Re: Web address of [ga] list please

[Karl Auerbach <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 21 Jul 2003, Richard Henderson wrote:

> On a separate issue, may I also ask once again the location of the At Large
> list of many thousands of names which was collected for the At Large
> elections, and which should have been archived by a responsible
> organisation? What precisely happened to this list of participants? Where
> precisely is this list?

By a process of exgesis from numerous small snippets, I have reached the
opinion that the list exists, is encrypted, and that the keyholder is
Andrew McLaughlin.  My opinion may be incorrect, but then again I have
heard nothing to indicate otherwise.

> While I would not expect a list of names and addresses to be released
> online, there is a general principle here of ICANN's responsibility for the
> safe-keeping of important documents and data.

As I have written, I believe that ICANN is legally obligated to make this 
list available to those who voted, and perhaps even tried to vote, in the 
2000 election:

	http://www.cavebear.com/icann-board/platform.htm#full-members

> ICANN has a responsibility for the preservation of all mailing lists, forum
> posts etc. I am a little confused about how a potentially invaluable source
> of participation like the At Large voters list can be mislaid (if it has). I
> am a little confused about how selective ICANN sometimes seems about things
> it *does* publish (for example, why 18 months late, has it *still* not
> published the Registry Evaluation Reports referenced in Appendix U of the
> Agreements with Neulevel and Afilias?).

I'm not sure that there is a legal obligation of such preservation, at
least not one that you have legal standing to enforce.

However, that does not mean that there is not an ethical or moral
obligation to the public, or to history, to preserve such materials.  And
in the absence of a Frank Quattrone style scorched earth document
preservation policy there seems little business reason to not save such
materials.

Nevertheless there are indications that might lead one to the opinion that
ICANN's "staff" has tried to "deep six" some materials or make them
difficult to find.  For example, despite an ICANN practice of publishing
documents from other board memembers and "staff", ICANN's previous
president and ICANN's anonymous "webmaster" have repeatedly answered my
requests (and requests from others) to publish my documents on those same
terms with silence and inaction.

The problem, however, goes both deeper and wider - Many documents of
importance are not even shown to the Board.  For example, ICANN's CRADA
report on root servers (see my note at
http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000007.html ) was never shown to
the board before the public version was published.  The full version has
never been presented to the board - a board member must make a special
request to see it.  Nor was the recent draft RFP for new sponsored TLDs
shown to the board before it was published.  And don't forget that I had
to bring a (sucessful) legal action against ICANN in order for me, then a
member of ICANN's board, to see even ICANN's financial records.  (And when
I did inspect those ledgers, we discovered that printouts [each about 4
inches/10 cm thick] of several sub-ledgers were absent - which somewhat
raises questions about the quality of the putative inspection and
unqualified endorsement of those same records made by the then chair of
ICANN's "audit" committee as described in ICANN's court filings in
opposition to my request for inspection.)  I found many of ICANN's records
to lack sufficient detail to be auditable except perhaps be a skilled
forensic accountant.  Because of that lack of detail, I found myself, as a
board member, unable to give credence to the endorsements by ICANN's audit
committee or ICANN's external auditors.

In my final report on ICANN (which I have not yet posted to the public),
among several other recommendations, I have recommended that ICANN improve
its staff-to-board reporting through the vehicle of a comprehensive
monthly report in standardized format (standardization being useful for
those who wish to compare month-to-month performance.)  My sense is that
ICANN's new president is in agreement that this is a situation that needs
to be improved and that will be improved.  But that's staff-to-board and
not ICANN-to-public.

My sense is that ICANN has improved.  That much of the mindless hostility
to the public and public interest from its founder, its prior president,
and some now gone board members is evaporating.  And I believe that the
present incumbent has much more of a sense of ICANN operating according to
reasonable business practices and with management being accountable the
board of directors.

However, ICANN has done much damage and put that damage into daily
practice - the UDRP and the processes by which the UDRP is applied being
but one example; the micromanagement of DNS business practices being
another; the utter failure to expand the DNS TLD space being yet another;
and ICANN's repudiation of public accountability and the construction of
moats and walls of committees and organizations between ICANN and the
public being the most pernicious.

That damage needs to be corrected - past faults should not be ossified
into permanancy simply on the basis of "what is past is past".  Antonio (a
character in The Tempest) was right in saying "Whereof what's past is
prologue, what to come in yours and my discharge."

> I would encourage the independent 'mirroring' of all ICANN-related websites,
> lists and forums, by parties outside ICANN itself

Amen.

> .... I've done this with two of the Public Forums on New TLDs
> (because they contain much incriminating information and yet were dismissed
> by Stuart Lynn as "a joke").

You aren't alone:

Don't forget that those 85 people (including many highly respected
academics and attorneys) who petitioned ICANN for a delay in the
promulgation of the UDRP (because it was pushed at a high rate of speed -
perhaps a better word is "railroaded" - through an incompletely formed
DNSO) were dismissed by ICANN's then president as "arrogant" and
"juvenile".

And ICANN's outside counsel (now "ex", but probably a much richer "ex")  
publicly abused me as an "idiot" when I refused to backing down when ICANN
tried to unlawfully restrict me in the pursuit of my duties as a director.

It seems that ICANN's motto as perceived by ICANN's founder and ICANN's 
past presidents has been "L'Internet, c'est moi"

Fortunately, I believe that there has been a major change in ICANN.  
However, the new board members are often unaware of the history and of the 
arguments.

		--karl--