Re: Farber on self-governance

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

I am not fighting any process except the chaos that appears to be happening

and WHAT is my group????

> Suggestion: please join the process Dave. Stop
> fighting everyone else or face the consequences
> of your group, a slow moving rather small sized
> object impacting with a huge, swiftly accelerating
> consensus that is forming as we speak.
>
> I remain commited to including you and collegues.
> However, my estimation is that ya'll have only so
> much time left to adjust your views to change or
> be left behind with no qualms or second thoughts.
>
> Bob Allisat
> Director, World TeleVirtual Network
> bob@wtv.net - (416) 534-1999 - http://www.wtv.net
> Free Community Network - .FCN free TLD Registry - http://fcn.net
>
>
>Dave Crocker <dcrocker@brandenburg.com> wrote:
>>Please forgive the strident tone of what follows, but the idea of looking
>>forward to starting over after 4 years of intense work, continuing to have
>>the network community give NSI an extra US$ 1M for every week that
>>meaningful competition is delayed, is just a bit frustrating.
>>
>>Here is the response I sent Dave:
>>
>>At 05:44 AM 6/16/98 +0900, Dave Farber wrote:
>>>I find this very unfortunate -- no very dangerous. In back of the whole
>>USG process was, I believe, the hope that the network community was mature
>>enough to take on self governance. If we blow it the result will be
>>governance by Governments with all the negatives that holds for the future
>>evolution of the net.
>>
>>Dave,
>>
>>You continue to mis-understand the basic causes for the current situation,
>>and therefore misunderstand the way to fix it.
>>
>>The Internet community WAS quite mature enough to handle the situation and
>>it was proceeding quite nicely to deal with it. Not smoothly or pleasantly,
>>but then it rarely is smooth or pleasant about a controversial topic. But
>>it copes and it was coping.
>>
>>The triggering topic, gTLDs, had been controversial for quite awhile and as
>>is usual for such things, a group was formed by IANA to solve the task. It
>>went about doing its job in the usual Internet style. A proposal was
>>formulated, feedback received, changes made, support garnered: 220
>>organizations so far, from around the world. That's not a trivial amount of
>>support.
>>
>>What changed was that too many people -- some well-intention and some not
>>-- decided to attack the work rather than try to help improve it. Rather
>>than make specific proposals for specific changes, people decided to just
>>declare the process problematic or the composition of the group
>>inappropriate, or to find some other reason for rejecting the whole effort.
>>It didn't matter that the work was broad-based, that the support was
>>broad-based and that incremental change to the work was being pursued in
>>the usual, open fashion. It didn't matter that there were no other focused,
>>broad-based, concrete efforts. No, it was -- and continues to be -- more
>>fun to attack.
>>
>>We might all have recovered from that, had it not been for the United
>>States Government.
>>
>>Remember that the USG created the original and compelling problem, by
>>giving NSI an instant US$50M/year revenue stream and thereby causing many
>>others to see potential for large amounts of easy money. Add to that the
>>legitimate difficulties because domain names can relate to trademarks and
>>we have a major pull for political maneuvering on a large scale. And that
>>is what we got.
>>
>>So, having created the problem, the US Government then proceeded to fully
>>destabilize things by throwing into doubt IANA's authority and the
>>processes that IANA had established. The government has given credibility
>>to a set of rogue activities that were attempting to take over control of
>>the root of the DNS. These efforts failed on their own but are now formally
>>recognized as legitimate by the Government report.
>>
>>Worse, the US government has taken credit and taken over work that IANA
>>already had under way to move itself under a private corporation. And let
>>us not forget that the US government, rather than honor a process that was
>>open and garnered support from 220 organizations around the world, has
>>tended to give extraordinary weight to highly political efforts by a tiny
>>group of folks, who have no Internet technical or operations experience,
>>but do have questionable motives.
>>
>>So, Dave, if we want to consider seriously how to improve things, we need
>>to stop giving credence and assistance to people who have no constructive
>>intent and we need to get back to Internet basics.
>>
>>That means getting back to supporting IANA's efforts to evolve, the efforts
>>that it had underway for quite awhile, until they were derailed by the US
>>government and a quantity of political hangers on.
>>
>>After more than a year of distraction, the government has come out
>>supporting essentially all of the principles and details of what was
>>already being done. Except that they have convinced people that we must
>>"start over" rather than "continue". After 4 years of effort, we must start
>>over?
>>
>>To all who have found it so easy or necessary to contribute to these delays
>>and to the destablilization, we thank you. But it is time to stop
>>"inventing" and "starting".
>>
>>It is time to return to the processes we already had, and "continue" to
>>evolve them.
>
>
> PS. That wasn't evolution that was
> monopolization. It won't happen again.
>
> Bob Allisat
> Director, World TeleVirtual Network
> bob@wtv.net - (416) 534-1999 - http://www.wtv.net
> Free Community Network - .FCN free TLD Registry - http://fcn.net
>
> Bob Allisat
> Director, World TeleVirtual Network
> bob@wtv.net - (416) 534-1999 - http://www.wtv.net
> Free Community Network - .FCN free TLD Registry - http://fcn.net
>