Comments Submitted to the ICANN Board (Final version, in alphabetical order by sender's last name)
(no name provided), ALCI and CABASE Other: 1.) Latin America has been excluded from the ongoing process of constituting a new IANA. 2.) Our region has demonstrated , during the IFWP fourth regional meeting in Buenos Aires, the will to participate in this process, as well as the capacity to organize and support this type of initiative. 3.) ALCI-Latin America and Caribbean Association for Internet--was formed as a result of the IFWP meeting in Buenos Aires, and initial members include stakeholder entities from latin America who have jointly demanded the above issues be resolved by ICANN. 4.) On October 20th, the NTIA called for ICANN to indicate how they would address the concerns of stakeholders demanding equitable representation of the Internet community, including developing regions. It also stated that the organization selected would reflect the geographic diversity of the Internet community. 5.) Latin America can contribute knowledgeable board candidates, not representative of any particular constituencies. 6.) Our region presented comments suggesting that the at large members of the Interim Board be expanded from 9 to 11 members, in order to include latin american board members. It was also suggested that the minimum representation per region be reduced from 50 percent to 40 percent. 7.) That proposal which has been duly presented to the NTIA, and amply published in all corresponding forums, has never met with adverse comments. Diverse organizations, within and without Latin America, have similarly underlined the necessity of having Latin American participation in the Interim Board. We feel the NTIA should respect this consensus and add Latin American and Caribbean representation. 8.) ICANN has announced their participation in meetings to be held in Boston, Brussels and Asia. No mention is made of Latin America, thus confirming our conclusion that Latin America is being ignored and excluded from this process.
Martin Aboitiz, InterMedia Comunicaciones s.a. & CABASE Other: I have been involved in the IFWP process, participating in the Geneva conference and helped organize Buenos Aires, at a times representing InterMedia, an Argentine ISP, and at times representing CABASE, our chamber. I could write my own statement regarding the lack of Latin American represent in ICANN, but instead I will echo the ALCI statement below, which I support. Martin Aboitiz
Amadeu Abril i Abril Other: Will prepare commnets for the meeting later though e-mail
Mitchel K Ahern, EAW/AIP Accountability and Representation: In general I am in favor of a mixed board structure in which a minority of the board is self-appointing and a majority is elected by the membership in staggered terms. In this case the membership is not entirely clear. One choice is that members could be authoritative Hostmasters. Another possible choice are 'Internet Professionals' although these are not as easy to conclusively identify. One could also have ICANN board members be composed of members of Supporting Orgs, but this is more problematic politically. Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: I don't favor making ICANN the sum of its Supporting Organizations. If there is sense in making ICANN a stand-alone org (as opposed to a committee of some existing org such as W3C (and frankly I think this option should be explored (at least to discount it))) then it should be made to stand on its own feet. That said I don't think there should be *formal* ties to other orgs, but rather working ties to all relevant orgs. Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: Good bylaws. Good reporting. A mission statement that makes sense and leads to action. Conflicts of interest are unavoidable, but can be encapsulated. Other: I am former Vice President and founding member of the Webmasters' Guild and current Chairman of the Association of Internet Professionals. As such I've worked up bylaws and worked through many of the issues endemic to start-up non-profits. If I can be of any assistance in this project I will happily contribute.
Izumi Aizu Accountability and Representation: We are interested in how we can give good inputs from Asia and Pacific region into the new process. The representation issue is very important, especially so from Asia and Pacific which itself is very diverse in terms of cultural difference as well as level of development of Internet. Many developing countries do not have strong commercial Internet uses, yet, and are not directly interested in DNS issues as much as other countries. I hope that new ICANN pay attention to these factors in a positive and pragmatic ways.
Christopher J Ambler, ORSC Other: I find it very difficult to comment on substantial issues while the issue of board accountability has yet to be resolved. Like many others, I share the opinion that the board is not accountable to anyone, and that the board's request to simply 'trust' them is not acceptable. At this time, I cannot endorse this board, nor the transfer of any powers to the ICANN until this issue, at a minimum, is resolved. Everything else is premature.
Richard J. ASexton, VRx Other: Please examine the ORSC bylaws at http://www.open-rsc.org/inc/bylaws
Karl Auerbach Accountability and Representation: 1. Assuming SO's retain their ability to appoint directors -- then how do we prevent those who obtain their voice on the board via an SO not obtain additional voice through membership on other SO's or in the membership at large? 2. How do we provide for 'meaningful' participation by individuals in the membership structure? By 'meaningful' I mean that outcomes are not preordained to a particular outcome by any institutional membership that might exist. Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: 1. Why should the board, when considering SO proposals, rely on the advice of the SO that is making the proposal, and hence has an advocate's role and is presumably less than unbiased? 2. Why should SO's have any membership on the board whatsoever? What is gained by this? 3. How does the board initiate policy should an SO not be willing to do so? 4. How do we prevent SO's from becoming nothing more than entrenched special interests? How do we allow their membership to permit 'meaningful' participation by interests other than those who are the initial 'core' members of an SO? 5. Can the board coerce an SO to revise it's membership rules? Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: 1. Why should not votes of the board be 'on-the-public-record' for matters of significance? Other: 1. Can 'the membership' amend the articles or by-laws? 2. What portions of the organic documents should be placed out of reach of the board (and hence be changable only by the membership or by the board with some sort of external approval [perhaps judicial])?
Richard C. Bartel, Communications Venture Services, Inc. Other: I am interested in being a candidate for the Board of Directors. Richard C. Bartel, President Communications Venture Services, Inc. 5530 Wisconsin Ave., Suite 703-5 P.O. Box 70805 Chevy Chase, Md. 20813-0805 (202) 728-3841 rcbartel@iname.com Fax (202) 686-7607 (H) (202) 686-5622
Daniel S Berkes, GalenaWEB Other: It is my sincere hope that ICANN, unlike the InterNIC, will require domain name registrants to provide and maintain accurate contact information (correct and verifiable email address, correct and verifiable address, correct and verifiable phone number)in the public database.
Michael H. Bourdaa Accountability and Representation: It is critical that ICANN not merely become the tool of the 'special instrests' of the Supporting Organizations. Membership needs to be broader, both geographically, and be truly representative of the general internet user, in order to maintain the bottom-up tradition of the internet. To that end, I would propose that an at-large membership organization be formed immediately. Ideally, one per region, [Latin America, Northern Europe (+ Canada), Southern Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceiana, Middle East, Western US, Eastern US.] such that each organization would send one representative to the board. Furthermore, I would suggest that major policy changes (those affecting addition/removal of gTLDs, amendments to the by-laws, or other issues along these veins] must be confirmed by a majority of these organizations (perhaps 2/3 of the groups), before they can be enacted. Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: Strict limits on the power of the Board. Unless the board were truly representative of the internet community (and I don't believe that is possible on a board of less than several thousand people), the Board's powers need to be very weak, in general. The most important thing for ICANN to do, however, is prevent as much as possible, litigation over domain space. (my comments below should remove some of the incentives, but more is needed.) Copyrights are important, but on the internet, litigious persons need not apply. Other: I suggest that new policies for domain name registrars be clearly defined, but that the free market should determine the price of domains. I would suggest also that for each domain registered by an individual or corporation, the cost would double - this would strongly discourage 'squatting.' (Loopholes need to be closed, however, to prevent people from registering false names, or allowing their infant children / business partners / pet rocks / etc. from registering, when the true owner is a squatter.) (i.e. if I register bourdaa.com for $30/yr, then want mikebourdaa.com, that one will cost $60. If I then get michael-bourdaa.com, $120.. then if I go for bourdaa-michael.com, $240) This system would preserve affordable domain space, while hurting those who hamper such progress. Another suggestion would be to give the .com domain a hierarchy, somewhat along the USENET vein. (e.g. www.delta.air.com, or www.disney.media.com, or www.microsoft.comp.com) This would allow, as a side benefit, a requirement that adult-entertainment sites must register in something like adult.com, or .xxx -- and allow a much easier method for filtering these out, without censoring them. Perhaps a .inc could be added, for major companies who don't want to be catagorized (at a much higher price.) *.gov and *.mil should be collapsed into the .us namespace - gTLDs should not be mono-national. Lastly, I suggest that ICANN should explicitly place in its by-laws that it will not interfere with the ccTLDs. (except the above comment, which is actually in augmentation of the .us domain's power) Each nation's soverignty on the internet should be respected.
Brandon Butterworth, British Broadcasting Corporation Other: Will watch some of the proceedings if I get time
Diane Cabell Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: I have great concern for the lack of checks and balances in the ICANN structure. Unlike all other communication media , there is no government agency having continuous regulatory oversight of ICANN activities; in fact the Clinton administration has striven mightily to keep governmental 'hands off' the Internet. In a market economy, that might be a fine thing, except that ICANN is not operating in a market economy. Unlike most enterprises, including non-profits, there will be no keen edge of competition in the assignment of names & numbers which might exert market pressure on ICANN to provide the greatest possible level of customer satisfaction. Nor does ICANN have to justify its decisions to stockholders who can express their approval or disapproval through their shares. Some portions of the ICANN by-laws even require the Board of Directors to automatically approve decisions made and forwarded to it by totally distinct and legally independent 'Supporting Organizations' over which it has no corporate authority whatsoever. This sounds rather like requiring Congressmen to automatically vote for whatever legislation their PAC committees submit to them. There are very few entities that have quite so free a rein with such internationally valued assets as ICANN has. Under the present structure then, there is but a single individual who is responsible for ensuring a fair and just administration of the Internet on-ramp. However, the Attorney General of the State of California is tasked only with protecting the interests of residents in that state. He has no obligation to the people of Massachusetts, much less the those of Spain or Zimbabwe. This raises the specter that ICANN will become the focus of endless private suits in numerable jurisdictions if people around the world must resort to their own courts to enforce their rights to Internet access. The current structure of ICANN seems designed more to satisfy the desires of the *providers* of Internet services than those of the *consumers* of such services. The providers are likely to remain a fairly small and distinct constituency, while the class of end users will continue to expand exonentially. Given that we are so far from having all users on board, it would seem more appropriate to create a structure that will expand with the user population and accomodate the ensuing changes. At this early stage of commercial and public access to the Internet, embedding a limited set of special interest parameters would not seem the most scalable choice. Membership should be open to any Internet user, with safeguards for proper identification, and the Board of Directors should be elected by a vote of the general Membership. The technical community that has supervised the assignment of names and numbers for so long and so well should remain the primary source of proposals for technical specifications. However, the impact of such decisions on such matters now extends far beyond that community. The social, economic, political and other ramifications should be addressed most properly by a Board which is representative of and accountable to the broader user community. Supporting Organizations should have advisory roles only and should come within the corporate structure. The Board, selected by direct election of the Membership, should have final decision-making authority over all corporate functions.
Ken Carew Other: I am an Internet user interested in the progress of the new governance of the Internet. ...../kcc.
Kilnam Chon, KAIST-APTLD Other: every region deserve one or more seat at ICANN Board to be truly global and international.
Susan Chooi Accountability and Representation: 1. no age limitation. Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: 1. organizations, which are able to contribute towards the development of the Internet. 2. maintain the regional registries. Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: no transparency, rules, etc... the present Internet rules are just fine. Try not to modify any of them. Other: no comments at the moment. Please provide me with an e-mail address, where I can e-mail my comments to. Thank You.
Keith R Christensen Other: Tighten and enforce rules on domain listings, contacts, addresses and such on WHOIS info. Unethical domains, primarily those involved in fraudulent activites such as unsolicited bulk emailing, have a long history of intentionally giving incorrect information, including email addresses that are even bad puns admitting that they are false. One method would be REQUIRING all info be verified and updated every 3 months, and occasional spot checks of all info. Also, having a verification done on request if a petitioner can give reason to believe a domain has done this. Indication of fraud could mean suspension of service.
L DeQuesada Accountability and Representation: The Internet is an international communications internetwork of networks based on connectionless pure datagram packet switching technology. This technical basis must be preserved and protected from those seeking to require anything more from the interconnecting networks networks. All problems and changes must be investigated by a publically protected research community patterned on the original ARPANET effort and the original IETF. Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: Conflicts of interest will be best avoided by maintaining the control and administration of the crucial Internet functions in public hands with oversight by the Internet User and Netizen community. Other: JCR Licklder's original vision should be guidance for the evolution of the Internet. He said the most importnat question to keep in mind is 'Will to be online be a privilege or a right?' Only if it is a right protected by governments and insured by all out efforts to achieve real universal access will it play the full role it can in serving human society.
