RE: [ga] About the "Mr. Qaddafi Salutes Verisign" GA thread

[Jefsey Morfin <jefsey@wanadoo.fr>]

Dear John,
I am afraid you know better than that: this /is/ an emotional response. 
Joanna speaks of the Swiss Banks.

I will respond to you as you are technically competent and accepted as a 
good lawyer in this area. But a certain number of my points do not address 
your positions but several positions developed by lawyers or other 
competent Members of this ML.

I wish - for the reasons I indicate below - to underline the /real 
importance/ of this very debate.

On 10:26 18/11/01, John Berryhill said:
> > Please understand my position. Any witch hunt using inappropriate methods
> > and based upon emotion rather than on professional cool and responsible
> > decisions by legitimate authority is creating more harm to its cause than
> > you can imagine. All the more than it is done by popular or drum
> > justice at the wrong place. Your call is like calling on bar tenders to 
> poison
> > possible terrorist's coffees.
>
>Are you saying that US Dept. of Treasury regulations do not constitute
>legitimate authority?

Who is talking about US DoT? Joanna calls on us. Calls on the ICANN. To 
some extent she is absolutely right, but we have to pay attention at not 
going too far.

>Are you saying that US banks are on a witch hunt?

I am saying that would the US Banks become emotional under the pressure of 
the events or of a popular demand and would cross the law in over doing it, 
they would be on a witch hunt as already are those making that pressure. I 
am sure you see all the differences between the death of the late Captain 
Lynch and those of James 1st or Louis XVI, to take other famous cases were 
national emotion played an important role.

>Look, it's very simple.  Companies in the US must obey the law.  When the
>law says that it is illegal to do business with certain entities or with any
>entities in certain countries, then US companies must cease to do such
>business.  There really should be nothing earth-shattering about that.

This is obviously true and this not what we are talking about. We are 
talking about a proposition by which under the coordination of a 
Californian non-profit no-member private company acting as an USG agency, 
an international drum justice would be organized to enforce a US people 
emotional attitude calling for an international enforcement of US rules. My 
whole point - and you know it - is that there are national laws in the USA 
and in each other countries and that unless treaties are signed to modify 
their international enforcement these laws only apply on their national 
territories and - to the extent foreseen by the sovereign constitutions of 
such States - to their nationals aboard.

This - in the case of the USA - contradicts the missions assigned to the 
ICANN and expected from the Sovereign States. Cuba has not implemented 
".cu" to be censored or embargoed by the USA. Members of the GAC are not 
expecting to receive legal obligations from the Staff or the BoD.

This leads to the following alternative:
- either the ICANN and the USG root are given an extraterritorial status 
like embassies and UN.
- or the sovereign states will review the USG policy carried by the ICANN 
and will take the measures they deem necessary to insure their national 
protection on the Internet.

The kind of attitude some US domestic lawyers and activists developed on 
this mailing list and during the MdR meeting has already risen question by 
several Governments to the point that alternative national strategies to 
the ICANN are now seriously investigated and the necessary R&D programs 
considered.

IMHO any US centric position over defending the AmerICANN conception - on 
this list or on some other list where serious people exchange serious and 
emotional opinions - is a bad turn made to the Internet and to the USA. I 
must admit that many things have been triggered by Mike Roberts' post. This 
resulted from the impact it got into the press, the personality, the 
Internet political weight of the author and the consistency of his position 
with the ICANN policy he adopted vs ccTLDs and Governments. I saw that 
through the "ICP-4 Internet Security and Stability Protection" drafting 
initiative I undertook after having attempted to conduct it at the BC.

May I remind you that Mike's initiated ICANN policy tends to weave 
contractual bonds between the ICANN and the Govs of the World, endorsing 
their national ccTLD contract and placing this way parts of their 
sovereignty under the IANA's control and decisions. May I remind you that 
for that reason the proposed counter proposed contract by the ccTLDs has 
just been refused by the Staff without any explanation (the ccTLD consider 
they are national Internet interests legitimate trustees and they delegate 
common services to the ICANN).

The @large issue is not important to the Govs unless it becomes a way for 
the ICANN and for the US gTLDs to force into reality what an European 
diplomat qualified in the past of "American Joke": the ICANN contracts 
attempting to become de facto International treaties and possibly 
detrimental to the national interests.

