This is a rough report of recent events.
For those who may not follow the other mailing lists, Jim Dixon, one
of our more vocal critics, is now worried that the USG will take over,
and has decided that he should join PAB. His plan, which he has been
quite public about, is to get a very large block of new members, and
take over the PAB.
But apparently getting all those signatories together may not be quite
quick enough. So he has sent a letter to POC (I recently learned),
and to all the EuroISPA members, requesting that he be able to sign
the MoU once, and have 83 votes in PAB, because his organization
represents 83 ISP's.
The issue of multiple votes came up once before, in the case of Amadeu
Abril y Abril, who represented 4 companies in one way or another. The
consensus was (there was only one dissenting voice, from my records)
"one person, one vote". And Amadeu voted only once.
I am sending a letter to Jim informing him of this policy.
This event underscores the fact that we *desperately* need a corporate
memory, in the form of a useful web page.
Vivian, according to the draft charter we are working under, is in
charge of the web page. She has begun work on it, and Rick has
installed an email archive.
Vivian is exploring beaches in the Virgin Islands at this moment, on
vacation. Before she left I spoke to her about what we can do to
improve our web presence. We concluded the obvious, that we need
content -- good, up-to-date content. Perhaps not-so-obvious, we
agreed that it would be very good if there were several people
involved that could work with her to get that content together --
sort of a "web page working group". There's a lot of work involved
in doing a first-class web site, and it certainly would be nice if we
had a first class web site.
So if you have ideas, or real content, or can help put together some
of the stuff mentioned in the charter, please contact Vivian, when
she gets back.
Speaking of charters, I am working on a revision of the draft that
Antony did. There are two significant changes I am making: First, I
am clarifying the voting policy, as described above. Second, I am
significantly changing the material concerning the role of the PAB
representatives to POC -- it's not at all clear how that will turn
out, and having around 9 representatives who are full members of POC
presents a much different situation from having two "observers".
I am also incorporating Dan's description of the voting procedure,
and making cosmetic changes -- I am formatting it primarily as a web
document (I'm doing my part to generate content :-).
I will post this draft within the next 24 hours -- maybe it will
generate some discussion.
Some general comments about our situation:
I am not a party to any of the negotiations or back room conferences
with Magaziner, and it may be that the POC only gets limited access,
as well -- it's hard to tell, and it is probably even hard for the POC
to tell.
Certainly the GP, as it currently stands, is a very serious impediment
to implementing any part of the MoU. It makes no provision whatsoever
for the MoU, POC, or PAB, and leaves very little room for CORE. Given
the CORE's level of investment, and the fact NSI has a huge cushion,
and a very large guaranteed income stream from its now-permanent
monopoly on .com, it is hard to imagine how CORE can compete very
effectively.
Thus it is very important to try to cause changes to the GP -- it is a
public document, open for comment, and, in theory, open to change.
There will be an open comment period, of relatively short duration,
and it is open now. While I think Magaziner is in NSI's pocket, a
large number of negative comments gives political amunition, and we
will need all the amunition we can muster. Therefore, I strongly
urge all of you to really study this issue, and submit strong, cogent
comments.
Very desirable, of course, would be comments from politically powerful
entities. But enlisting politically powerful entities to your aid is
dangerous -- they almost always want a little something in return,
and, as I wrote in a message on the domain-policy list, the end result
of this kind of escalation could well be extensive governmental
regulation. Strong international response would probably be helpful.
People in the states could consider contacting their congressman,
especially if they are conservative, anti-regulatory types.
Finally, please remember: in dim times like these it is easy to lose
energy and drift. Sometimes the the tide runs against you. I view it
as a good opportunity to get our house in order, and our thinking
straight. We have a good cause; we aren't presenting it well. We
must do a better job, and we must do it with energy. We must think
through our position carefully, analyze why opposing views are
popular, and deal with it.
I hope to see some volunteers for the web stuff soon...
-- Kent Crispin, PAB Chair "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html