PAB Fax and Congress

William Allen Simpson (wsimpson@greendragon.com)
Tue, 24 Feb 98 04:37:21 GMT


Someone with CORE and/or POC contacts, please forward this on to them.

> In case you want to FAX by Internet to Congress:
>
> During our last Teleconf, someone asked about ways to bombard Congress ov=
> er the
> Internet.
>
Please, pulease, do not bombard anyone with Faxes or email. They hate
that, and it would give us a bad name.

Letters. Type-written, hand addressed, letters.

Now, I'm not sure how far you would get with Senators. I've known both
of mine personally for over 10 years (before one of them ever ran for
office), have been actively involved in campaigning (and paid consulting
fees), and I still would not venture to expect contact or a response
from them in under a month time-frame.

We need to make a list of Reps where the zip-codes of the CORE companies
and PAB members fall in their districts. Then, those folks should
personally call the local office. And write a followup letter to the
local office. And, if you are very lucky, get the opportunity to talk
to the designated staff contact in DC about your concerns.

Mostly, we have to find Reps on the Commerce and/or Science committees
that match our folks.

Non-US persons, please do not muddy the waters here, please contact your
government ASAP, and help them send official complaints to the US.

If a US person or company, you might want to send a short note ASKING
for the House Science committee (probably the technology sub-committee)
to meet to review the NSF/NSI imbroglio, or ASKING for the House
Commerce committee to review the Magaziner proposed Rule. Here are the
general contacts:

James Sensenbrenner
Science Committee
2320 Rayburn
Washington DC 20515

Connie Morella
Science Technology sub-committee
2319 Rayburn
Washington DC 20515

Thomas Blyley
Commerce Committee
2125 Rayburn
Washington DC 20515

John Dingell
Commerce Committee
2125 Rayburn
Washington DC 20515

Make each contact individual, but mention a few of these things:

- the proposed rule comment period expires March 23rd. Time is of the
essence.

- the proposed rule does not have statutory authority to create any new
corporation.

- the proposed rule would continue the NSI agreement past March 31st,
which may be unconstitutional.

- the NSF agreement with NSI has been enjoined by Judge Thomas Hogan.

- the Internet does not need any new corporations to govern it. We
already have established non-profit associations in DC and Geneva.

- the proposed rule is interfering with inter-state and inter-national
commerce.

- the proposed rule is likely to be more expensive to the Internet than
the current Council of Registrars.

- the proposed rule is not supported by the Internet community, and may
cause a split in the root operations, damaging the Internet.

WSimpson@UMich.edu
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