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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 269
Netizens-Digest Saturday, February 6 1999 Volume 01 : Number 269
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
Re: [netz] Re: A Call to Arms?
Re: [netz] FYI: my posts re: THEYCANST
[netz] Re: Competition; was Re: [Membership] ICANN: The Issue of Membership---
[netz] Re: thy grammar
[netz] Public Relations and ICANN't
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 17:02:01 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] Re: A Call to Arms?
Craig Simon <cls@flywheel.com> wrote:
>
>>Ronda Hauben wrote:
>
>>[much snipped]
>
>> IANA was under DARPA and DARPA was responsible for what went on in IANA.
>> And the DoD folks were responsible. There was a line of responsibility
>> backed up by penalties for abuse.
>
>Well, of course Postel would have been penalized for crimes like
>embezzlement if such things had occurred, but you have been missing the
>fact that he had a very free hand. As RFC editor and in his other
This is where the difference between us seems to lie.
Postel worked at the University of Southern California for ISI
and was working under a contract from DARPA. It wasn't that
he had a free hand. He was working under a government contract
with the obligations that come with that.
>functions he saw himself as answerable to the Internet community. USG
>oversight provided a certain set of circumstances, yes, but Postel's
>agenda had much more to do with building up ISOC and a global Internet.
Well it is hard to discuss Postel's agenda, but it isn't thatPostel
was responsible for the fact that the U.S. government was terminating
the IANA contract before there was any other structure to provide
for the proper functioning and running of IANA.
That makes it seem as if it was basically blackmail of the IANA
folks to go along with the privatization plan, or else they
were out of a job and the IANA functions wouldn't be performed.
If the U.S. government had a legitimate plan for privatization
and the authority then they could have funded IANA under
DARPA as they worked out the details.
They didn't do that.
But it isn't even clear who the "they" is that planned all this
and is carrying it out.
>
>> This is all being thrown to the wind by the so called
>> "self governance" model or "private self regulation model"
>> which is essentially setting up a system for abuse as there
>> is only reward for abuse.
>
>There is only reward for abuse??
>
Yes only reward for "abuse" as there is considerable power and sums
of money that are involved in the control of the essential
functions of the Internet and so there will be abuse and there
already is. But there is no penalty for abuse as there are no
laws or institutions to deal with them as there are within government.
For example I am reading about DARPA's functioning and the folks from
various government entities like the Office of Inspector General
come to look over what has been done. And there are penalities
if there are problems.
That isn't true in the ICANN situation. People are being put in
control of enormous power and wealth and they are free to abuse
that situation at will.
This is the opposite of the obligations of government -- there
there are obligations (though we have trouble often having them
carried out. But these mechanisms have been evolved over a long period
of time. And ICANN is throwing all those to the wind and setting
up an entity to be the seat of corruption and power grabbing
and abuse of people's rights and interests.
>>
>> Some of the problem is that NSI was allowed to function in a
>> way that is abusive of the obligations of a government contract.
>>
>> All that they should have been allowed to do was to have an
>> administrative fee *not* a way to make profit, from the registrations.
>>
>> So there was a probelm that had to be solved, and instead of it being
>> solved it was used by the U.S. government as a power play to
>> make a much worse problem for those who depend on and understand
>> the importance of the Internet.
>>
>> >oversight was once coordinated through agencies of the USG, but the
>> >private entities (peers) which constitute the nodes, intersections, and
>>
>> Not "private" entities. There are all sorts of entities, but in general
>> they are autonomous networks that join together to communicate.
>> (Many are public or related to public entities like government or
>> universities, etc.)
>
>OK, autonomous, but the vast portion of it is privately funded.
>
>
What is this privtely funded? The entities that are commecial entities
are often funded by their users - the nonprofit entieis are funded
in all sorts of ways including public funding, and government networks
are funded by government funding.
There are all kinds of networks that are part ofthe Intenret - that
is why it is an internet.
>> >.highways of the Internet looked to the IANA for guidance regarding
>> >standard operatiing procedures, and tended to interact within
>> >IETF-inspired venues when they wanted those procedures to be changed.
>>
>> But the whole process was under obligation to be legitimate that
>> the U.S. government DoD oversight and responsibility for IANA
>> provided.
>
>I don't understand that sentence, but I think you're repeating your
>assertion that everyone was supposed to follow orders of the DoD. That
>simply isn't true. NSF and DOD were seeding things, watering them with a
>little money, and were happy to see them grow without need for constant
>attention.
I didn't say anything about "following orders of the DoD". I am
talking about how the U.S. Department of Defense and NSF are
entities of the U.S. government. There are proceedures for
oversight of all that gets done with regard to their activities.
The NSF oversight process broke down with their ignoring the
Office of Inspector General Report of Feb. 7, 1997.
The point I am making is that it isn't any "seeding or watering"
that grew the Internet, it is that it was funded by a
great deal of public funding, it was developed under DARPA
and then NSF and these were active processes, with oversight
by other U.S. government entities and that the Internet was
born and grew up as a result of an active and important
process by the U.S. government and under the U.S. government
and the U.S. computer scientists who set the basis and
worked on it.
