 13:05:28 EST 2001
A Guide to the perplexed
Carl Oppedahl, a
respected expert on the ins and outs of DNS and founding partner
of the law firm Oppedahl &
Larson LLP, has written a superb how-to for
domain-name holders on ways to try to avoid falling victim to
overreaching organizations wielding the double-whammy of ICANN's UDRP
and the ACPA.
roving_readers, being the the savvy lot they are,
autonomically ask: Which ACPA? Is it the nameless
website-building site at www.acpa.com, the American College Personnel
Association, the American Crop
Protection Association, the American Catholic Philosophical
Association, the American Chronic
Pain Association, the Association of Certified Public Accountants
or perhaps the confusingly similar Affiliated Conference of Practicing
Accountants [International], or the even more confoundingly
similar Association of Practicing CPAs
-- or is it the American Institute of
Certified Public Accountants that's confusingly similar?), the Association Cagnoise Pour les
Animaux, the Australian Centre for
Precision Agriculture down under with the Aboriginal Centre for the Performing
Arts, the Atelier de
Chaudronnerie du Pays d'Argentan, the American Concrete Pavement
Association (or the similarly confusingly similar American Concrete Pipe
Association, to say nothing -- a good policy when one is confused
-- of the American Concrete
Pumping Association), the Asian
Professors' Control Association, the Air Canada Pilots Association (not to
be confused with the Association of Canadian Port
Authorities), the Arizona Crime
Prevention Association, or -- in a totally different vein -- IBM's
M-Audio Capture
& Playback Adapter/A, or (back north again) the Association of the Chemical
Profession of Alberta, then on to the American Cleft
Palate-Craniofacial Association, the Association of Chinese
Philosophers in America and the Canadian Philosophical Association
(which should be confused with l'Association Canadienne de
Philosophie but not with l'Association Canadienne des
Producteurs d'Acier a/k/a the Candadian Steel Producers
Association)... But of course the roving_reporter really meant
the US Anti-Cybersquatting
Piracy Act, which along with the UDRP provides guidelines and
procedures (and, in the case of ACPA, fines ranging up to $100,000)
for sorting out which entity is rightfully entitled to the the
exclusive use of a domain like, say, acpa.org -- as opposed to the
rest of the riffraff, who would therefore be "cybersquatters."
Among the highlights of Oppedahl's how-to are:
Responding to an offer to purchase the domain name. The covetous
party, well aware of the ACPA language that offering to sell a domain
name owner supposedly proves the domain name owner is breaking the
law, will quite often offer to buy the domain name, and then if the
domain name owner responds in any way, the response is urged to the
Court as proving that the domain name owner is a lawbreaker. Do not
respond to an offer to purchase your domain name except upon advice of
experienced trademark counsel.
and:
Presenting to the lawyer a list of other parties who use the
same mark or similar domain names. This is somewhat like the
previous point. What's really going on is that the covetous party
wants your domain name, not someone else's domain name. As
such, you will probably not get anywhere asking the other side to
be reasonable and look at your long list of domain names that also
contain the trademark of interest. (In contrast, if competent
trademark counsel presents a list of others who hold identical
trademark registrations, it may well be one of several factors
prompting the covetous party to back down in its demands.)
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Sun Jan 7 11:06:42 EST 2001
Former board candidate sighting
WiReD News mentions
that former congressman (R-WA, 1995-99) Rick White has a new job: CEO
of the Silicon Valley political organization TechNet. In October 1999, he was
nominated by CDT's Jerry Berman for
an ICANN board seat, to much acclaim from AT&T, Microsoft, and, as
AT&T's lead lobbyist in ICANNesque matters Marilyn Cade put it in a
campaign letter for White, "other commercial companies." White's
earlier work with the CDT involved promoting
an early "compromise" version of the Communications Decency Act.
When the Consumer Project on
Technology's Jamie Love redistributed Cade's campaign letter for
White, he asked,
If ICANN is only going to do boring and unimportant technical work,
why does a former US Congressman want to run for its board of
directors, and why does AT&T, Microsoft and others lobby so hard to
put their people on the board of directors?
