Comment submitted after the Nov. 14, 1998 ICANN Meeting in Boston At the Saturday, Nov. 14 meeting, the chair asked how many people felt that ICANN was a fraud and had come to stop it. When people raised their hands, someone came over and said that was brave. Those on the Board didn't ask why anyone would raise their hand. They didn't ask what the problems were with ICANN that it is understood to be a fraud that is a genuine problem for the Internet community. When my name was called to speak at the meeting, I presented a statement of the genuine problem represented by ICANN. My words were misrepresented in the transcript. I have since written to Ben Edelman and asked him if he would make a correction in the transcript and have yet to hear from him. See http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/statement_n14.txt In general the transcript of the meeting misrepresents or deletes much of what the people at the meeting said who criticized what ICANN represents, often making it ununderstandable, but presents the words of the Chair without such deletions. Since no Board member asked any questions about the opening statement I made, it seems important that I clarify why it is crucial such questions be asked. ICANN has been created by the U.S. government to protect certain hidden corporate interests and to remove the Internet from any participation by the public or by users in its functioning. Until recently, the U.S. government played a good role of supporting users in participating in the Internet and in having cooperative processes and procedures that would determine the content and often the software that made it possible for the Internet to grow and flourish. Also it protected users from commercial and political pressure. The ICANN board of directors and bylaws etc. have been created to incorporate centralized control by the commercial pressures who formerly were restricted in the role they could play in Internet development. No one from the public sector is allowed on the Board, members are appointed by governmental bodies in an unofficial and unaccountable way. Members of the board have explained that they have been chosen because they know *nothing* about the Internet. More importantly, however, the board members are part of a centralized structure that concentrates power at the top for the purposes of making decisions that serve certain business interests, rather than enabling the Internet community to partipate in the decisions that are needed to help the Internet continue to grow and flourish. The obligation of the ICANN board on Nov. 14 was to invite the criticisms and listen to them and make the effort to understand them if they had any concern for the best interests of the Internet. They didn't do that. Instead, the Chair kept asking people to support her usurpation of the assets of the Internet for the private sector. Several people spoke at the Nov. 14 meeting of the need for an international public utility to oversee the essential control points of the Internet like the domain name system, the IP numbers, the root server system and protocols etc. (Also there is a proposal for an international public administration of the essential functions of the Internet which has been totally ignored by government officials creating ICANN. The URL is http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/dns_proposal.txt) Instead this private corporate entity is being handed these invaluable public assets and is excluding the public and users from any role in the crucial decisions regarding control over the Internet essential functions. What is to be lost by this is very important. The Internet is a very spectacular achievement. It is a means of global communication connecting people around the world. The early vision for its development was articulated by J.C.R. Licklider and Robert Taylor in 1968. This vision was that it was necessary that the network being developed be available to all to participate in and to gain the benefits of "intelligence amplification"; otherwise they said it would be a bane, rather than a benefit. What is happening now is this vision is being changed by fiat to provide for big corporate entities to provide their junk content and sales pitches, which is very far from the online interactive discussion and communication, and even software debugging, that Licklider and Taylor pointed to as the goal of what should be available to all. Thus there is a significant paradigm shift being made in the nature of the Internet and in the plans for its future. This paradigm shift is being carried out as a secret coup rather than an open public discussion of what is the nature and should be the future of the Internet. Anyone who recognizes that there is a need to be concerned with the long term well being of the Internet and that its nature as a participatory online global communication medium is now under seige needs to figure out how to open up the discussion, rather than go along with the cherade of so called "Internet governance" being turned over to a self appointed oligarchy of business interests. There is no self regulation of the Internet possible by excluding the millions of users and seizing power by a handful of powerful corporate interests. That is not "Internet self governance" but rather the effort to disenfranchise the Netizenry of the Internet. This is an important challenge for Netizens, and for all those who care about the need for more responsible and participatory governance in all forms. Ronda Hauben November 21, 1998 ronda@panix.com Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook also in print edition ISBN 0-8186-7706-6