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ICANN Director Sues ICANN for Access to Records 128

Posted by michael from the nutcracker-suite dept.
According to an EFF press release (press release mirror) today, Karl Auerbach (the North American elected representative to ICANN's board) filed suit (petition mirror) today against ICANN itself to obtain financial and other records that he has been seeking to obtain since December 2000. As a bit of background, according to general summaries that ICANN has released, it now spends about $6 million per year (for a job that used to be done by volunteers); roughly half of all the money it spends goes to the law firm of Jones Day.
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ICANN Director Sues ICANN for Access to Records More

ICANN Director Sues ICANN for Access to Records

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  • It should be.

    Anyway, any large evil corporation of which ICANN currently resembles far more than a democratically elected board almost always spends a good portion of its money for entrenchment with the fear of the light footed and legally just taking over. Look at rambus.

  • Something is fishy here (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TrollMan 5000 ( 454685 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @02:53PM (#3182476)
    When a company's own director is denied access to financial records of his own company!

    Though not an admission of wrongdoing, it does raise some serious issues on how ICANN is run.

    One question, was this director already aware of any wrongdoing, or just checking some facts out?
    • Last time I saw something like that, is when this one dude owned a domain with a bunch of friends, then the guy that "volunteered" to do the webpage, and the site became a huge success, until the "webmaster" hijacked the site [sethf.com], and it hasn't existed since.

      Too bad it wasn't a corporation where you can get the law on yourside (because the guy that started it all WAS a lawyer).

    • Re:Something is fishy here (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sallen ( 143567 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @05:38PM (#3183465)
      When a company's own director is denied access to financial records of his own company! Though not an admission of wrongdoing, it does raise some serious issues on how ICANN is run. One question, was this director already aware of any wrongdoing, or just checking some facts out?


      A Board of Directors has a fiduciary responsibility to the Corporation. Anyone in management who attempts to withhold access from a Board member should be subject to immediate termination. I'd love to see how the insurer carrying their D&O policy would react to this type of activity. It seems, being non-profit under 501(c)3, it's even more paramount for the board member to insure the finances are in order. It sound like management doesn't realize they are employed BY the Board, and that goes for their legal team as well. (It's interesting to note someone mentioned a law firm receiving a substantial portion of the expenses. Check the 'contributions exceedind 5,000.00' in their financial statements)

  • Public Record (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AlexDeGruven ( 565036 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @02:54PM (#3182484) Homepage
    ICANN management dragged its feet for nine months, then issued a new "policy" -- never brought before the Board for discussion or vote -- requiring Auerbach to sign a non-disclosure agreement that placed Auerbach's ability to discuss the records at the discretion of ICANN management.

    Appears as though ICANN wants to take something that was apparently public record and turn it into private, proprietary information. Not really a smart thing to do after the request has been made.

    "Here, take a look at our records. Oh, wait, you might use some of this against us? Never mind, sign this binding agreement so we can take care of our CYA initiative."
    • Is ICANN still "governmental" enough that it falls under the Freedom of Information act?
      • Of course not. That's part of the point of having corporations do the government's dirty work: corporations, being non-government agencies even when acting as agents of the government, are not subject to regulations like the FOIA.

  • I've said this before (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hrieke ( 126185 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @02:54PM (#3182486) Homepage
    The internet is designed to route around problems, so why haven't we routed around ICANN yet?
    ICANN was designed to give legitimacy to the way the net is run, and the only way that they could have done that was to spend money. As soon as money entered the picture politics followed. Get rid of both and start from scratch with a better designed and built system. One where democracy rules, where the law is applied equally to both big companies and the little guy.
    Just a side point, what would it take to replace the 13+ root dns servers?
    • The reason the ICANN hasn't been routed around yet is that it has not yet been enough of a problem in the day-to-day operation and usage of the Internet. Domain name scarcity is minor problem, but won't stop someone from putting up a web site. The disbute resolution has been causing problems for parody sites, but that's a small part of the Internet.

      Prehaps if these probably start getting worse, alternatives may form.

    • Re:I've said this before (Score:5, Informative)

      by Brian Knotts ( 855 ) <bknottsNO@SPAMcascadeaccess.com> on Monday March 18, 2002 @03:14PM (#3182595)
      There are already multiple "routes" around ICANN.

      One of them is OpenNIC [unrated.net].

      The challenge is just getting people to use the other routes. Most people don't think there's a problem. Mainly because they don't know what's going on with ICANN.

