Here is the response I sent to Ira Magaziner and eventually wrote my proposal in response to his questions. ronda >From ronda Fri Aug 14 13:33:24 1998 Received: (from ronda@localhost) by panix3.panix.com (8.8.5/8.8.8/PanixU1.4) id NAA24799; Fri, 14 Aug 1998 13:33:20 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 13:33:20 -0400 (EDT) From: Ronda Hauben Message-Id: <199808141733.NAA24799@panix3.panix.com> To: Ira_C._Magaziner@oa.eop.gov Subject: Re: In Geneva you asked me to write you Cc: ronda@panix.com Status: RO Dear Ira or whomever gets to read your email while you are traveling as you indicated you couldn't return my call because you were traveling. >Please tell me what you think should be done differently. You can call me at >202 456 6406 and we can talk on the phone or you can e mail me. I did try to call the number above and all I got was an answering machine from the office of policy creation. And nobody returned my call. I guess that is how public input is encourged into policy creation. And if this is how a government body can act toward citizens -- when the government body has an obligation to be accountable, imagine how much more impossible will be any effort to make public input into a process with a private entity such as the organization that is being created to replace the U.S. government role in overseeing the root server system and domain name system of the Internet. >I don't understand why you believe that there is no public input or >accountability to the process we have been going through. It has been a >completely open process with a number of opportunities for the public to >comment, a number of Congressional hearings and a steady stream of news >reporting. I was at the meeting in Geneva and found that no input was allowed (the IFWP meetings). I will send you my account of the meeting if you wish. There was *no* discussion allowed on any issues and *no* information provided about key issues. Instead the people and press were told *not* to pay attention to what was happening - that it didn't represent any change. But it represents a significant change, and a change that puts the control of a vital aspect of the Intenret into the hands of this new organization. And instead of any discussion of the real problems and issues involved, the users of the Internet and the public are being kept out of the process. The phony choices being presented rather than the real issues is why I maintain there in *no* public input or *accountability*. The DNS is not intended as a directory service and shouldn't be used for one. There is a need for a directory service. The DNS shouldn't be used to identify products -- it was intended and should be used to identify legitimage organizations. Also the hierarchical structure puts the control in the root which is not a technical problem but a political problem. With the root in the hands of unreliable or unaccountable entities which is what a private organizaton is-- this is placing the political power to do what they wish with the Internet into too few and unaccountable hands. The Congressional hearings have invited those with a commercial interest in the outcome to speak, not those with no commercial interest and thus have no way to represent the social interest. Also the press reports I have seen have just acted like public relations for the government line rather than raising any of the real questions. (except for one report I saw online) The Internet provides for a forum on issues - yet there has been no effort to invite the kind of discussion online of those with a broad range of views -- which is needed in such a situation. The NTIA online forum in Nov. 1994 was the beginning for the kind of process needed in discussing such an important issue as control of the DNS and root server system. It is described in my book or available at http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ See especially chapters 11 and 14. Discussion online in a well publicized forum is what is needed, not the process of having people send in comments that don't allow people to discuss each other's contributions and which are ignored in the end anyway. >I also don't understand why a stakeholder based, private, non profit >organization with an international board to coordinate the technical >management of the domain name system is not consistent with the >history and traditions of the Internet. The IETF and IAB have this >kind of structure, though admittedly there situations are less >complex because the issues they deal with have a narrower set of >stakeholders.There are more stakeholders now than there used to >be, but the principles we are trying to use are the same. First of all the government's substitution of the word "stakeholder" for "user" is the problem. The history I have studied is that Usenet and the Internet have been considered "users" networks -- and the users are consulted and informed and involved in the process of the development. Suddenly the U.S. government has decreed that the users don't exist, but that there are just industry stakeholders and that that is who should make the decisions. As a service provider noted, this is telling the vendor who is selling us something that he is being empowered to decide how vendors should behave. So you are only enpowering vendors to leave the users as the victim. The Internet exists *not* because of vendors, but because of the many contributions of software and content etc that are its lifeblood. Vendors should be serving users, but they can't be if they are being goaded on by the U.S. government to grab for all they can. The IETF has become increasingly dominated by industry people, rather than by the technical people who worked for the academic institutions that so contributed to the building of the Internet. In any case what is being created is not like the IETF or IAB as it is a private corporation with no responsiblity to users and no online processes that make any real input possible. The Names Council folks I saw in action at the IFWP in Geneva were all there to take care of their own interests, and to give themselve power, and so they had no ability to be the body to make policy regarding domain names and gTLD's and yet that was the function they decreed for themselves. They had no technical interests or concerns -- all I saw was a political power grab. >Please tell me what you think should be done differently. First of all the rush should stop. Secondly, the technical issues need to be raised and discussed through an online process open to all and covered by the press so the public not yet online has access to the issues and discussion as well. Also there should be online terminals set up for the public in the U.S. and an encouragement to others around the world to do the same so those interested around the world can be part of an unmoderated online forum. Also the ways of encouraging input and discussion which is what my research has focused on which has been so important in the development of the Internet should be a subject for supported reseach and the results used to help open up the process of decision making, rather than closing it off as this IFWP process is doing. This process is totally contrary to the process that made the Net possible and is only working to get rid of the Internet and replace it with a commercenet more like compuserve than like the Internet. >You can call me at 202 456 6406 and we can talk on the phone >or you can e mail me. As I mentioned earlier the number you have given me is an answering machine with no one returning the calls. I did provide my phone number (212)787-9361 and I do try to return calls when I am out. Can you explain why the NSF is *not* defending against the lawsuit against it on the gTDL's issue? By not defending and providing the technical reasons why the hierarchical system was created and how it is important to the proper functioning of the Internet, it is showing that the technical issues that would solve any real problems are not of interest to the U.S. government nor is the well being of the scientific or education communities -- but only enriching a few individuals at a great social cost is the concern. In the spirit of Netizenship Ronda