And continuing this development of the Internet requries understanding
these actual processes, not speculating that there was only some "seeding"
or "watering".
There was also an acceptible use policy both under DARPA
and under NSF (under DARPA it was something like no personal gain)
that provided protection for the computer scientists working
on the ARPANET and Internet so they could challenge the commercial
interests who tried to interfere with their work or with providing
the best technical decisions.
>
>> >That community, as you know, has been attempting for over three years to
>> >terminate NSI's commercial monopoly on .com, .net and, .org
>> >registrations. In my view, that community has also been rather noble and
>> >forthright in attempting to establish new sorts of DNS oversight
>>
>> That community has *not* in general been attempting to do anything.
>>
>> A small group has been trying to (at the instigation of the U.S. govt)
>> get themselves a piece of the NSI pie, but not to identify or solve
>> the problems.
>
>You are simply missing the point that the different camps in this debate
>bring to different interests to the table. There are material reasons
>that companies like Cisco, MCI and Sun are promoters of ISOC, and
>consequently why the IAHC/IETF positioned itself against NSI, and the
>proprietary registry interests. And you miss the fact the the USG policy
>is driven by rival material impulses and is therefore beset by
>contradictions. It's not some evil conspiracy, just people muddling
>through, inventing ideologies to explain their behaviors.
>
But the U.S. government isn't the "market". It's a government
with obligations to all its people.
The Office of Inspector General of the NSF is part of the government
and it strongly spoke against what is happening.
The serious problem that is revealed in all this is that the U.S.
government seems to be taken over by narrow commercial concerns
rather than having an understanding of the important social issues
that have to be examined before changing the means of oversight
and ownership and control of central and essential functions of
the Internet.
The problem is the U.S. government and I am trying to understand
better where that problem comes from in U.S. government.
Who in the U.S. government wants ICANN and its abusive and
corrupt structure and to subject the Internet to being
controlled and taken over by ICANN?
This is a very serious matter and it is important that what
is happening come out in the open.
Ronda
ronda@panix.com
Netizens: On the History and Impact
of Usenet and the Internet
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook
also in print edition ISBN 0-8186-7706-6
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 15:01:51 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] FYI: my posts re: THEYCANST
Please forward on to others that the archives of the lists and more
information is available via
http://www.icann.org/membership-com.html
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 18:29:44 -0500 (EST)
From: Ronda Hauben <ronda@panix.com>
Subject: [netz] Re: Competition; was Re: [Membership] ICANN: The Issue of Membership---
>From membership-owner@ISI.EDU Sat Feb 6 15:18:40 1999
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To: Michael Sondow <msondow@iciiu.org>
From: edyson@edventure.com (Esther Dyson)
Subject: Competition; was Re: [Membership] ICANN: The Issue of
Membership---
Cc: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>, membership@icann.org
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 14:57:16 -0500
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Precedence: discussion
Status: RO
edyson@edventure.com (Esther Dyson) wrote:
>Excuse me. In every market I know where telecom has been privatized and
>rendered competitive, prices have gone down. And generally, service has
>even improved!
Not our service in NYC. And the pay phones in NYC are a disaster.
And even the WSJ has run an article about the corrupt processes
of telecoms in the U.S. transferring people to their services without
the people's permission.
The number of junk phone calles has incrreased many folk.
And in the U.S. we lost Bell Labs which was where Unix was created and
the transistor created because the obligation on the regulated
AT&T was to have the highest level of technology which is
what creates the lowest prices.
My paper distributed at the Jan 23, 1999 Berkman Center meeting
"The Internet: A New Communications Paradigm" documents the
discussion recently on Usenet about this problem in the U.S.
of the U.S. government destroying basic research and attacking
important entities like Bell Labs.
The paper is at
http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/internet.txt
And the discussion about Bell Labs is at
http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/discussion.txt
All this is lost in the U.S. with the privatization.
The change at AT&T from mechanical to electronic switching
was what made phone service in the U.S. one of the best
systems. That change required being able to program millions
of lines of code and the work done at AT&T developing UNIX
and UNIX toolsmade this difficult technical challenge doable.
This is documented in the book I co-authored "Netizens: On
the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet" chapter
9. The book is published in a print edition by IEEE Computer
Society Press. And a draft of the book is online at
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120
Chapter 9 is "On the Early History and Impact of Unix:
Tools to Build the Tools for the New Millennium"
The myth that "competition" and "so called market" bring
better telephone service is the grandest myth of the
deregulated telecoms.
It is the basic research creating the most advanced
technology that has proven in the U.S. to create the
world class phone system. And basic research is
by government or in the case of AT&T and Bell Labs, was
that the rates were set by the govt to provide for basic
research that went on at Bell Labs.
Private companies don't and won't support such basic
research.
So the myth of the "market" is the myth to keep in place
the old technology and the high prices and to rob the
future by robbing the kind of new technology that will bring
the future.
