PAB [ooblick@NETPOLICY.COM: Open Letter to the Internet Community]

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

FYI...

-----Forwarded message from Mikki Barry <ooblick@NETPOLICY.COM>-----
Date:         Fri, 26 Jun 1998 19:59:30 -0500
Reply-To: Mikki Barry <ooblick@NETPOLICY.COM>
Sender: Owner-Domain-Policy <owner-domain-policy@internic.net>
From: Mikki Barry <ooblick@NETPOLICY.COM>
Subject:      Open Letter to the Internet Community
To: DOMAIN-POLICY@LISTS.INTERNIC.NET

Open Letter to the IFWP:
Friday, June 26, 1998

We at DNRC have become increasingly disturbed over the lack of consensus,
organization, and general difficulties of the IFPW.  The lack of answers to
legitimate questions posed by people on mailing lists like domain-policy have
greatly troubled us.  We are writing this letter to you to make some
clarifications, and to ask for suggestions to our proposals, set forth below.

DNRC was one of the original organizers of this conference (the GIAW), along
with a few others. DNRC asked for Dr. Tamar Frankel to donate her
time and expertise to assist the Internet community in creating a
corporate structure that would fulfill the outline set forth in the White
Paper, AND be accountable to everyone involved with the Internet.  We were
concerned that a generalized non-profit structure without more, would not be
appropriate given the lack of oversight of a general 501(c)3 corporation.  We
hoped to reach a consensus on this issue, and this issue alone, in an attempt
to create a firm foundation for discussion of all the other issues necessary
for Internet governance.

When Dr. Frankel agreed to chair the GIAW, it was a single issue conference,
focused in her area of specialty. DNRC worked with others to put together
a conference plan that would work.  DNRC also wished to avoid the criticisms
of the IAHC process by making certain that everything associated with this
conference was open, inclusive, and all results would be by general consensus.

Unfortunately, politics immediately ensued.  Don Heath and ISOC leveled
charges that the conference would be controlled by NSI, since NSI was one of
the first organizations who expressed interest in it.  Barbara Dooley
asserted that no one would attend if the only issue was the corporate
structure, and pressed to have further discussions of other issues.
Accusations flew that the conference would be closed, not all stakeholders
would be invited, and that the International community would not be heard.  We
took all of these voices to heart and attempted to re-organize things to the
extent we could given the time constraints.

The IFWP was formed by Barbara Dooley and DNRC was not included.  We were not
given any explanation for being excluded, and as the conference calls took
place and the website was organized, we were not included in the process,
so we cannot tell you what occurred.  As soon as the IFWP website was posted,
we sent our concerns to Dooley.  For numerous reasons, we were concerned that
the website excluded people rather than including them and confused issues
rather than clarifying them.

One thing we did hear about early on was the expansion of the conference from
a single issue to an expanded format.  We fought it all the way. We believe
this expanded agenda was a large part of the reason for the delay in
publishing materials. The new agenda is far too ambitious for a two day
conference.

We had hoped that Ms. Dooley (who now essentially is in charge of the
conference) would take heed of the many voices calling for either a roll
back of the issues, or an expansion of the time of the conference, but she has
not.

Proposal:

1) We propose to keep the IFWP conference to the one issue it was originally
designed for:  the actual structure of the new corporation.  Later conferences
will and should discuss the other open issues of the White Paper, such as A
process for domain name disputes, and security and privacy of the DNS system.
We plan to attend these conferences and urge others to do
likewise.

2) We would like to establish an oversight committee made up of individuals
without a direct financial stake in the outcome of any decisions on Internet
governance.  This committee would report on conferences and seminars, and
would monitor mailing lists for ideas and opinions.  The committee would also
attempt to ensure that all processes are open and inclusive.

3) We seek input on how the conference can be most effective.  We are hoping
that a significant number of people attend.  How best to give everyone who
wishes to be heard a forum without dissolving into chaos?

4) We would like the GIAW page to revert back to the earlier questionnaire
form developed by Tony Rutkowski.  This form had input sections after each
question and  it was designed to allow the responder to decide what questions
he/she wanted to answer and to sort the answers by workshop so that the
workshop leaders would have the website responses. The answers were to be
anonymous unless the responder chose to identify himself in the answer.

We would like the original form and aggregation process installed and an
assurance that the anonymity of the responders will be preserved unless they
chose to identify themselves.   The current questions are at
http://www.giaw.org/questions.htm.

Reverting back to the original questionnaire process, with Internet
participation, will give us a significant start on the discussions.

5) We would like to also urge everyone to please continue your discussions
(including criticisms) so that we can keep this an open and healthy discourse.


Please put some thought into these proposals and give us your input.

Mikki Barry, President                          ooblick@netpolicy.com
Kathryn Kleiman, General Counsel                kathrynkl@aol.com
Domain Name Rights Coalition

-----End of forwarded message-----

-- 
Kent Crispin, PAB Chair			"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
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