RE: [wg-d] determining the make up of working group D

["Antony Van Couvering" <avc@interport.net>]

Randy, good move.  I think putting our cards on the table will do a lot of
things, including helping us be a little more civil than the usual sewer of
insults that DNS lists seem to become.

- I'm American, though I grew up in Africa and England and spent 3 adult
years in France.  I have a degree in comparative literature from Columbia
University in New York City, where I still live.  My wife is a District
Attorney in Manhattan.  I don't have any kids.

- Before getting involved in domain name issues, I ran a company called La
Vue Le Texte which put together writers and artists and published the
resulting books bilingually in Europe and the U.S.  If it matters, some of
the people I worked with included Gilles Deleuze, Michel Butor, Barbet
Schroeder, Eric Fischl, David Salle, Willem de Kooning, Emil Cioran, among
others.  I also edited six books for HarperCollins from the posthumous works
of Joseph Campbell, the scholar of mythology and comparative religion, and
worked with George Lucas (a Campbell fan) in preserving and copying 50 years
of Campbell's recorded lectures and notes.  For many years I worked in the
restaurant business.

- I was the founder of NetNames USA, which grew up as a separate company
from NetNames UK, with which it eventually merged.  This was a domain
registration company.

- I was the founding chair of the Policy Advisory Body within the gTLD-MoU,
a post now occupied by Kent Crispin, although I don't think the PAB really
functions anymore.  During my tenure there I had lots of disagreements with
the Policy Oversight Committee.  Mostly I didn't like the secretive and
defensive nature of the POC, which I believe was the main cause for its
downfall.

- I am now president of a company called NameEngine, which registers domain
names in ccTLDs on behalf of third parties, usually larger companies who are
worried about trademark protection.

- I'm President of the IATLD, which is an assocation of ccTLDs from small
and developing countries, and which has had as its initial mission the
preservation of RFC 1591 as the foundation, basis, and authorization by
which TLDs are delegated (and re-delegated) and managed.  We've been very
noisy about ICANN even thinking about imposing new rules on ccTLDs, we
believe any new rules would have to be seen as a modification of RFC 1591
and should not be constructed out of whole cloth or without the consent of
the ccTLD managers.

- I'm a candidate for the Names Council within the ccTLD constituency.

- I think that the processes for making policy within ICANN will determine
whether it will become a forum for discussion and good policy decisions, or
whether it will become a sham.  I believe that it is already on the road to
becoming the latter.  The roles and responsibilities of the General
Assembly/Working Groups/Names Council are the crucial determinant, which is
why I'm on this working group.

Antony Van Couvering