TechNet's press
release quotes White talking about his new job:
My job is to help high-tech leaders communicate to our elected
officials the importance of the technology industry and ways to
make it grow. TechNet has already accomplished a great deal
including playing an instrumental role in such policy initiatives
as PNTR [Permanent Normal Trade Relations -- r_r] for China
and much needed H1-B visa reform. Just as the high tech industry
is maturing, I want to help lead TechNet as it matures, further
fostering its role as a policy organization.
Had White ended up on ICANN's board, he no doubt would have further
fostered its role as a technical coordination organization. Heh --
right...
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Thu Jan 4 16:41:39 EST 2001
ICANN Blog
Fantastic! Bret Fausett quietly began a "blog" devoted to
ICANN in early December.
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Mon Dec 25 23:51:48 EST 2000
Ode to ICANN
Permissions granted by the authors (Berryhill-Reid) in a Nick, as
it were, of Time:
O little town of cyberspace,
dot org, dot com, dot net;
Between our short and fitful sleeps,
we rant and rave and fret.
While in thy packet headers,
are IP addresses;
And they'll go where they're meant to go,
despite what ICANN says.
For Strife is born of abject power
And gather'd all for use
By those whose shares of stock impairs
when TLDs are loose.
Yet in dark fiber shineth
a CRC of light:
If damage found, we route around
from some new server site.
How easily, how easily,
the packets find their way.
If One True Root does not you suit
then start your own, today.
No UDRP saving
the WIPO-loving herd.
Here free souls will the name space fill;
with their favorite word.
O holy 'net stability'
whose name control evokes
and leads us to the name space zoo
but all its names are jokes.
We know no core authority;
no target for a suit.
The dot zone starts in many parts
combined to form the root.
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Mon Dec 25 14:34:29 EST 2000
From ISOC to ICANN
In the December 2000 "Inside ISOC" newsletter, ISOC President and
CEO Don Heath publicly announced what he had told the ISOC
board of trustees in September, namely, that he'll retire as of March
2001 -- just in time to replace Mike Roberts as ICANN's president and
CEO, some speculate. In this regard, the top agenda item of ISOC's
9-10 September board meeting minutes is worth quoting at length,
for it presents a far more candid assessment of ICANN's situation than
anything ICANN itself has ever offered (emphasis and links added):
[Correction: The meeting took place in December, not September,
and the following excerpt is from a "public policy report," not the
meeting's overall minutes; thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing
this out. -- r_r]
A. Internet Governance
The most critical public policy issue affecting the Internet
remains the same -- namely, its governance. The ISOC Board of Trustees
will face a continuing challenge to define the role of ISOC in the
developing structure of non-governmental technical coordination of the
Internet.
ICANN's legal authority for "technical management of the Internet"
(in ICANN's own words) remains in doubt. A connected issue is ICANN's
ability to finance its operations.
ICANN's General Counsel recently acknowledged that "ICANN
cannot, and has no legal authority to, implement new top level
domain names; that authority currently resides in the Department
of Commerce." Also, "no foreign government owns its ccTLD or can
order ICANN or the Department of Commerce to take any actions with
respect to a ccTLD." (Declaration
in Economic Solutions, Inc. v. ICANN, U.S. Dist. Ct., E.D. MO)
The question of ICANN's influence over ccTLDs is the subject
of ICANN's "Discussion
Draft of Letter to Governments Regarding ccTLD Managers" (12
November, 2000). ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee had
asked ICANN to "write to the relevant governments and public
authorities to ascertain their views concerning the current
delegation for the ccTLDs that correspond to their jurisdictions."
The draft letter asks for these views, and goes on to state that
ICANN intends to enter into contracts, not with the governments,
but rather with the ccTLD managers.
There are two serious problems with this plan. A number of
ccTLD managers and governments have indicated that they are (1)
unwilling to enter into such contracts and (2) unwilling to pay
the assessments voted by ICANN. [See, e.g., CENTR's discussion
of the issue -- r_r.]
Assuming that ICANN is able to overcome these objections and
enter into private contracts with a significant number of ccTLD
managers, it will then be in a position to accept a transfer of
responsibility [of the root -- r_r] from the U.S.
Department of Commerce. This, however, depends on whether the U.S.
Department of Commerce is able to make the transfer.
