Re: [ga] Esther Dyson..... - a modest clarification

[Esther Dyson <edyson@edventure.com>]

Andy -

three suggestions:

One: Ask yourself: If I am really as power-hungry/money-grubbing as they 
say, why am I wasting my time on ICANN?  Because I believe in what it 
*should* be, not because I can benefit from it.  Meanwhile,  I do have 
another life.  You can check on my site: My own conference is at the same 
time as ICANN's March meeting; I couldn't be chairman of the ALAC even if I 
wanted to.  Furthermore, take a look at the conference speakers and agenda 
and you'll see I have a rich intellectual and commercial life apart from 
ICANN.  ICANN is not my power base.

Two:  Don't believe everything you read. What I actually said was quite 
different, and not that new.  Please do read Oxford's precis of the 
conference when it is posted.  Or you can read what I wrote for the Wall 
Street Journal last June.  It's fairly short and simplified, but it's the 
best statement of my position I can make, and it's on the record.
You can agree with it or not, believe it or not, but I got it published in 
the most influential medium I have access 
to.  http://www.edventure.com/conversation/article.cfm?Counter=9153289

Whose Domain Is It Anyway?
by Esther Dyson
originally published in The Wall Street Journal - June 17, 2002
Last week, the Senate held hearings on the putative governing authority of 
the whorls of cyberspace, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and 
Numbers. On Monday, Sen. Conrad Burns, (R., Mont.) announced plans for a 
bill to give the U.S. government greater sway in ICANN's operations. At 
stake is just who should oversee the non-government policy-setter of the 
domain name business -- the U.S. government, many governments or the 
Internet community itself.

At the moment, this international body fills an important vacuum. It is, in 
a way, the center of the Internet, dictating policies and picking managers 
for who gets to call themselves wsj.com or fbi.gov. But ICANN doesn't 
directly provide domain names or other Internet services. It simply sets 
the standards by which independent parties provide these services.

ICANN is weak and powerless. But while it needs to be fixed, it should 
remain weak and powerless. Its role should be to set only the least 
controlling of policies, fostering the orderly allocation of domain names 
to anyone, regardless of the meaning of the name or the content of the 
site. ICANN's proper role is not to oversee whatever a bureaucracy wants to 
control, but to resolve issues most people agree are problems.

Since ICANN is not a government body, it has no statutory authority and 
imposes its policies through contracts with its members. But many of those 
domain managers have taken a pass on joining, creating a stalemate in which 
the Web's technical infrastructure can't evolve and is subject to continual 
attempts at government control around the world -- including our Congress's.

ICANN was supposed to keep control of the Internet's infrastructure out of 
the hands of government, and in the hands of users worldwide. The 
distinction matters because governments potentially restrict freedom of 
speech; ICANN can control not so much freedom of speech as freedom of 
presence on the Internet.

The trouble is that despite some early successes, ICANN suffers from a 
flawed decision-making structure and lacks adequate staffing and funding.

If ICANN is not fixed, control over its functions will revert to the 
Department of Commerce, which gave the agency its original contract in 
1998. But when Commerce privatized naming policy, it took it out of the 
domestic realm. There is no way that Commerce could now reassert U.S. 
authority without causing an international battle and perhaps ceding ICANN 
to an organization like the U.N.

How can ICANN fix itself when its board meets next week in Bucharest? The 
staff needs to develop contracts that will lure non-U.S. managers to the 
table by inviting their input on policy. It also needs a management and 
board structure that would make it accountable not just to corporations and 
engineers but to individual users. The departing president and senior staff 
need to be replaced with fresh blood that will welcome constructive criticism.

ICANN's creation reflected a remarkable leap of faith -- relinquishing de 
facto U.S. power to a global community, through an organization that has to 
win adherence from a diverse range of participants without the power to 
raise taxes or enforce laws. We should give it time -- but also hold to the 
original vision. It needs to ratify global consensus onlywhere it should 
exist, and leave the rest of the issues -- serving the poor, policing 
fraud, setting prices -- up to local societies, governments or markets.

If ICANN can learn to live with diversity, allow new competitors to enter 
the fray, and remain open even to critics, it will prove the virtues of 
voluntary cooperation and open systems that gave us the Net itself.
Copyright (c) 2002, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.



Three:  Meanwhile, please *do* get active in the ALAC and the At-large 
membership and try to change things to your satisfaction.  Your duty does 
not end with criticism.

Esther Dyson


At 07:46 PM 2/7/2003, Andy Gardner wrote:
>At 7:00 AM -0500 2/7/03, Esther Dyson wrote:
> >Not only that; it is already determined that I will *not* chair it.... but
> >who will is still not clear.
>
>Good job!
>
>You appear to be absolving yourself of responsibility of anything that
>happened while you chaired ICANN (what the hell were you there for then?)
>so I'd prefer you stayed away from positions of responsibility of ANY
>entity that attempts to speak for the little guy - whom you ensured was
>COMPLETELY SCREWED OVER.
>
>What really amazes me is to see people who got the royal shafting from you,
>now working along side you as if nothing ever happened. Surely they don't
>think you're lining them up for anything but another buggering?
>
>IMHO, etc.
>
>
>--
>Andrew P. Gardner
>barcelona.com stolen, stmoritz.com stays. What's uniform about the UDRP?
>We could ask ICANN to send WIPO a clue, but do they have any to spare?
>Get active: http://www.tldlobby.com
>--
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Esther Dyson                    Always make new mistakes!
chairman, EDventure Holdings
writer, Release 3.0 (on Website below)
edyson@edventure.com
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New York, NY 10011 USA
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