[117787] in Cypherpunks
November COOK Report part 2 on ICANN
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Fri Sep 10 14:56:50 1999
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Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 14:28:18 -0400
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From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
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Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 02:50:04 -0400
To: com-priv@psi.com, telecomreg@relay.doit.wisc.edu, list@inet-access.net,
CYBERTELECOM-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
From: Gordon Cook <cook@cookreport.com>
Subject: November COOK Report part 2 on ICANN
<x-flowed>ISOC'S ICANN COALITION WIDENS ITS CONTROL
ATTEMPTS TO REGULATE DNS - INVITES TRADEMARK, IP, ITU,
EC, E-COMMERCE INTERESTS TO EXPAND ICANN SCOPE
ICANN ALLOWS PROPERTY RIGHTS & TELCO REGULATORY INTERESTS TO
STRUCTURE SOS TO ENSURE THEIR MAXIMUM ECONOMIC ADVANTAGE
ICANN is moving forward inexorably. Whether it is moving toward
triumph or ready to fall off the cliff remains to be seen. It has
great trouble getting its sense of mission accurately adjutsed. On
June 13th IBM Vice President and GIP officer (with the assistance of
Esther Dyson, Vint Cerf, and Mike Roberts) wrote privately to Silicon
Valley venture capitalists soliciting funds for ICANN. Patrick:
"ICANN is trying to get the policy, technical and financial aspects
of the Internet moved successfully from U.S. government to the
international private sector. Everyone thinks this is a good idea.
In fact, I would say that the future of the Internet is dependent on
the execution of the plan."
Consider carefully his words. Remember that Esther on August 29
chidingly asked Dave Farber not to call ICANN the Internet's
"Oversight Board" since ICANN's purpose was nothing more than dealing
with a subset of technical coordination issues.
Since its establishment last October ICANN has waged a calculated
campaign of deception. But in the last two weeks since ICANN's
regimented Santiago performance, public perception is shifting. It
has waged a stealth campaign designed to get Internet user's hatred
of Network Solutions focused on and supportive of its announced
purpose of ending the NSI monopoly over .com. With less arrogance on
the part of Dyson and Roberts it might have succeeded. However as
ICANN has said one thing and done another, people are beginning to
catch on that its goal is to establish its own monopoly, in place of
that of NSI.
In the September 6th issue of Business Week, Mike France wrote: "if
Esther Dyson & Co. prove that they're able to successfully manage
domain names, then they would be in a strong position to handle more
urgent policy problems such as protecting intellectual property.
While no one is asking ICANN to take on more responsibilities yet,
the group could tackle problems more swiftly than the alternative:
new and untested Internet regulatory agencies."
"The second reason ICANN's influence could grow is that domain names
are starting to be viewed as a potentially powerful method of getting
Netizens to obey the law. When people buy names for their Web sites,
they could be required to sign a detailed contract obligating them to
comply with a certain set of rules governing the sale of products,
the use of someone else's intellectual property, the display of
sexual content-you name it. If they violated the terms of the
contract, they would forfeit the domain name. That may not sound like
a particularly serious penalty, but on the Internet it's a death
sentence."
"While this may sound far-fetched, it appears to be the most
efficient way of enforcing the law on the Net. Already, ICANN is
contemplating forcing applicants for new domain names to agree to a
set of rules blocking so-called cybersquatting-the practice of
registering well-known corporate brand names as domain names before
the actual owners have a chance to do so. [Editor: Blocking much more
than just this. According to its March 99 Registrar Accreditation
Criteria, ICANN could revoke a registrant's domain name for a wide
variety of infractions.]"
"''After all the talk over the past few years about how difficult it
will be to regulate conduct on the Internet,'' says David Post, a
cyberlaw specialist at Temple University School of Law, ''the domain
name system looks like the Holy Grail, the one place where
enforceable Internet policy can be promulgated without any of the
messy enforcement'' problems, France concluded."
The battle is not just about NSI anymore. Awareness of the profound
reach of the ambitions of Cerf, Dyson, Roberts and Patrick for ICANN
is growing. As shown in their private June 99 fund raising
correspondence this group is holding ICANN out as the only hope for
the continued commercial success of the Internet while, at the same
time, warning that the stability of the net and the fate of
electronic commerce hang on the balance.
ICANN is taking such care not to be legally accountable to anyone
that people are beginning to wonder why. Under California law it
looked as though ICANN members would have had some real authority by
state statue to examine corporate books, and bring derivative actions
against the corporation. ICANN had always asserted its
accountability to a doubting public by saying that its members would
elect half the board. In Santiago however they were deprived of even
this right by the establishment of a membership council that they
would elect. The council would then select the board members. Never
mind the fact that ICANN's shadowy controllers have now decided that
that the membership will not be activated until a unreasonably large
total of 5,000 members can be chosen by means yet to be determined.