In July, 2000, the U.S. General Accounting Office made a study
of the relationship of the Department and ICANN [175K PDF
-- r_r]. The study supported ICANN's activities but questioned
whether a transition of administrative control of the Internet
would "involve a transfer of government property to a private
entity. If so, the transfer would have to be consistent with
federal property laws." (p. 26) The study further states that it
is "unclear if the Department has the requisite authority to
effect such a transfer" and that the Department "has no current
plans to transfer policy authority for the authoritative root
server to ICANN, nor has it developed a scenario or set of
circumstances under which such control would be transferred." (p.
27)
Under these circumstances, the proposed transfer of
responsibility is not likely to happen soon. This interferes with
the corporation's efforts to find a stable source of income
[cf. ICANN's statements
to the IRS regarding outstanding loans and our commentary -- r_r]. It is also a
problem because it interferes with ICANN's ability to deal with
truly technical administrative issues such as internationalized
domain names, where economic interests may be in conflict with
sound engineering practice.
ICANN has announced its initial
selection of new registry operators for additional generic
TLDs. This selection must be approved by the Department of
Commerce, which has been warned
by two members of the U.S. Congress not to take action until
hearings are held on the status of competition among registries.
In addition, and regardless of the merits of the proposals for new
gTLDs, there is a strong possibility that ICANN's selection will result in litigation in U.S. courts
which in turn could result in authoritative legal answers to the
questions raised above. The answers may or may not be favorable to
ICANN.
The challenge to the ISOC Board is to deal with developments as
they may arise in the political and judicial arena while supporting
the further development of an Internet technical administration system
in which decisions on technical issues are made by qualified technical
authorities.
This ambiguous conclusion is remarkable, given the general tenor of
solidarity ISOC expresses for ICANN (which isn't at all surprising, in
Milton
Mueller's analysis). Presumably, the unspoken alternative to
"qualified technical authorities" is unqualified political
authorities, assumed to be governmental authorities. At pivotal
points, it's been a mantra among ICANN's supporters than any
alternative to ICANN would necessarily involve -- horror of horrors --
the gummint; but, as even ISOC's summation makes clear, ICANN
is in essence a proxy for the US Department of Commerce. (And even
within that framework its actions have been constrained by
governmental pressure, according to former chair Esther Dyson as reported by MAL boardmember Andy
Mueller-Maguhn.)
As to technical street cred, ICANN's new chair, Vint Cerf, is
virtually unsurpassed; but it's hard to see how his status would or
could steer ICANN away from its expansionist political trajectory
toward a more minimal role as a technical coordination body. And if
Don Heath -- who is widely known to enjoy Cerf's unequivocal support
in ISOC -- does in fact become ICANN's new president and CEO, such an
outcome seems even less likely.
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Sun Dec 24 13:51:32 EST 2000
U.S. Election systems subject to de facto cartel
According to an article
by elections expert Eva
Waskell published in SafeVote's newsletter The Bell,
the only independent testing authority (ITA) accredited by the
National Association of State Election
Directors (NASED) to evaluate and certify software for elections
in thirty-two states has been shut down. As a result, only voting
systems accredited prior to the Florida fiasco are eligible for sale
or implementation in those states
On 16 November 1999, Nichols Research announced
that it had merged with Computer
Sciences Corporation; but in November of this year its public
sector unit, which performs election software certification, was shut
down without public notice because it wasn't turning a profit.
According to Waskell, this dilemma cannot be resolved prior to
NASED's 2-4 February
2001 meeting in Washington, D.C. As a result, April 2001 is the
earliest any new ITA (if indeed there is a new one) would be able to
accept new systems for testing, and July 2001 is the earliest date any
newly approved system could go into operation.
However, such an accelerated schedule seems unlikely at best. As
Waskell implies, the backlog stemming from Nichols's action all but
guarantees that the vendors that now dominate the election systems
business will, in effect, be able to shut out innovative systems and
alternative vendors from the newly invigorated market.
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Sat Dec 23 23:28:27 EST 2000
Home rule
This gem just in from the xmas eve New
York Times:
Mr. Clinton this week authorized the placement of the District of
Columbia's new plate, with the slogan "Taxation without
Representation," on the presidential limousine. The plate was
created by the city to protest the fact that residents are not
represented by a voting member of Congress.... Jake Siewert, the
White House press secretary, insisted that the president was
making his own statement, and that the next president was free to
put anything on his car that he liked. "We're not tying anyone's
hands," Mr. Siewert told reporters. "Screwdrivers are a dime a
dozen."
