IP: Wired: Congress to Enter ICANN Fray

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

I will be writing an IP Editorial (rare events) this weekend giving my views
on the current situation with ICANN. As a early participant in the planning
for an organization , as an advisor to Jon Postel, I will try to put some
context to the current mess and suggest some rational ways out.

Dave


------ Forwarded Message
From: Richard Forno <rforno@infowarrior.org>
Organization: www.infowarrior.org
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 09:37:39 -0500
To: <farber@cis.upenn.edu>
Subject: Wired: Congress to Enter ICANN Fray


(Wired article exerpt follows)

All I can say, is it's about time we got some fresh air and sunlight into
the secretive bedchambers of the runaway frieght train known as ICANN.
Congress needs to take a good, hard, and objective look at ICANN's past
actions, policies, and questionable practices, lest it become a miniature
Enron-in-the-making.

I was talking to a few folks last week....does anyone else  wonder why they
picked Ghana - a very, very remote place on Earth - to have their Board
Meeting.....to discuss the controversial Lynn Plan? Could it be ICANN didn't
want much "interested media" coverage or public attendance at this
monumental meeting?  (The feeds from the meeting go up and down like a yo
yo, by the way, further muddying the waters.) Conspiracy theories
abound.....

ICANN, in its current (or proposed) form  - except for a small number of
folks on their Board - appears to be a corrupt, unqualified, one-sided
"Bannana Republic" model of governance that is stereotypically equated to
small, tropical dictatorships in the Caribbean.

rick
infowarrior.org



> Congress to Enter ICANN Fray
> By Declan McCullagh
> 
> 2:00 a.m. March 14, 2002 PST
> 
> WASHINGTON -- Official Washington's post-Sept. 11 preoccupation with
> heightened security measures has finally extended to the underlying structure
> of the Internet.
> 
> The U.S. Congress is planning oversight hearings to investigate the Internet
> Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the troubled nonprofit
> organization tasked by the Clinton administration with overseeing domain names
> and Internet addresses.
> 
> One reason for the heightened scrutiny of ICANN is a controversial proposal
> that the group's president circulated in advance of this week's meeting in
> Accra, Ghana. The turmoil it created exposed how public support for ICANN --
> never all that strong -- has waned since the organization's creation in 1998.
> 
> For U.S. politicos who have erected their political careers on promises of
> stability and security, the prospect of radical changes to a body that
> oversees the sensitive areas of addresses and domain names is something less
> than palatable.
> 
> "More fundamental questions also need to be addressed, such as whether ICANN
> is even the most appropriate organization to be tasked with such a critical
> mission, which is central to our national security," wrote Sen. Conrad Burns
> (R-Montana) in a letter asking for hearings.
> 
> Another reason for the hearings, which the House Commerce committee has
> promised and the Senate Commerce committee is weighing, are long-standing
> complaints about ICANN's lack of accountability. It has refused to let one of
> its own board members review its financial information, and many anti-tax
> Republicans remember ICANN's abortive plans to levy fees on anyone who owns a
> domain name.
> 
> < snip >
> 
> http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,51041,00.html



------ End of Forwarded Message

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