Ronda Hauben on 30 Oct 2000 00:05:40 -0000


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[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Nader is important, get rid of fear


Jay Fenello <Jay@Fenello.com> writes:


>Nader is a harbinger of things to come.

>Today on ABC's "This Week," Ralph Nader once again 
>described how our government has been hijacked by big 
>business, and how its decision making is done behind
>closed doors.

>Having been personally involved in just one example 
>of this, I'd say he's right on target! 

It is good that the Nader campaign is bringing the issue of the
corporate control of the US government out into the open.

I saw someone campaigning for Nader outside in my neighborhood
today and talked to him for a few minutes. He said there would
be a parade for Nader in the neighborhood next Saturday and
asked me to join.

I told him that it was good Nader was bringing out the problem
of the corporate control of the US government. But that Nader
had gone along with the privatization of the Infrastructure to
the Internet. That when I had tried to correspond with Jamie
Love on the issue of the support for ICANN, Love told me 
that I should read what Nader had written. I had and it was
a problem.

The person campaigning said that he would expect Nader to be
against the privatization of the Internet's infrastructure since
he was against the privatization of the air waves. He said he
would look into the situation.

The creation of ICANN instead of the US governmwent figuring out
what was the needed government and scientific role in the development
of the Internet, or supporting and encouraging others to try to 
sort this all out, is a serious problem.

Also my original proposal that was submitted to the Dept of 
Commerce before they contracted with ICANN was a proposal to take
on to determine the problem that had to be solved.

It didn't seem that folks close to Nader ever gave this proposal
any serious thought, even though they had to have known about it.
It's still online at http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/dns_proposal.txt
and its also online at the Dept of Commerce.

Also I know someone who asked the Nader campaign about the position
about ICANN and he was told he would get an answer, and he never got
an answer.

Why didn't Jamie Love ever make an effort to look at the proposals
submitted to the Dept of Commerce along with the ICANN proposal?

This is an important issue for the Nader campaign to take on and 
yet the opposite seems to be the case. Instead of opposing ICANN,
it has seemed that Nader and Jamie Love have encouraged the labor
movement to get behind the creation of new TLD's.

So thought the Nader campaign is very important and it has done
something important, if it goes along and keeps the silence about
the privatization of the Internet's infrastructure or if it
encourages ICANN to create new TLD's and to be accepted, then
it doesn't stand up very well under the heat.

When the US government was trying to privatize atomic energy,
the labor movement (I read in Donald Price's telling at least 
in his book Government and Science) opposed the privatization
and that led the US government to form an atomic energy commission
within government and that was a better situation that letting
the private sector take over atomic energy development and policy.

It seems that Nader, instead of encouraging the labor movement
to oppose the privatization of the Internet's infrastructure, he
has been promoting their support of it.

There is a need to figure out how to have an international public
structure for the administration of the Internet's Infrastructure,
but not a private administration like ICANN.

I have found some helpful precedents to give an idea what is needed,
and my proposal was a way to start some international collaboration
to find a way to identify what was needed.

I wonder why the Nader campaign has been silent on this issue
or has gone along supporting ICANN.

Ronda
ronda@panix.com
http://www.ais.org/~ronda/



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