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Fri Dec 22 15:17:30 EST 2000
'Tis the season to catch up
MDR2K: Harald Alvestrand has published his notes on ICANN's
MDR2K meeting here.
Preconsideration: Two reconsideration requests submitted to
ICANN, 00-6
and 00-7
(dated 5 and 13 November respectively on ICANN's site), were both
posted on 18 December -- a delay in posting them that's longer than
period in which the Reconsideration Committee "will endeavor to
complete its work and submit its recommendation." UDRP
update: According to a short note sent out by Milton Mueller, his
statistical analysis of UDRP filings showed that the number continued
to drop in November (210, down from 247 in October), but that WIPO's
marketshare continued to rise (68.5%, up from 66% in October and 63%
in September). ccTLDs in transition: .au: The Australia
gummint approved the
non-profit auDA to administer the .au ccTLD; in addition to de rigeur
boilerplate about being open, transparent, and accountable, it's
supposed to "establish domain name dispute resolution mechanisms."
Former ICANN boardmember Greg Crew is one of its "independent
directors." .hk: The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
has established
an "advisory body with divergent representation" to form a nonprofit
to take over administration of the .hk ccTLD, now run by the Joint
University Computer Center. Changes will include permitting entities
to register more than one domain, a second-level domain under which
individuals can register domains, and procedures "allowing the
transfer of domain names on valid grounds." Cap'n Mike prepares to
set sail: According to the preliminary report
of the 13 December Special Board Meeting, "The Board discussed finalist
candidates for ICANN's new CEO" -- to replace Mike Roberts -- "and
approved going forward with negotiations with one of the candidates."
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Fri Dec 22 12:27:20 EST 2000
Working group F
Four days before Christmas, a day that inaugurates a few weeks
legendary for bringing progress to a screeching halt, ICANN made the
following announcement:
ICANN's Names Council Renews Call for Wide Consultation on
Consensus Building
To get additional input into a review of its own consensus-building
procedures, the Names Council of ICANN's Domain Name Supporting
Organization (DNSO) at its December 19 meeting established a Review
Working Group charged with actively seeking input from the widest
possible set of Internet stakeholders.
The rest of the announcement reads more like a lexicon for Buzzword
Bingo ICANN-style than a clear statement of what exactly this working group
is supposed to be doing -- maybe because it isn't really supposed to do
anything. To begin with, it's mandate is to
provide additional answers to an extensive questionnaire developed
by a task force of Names Council members with a mandate to improve
the decision-making process of the Names Council by more effective
outreach.
Translation: ICANN's Names Council (chaired by Our Hero Ken
Stubbs) has assembled a set of questions about how to reform the
DNSO, i.e., the body from which the Names Council is drawn (or over
which the NC functions as a "governing body, according to boardmember Jonathon Cohen).
The task force has already made two calls for input to its
questionnaire from DNSO constituencies and its general assembly.
This final call is intended to improve the quality and quantity of
input as a function of the interactive nature of a DNSO working
group.
Translation: The DNSO itself has already reviewed itself;
this "working group," with no freedom and less time, is
window-dressing.
And the kicker: the working group's report is due on 15
January.
ICANNWatch has debunked this
charade, in a short essay called "When is a Working Group Not a
Working Group?"
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Thu Dec 21 15:11:50 EST 2000
Desperately seeking penpals
In a testament to its foggy notion of transparency, ICANN's "correspondence" page
lists a paltry ten documents sent and received in the year
2000, out of a measly thirty-two in the twenty-six months since the
organization was founded. True, there are a number of other
unlinked documents tucked away in the directory (e.g., the 27
October 1999 SBA
letter, an MSWord document) -- ICANN's way of "posting"
inconvenient documents beyond the reach of mortals and spiders.
