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    USA Goverment Relations ICANN, Narcissus; Narcissus, ICANN
    posted by tbyfield on Thursday January 09 2003, @07:59PM

    ICANN has published its "Fifth Status Report to the United States Department of Commerce Re: Progress Toward Objectives of Memorandum of Understanding -- Q4 2002," in which it enumerates its divers accomplishments. ICANN Watchers will search it (in vain) fo substrings like "fail", "inadequate", "shortcoming", "exclud*" -- let alone for any substantive self-critique.



    A fine example of ICANN's penchant for revisionism is section C.1.c, "Enhancing Participation of Key Stakeholders," which mentions "the bodies responsible for the underlying Internet protocols, the operators of the generic and country-code name registries ("ccTLDs"), the operators of the Regional Internet (IP address) Registries ("RIRs"), and the operators of the root name servers." All that, but not a peep about "accountability to and representation of the global and functional diversity of the Internet and its users" -- even though, barely three weeks ago, ICANN's board extended the terms of the Membership at Large directors who were elected by users.

    Oops, sorry. There is this...

    ICANN's New Bylaws include several provisions directly focused on this goal. First, the Bylaws establish an Office of Ombudsman, which is responsible for intake of complaints about unfair or inappropriate actions by the ICANN Board or staff, and the attempted resolution of those complaints. Second, the New Bylaws create both a process for reconsideration of ICANN actions or inactions, and a process for independent review of the same where necessary. The New Bylaws contemplate a significantly improved ICANN website, and create a staff position directly responsible for coordinating the various aspects of public participation in ICANN. The New Bylaws also contemplate the provision of staff support to the various policy development and advisory entities within ICANN, including the Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees. Work is underway on implementing these requirements.
    ...which is, truly, honest: users appear not as the foundation of legitimacy but, rather, as the source of "complaints about unfair or inappropriate actions by the ICANN Board or staff." And so on.

    Perhaps most hilarious is the "Summary of IANA Activities, September-December 2002," in which ICANN's unaccountable and anomymous (and historically technically incompetent) staff vaingloriously boasts dozens of technical accomplishments, including -- in November 2002 alone! -- "RMT FEC Encoding IDs and FEC Instance IDs, MPLS Label Values, DNS KEY Resource Record Protocol Octet Values, DSN Types, [and] GMPLS Signaling Parameters." Somehow, we doubt that anyone on ICANN's staff, to lift a line from Roger Ailes, would know GMPLS Signaling Parameters if they hit him (or her) in the ass with a banjo. Clearly, ICANN thinks it can bedazzle the DoC with this chicanery; if it can, then one can only wonder what purpose these progress reports is.

     
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      Related Links  
  • ICANN
  • accountability to and representation of the global and functional diversity of the Internet and its users
  • extended the terms
  • Summary of IANA Activities, September-December 2002
  • Fifth Status Report to the United States Department of Commerce Re: Progress Toward Objectives of Memorandum of Understanding -- Q4 2002
  • More on USA Goverment Relations
  • Also by tbyfield
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    This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
    ICANN, Narcissus; Narcissus, ICANN | Log in/Create an Account | Top | 10 comments | Search Discussion
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    A rebuttal?
    by PeterBarron (pebarron@hotmail.com) on Friday January 10 2003, @06:10AM (#10941)
    User #3240 Info | http://www.icannwatch.org/
    Might I suggest that those more tuned in to the truth prepare a rebuttal brief and publish it as well as forwarding it to the appropriate authorities? Those authorities might be sadly excused for believing ICANN's report unchallenged.

    ++Peter
    [ Reply to This | Parent ]
    Breach of contract?
    by Anonymous on Friday January 10 2003, @04:36PM (#10951)
    Can anyone indicate when and where ICANN delivered the reports mentioned in the version of the MoU of last September as due? It says: "ICANN shall submit a report to the Department no later than November 30, 2002, providing a description of the current status of the root server system. ICANN shall submit a report to the Department no later than December 31, 2002, providing a description of the proposal for enhanced architecture for root server security as set forth above, a procedural plan for the transition to such enhanced architecture, and an implementation schedule for such transition."
    [ Reply to This | Parent ]
    What a laugh
    by KarlAuerbach on Sunday January 12 2003, @05:49PM (#10962)
    User #3243 Info | http://www.cavebear.com/
    I found it amusing to see that ICANN now considers the only "stakeholders" who are allowed in the sandbox to "key stakeholders" - I guess it's not enough to anymore to be a mere run of the mill "stakeholder", now one has to be a key stakeholder.

    But wait there's more - now for members of the public to be allowed into ICANN's useless company unions, you must be an "informed" member of the public. But no such requirement of being "informed" is placed on those "key stakeholders" and ICANN certainly worked its tail off trying to prevent me from looking at its records so that I could be an "informed" director. I guess that within the fantasy world of ICANN, it is only the public who are obligated to be "informed" as a precondition to participation.

    And then there's that list of IANA - not ICANN - accomplishments. Things like those "private enterprise numbers" that make up the majority of its work - those are allocated in exactly the same way that most protocol numbers are assigned - the big book of numbers is consulted, the difficult job of adding one to the previous maximum value is performed, the result is written back into the big book of numbers. Even under ICANN's reign, that job takes at most a few seconds per number. In other words, ICANN is reaching very hard to make a very small molehill look like a very large mountain.
    [ Reply to This | Parent ]
    Re:hilarious
    by tbyfield (reversethis-{moc.xinap} {ta} {dleifybt}) on Saturday January 11 2003, @06:55PM (#10956)
    User #44 Info
    so why didn't any of the earlier status reports include a litany of IANA's accomplishments?

    cheers,
    t
    [ Reply to This | Parent ]
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