IP: New Web Site to Monitor ICANN

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

>Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 12:44:38 -0400
>To: farber@central.cis.upenn.edu (Dave Farber)
>From: David Post <Postd@erols.com>
>
>New Web Site to Monitor ICANN
>
>Check out http://www.icannwatch.org/
>
>Edited by David Post, Michael Froomkin and Dave Farber, ICANN Watch will 
>serve as a forum for understandingof, and informed debate about,
>ICANN's role in managing the Domain Name System. 
>
>Reorganization of the Domain Name System, far from being an arcane
>technical detail of Internet engineering, is a pivotal event in the
>history of the Internet. 
>
>Whoever controls the DNS will be subject to immense pressure to stray
>far beyond any limited technical functions because the domain name
>system is the one place where enforceable global Internet policy can be
>promulgated without any of the messy enforcement and jurisdictional
>problems that bedevil ordinary law-making exercises on the Net.
>Businesses, which now realize the huge economic stake they have in this
>medium, and governments, which have spent the last few years worrying
>about how they would ever get back their taxing and  regulatory
>authority over Internet transactions, will view ICANN as the means to
>impose their particular vision on Internet users worldwide. 
>
>With so much at stake, how can we be assured that ICANN will be able to
>resist the pressure that will be brought to bear upon it? Where are the
>checks on the new corporation's exercise of its powers? How can all of
>those with a stake in the Internet's future i.e., all of us -- be
>assured that ICANN will exercise its powers in the best interests of
>the Internet community as a whole, rather than on behalf of one
>particular faction or another? 
>
>ICANN Watch will serve as a forum for understanding and informed debate
>about the implications of ICANN's activities. We have no particular
>viewpoint to push or axes to grind; we will offer commentary and
>criticism from a wide variety of different perspectives, guided only by
>our belief in the power of ideas and informed discussion and debate to
>shape events and institutions. 
>
>We hope you'll check it out.
>
>David Post
>