RE: [ga] Partial response to questions from Danny Younger regarding Business Constituency: Charter and ByLaw Violations

[Roeland Meyer <rmeyer@mhsc.com>]

|> From: admin@consumer.net [mailto:admin@consumer.net]
|> Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2001 4:21 AM

|> >  Of course, we all recognize that
|> >AT&T is also a communications company, as well as a web 
|> hosting, business
|> >user, and Internet company. \
|> 
|> I thought their main business was telemarketing???

In the old days, when IBM was the "evil Empire", before the rise of MSFT,
someone told me that IBM was not in the computer business. I stood there,
amazed. They went on to state that IBM was in the business of making profits
and that designing computers was incidental. At the time, I was whining
about the crappy ISA bus that I had to design an interface card for (as
opposed to STD bus). By the same token, AT&T isn't in the telecomm business.
Telecomm is a means to an end, for AT&T. Lucent kinda forgot that (actually,
Bell Labs never did learn that, IMHO).

|> Their allegiance is to their corporation and 
|> their stockholders.
|> They don't care about anybody or anything else.

Duh! Please look up "Fiduciary Duty", in your local US law library. Look up
the penalties for failing in such duty. Geez, they actually include
jail-time!

|> Why should anyone believe anything said by an AT&T lobbyist 
|> is beyond me.

We all have our biases, some of them are required, by law. Others are a
personal affliction. The trick, on ALL sides, is to recognise such biases
when they appear and account for them accordingly. That's politics and
marketing.

|> How can anyone be so stupid as to believe these people?

I don't think that this audience is as terribly naive as you think. The
bottom-line is that those that control [access to] resources have capability
for making stronger argument then those that don't. After that, it's an
question of degree. Why does the ICANN continue to blunder on? Because, they
have semi-exclusive access to a very desireable resource, via the DOC MoU.
Namely, the DNS root. Otherwise, no one would be talking to ICANN, there
would be no need or value-add.

Marilyn Cade works for AT&T and is actually paid to do what she does. She is
much more constrained, in what she is allowed to say, than you are, by law.
She has a fiduciary responsibility to her employer. Please recognise that
for what it's worth. Also, recognise that AT&T is part of www.gip.org,
ICANN's primary backer.

--
R O E L A N D   M J  M E Y E R
Managing Director
Morgan Hill Software Company
t:01 925 373 3954
c:01 925 352 3615
f:01 925 373 9781 
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