RE: [ga] No room on the bus

[Roeland Meyer <rmeyer@mhsc.com>]

Hello Karl,
Please find a note I have sent to Danny Younger and the DNSO/GA list. It
seems that ICANN staff do not want to allow the GA to have a sponsor to pick
up the tab for the MdR festivities. Does this mean that the ICANN staff are
picking up the tab? I see no place where exclusive support of the "unified
root" religion is written into the ICANN charter. I suggest that such
restrictions are improper and inappropriate. Further, that they violate
inclusiveness requirements of the DOC/ICANN MoU. One cannot be both
inclusive and exclusive.

If Mr Lynn is acting directly on instruction from the BoD then I would
appreciate knowing that. If he is not then I request his censure, followed
by an immediate redress.

Further comments to Danny are interspersed below.

--
R O E L A N D  M J  M E Y E R
Managing Director
Morgan Hill Software Company
tel: +1 925 373 3954
cel: +1 925 352 3615
fax: +1 925 373 9781 
http://www.mhsc.com

|> From: DannyYounger@cs.com [mailto:DannyYounger@cs.com]
|> Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2001 12:48 PM
|> 
|> It is my duty as your Chair to report on recent events.  As 
|> many of you know, the General Assembly will be meeting on 
|> the evening of November 12 from 8PM to 11PM.  The new.net 
|> organization kindly offered to sponsor our session by 
|> providing food and beverage during our meeting (which comes 
|> at the end of a very long day of back-to-back meetings).  
|> 
|> Protocol required that I contact Mary Hewitt as per the 
|> instructions posted at http://www.icann.org/mdr2001/  
|> because "Starting with the Marina Del Rey 2001 meeting, 
|> there will be a new format for sponsorship opportunities 
|> for this ICANN meeting."

I don't see where contact infor, for Ms Hewit, is provided on that page.

|> Ms. Hewitt rejected the sponsorship application of new.net 
|> citing the fact that they did not support the authoritative root.

I don't see anywhere that support for "authoritative root" is required.
Neither do I see DOC sanction for authoritative root exclusiveness in the
ICANN charter.

|> I sent a reconsideration request to Stuart Lynn.  Mr. Lynn 
|> responded that "we place bounds around whom we accept as 
|> sponsors. And new.net does not fit the package."

IMHO, this is out of bounds for ICANN staff. Therefore I have fowarded this
to an ICANN BoD member for consideration (Karl Auerbach). 

BTW, the Rosa Parks analogy is an inappropriate distraction. Analogies
suffer because they are prone to attack and their defense takes away from
the true point of discussion. The real points would be references to points
and authorities stating that the ICANN's decision was in violation of law or
regulation, as you've done below.

|> Although our Memorandum of Understanding with the US 
|> Department of Commerce states:  "Neither Party, either 
|> in the DNS Project or in any act related to the DNS Project, 
|> shall act unjustifiably or arbitrarily to injure particular 
|> persons or entities or particular categories of persons or 
|> entities," recent ICANN actions, from the issuance of 
|> ICP-3 to this sponsorship denial, make it clear that ICANN 
|> is indeed acting to injure a particular category of entities.  

This is indeed the salient point. But, as I stated in the MHSC demand
letter, it has been going on for some time. The problem is that most of
those whom have been injured are corporations and corps don't have a vote
that effects the US Congress. We also suffer from a relative visibility
issue since there *is* a real life shooting-war in progress. All of these
issues seem to be dropping out of the DC "issues triage" machine.

|> I thank new.net for demonstrating its commitment to 
|> participation in the ICANN process and for its support of 
|> the General Assembly. It is to our shame that such efforts 
|> at participation are routinely being denied by those 
|> charged with the coordination activities of the Internet.  
|> This is a sad day in our history, and I mourn the death of 
|> the concept of "fairness".  

Fairness isn't an issue. ICANN doesn't pretend to play fair. But, we all
knew this ... didn't we?
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