Re: [ALSC-Forum] Re: a proposed action statement

[Eric Dierker]

This is one of the most important and wrong documents ever written.  Mr.
Roberts is clearly the "leak" man for ICANN and he has done a piss poor
job.  A
declaration that we have no rights in the internet and that his people
will
decide what is right is shameful.
For all of my international brothers and sisters I want you to know that
this
is not "US-centric" this is bald faced bull.  This is one of the most
Anti
American pieces of garbage ever written.  I have read the entirety of
the new
antiterroism bill front to back several times and find that this is
actionable
there under.  ICANN is not the US Government and therefor any attempt to
capture the operation of the Internet through non open and transparent
means is
a threat and should be viewed as such.

Mr. Roberts;  What is terrorism if not what you are doing?  Scaring
people for
the purpose of taking over a legitimate commercial interest.  Sorry Joe
McCarthy this country has been there and done that and it ain't doin it
again.
I look forward to seeing you at MDR.

Eric

Mike Roberts wrote:

> With apologies to the non-US members of this list, I'd like to make
> some comments that are inevitably US-centric.
>
> Today marked a watershed day in the history of the Internet.  In some
> sense, the real date was September 11, when the leadership role of
> the United States in world peace, in economic development, and in
> technology innovation was challenged by a group of determined
> religious fanatics using our own technology on us to cause the death
> of thousands of innocent people.
>
> But the legal date between the "old" Internet and the "new Internet
> was today, October 26, 2001,when President George Bush signed the
> anti-terrorism bill that was passed by the upper house of Congress
> yesterday with one dissenting vote.
>
> This legislation brings the Internet and its developers, providers
> and users directly into the new war on terrorism.  It extends
> extensive new power to law enforcement to find, capture, and punish
> those who use the network for terrorism or other criminal activity.
> It removes the previous barriers between foreign and domestic
> anti-terrorism investigations and establishes the principle that
> whoever you are, wherever you are, if you use the net for terrorism,
> you are in the sights of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and their foreign
> counterparts.
>
> In the New York Times this morning, under the heading "We are All
> Alone," widely respected columnist Tom Friedman said,  "Focus instead
> on the firemen who rushed into the trade center towers without
> asking, 'How much?'  Focus on the thousands of U.S. reservists who
> have left their jobs and families to go fight in Afghanistan without
> asking, 'What's in it for me?'  Unlike the free-riders in our
> coalition, these young Americans know that September 11 is our holy
> day - the first day in a just war to preserve our free,
> multi-religious, democratic society.  And I don't really care if that
> war coincides with Ramadan, Christmas, Hanukkah, or the Buddha's
> birthday - the most respectful and spiritual thing we can do now is
> fight it until justice is done."
>
> After a week of tough fighting in Afghanistan where the battle is
> rapidly deteriorating to the same "take no prisoners" ethic that
> prevailed on September 11, the same week that professionally prepared
> anthrax kept showing up in new places everyday on the U.S. east coast
> and killed two postal workers, there is a  determined and deadly
> resolve to follow the Friedman advice.
>
> A resolve that will affect many if not most institutions, among them ICANN.
>
> It's different now for ICANN.  What started out as your typical
> ritual White House privatization effort; one that parroted the young
> Clintonites' "Agenda for Action" of 1993; the Al Gore "Information
> Superhighway" speech; that provided a last hurrah for Clinton advisor
> Magaziner at the end of the second term.  A sly political move that
> solved, or maybe solved, the National Science Foundation's honest
> mistake in giving Network Solutions and SAIC a billion dollar
> monopoly. That is not the ICANN of post-Sept 11.
>
> It's different now.  It's not world government because national
> governments are evil; it's not Internet governance because national
> laws are unjust; it's not a response to some abstract imagining of
> the global popular will; it's not solving poverty, famine,
> infanticide, drug abuse and political oppression in the DNS.
>
> It's serious.  It's first things first.  It's about keeping people
> from being killed by terrorist plots hatched over the net.  All of a
> sudden it matters that you know what you are talking about.  If you
> are an Internet engineer, what about nailing down the RFC's needed
> for secure new functionality in the DNS?  If you are a root server
> host organization CEO, all of a sudden being a volunteer in Jon
> Postel's army takes on new meaning.  If you're the manager of a top
> level domain name registry, it's not a pc in a closet time anymore.
> Important people are watching, people who have the ability to
> nationalize you overnight if you're not carrying your weight in
> making the Internet more secure.  The Japanese government and the
> United States government are sending cabinet level officers to speak
> at the November ICANN meeting about how serious this really is.
>
> So what does this have to do with At Large?  First, don't expect to
> get the attention of the study committee, your fellow stakeholders in
> ICANN,  the dedicated members of the Board, or the governments whose
> sanction makes this privatization effort possible, with a
> continuation of the shallow rhetoric that has characterized the
> postings on this list.  Second, think seriously about constructive
> improvements in the recommendations of the ALSC.  Nobody cares that
> you don't like a particular recommendation, they want to know whether
> you have a better idea, an idea that is good enough to gather the
> support of a lot of other interested parties that may not share your
> individual political or social or economic background but are
> nevertheless interested in the future welfare of ICANN.   Third, be
> prepared to compromise your goals in the interests of forging an At
> Large organization that contributes to an ICANN that is going to
> operate in a far different environment than its founders envisaged.
>
> The study committee has worked hard. It doesn't deserve the abuse it
> has received on this list.  The several points of the action plan are
> reasonable, centrist, and provide a basis for moving forward. They
> deserve your support.
>
> - Mike Roberts
>
> --