Re: [council] Marina del Rey meeting announcement

["Milton Mueller" <Mueller@syr.edu>]

As an American in New York State at a University that draws a
large portion of its student body from New York City (several known
casualties among alumni and student families so far) it is my belief 
that it is neither warranted nor wise to allow the destructive actions
of a small number of criminals to completely divert ICANN and the 
Internet community from its ongoing agenda. Indeed, I and many 
others much closer to the tragedy would feel deeply resentful of any 
attempt to exploit the tragedy to avoid other issues. The best way to 
respond to terrorism is not to be terrorized. Let us all recognize
the gravity of what has happened, but let us grit our teeth and
continue on with our own business.

ICANN is primarily a policy making and regulatory organization
for the DNS. There is very little it can do about attempts by 
murderers to blow things up; such problems are in the hands of
law enforcement, intelligence agencies and the military. If ICANN
wishes to add to its agenda some discussion of its relationship
to those efforts, fine. To devote an entire meeting to it, crowding
out all the other issues that must be dealt with, no.

There are numerous ongoing and unresolved policy issues that have
been on ICANN's DNSO agenda for some time: 

   * UDRP reform
   * ORG divestiture
   * Representational structure
   * Multilingual names
   * Registrar-registry relations

The Marina del Rey meeting will deal with these issues.
Our constituency meetings will deal with them. The Names
Council will continue working and voting on them.

--Milton Mueller

>>> "M. Stuart Lynn" <lynn@icann.org> 09/26/01 10:52PM >>>
This is to give you a heads-up that later today we will announce 
(please see the appended and attached announcement for details) that 
the ICANN meeting in Marina del Rey will proceed as scheduled but 
with a very different format and content than usual.