[icann-europe] [fwd] [ALSC-Forum] Re: a proposed action statement (from: mmr@darwin.ptvy.ca.us)

[Thomas Roessler <roessler@does-not-exist.org>]

FYI.
-- 
Thomas Roessler                        http://log.does-not-exist.org/


----- Forwarded message from Mike Roberts <mmr@darwin.ptvy.ca.us> -----

From: Mike Roberts <mmr@darwin.ptvy.ca.us>
To: <forum@atlargestudy.org>
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 20:59:42 -0700
Subject: [ALSC-Forum] Re: a proposed action statement


With apologies to the non-US members of this list, I'd like to make 
some comments that are inevitably US-centric.

Today marked a watershed day in the history of the Internet.  In some 
sense, the real date was September 11, when the leadership role of 
the United States in world peace, in economic development, and in 
technology innovation was challenged by a group of determined 
religious fanatics using our own technology on us to cause the death 
of thousands of innocent people.

But the legal date between the "old" Internet and the "new Internet 
was today, October 26, 2001,when President George Bush signed the 
anti-terrorism bill that was passed by the upper house of Congress 
yesterday with one dissenting vote.

This legislation brings the Internet and its developers, providers 
and users directly into the new war on terrorism.  It extends 
extensive new power to law enforcement to find, capture, and punish 
those who use the network for terrorism or other criminal activity. 
It removes the previous barriers between foreign and domestic 
anti-terrorism investigations and establishes the principle that 
whoever you are, wherever you are, if you use the net for terrorism, 
you are in the sights of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and their foreign 
counterparts.

In the New York Times this morning, under the heading "We are All 
Alone," widely respected columnist Tom Friedman said,  "Focus instead 
on the firemen who rushed into the trade center towers without 
asking, 'How much?'  Focus on the thousands of U.S. reservists who 
have left their jobs and families to go fight in Afghanistan without 
asking, 'What's in it for me?'  Unlike the free-riders in our 
coalition, these young Americans know that September 11 is our holy 
day - the first day in a just war to preserve our free, 
multi-religious, democratic society.  And I don't really care if that 
war coincides with Ramadan, Christmas, Hanukkah, or the Buddha's 
birthday - the most respectful and spiritual thing we can do now is 
fight it until justice is done."

After a week of tough fighting in Afghanistan where the battle is 
rapidly deteriorating to the same "take no prisoners" ethic that 
prevailed on September 11, the same week that professionally prepared 
anthrax kept showing up in new places everyday on the U.S. east coast 
and killed two postal workers, there is a  determined and deadly 
resolve to follow the Friedman advice.

A resolve that will affect many if not most institutions, among them ICANN.

It's different now for ICANN.  What started out as your typical 
ritual White House privatization effort; one that parroted the young 
Clintonites' "Agenda for Action" of 1993; the Al Gore "Information 
Superhighway" speech; that provided a last hurrah for Clinton advisor 
Magaziner at the end of the second term.  A sly political move that 
solved, or maybe solved, the National Science Foundation's honest 
mistake in giving Network Solutions and SAIC a billion dollar 
monopoly. That is not the ICANN of post-Sept 11.

It's different now.  It's not world government because national 
governments are evil; it's not Internet governance because national 
laws are unjust; it's not a response to some abstract imagining of 
the global popular will; it's not solving poverty, famine, 
infanticide, drug abuse and political oppression in the DNS.

It's serious.  It's first things first.  It's about keeping people 
from being killed by terrorist plots hatched over the net.  All of a 
sudden it matters that you know what you are talking about.  If you 
are an Internet engineer, what about nailing down the RFC's needed 
for secure new functionality in the DNS?  If you are a root server 
host organization CEO, all of a sudden being a volunteer in Jon 
Postel's army takes on new meaning.  If you're the manager of a top 
level domain name registry, it's not a pc in a closet time anymore. 
Important people are watching, people who have the ability to 
nationalize you overnight if you're not carrying your weight in 
making the Internet more secure.  The Japanese government and the 
United States government are sending cabinet level officers to speak 
at the November ICANN meeting about how serious this really is.

So what does this have to do with At Large?  First, don't expect to 
get the attention of the study committee, your fellow stakeholders in 
ICANN,  the dedicated members of the Board, or the governments whose 
sanction makes this privatization effort possible, with a 
continuation of the shallow rhetoric that has characterized the 
postings on this list.  Second, think seriously about constructive 
improvements in the recommendations of the ALSC.  Nobody cares that 
you don't like a particular recommendation, they want to know whether 
you have a better idea, an idea that is good enough to gather the 
support of a lot of other interested parties that may not share your 
individual political or social or economic background but are 
nevertheless interested in the future welfare of ICANN.   Third, be 
prepared to compromise your goals in the interests of forging an At 
Large organization that contributes to an ICANN that is going to 
operate in a far different environment than its founders envisaged.

The study committee has worked hard. It doesn't deserve the abuse it 
has received on this list.  The several points of the action plan are 
reasonable, centrist, and provide a basis for moving forward. They 
deserve your support.

- Mike Roberts

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