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

[Izumi AIZU]

With only one week to the MdR ICANN meeting, I cannot put some
comment on these. It is extremely difficult for me, as non-American,
to say something since I do have a lot of sympathy to those victimes
in NY, DC and Pittsburg on Sep 11 including brave fire fighters
and policemen. We landed at JFK at around 8:30 in the morning,
I saw the last moment of WTC clearly from the airplane window, then with
black and white smoke from the taxi window, and then, nothing...
There were quite a few non-Americans, including 20 plus Japanese who
also were killed in the tragedic event, thus it is not only anti-US act,
but anti-human one. With this I share the strong voice that Mike expressed.

But I don't agree with Mike to use this event to change the course of
debate of At Large issues. That, to me, seems a kind of "hijacking".
Sorry to use a strong word, but as non English native, I don't know
how better to express my thoughts. Talking about DNS security is one
thing, discussing about Open Membership implementation is quite
another, and I don't see any direct relationship between the two.

I am particularly annoyed by the following statements in its content
and tone. Why Mike tries to dictate us? Wasn't ICANN a bottom-up
consensus body to large extent? Isn't that how DNS servers including
ccTLD work?  Or has ICANN changed its modus operandi without
any discussion already?

>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.

And I do not find any logical connection between the security
issue with ICANN operation and the draft report of the ALSC.
It is even before they publish the final report that Mike argues
too support it. That does not make sense to me.

Yes, we all appreciate that ALSC worked very hard, but so did
many others.

So please stay more logical and rational, otherwise we will mix the
issues and have no good solution for both critical issues to the
stability of the Internet, I mean Security and Open Memebership.

izumi - this comment is solely my personal one, not representing any
  institutions or groups I work with

PS

I was one of the strong voices to try to implement Y2K readiness
on Internet and did quite a bit of work around DNS root and ccTLD
contingency.

I hope most of the real and pragmatic security discussion be kept
by only those responsible operators, not in the open public environment.

And I must also confess that while security is the very critical issue today,
of the operation of the Internet in particular and against bundal and evil
attack, I also view that ICANN has very specific mandate to operate
Internet Names and Number system in a stable manner, set policies and
coordinate them, and not in charge of overall security of the whole Internet
operation. That was quite clear from what I saw in the draft program of
MdR meeting on Security, but I nevertheless cannot help but express this
as a reminder.

The anti-terrorism bill passed the US congress, not global congress. I personally
would like to endorse some parts, but not all, but we need to be careful about
these. Yes, we support US fight against terrorism, in full, but we also need to
judge under our own jurisdictions, too.


At 20:59 01/10/26 -0700, 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.


>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





                    > Izumi Aizu  <
               Asia Network Research
                      www.anr.org
                  GLOCOM , Tokyo
  Institute for HyperNetwork Society, Oita, Japan
        < Writing the Future of the History >