[atlarge-discuss] ICANN's Actions Illegal and Hampering Reform

[Khyron <Khyron@jollyrogers.com>]

  ICANN Director Demands Disclosure

ICANN's Actions Illegal and Hampering Reform

Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release

For Immediate Release: Monday, July 15, 2002

Los Angeles - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today asked
the Los Angeles Superior Court again to grant Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Director Karl Auerbach access
to records ICANN management has withheld improperly for over eighteen
months.

EFF explained in a legal brief that ICANN's excuses have no
foundation in case law or California statutes. ICANN falsely portrays
Auerbach as a malicious "dissenter-for-the-sake-of-dissenting," which
is an insufficient basis for denying Auerbach the legal rights and
responsibilities of a corporate director.

"I'm simply trying to do the job I was elected to do," explained
Auerbach. "ICANN management and other directors have a different view
of reform, but that doesn't justify denying me the right to inspect
corporate records."

"Mr. Auerbach was elected to his current position as an ICANN
director on the basis of his sincere belief that ICANN must change,"
explained EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "He has no hidden agenda
to 'harm' ICANN; instead he has a very public agenda to reform and
improve ICANN."

Auerbach, the North American Elected Director of ICANN, began asking
for corporate records in November 2000 shortly after he was elected
to the Board. After ICANN management delayed for nine months, it
granted Auerbach conditional access to corporate records if he signed
a "policy" -- which the Board of Directors had not ratified -- that
placed his ability to access and copy the records at the discretion
of ICANN.

EFF contends that only a court can constrain Auerbach's access to
corporate documents and that ICANN's specious "policy" is
unreasonable.

"ICANN's arguments are disingenuous," asserted Cohn. "ICANN has
presented no evidence that Mr. Auerbach's beliefs about the need to
reform ICANN in any way imply that he will engage in self-dealing or
otherwise violate his duties as a director."

EFF also argues that recent corporate collapses illustrate the
importance of management oversight.

Mr. Thomas H. Wyman, former Board Director of General Motors and of
Delphi Automotive Systems, recently observed in the New York
Times: "The director's real role is to smell trouble. And to find out
if it's real. And to ask questions, again and again... think of the
hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the lives that would have been
better, if somebody had blown the bugle at Enron two years ago."

The case, entitled Auerbach v. ICANN, case no. BS074771, was filed in
California Superior Court, Los Angeles County.

Links:
For this release:
http://www.eff.org/Cases/Auerbach_v_ICANN/20020715_eff_icann_pr.html

Documents related to the Auerbach v. ICANN case:
http://www.eff.org/Infra/DNS_control/ICANN_IANA_IAHC/Auerbach_v_ICANN/


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