You have to understand that the DNSO /is/ the place built for a review of 
the DNS policy and that GAC Members know it, even if Staff and BoD tend to 
ignore it. Also that this GA is appreciated as /the/ only non ICANN place 
to hear about what independent real specialists and concerned stakeholders 
have to say under their own mutual control. So this list /is/ seriously 
monitored and will probably be more and more in the future. This is an 
interesting fall out of the MdR security harping show. It also gives us 
more and real responsibilities.

You know that I certainly defend the position that the ICANN mission is the 
management of an Excel three page folder by two secretaries - so one can go 
on vacations - with a manager, two or three engineers to check the 
fulfillment of the TLD registration prerequisites and of an international 
multilingual legal writer to draft and edit the ICP documents establishing 
these prerequisite as voted by the BoD and proposed and/or reviewed by the 
SOs. You also know that I consider 1982 Mokapertis' views on the DNS as 
concerning the naming plan of an interconnected system to the international 
data network naming plan and certainly not fitting anymore the management 
of that whole plan over what has become a universal interconnecting system. 
You also know that I am well suited to say that the USA have a real 
legitimacy in the naming plan organization and management but that many 
others have too, in particular France, but also UK, Germany, Italy, 
Switzerland, Japan, Spain, etc..etc... and if there is a particular 
commercial and political interest of the USA to assist the others 
countries, there is no particular right to it, but there are duties.

So you cannot suspect me to over support the AmerICANN, and you can accept 
that I am under no emotional or activist influence when I ask that the 
transition from the AmerICANN mission creep and outdated conceptions to a 
serious Internet Security and Stability Protection is organized in a 
professional and serious manner, respecting the US rights and interests and 
taking the necessary time, so the medication kills the illness and not the 
patient.

1. the current situation where the US laws are applied mildly to Registrars 
and Registries is a good thing in the interest of the USA. Obliging a law 
enforcement by popular emotional actions and specialists' petitions - on 
this mailing list on the @large in particular - would embarrass the USA as 
they do not have today the time, the competence, the desire (I suppose) and 
the priority to draft and vote an ICANN Act. You do not fight terrorism by 
terrorism or even by integrism.

2. the ICANN is now in a situation where several major parts of the 
Internet (China, Europe, several other countries) have serious experts at 
governmental, industrial and/or civil society level studying contingency 
plans to by-pass the ICANN and to protect their citizens and their economy 
from an US control of the Internet. IMHO it is of the interest of the USA 
and of common interest for the world stability that these studies and plans 
are made at least in corelation. There is no need for the Internet to work 
well that such a cooperation exists, however it is to think that the IPv6 
deployment would be delayed and the TLD unlocking would be more conflicting.

You certainly realize that you cannot have a thread on "Mr. Qaddafi Salutes 
Verisign" going on for days on the professionals and experts debating list 
of the DNS oriented SO, which has the mission to advise the BoD of the 
concerned US Government acting Agency and its Counselors from many foreign 
Governments (GAC) without rising an interest among these countries 
diplomatic and political spheres. What are of interest are not the 
technicalities and the "alt(ic)roots" cons/pros by the Crispy Crockets. 
What is of interest is that there is here a live documentation and 
demonstration of a true risk of prohibitive control and remote embargo on 
national economies by the USA and a real threat that US activists may force 
their enforcement. You will understand that the directly concerned States 
and the States whose policy is not drastic to the point of a international 
witch hunt - including most probably the USG - may feel concerned. That 
they also may rise anti-trust concerns about Plan B (as did the DoJ) and 
the domain name system management stability.

You will also realize that once you have made plain on this list that you 
understood this, your posts will be more seriously analyzed by serious 
people to understand their value. Your are a specialist: they try to build 
their opinion to report to decision makers. All the sudden you are not 
anymore "not listened by the ICANN BoD and Staff", but "listened by serious 
people seriously worried by the ICANN BoD and Staff attitude".

IMHO our message should be "there is no panic; there are serious concerns 
due to the ICANN Management's current misunderstanding of the real nature 
of the Internet as an interconnecting and no more as an interconnected 
system; there are innovative easy responses; such responses should be 
discussed in common to make sure that non one can anymore attempt to "own" 
the Internet and to give the ICANN the true international status for the 
truly limited mission it should carry: protocol sequential numbering, IP 
addressing block allocation and IPv6 deployement serious catalysis, TLD 
Management prerequiste advisory control and registration".

Jefsey


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