More Questions while waiting for Esther Dyson's Answer...

[usdh@smtp1.ncal.verio.com (steve)]

2/4/99

TO: Esther Dyson, Chair, ICANN

FROM: Stephen J. Page, President, Internet .A-.Z Name Registry, a
California Corporation
T: 925-454-8624

RE: Still waiting for your answers to some very important questions...

Dear Esther,
        It's been about a week and one-half now since I asked some
questions directly of you in an open email forum so that all participants
could get a better feel for the thinking behind the actions of their
appointed "leaders".  The questions were only the tip of an iceberg of
questions which seem to be important for every informed person to know.  I
will repeat them again, in case you've been distracted by doing ICANN's PR
deals, and I've added some more below as I've wondered about what ICANN is
hoping to accomplish.

Last Week's Questions were:
Esther, early CommerceNet was an attempt at a monopoly. It failed. You have
consistently publicly supported it. Why? Do you have any business
relationship with CommerceNet? Does Edventure? Whose interests do you
represent among the dues paying CommerceNet members? Same question for
Edventure? How many companies are your clients? Edventure's clients? Will
you disclose any relationships there? If so, who are they? If not, why not?
...In the interest of transparency, I would like to know.

        I still wait patiently for your answers to these questions above,
which are not personal, but principled in nature.  If anyone else were in
the same position as you, I would ask them similar questions, and expect a
prompt reply.  Any other response or lack of response would lead one to
conclude that the person has something to hide.  In the White Paper's
interest of openness and transparency, we all have a right to know, since
you are "managing" the process.  Anything short of forthrightness will not
be acceptable.
        IF you continue to ignore these questions which focus on any
potential role which special interests might or might not be playing in
your manipulative decision-making, you lose credibility and trust, because
by abstaining from answering, you assault the required openness and
transparency principles.
        Sending up trial balloons to unsophisticated reporters like the San
Jose Mercury News' Plotnikoff to write adoring PR pieces on ICANN leaders
(who are unresponsive to input, therefore not open, nor transparent), and
the recent hiring of professional media manipulators like Ogilvy under the
guise of "outreach and education" to begin a clear end-around mass-market
"brand-building" campaign for ICANN, skirts the more important issues,
which I have tried to raise in the spirit of openness and transparency.
        As ICANN clearly struggles in its uphill climb to gain acceptance
from the very people who have invested thousands of hours over several year
period to shape its existence, not meeting the difficult questions head-on
does nobody any favors in the long term.  The questions will not go away.
They will only increase in their intensity, and your PR-related actions
will be fueling the fire.
        Your recent shift into PR has me asking THIS WEEK'S QUESTIONS:

1. Why would the Board go "outside" of the community to find an
organization which would need to be educated by you first before it had a
clue what it needs to do?  Why wouldn't you seek out talent from within the
community of talented and committed people who are participating in the
shaping of the ICANN process?  Many of the participants have ideas which
are recognized to be valuable.  What are ICANN's motivations?  The Interim
Board Members' individual motivations?  Please break them down into detail
so that we can analyze what is happening, and why it is happening at this
particular time.

2. As far as I can tell, ICANN does not have "buy-in" from the "community"
yet, which at this point can be described as self-selected and interested
people with an interest in shaping the process, so "What is it that Ogilvy
is going to "reach-out" and "educate" the public about, specifically?

3.Isn't "outreach" placing the cart before the horse?  It seems so.  That
seems to be a useful thing to do once the "design and construction phase"
is completed.  Is your interest in obtaining more public input into the
process?  It seems to me that the Board does not respond to the comments
that it receives from the self-selected group of participants, so why seek
more participation?  What is the rationale of the Interim Board's seeking
to do this now?  Which Members support the move?  Who dissents?  What are
the reasons behind their support/dissent?  I could see a reason to seek
more IF the process was truly open and transparent, but it is not.  It
seems to me that it is ORSC or IICIU are better positioned to manage an
outreach and education program, not ICANN.

4.Normally someone has something to market before they go into a full-blown
PR/marketing program.  ORSC has "openness and root servers".  What is ICANN
marketing?  Why was Ogilvy chosen to do the job for ICANN?  Was there
competition or was Ogilvy selected by some other method?  Who did the
selecting? Did the selection involve any payback for things unrelated to
the task?