Cliff Dilloway Other: The materials below are submitted for the November 14 ICANN Open Meeting. Mr Cliff Dilloway cliffd@endispute.co.uk Do not plan to attend November 14 Meeting at Cambridge Other comments Governance by Self Regulation in the Internet Jurisdiction to develop the Law of the Internet. The (unwritten) Law of the Sea has been taken as a model for the Internet. It is put forward that the materials linked to this Notice would provide the Internet with: A Membership structure. Impartiality - Diversity Transparency par excellence Evolution of rules based on custom and usage Dissipated authority created bottom up An enforcement mechanism It would appear that if the ICANN were to be able to make a process such as offered here the norm for the Internet an international compromise would evolve. The materials (about 150kb) contain details of relevant precedents and references. The Self Regulatory Process The objectives can be achieved through arbitration following an uncodified Law of the Internet. Published Reports on the diverse arbitral awards will evolve into a generally accepted Law of the Internet. One cannot expect to get it right first or even second time. Experience rules. The Reports will be available for comment on the Internet. The Law of the Internet is no more than morally binding but will guide future arbitrators, who will produce case Reports and so on ad infinitum. If not accepted graciously, each separate arbitrator's award may be enforced almost worldwide through international treaties. National courts will enforce the arbitrators' awards under the international treaties without any possibility of appeal. The mechanisms for developing and enforcing a generally accepted Law of the Internet are explained at: o "Comments on how the Internet can arrange its own Regulation" http;//www.endispute.co.uk/isr/cirb.htm An overall description.(22k) o "Draft Constitution of The Internet Arbitration Association" http;//www.endispute.co.uk/isr/dciaac.htm An association to bring all those in the Internet Community under the Law of the Internet.(3k) o "Draft of the Law of the Internet Arbitration Rules" http;//www.endispute.co.uk/isr/diard.htm The Internet process for resolving disputes.(11k) o "Full effect of the Law of the Internet Arbitration Rules as expanded by the Arbitration Act 1996" http;//www.endispute.co.uk/isr/feiare.htm The effect of the supporting legislation is shown in full detail.(74k). o "Reference material relevant to the Internet Arbitral Self Regulatory process"(43k) http;//www.endispute.co.uk/isr/insrref.htm Reference materials. The author is an "old systems man" (there is always a better way) who is his own webmaster and a fully qualified and experienced arbitrator. He is modest enough to think that the process developed here is what the Internet Community is looking for right now. Rest assured that what is being offered is legal, would be free and effective, and shown to be so on the website, surprising as that might seem. Please address comments to srcomments@endispute.co.uk Cliff Dilloway. Dynevor, Park Road, Stroud Gloucestershire GL5 2JF, England Telephone: Stroud +44 (0) 1453 763387 Fax: +44 (0) 1453 751528 email: cliffd@endispute.co.uk http://www.endispute.co.uk 8th November 1998
Jim Dixon, EuroISPA / ISPA UK Other: Any comments will be submitted separately.
Miles R Fidelman, Center for Civic Networking Other: I'm not sure I see the need for yet another organization - ISOC and IETG would be perfectly appropriate homes for IANA.
Joseph Friedman Other: Dear members of the Board of Directors of ICANN, I'd like to offer some suggestions for an improved Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.  I will not be able to attend ICANNs public meeting personally, but I do have some ideas I think would be beneficial to the new organization.  I summarized them below as best I could, and I hope you as well as the rest of the Board of Directors find merit in some or all of these suggestions.  I ask that you share these ideas with the board and with the public in your meetings. Here are 10 issues I considered: 1) The name of the organization The name of the organization, currently the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), should be renamed to the Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA).  In his 5th and final iteration of the proposed Articles of Incorporation of the 'New IANA' prior to its submittal to the NTIA, Dr. Jon Postel noted that many people commented that the name change from IANA to ICANN in the 4th proposal 'has not met with universal acclaim' and that 'there is apparently strong sentiment for continuing to use the name Internet Assigned Numbers Authority and the acronym IANA'. And he requested additional input from the community.  Shortly afterwards Dr. Postel passed away.  I believe the name of the organization should be IANA, and I don't know of anyone who would have any objections to such a move. 2) The root servers All the authoritive root servers for the Internet's Domain Name System (currently there are 12 maintained by volunteers, the United States Government, the United States Military, Network Solutions, and the University of Southern California/Information Science Institute) should be under direct custody and maintenance of ICANN. 3) Separation of the root and the SLD The root (the 'dot') should be separated from the Second Level Domain (SLD) servers.  Currently they are both served by the same physical and logical servers.  i.e. the millions of SLDs, ibm.com, uu.net, are in the same servers as the root.  Technically and logically it makes more sense to separate these functions.  Separating them will also relieve millions of SLDs from the root servers. 4) The SLD servers The Second Level Domain (SLD) servers should also (in my opinion) be under direct custody and maintenance of ICANN.  Currently the SLDs are served by the same servers as the root.  Another option would be to contract out to the best bidder maintenance of these servers. Currently maintenance of the existing SLD servers are done by Network Solutions (NSI), under contract with the United States.  I do not believe NSI should be the contractor for .COM .NET .ORG and .EDU perpetually.  Eventually these should also be re bid. 5) Annual fees I do not believe whoever maintains the SLD servers should charge the registrars (or registrants) an annual fee per domain.  There is no annual cost associated with maintenance of a domain in a server.  There may be a cost to adding and modifying information for a domain, so perhaps the charges can be based on adding new domains and modifying existing domains.  (It is even questionable as to the costs involved adding and modifying domains considering that these functions are processed by automated systems.)  The largest and primary cost a registrar incurs, is maintaining the database (which isn't seriously affected by the number of domains it contains) and for customer service requiring manual assistance (which ideally would be minimized). 6) Shared gTLDs All registrars should be allowed to register domains in all the shared gTLDs (.COM, .ORG, .NET, and the new ones.)  Prices for registration would be negotiated between the registrar and their customers.  Any domain registrant should have the right to transfer their domain from any registrar to any other registrar, in as much as consumers have the right to transfer their local and long distance telecommunications provider as often as they please.  This is fair competition. The .EDU TLD should be a shared TLD maintaining the current restriction that its limited to registrations by public institutions of higher education. ICANN should maintain a whois database (at whois.internic.net?) that provides domain and contact information on all the shared gTLDs.  It would also be nice if arrangements can be made with all the ccTLD registrars, the U.S. Government domain registrars (.GOV & .MIL), the .INT registrar, as well as the IP registries (ARIN, RIPE, and APNIC) to share their public whois database with ICANNs as to provide one point-of-contact for a whois database. 7) The InterNIC The name 'InterNIC' (short for the Internet Network Information Center) and the internic.net domain, should not remain in the sole custody of NSI after the completion of the transition.  The term 'InterNIC' is not a NSI concept or brand name.  The term was used for the U.S. Government contract awarded to NSI, AT&T, and General Atomics.  All 3 companies have used the term in conjunction with their part of the contract - NSI for registration services, AT&T for directory services, and GA for information services.  It would not be right for NSI to assume sole control for that name and domain.  It should be transferred to ICANN which should use it as an information resource (maintaining the RFCs as is done currently, etc.) and a directory of all the official ICANN registrars. 8) Adding gTLDs Add as many new gTLDs as possible.  This of course should not be done all at once, but over the course of time. Every short, memorable, generic (3-5 characters?) word, in all major languages, should be added as a new shared gTLD.  i.e. .INFO, .STORE, .HELP, .INC, .CORP, etc.  Any word that is short and memorable would be wanted by many parties and it is only fair that it be a shared gTLD.  I believe there should be 100's even 1000's of new new shared gTLDs added to the root. Note:  There is no technical limitation on the number of TLDs that can be in the root.  This is demonstrated by: -There are currently about 200 TLDs. (including the gTLDs, ccTLDs, .EDU, .GOV, .MIL, and .INT) -Dr. Postel, in his original proposal in '96, proposed the creation of 150 new gTLDs.  Who is more of an authority on the technical capabilities than Dr. Postel? -And most importantly, as I mentioned earlier, currently the root servers also function as the SLD servers which have literally millions of domains.  If the root is capable of maintaining millions of SLDs there is no reason why it couldn't handle millions of TLDs. 9) Adding TLDs After some time to digest these changes, ICANN should strongly consider allowing anyone or organization to register there own TLD.  For example IBM might register .ibm as a TLD it would use for its internal purposes.  I might register .friedman for myself.  Of course ICANN would likely want to set policies on this i.e. pricing, and perhaps limiting the number of TLD registered to an organization.  This proposal should only be implemented after there are many (1000's?) of shared generic TLDs in the root. There is no real reason domain names must be in the second level (SLD) or higher.  They can be in the first (root) level as well.  One benefit (certainly not the only) of allowing open registration of TLDs in the root, would be easier, shorter domain names. (i.e. www.ibm and mike@ibm instead of ibm.com.) 10) Trademark disputes It is my strong belief that domains should continue to be assigned on a first-come first-serve basis, and that ICANN and the registrars should be prohibited by ICANN policy from refusing to assign a domain, taking away a domain, or suspending a domain due to alleged or possible trademark violations.  The only time a domain should be refused or revoked is with a valid court order from a  court with jurisdiction in the place of resident or business of the registrant.  (If someone believes there trademark has been violated by a domain registrant, they shouldn't be able to drag the registrant to a court in a far away jurisdiction, nor should they be able to pick 'n choose a friendly court.)  It is not the business of ICANN or the registrars to determine who has a valid trademark, in what jurisdiction, for what industry, and decide if the another party is using a domain in a manner that legally constitutes a violation of a trademark or whether its considered fair-use, comical-use, or whether or not the domain is being used in a manner that confuses consumers with a trademark owner.  There can also be more than one legitimate holder of a trademark in different jurisdictions and/or industries that both have a right to the same trademark.  In such an instance a court would not have any basis to take a domain from one party.  In short, leave the decisions to a court-of-law.  Let them arbitrate as they always have and always will. Sincerely, Joseph Friedman
Roberto Gaetano, ETSI Accountability and Representation: I am in favour of an open Membership structure for ICANN. In this sense, I am expressing not only my personal opinion, but the position of my Company, which is itself a non-profit organization run by its 600+ Members, who take the basic policy decisions, approve the budget, etc. while the Board takes care of the everyday operations. I believe that this is the structure that we should aim to build: the Interim Board shall release gradually (part of) its powers to the General Assembly of Members. More specifically, ETSI thinks that the rights of the Membership are linked to the duty of financing the Corporation. Also, it will be wise to have different classes of Membership, in order to be able to have representation of the large Organizations as well as the individual users of the Internet. Of course, the voting power (and fees) must be weighted in a way to be defined. Special care should be dedicated to the problem of 'proxy' voting, in order to avoid concentration of voting power in few hands. Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: The Supporting Organizations shall be open organizations. Probably the three organizations will share some 'common' features, but I would be surprised if they will end up in being identical. The big issue is election of Directors from the SOs. In my opinion, in order to avoid conflict of interests, the Directors elected from a SO should resign from any appointment / office they may hold in the Supporting Organization itself. This is particularly true if the Supporting Organization is structured with some sort of Executive Committee or Board. Serving in the ICANN Board and in the SO ExCom should be avoided. On the other hand, nothing should prevent the Directors elected by a SO to participate as observers in the SO ExCom (or similar 'governing' body): this should be encouraged to achieve better coordination between ICANN and SOs.
Patrick C Greenwell Other: I wish to discuss: 1) The constitution of the board. 2) The methods and criteria by which it was constituted. 3) Their claim to legitmate representation of the broad group of stakeholders involved in light of item 2. 4) Their claim to be capable of adequately stewarding an 'open, transparent, and representitive process' in light of item . 5) Their technical and operational experience in the specific areas that this organization is charged with setting policies and procedures for. Before discussing issues involving the structure of the new organization, the board of ICANN must be able to offer some evidence that they are the appropriate persons to be doing so. Answering the above questions would address this issue.