The Internet is another product of the support fby government
for basic research and the Internet continues to need the
protection and support for its development and scaling that
those at DARPA gave it in its birth and early development.
The U.S. government, howevers, seems to be promoting the
spread of the deregulated U.S. phone companies around the world rather
than supporting needed growth and development of the Internet.
It seems that first Bell Labs was sacrificed and now it is to
be the Internet. And ICANN is the mechanism of attacking the
Internet.
d
>THe countries I know well are the US, UK, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary,
>Russia...... Which ones are *you* referring to?
I know about the U.S. and particularly NYC and we have much
worse phone service and are paying much more since the deregualtion
of AT&T. But maybe home phone users are not what you are referring
to. Maybe you are only referring to big corporate entities.
I don't know how they have done with the breakup of the U.s.
phone company, but for the home user it is disasterous.
And those hoping to find a working pay phone in often have a
very hard time.
>Esther
Also the Office of Inspector General's Report for Feb. 7, 1997
about the problem with the DNS said that the Internet needed
to have its scaling overseen by those with the kind of scientific
knowledge (and I would add the scientific methodoloy) that built the
Internet.
ICANN is exactly what the Internet needs to be protected from
if it is to continue to grow and flourish.
Instead of the U.S. government figuring out how to solve the probleml of
scaling tyhe Internet, they created an entity that welcomed the
commercial and political pressures to fight it out to gain
control and squelch the communication functions of the Internet.
The MoU at the NTIA says there is only to be a design and test
process ongoing, but instead there is a secret time table
that someone in the U.S. govt is carrying out despite any
authority to do so. Also Commerce Committee Bliley's letter
to the U.S. Dept of Commerce asked them to provide the authority by
which they can transfer such valuable and controlling assets
of the Internet to a private entity.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at the NTIA in Nov. 1998
didn't provide any authority to transfer any assets. It only
provided auhtority of the Dept of commerce to make contracts.
Thus there is no authority for ICANN or what ICANN is doing.
So who is creating it and for what purpose are questions that
have to be answered.
There are those trying to use the Internet as a cheap way of
their making millions off of telephony, despite the fact that
this will destroy the Internet as a new means of computer-
human-to-human communication.
Thus the old is trying to resurrect itself and take
over the new.
Obviously this is an important battle, and that the forces behind
the creation and development of ICANN hide so carefully shows
the illegitimacy of what they are doing.
Ronda
ronda@panix.com
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 07:39:04 -0004
From: kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)
Subject: [netz] Re: thy grammar
> Re: [netz] FYI: my posts re: THEYCANST
thou canst, maybe, but they cant is thy better choice ;-)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 18:55:08 -0500 (EST)
From: Jay Hauben <jay@dorsai.org>
Subject: [netz] Public Relations and ICANN't
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 12:39:56 -0500
From: Gordon Cook <cook@cookreport.com>
Subject: How much does ICANN PAY Ogilvy to "Create the right perception"?
Esther, Is ogilvy doing this for free? For a discount or at its regular
rates? how much *ARE* you pasying them for their slippery sleight of hand.
Here in their own words from their own web site is their methodology for
helping outfits like ICANN, outfits in trouble with alienated publics,
doctor their "images". Not change mind you....NOT serve their publics, but
serve THEMSELVES and whatever secret agendas they are pursuing.
This is the normal PR approach to putting a friendly face on a dictator or
a carcinogen.
______________
Ogilvy PR Public affairs: http://www.ogilvypr.com/public_affairs/pubaffrs.html
Form an alliance. Affect an opinion. Create the right perception. When your
voice needs to be heard, turn to the Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide
Public Affairs Practice.
The Public Affairs Practice is skilled in managing public perception and
influencing the attitudes of policymakers. The Practice is comprised of
experts with extensive experience in government, journalism, Corporate and
interest group advocacy. Employing a range of tactics from media relations
to grassroots outreach, the Public Affairs Practice can develop and execute
custom-made strategies for your communications challenge.
Our Public Affairs Practice understands the power of coalitions. Working
with clients whose missions differ but whose goals concur, we have built
and managed non-traditional coalitions for major American industries,
including health care, steel,energy, defense and forest products. The
result of this approach is a broader base of support for the client's
message.
Finding resources for effective public affairs strategies demands creative
solutions. Our Public Affairs Practice realizes that within every employee,
member or associate, there exists a potential advocate. By using local and
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Communicating effectively to a skeptical audience can require the support
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advance its position through other voices.
***************************************************************************
The COOK Report on Internet 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA
(609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) cook@cookreport.com http://www.cookreport.com
NOTE: Contempt in which ICANN PRES. MIKE ROBERTS holds rest of Internet:
"Some of those people think the management [ICANN] should check with the
public [the Communities of the Internet] every time they make a decision,
which is crazy," Roberts said. "That's flat-out crazy." WIRED NEWS 2/4/99
***************************************************************************
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End of Netizens-Digest V1 #269
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