    • One where democracy rules, where the law is applied equally to both big companies and the little guy.

      ...but if you move the root dns servers to another universe, we won't be able to access them from here, so it'll be moot.
    • You mean like this? [open-rsc.org]

    • Re:I've said this before (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Seth Finkelstein ( 90154 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @03:41PM (#3182717) Homepage Journal
      Why? Read:

      ICANN and Antitrust, by A. Michael Froomkin and Mark A. Lemley [miami.edu]:

      The small take-up is hardly surprising, given that the alternate roots suffer from a classic network effect, and that a registration in an alternate root is of relatively little value in the absence of a critical mass of fellow users who can access that root. The existence of this network effect, coupled with ICANN's control over the dominant root, makes ICANN's exclusive deal particularly effective. By denying alternate roots the right to participate in running gTLDs in the legacy root, ICANN keeps those alternate roots marginalized, and makes it far less likely that they will ever achieve that critical mass. The foreclosure in question here is not substantial in percentage terms simply because ICANN's control is so complete.

      Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]

    • Want a route around ICANN? How about DNS? Try freenet [freenetproject.org]! No domain registration required. Free anonymous encrypted worldwide data storage, what more could you ask for?
    • Millions already have - either via their ISPs or directly by upgrading their DNS to use The PacificRoot(R). Details are located at http://www.PacificRoot.com/updatedns.shtml. You can also join the growing community of PacificRoot Accredited Registrars by visiting http://www.POSSR.com or see our full page ads in ISP World magazine.

      er... it's actually not a route around for the Alternate, deprecated, legacy system operated by ICANN - It's a complete replacement.

      BTW, This "ICANN Director" (Karl, that is) operates the .EWE TLD which is carried by The PacificRoot. Once you upgrade your DNS you will be able to visit his website at http://www.beautiful.ewe :)

  • JP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rakerman ( 409507 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @02:58PM (#3182509) Homepage Journal
    Didn't Jon Postel do practically all of what ICANN does?

    Do we really need a huge, opaque, multimillion dollar organization to do... what is they're supposed to do anyway, manage the DNS space? Sheesh.
    • Most likely one person could not handle the lawsuite waving coporate lawyers demanding that they have ownership of any disputed domain name.

      • Re:JP (Score:1)

        by CentrX ( 50629 )
        Only 3 million out of 6 is going to the law firm. That's still 3 million dollars that's being "used" for doing other stuff.

    • Re:JP (Score:2, Informative)

      by john_heidemann ( 104993 )
      Yes, but when there was an order-of-magnitude less politics involved. (Hint: there's a reason they're paying lawyers, and it's not a technical one.)

      Also, to clarify:

      ...(for a job that used to be done by volunteers)...

      ICANN/IANA's work has not been volunteer for many, many years. It used to be paid for by different funding agencies (like DARPA, NSF, or ISOC), but it was never free.

    • Re:JP (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mindstrm ( 20013 )
      Yes.
      He also tried to open up the root servers at one point, and I believe one of hte major powers semi-involved (netsol?) actually got the FBI involved to ORDER him not to interfere.

      Something about him contacting the root servers to organize the addition of some other stuff.

    • Re:JP (Score:2)

      by cabbey ( 8697 )
      basically, yes.

      and he did it a helluva a lot more efficiently.

    • No, JP didn't do what ICANN does. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @10:27PM (#3184970) Journal
      • He didn't play politics much,
      • He didn't declare himself to be autocrat of the world,
      • He didn't refuse to listen to real users,
      • He didn't act obnoxiously and irresponsibly.
      Jon Postel wasn't perfect, and he did make some mistakes, but he was fundamentally reasonable and tried to do a good job. He didn't let the fact that he really was in charge of the world as we know it go to his head....
      • Yes, JP was what you might call a benevolent dictator.
        It is a shame that the "democratic" ICANN, with a huge budget still perform considerably worse than a single man did in his spare time...

        And ICANN was supposed to be a step forward. But it has mostly brought politics, greed and corporatism to the net.
        Some democracy on the net would be nice though, but ICANN is not it.

  • ICANNOT (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18, 2002 @02:58PM (#3182510)
    ICANNOT access my records =(
  • thats gotta be close to $3 million, so lets just call it even.

  • ICANN is a waste of money (Score:5, Informative)

    by lamj ( 153635 ) <jasonlam@NosPam.flashmail.com> on Monday March 18, 2002 @03:02PM (#3182530)
    What positive things did ICANN did so far?