Jay Hauben, Amateur Computerist Accountability and Representation: The Internet is an international communications internetwork of networks based on connectionless pure datagram packet switching technology. This technical basis must be preserved and protected from those seeking to require anything more from the interconnecting networks networks. All problems and changes must be investigated by a publically protected research community patterned on the original ARPANET effort and the original IETF. Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: Conflicts of interest will be best avoided by maintaining thecontrol and administration of the crucial Internet functions in public hands with oversight by the Internet User and Netizen community. Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: The Internet is and should continue to be a public resource so there should be a dominance of representatives of public bodies and the control and administration of the internet should be in the hands of the users and represntatives of the governments of the world. Other: JCR Licklder's original vision should be guidance for the evolution of the Internet. He said the most importnat question to keep in mind is 'Will to be online be a privilege or a right?' Only if it is a right protected by governments and insured by all out efforts to achieve real universal access will it play the full role it can in serving human society. -- No one on the ICANN Board who appeared on Nov seemed to understand or support the concern of those Internet users who are being completely disenfranchised by the process leading to the ICANN. The unprofitable uses of the Internet such as for public health and safety, education, access of government information, interaction with government officials, email, usenet, chats and MOOs, library searches, scientific and technical research and student uses of all sorts, are all left out by the ICANN Board as secondary to commercial uses that see users only as customers of one form or another. There was no mention and every sign of avoidence of any relations with governments and public entities. The participant who said that the ICANN would have a chokehold on the economies of the US and the world was correct but it would also choke off the common uses that people have grown to expect for themselves or at least for their children or grand children. Forces opposed to the privatization and commercialization have been frozen out of the picture by the declaration that the question of privatization vs the continuation of a public Internet has already been answered. Where the debate over that question occured has never been shared and in fact no such debate will be invited because the out come might be that the Internet should remain a public network of diverse networks. Still at the Nov 14 some speakers did accuse the Board of only representing commercial and private interests and the Board did nothing to deny that. In the comments I made before the meeting I refered to JCR Licklider's vision that inspired the creation of the Internet in which he saw online access as a right not a pivilege. The Board did not respond to my comment nor could it because it requires governments to protect rights and ICANN has been carefully crafted to eliminate any government role in the administration and control of the Internet. - General Comments Based on the Nov 14 Boston ICANN Meeting ICANN is a failure. There is no way to reverse the fact that the ICANN Intrim Board was selected on the basis of a process that was secret and representative of forces which prefer to remain hidden. Out of this secret process has also come a hidden agenda, complete with an approximate timetable with no member of the Board or others who know this agenda willing to expose it to scrutiny by the public or even just those at the Boston meeting on Nov 14. ICANN is not yet NewCo as outlined in the White Paper process and concievably it might not become NewCo. Still some USG assets such as the NSI contract appear from Mike Robert's statements to have already been taken over by ICANN. In which case statements from Ira Magaziner that there were still some conditions unmet for the transfer are part of a fraud. This makes it unclear what other USG and Internet community assets have been transfered to ICANN and to what extent the hidden process reaches. Why wasn't ICANN just declared already to be NewCo and the cherade consensus process ended? Perhaps a clue is that the Board members acknowledged that they were chosen not for their technical knowledge but for their ability to direct the formation of a new corporation. ICANN will not be able to administer and control the crucial technical functions of the Internet without the cooperation and subordination of the Internet technical community, the ISP community, and the name and number registry and registrar communities. Among the members of these communities there are many people who are suspicious of the hidden agenda and secrecy about the forces behind the formation of the ICANN. No one on the ICANN Board who appeared on Nov seemed to understand or support the concern of those Internet users who are being completely disenfranchised by the process leading to the ICANN. The unprofitable uses of the Internet such as for public health and safety, education, access of government information, interaction with government officials, email, usenet, chats and MOOs, library searches, scientific and technical research and student uses of all sorts, are all left out by the ICANN Board as secondary to commercial uses that see users only as customers of one form or another. There was no mention and every sign of avoidence of any relations with governments and public entities. The participant who said that the ICANN would have a chokehold on the economies of the US and the world was correct but it would also choke off the common uses that people have grown to expect for themselves or at least for their children or grand children. Forces opposed to the privatization and commercialization have been frozen out of the picture by the declaration that thequestion of privatization vs the continuation of a public Internet has already been answered. Where the debate over that question occured has never been shared and in fact no such debate will be invited because the out come might be that the Internet should remain a public network of diverse networks. Still at the Nov 14 some speakers did accuse the Board of only representing", "commercial and private interests and the Board did nothing to deny that. In the comments I made before the meeting I refered to JCR Licklider's vision that inspired the creation of the Internet in which he saw online access as a right not a pivilege. The Board did not respond to my comment nor could it because it requires governments to protect rights and ICANN has been carefully crafted to eliminate any government role in the administration and control of the Internet.
Ronda Hauben Other: At the Saturday, Nov. 14 meeting, the chair asked how many people felt that ICANN was a fraud and had come to stop it. When people raised their hands, someone came over and said that was brave. Those on the Board didn't ask why anyone would raise their hand. They didn't ask what the problems were with ICANN that it is understood to be a fraud that is a genuine problem for the Internet community. When my name was called to speak at the meeting, I presented a statement of the genuine problem represented by ICANN. My words were misrepresented in the transcript. I have since written to Ben Edelman and asked him if he would make a correction in the transcript and have yet to hear from him. See http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/statement_n14.txt In general the transcript of the meeting misrepresents or deletes much of what the people at the meeting said who criticized what ICANN represents, often making it ununderstandable, but present the words of the Chair without such deletions. Since no Board member asked any questions about the opening statement I made, it seems important that I clarify why it is crucial such questions be asked. ICANN has been created by the U.S. government to protect certain hidden corporate interests and to remove the Internet from any participation by the public or by users in its functioning. Until recently, the U.S. government played a good role of supporting users in participating in the Internet and in having cooperative processes and procedures that would determine the content and often the software that made it possible for the Internet to grow and flourish. Also it protected users from commercial and political pressure. The ICANN board of directors and bylaws etc. have been created to incorporate centralized control by the commercial pressures who formerly were restricted in the role they could play in Internet development. No one from the public sector is allowed on the Board, members are appointed by governmental bodies in an unofficial and unaccountable way. Members of the board have explained that they have been chosen because they know *nothing* about the Internet. More importantly, however, the board members are part of a centralized structure that concentrates power at the top for the purposes of making decisions that serve certain business interests, rather than enabling the Internet community to partipate in the decisions that are needed to help the Internet continue to grow and flourish. The obligation of the ICANN board on Nov. 14 was to invite the criticisms and listen to them and make the effort to understand them if they had any concern for the best interests of the Internet. They didn't do that. Instead, the Chair kept asking people to support her usurpation of the assets of the Internet for the private sector. Several people spoke at the Nov. 14 meeting of the need for an international public utility to oversee the essential control points of the Internet like the domain name system, the IP numbers, the root server system and protocols etc. (Also there is a proposal for an international public administration of the essential functions of the Internet which has been totally ignored by government officials creating ICANN. The URL is http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/dns_proposal.txt) Instead this private corporate entity is being handed these invaluable public assets and is excluding the public and users from any role in the crucial decisions regarding control over the Internet essential functions. What is to be lost by this is very important. The Internet is a very spectacular achievement. It is a means of global communication connecting people around the world. The early vision for its development was articulated by J.C.R. Licklider and Robert Taylor in 1968. This vision was that it was necessary that the network being developed be available to all to participate in and to gain the benefits of "intelligence amplification"; otherwise they said it would be a bane, rather than a benefit. What is happening now is this vision is being changed by fiat to provide for big corporate entities to provide their junk content and sales pitches, which is very far from the online interactive discussion and communication, and even software debugging, that Licklider and Taylor pointed to as the goal of what should be available to all. Thus there is a significant paradigm shift being made in the nature of the Internet and in the plans for its future. This paradigm shift is being carried out as a secret coup rather than an open public discussion of what is the nature and should be the future of the Internet. Anyone who recognizes that there is a need to be concerned with the long term well being of the Internet and that its nature as a participatory online global communication medium is now under seige needs to figure out how to open up the discussion, rather than go along with the cherade of so called "Internet governance" being turned over to a self appointed oligarchy of business interests. There is no self regulation of the Internet possible by excluding the millions of users and seizing power by a handful of powerful corporate interests. That is not "Internet self governance" but rather the effort to disenfranchise the Netizenry of the Internet. This is an important challenge for Netizens, and for all those who care about the need for more responsible and participatory governance in all forms
Don Heath Accountability and Representation: Membership is a difficult thing to managed and could perhaps be better handled through constituency organizations. That is, there are those organizations to whom the ICANN must be directly responsive and who will benefit directly from the services of ICANN. They in turn serve a broad constituency and may, thus, be better equipped to represent them - and make it far easier for ICANN to be responsive. Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: The natural PSO is the IETF. They, indeed, could be a defacto PSO - or an independent body that performed the functions that would otherwise be performed by ICANN/PSO. It would be wise for ICANN to recognize the reality of the IETF, while at the same time IETF recognizes the value of an internationally sanctioned and recognized ICANN DNSO, to be effective, must have trademark representation, Thus, far, the TM people seem to be playing a 'wait-and-see' strategy. Doesn't play and won't work Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: Keep everything open - even 'closed' meetings should be well publicized and should allow interested parties to listen in, i not participate. Other: Keep perspective. In the final analysis, ICANN is going to perform some rather mundane tasks: the administration of names and numbers. On the other hand, you get to decide who can become a registry, and therefore who could be running a potentially lucrative business. Further, ICANN is the first real test of how we set up and run a self-regulating organization. Good luck. Do well.
Mark D. Heckendorn, i800 Inc. Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: I am interested in the relationship of ICANN to the IETF, regarding the creation of 'new standards' that have any impact on the Domain Name System. It seems to me that if ICANN is to be successful it must be clear that any changes to standards that involve the Domain Name System must be reviewed, open to public comment and subject to final approval by ICANN.
Bob Helfant, iName, Inc. Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: To date there is no organization which has the 'blessing' of the US Government or the Domain community. Seeing you folks somehow 'elected' to your board and trying to get the USG behind you after not taking part in the past two years of discussion is more than a little odd. With no members, you seem to have no representation, and there is very little accountability built in to your organization. I hope this all changes dramatically before any real motion forward occurs. Other: What is most important is to find the correct way to move forward, not to move forward as soon as possible.
Michael E. Heltzer, International Trademark Association Other: To the Members of the Initial Board of ICANN: The International Trademark Association respectfully submits this statement on the issue of trademarks in cyberspace. HARMONIZING DOMAIN NAMES AND BRAND PROTECTION INTA'S PERSPECTIVE To argue that domain names are no more than mere computer addresses is to belittle the importance of the Internet. Domain names are the street and house signs on the superhighway and the awning on the shop front as well. The services provided at yahoo.com, excite.com and aol.com have made well-known trademarks of YAHOO, EXCITE and AOL. Simultaneously, goods and services offered under the most famous trademarks in the world, such as MICROSOFT, SONY and DISNEY, can be found at microsoft.com, sony.com and disney.com. On the Internet, location becomes brand and brand becomes location. The ranks of trademark owners are swelling due to the explosive growth of small-businesses on the Internet (approximately 2.5 million domain names registered in the .com domain and counting). No business is too small that trademark law will not protect its rights in its domain name. Everyone taking part in the monumental task of building the Internet into the backbone of the world economy has a vested interest in a stable domain name system. Part of that stability derives from brand protection, but brand protection is endangered by certain proposals for reorganizing the domain name system ('DNS'). Judging from some of the more heated discussion occurring at various meetings and in the Internet discussion groups on this topic, there appears to be some misunderstanding regarding INTA's position on the DNS which unnecessarily creates a perception of a trademark vs. domain name owner conflict. This perceived conflict detracts from the goal of creating a non-governmental, stable DNS. At this critical juncture, we think it necessary to summarize our recommendations regarding the future DNS. The Formation of ICANN The U.S. Government has developed a plan (summarized in its 'White Paper') for transferring control of the domain name assignment system ('DNS') from the federal government to the private sector. INTA supports the privatization of the Internet and the promotion of international participation in the DNS. The Association has participated in the International Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC) / Policy Oversight Committee (POC) process and the series of International Forum on the White Paper (IFWP) meetings. We intend to remain active in the creation of ICANN as well. ICANN's responsibilities as they pertain to the allocation of domain names have great impact on the future of Internet and in particular, on e-commerce on the Internet. The four basic areas in which we make recommendations regarding ICANN are: 1. Whether to Add Generic Top Level Domains; 2. Minimum Standards for Reserving a Domain Name; 3. Dispute Resolution; and 4. Representation in ICANN. These recommendations grow out of INTA's participation in the IAHC / POC, an early attempt to lay the groundwork for a permanent DNS. Our position has been recently set forth at length in the testimony of Anne Chasser before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer Protection (available at http://www.inta.org/achasser.htm). The safeguards we propose benefit all those building the Internet - brand protection is not a big vs. small or trademark vs. domain name issue. In fact, trademark law is the primary means by which the domain name owner protects his or her rights. Trademark law is flexible enough to protect free speech, as in the U.S. case Reddy Communications v. Environmental Action Foundation case in the U.S., where an environmental group's use of a utility company's REDDY KILOWATT logo was protected, while simultaneously protecting the public from fraudulent speech where defendants misuse trademarks to masquerade as their opponents in order to expose unwitting people to their views. As illustrated by the 'Panavision' case, where over 200 trademarks were pirated from their owners for use on the Internet, the application of trademark laws to domain names is not a radical proposition. Trademark law protects telephone listings - in the Canadian case Orkin v. Pestco, a rival exterminating company was barred from listing itself in the white pages under the famous ORKIN mark of its competitor, and it protects telephone numbers - in the U.S. case Dial-A-Mattress v. Page, a competitor was barred from using the 1-800 equivalent of the famous 212-MATTRESS number. As domain names function more and more as brands, the question becomes how to efficiently harmonize DNS procedure with brand protection. 1. The Addition of Generic Top Level Domains Second level domain names can contain up to 22 alphanumeric characters. Despite this seemingly infinite number of possibilities, there is a perception that all the 'good' .com names have been taken and that more gTLDs are needed. It is not productive to discuss the addition of gTLDs in the abstract. In theory, gTLDs dedicated to and appropriately designated as non-commercial or religious or political or personal in nature (i.e. johndoe.nom) may have no significant impact on trademark owners' rights. However, it seems that the addition of commercial gTLDs such as a .firm or .store would only lead to consumer confusion if different parties own coca-cola.com, coca-cola.firm and coca-cola.store. Therefore, new gTLDs should only be added, if at all, after the completion of a study by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) (which study was requested in the White Paper). If additional gTLDs are to be added, it should be one-at-a-time. 2. Minimum Standards For Domain Name Registration If customers cannot trust the integrity of goods purchased over the Internet, they will stop purchasing goods over the Internet. Anonymity may be of value in an Internet chat room but not in e-commerce. Accountability starts with identity. Under the present DNS, a domain name can be obtained and immediately utilized without verification of identifying information. This is not a trademark-specific issue. There is a public interest in preventing the Internet from degrading into a global fly-by-night operation rife with online gambling, obscene material and confidence schemes. We therefore advocate the establishment of specific minimum standards for domain name registration and renewal (some of which were included in the Administration's policy statement). These standards must include at least the following: * sufficient contact and intended use information; * appointment of an agent for service of process and contact information; * agreement to jurisdiction (at least in the jurisdiction of the registrar) in the event of litigation; and * publication of all application/renewal information on an easily accessible public web site. 3. Speedy Inexpensive Dispute Resolution Policy While there is dispute as to the magnitude of the problem of domain name piracy, if only one percent of the 2.5 million .com domain names are pirated, that represents a tidal wave of potential litigation and a large fortune spent on unproductive legal fees (which ultimately become 'the cost of doing business' and are passed on to the consumer). Like any other field where disputes arise, there is a need for quick inexpensive alternatives to litigation. The disputants and the consumers benefit. INTA does not advocate a dispute resolution system where the registered trademark owner always wins against the domain name owner, nor does it endorse all the actions of owners of registered trademarks who have utilized Network Solution Inc.'s dispute policy. A system which ignores basic tenets of trademark law such as a likelihood of confusion analysis penalizes all parties involved - including the owners of registered trademarks. Accordingly, a reasonable administrative dispute resolution policy is a necessary element for the future DNS. Any dispute policy needs to be consistent across the gTLD space (should the WIPO study determine that additional gTLDs are in order). 4. Representation in ICANN The Internet is used by so many people, businesses, and organizations that it is difficult to categorize the various parties. Developing a membership structure for the organization and ensuring that those groups will be represented in a governance mechanism is an important task for ICANN as it pushes forward with its vision for the Internet of the 21st Century. In developing a structure for tomorrow, we should not forget the past. In particular, the impact that trademarks have had in making the Internet a powerful means for commercial interaction. If the Internet is to serve the needs of international commerce, such as maintaining brand equity and consumers' interests in relying on such brand equity, the trademark community must have a significant voice in domain name policy. Otherwise, a governing body weighted heavily toward the Internet technical community or registries/registrars may well not fully understand or appreciate the relevance of trademark concerns to business and consumers. Conclusion In the words of the chief executive of Australia's National Office of the Information Economy, domain names are the thin edge of the Internet governance wedge. Let's work together to set the right precedent. In view of the importance of the DNS to e-commerce, INTA encourages stakeholders of the Internet to throw their support behind a representative ICANN which will consider the recommendations outlined above. Help us work towards a stable commercial environment on the Internet. About INTA The International Trademark Association (INTA) is a not-for-profit membership organization with 3,600 members from 120 countries. All of INTA's members, regardless of their size or international scope, share a common interest in trademarks and a recognition of the importance of brand identity to the businesses that own trademarks, to the general public, and to the global marketplace Submitted by: Michael E. Heltzer, Government Relations Program Coordinator, INTA
Rafael Hernandez, Corporacion InterRed Other: What are the mechanisms for ICANN to be self-sustainable in the short and the long term?
