http://atlargestudy.org/forum_archive/msg01113.shtml With apologies to the non-US members of this list, I'd like to make some comments that are inevitably US-centric. Today marked a watershed day in the history of the Internet. In some sense, the real date was September 11, when the leadership role of the United States in world peace, in economic development, and in technology innovation was challenged by a group of determined religious fanatics using our own technology on us to cause the death of thousands of innocent people. But the legal date between the "old" Internet and the "new Internet was today, October 26, 2001,when President George Bush signed the anti-terrorism bill that was passed by the upper house of Congress yesterday with one dissenting vote. This legislation brings the Internet and its developers, providers and users directly into the new war on terrorism. It extends extensive new power to law enforcement to find, capture, and punish those who use the network for terrorism or other criminal activity. It removes the previous barriers between foreign and domestic anti-terrorism investigations and establishes the principle that whoever you are, wherever you are, if you use the net for terrorism, you are in the sights of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and their foreign counterparts. In the New York Times this morning, under the heading "We are All Alone," widely respected columnist Tom Friedman said, "Focus instead on the firemen who rushed into the trade center towers without asking, 'How much?' Focus on the thousands of U.S. reservists who have left their jobs and families to go fight in Afghanistan without asking, 'What's in it for me?' Unlike the free-riders in our coalition, these young Americans know that September 11 is our holy day - the first day in a just war to preserve our free, multi-religious, democratic society. And I don't really care if that war coincides with Ramadan, Christmas, Hanukkah, or the Buddha's birthday - the most respectful and spiritual thing we can do now is fight it until justice is done." After a week of tough fighting in Afghanistan where the battle is rapidly deteriorating to the same "take no prisoners" ethic that prevailed on September 11, the same week that professionally prepared anthrax kept showing up in new places everyday on the U.S. east coast and killed two postal workers, there is a determined and deadly resolve to follow the Friedman advice. A resolve that will affect many if not most institutions, among them ICANN. It's different now for ICANN. What started out as your typical ritual White House privatization effort; one that parroted the young Clintonites' "Agenda for Action" of 1993; the Al Gore "Information Superhighway" speech; that provided a last hurrah for Clinton advisor Magaziner at the end of the second term. A sly political move that solved, or maybe solved, the National Science Foundation's honest mistake in giving Network Solutions and SAIC a billion dollar monopoly. That is not the ICANN of post-Sept 11. It's different now. It's not world government because national governments are evil; it's not Internet governance because national laws are unjust; it's not a response to some abstract imagining of the global popular will; it's not solving poverty, famine, infanticide, drug abuse and political oppression in the DNS. It's serious. It's first things first. It's about keeping people from being killed by terrorist plots hatched over the net. All of a sudden it matters that you know what you are talking about. If you are an Internet engineer, what about nailing down the RFC's needed for secure new functionality in the DNS? If you are a root server host organization CEO, all of a sudden being a volunteer in Jon Postel's army takes on new meaning. If you're the manager of a top level domain name registry, it's not a pc in a closet time anymore. Important people are watching, people who have the ability to nationalize you overnight if you're not carrying your weight in making the Internet more secure. The Japanese government and the United States government are sending cabinet level officers to speak at the November ICANN meeting about how serious this really is. So what does this have to do with At Large? First, don't expect to get the attention of the study committee, your fellow stakeholders in ICANN, the dedicated members of the Board, or the governments whose sanction makes this privatization effort possible, with a continuation of the shallow rhetoric that has characterized the postings on this list. Second, think seriously about constructive improvements in the recommendations of the ALSC. Nobody cares that you don't like a particular recommendation, they want to know whether you have a better idea, an idea that is good enough to gather the support of a lot of other interested parties that may not share your individual political or social or economic background but are nevertheless interested in the future welfare of ICANN. Third, be prepared to compromise your goals in the interests of forging an At Large organization that contributes to an ICANN that is going to operate in a far different environment than its founders envisaged. The study committee has worked hard. It doesn't deserve the abuse it has received on this list. The several points of the action plan are reasonable, centrist, and provide a basis for moving forward. They deserve your support. - Mike Roberts -- ======================================================== The COOK Report on Internet, 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA (609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) cook@cookreport.com Go to http://cookreport.com for info on new features, updated mission statement, contents of Dec 2001 issue, subscription info and prices at http://cookreport.com/subscriptions.shtml -- summary of content for nearly 10 years at http://cookreport.com/past_issues.shtml