5. What job will Ogilvy be specifically doing?  Can anyone do it cheaper?
Can anyone do it better? Has the brainstorming session already been held
with the "idea people"?  If not, how can you answer these questions? If so,
what are their ideas?  What are the targeted demographics to be reached?
How many impressions are they going to create?  What media will they use?
What is the cost per impression?  Who is going to pay the fee?  What is the
Return on Investment (ROI)?  If Ogilvy is doing this pro bono, what
promises have been made to them regarding their Return on Investment?

6. What benefit do you envision accruing by shifting your energies to "spin
doctoring" by professional PR firms, if the actions are clearly designed to
skirt issues which require openness and transparency in order to build
trust from within the group of interested, committed, Internet community
participants.

        These are just a few of the questions that a professional market
analyst and network architecture design professional might ask IF given the
chance at professional dialogue with the professionals who are apparently
running the show while thumbing their noses (at least recently) at the
principles of open, honest, and transparent communications.
        Inquiring minds want to know...because it builds trust...

Respectfully and with Great Interest,

Stephen J. Page

(c) Copyright, 1999.  Stephen J. Page.  All Rights Reserved.


Questions of Esther Dyson were taken from the following text sent in
response to ICANN's "lottery" trial balloon.

1/25/98

TO: Esther Dyson, Chair, ICANN

FROM: Stephen J. Page, President, Internet .A-.Z Name Registry, a
California Corporation
T: 925-454-8624

RE: DNS Lotto: Dead Man Walking

Dear Esther,

As the ICANN PR engines begin to send up trial balloons (SJ Mercury News
reports that ICANN "May" Have a Lottery) and ICANN rolls forward to its
destiny (it seems), I wanted to echo Simon's position below that ignoring
the history as you have done is dangerous and likely to end in failure.

As Mike Roberts was quoted in the San Jose Mercury News yesterday as saying
there is only one chance for ICANN to do it right. If that is true, as the
well-connected politically astute guy that he is, (I think we should
believe him), then the path that is being chosen has been shown by Simon to
have been pursued unsuccessfully already, does not have a high probability
of success.

Simon states correctly that certain principles apply at all levels. If
competition is what is desired, (the word has been used dating all of the
way back to 1995/96) then those who have prepared for competition, by
incorporating, by developing business strategies and marketing materials,
by deploying infrastructure, will be damaged by a lottery. If they have
been misled to believe that competition is the desired result, when it
really isn't, then they will be damaged by ICANN's new direction. In either
case, the result is damage.

A lottery is not competitive. A lottery is random. It is chance. (It's not
competition, though.) A lottery with a high barrier to entry, is much
worse. It represents corporate welfare under the guise of competition and
it will fail. It has been proven to fail, and it will fail again because it
violates the evolution and design of all network systems. (More later, if
you would like on that topic.)

Your proposal for a lottery, if implemented will be a new incarnation of a
concept which was proven to be flawed when it was tried the first time by
CommerceNet in 1994. I witnessed it firsthand and I studied why it failed.
I was involved as the writer of a grant. Our grant was a small business
innovation research grant (SBIR), and we were doing research into how
networks commercialize, and I learned important lessons that ICANN's
leaders have not learned yet, apparently. If Mike Roberts is correct about
having one chance only, then everyone had better learn quickly.

As the project manager of one of two DARPA Network Architecture grants (the
other one being CommerceNet, which was a proposal made by Enterprise
Integration Technologies, now a division of HP) we were interested in
participating in CommerceNet consortium which was to bring a competitive
marketplace into existence. CommerceNet never accomplished its mission.
Why? The self-interest paradigm unleashed by Mosaic Communications (now
Netscape) let every individual become a distributor of a "free" browser,
which left no reason for CommerceNet to exist anymore. That same principle
applies to ICANN's situation today and you'll see why.

CommerceNet's design was fundamentally flawed. ICANN is pursuing the exact
same strategy. (IAHC pursued the exact same strategy and ignored the
lessons which I sent to them as well.) CommerceNet was designed to benefit
the biggest companies, while excluding the small ones. (Corporate welfare
at its monopolistic worst.) Its strategy was to *manage* the roll-out of
commercialization of the Internet by charging exhorbitant membership fees
to those who could afford to pay them, creating a high barrier to entry for
everyone but the big, strong, and economically powerful. Netscape's
strategy won. They reduced the barrier to entry and made their value "free"
in the short term, which enabled millions of others to benefit. What
Netscape demonstrated was that only the small, the innovative, the
inventive, can create true competition, (Wall Street is still rewarding
Internet entrepreneurship, BTW).