Fay Howard, CENTR Accountability and Representation: Clarification of the envisaged SO structures, particularly wiith regard to Councils. In the Domain Name SO, there are 2 confliciting definitions of what a Council is meant to be. A broad mebership, at large group versus a small group elected by the Domain Name SO to liaise with the ICANN Board. Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: Would like to see the issue if ICANN funding and the proposed budget process discussed. Direct finding from members or via Support Organizations. The relationship with ccTLD registries. Are contracts with registries and other constituencies envisaged?
Steven G Huter Accountability and Representation: For ICANN to prosper globally in the long term, it's imperative that more world regions have a representative voice in the ICANN Board. Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: I believe that having representative(s) who have actively contributed to the design and implementation of Internet protocols and standards is critical for the ICANN Board. The perspective and experience such individuals could bring to the decision-making process would greatly enhance the effectiveness of the Board.
David L Ian-Diorio, Franklin Pierce Law Center Other: As I'm uncertain into which category these fall, here goes: 1) What distinction might be made for educational institutions and related name registers, versus commercial use? 2) Will there be a discussion as to liability for infringing use of a registered name, and a) what is jurisdiction for filing a claim; b) What ruling entity will oversee such claims and levy enforcement? Thanks, Dave
Jeff J Kinz, Emergent Phenomena Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: Regarding the membership structure, I believe that it is critically important that persons representing non-telecommunications entities be the majority membership of your organization. The reason for this is that the traditional telephone businesses are focused strongly on creating higher margins, (and prices) for internet service products and they will be using all of their considerable resources and energy to make this happen. To keep the process balanced and fair I hope that a way can be found to ensure that the composition of the membership is balanced to reflect the needs of all of the Internet public and not be affected by an overlarge presence of individuals with short term economic gain as their goal, rather than the long term usefullness of whatever the internet evolves into. Today the Internet supports a healthy and diverse population of research, commercial, and private uses. From this mixture many different kinds of value are produced. ( yes, I know, I'm probably preaching to the choir ... ) Much of the information available on the Internet today has been posted publicly simply out of a willingness to share information that might be helpful or in hopes that the information might be interesting enough to generate either commercial endeavors or participation in someone's favorite cause. Much research and academic information is available on the Internet naturally due to the origins of the Internet itself. I am concerned that the 'ILEC's',('Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers', formerly known as the 'Baby Bell's' ) are pushing extremely aggressively to convert all data communications traffic to the restrictive and arbitrarily toll bound pricing model currently in effect for the telephone system. If this pricing model is put into place, the Internet will suffer a major injury. This pricing model will do great harm to the value and utility of the Internet because it would dramatically reduce the growth rate in general public use of the Internet. This would cause harm to both those who wish to use the Internet for commercial retail purposes and those who use the Internet for research, or simply as an effective and convenient information gathering tool. Simply put, a major portion of the value and utility of the internet is large numbers of people, businesses and institutions which it connects to each other. Anything which stops or severely slows that growth is reducing the usefulness and value of the internet both for business and the general public. The only entities who would gain from slowed growth of the Internet are the companies which would gain higher profits from the increased prices they would be able to charge. As we all know the cost of the operating the internet has to be paid for. And it will be- but let the prices be based on the actual costs of providing the service and not on arbitrary (and frequently tele-opoly originated) tarrifs. Here is an example of the current value of the internet: When our daughter was 11 months old she broke her femur. she was diagnosed with a defect in her collagen protein chain production. Even though the the doctor who treated our daughter spent a long time with my wife and I, we were left feeling (as you can probably imagine) quite overwhelmed and ignorant. Later on the same day as our meeting with the doctor, we started doing our own research over the internet. In a very short time we found an enormous amount of material on our daughter's problem, despite the fact that it is a very rare condition. After a quick scan we triaged the material down a reasonable size of about 15 hours of reading, (as opposed to 100's hours) Using the Internet dramatically improved our knowledge about this problem and more importantly it vastly expanded our awareness of what options of treatment were available and how other people with similar problems were dealing with them etc.. The bottom line here is that the wide open nature of the internet greatly improved the quality of my daughter's life and consequently the rest of her family's life as well. If the Internet is converted to the 'Telephone price model' the open nature of the Internet will suffer greatly and this type of information will become much less accessable. It may virtually disappear. Jeff Kinz Research Director, 44 Marlboro Street, suite 12 Emergent Phenomena Hudson, MA 01749 'A research partner of IDC, (International Data Coproration).' Email : jkinz@ultranet.com Phone : 978.568.9083 Fax : 617.670.3142 This email was created using Naturally Speaking Speech Recognition software. Incorrectly recognized words and phrases may be present.
John C Klensin Accountability and Representation: Statement may follow under separate cover. Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: The following is a personal statement only: Generally, I believe that technical representation on the Board, selected directly by, and responsive to, the various technical communities is vital. 'Technical', in this context, reflects the different communities that the IANA function has traditionally served: Protocol design and standardization bodies in the protocol areas; registrar, registry, and names/intellectual property interests in the domain names area; and registry, ISP, and major user interests in the address allocation area. I believe that, if such interests and experience are not strongly represented on the board, there is significant long-term risk of ICANN attempting to set policies on the basis of things that enough people wish were true: the equivalent of legislation setting PI at 3 because it would be profoundly convenient. Especially if ICANN is going to seek direct membership, I believe that user interests should be represented through that membership and board members selected by it. By contrast, the supporting organizations (or equivalent) should be centers of technical and operational expertise in their particular areas, containing people and organizations with significant contemporary stake in those areas (and 'skin in the game'), not just interest in the area or passionate beliefs about it, and their associated councils and board representation should reflect this. More generally, especially if ICANN is to adopt a membership structure, I think the only safe strategy is to view the board as a balance of interests, not as a body all of whose members are chosen by similar processes and constituency. Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: Statement may follow under separate cover.
Eric H.M. Lee, Commercial Internet eXchange Association Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: Will ICANN be a membership organization? If you cannot answer this question now, when will you be prepared to answer it? If it is not a membbership organization, what legal requirements for public accountability exist? How will ICANN's board ensure that it will not be self-perpetuating but represent a diversity of interests, including - and especially ISPs and the business community at large? What would happen if the full transition were delayed? If there are further Congressional hearings, will ICANN be prepared to appear in its formal capacity and under what authority would it testify? What would be the legal effect of Congressional action (law or resolution) to block or revoke the transition?
Don Libes, National Institute of Standards and Technology Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: I would like to bring to your attention the existence of a registry service that may solve some of the problems currently facing IANA/ICANN. NICS is a name service currently run by NIST. Before going any further: no, NICS is not a replacement for DNS. NICS, however, could be a replacement for some of the other domains for which IANA has traditionally been responsible. NICS was designed to serve as a registry for domains in which there was no central authority - or for domains in which the central authorities were too expensive or their existence impeded development. Given the controvery over the future of IANA/ICANN, it is appropriate to raise the awareness of NICS and its possible expanded use. One of the NICS test cases was in fact the domain for Port Numbers, which tracked those numbers maintained by IANA. Other test cases included Magic Numbers and File Extensions which have no analog at IANA. Not surprisingly, it is inconceivable that IANA would support any domain for which people might have a need. In contrast, NICS is generic and automated, allowing the creation of any domain. It is also free. NICS provides a number of other features: * Domains may be populated in collaborative fashion. Any party (user, company, working group) may participate in population of a domain. * Entries are allowed to conflict. Temporary disagreements show where attention of research should be focused. It is also possible that conflicting identifiers may merely reflect the real world. (Just because IANA's registry exists doesn't mean it's not possible to encounter port collisions.) NICS can automatically contact parties involved in registry collisions. * Each entry is authenticated. There is always a way to find out the party responsible for an entry. This is not the case with IANA's current registry. Responsibility for entries may be transferred. For example, upon standardization, a working group could give ownership to ISO. * Comments may be attached to an entry, for example, to suggest better names or identify potential conflicts. Public comments avoid multiple parties redundantly contacting the original party. (There is no way to permanently comment on entries in IANA's registry except by methods that are outside the registry, i.e., mail, Usenet postings.) * Entries can be seen by others immediately. There is no lag from the time of submission to approval. (In contrast, IANA never guaranteed any turnaround time or, for that matter, approval at all.) * Descriptions must include their status with respect to use and standards. Placeholder identifiers, deprecated identifiers, and other non-official or de facto identifiers are encouraged if they clarify knowledge needed by other users. Summary: NICS is a name registry that avoids political issues by being free and entirely user-driven. NICS offers a more responsive mechanism than traditional manual registries. Plus, NICS offers many desirable features appropriate to the very purpose of such registries. NICS presently runs on a NIST web server. It is entirely automated - there are *no* staff involved. Feedback is encouraged and the potential for further NICS development is possible if appropriate. (NIST would also be willing to turn NICS over to a neutral party if NIST is not deemed neutral enough.) There is a NICS FAQ at: http://pitch.nist.gov/nics/faq-doc.html The NICS home page is: http://pitch.nist.gov/nics It only takes 4 clicks to get from the home page to the 'TCP Ports' domain, but to avoid any confusion in initial navigation, here is a URL that takes you directly to the TCP Ports: http://pitch.nist.gov/cgi-bin/nics/cgibin/domain_list_with_attributes.cgi?DomainNameList=TCP+ports For comparison, here is the domain for 'magic numbers': http://pitch.nist.gov/cgi-bin/nics/cgibin/domain_list_with_attributes.cgi?DomainNameList=Magic+numbers Note: The development of NICS was funded in part by a US Dept of Commerce Pioneer Grant; however, there is no connection between NICS and the Department of Commerce staff currently participating in the IANA/ICANN reorganization.
