Re: [ga] Bucharest, June 27, 2002

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com>]

Jamie and all assembly members,

  Thank you Jamie for these fine and detailed to some degree notes
regarding the events from Bucharest.  I am sure many shall remember
them for years to come.

  I was not surprised myself to here of Vint Cerfs continuing
interrupting you regarding getting to some issues and questions.
As Vint is not under some scrutiny, and will be in some heat
when returning to the US regarding the WorldCom Fraud
Scandal that is seemingly widening almost hourly.  His history
with Money matters in the GIP and with his relationship with
than new friend G. Soros, whom at that time frame had lost
his investment customers some $1b US.  However the BoD
o Worldcom has topped that by loosing their stockholders
some $3.7b and misreporting, knowingly falsely stating
their revenue, and engaging in reselling network services
to their own affiliates and wholly own subsidiaries at
highly inflated process and then improperly writing them off
in tax filings at some 1/3 of the actual cost, ect., ect.,...

  The ICANN sick saga seems to get far worse than
it was in '99 as you have rightly pointed out and that
the GAC rep to whom Nancy J. Victory requested
stakeholder/users to address their concerns to
as you seem to be noticing is about a helpful
as fly swatter on a bear hunt.

James Love wrote:

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [Random-bits] Bucharest, June 27, 2002
> Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 21:35:14 -0400
> From: James Love <james.love@cptech.org>
> To: "random-bits@lists.essential.org" <random-bits@lists.essential.org>
>
> ICANN meeting in Bucharest, June 27, 2002
>
> Today was grueling, in part because no one is getting much
> sleep and some tempers are short.  Last evening the 11
> .org bids were presented  and today there was an ICANN
> public forum, which lasted all day.  I'll start with a few
> words about the .org bid process.
>
>             DOT ORG
>
> The various applications are quite detailed and take a
> while to understand.  Nearly all of them appear to be
> mostly for the benefit of for profit companies, with an
> occasional non-profit group or "policy body" as window
> dressing, and maybe some true non-profits, as the IMS and
> Internet Software Consortium appears to be.  It cost $35k
> just to provide a bid that most people thought was wired
> for ISOC/Afilias from the beginning, but there were still
> 11 bids, all of them serious.  The asset is worth a lot.
> With a ~$5-6 per domain wholesale price and a cost of $1
> to $2.5 to operate (according to some bidders) with 2.3
> million registrations, I have heard estimates that .org is
> worth $35 to $100+ million, for #35k is cheap.
>
> There is a lot of talk about Verisign, Register.com
> and maybe some others having a stake in more
> than one bid.  ICANN had a "consensus"
> recommendation to award the bid to a non-profit, but at
> the urging of Robert Blokzijl and other board members, the
> ICANN board decided to eliminate the non-profit
> requirement in Accra.  Rober Blokzijl's wife worked for
> Nuestar, one of the commercial bidders who is not teamed
> up with a non-profit, and. now Blokzijl is named as
> potential board member for Organic Names, another
> commercial only bidder..  Someone said Blokzijl and Amadeu
> Abril Abril have recused themselves on org at this
> meeting, but Amadeu was questioning some of the bidders
> anyway.
>
> People who were working on this said the ICANN staff did a
> decent job of following the ICANN Names Council
> recommendation on the .org bid, which Milton Mueller
> worked on (given the fact that the ICANN board got rid of
> one of the primary requirements, that the bid be given to
> non-profit).
>
> I had raised concerns much earlier about the bidding
> system, and had asked the ICANN staff and board to have a
> two stage process, where it picked the non-profit first,
> and then the non-profit picked the operator.  My thinking
> was that the non-profit would then have serious bargaining
> power, and could get the operator for a competitive price,
> maybe $1 or less per year per domain (creating an
> interesting PR issue for the .com and other TLD registries
> that charge up to $6 per name, wholesale)..   The two
> stage bid wasn't done, and as I had predicted, most bids
> are financed and controlled by the operators, who will
> make a bundle if the ICANN board likes them enough.  Like
> a lot of what goes on here it is about who makes money
> off domain names.
>
>             Transparency issues
>
> Well, I asked the ICANN board to stick to the unofficial
> secret meetings, and stop holding official secret
> meetings, a serous point that got a laugh. I also asked
> them to follow the DNSO Names Council example and provide
> MP3 files of their telephone meetings, which currently are
> closed and not recorded.  Next, I asked what ICANN was
> spending on its litigation with Karl Auerbach over his
> efforts to have access to the ICANN books, and was told I
> could not have that information by Stuart Lynn.  I sent
> Stuart and Vint a follow up message and talked to Vint and
> Hans, but apparently not only are the ICANN books secret,
> the amount of money spent on lawyers to keep it secret is
> also secret.  One would like to complain to the GAC about
> this, but they also hold secret meetings, give the ICANN
> board secret documents, and won't meet with the public, so
> this is hard to do.
>
>             At-Large
>
> Back in the old days when democracy was considered a good
> thing, "at large" membership meant you allowed individuals
> to elect people to the board.  The ICANN board was
> supposed to have 9 elected members, then 5, then maybe 3,
> and more recently, and far more pathetically, maybe 1 of