Esther, clearly, the key to the path forward lies in harnessing the nature
of what makes entrepreneurship happen...self-interest. However, if one
looks at who comprises ICANN's Board, it is primarily large-company
interests. Therefore, it is no surprise to me, having watched CommerceNet's
membership assemble, and IAHC's insiders disband, that there is a strong
sense of deja vu...the ICANN process is being steered transparently by
forces whose agenda is clear to anyone who has seen them fail before.

As I have mentioned before, I have been one the many entrepreneurs who has
taken the up-front innovative, intellectual and creative risks to try and
create *choice* where non exists, only to have the opportunity blocked by
apparently powerful interests that are unelected by anyone, and appointed
by unelected persons. All I have ever received from you in my many emails
has been silence, a "Huh?" reply, and nothing substantive. On top of that,
Mike Roberts has never returned phone messages left for him. Would that
happen if I were Dun & Bradstreet? Bull? HP?

Although I may be one of a very small minority whom Mike Roberts dismisses
as a very small vocal fringe, what I represent is something much
bigger...the opportunity of one person to innovate and compete,
incorporate, to protect intellectual property, and to serve customers by
increasing choice among alternatives to how people use language on the
Internet.

Esther, how you and the Board will move in the next several months will
unveil to all who want to know exactly who you are, and who is pulling the
strings of ICANN. I am hoping for a magic movement toward true competition,
but based upon the interests of your constituency, there is little hope. I
hope you prove my instincts wrong.

Esther, you have been a clear supporter and promoter of CommerceNet, and
they were the beginning of this process of a commercial Internet. But they
failed. It is also no surprise to me that Mike Roberts is the
President/CEO, because he has represented the institutional interests of
hundreds of traditional universities (which have had no competition), at a
time when small educational companies were gearing to provide distance
learning capability, which threatens traditional institutions' monopolies.
Mike Roberts is an institutional monopolist's best friend, (which makes him
an entrepreneur's worst enemy.) Is that the man to run ICANN? Nope. He may
be a great politician, a great organizer, a very astute guy, but he doesn't
know how to usher in competition anywhere, and he especially does not know
how to build trust. His record demonstrates that he is exactly the sort of
"status quo" person who will be "routed around" by the Internet because he
has functioned entirely within institutional structures. He is apparently
unresponsive to all but his narrow constituency, which is not what an
economic or social network system is.

Esther, early CommerceNet was an attempt at a monopoly. It failed. You have
consistently publicly supported it. Why? Do you have any business
relationship with CommerceNet? Does Edventure? Whose interests do you
represent among the dues paying members? Same for Edventure? How many
companies are your clients? Edventure's clients? Will you disclose any
relationships there? If so, who are they? If not, why not?

This question is not directed to you personally, but as the Chair of the
Interim Board. Whether you have any relationships or interests or not does
not really matter, because you may be functioning as the "front" person who
at least has the courtesy to respond to some queries on behalf of the
interests that we do know about, all of the Interim Board members and their
companies. In the interest of transparency, I would like to know.

Esther, the same questions apply to Mike Roberts as President/CEO of ICANN.
Mr. Roberts' Internet2 can be viewed as a great thing for Universities
(institutions) but also as a monopolistic attempt to protect universities
against the competition which the Internet creates against domination of
knowledge by controlling institutions. As the San Jose Mercury reported
yesterday, Mike Roberts *led* Internet2. On the more subtle level,
Internet2 has been a transparent attempt to apply the principles of
classism and elitism to the Internet, by using speed as a competitive
advantage which only institutional funders can benefit from. The Internet
enables anyone be a publisher of knowledge for anyone else to consume, but
Internet2, Mike Roberts' baby creates a second class. Clearly, the
institutions have something to fear, and Mike has been the man to organize
their protection scheme, and grease the funding for their exclusive
network, all under the guise of a faster Internet. What is ICANN's real
agenda? Esther, those of us who will be damaged by ICANN policies want to
know.

Finally, ICANN has the same exact opportunity that CommerceNet once had, to
lower the barriers, to allow innovation, entrepreneurship, and bring choice
to everyone who is interested in choice, but it appears that the same exact
strategic mistakes once made, will be made again. Please prove that you can
learn from recent and very relevant history.

If not, ICANN's fate is sealed. ICANN is a Dead Man Walking (reference to
the movie). As Simon said, it's all been done wrong before. Let's do it
right. Level the playing field...reduce the barriers to entry...eliminate
the unseen hand of special interests...and learn from history...for
starters.


Respectfully,


Stephen J. Page, Member ORSC
Internet .A-.Z Name Registry
& U.S. Data Highway Corp.
T: 925-454-8624

(c) Copyright, 1999. Stephen J. Page. All Rights Reserved.






