Re: [ICANN-EU] meeting esther dyson - a very short report

[Jefsey Morfin <jefsey@wanadoo.fr>]

Andy,
This is a very good and interesting meeting and report. Thank you.

At 09:47 25/10/00, you wrote:
>AMM 23 OCT 2000
>She seems to be very happy to be getting out of the job at ICANN. Starting
>from the end she told me, that we gonna change seats and she will become an
>outside critic of ICANN. What she said is, that she didnīt like the job
>very much, cause she was blamed all the time for the decisions of ICANN she
>had to promote, which often have been decisions against her personal vote
>in the board. I did not ask for what or whom she was doing something like
>this, even if I do ask me this question.

Seems pretty consistent with press interviews. Also with the published
letter to Ralph Nader and Jamie Love about NSI power to fight. She had been
very fair to you when she responded my mail saying she made a difference
between "hackers" and "breakers" and respected "hackers" competence.

Her motivation is probably politic: she is acknowledged by President Clinton
as a friend. I suppose SAIC (owner of VeriSign/NSI) is the issue as the
military/tech  establishment. Also she works with eastern countries and
small firms, the same people must be her professional competition?


>After she teached me again the well known "no we donīt govern and also we
>have nothing to do with copyright issues" she pointed out, that the space
>for decisions within ICANN has never been very big, cause the governments -
>not only the USG - put great pressure on the control of the DNS and also on
>ICANN in general.

Look at European policy. Look at the MINC with Japan, Korea and all the
developing countries through the international character sets. The control
of the DNS is wrongly perceived as the stability of the system (this will be
corrected over time) but also the neutrality of the net, ie its political 
equilibrium
and the ccTLD protection (".tv" or ".ph" represents a lot to the Govs of those
tiny islands, no one wants to be the bad guy of these small "states").


>So, any kind of ideas she ever had - that is at least the way she described
>it to me - was not very much able to adress officially; also because she
>had no real legitimation, she was not voted by anyone and so she suspected
>me to be in a much better situation, cause I was elected and might even
>say, what I think. Which is something new at ICANN.
>
>What she didnīt said and I can only guess is that the representatives of
>the governments (in and outside the GAC) donīt see this problem of
>legitimation for themself.  So, in her words, the basis for anything to do
>actively within ICANN has been very thin. That might be true in my eyes,
>but not very much when this shall mean "we have never been making great
>decisions". We argued a little bit about the possibilities of claiming the
>name space as a public space in policies (for ccTLD etc.), what she said is
>that the ICANN board never wanted to get any trouble with any of the
>countries so they never did try to do anything in this direction.
>
>Also, it would not be the ICANN board in general, but the representatives
>of the GAC that donīt wanīt ICANN to be transparent or open for anything
>the users want, cause the government claim to be the official
>representatives of the citizens of this planet. Well, what a bullshit.
>Maybe someone should mention, that governments have their own interests.

This is why I think the concepts of governance and netizens are not good as
the hurts Govs. We are the fellow users and we are the market. This issue is
not governance but deregulation at this stage. ICANN needs legitimacy and a
doctrine. Legitimacy can come from Govs or @large, the doctrine be market
or business driven. I am for an objective alliance business/@large.


>When I can beleave her, not all, but some of the directors beheave
>like him and donīt want to see any organization of users or the "at large
>members"; even the meeting organized by the CPSR on sunday before the
>official meeting is beeing watched with great fear.

This why we have to keep and develop the user side, *independently* from
the ICANN: in supporting the @large concept in other institutions (IEFT,
MINC, WIPO, etc) and in gathering people on a yearly basis and press
(what I name the @wide community).


>Of course we talked about other things, examples of problems, a little bit
>about the official agenda for the november meeting (it is not planed to be
>much more than discussion of gTLD and maybe a UDRP-update discussion), but
>the whole discussion was a bit hard to sharpen. So Iīll take the picture
>she gave me and - even if it is a picture based on the truth - this is not
>a very nice one. Itīs a picture of ICANN that is just pushed by
>governmental interests in the one and in the other direction, and any space
>for decisions there has ever been, was misued for commercial interests in
>the network solution style.

Governments are interested by legal and content issues. Look at China's
new regulations. They are also interested at protecting their economy
against US and large corporations monopoly. This is something we may
understand or live with. Up to us to start responsible actions with good
national and international user support like :

-  IP addressing plan
-  electronic human rights
-  domain name legal definition in front of innovations
-  Internet of proximity
-  convergence Internet/telephone

If we publicly show we are concerned by major issues affecting our day
to day private life and we have market regulated solutions and sometime
the need of new laws, the business and the governments will be
interested in cooperating and will probably focus on the issues of their
concern (it would be too complex otherwise).

The election of Andy and to some extent of Karl is not the end of our
problems. We known it was just a good step in the proper direction.
The next one is to organize the @large, to obtain ICANN administrative
support and to get the last 4 @large directors elected before 2002.
And to get rid of the "interim" Directors.


>She said it in nice words: the current steps - extension of the gTLDīs,
>having at least some directors legitimated and able to speak for user
>interests - would be steps in the right direction. That might be.

We have to complete that in structuring the @large as Hans Klein is
helping us to do (I incorporated this morning France@large as a small
help to the French @large community. My target is to get 100.000
@large French voters - from every opinion and trade - for the next
campaign).


>But if this institution - driven now by governmental and industrial
>interests - can be changed to anything based on the diversity of netizens
>and citizens interests enabling a decentralized structure, that respects
>different entitys, free flow of information even if this means the end of
>controlling non-material goods, is a complete other question. So, for me it
>is an open question, if this is an ICANN issue.

Nor a government without citizen, neither an industry without a market
can do many things. We are the citizen and the market, let show it up
so they may trust us: ICANN by laws say that 10 Directors come from
specialized constituency and 9 from us, the governments being advisors.
This seems fair. Let make it to happen. By meeting, explaining, convincing
of fighting opponents.

Jefsey