Richard A. Lindsay, interQ Inc. Accountability and Representation: It seems that the biggest concerns, are whether or not the ICANN can create a truly representative organization. Since this has never really been done before, I think the first steps have to be taken, the organization set to work, and tested based on its results, not on what might happen. This exercise will require a lot of common sense, and require decisions to be made taken with many grains of salt. However, over-debating basic accountabilty issues will restrain the ICANN from doing any real work. Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: An interesting point, is that any member of NSI, or a country code NIC (for example JPNIC in Japan) that is a member of the ICANN would have an inherent conflict of interest, in that the ICANN is chartered with creating competing organizations that will challenge NSI and the current country NICs. It is no secret that NSI has enjoyed financial success due to its ability to register current gTLDs with no competition. Thus completely avoiding the appearances of conflicts of interest will likely be impossible. Once again, however, the real result of members performance in the actual working environment of the ICANN, and in voting tendencies would indicate whether a member is truly impartial or not. The transparancy of actual processes (day to day votes etc.) should ensure conflict of interest problems. Other: The ICANN board, has a momentous task ahead of it, however the element of time should not be ignored. While the current agenda items are important for the full implementation of the ICANN, other more significant issues must be addressed sooner rather than later. I believe the need for further gTLD space is both real and urgent. Witness the growth of ccTLDs such as .to .nu and .cc (just to mention a few). The purpose of these domains is not to provide an identity with Tonga or New Guineau, but to have a domain that reflects the end users' products or services. Further the monopolist nature of the NSI contract, has now in recent months taken an international turn. In Japan, NSI has recently embarked on a Japanese version of the InterNIC, with ASCII. NSI did not attempt to establish free competition by requesting multiple partners in Japan, rather it selected a single partner with which to continue a Japanese monopoly. Similar such partnerships have been undertaken in other nations around the world. We believe the gTLD issue must be addressed, and urge the ICANN to consider the groundwork and preparation that another organization, the Council of Registrars (CORE), has undertaken. Our company is a recent member of the CORE. We joined, the CORE as it was really the only open organization that has clearly stated a policy and rationalle of addressing new gTLD issues. We urge the ICANN to address the issue of new gTLDs as one of thier primary working agenda items, and to consider the CORE as a participant in whatever solution follows.
Nick Lordi Other: There is too much distrust between the various stakeholders across the world. ICANN should consider the establishment of trust as a primary oganizational goal. The new organization needs stability, which would help to lend confidence in it from those of us in the industry. Stability in the form of stable funding and prominent, knowledgeable staff is required. Establishing a set of minimum technical and business criteria is a first step towards stability, criteria such as: * The development and acceptance by the board of a 5 year business plan with financial projections and sensitivity analyses, which includes a funding model and a five year projection of revenues, expenses, and staffing requirements. The business plan should also include a risk analysis section addressing the potential impact of alternative positions stakeholders take on ICANN's business. Such a risk analysis should also include legal contingency plans. We further believe that 'what if' sensitivity analyses should be conducted on the projected revenues and major cost items. We also understand that an ICANN representative stated at an Nov 2nd Cross Industry Working Team (XIWT) meeting that ICANN estimates it will cost between $2 to $3 million, annually, to operate ICANN. What business case is this estimate based on ? * The selection of a new CEO. We understand an executive search firm has been engaged by ICANN, and hope ICANN keeps the community informed of its progress. Such open communication with the Internet community on the progress of the search will help to build trust in ICANN. Will the Internet community be told who the executive search firm is and how nominations could be sent to such a firm? * the selection and staffing of the new 'councils', which have had a minimum of 2 meetings, or been in operational existence for 3 months, whichever is greater, prior to acceptance by ICANN * a fully funded legal contingency fund * legal insurance, fully funded, in the amount of $Y dollars * the establishment of a technical core support team, not a chief technical officer but competent technical staff that ICANN can rely on.
Thomas J. Lowenhaupt, The Communisphere Project Accountability and Representation: Internet Governance & Representation on the Governance Body By Thomas Lowenhaupt (toml@communisphere.com) November 11, 1998 Think back to the Internet's origin. Was it conceived as the basic communications structure for the planet's civil society? Did society's elders say: --- OK geeks, here's the game plan. We want you to build a communications system that will promote family values and individual freedoms. Make it something that will make communities a better place to live. Closely examine social and economic needs and involve a broad swath of society in designing it. And make sure it's a system that will protect privacy while providing opportunities for local economic development. And make it capable of providing entertainment and other communication services.… And here's a blank check. --- As you know, that's not the Internet's history. The system was designed for military purposes and outside the purview of civil society. In the mid 1990s the moguls bought off the geeks, and now they're trying to turn the net into net profit. I'm a member and vice chair of Community Board 3. In New York City the Community Board is the grassroots level of government. We have broad planning responsibilities, we recommend and monitor service delivery standards, and we make zoning recommendations. My district covers three neighborhoods surrounding LaGuardia Airport - Hispanic Corona, African-American East Elmhurst, and multicultural Jackson Heights - all of which are on the wrong side of the Digital Divide. There are about 125,000 people living here. Since my appointment to the Board in 1992 I've labored to weave interactive technologies into a communications system that will benefit my community. We desperately need it. As our civilization has become increasingly complex the communication systems available to our community have become dysfunctional. We're inundated with trash and trivia through TV, radio, and newspapers. And industrial economies of scale have resulted in our having no local TV, radio, or daily newspaper. Here we sit in the middle of the 'world communications capital' and yet we must rely on word of mouth or snail mail for civic communication. Net Damage When I was first appointed to the Community Board I thought that, being an 'expert' in interactive technologies, I'd pull a BBS off my shelf and put it to work solving community problems. At first there was some small interest - residents and Board members were beginning to communicate with one another. Then the Internet arrived and things got worse. 'Worse?' some of you are probably saying in disbelief. 'Isn't the Internet the best thing that ever to happen to the online world?' Absolutely not. As we were experimenting with the BBS the web arrived and walloped us - it offered a spacious world that made our community effort seem puny. Nobody wanted to hear about an obsolescent BBS. 'Where's the world?' they'd ask. The net also hurt other community communication resources, such as cable TV's public access channels - our one real medium for local communication. In the recent negotiation for the renewal of its cable franchise, Time-Warner argued that Internet competition might kill them…they were unable to provide the state-of-the-art system our community hoped for…we should consider ourselves lucky to get what they're offering. But we don't hear much about net damage or lost opportunities. Sometimes I'm astounded to hear the mass media talk about the Internet. It's like these people live on mars. Two years ago they learned to access the Internet and now they presume it's universally good and that everyone on the planet is similarly endowed. It's just ain't so. (If you're asking yourself what all this has to do with Internet governance be patient, it has everything to do with governance.) The Two Voids As you'll recall, we're on the wrong side of the Digital Divide. So while Silicon Valley communities can count on everyone in town having an Internet-capable PC, we scramble to reuse 486 machines for our youth and community groups. But it's not just computers that we need - nor training in their use. These we would need with or without the Internet. What we need is common access to the online world. And what we need is a community channel. With these our community can begin to garner some Information Age benefits. But it's going to be difficult because the Internet was designed for military not community use. Consequently common access and a community channel are two great voids. Let me explain. Common Access is the simpler void to illustrate. It's most easily seen in our schools, the more wired part of our community. If you attend a school governance or technology meeting these days administrators say things like 'THE PARENTS WILL HAVE ACCESS TO THIS OR THAT VIA THE INTERNET.' But they're not investing E-Rate or local school monies in this. No, individual parents are expected to spend $200-300 a year on AOL or the like (plus get a computer, training…). This is not a realistic expectation for many families. The Community Service Tier But we are preparing a solution. Through The Communisphere Project, our local effort to bring Information Age benefits to our community, we're developing a two-tiered Internet - one free, one pay. The free Community Service Tier will provide access to email, a community calendar, civic, school, city, state, and federal web sites. The pay tier will provide access to everything else - and subsidize the Community Service Tier. Some have likened the Community Service Tier to a hybrid of cable access channels and the telcos lifeline services. Together with a computer reuse effort we expect this project to provide access to many. But our plans are largely incompatible with the standard Internet architecture. To the military-mind, space was inconsequential - there was no need to differentiate between a battle zone in Asia or South Africa. Consequently, standard Internet technology can't differentiate between a call to the local church or one to the Vatican or Lhasa. So while we're negotiating with Bell Atlantic to partner with us on this project, we hear them calculating the retrofit dollars they must invest to allow the Community Service Tier to function on the military-design Internet. The Community Channel The other big void coming out of this military-mind is the inability to provide a community channel. Those of you involved with government will appreciate the need for quality communication. For a community to run effectively (or even to exist) it's essential that we have a means to communicate with one another. Intuitively some of you will again think the Internet must be a godsend of us. Absolutely not. When I poll my neighbors as to their Internet Service Provider I hear a remarkable number of companies mentioned. There's a lot of AOL, some AT&T, Bell Atlantic, Netcom, TIAC, Rocket, ABC, XYZ… When trying to establish a community channel this plethora of ISPs might best be thought of as speaking different languages. The Fissiparous Internet Where's the Internet's community interface? Where are the features that allow us to discover common interests? How does it allow us to connect as neighbors? How do we let the community know about this or that problem? Or the new opportunity? Or the event coming up next Tuesday? The answer is simple - when each neighbor connects to the Internet through a different ISP, each with its own interface, we don't. We loose community. Geographic communities were not part of the military-mind. And they're not part of today's Internet - at least not without an extraordinarily difficult retrofit. Thus the Internet has had a fissiparous impact upon our community. Let me combine these two voids into a picture of the Internet's likely impact on one segment of our community - shopkeepers. First, for historic perspective, think of the impact the automobile had on community shopkeepers, i.e., think about the malls and downtown deterioration. Now, think of a distance-insensitive Internet with no community interface. Many see a dim future for a large segment of our local shopkeepers. Was the Internet intentionally designed by the military to destroy shopkeepers? Absolutely not. Quite simply, it was designed for military purposes, not civilian. It was conceived without the shopkeeper, the school teacher, the parent, the local government, the libraries, the businesses, the hospitals…in mind. Before ICANN accepts the proposed Internet management responsibilities they should make it known that they're accepting damaged goods. And that they expect a retrofit fund to be allocated to make necessary adjustments. TIIAP might be an appropriate agency for dispersing this fund. Governance & Representation Who should be represented and on ICANN's Board? The people of my community should be represented. Their lives will be changed extensively in predictable and in unimaginable ways. Not only will they be coming to you for personal names and numbers but they'll need numbers for their cars, their refrigerators, lawnmowers… How will ICANN look out for their needs? What steps are you taking to see that your activities do not have a negative impact on their future? Ask the same questions about our schools, our medical institutions, our governments, our privacy, and security. For each of these areas is going to be affected is very significant ways by your activities. From the start ICANN needs to begin an Internet redesign. The redesign needs to start with: --- OK geeks, here's the game plan. We want you to build a communications system that will promote family values and individual freedoms. Make it something that will make communities a better place to live. Closely examine social and economic needs and involve a broad swath of society in designing it… You got the idea. We've got to make the Internet a civilian communication system for individuals, families, and communities. 1776 Will the governance mechanisms adopted by ICANN have as significant an impact on our society as those made in Philadelphia in 1776, as some claim? Will they forestall the helter-skelter planning that followed the introduction of automobile technology? Probably not, but as a rule of thumb you should proceed gingerly and err on the side of safety. Think back to 1776. Is my community to be treated like the plantation slaves in 1776, and the women, and non-land owners? Who represented them in 1776? Where is my community's representation on ICANN? Is there a lesson to be learned from the privileged material position given landowners in 1776? Are the proposed guaranteed seats for SOs appropriate? Is the Internet their world or my community's? The geeks were needed to design the military machine and they'll continue to serve a role - but to put them in charge? Do they know how to run society? ICANN has to keep clearly in mind who the retrofit system is to be built for - not Mr. Gates and the moguls at Time-Warner - it's for my community and yours. I wish you wisdom and courage in the difficult tasks ahead. And get lucky. Personal Background: Thomas Lowenhaupt has been involved with designing and developing interactive telecommunications systems for two decades: cable TV 1978-82; electronic kiosks 1981-84; electronic marketing 1985-Date; published QWIX Guide To Online Services 1988-91; founder and director The Communisphere Project 1992-date; consultant. He is a member and vice chair of Community Board 3 and co-chair of its communications committee. A graduate of Queens College and New York University's Interactive Telecommunication Program. End. icann comments on governance.doc Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: Is there a lesson to be learned from the privileged material position given landowners in 1776? Are the proposed guaranteed seats for SOs appropriate? Is the Internet their world or my community's? The geeks were needed to design the military machine and they'll continue to serve a role - but to put them in charge? Do they know how to run society? (Comments cut from Accountability and Representation entry.) Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: Comments to be submitted Other: I hope to attend. If not an audio stream would be nice. Tom Lowenhaupt
Carlos A. Marroquin, Universidad Rafael Landivar Accountability and Representation: I'm sending this e-mail from an latinamerican country, and I consider we are nor represented because any member of the BoT is from Latin America. Are you going to do anything about this? Latin America is a very big region and MUST be represented. I hope you reconsider this.