>Esther,

>Thank you for your reply.

>This process has a history of broken expectations running back since 1995.
>A while back you expressed an opinion on the IFWP list that you weren't
>interested in the history of the TLD process, since it was irrelevant. If
>you were prepared to learn a little about the previous efforts, you would
>not be making the same mistakes that previous organizations, like the
>IAHC, made.

>Domain delegations are not derived from a lottery process, and neither are
>registration authorities. There is a formal application process already in
>place - RFC1591 - which has not yet been superceded. There is also a long
>list of TLD registry applicants, who used the RFC1591 process, and have
>been ignored. What you have failed to grasp is the recursive nature of any
>domain registration. Certain principles apply at all levels, whether they
>are TLDs, SLDs, 3LDs, or below.

>The IAHC decided to hold a lottery for registrars around it's monopoly
>registry, and the internet community said it was the wrong thing to do, so
>it opened up the registrar process to all comers. This is consistent with
>current policy. But what it still failed to do was listen to the internet
>community and open up the registry side to competition, by allowing
>multiple registrars access to multiple TLD registries.

>"Not for the long term" is a phrase that creates much distrust in the
>internet community, since previous efforts have deliberately used that to
>implement permanent policy. It's been commented on elsewhere that ICANN is
>also making the same mistake as IAHC in alienating their best allies.
>While you may have only noticed a lot of criticism, your best allies are
>actually the ones who have independently developed "rough consensus and
>running code", and who are contributing competing policy documents in the
>interests of openness. Unfortunately, the DNSO as it currently stands is
>burdened with the baggage and failed expectations of [failed] IAHC
>process.

>Best Regards,

>Simon Higgs
>WWW Architect
>DCMDW


>-----Original Message-----
>From: edyson@edventure.com [mailto:edyson@edventure.com] Sent: Saturday,
>January 23, 1999 10:48 PM To: Higgs, Simon
>Cc: 'discuss@dnso.org'
>Subject: Re: FW: [dnsproc-en] DNS Lotto: You Gotta Be In It To Win It


>Simon -

>As we have said, we welcome your comments. What specifically was stupid?
>How could we improve things?

>Note that we are considering the lottery idea for the SRS *test* for
>registrars (not for the registry; the article was confusing), and not for
>the long term.

>Yours trying to listen,
>Esther Dyson

>At 03:00 PM 22/01/99 -0600, Higgs, Simon wrote:

>>Here we go again.

>>Didn't the IAHC try something similarly stupid? They failed due to the
>>overwhelming objections from the internet community, and consequently
>opened
>>the registrar business up to all-comers who would stoop low enough to
>>sign the gTLD-MoU.

>>Someone tell me that it's not the same people that pulled the IAHC
>>strings, now pulling ICANN's strings?

>>History repeats itself when no-one listens.

>>Best Regards,

>>Simon Higgs
>>WWW Architect
>>DCMDW


>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Martin B. Schwimmer [mailto:martys@interport.net] Sent: Friday,
>>January 22, 1999 6:46 AM
>>To: list@ifwp.org; discuss@ndso.org
>>Cc: dnsproc-en@wipo2.wipo.int
>>Subject: [dnsproc-en] DNS Lotto: You Gotta Be In It To Win It


>>New York Times - Friday Jan 22, page C4

>>Lottery May Decide Competition in Internet Name System

>>by Jeri Clausing

>>The nonprofit board charged with opening the Internet domain-name
>>registration business to competition is leaning toward an international
>>lottery to pick the five companies that will get the first shot at ending
>>the Government-sancitioned monopoly held by NSI, the Board chairman said.
>>

>>Esther Dyson, interim chairman .... "said this week that she expected the
>>selection process to be complete and that the registry for the three most
>>popopular top-level domains ... would be open to competition by the end
>>of April.

>>.....



>Esther Dyson   Always make new mistakes!
>chairman, EDventure Holdings
>interim chairman, Internet Corp. for Assigned Names & Numbers
>edyson@edventure.com
>1 (212) 924-8800
>1 (212) 924-0240 fax
>104 Fifth Avenue (between 15th and 16th Streets; 20th floor) New York, NY
>10011 USA
>http://www.edventure.com

>High-Tech Forum in Europe: October 1999, Budapest PC Forum: 21 to 24 March
>1999, Scottsdale (Phoenix), Arizona Book: "Release 2.0: A design for
>living in the digital age"