Re: [ga] Karl Auerbach's "A View From Vancouver"

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Danny, Karl and all former DNSO GA members or other interested
stakeholders/users,

To me and our few members that are in attendance in Vancouver
Karl's observations do not seem to be a strange view at all. Rather
most of the ICANN meetings are junkets for ICANN BoD and
staff members to go to rather than to actually accomplish any
actual work.  From where we sit anyway, this meeting is
SOP for ICANN.  Actually doing anything or conducting
productive work sessions is something ICANN doesn't do,
or at least do well.

Danny Younger wrote:

> Karl Auerbach writes on his blog:
>
> December 01, 2005
>
> This is the strangest of ICANN meetings.  Several
> registrars sit in the lobby making deals; other
> registrars are very angry about the Verisign-ICANN
> "settlement"; there are domain name owners who are
> equally ticked off about the same thing; there are the
> .xxx people wearing scowls, GAC people wearing deep
> blue, and often shiny, suits; there are trade booths
> (wo-)manned with folks who could be easily mistaken
> for trade show bunnies; a small number of board
> members pass through the public areas in as short of
> time as they can; a larger number of board members are
> unseen; and ICANN "staff" is largely invisible.
>
> Barely anybody talks about WSIS. But there is a lot of
> talk about lawsuits filed or contemplated.
>
> There is a lot of quiet talk about how .xxx was
> suddenly removed from the agenda and how a redacted
> Freedom Of Information (FOIA) inquiry indicates that
> the Bush Administration, in the person of Karl Rove
> and at the behest of religious fundamentalist James
> Dotson, caused the US Department of Commerce to
> secretly instruct ICANN to deny .xxx and thus
> triggering a dance of the proxies as ICANN and/or the
> US government attempted to create a screen of
> deniability by getting other countries to do the dirty
> work.
>
> Nobody here seems to support the ICANN-Verisign
> "settlement", although nobody seems to really think
> that ICANN will listen to the nearly universal
> complaints beyond making a few cosmetic adjustments.
>
> Those who actually use domain names, the community of
> internet users, are nearly completely absent; the ALAC
> meetings were so under-attended that they could be
> squeezed into a small room at the end of a nearly
> hidden corridor.  Even as UN is demonized for its
> incorrectly characterized attempt to "take over the
> internet", at least the formative UN Internet
> Governance Forum will probably allow individuals to
> obtain credentials while ICANN relegates us to a
> powerless limbo.
>
> There is talk of the splitting of the internet, not as
> something to come but rather as something that has
> already happened.  And that impossible as it is to
> trivalize the situation when the split involves China
> and other Asian nations ICANN has managed to pretend
> as if nothing of significance has happened.
>
> And in a bit of stunning Orwellian NewSpeak the United
> States Federal Trade commission said that to protect
> privacy it has to kill it.
>
> Matters of IP address policy are not discussed.
>
> Questions about the fate of the 40 TLD applications
> left over from year 2000, for which ICANN collected
> $2,000,000, remain unanswered while a very glitzy and
> expensively printed, but otherwise vacuous and
> self-congratulatory, booklet from ICANN's ombudsman
> occupies space on the information tables.
>
> http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000209.html
>
>
> __________________________________
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Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 134k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" -
   Abraham Lincoln

"Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is
very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt

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P: i.e., whether B is less than PL."
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