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Thu Dec 21 15:09:50 EST 2000
.bzzzzzzt
In a document purporting to be a sworn
declaration filed in the ESI suit against
ICANN, Veep-plus Louis Touton strongly suggested that ICANN hadn't
been able to verify ESI's claim to have a contract with the government
of Belize to operate ".bz". However, an October 1999 press briefing on
the Belize government's site states:
Marketing the .BZ Domain
Cabinet agreed to a proposal from Economic Solutions Inc. located
in Florida to accelerate the use of and increase the revenue received
from the Government of Belize "BZ". Domain via aggressive
international marketing. This would involve registering internet users
under the BZ. Domain that is being administered by the U.C.B.'s
registrant. Under the proposal the company would promote Belize in
each transaction with final BZ users, UCB would continue in its role
as the resident administrative contact for the BZ domain and its
records would be updated regularly by Economic Solution's primary
server in the USA. G.O.B. would be paid a royalty on each user.
This notice predates the filing of the lawsuit by over a year.
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Tue Dec 19 01:33:33 EST 2000
whois whois-committee.com
The ubiquitous Y. J.
Park, whose energetic contributions to a properly global and
egalitarian ICANN have gone amazingly unremarked outside their
immediate contexts, has written up a vigorous summary of what's
known about ICANN's Whois
Committee.
Addendum: Well, well, what do you know?
roving_regular and Names Council chair Ken Stubbs is shocked,
shocked at
Ms. Park's prodigious efforts. In a quick snub, Stubbs objected
to her writeup on the Names Council list: "i do not like the implication that,
as a names council member, i am being led down some sort a
pre-determined path." Especially when that path leads directly
to his own outhouse -- for it was his slip of the tongue
during the 19 October Names Council teleconference that revealed the existence of the Whois Committee to
begin with:
I'm on the Whois Committee for the DNSO, and I take notice of
the fact that there's still a significant amount of concern
that's being expressed from various quarters about this
issue, and I am going to be pushing that the Whois Committee
report be accelerated so that we can try to come up with
something substantive....
When his slip was spotted, he handed off to ICANN Veep-plus --
in other words, ICANN staffer -- Louis Touton, who said:
--actually, the Whois Committee is just a group of people
that...of various interest...who the ICANN staff asked to get
together and try to formulate some proposals or ideas that
might then be passed as appropriate to either the Names
Council or the ICANN staff, depending on whether it's a
policy matter or an implementation matter. So I think what
Ken is speaking of is that it's anticipated that some of that
committee's work might go to the DNSO for the Names Council
to manage in whatever way it deems appropriate.
Still rattled, Stubbs went on to deny that the committee is a
committee:
If they change the name from the Whois Committee to the Whois
Group... [laughs] I apologize -- I get committees, uh, I
guess committee's beginning to connote something that may not
necessarily be what is intended here.
Tsk tsk...and now, as Names Council chair, he wants to block
any further examination of it. And he's got help -- from Philip
Sheppard and Theresa
Swinehart -- i.e., two of the three NC members elected by the
Business Constituency (the third is...Asia-Pacific MAL
boardmember Masanobu Katoh). Spake Swinehart: "I do not think the NC
should spend much time on a report or statement that is seeking
to lead down some pre-determined path."
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Tue Dec 19 01:21:15 EST 2000
So much to reconsider, so little time
ICANN's "Committee of the Board on Reconsideration," known for
its consistent refusal to buck the board, has been inundated with
requests for
reconsideration: there are ten pending (all related to
rejected TLD applications), seven of them filed in the last four
days.
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Mon Dec 18 01:16:09 EST 2000
Dyson on ICANN -- sort of
Former ICANN Chairman Esther Dyson launched her new career as
the organization's "best
critic" on 5 December with a short
essay in the South China
Morning Post (free registration required), headlined
"Dotsucks mantle for free-speech forums denied domain status."
In it, she makes a rather wan case for a ".sucks" TLD, which
was proposed to ICANN (lethally, along with 117 others TLDs) by
Name.space. Her
argument, to the extent that one can be discerned, is pragmatic:
"the proposal...appealed to me precisely because it was a mix of
commerce and principle." Common sense, too, features:
why not create a separate TLD, .sucks, specifically for
criticism? By itself, it would not guarantee freedom of speech,
but it would presumably be a place where trademark laws would
have been applied differently -- even though nothing would or
could eliminate a company's right to sue for libel or commercial
damages.
