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| Jim Rutt and the ICANN Debacle | |
| Item 35 28-FEB-2003 19:33 Gordon Cook |
| The good folk of the internet society , vint cerf, dave farber, larry
landweber and assorted friends of IBM started a campaign to villify network
Solutions in and the NSF's role there in 1996. They were extra oridinarily
successful in turn opinion against NSI and managed in december 1996 january
1997 to overturn the decision of the national science board to get the us
gov't out of domain names.
In 1997 - 98 ira magaziner led an effort to institutionalize the IANA function that resulted in the now much despised ICANN. ICANN was brought into being as the personal tool of these insiders.... unaccountable to anyone....masquerading on a platform of lies. in the times of the dot com bubble network solution through its fees for domain names damn near had a license to print money. Vint cerf at MCI and john patrick at IBM through beckwith Burr and NTIA waged a campaign that brilliantly depicted NSI as evil incarnate.... when in fact while don mitchel was supervising the cooperative agreement on behalf of NSF, NSI was not evil incarnate at all but was quite responsible and open and easy to deal with. ICANN meanwhile was spending money as if it owned a printing press and in danger of going broke. It was putting out the pretense that domain name outfits....IE NSI which was 90 pecent of the industry had to become certified by ICANN so that they would act "responsibly." And fo this certification NSI was to give cerf mike roberts esther dyson and that ilk of ICANN a dollar a domain name per year. Now with 20 million names in dot com that was a nice chunk of change. By the way from 1995 on Don Mitchell at NSF was much key source. he gave me permission a month ago to identify him as such. But by may 99 the citical question was would NSI capitullate and become an ICANN cerrtified registrar. If NSI refused ICANN would have tumbled like a house of cards. |