RE: [ga] icannatlarge.com

[Joanna Lane <jo-uk@rcn.com>]

> This "ICANN Community" responded by engaging in wholesale trademark
> infringement and deception.  The website icannatlarge.com uses U.S.
> Registered Trademarks 2,400,781 and 2,517,318 prominently in the
> domain name and on the website, along with the ICANN logo, with no
indication that the
> website is not, in fact, authorized or licensed by ICANN.

Hello John,

I don't think you quite fully appreciate the events that lead our
organization to this point. Let's review the history. Danny has explained
that the site was commissioned, approved and paid for by Esther Dyson and
Pindar Wong, the former Chair and Vice-Chair of the ICANN Board, that
authorized Joop Teernstra's company (imachination) to do the work on the
website for Icannatlarge.com.  In addition, Esther and Pindar registered as
founding members of ICANNAtLarge, as did ICANN At Large Director, Karl
Auerbach, Marilyn Cade and former ICANN CEO and President, Michael Roberts,
amongst other leading ICANN players.

This organization grew from the work of the At Large Study Committee, and in
particular, an Esther Dyson and Pindar Wong membership drive instigated in
response to the Board's call for the At Large Community to self-organize
into a proposed ALSO, with Denise Michelle providing ICANN Staff support to
the ALSC at that time. The At Large community received assistance in this
effort from a number of independent sources, including Thomas Roessler, who,
as you know, is Chair of this GA, and provided the fledgling ICANNAtLarge
organization with mailing lists. The ICANN ALSC mailing list, which had
provided the resources needed for the members to self-organize up to that
point, closed its lists, but not before pointing all its members to the
Iannatlarge initiative. So what occurred in fact was that ICANN Staff
actually pointed the wider community towards this organization. All of this
is documented in the ICANN ALSC archives and all was done with ICANN prior
knowledge and consent.

Not only that. The name, ICANNAtLarge, was actually picked by Pindar Wong,
who together with Esther was still very much engaged with the ALSC and
funded by ICANN at the time they launched ICANNAtLarge. Pindar paid Joop for
the initial website to be built and Esther pledged a further US$10,000 to
the new organization in which she was proactively involved. Her donation was
listed under "funding" on the ICANNATLarge website, together with other
pledges intended to be distributed by a new Board once they had been elected
directly by the membership.

Esther then decided the best way forward for Icannatlarge would be to
appoint a liaison between our members and Icann staff. She offered the role
to Alexander Svennsson and there were objections that the appointment was
made without a proper election being held, which is how Denise Michelle, who
was recently out of work with the ALSC, slid neatly into the job quietly and
just assumed the role. Esther decided to use the $10,000 promised to
ICANNAtLarge to pay Denise's salary on a temporary basis. Members were told
that in return for the $10,000 to be paid to Denise, she would assist
ICANNATLarge with its self-organizing effort.

Of course, Denise Michelle was in a fact acting under contract to ICANN, as
a member of ICANN staff, not ICANNAtLarge. She was hired by Stuart Lynn to
manufacture a consensus for his Reform Plan in the At large community,
meanwhile trashing any form of individual participation or semblance of
democratic process along the way. Whether Denise ever received the $10,000 I
do not know, but she then evaporated for a little while, and when she
reappeared, she was attached to a completely new At Large organization, a
new and rather dysfunctional website, a confusingly similar domain name, a
new definition for what At Large meant and an ICANN At Large bank into which
she invites all pledges to be sent - nothing short of an At Large coup
d'estat, of which nothing had ever been discussed in advance amongst the
community. To add injury to insult, the ICANN fundraising tour redirected
precious independent sources into a competing entity from which direct
participation by individual At Large members, our members, was to be denied.

Understandably, some members felt this betrayal of the At large by ICANN
Staff warranted complete withdrawal of our organization from the Reformed
ICANN, including dropping ICANN from the name of the organization itself. A
heated debate followed and we will have the results on a vote of the full
membership to choose the organization name by the middle of next week.

Whatever it's name, here is an organization that is in it for the long haul,
is committed to actually engaging the user in cooperative processes, and is
working to have an impact on internet governance over the long term future.
The decision making, and therefore I guess also the responsibility, is
passed directly to individual members, not a Nominating Committee, so that
anybody who intends to start throwing stones at us, will need more than a
handful to make any impact....:-)

Probably the most important vision for our organization is to implement the
very things that ICANN is discarding. As ICANN is phasing out direct user
participation and abandoning any form of At Large elections or voting
mechanism, ICANNAtLarge will be phasing it in. This will put us in a
favorable position to show the world that there is another group around
ICANN that better serves the public interest than the window dressing being
paraded in the spotlight by ICANN Staff as meaningful At Large
participation.

With all the above aspects in mind, I hope you now view this effort in a
more favorable light than at the time you penned your comments. Should you
have any further comments to make, I'd be pleased to hear them.

Regards,
Joanna Lane
Chair, Icannatlarge


There is nothing
> I could find on the website which would tip off the unsuspecting visitor
> that the site is not an official ICANN site.
>
> Either ICANN has decided to abandon its trademarks through
> non-enforcement, or the people responsible for that site should be held
liable.



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