One answer, as Dyson knows full well, is that setting aside a
ghetto specifically for critical sites would very likely end up
rebounding disastrously, as trademark holders invoked the
option of the TLD to suppress critical sites in any other TLDs.
Given the constraints of an op-ed, Dyson's downplaying of the
counterargument is understandable, if less than ideal. But rather
than discuss the subject seriously, her essay wanders off
surreally into morals drawn from (and blurbs dispensed for) the
waggish English-language Russian broadsheet eXile and platitudes about
the French government's suit against Yahoo over Naziana.
These "big picture" detours, taken in conjunction with her
self-serving depiction of herself as a supporter of free speech
-- and her failure to clearly state that she presided for two
years over the ICANN board's subordination of free-speech to
private contract processes dominated by intellectual property
claimants -- sadly reveals that "ICANN's best critic" may be a
genteel circumlocution for "revisionist opportunist."
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Fri Dec 15 16:29:16 EST 2000
.schmuseum
Jon Ippolito, a curator for the Guggenheim (New York), has written a
politely scathing letter to Cary Karp, the Basil
Valentinesque Chief Operating Muckety-muck of the Museum Domain Management Association,
which successfully applied to ICANN for the .museum TLD. In it, he obliquely
notes the fear and loathing with which museums have regarded the net:
I believe that many in the online community will view the International
Council of Museums' support for .museum as a smokescreen to cover the
embarrassing fact that artist collectives and online art sites, from
ada'web to Nicholas Pioche's WebLouvre, established important online
presences well before their brick-and-mortar equivalents.
And, really, why would museums -- which are still recovering from the
trauma of mechanical reproduction -- respond in any other way to
the realm of drag-and-drop digital distribution? Kultur, as
Ippolito points out when he cites Gnutella's Gene Kan, doesn't sit
easily with the authoritative centralization and devotion to uniqueness
that make up the very essence of a MVSEVM.
Ippolito goes on to allude -- too politely, in the
roving_reporter's opinion -- to the implications of ICANN's
ill-conceived decision:
it's important to keep in mind that our mandate as museums is not to
compete with the cultural production going on outside our walls, but
to reflect and preserve it.
Good point. But when ICANN sprinkles its magic artificial-scarcity
pixie dust on an organization, transforming it from a somnolent
bureaucratic backwater into an international arbiter of virtual
"legitimacy," one likely consequence is to encourage adversarialism. Put
simply, if ICANN accredits an org to accredit other orgs, it implicitly
vests that organization with the power to discredit them as well.
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Tue Dec 12 07:23:54 EST 2000
From our notes: ICANN to world -- MYOB
At the MDR2K meeting, an ICANN staffer -- either CEO Mike Roberts or
Veep-plus Louis Touton (we admit it: our notes are thin) -- stated that
ICANN would not disclose data about the how much various ccTLDs had
loaned or donated to ICANN. The reason? Something to the effect of:
there's all kinds of data mixed up there -- bank account numbers, dates
of payment etc. -- and it would be improper to reveal all that info.
Setting aside the fact that ICANN is less than scrupulous in adhering
to such principles (scroll to the bottom of this page),
the argument is disingenuous in the extreme -- and its flimsy misuse of
privacy rhetoric casts further doubt on ICANN's refusal to release
contact info for the Membership At Large. In the Berkman Center's "Pressing
Issue II" panel on the MAL, Chief Policy Poobah Andrew McLaughlin
maintained that ICANN's staff couldn't act on the data (which is "locked
up in an encrypted file") without a directive from the board. In saying
so, he either overlooked -- or hoped that rather motivated audience would
overlook -- the staff's propensity for initiating action items. ICANN
doesn't want anyone else to gain access to the MAL data, lest the MAL
"hijack" itself into a functional organization; and ICANN doesn't want
anyone to know how much the ccTLDs are -- or, more to the point,
aren't -- donating or loaning to the "international" organization.
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Tue Dec 12 07:08:49 EST 2000
Oh, that Whois Committee...
roving_readers may remember the mysterious Whois
Committee that, according to ICANN Veep-plus Louis Touton and
Conflict of Interest Spokesman Ken Stubbs, is not a "committee" but,
rather, is "just a group of people that...of various interest...who the
ICANN staff asked to get together and try to formulate some proposals or
ideas." Well, guess what? It's a
committee. Ooh, and look at who's on it: CORE, Domain Bank,
Melbourne IT NSI Registrar, VeriSign Global Registry Services, Motion
Picture Association of America, Recording Industry Association of
America, and Verizon.