The reasons for ICANN's intransigence have finally become clear as we
recount in a 4,000 word introduction to this 27,000 word part 2 of
the November COOK Report. If one goes back over the details of
events since Landweber sent his October first master plan to the ISOC
Board in 1995, ISOC has been single mindedly pursuing a campaign to
make itself (now via ICANN) legally responsible for Internet
technical administration. ISOC's first move by itself in 1995
angered the ITU, INTA and WIPO. The later two had decided that DNS
service presented unique problems and unique possibilities. If they
could link trademarks to domain names, it would become much easier
and more cost effective to enforce presence in cyberspace on terms
favorable to the most wealthy corporations and unfavorable to
individuals and small businessmen. As a result ISOC invited its
early critics, Walter Tramposch for WIPO, David Maher for INTA and
Robert Shaw for the ITU to join it in another attempt to garner legal
control over DNS policy and the Root servers. This resulted in the
IAHC and gTLD-MoU which itself was attacked in 1997 by others upon
whose interest ISOC's emerging coalition trod.
When with the issuance of the Green Paper in 1998, it became obvious
that the IAHC coalition had failed, ISOC, in early 1998, invited its
critics into the fold once again. In a complete abrogation of
responsibility on their part to ensure that an open process would
follow, the democrats released the White Paper in June 1998. This
document was built on a clever ruse. It stated that the Clinton Gore
administration would keep its hands off the Internet by approving an
industry led effort to develop "newco" which in October of last year
was re-labled ICANN. The reigns of authority however were turned
over to the lawyer Joe Sims as a new member in the Cerf, Patrick,
Heath partnership. One of Sim's duties was to keep Jon Postel
legally defended. Sims accomplished by writing a set of bylaws that
created an unaccountable California public benefit corporation to
reimpose the defunct IAHC gTLD-MoU solution. This time with the
European Commission added to the ISOC coalition in a partnership with
the ITU to enlarge ICANN's powers over Internet protocols and the
assignment of IP numbers for the purposes of routing in the Internet.
Mike Roberts had been part of the ISOC inner circle for some time.
Esther Dyson was added now for her corporate networking abilities and
a Board representing the ISOC, old line telco and intellectual
property interests behind the latest ISOC coalition was announced.
ICANN, set up under the guise of forming the permanent corporation as
quickly as possible, then began, instead, to make policy. Its agenda
was to cement itself in control of making policy decisions about DNS,
IP numbers and Protocols as quickly as possible. It hoped to be
recognized by enough players to begin to be able to make decisions
that, if obeyed, could acquire the force of law through practice.
Its agenda was not to provide open and transparent coordination of
Internet plumbing but rather to deliver a set of rules that would
place its trademark, and old line telco supporters in the driver's
seat where they could use the new body to place themselves firmly in
regulatory charge of the Internet's key infrastructure. The
supporters were so transfixed by the enormity of the possibilities in
front of them that the small clique which guided ICANN was also moved
by the same arrogance that caused IAHC to crash and burn. For nearly
a year it has gone full speed ahead and steam-rollered over all
opposition. What it has finally begun to do is alienate many of its
early supporters who now quite correctly are wondering why it should
be needed in the first place.
ICANN has high hopes of succeeding because it is the consumate
insider's battle, convoluted and hideously complex. We offer this
long article as documentary evidence of ICANN's deceptive practices
as it dodges and feints and uses continued secrecy to push its agenda
on behalf of its ISOC, trademark, telco and EC masters. This is a
battle not only for the control of telecommunications world wide but
also for the rules on which electronic commerce will be played. If
Mike, Esther, Vint and John have their way, it will be decided out of
sight and away from any citizen oversight by a small elite group of
corporate and government bureaucrats. The battle is likely nearing a
turning point and one must hope that the rest of us can work through
Congressional action to obtain justice and accountability since the
Clinton Gore administration has abdicated any leadership
Editor's Note: I will put it up on my web site in a couple of days.
Someone on the ICANN side asked me why I am doing this which
certainly will win me no friends among powerful people. My answer is
that it is a matter of principle: the end, does not justify any
means.
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The COOK Report on Internet Index to seven years of the COOK Report
431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA http://cookreport.com
(609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) ICANN: The Internet's Oversight Board -
cook@cookreport.com What's Behind ICANN's Desire to Control
the Development of the Internet http://cookreport.com/icannregulate.shtml
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Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