    Let me mention the issue where NSI and some other players not release the expired domains back to the pool. What did ICANN do about it?

    Check out these links

    NSI abuse [icannwatch.com]

    Verisign's status [dnso.org]

  • Does anyone else find this hysterical? I was going to attempt a thoughtful commentary, but there is just something about the highest office in the company not being able to access records. This maybe a very sad case of business today, but I still believe that the absurdity of what is happening, and the humor, cannot be denied. ROTFL

  • This is extremely disturbing (Score:5, Funny)

    by hillct ( 230132 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @03:04PM (#3182546) Homepage Journal
    It's shocking that ICANN expects to be able to hide it's basic financials from members of it's own board of directors.

    I was rather amused though by board member Wilson's comment to Auerbach that his request for records had been rejected because he has requested them in Electronic Form; after all. ICANN can't be expected to be particularly technologically savvy. It's not like they do business in a high tech field. In fact, It's a miracle they even have a board member mailing list, from the tone of the petittion.

    --CTH

  • Core of Auerbach's petition (Score:5, Informative)

    by Seth Finkelstein ( 90154 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @03:05PM (#3182555) Homepage Journal
    For better discussion, here's the heart of the matter, from within the petition [eff.org]
    Auerbach contends, simply enough, that the code section means what it says: that as a Director of ICANN, he has the absolute right (at any reasonable time) to inspect, and to copy, any and all of ICANN's corporate records. Of course, Auerbach has not asked to see them all, only a small amount, but both by its actions and in its words, ICANN, primarily through Lynn, contends that it can impose not only "reasonable time" restraints on Auerbach's rights, but also substantive restrictions on his right. In acting on its contentions, ICANN has denied Auerbach his legal right to inspect and copy ICANN records. Indeed, in denying Auerbach the right to inspect and copy records as he sees fit, ICANN has acted contrary to its own Bylaws, as well as S 6334. As quoted in paragraph 5 above, Article V, Section 21 of the ICANN Bylaws provides that "[e]very Director shall have the right at any reasonable time to inspect and copy all books, records and documents of every kind ...." California Corporations Code 5231(a), which also governs the conduct of California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporations such as ICANN, provides: A director shall perform the duties of a director, including duties as a member of any committee of the board upon which the director may serve, in good faith, in a manner such director believes to be in the best interests of the corporation and with such care, including reasonable inquiry, as an ordinarily prudent person in a like position would use under similar circumstances.

    Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]

  • Good luck! (Score:2, Funny)

    by macdaddy ( 38372 )
    Good luck, Karl! It sounds like at least one person over at ICANN isn't a horrible waste of carbon.

  • Can someone please help me out for a second (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cdrudge ( 68377 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @03:16PM (#3182601) Homepage
    and list who exactly all the players are? I thought that most of the ICANN board were to be hated, with the exception of the elected members. Is Karl Auerbach a good guy or the bad guy here? It wasn't clear since he is the Director suing his organization...or is Director in the sense of "Board of Directors" instead of the singular leader, such as a President or CEO?
  • I realize that they're supposed to be "in charge", but what are they in charge of doing? As far as I can tell, they have big meetings in strange, out-of-the-way places where reporters can't show up. Then they sit around, talk amoungst themselves, and choose who gets to have a top-level domain and who gets locked out.
    Do they do anything else? I would love anywho who saved us from SPAM, but they can't seem to do that. I would love it if someone could lower the cost of registering domain names to close to the real cost, but they can't seem to do that. I would love it if they could promote more stable, secure protocols, but they aren't close to considering questions like that.
    So can anyone else articulate something they have given us?
  • ... because even though the financial records should be made avaliable since there's nothing to hide (right?), Karl could easily use the policy for political reasons.

    If he sees that requesting the information would be rejected, he could do it on purpose, be refused, and then raise a huge stink about it in hopes of drawing attention to himself as a poor guy getting trounced by THE MAN. Kind of like saying "... so you won't tell me your secerets? What are you hiding? Hey everone, this guy is hiding something, he must be evil!"

    I agree that the organization should cough up the information out of principle, but if Karl is requesting them becasue he can see that he would get personal (and political) gain out of it, we're choosing between two evils.

    • Umm (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mindstrm ( 20013 )
      He *could* I suppose... but...

      IT is *illegal* for them to not provide him with the requested records. He's a director of the company!

      So political gain or not, he is right.
    • Take a look at this part of the petition [eff.org]. Which side do you think is playing political games?
      5. Restrictions on Access or Use. To the extent that the Chief Executive Officer, in consultation with the General Counsel of the Corporation, determines that compliance with any request for records necessarily involves issues of confidentiality, privilege, or privacy of a nature which require limitation of or conditions on the Director's access or use of the requested records, the Chief Executive Officer shall advise the requesting Director of the issues which require the restrictions and the nature of any proposed restrictions on access or use. Similarly, if permitting an inspection of the Corporation's properties necessarily involves such issues, the Chief Executive Officer shall advise the requesting Director in writing of any restrictions on access to the Corporation's properties. If the Director accepts the restrictions by countersigning the statement concerning limitations, the records shall be made available to the Director or the inspection scheduled as soon as possible.

      Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]

    • Wouldn't Karl have a Fiduciary Duty to review these records? Of course, as a non-profit with no stockholders, fiduciary duty may mean something different to ICAN'T^H^H^H^H^H^HICANN...

      • Re:Calling All Lawyers... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Jim Tyre ( 100017 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @04:16PM (#3182920) Homepage
        A director may rely on that which management may choose to spoon feed him, a director is not required to look at everything himself. But if a director wants to look at more than what management chooses to show him, a director has the right to see and copy all corporate records and documents.

        -J, not all lawyers, but Karl's lawyer

        • Under UK law a director is an officer of the company. This is serious because it is the board that jointly carries the can for the correct running of a company as defined by its charter and company law. you are right that the director does not need to look at anything, but it is the director that is held ultimately accountable.

          Now ICANN is a non-profit US based corporation, but I'm certain the principles are the same. If an undue amount of money is going in particular directions, Auerbach is right to ask why. My only question is where are the rest of the "about to be out of a job, at-large representatives"?

  • Meanwhile, Back at ICAAN Headquarters (Score:5, Funny)

    by SubtleNuance ( 184325 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @03:27PM (#3182653) Journal
    "Gentlemen, Start your Shredders!"

    VRMMMMM VRMMM SHHHHHHHHHRREEWWW.

  • For roughly $500 000... (Score:5, Funny)

    by FFFish ( 7567 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @03:29PM (#3182661) Homepage
    ...I'll do all the work that ICANN does. And I promise to be fair and sensible.

    Which is, all told, a helluva deal for everyone. I'll be a lot cheaper, and you can be damn sure that even at my worst, I can't be even 1/10th as bad as ICANN. :-)
  • The only thing that scares me about this is that ICANN now has a budget this big. money==power

    • Re:influence (Score:3, Insightful)

      by reemul ( 1554 )
      The budget isn't that big. To you and me $6 million USD is a pretty sexy number, but once they've paid themselves, their lawyers, and their lobbyists, they wouldn't have enough money to buy even a single congresscritter, much less be able to exert significant influence around the world.

      I suspect a lot of the budget that isn't going to the law firm is going to pay for all the meetings in out-of-the-way places they use to hide what they're up to while pretending to be global. Ghana?!? Who had that bright idea? Including all the laptops of members and lackeys and press, the number of PCs in Ghana likely doubled for the duration of the conference. Nice work if you can get it, I suppose.

  • Orwell was RIGHT! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by isotope23 ( 210590 )
    Just goes to show Orwell was right on with "Animal Farm"!

    All Animals Are Equal

    But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others

    LOL!

  • Half of ICANN's 6 Million dollar budget (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18, 2002 @03:47PM (#3182745)
    Went to a single law firm. Has ICANN been involved in 3 million dollars worth of litigation? I can understand that they may have use of a lawyer's service in their position but 3 million dollars worth?

    Lots more questions then beg to be answered. How many lawyers was the money paying for. What did they do? Is the same law firm the one suggesting ICANN not release the financial documents? Are any of ICANNS managers benefitting from diverting so much money to the law firm?

    Oh man people are going to want to know answers to all these things, while ICANN skitters around looking for something to scurry under to escape the terrible light.
  • Sounds like... Enron. Higher ups, not knowing where things are going, lots of money, etc.

  • ICANN meeting in Ghana (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bstadil ( 7110 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @03:49PM (#3182757) Homepage
    There is an interesting article [wired.com] over at Wired about ICANN's future directions following an ICANN meeting in Africa.
    The main issue seems to be fear of increasing US influence. Looks like Esther Dyson has less money to roll naked in since she pledged $10k to studey of "at-large outreach".
    How this square with
    Quote "Lynn (The ICANN CEO) also published a 17,000-word proposal calling for elections to be abolished and to more closely involve national governments"
    unquote
    is beyond me.
  • Does any of my money goes to pay these fellows?

