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

[Norbert Klein]

Thanks, Karl,

for your analysis.


Norbert Klein

=

Karl Auerbach 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--
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
>     governance at lists.cpsr.org
> To be removed from the list, send any message to:
>     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org
>
> For all list information and functions, see:
>     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
-- 
If you want to know what is going on in Cambodia, please visit
The Mirror, a regular review of the Cambodian language press in English.

This is the latest weekly editorial of the Mirror:

The Highlight of the Past Week: the Constitution – Sunday, 27.9.2009
http://wp.me/p2Gyf-124

(To read it, click on the line above.)

And here is something new every day:
http://cambodiamirror.wordpress.com

____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance