Message-ID: <19990126165419.AAC3531@LOCALNAME> Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 12:54:08 -0400 From: Kerry Miller <mailto:kerryo@NS.SYMPATICO.CA> Subject: Re: Underestimating Wired Africa To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
{ On the other hand, if they act like the W3C has been acting, playing to
{ corporate interests and allowing the various players to promote their
own
{ PATENTED proprietary technology as Internet Standards, then I have a
real
{ problem.
{
Thats the point: theres nothing to prevent its doing just that.
Here's a partial post from another list:
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>From: Ronda Hauben <mailto:ronda@panix.com>
I Went to the Berkman Institute meeting on memberhip for ICANN
held on Saturday, January 23, 1999.
Following is a brief report on what happened. [...]
The final panel presented a speaker, Elaine Kamarck who
said that she was here at the insistance of the Dean of
the Kennedy School.
Kamarch said that the task folks have is very difficult and
it is unprecedented. That essentially there are two
organizational forms to consider, the first panel
considered interest group organizations. These are protected
by the first amendment, the right of freedom of speech and
of association. People ban together to influence some entity,
usually the government. Membership is voluntary, usually there
is easy entrance and easy exit. And membership is not required
to function like one can practice law without being in the
American Bar Association. Interest groups are what this meeting
has heard from all day. But those are meant to influence.
As opposed to that, there are regulatory agencies of the
government. And those exercise the power of the state.
Therefore the head of such agencies are required to
submit financial statements checked by law enforcement
agencies. And in the U.S. regulators are confirmed by
the U.S. Senate. That is because they have real economic
power. Therefore, the US requires regulators to go through
lots of hoops. On the International level, legitimacy
is by treaty of sovereign governments.
What is the ICANN? Is it going to be an interest group
or a regulatory body? No (non government) ICANN that one
can build can have an enforcement capacity and therefore
how can it have any legitimacy? It will have the power to
end the economic life of a company by for example denying
it a domain name that it feels is crucial for its business.
But it won't have the legitimacy to do that. She had the
impression that ICANN is trying to build something between
the two forms.
If one is trying to create a self-governing entity,
while dealing with the exponential growth of the Internet,
on the horizon there will be public issues even if one doesn't
feel there are public issues now. And interest groups
can't deal with these.
So it is necessary to figure out when and where
the government comes into this issue, asking
the question what are the things realistic to do
in a self governing role and what things need
government and how should these government things
be implemented?
She basically said that the form being created for ICANN
was fundamentally inappropriate for the task that it
was being created for.
Not only was her talk important, but the response of the ISOC
people there was similarly important.
An ISOC person from France who is also on the Membership Advisory
Committee said that ICANN had to stick to its limited
functions or that governments would defranchise it, that
governments can take their powers back and they will.
Several ISOC folks said that there was nothing basically at
stake in what ICANN would be doing. That they were
just boring technical functions and that there was no reason
for anyone to really be concerned with what was being done
with ICANN. Also they began talking about specific examples
that they made especially confusing so as to confuse anyone
who didn't have a technical background (and even those who did).
[...]