  • ICANNWATCH.org - dedicated ICANN-watching site (Score:5, Informative)

    by Seth Finkelstein ( 90154 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @03:59PM (#3182811) Homepage Journal
    For those interested in more ICANN-watching, there's the dedicated site

    ICANNWatch [icannwatch.org]

    (which is also covering this story [icannwatch.org])

    Note the michael posting articles on that site is A. Michael Froomkin [www.law.tm], not Slashdot's Michael Sims [sethf.com]

  • ICANN't? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Xaxeon ( 224392 )

    KARL: Give me the financial records!
    ICANN: ICANN't let you do that Karl...

    Sorry, didn't see that anyone had done it so I had to... =)
  • Anyone else notice that the EFF related information is mirrored, but the ICANN info and the law firm aren't? Hmmm... hostile slashdotting?
  • From where does ICANN's power depend?

    To whom do we petition to have that power revoked?

    --Blair
    "The revolution will be webcast."

    • Re:Who do we sue? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @06:03PM (#3183626) Homepage Journal

      They aren't really accountable to anyone, at least in the traditional sense. Their real power is entirely defacto. You give them power when you use (or run) nameservers that point to their roots.

      To whom do we petition to have that power revoked?

      For most people, the party to petition is your ISP. Whoever runs the resolver you use, needs to point to other roots. If that party is unresponsive to your desires, then you can either find someone else's resolver to use, or run your own bind or djbdns (or similar software) to query from the roots yourself.

      I believe a few months ago, I saw that someone on the OpenNic forums was making a resolver or two open to the public, for people who don't want to mess with such details. Beware that using a far-away resolver does come with a slight performance hit.

  • Devil's Advocate (Score:2, Informative)

    by yuri ( 22724 )
    I don't like the way it sounds but reading the press release, maybe they can make him sign an NDA.

    From bylaws (in press release):

    "The Corporation shall establish reasonable procedures to protect against the inappropriate disclosure of confidential information."

    Surely an NDA would fall into this category, given they believe he is someone that is likely to publicly raise issues.

    That said, the state law "absolute right" would seem to contradict that.

    • It isn't up to the corporations bylaws to define what a director may or may not do - it is up to laws. In this case California law give a director of a nonprofit nearly unlimited access to the corporations records, because a director can go to jail for certain crimes comitted by the company.

      I'm won't speculate about whether Karl Auerbach is right or not about ICANN (I have a conflict of interest there, as I'm involved with .name [nic.name]).

      But the above is essential, because what Karl is saying is that he believes that the terms imposed on him, seemingly arbitrarily, are so restrictive that if he signs it it may allow ICANN management to restrict his ability to make any records he obtains available to persons needed to assist him in his legal duties. Duties which he can end up in jail if he don't carry out and there later turns out that ICANN has broken the law.

      That could include discussing the documents with his lawyer, showing them to government agencies (such as the IRS) that may have a legitimate interest (if there turns out to be issues that put a doubt on ICANNs right to nonprofit status for instance), or having an auditor verify that the ICANN retained auditors have indeed done their job properly.

      All of these are seemingly innocent actions, and it may very well be that if Mr. Auerbach had signed the document provided by Stuart Lynn that ICANN wouldn't have objected to him showing the documents to the above mentioned people. But what if they do, and Auerbach has just signed away his right to?

      In that case he has signed away an essential tool of complying with his duties as a director.

      So even if ICANN is squeaky clean and just wants to protect sensitive information, I can perfectly understand that Auerbach don't want to take the risk of taking ICANN management on its word.

  • 6 MILLION dollars?

    Something smells...VERY BAD.

    -hack

  • Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Garry Anderson ( 194949 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @06:49PM (#3183855) Homepage
    I had asked the question before on ICANNs own forum: It seems to me difficulties are due to piss poor management and nothing to do with need for structural reform. For instance, why stick with Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue? Is it because of certain old ICANN links with them? Are JDRP profiteering? They are very costly - have you looked for other Law firms?

    Have you checked out JDRP.com - and their people involvement with ICANN?

    A quote from a Karl Auerbach:

    Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue is ICANN's law firm, and has been so since the day of ICANN's birth. Indeed Jones-Day actually performed the incorporation ceremony in its Los Angeles offices.