It's great to see the fine folks at the MPAA and the RIAA giving
back to the net by helping, as Touton put it, to
try to formulate some proposals or ideas that might then be passed as
appropriate to either the Names Council or the ICANN staff, depending on
whether it's a policy matter or an implementation matter.
Like, for example, ways to convert whois data into a tool for
enforcing their, umm, sinecures.
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Fri Dec 8 17:14:59 EST 2000
On "owning" ccTLDs
Mike Brett, an ardent disliker of ICANN, was circulating an email
pointing at his
site that damns ICANN for toying with the ccTLDs. The main item of
interest on the site is the sworn
declaration of ICANN Veep-plus Louis Touton in the failed ESI lawsuit, which is worth a read. The blurb that seems
to have gotten his knickers in a twist is this:
19. ICANN's recommendations regarding the possible replacement of
the managers of a ccTLD are based on a number of factors that are
designed to ensure the sound operation of the Internet. Although one
of those factors is the wishes of the government of the country
involved, no foreign government "owns" its ccTLD or can order
ICANN or the Department of Commerce to take any actions with respect
to a ccTLD. Indeed, under current policy ccTLDs are not "owned"
in any sense; they are made available to the benefit the entire
Internet community. [emphasis added]
At issue is the vexed issue of "ownership" of a TLD, which invites a
torrent of troubling questions: what exactly is owned, by whom, how
ownership is defined and in which jurisdiction, how the exclusivity of
ownership might conflict with a utility that relies on global
accessibility, and so on. No one -- least of all the US government,
which retains "ultimate policy authority" over the root -- is especially
eager to press for answers to these questions.
Surprisingly, Dave Farber forwarded
Brett's email to his "Interesting People" list,
prompting a
quick response from ICANN's CEO-plus, Mike Roberts. Though
informative in its clarity, the response is noteworthy for its cynical
genuflection to Saint Postel:
With respect to the situation of the country code Top Level Domain
Registries, the original Postel position remains ICANN policy today.
As Jon put it, "The IANA takes the desires of the government of the
country very seriously, and will take them as a major consideration
in any transition discussion." This was good advice when Jon said
it, and it remains good advice today.
One wonders what Roberts thinks of Postel's advice in the June '96 Internet
Draft "New Registries and the Delegation of International Top Level
Domains"," in which Postel bluntly stated that "Domain names are
intended to be an addressing mechanism and are not intended to reflect
trademarks, copyrights or any other intellectual property rights." And
one wonders as well what Postel, whose was famous for sidestepping
conflict, would think of ICANN's alpha-male interpretation of the "GAC
Principles," which ICANN claims justifies tinkering with ccTLD
delegations (see the draft "Letter
to Governments Regarding ccTLD Managers").
Roberts continues:
Subsequent to the formation of ICANN, its Governmental Advisory
Committee undertook to develop a framework with some proposed policy
guidance and some practical advice about how to bring the original
"gentlemen's agreement" relationships of the Postel era forward into the
much more complex environment we have today. There has been, and
continues to be, considerable debate about how best to forge the
trilateral relationships among governments, their ccTLD organizations,
and ICANN into a suitable set of documents. For a recent example of the
working out of an arrangement to meet the needs of a specific country,
Canada, see http://www.iana.org/cctld/reports/ca-report-01dec00.htm.
This notion of "trilateral relationships" is viewed with no small
suspicion by many ccTLDs, as noted -- in only the simplest terms -- in this space. With good reason: when presented with the
potential unpredictability of a three-body problem, ICANN seems more
interested in undertaking unilateral (a/k/a "shotgun") action to
stabilize itself than in the stability of the net. But, as Roberts informed
the crowd at the obliviated IANA - ccTLD meeting in MDR2K, "ICANN is the
community."
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The above material is Copyright © 2000 by t. byfield.
The r_r began as a semi-collaborative nym on the <nettime> list, where it worked well; but the
pseudonym precluded comments, and there was more to report than was
good for the list, so now it -- or a mutation of it -- has
resurfaced on TBTF. [ top] |
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