> 19 members of a nominating committee that elected only
> part of the board.   But apparently it can get even worse.
> Now Esther Dyson, Denise Michel and Lyman Chapin are
> pursuing a version of this that would seem more
> appropriate for Romania or the USSR in the "old" days..
> The new idea for the "at large" is to have ICANN determine
> which groups "really" represent user interests, and to
> manage their "constructive input" into the ICANN process,
> sans elections for anything.  Also, this apparently (in
> Lyman Chapin's proposal) provides a nice opportunity for
> the board to further stack the ICANN "NomCom", which is
> the body that is supposed to pick ICANN board members.
> and maybe other "bottom up" other bodies  Apparently if
> you pick your cronies but call them the "at large" you can
> do this.
>
>             GAC
>
> The GAC communique was long and detailed, and reflected a
> highly unusual amount of dissent among GAC member
> countries, almost as if they had minds of their own.  The
> scribe's notes will probably do justice to the fine points,
> but allow me to briefly complain about my own GAC member,
> the USG.  Earlier (a while ago) Robin Layton had promised
> many NGOs that the US would demand that ICANN address
> civil society concerns.   None of this was reflected in
> the GAC communique.  The fact that ICANN holds secret
> meetings, refused to record its telephone board meetings,
> doesn't disclose how it spends its money, has proposed
> eliminating elections for individuals, won't allow the GA
> to vote or elect its own chair, has transformed the "at
> large" into a board/staffed managed PR exercise, is acting
> more like a cartel than a consumer protection agency, and
> has refused to implement the independent review process is
> of course just great, as long as this is "private sector
> led."  DoC's Robin Layton has done a great job of avoiding
> eye contact all week, so we haven't had a chance to
> understand why we are getting zero action from DoC yet.
> But I am informed that Robin is doing a good job of
> keeping track of the FBI's concerns over WHOIS data, and
> in close touch with US registry groups bidding on .org, so
> I guess this is all a matter of priorities.
>
> My own presentation to the GAC was cut short, as usual, by
> Vint Cerf, who seems to have made a point this week of
> interrupting me from making any tough criticism of the
> ICANN process.   Before Vint stopped me yet again from
> expressing any criticism of ICANN, I was telling Paul
> Towmey, the private sector former Australian government
> employee (who reportedly has a  business with former
> Clinton administration official Ira Magaziner) but still
> chairs the GAC, that we would like to know which
> international policy making group is willing to talk to
> civil society.  It is quite clear that ICANN itself is not
> making any space at all for civil society or consumer
> concerns, and is only interested in business interests,
> and so it is natural to ask, if not ICANN, who can we talk
> to on matters such as intellectual property policy,
> privacy, consumer protection, transparency, conflicts of
> interest, or competition policy?   The GAC communique
> seemed to say that the GAC is the body that must control
> all of these issues.  Of course, the GAC is more closed to
> civil society than any international body on earth, so
> this makes us wonder, what are we supposed to do?
> Nothing?
>
>             Evolution and Reform  and Debate
>
> It was long, it was interesting, it was a lot of going
> along to get along, but not always, and it was a lot of
> loose ends, particularly in terms of if the registries
> would pay for ICANN.
>
> My contribution had to be brief and focused.  Vint Cerf
> had cut me off every time I had talked on other issues,
> and of course, he did it once again.  I started with
> thanking Alejandro Pisanty and Vint for their willingness
> to engage us in the debate, and for making some real
> changes in the really bad earlier proposals, to the
> current confusingly vague elitist proposals.  (actually
> stated much more diplomatically).  I noted the problems
> with transparency, nuking elections of individuals while
> keeping them for self selected business groups, and talked
> a bit about the NomCom proposal (the group that will
> actually elect ICANN board members),, and the decision to
> strip the GA of the ability to elect its own leaders.
> Then I switched gears and talked about mechanisms to
> decentralize ICANN decision making
>
> I noted that I had engaged in extensive discussions of
> decentralization with Alejandro and Vint,on this topic,
> which had been ignored completely in the June 20 report.
> What we proposed was to acknowledge that there were few
> benefits in a "one size fits all" DNS regulatory approach,
> and that the process should reverse gears, and explore
> ways that global coordination would be minimalist.
>
> I said, for example, that ICANN
> didn't need to do every regulatory function with new TLDS,
> they only  needed to address issues such as uniquenesses
> of TLD strings, and whatever minimum standards for IP and
> consumer protection policy that were considered necessary
> from a global perspective, and to encourage others to
> address as many issues as possible.  In my "several
> gatekeepers" comment, I talked about a scenario with about
> 7 or more mini-ICANNs, for different types of TLDs, each
> with its own management structure and objectives.  These
> included a ccTLD group, 1 for treaty based organizations,
> 2 for commercial gTLDs groups, one for non-commercial, one
> for academic and one more I can't remember, as starters.
> The idea is to prevent a single group from becoming a
> barrier to innovation or competition (exactly what has
> happened in ICANN), and to create some competition among