    Jones, Day, in the person of its principle man-on-the-ICANN-scene, Joe Sims, was present for at least half a year before ICANN was born, working in the shadows, responding to unknown interests and possibly making unknown deals. About all we know about that period is that those who were not insiders to Joe Sims process were ignored and that those who objected were treated with condescension and abuse.

    Over the life of ICANN, Jones, Day has been the the dominant creditor of ICANN.

    Even now Jones, Day continues to receive a lion's share of every dollar that flows into ICANN.

    And one of Jones, Day's partners, Louis Touton, left the firm to become ICANN's Vice-President, Secretary, and General Counsel.

    There is in my mind a question about the appearance of propriety.

    Karls platform [cavebear.com].

    ***End quote.

    In a good two month period, October and November 2000, they got $465,553.67 from ICANN.

    ICANN minutes [icann.org].

    As it one of the largest intellectual property practice groups in a general-practice law firm - with more than 85 intellectual property lawyers, I would imagine Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue make a lot of money on trademarks problems on the Internet.

    Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue [jonesday.com].

    Virtually every word is trademarked, be it Alpha to Omega or Aardvark to Zulu - even common words you learnt with your A B C's - apple, ball and cat - most many times over.

    MOST share the same words or initials with MANY others in a different business and/or country. For example, the World Trade Organization (WTO) shares its initials with six trademarks - U.S. alone [uspto.gov] (please check). Conflict is IMPOSSIBLE to avoid.

    The solution to this problem has been ratified by experts - so that ALL registered trademarks can be identified on the Internet.

    Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue know this solution.

    They would lose a lot of money, if there was less trademark problems on the Internet - wouldn't they?

    Draw your own conclusions - but it is my opinion they do not want the solution to 'consumer confusion', 'trademark conflict' and 'passing off' problems on the Internet.

    There is in my mind certainly no question about the appearance of corruption - it is beyond doubt.

    Please visit WIPO.org.uk [wipo.org.uk] to see. No connection with the United Nations WIPO.org.

  • Help them out... support the EFF! (Score:3, Informative)

    by GuNgA-DiN ( 17556 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @07:24PM (#3184084)
    If you haven't already joined I suggest that you become an EFF member today! If you are a member I suggest you give them a donation:

    http://www.eff.org/perl/join [eff.org]

    Everyone likes to talk about fighting for causes like freedom of speech, privacy, and individual's rights. But, the EFF takes on cases that fight for these things all the time! If you support Karl's fight against ICANN head on over and donated $10 or $20 now!

    Put your money where your mouth is!

  • Because ICANN (cheap shot) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by buss_error ( 142273 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @08:38PM (#3184447) Homepage Journal
    Also, I think ICANN is a California Non-profit. As such, it's records are also public record to some extext, are they not? IANAL.
  • This has long been a theme among those at ICANN. It's not surprising that they do it and quite satisfying to see them hauled into court over the matter.

    But this sort of problem isn't restricted to ICANN. It's all over. People are constantly entering themselves into pissing contests over matters of ego. Ironically, there is such an on-going "matter of ego" going which includes the posting editor of this very thread. I suspect that due to my mere mention of it that this response will be modded down, but it is my opinion and observation that there is a bit of irony here and what appears to be a "pot calling the kettle black."

    I think the larger picture is that we wish the world were less "petty" in its behavior and in the grand scheme of things we all forget that we all, as individuals will die eventually. ICANN, as a body should have been designed from the ground up as a non-petty organization.

    In any case, we wish for the world to be less petty, but our world starts with ourselves. How petty are we? Ask yourself if you're doing things out of spite, or out of some personal need to be in control? Do you ally yourself with like-minds in order to strengthen your own position?

    I think we all start with good intentions and generally forget what we started out to do.
  • Really! What are they hiding?

  • Salon interview with Auerbach (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Robotech_Master ( 14247 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2002 @01:29AM (#3185610) Homepage Journal
    This interview in Salon Magazine [salon.com] lets Auerbach go into more detail about why he's suing, and the roadblocks that ICANN has thrown up when he's tried to get the records. He makes comparisons to Enron, and talks about director M. Stuart Lynn's proposed plan for reorganization.

    My favorite bit:
    Is there anything in the plan that's useful?

    I think it would make great kindling for a fire. There's nothing in it that's useful.
    (I already have 50 karma, so don't be afraid to mod me up for Informative. :)

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