[ga] Re: Board descisions

[vint cerf <vcerf@MCI.NET>]

Dear Mr. Langenbach,

Thank you for taking time to let us know your views in these matters.

Please see a few comments below.

Vint Cerf

At 06:23 PM 3/8/2001 +0100, Siegfried Langenbach wrote:
>Mr Chairman, members of the ICANN board,
>
> these is an open mail expressing my concerns about the way 
>ICANN's board is acting. 
>
> as an individual who was and is involved in these process from the 
>very beginning I feel to have the right to address all of you. 
>
> It seems to me that, in contrary to the original intention, decisions 
>are taken from board, even worse from boards excom only (or from 
>staff?), without proper consultation of NC or DNSO and equivalent 
>bodies.
> Yes, you have the power to do so, but you should be aware that 
>on the long run you will loose credibility. Are you discussing 
>matters to be decided by the board, with those which elected you ? 
>Perhaps, but I never heard of that. Instead you are using the very 
>old argument of time-pressure to skip proper consensus building.
>
> Let me give you some examples:
>
>1.) selection of new TLD's . Without going into details : The way 
>how Joe Sims directed the board, by having them voting 3 (three!!!) 
>times until the board recognized how Joe wanted them to vote 
>(change .web to .info), showed the interested how familiar the 
>board was with the matter they were deciding. Consultation could 
>have helped.

The Board is entitled to counsel from its outside counsel
and from its general counsel and others. Ultimately the decision
was the Board's and not Joe Sims'.


>2.) Internationalizing of domainnames or multi-lingual-mess. With 
>all respect, these is nationalizing not internationalizing : are you 
>really convinced that toshiba will use the japanese equivalent as 
>domainname internationally? It could have some sence if national 
>ccTLD's would do it, but they have too much respect for the 
>process to overpass IETF and other. Nobody seems to care about 
>the practicably : making money is more important. Should have 
>been worked on before starting a so called testbed. Most confusing 
>is the fact that ICANN on one side warns on the other side 
>supports VeriSign's activities.

Here I strongly disagree - I have been on record repeatedly 
expressing concern about many of the efforts to explore internationalizing
of domain names - the technical problems are quite serious and so are
the various jurisdictional questions. ICANN, however, may not have
the ability to prevent experiments from happening. In some sense, anything
that is technically possible on the Internet is likely to become the
subject of experimentation - ranging from multi-lingual TLD efforts to
alternate roots and many things in between (including things like
telephony, video casting and so on). There is risk taken by anyone who
participates in an experiment or a testbed that is not specifically
sanctioned - ICANN can raise issues to assure public awareness of risk
but it may have no ability to prevent these experiments from occuring.


>last not least
>3.) Splitting com-net-org registry / registrar. I simply refuse to 
>believe that the board is willing to cancel that part of the contract.
>The argument astonishing : One of the main intentions of the whole 
>construct was to weaken the power of an monopolist (NSI), now we 
>seem to see that it works (does it really?) we try to disrupt that 
>process instead to be happy that it works as it was intended to do.
>I might be worng but I could not find that the matter was brought to 
>NC and DNSO...

Nothing has been decided here at all - there is a proposal on the
table and the Board has yet to discuss it - though it will do so
during the Australian Board meeting this week. I don't believe any
decision will be made during this board meeting but because of
the various timing elements in the equation, the Board may have
to make a decision by the end of March or the opportunity may be
lost. 

NSI's dominant position as registrar appears to have eroded
considerably in the last 12 months, according to statistics
that I have seen - perhaps you have different views on that point?



> I recognize that I am only an individual, perhaps with strange ideas 
>such as that I would prefer the slower and not so easy democratic 
>way instead of the more efficient board-alone decisions, but 
>remember an head without an body is not really what you want.

I think we want ample and public board discussion on these matters -
ultimately the board must make policy choices and it is a fine balance
between endless debate among many parties - losing opportunities for
lack of closure, and inadequate discussion. I hope we are able to find
that balance to the satisfaction of most observers - we will never
satisfy everyone, I think.

Vint


> Elected members should be responsible to those which elected 
>them, but not only at election time.
>
>
>Siegfried Langenbach
>joker.com 

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