IP: Re: ICANN Board proposing to extend its term

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

>Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 12:14:54 -0800
>To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
>From: Ellen Rony <erony@marin.k12.ca.us>
>Subject: Re: IP: ICANN Board proposing to extend its term
>
>Mr. Farber:
>
>Since you posted ICANN's proposal to extend the terms of its interim board
>members, perhaps your list would be interested the response I submitted to
>ICANN on August 21.  Comments may be submitted to ICANN at
><comment-initial-director-term@icann.org>  To date, my response is the only
>one ICANN has received.
>
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>What is the justification for extending the terms of this interim,
>unelected and unaccountable board?  The participation of the majority of
>the board members on public comment lists is abyssmal to non-existent.
>Without intervention of the Department of Commerce, this board would
>continue to hold its meetings in private.   Of greater concern, this board
>is developing policy directives that will affect millions of Internet users
>before it has even completed building its own foundation.
>
>Neither the at-large membership nor the DNSO constituencies, are complete.
>To date, only commercial and infrastructure representation has been
>annointed by the ICANN board, but the issues are being moved forward on a
>fast track. Its bylaws keep changing, and in one case, new rules have been
>applied retroactively.  And this board's idea of a bottom-up
>self-organizing process is to tell the DNS community who may have a voice
>in the policy recommendations.
>
>IMHO, this unelected and unaccountable board should not make a single
>decision that is unrelated to the development of the structure of the
>organization. It should focus *solely* on setting up its foundation and the
>mechanisms that will allow us to vote in replacement members of the board.
>
>Many of us do not trust this board.  And given the broad and vocal
>complaints about how the board members came to hold their positions, about
>ICANN's unsupportable claims of community consensus, its failure to hold
>open meetings, its blatant conflicts of interest, and its general hubris in
>promulgating policy that touches individual domain name registrants (not
>just registries and registrars), I believe continuing the terms of the
>interim directors will not be in the best interest of this privatization
>process and simply prolong the DNS community's collective pain.
>
>
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Ellen Rony                                          The Domain Name Handbook
>Co-author		           ____        http://www.domainhandbook.com
>==========================     ^..^     )6     =============================
>ISBN 0879305150                (oo) -^--                   +1 (415) 435-5010
>erony@marin.k12.ca.us              W   W                         Tiburon, CA
>               DOT COM is the Pig Latin of the Information Age
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