Re: [ga] Casting stones

["Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <froomkin@law.miami.edu>]

We disagree strongly on this point.  Asking for the rebid was and is a
good move, and in the long run not at all consistent with VRSN interests
since it is more likely to open up the namespace than the current frozen
process.  There are only so many hours in the day.  

Just about very US-based NGO person I know thinks time spent inside
ICANN's hall of mirrors is now wasted time.  I can't blame them.  They
don't get postive results, they don't stop bad things, things only get
worse.  In some cases, the situtation is so bad that the bosses, or even
the funders, won't support the staff time for these sort of results.  The
only things that have any hope of results in even the medium term are
outside the utterly neutered sham input ("advisory") organizations ICANN
has created. These are to me not unlike the unions in the ex-USSR.  
Window dressing at best, traps for "useful idiots" (to borrow the rather
strong phrase you used), at worst.

On Wed, 7 Aug 2002, Thomas Roessler wrote:

> The point is this one: The most important contribution from the NGO  
> and civili liberties community I've seen in the recent past was  
> indeed this re-bid vote, and their later letter to the DoC.  In the  
> best case, this was just a dumb mistake.  In the worst case, the  
> NGOs were acting as useful idiots for Verisign's business interests. 
> (Putting on asbestos.)

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A. Michael Froomkin   |    Professor of Law    |   froomkin@law.tm
U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA
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