Declan McCullagh, Wired News Accountability and Representation: be sure to provide a reasonably detailed agenda at the start of the day
Mark R Measday Accountability and Representation: Given the further likely evolution of internet commercial interest to deal with copyright, ownership and public/private domain issues that will arise to parallel historical developments in technologies such as publishing, cinema and radio/telephony, it would be wise for ICANN to realize that what have been regarded as technical issues until now may very well become politicised, interest-based issues in the future. As such the simplistic duality of organizational/individual membership will probably be superseded by a number of entities with interest in the resolution of issues in their direction. If ICANN is not to cede authority for much of its operations to the governmental and inter-governmental bodies already engaged in this area, it needs to present itself as a forum within which this issues can be resolved, as such representativeness and inclusion are the highest priorities. Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: The symbology of impartial internet expertise - a technical means of communication - will be replaced by legal advocacy of various points-of-view, as the technology is no longer a property of the technical fraternity alone (as Jon Postel found out) but part of a wider sea of issues for which it is a conduit. Unless the requirement for expression of these issues is found, it is likely problems will arise. The inherently monopolistic nature of TLD's and even more importantly ccTLD's is likely to give cause for conflict with the judicial systems of many countries if and when they become highly profitable ventures. As such purely technical advice may be in conflict with the non-linearities of legal systems. Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: The dispute resolution precedures into which OMPI has invested so much time and money stand as an example of how such global procedures might be set up. However, whether agreement to such arbitration can be coerced other than by the passage of time remains to be seen. Many conservative bodies will not be happy with such processes which dilute their entitlements for fairness. If ICANN is to be seen as an embodiment of some post-20th century consensual international structure (and there is no particular reason to believe that this is the case), then it must use the technologies it represents to find a structure and modus operandi which is not that of the 19th century Weberian bureaucracy, in which these issues are solved by time (give up waiting), guile (we didn't understand what they were doing until too late) and abstraction (it's against the rules). A simple set of initial voting rules and on-line voting would enable most of the inital consensi to be established, thereafter remaining as a check. Other: The complexification of what was initially a response to consumer demand (more TLD's please) demonstrates that the nature of human negotiation has not changed in thousands of years. Should ICANN, ably lead by Mr Roberts and Ms Dyson in its interim incarnation, be able to recapture some of the initial enthusiasm and inspiration that made the internet a boon to many around the world, they would be providing a useful service of leadership and demonstration that human institutions can evolve positively.
Albert G. Meyer, Austin Internet Accountability and Representation: The fact that InterNIC does not require domain registrants to provide correct contact info is inexcusable negligence. This flaw needs to be corrected. Domains which do not have correct contact info should be deleted after reasonable attempts have been made to reach the registrant and obtain correct info from them.
Roeland M.J. Meyer, Morgan Hill Software Company, Inc Accountability and Representation: (From our proposal to the NTIA green-paper process.) There have been a number of submittals suggesting various forms of policing the new registrar system. Of these, the best idea we have heard was that of a not-for-profit corporation. However, I would add an extra ingredient that would make the entire system self-policing. The registrants should be the majority stockholders in this corporation. Those who are directly effected by a system are often the best policing agents. I strongly suggest a private corporation, with the only voting shares being held by the registrants. a) A TLD registrar would be very nice here. Their function would be very simple, maintain the TLD name-space, operate the root-servers, and assign authority. That is all. It should be prohibited from doing anything more. So as not to become 'in competition' with its own customer-base. b) Registration cost would be the annual budget, divided among the registrants. c) All TLD registrants would own ONE share, per TLD, in the corporation that actually runs the TLD registry. This way the registrants, in fact, own the Registrar, and therefore the Registry, in common. d) Annual meetings would be held to vote on things, like the annual budget. Proxies could be solicited/assigned/pleaded as in any other corporation. e) Any profits would be paid back out to the shareholders as any corporation would pay out dividends. f) All executive offices should be elective, as well as board seats. g) The Registry shall have no right to deny service to any potential registrant, other than for name-space conflict. However, all TLD registrants will be required to show a working public SLD registration system, within 6 months, of TLD registration, or lose the TLD. All registration fees are due on application. h) A minimum $100 application processing fee should be submitted before the application is reviewed. Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: The DNSO need to be simple and direct. Since it has not enforceable in international law, it needs to have consensus agreement from the stakeholders. Only the simplest of possible structures has a chance to achieve such a consensus. I suggest the 'clearinghouse' model of SLD/TLD, on a first-come-first-served (FCFS) basis.The 'clearing-house' would simply assure name uniqueness and entity reliability. Publicly registered TLDs need to prove their ability to register SLDs within six months of TLD registration or lose the TLD. Any TLD that does not accept SLD registrations should not be allowed. The TLD can set any SLD registration criteria it chooses.But, that charter must be publicly registered with the clearinghouse. Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: a) A TLD registrar would be very nice here. Their function would be very simple, maintain the TLD name-space, operate the root-servers, and assign authority. That is all. It should be prohibited from doing anything more. So as not to become 'in competition' with its own customer-base. Other: At MHSC, we believe that only the simplest form of regulation may survive the various conflicting interest groups. Any complication or attempt to set some sort of cultural agenda will either exclude an entire stakeholder group, or massively offensive to other stake-holder groups. An open and *permissive* frame-work, without undue restrictions, it what is required here. Any attempt to force either a socialist OR a capitalist agenda will be met with resistance by some large faction of the Internet community. Both must be allowed and neither must be protected. -- We have all grown callous, in our distrust of leadership in general, through this entire ordeal. Heaven forbid that I speak ill of Postel, but his unilateral dealings are one of the key factors generating this distrust. Yesterday we found out just how 'unilateral' those dealings have been. Jon Postel never intended the IFWP process to succeed, since he was 'searching' for potential BoD members since last Jun98. Michael Sondow raised a very valid point, 'what gave him the right?' It is painfully obvious that Postel was not attending the IFWP meetings in 'good faith' It is also painfully obvious that ICANN is Postel's legacy and was created entirely by him, with very little external input. This is entirely consistent with our valuation of the 'NIH syndrome' factor present at IANA/ISI/ICANN. Personally, I think it would do more harm than good, were the present BoD to step down. It would add nothing more, other than yet more delay, which may prove fatal at this point. I do believe that Mike Roberts should step-down and let a process, whereby another interim president is selected, be decided and deployed (Mike Roberts has already proven his trustworthiness when, arguing strongly against an IFWP wrap-up meeting, he failed to reveal that he was *already* annointed as the ICANN CEO by his god-ship Jon Postel.) This, if for no other reason, should be done to rebuild the trust so urgently required of the InterNet stakeholders. I also believe that the ORSC by-laws are substantively better than the current ICANN proposal. The current proposal does nothing more than propogate the situation that has already serially-raped the InterNet stakeholders. Of course, we're not going to trust it. The track-record is already extant.
Thomas A Morrison, Franklin Pierce Law Center Accountability and Representation: No comment
Brian F Muolo, General Services Administration Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: I would like to see a better naming structure. Why should a major corporation, or a domain name broker, buy up all the domains for generic products and services and then be allowed to sell them. They are only valuable becuase the current naming structure is 'dog eat dog'. I would like to see generic categories defined, and specific companies defined within (fine, allow for multiple category companies). Couldn't we have a www.diapers.com and have a page generated listing links to all the companies that fall under that catagory? Then more specifically, www.pamper.diapers.com (or something along those lines) would redirect me to the pampers home page or web site! DNS Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: Keep it all public. The power is being removed from the gov't so please don't make it political! Other: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to attend. --- I wanted to state how disappointing I found the November 14 Public Meeting. It was great that you allowed ample time for comments and questions, but I was upset by the fact that you answered very few questions. If you only wanted to solicit comments and questions, a simple web form - like the one I'm using now - would have been sufficient. I am glad I did not travel, as one speaker quoted, 29 hours to attend the meeting - I would have personally considered that a waste of time, money, and resources. I am also sorry for the audacious manner in which Esther Dyson responded to one speaker right before the lunch break when he asked if the board was planning on answering any questions during the Public Meeting. To which the response was, we told you to feel free to ask questions of individual board members. I plan to be involved with this upcoming process as much as possible, however I don't see myself attending any more meetings - I'll save the time and gas, and read the minutes on-line and comment in a forum as such. Thank you.
Helen H. Naylor Accountability and Representation: With the Justice Dept. bringing suit against Microsoft, I think Washington, D.C. is going to be more and more crisscrossing into technology. Hence, can a judge be a board member? A judge who may be retired, but with some experience in high tech law? Also, should the FCC be involved? A rep from the IRS? I've heard it said, in the future, cyberspace will be a taxable area. Maybe its a good idea to be forwarned? Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: Massachusetts NetDay was an interesting grass-root effort to get puplic schools up on the net. Private businesses helped. Forge an alliance between public/private and form a separate, national technical advice group with specific 800 phone numbers? Other: Gather the young, the middle age and the old into this effort.
Ron Newman Accountability and Representation: The current InterNIC/NSI structure fails entirely to be accountable to the Internet community at large. InterNIC allows people to register domains with blatantly false or missing contact information (e-mail addresses, phone numbers, snail-mail addresses). InterNIC refuses to take any action to ensure that the information in its database is correct or useful to the public. The result is a proliferation of domains that act as havens for spammers, and which have no accountability to the rest of the Net at all. It is essential that the successor(s) to NSI/InterNIC take seriously their responsibility to provide a useful and accurate database that does not allow domain owners to hide from the public.
Andy Oram, CPSR Other: I cannot come until the early afternoon.
Dan Parisi, Whitehouse.com Accountability and Representation: Some kind of Constitution guaranteeing citizens of countriews the same civil property and free speech rights as thier homeland should be adopted. Right now people throughout the world know that thier rights are protected under the Constitution of the United sates through the U.S. Government. I do not see why U.S. citizens should be stripped of thier constitutional rights by the U.s. Government transferrign control to a private organization without accountability to anyone. Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: I do not see how you can avoid this problem. The body has been constructed in secret and its bylaws constructed in secret. How do we know the government is behind it and they are just trying to privatize a government function so they would not have to adhere to the U.S. Constitution similar to what the Southern United States tried to do in privatizing schools to get around the U.S. Constitution.
Adam Peake, Center for Global Communications (GLOCOM) Accountability and Representation: I believe Einar Stefferud has made a strong case for the creation of some form of 'Fair Hearing Panel'. A model to consider might be Ombudsman schemes used in many self-regulatory regimes, perhaps taking the Australian Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman <http://www.tio.com.au/> as a working example. Greg Crew is no doubt familiar with the goals and functions of the TIO scheme, I would like to encourage him and Einar Stefferud to see if they can find some mutual ground on this matter. Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: Address Supporting Organization: The bylaws being considered suggest that the Address Supporting Organization should appoint 3 members to the ICANN board. Until such time as this Supporting Organization is comprised of more than the 3 existing regional registries (i.e. the 'other' address stakeholders are identified), I believe it would be a mistake grant this SO the ability to elect 3 seats. To avoid creating a situation where the 3 registries effectively have one board member each, and ensure that they attempt to reach consensus on relevant issues among themselves, I believe language should be introduced to limit the existing 3 registries to electing up to 2 ICANN board members, with the 3rd seat left vacant until other address stakeholders (perhaps a 4th or 5 regional registry) are identified. Other: The ICANN must improve its information dissemination and general public relations. One goal of the meeting should be to establish a secretariat (functions to be put out to open tender as soon as possible) to ensure that information from the board is distributed quickly and in the appropriate. Thanks to the Berkman Center for their hard work preparing on- and offline facilities. Good luck
Robert S. Phelps Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: The transparency provisions proposed by IANA are inadequate. I favor the ORSC provisions on transparency.
Ivan A Pope Accountability and Representation: Comments via email
Elisabeth Porteneuve, AFNIC (NIC-Fr) Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: Trademark's problem is a conflict between themselves first, and between business (corporate) users and individuals, as it is about dictionnaries' names which belong to everybody. This is political problem, and have to be considered by governements, which have an obligation to guarantee to everybody an equal right to a common ressource. With approx 60000 differents words within French (or others) dictionnary, it is mathematically impossible to provide to every individual or every bussiness an Internet name in the second level of the same TLD. It does not mean either that it is necessary to open a number of new TLDs. The social responsability is to disconnect an Internet domain name from business name or any first-last name. If this is not done by ICANN or governements, and if the Internet end up with thousands of new TLDs, the final result will be the same - the Internet domain name will be meaningless.
