[ICANN-EU] ICANN Alert - Stakeholders beware?

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com>]

All stakeholders and @large ICANN members,

 http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/webreform.shtml

Excerpts to wit:

"ICANN Alert

The battle lines are being drawn. International
organizations, dominated by business interests, are
already hard at work on new protocols and rules to
rationalize and tame the Web. Writer Steven Hill asks,
"How many people have ever heard of ICANN, the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers?
Depending on whose description you read, ICANN is
either an innocuous nonprofit with a narrow technical
mandate, or the first step in corralling the Internet for
commercial and other purposes."

ICANN is a nonprofit corporation that was chartered by
the U.S. Department of Commerce in November 1999 to
oversee a select set of Internet technical-management
functions previously managed by the U.S. government.
In theory a nonprofit can do the job as well as the
government, but not if it's dominated by private interests
and lacks accountability and transparency. Notes Hill,
"These functions include fostering competition in the
domain-name registration market (i.e. the selling of
.com, .net and .org suffixes) and settling disputes over
"cyber squatting" (the intentional buying of domain
names like McDonalds.com for later resale at exorbitant
prices to the corporation)."

Sound benign? Except that ICANN has operated
secretly, with its very existence a secret to most
Internet users. The reason is simple: It is not being
covered by the media."

===============

Personal Notes:  I was originally contacted in early Early October
of '98 regarding our submission for the bid ICANN (Than referred to as
NewCo) as to our willingness to provide for initial funding by George
Soros and Vinton Cerf.  I am sure that Vinton recalls those E-Mail
exchanges, right Vinton?

Regards,

Regards,
--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman INEGroup (Over 112k members strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com
Contact Number:  972-447-1800 x1894 or 9236 fwd's to home ph#
Address: 5 East Kirkwood Blvd. Grapevine Texas 75208