[governance] so do i owe bill drake a pizza or not?

[Carlton Samuels]

I once had an [American] boss who taught me that when some persons shake on
a deal, you should be certain to check your fingers before you leave the
room.
For me, Karl has fingered one of the most important of the 'hanging chads'
of this entire business; the encomiums from that select list of re-actors.
 Good politics, true.  And undoubtedly an orchestration.  Leaves a body to
wonder...
Carlton Samuels

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 3:08 PM, Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com> wrote:

> On 09/30/2009 10:01 AM, William Drake wrote:
>
>> Let's see.  On the one hand we have
>>
>> 1. IANA contract
>> 2. VeriSign contract
>> 3. California law
>> 4. Entrenched org culture
>> 5. Entrenched commercial interests
>> 6. Whatever back channel political deals and assurances were needed in
>> DC, etc (the administration will probably take heat for it anyway)
>> 7. etc
>>
>> On the other hand, we have
>>
>> 1. NTIA's reviews replaced by non-binding panels.
>>
>
> I see serious problems with this "Affirmation".
>
> First of all, NTIA cites as authority only the most vague and general of
> statutory authorizations.  If one accepts those as adequate it means, for
> example, that NTIA has the general authority to enter into agreements that
> require US corporations to include a committee of foreign governments in
> their highest decision making processes.
>
> That might be a thought that gives comfort to some outside the US but it
> scares the beejeebers out of me as a whole new and previously unseen kind of
> expansion of US governmental power into the affairs of private activities.
>
> There are several other aspects in which NTIA's citation of authority is
> not adequate for the impositions it places on ICANN.
>
> Second, the agreement, as you mention, leaves open many other issues, such
> as who prepares the root zone, is NTIA still in the approval loop (I see no
> reason to believe that it is not).
>
> Third, the "Affirmation" seems to be designed to buttress the intellectual
> property industry's drumbeat for an every more revealing and privacy-busting
> "whois"
>
> Fourth, it leaves ICANN still in an unclear position with regard to
> anti-trust laws.
>
> Fifth, given that the ICANN-Verisign contracts and legal agreements are
> based on certain assumptions about what NTIA delegated to ICANN, there is
> now a cloud on those contracts and agreements in that they now may be based
> on a vanished foundation.
>
> The "Affirmation" is still based on the technically false belief that other
> DNS systems do exist and that some may come into larger use than they have.
>
> And where are the root operators in all of this - they, at a flick of their
> text editors - can obviate this entire ICANN/NTIA structure.
>
> This "Affirmation" is a collection of euphemisms wrapped in pretty ribbons.
>
> By-the-way, did anyone else notice the list of "reactions" - all from
> people who must have been given an advance copy and none of whom are ICANN
> critics.
>
>                --karl--
>
>
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