David Post, Cyberspace Law Institute,Temple University Other: I am writing in reference to your request for comments on the ICANN By-laws and the governing structure of your new entity. I have deep concerns about that structure as currently formulated. Any entity responsible for, and exercising control over, the rootserver atabases possesses immense power over the future development of the Internet itself, and will, accordingly, be subject to immense pressure to act in ways that may be contrary to best interests of the Internet community as a whole. Devising ways to prevent arbitrary, oppressive, or self-interested actions by this entity is a task of deep — of truly “constitutional” — importance to that community I do not question the good will and honorable intentions of the members of the ICANN Board of Directors; indeed, this letter is premised on the notion that you are sincerely interested in building an organization to which the Internet community can safely entrust this most significant resource. What is at issue, however, is not your good will and honorable intentions but the ability of the institution you are building to carry out its functions in a fair and equitable manner whoever may be occupying positions on the Board in the future. For this purpose, the substantive provisions of the ICANN By-laws — the promise to operate “in an open and transparent manner and consistent with procedures designed to ensure fairness,” to “provid[e] a reasonable opportunity for [affected] parties to comment” on the adoption of new policies, the promise that the corporation will not act “in competition with entities affected by the policies of the corporation” nor apply its policies “inequitably,” nor subject any party for “disparate treatment unless justified by substantial and reasonable cause” — will not suffice. As James Madison pointed out 200 years ago, and as the history of constitution-making in the intervening period has amply demonstrated, the “mere demarcation on parchment” of limits on power is not “a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of all the powers . . . in the same hands.” Without some means outside of the Board’s control for giving meaning to the principles and procedures set forth in the By-laws in the face of unforeseen and unforeseeable circumstances and events these substantive protections will inevitably prove inadequate. Constructing a broadly representative Board of Directors — ensuring, that is, that the global Internet community, and the many stakeholders in the domain name system, have a voice on the Board — is necessary, but will not be sufficient, for this task. If American constitutional history proves anything at all, it is that representational principles alone do not and cannot produce just governance. Power does corrupt, and the power of even representative bodies must be held in check by some means other than the “electoral” check on representatives; only by dividing and dispersing governing power among distinct institutions with distinct spheres of operation, and then “giving to those who administer each [institution] the necessary means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others [can] a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department” be avoided. (Madison, again). Without mechanisms pursuant to which others are given the requisite means to check the Board’s exercise of its powers, the Board, no matter how “representative” it may be, will succumb to the inevitable and inherent pressures to act not in the interests of the Internet as a whole but in its own self-interest (or in the interest of whatever faction manages to gain control of the Board). These “checks and balances” can be provided in many different ways. Article III, Section 4 of the ICANN Bylaws already provides that “the Board may, in its sole discretion, provide for an independent review process by a neutral third party” in regard to reconsideration” of Board action. Putting this into practice in a meaningful way — creating the equivalent of an independent judicial arm with the authority to hear, on a global basis, claims that the Board has acted in a manner contrary to the letter or spirit of its Charter or By-Laws — is absolutely mandatory to provede the necessary counterweight to the Board’s powers. There are, to be sure, many questions that need to be considered in constituting such an institution. For example, how should its members be chosen? To what extent, and to whom, are decisions made by this institution subject to additional internal or external appeal? In what ways can the Board insure that its own freedom of action is not unfairly compromised by an action by this co-ordinate institution? Who bears the costs of these proceedings? Without prejudging any possible solutions to these or other problems, I would suggest that several principles should guide the Board’s consideration of various options. First, any ICANN member, or member of any ICANN supporting organization, should have the right to bring a claim that the Board that has acted in a manner not authorized by its Charter or By-laws before a neutral hearing panel. Second, the Board must pre-commit to abide by a finding by any such hearing panel by rescinding any action found to constitute such an unauthorized action. Third, the hearing panels must possess a substantial degree of independence from the Board; in particular, the Board must not have the sole power to appoint or remove members of this co-ordinate institution, who should be accountable, ultimately, to ICANN members. This independence need not, and indeed probably should not, be absolute; the Board, for example, may want to reserve for itself in extraordinary circumstances — as evidenced by supermajority vote of the Board, subject to approval by a supermajority vote of the ICANN members — to refuse to recognize the findings of any hearing panel. These principles can and should guide implementation of the Article III Section 4 process, and different structures may comport with these principles. These are not insurmountable obstacles if the Board is truly interested in full and effective implementation. I would be happy, should you decide to take this course of action, to provide any additional assistance you might require to put an implementation plan together. The only truly perilous course here is failing to take any steps in this direction.
Ellen Rony, Alexander Works Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: How does ICANN reconcile SO membership representation on the ICANN Board? Any issue involving a particular SO would require those three individuals to recuse themselves. I can imagine a policy issue crossing several SO bounds and resulting in a diminished board left to debate and vote on major concerns. Other: To facilitate the discussion in Boston on November 14, a full-text, side-by-side comparison of the following bylaws proposals: • IANA Iteration 5 • ICANN Adopted Bylaws (Iteration 6) • Boston Working Group • Open Root Server Confederation is posted at: http://www.domainhandbook.com/comp-bylaws.html The comparison is color-coded and word-for word. It uses the Iteration 5, ICANN proposal submitted by IANA to NTIA, as the baseline. Additions by the Boston Working Group (BWG) are coded in blue. BWG used ICANN Iteration 4 as a framework. Additions by the Open Root Server Confederation (ORSC) are coded in red. ORSC used the BWG proposal as a framework. Deletions in ICANN's Adopted Bylaws of 11-6-98 or in the bylaws proposals submitted by BWG and/or ORSC are noted by strikethroughs. ICANN additions are green; BWG are blue; ORSC are red. This is an independent, unbiased, unsolicited, pro bono effort on my part to enable you to focus quickly on the differences among the proposals.
Jen Runne Other: Discussion of how this will affect small ISP's and other Net professionals on a day-to-day basis down the road....
Anthony M Rutkowski Accountability and Representation: As Tamar Frankel notes, the threshold issue is not membership structures, but reincorporating as a membership based organization, and apportioning powers to member classes in a matter that achieves a substantial measure of accountability and trust. The next step is defining membership classes and the associated requirements and powers. Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: The threshold issue here is whether Supporting Organizations should be anything more than advisory committees within the corporation. Doing so, substantially mitigates the rather considerable problems that will otherwise arise - particularly external capture of the organizations and endless associated controversy and turmoil. There are also no apparent downsides to doing so. Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: All documents before the Board - except for narrowly-defined, identified sensitive material - should be identified and made publicly available. Other: Some small amount of time should be spent on reviewing the purposes of the corporation, and the constraints on those purposes that are expressly manifested in the articles of incorporation. This was part of a drafting history that is probably unknown to the initial board, and very relevant to all activities. Disclaimer: These comments are individual ones, and should not be associated with any organization or group with which I am associated. -- At the final session at the ICANN public meeting, in response to expressed concern regarding the Initial Board taking far reaching decisions concerning Internet matters that were wrong in practice and in law, a Board member asserted that 'we just said we were maintaining the status quo.' ICANN's own web site archives plainly portray a different situation. The applicable section in the 6 Nov letter to the U.S. Department of Commerce reads as follows: 6. Country Code TLDs. You asked us to confirm your 'assumption that national governments would continue to have authority to manage and/or establish policy for their own ccTLDs (except, of course, insofar as such policies adversely affect universal connectivity on the Internet).' We are happy to confirm that assumption, but we note that the details of implementation of this objective may be complex. It may well be that this is an example of an issue where the Governmental Advisory Committee could provide a useful forum for discussions and advice to the Board. See <http://www.iana.org/icann/letter-pr06nov98.html> The public statement in ICANN's Press Release of 6 Nov. reads as follows: The bylaws submitted today include modified or additional language designed to satisfy specific structural concerns noted by the government. These changes ensure the following: ... -- ICANN will respect each nation's sovereign control over its individual Top Level Domain. See <http://www.iana.org/icann/icann-pr06nov98.html> The Internet is a private shared user network under international and domestic law, in which its identifiers - including 2-letter country symbols of the Domain Name System - are reference values maintained among the network users. The concepts or constructs of 'national governments hav[ing] authority...for their own TLDs,' or a 'nation's sovereign control over its individual Top Level Domain' are not ones that exist or have ever existed. This is a fundamental and profoundly important matter. In the Internet DNS, TLDs have only a semantic definition as a 'zone,' and the responsibility for maintaining those zones have been assigned from the outset by the DOD IANA administrator to organizations and individuals in countries who demonstrated the necessary stability and competence. In making these decisions, local users, ISPs, and occasionally government representatives were consulted. Indeed, on occasion they were ignored. However, in no instances was the notion of national sovereignty *ever* asserted or been determinative - because it simply isn't applicable to a private shared user network. In contrast to the Internet DNS, the separate but interoperable ITU-T F.401 domain name system established pursuant to treaty instruments, is based on the notion of national sovereignty, and it is applicable to public networks. However, this sovereignty construct is not applicable to the Internet DNS. Along similar lines, this is not a matter in which any ICANN Government Advisory Committee 'provides a useful forum.' In addition to being wrong in law and practice, making such pronouncements destroys trust, and does enormous mischief. I hope that it will see fit issue a retraction or clarification at the earliest opportunity, and in the future pursue some kind of an open policy making process in making any kind of substantive policy determinations. In response to the above information, an ICANN Board representative stated by EMail: Over the last week or so, I have met with a number of people from the country code interested parties community. They accepted my interpretation of what we submitted as reflecting no decision on ICANN's part to disturb the status quo with regard to IANA's handling of country code assignments. You apparently don't. Since Becky is an addressee of your note, this response, and the original letter, I'll leave it to her to decide whether the Department of Commerce wishes us to expand further on the matter. Thus, whas is being said here is that somehow the Initial Board made a fundamental policy determination, then ratified it by obtaining the acceptance by 'a number of people from the country code interested parties community.' While it's useful to get the such feedback, this hardly constitutes transparent and open due process. It's also a highly inappropriate way to proceed on such an important matter under any circumstances. It is worth noting that the Department of Commerce probably doesn't even have the authority to make such a determination, and if it did, it would require a public policy making proceeding to do so. In addition to the Department of Commerce, this is certainly a matter in which the U.S. Congress will wish to have a voice in the matter - particularly in light of ramifications of such a determination in the context of recent relevant ITU Plenipotentiary Conference resolutions
Karoline J Scott, Nortel Networks Other: Nortel Networks, in general, supports the revised Bylaws of November 6, 1998, proposed by ICANN, especially in the areas of broad, global representation and an open, transparent, responsive structure free of hidden conflicts of interest. However, we wish to stress the importance of the following specific aspects: * Global representation from both the Private and Public Sectors must be ensured. The Private sector view is important because they will build and shape the future global Internet infrastructure. The Public sector view is important, as they will form the global legal framework. The separation of each sector's concerns and powers should be embodied in the Bylaws. * Different levels of membership need to be defined including their rights, powers and responsibilities. Nortel Networks supports having different levels of membership, for example, as an observer or a voting member, and clearly defining the distinction between the Private and Public sector interests as noted above. * The approval procedures need to be clearly defined at all levels of the organization. * Representation from the Private sector, including equipment manufacturers, network operators and end users, all on a global basis must be ensured both in the Membership and Supporting Organizations. * ICANN should take into account the work of other organizations, especially key standards development organizations, by their appropriate involvement and representation in Membership, Supporting Organizations and Councils. Specifically, the ITU needs to be included which has already indicated willingness to be actively involved (Resolution COM5/15 from the recent Plenipotentiary Conference (PP-98)
Karoline J. Scott, Nortel Networks Accountability and Representation: We would like to stress the importance of global representation from both the private and public sectors. The private sector is important because they will shape, create and build the future Internet infrastructure. The public sector is important because they will form the global legal framework. We support different levels of membership which need to be clearly defined (including their rights, powers and responsibilities) and a distinction between the public and private sector interests. Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: Global representation from the private sector, including equipment manufacturers, network operators and end users, must be ensured, not only in the 50s, but also in the Membership, and Board. ICANN needs to take into account the work of other organizations, especially key standards development organizations (for example, ITU). Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: Approval procedures at all levels of the Organization (i.e., membership, SOs, Board) need to be defined. Other: *Nortel Networks is extremely interested in active involvement within ICANN; in the appropriate SOs, as a member, and on the Final Board. 1.) What is the relationship with IETF, IESG, IAB, IRTF, ISOC, IAB, ITU, WIPO, WTO, to name a few? 2.) Regarding funding: i) is the Global Internet Project the fundraising arm of ICANN? Will GIP continue in this role past their current fundraising arm of ICANN? Will GIP continue in this role past their current fundraising campaign for ICANN startup funds? Is their a formal/informal relationship between GIP and ICANN & what does that relationship cover especially with respect to financial committments? ii) are there any other proposed funding mechanisms besides the SOs , membership and GIP? Is it anticipated/planned/contemplated that Govt's will provide funding of any sort, or will all funding come from the private sector? Will funding come from any of the 'other' Internet organizations (other than through their involvement in SOs and/or membership, i.e. ISOC, etc.?
Tom Selldorff, Weston Consulting Network Other: This is an informational meeting for me.
J. William Semich, .NU Domain Ltd Other: There are two important issues which were raised by the Department of Commerce's NTIA letter to ICANN which you do not appear to be planning to address at these meetings: 1. How does ICANN assure fiscal accountability to those who will be using and funding its services? The .NU domain has posted some possible language at the NTIA comments page (http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/proposals/comments/10-03-98.htm or http://www.nunames.nu/spending-controls/) which can be used as a basis to respond to this question, and we would like the opportunity to explain our reasoning and hear what ICANN plans on this front. .NU Domain Corporation Counsel Harold Carroll will prepare comments on the proposed bylaws and will make a brief presentation at the meeting if permitted. 2. What will ICANN's role be in relation to the 220+ ISO 3166 TLDs currently active on the Internet (commonly known as the ccTLDs)? In response to this question, an independent group of 61 ccTLDs worldwide (and rising) proposes that ICANN use RFC 1591 as its initial mechanism for dealing with the ISO 3166 TLD community, and perhaps create a mechanism for those ccTLDs to update or modify RFC 1591 as circumstances change in the future. The International Association of Top Level Domains (IATLD) would like the opportunity to present a brief explanation of RFC 1591 and explain why, in the interest of continuity and stability on the Internet, it is important for ICANN to continue to use RFC 1591 as the most appropriate policy for ccTLDs. Respectfully Submitted, J. William Semich President and Chief Financial Officer .NU Domain Ltd bsemich@mail.nu http://whats.nu Memberships: ISOC, ISP/C, APIA, APTLD, IATLD, Internet Users Society - Niue
Craig L Simon, Univ. Miami, School of International Studies Other: http://www.flywheel.com/ircw/overview.html
Greg Skinner Other: I will have more specific comments later. As a general comment, I would like to see these issues made available to a larger audience, and that they be encouraged to participate in the process.