> groups, so that people could choose where to register
> domains.
>
> In this view, if you created competition among
> "gatekeeopers", there would be incentives to "get it
> right."   Every busiess thaqt wanted to run a TLD string
> would have to be adopted by a "mini-DNSO."  Mini DNSOs that
> had too much or too little consumer protection would not
> be able to attract much market share.  At this point, Vint cut me
> off.  As I walked away, Alejandro said that he could never
> understand how the decentralization would work,
> technically.  If I had the opportunity to talk, I would
> have discussed the many different ways that this could
> work in terms of "solving" the uniqueness, issue,such as
> first come first serve, lotteries or arbitration based
> upon merit.  But I am exhausted, and will turn in.
>
> Jamie
>
> --------earlier notes------------------
>
> In the public forum, Esther Dyson and Denise Michel just presented the
> at-large proposal.  It is essentially a top down proposal, which allows
> organizations but not individuals to join, and will later develop a yet to
> be defined method of managing public input.  The group not only did not
> propose the development of any mechanisms for votes by individuals, but its
> only suggested the board "consider" allowing this effort to "select" its own
> steering committee, and even then, under "Board-approved guidelines."
>
> http://www.at-large.org/submission-to-evolution-and-reform-cmt.htm
> "We also recommend the Board consider allowing the At-Large Supporting
> Organization to select their Steering Committee and Board members under
> Board-approved guidelines/criteria."
>
> Vint asked Denise if there would be methods of determining if the
> representatives of these groups actually represented the interests of their
> own users, and elaborated on his concern that they may only represent their
> own views.  Denise said that they would be working on this issue, and Esther
> took the floor and discribe a system used by two merging corporations to
> confidentially poll (shareholders/stakeholders?).   She also noted that when
> the results were contrary to what was desired, the poll results were not
> made public, and then she suggested this polling firm might be available to
> provide services for the at-large structures consultation.  It was not
> obvious why Esther had come up with this example, or where she was going
> with it.   There was another exchange regarding Esther's comment that she
> hoped for the development of "parties" that cut across regions, prompting
> Vint to indicate that he hoped this would not happen, which prompted Esther
> to appear to back off, and Denise to emphasize their understanding that the
> process would be managed in such as way to help faciliate consensus.
>
> There were several persons in the room who have worked on At Large efforts,
> including for example Aizu Izumi, Vittorio Bertola and Wolfgang
> Kleinwaechter, who were recently elected leaders for incannatlarge.com[1],
> Esther's previous at-large effort, and persons who were involved in the NAIS
> and ALSC efforts.  Only two persons from the floor spoke on the Michel/Dyson
> report, myself and Harold Felt from Media Access Project, a US NGO that
> works on free speech issues.
>
> I began by noting that we are meeting in Romania, a country that has only
> recently abandoned a governance system that limited political freedom.  I
> said that I opposed the top down managed public particpation system that
> Denise and Esther were proposing, and that it was likely to be used to
> control and supress criticism of ICANN, and that if ICANN was to get the
> trust of the public and governments, there had to be mechanisms for people
> to freely express opposition to its policies, and to freely choose their own
> leaders.   I noted that ICANN is comfortable allowing a handful of select
> selected businesses represent all businesses on earth, but was unwilling to
> allow individuals to represent themselve directly, even in a structure that
> has little or no real power.
>
> Vint said the board was short on time, and I was cut off.  There will be
> further opportunties to discuss these issues later during the period to
> discuss the ERC report.
>
> Harold Felt echoed some concerns about the at-large proposal.
>
> [1]  I was also elected to the "temporary" steering committee of
> icannatlarge.com.  This body was supposed to hold a new election within 90
> days.  When it became clear that the panel was not going to hold a new
> election within the 90 days, I resigned.
>
> -----------
> Note, we have since resolved the date of the elections..... and my
> resignation has been withdrawn.
>
> ------
> James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
> http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org
> voice: 1.202.387.8030; mobile 1.202.361.3040
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
> --
> ------
> James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
> http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org
> voice: 1.202.387.8030; mobile 1.202.361.3040
>
> --
> ------
> James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
> http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org
> voice: 1.202.387.8030; mobile 1.202.361.3040
>
> --
> ------
> James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
> http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org
> voice: 1.202.387.8030; mobile 1.202.361.3040
>
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Regards,
--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup - (Over 124k members/stakeholders strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com
Contact Number:  972-244-3801 or 214-244-4827
Address: 5 East Kirkwood Blvd. Grapevine Texas 75208


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