----- Original Message ----- From: "Lyman Chapin" <lyman@acm.org>
Emotionaly I would use as strong words as un-democratic and top-down on creations like this.
Maybe the right way to do this is to say that the Board has the power to change the bylaws and articles of incorporation (as a legal matter of incorporation, which is currently in California), but that such a change must be treated as a policy matter like any other, requiring review and public comment from the community. In fact, that's what we're doing with the proposed bylaw changes now - the process of public discussion and comment has been going on since last February.
Reform and changing the bylaws, was a self-manufactured smoke-screen to distract people while the .ORG re-delegation was being done behind the scenes and while the U.S. Government Department of Commerce extension was being done behind the scenes. As predicted, the "Reform Process" captured the imagination of the new, clueless, U.S. DOC employees, and they rubber-stamped a renewal like robots. Now that the smoke has cleared, people are saying, "Oh, now what ? We better generate a lot of revenue, because that is what the U.S. Government wants." That was about the only substantive comment the U.S. DOC made, they said they wanted ICANN to be well-funded. The best way to do that is to start charging ALL customers the same for IP address space leasing. ARIN and ICANN are corporations subject to U.S. laws. RIPE and APNIC may be under ARIN as is the case with LACNIC. That can be transparent to ICANN, above ARIN. http://lacnic.net/en/transition.html http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space U.S. companies must be consistent in their charging and charge rates based on market values to avoid concerns about dumping at below cost or cross-subsidies and bartering, where certain select vendors pay nothing or less because of insider relationships, as opposed to published, volume agreements that are available to all customers. Jim Fleming 2002:[IPv4]:000X:03DB:...IPv8 is closer than you think...IPv16 is even closer... http://www.ietf.com http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/130dftmail/unir.txt http://ipv8.dyndns.tv http://ipv8.dyns.cx http://ipv8.no-ip.com http://ipv8.no-ip.biz http://ipv8.no-ip.info http://ipv8.myip.us http://ipv8.dyn.ee http://ipv8.community.net.au