Michael P. Sondow Accountability and Representation: What provision will be made for representation in the membership by Internet end-users? By what mechanisms? Will there be a place for individual members, as in the BWG proposal? Will size and economic restrictions be put on non-profit organizations for membership, as in the ORSC proposal? If that is done, how will the dispersed but vast community of individual users participate? Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: Does the interim Board envisage hiring expertise, in order to ensure its loyalty to the NewCo? Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: Has the mechanism of balloting by domain name holders been considered? Other: The Internet itself provides the surest and best mechanism for consultation and consensus. Will the web be used actively for providing information to the community and soliciting input from it? If so, it might be a good idea to rapidly appoint an information officer so that someone in the ICANN is occupied from the outset with this important and difficult task.
Susana M. Sotillo Accountability and Representation: How will the private sector manage the Internet on behalf of the world collectivity? How will non-research institutions of HE be represented? Will we see a lot of the strong arm tactics as to what can or cannot happen on the Internet similar to the recently disclosed Microsoft vs. Intel conflict? I doubt that private entities can manage anything on behalf of the public good. The bottom line for the private sector is profits. Is someone like Noam Chomsky part of your membership structure? I do trust his questioning spirit on behalf of the public good.
Sotiris Sotiropoulos, Hermes Network, Inc. Accountability and Representation: Membership should be open to all who comprehend the importance of the task at hand and care enough to take steps to involve themselves.
Einar A Stefferud Accountability and Representation: It is exremely important for ICANN to have bylaws that provide for accountability beyond mere voting for board members once every year or so. Such a vote is not a voice, so that parties that perceive that actions of ICANN impose damages on them are left with only legal law suits as their means to obtain both attention and redress. An ICANN that protects itself from the parties it is commissioned to help is a very strange concept in my personal view. We need Fair Hearing Panels to give Voice to parties that seek redress. We also need fiscal accountability. Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: Technical advice is readily available in the Internet Community, though it cannot always to be trusted without confirmation by others, as we have seen during the last two years, where some very bad technical advice has been given as court testimony, and where it is clear that the motive was to mislead the court. So, the ICANN Board of Directors needs to be immune to what I will call 'snow jobs' provided by technical experts with political intent to mislead, or perhaps with simple ignorance in stead of malice. Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: The first rule must be full disclossure of conflicts by responsible parties, especially the Board of Directors, plus the various Officers of ICANN. The second rule must be to openly publish prompt and accurate and full minutes of official and unofficial meetings. The third rule must be to openly publish for comment, pending actions planned by the Board of Directors and by Officers and Emplyees of ICANN, which relate to changes of policy or administration, and then consider comments, and comment back on them to the community to assure that the community voice is being heard, and heeded. Other: There is a high meta level problem born of the fact that the last 3 years of DNS and IP turmoil have left the Internet Commnity with a serious loss of mutual trust among Internauts. The Internet only works when trust is present, so it is extremely critical that a program be developed by ICANN to induce restoration of trust to the entire global Internet community. For me, this is the quintessential meta problem to be solved by ICANN for itself, and by the global Internet Commnity for itself. For ICANN to obtain is desired levels of consensus support, ICANN must be sen as a fuly trusted institution, and at this point in time, the commnit is far from being able to give ICANN the desired or required levels of trust.
Dan Stein Accountability and Representation: The issues of accountability and representation include far more than the mere membership structures. Membership is a long-term accountability mechanism whereby you hold someone accountable for past decisions by voting them out of office at the next opportunity. For the fast-moving internet, this is an insufficient safeguard. Due process, transparency (so you know what to hold the board accountable for), ADR, etc. are all necessary components. Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: comments to follow under separate cover Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: It would be useful to spend a small amount of time at the start of the meeting on reviewing the purposes of the corporation, and the constraints on those purposes that are defined in the articles of incorporation. A review of how/why these contraints came to be inserted during the NSI/IANA negotiations might be useful to the board, and certainly relevant to all other issues Other: comments to follow under separate cover
Joop J Teernstra, Democratic Assoc. Of Domain Name Owners Accountability and Representation: Representation of Domain Name Owners' interests
Florencio I Utreras, ENRED Accountability and Representation: 1) The proposed Bylaws lack accountability, since the organization has no membership support. The 'stakeholders' are not direct owners of the organization. 2) We do not feel that wide International representation is clearly assured. In particular, a more precise definition of the regions like the one proposed by RIPE is needed. Also, if we want to ensure that all points of view are represented and that the new organization has a strong basis, we need to put stronger bounds to the representation of any single region, 33% at most. But, most of all, we must also make sure that different levels of development are represented. 3) We feel extremely disappointed by your Initial Board proposal. All the proposed members come from OECD countries. We have proposed 4 candidates of our region and support the nomination of one Asian candidate. No one of them has been taken into account, neither one from Africa nor other non-OECD country. After that, a new list of names for the Initial Board was announced, which once more has not included a representative of our region. Clearly the whole Internet community is not represented in that board. ENRED and the whole of LA&C do not feel that anyone from other region could represent our views and interests. The Initial Board, as currently formed, represents the interests of only the most developed countries of the world, and neglects the importance of an effective north-south interaction. However, we strongly recommend the US government to correct this mistake and demand ICANN to review its Initial Board composition, to ensure that all regions defined by its own proposed Bylaws, are duly represented in that board.
Edmundo M Valenti, CABASE Other: 1) Latin America has been excluded from the ongoing process of constituting a new IANA. 2) Our region has demonstrated, during the IFWP fourth regional meeting in Buenos Aires, the will to participate in this process, as well as the capacity to organize and support this type of initiatives. 3) ALCI – Latin America and Caribbean Association for Internet – was formed as a result of the IFWP meeting in Buenos Aires, and initial members include stakeholder entities from Latin America who have jointly demanded the above issued be resolved by ICANN. 4) On October 20th., the NTIA called for ICANN to indicate how they would address the concerns of stakeholders demanding equitable representation of the Internet community, including developing regions. It also stated that the organization selected should reflect the geographic diversity of the Internet community. 5) Latin America can contribute knowledgeable board candidates, not representative of any particular constituencies. 6) Our region presented comments suggesting that the at large members of the Interim Board be expanded from 9 to 11 members, in order to include latin american board members. It was also suggested that the minimum representation per region be reduced from 50 percent to 40 percent. 7) That proposal which has been duly presented to the NTIA, and amply published in all corresponding forums, has never met with adverse comments. Diverse organizations, within and without Latin America, have similarly underlined the necessity of having Latin American participation in the Interim Board. We feel the NTIA should respect this consensus and add Latin American and Caribbean representation. 8) ICANN has announced their participation in meetings to be held in Boston, Brussels and Asia. No mention is made of Latin America, thus confirming our conclusion that Latin America is being ignored and excluded from this process.
Antony E. Van Couvering, IATLD Other: We are concerned about the explicit mention of 'sovereignty' over ccTLDs in your recent letter, as if this policy were a continuation of existing Internet norms, which it definitely is not. We would like to make a case for using RFC 1591, which is the current guide for the administration of top-level domains, as the starting point for any discussions about the conduct of, and authority over, ccTLDs.
Douglas E. Van Houweling, UCAID Accountability and Representation: Dear Ms. Dyson, I am writing on behalf of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID), a not-for-profit corporation of research universities and their industrial and not-for-profit partners who are engaged in the Internet2 project. I write in support of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and its goal of establishing a robust, stable, open and competitive environment for the management of a crucial piece of the world's Internet infrastructure. I commend your past and continuing efforts to solicit and consider the public's comments in this process. UCAID, its members and its Board of Trustees--who are CEOs of leading U.S. research institutions--believe a not-for-profit corporation is best suited to serve the public interest in developing a non-governmental solution to managing the name and number infrastructure of the Internet. We believe the current Bylaws of ICANN are responsive both to the goals set out in the White paper and the many recommendations from the community at large. To succeed in today's Internet environment, ICANN must be as agile and flexible as possible. At the same time, the public's interest and input will be key to the ultimate success of the organization's policies and activities. We believe the current Bylaws succeed in achieving this very difficult balance between effective representation and timely action. We welcome ICANN's continued leadership in this important endeavor. Sincerely, Douglas E. Van Houweling President and CEO UCAID
James Vaughn, Kennedy School of Government Accountability and Representation: It seems to me that besides the 'authorities' you need to have representation of the 'typical user' which I recognize might be difficult to identify or quantify. However, as the average user is the one most impacted by the decisions made by this board, they ought to have some representation and perhaps the most non-controversial would be to draw lots from among a group who self nominate and who can meet the criteria established by the organization (such as ability to attend meetings as well as meet criteria for 'average user.'
Herbert Vitzhum Accountability and Representation: How the board see funding process -timescale for ICANN budget and allocation of budget to each SO -monies direct to ICANN who in turn fund SOs? Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: Structure of Support Organizations -Can we have difinitive answer on the role of Names Council? (2 interpretations currently: at large body which anyone can join or small elected top tier of the DNSO) -Some SOs are currently drafting bylaws. As we understand that the SOs will not be legal entities, would it not be more appropriate to Have the rules of each SO appended to ICANN bylaws? Conflicts of Interest and How to Avoid Them: ICANN future relationship with ccTLDs? - direct relationship with individual ccTLDs? - how do they intend to ensure continued stability and autonomy for ccTLDs
Tom Warren, KnowledgeXpress.com Other: Since audiotaping is easier than videotaping would it make sense to concentrate first on that possibility. Also even if you can't broadcast live over the Internet, audiotaping would allow you to distribute either a condensed audio cassette, audio program (at your Web site), or written minutes of the public meeting to a very broad audience. This approach would enable people to access the information in the format best for them at their convenience. 'Low tech is better than no tech.' If you can do a live Internet broadcast, these other approaches might still be useful. Best of luck with the session. I'm looking forward to it. Tom Warren, CEO, KnowledgeXpress.com, 241 West Street, Mansfield, MA 02048, (508) 339-6466 and tomw@knowledgexpress.com .
Eric P Weisberg, Internet Texoma Technical Advice and Unbiased Expertise: I do not understand the conjunction of the two parts of this heading. Technical advice can come from your CTO, technical councils, or from your clients, etc. Bias is a concern with any source of advice. Supporting Organizations is a code word for something else. Kent Crispin calls them 'defined constituencies.' Others refer to them as special interests. I consider them to be subsets of the community which are seeking special influence. They will not necessarily represent their own membership, in general, and certainly will not represent all persons and entities affected by their specific areas of interest. The concern for conservative policy proposals which are not the result of consumer pressure (as opposed to producer self-interest) is more than adequately satisfied by their having primary responsibility for originating policies in their areas of interest. I would dispense with the term, bring them in-house as councils as contemplated in the IFWP proceedings and consensus, and not give them the power to select board members.
Frederic M. Wilf Other: I am a lawyer who is very interested in Internet governance issues, and I look forward to learning more about ICANN's mission, its structure, and its current plans to achieve its mission. I currently have a prior engagement so that I cannot attend. I would appreciate it if any audio, video or other data were archived for easy subsequent retrieval. Thank you, --Fred Wilf Email fwilf@saul.com http://www.saul.com/lawyers/5082.html
James D. Wilson, Serendipitous Solutions Accountability and Representation: All registered domains should be required to provide and maintain valid contact information, including street address, telephone numbers, email addresses and DNS entries. Domains which have inaccurate or missing information should be contacted (if possible) and after x number of days be placed on hold until the information is accurate. This does not mean that the domain entries will be scanned periodically; what should happen is (1) no domain should be registered without this information and (2) if a domain is reported to the agency as having missing or invalid information it should be verified by the agency and the agency should require that either the information be updated with valid data or the domain should be placed on hold after x number of days. Registration information should be required to take place via the email addresses referenced in the contact information. This would make it impossible to register a domain or change entries on a domain with an invalid contact email address except to change an entry with a bad email address to a current and accurate email address. Furthermore renewal of domains should also require verification through the contact email address. This would provide at a minimum an annual verification of contact information in a manner which can be automatically processed. You could use a ACK/NACK format such as that used to verify changes via email. Failure to maintain valid contact information could then be automatically verified and the domain placed on hold. If a site has registered DNS entries from a third party, that third party should have the right to cancel references to itself without the permission of the DNS entry holder. Currently there are sites registered on the net which point to DNS providers who no longer provide DNS to the site, yet are not allowed to change the information with the agency because the original site refuses to update the info themselves or is not reachable. This can have negative impact on the DNS provider. An example is some sites which used to be under Spamford Wallace's Cyberpromo and reference DNS hosts on networks which no longer provide DNS to the domain. The agency refuses to correct the data and those organizations continue to be associated with Spamford and Cyberpromo, which is damaging to their reputation. Other: Thank you for the opportunity to submit comments in this manner!