Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: News from Don Telage about ARIN from Gordon Cook
From: David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 00:16:34 -0400
I must make a few comments re certain "facts" in this document re the IP list. Gordon has often felt I should not send out items which he believes are wrong -- others may disagree as to the rightness or wrongness. My editorial policy is I want to provide all sides to controversial issues not just what I think is right. I send out comments from the far right and far left -- from pro CDAers and anto CDAer, from Pro key escrow and anti key escrowersSometimes I make a co mment expressing my personal opinions but I consider that editorializing and try to minimize it. So please I will repeat again and in all caps -- IP MAILINGS DO NOT REPRESNT MY OPINION BUT SOLELY ITEMS I THINK YOU SHOULD SEE. Also there is a reason I severely moderate the list == make it only from me. All unmoderated lists I know have decended into chaos. IP has been about for a long time and I get very few "get me offs" and lots of put me on. So maybe the best test of an idea is the results. I really dont think that is a "problem". And finally there are a lot more than a "few thousand" and it is very international and I will not again make the error made in 1992 and declose the people who get it :-) Dave ps i THINK THIS IS A VERY FINE JOB ON GORDON'S PART OF INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 23:32:00 -0400 (EDT) From: Gordon Cook <cook () netaxs com> Subject: Important News from Don Telage about ARIN The bottom line of this message is that, in a phone conversation with me earlier this evening, NSI Senior Vice President Don Telage said he would be happy to permit Kim Hubbard to make her own *independent* and *unreviewed* progress reports regarding the progress of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) weekly or as often as she felt it to be necessary. These progress reports could be placed on the ARIN web site and sent by Kim to appropriate mail lists. Here is what happened to lead up to this unexpected phone conversation. Dave Farber is a senior member of the Internet community who has run, at least since 1990, a mail list that he calls Interesting People. I have been on this list since 1991. Sometime in 1992 Dave goofed and a message went out that contained the identities of the list members. Less than 200 at the time, but a very impressive collection of high ranking folk from the media, government, education and the corporate world. My understanding is that since then the list, which is private, has grown in size to several thousand - that it has a very international flavor, and agAin very influential subscribers. Now one problem with the list is that it is moderated by Dave such that communication is one way. People send him stuff and ask him to redistribute. This means that the signal to noise ratio is generally quite high. But it also means that from time to time some real zingers slip out. Rebutting them is difficult and usually requires some extended negotiation with Dave who - with this list - effectively acts as "gate keeper" to the internet for many many influential people. Such negotiation is something that, not wanting to take the time, I usually don't do. It is much easier to publish my rebuttal elsewhere. Last night Dave published a real zinger. He did this when he took what I regard as a scurrilous attack on the American Registry for Internet Numbers by Dave McClure <dpmcc () bellatlantic net> and published it to his list with the heading "Domain names and "The Network $olution", from The Netly News." [What he piece had to do with the netly news escapes me.] As far as I can figure out, McClure is the executive director of something called the Association of on Line Professionals. (AOP). He has had, what looks like, a vendetta going against ARIN for most of 1997. McClure's AOP has no standing what so ever in the internet industry that I am aware of. (Something confirmed by more than a dozen responses that I have received to a public query I made earlier today.) And yet Dave apparently took text from Sky Dayton, the Earthlink CEO, that Sky had received from McClure and posted it without comment to his Interesting Persons list. In my opinion from 6 years of reading Dave's list that action means Dave endorses the comment. When he posts something he doesn't agree with he says so. I have watched a wide variety of people try to crucify ARIN since February of this year. Seeing McClure's unsubstantiated accusations go out to a one way list of influential people largely without independent means of verifying the data, was a hit below the belt that I felt that ARIN ill deserved. I let Dave know my displeasure and he said he'd publish a reasoned rebuttal to his IP list. I hope he finds that this meets those criteria. I then made phone calls and sent a bunch of private mail and found out some very interesting and *totally unexpected* information. There had been relatively little response from John Curran, Scott Bradner or Randy Bush on any of the relevant mail lists in answer to many many attacks on ARIN. Today there was also no great rush to write a rebuttal of the McClure piece that Dave Farber had posted. Suddenly I got a phone call explaining why. I took the information that I was given and called Don Telage at NSI. In a half hour phone conversation Don told me the following. (1.) The three CURRENT members of the ARIN board are himself, Kim Hubbard, and Phil Sbarbaro, outside legal counsel to NSI. (2.) This is the "incorporation board". As soon as legal insurance for the Board is put into place the incorporation board would meet and select the seven person *proposed* board listed on the Arin web pages. (3.) This had not yet happened because they had not yet managed to nail down the necessary legal insurance. As soon as the policy was in place the new board would be chosen. He thought thi would happen in less than two weeks but he could not name an exact date. I pointed out that the ARIN board was getting nibbled to death on the net and felt unable to defend itself until legally it was indeed the ARIN Board. I mentioned that I had found out that article 8 of the By-laws said that within one year of the date of the incorporation the board was obligated to have procedures in place for the immediate election of the advisory council members by the ARIN membership - thus letting the air out of the argument that the ARIN board would be a self perpetuating monopoly. But I complained that the by-laws were not yet on the web site. Why not? Because they are still being revised. I replied that, in view of the situation, if ARIN is to have a chance at being successful, it would sure as heck help to get the current version up there with a statement that there might be subsequent revisions. But what is the urgency? We are doing the right thing, Don said. I responded that such may be very true but that damned few people on the net believed it and I emphasized that they were using NSI's apparent unwillingness to supply information to destroy ARIN's credibility - that NSI's "good intentions" would be meaningless in another month or two because, if Kim and the ARIN Board could not be PROACTIVE, their credibility would soon be gone. (I mentioned Farber's publication of McClure's accusations as a case in point.) If Don Telage couldn't get the word out himself, he needed to find some other way to do it. For example letting Kim Hubbard, who would be leaving NSI employment and becoming the ARIN president, KNOW that she had his full approval to make a weekly progress report on the ARIN web page and naipr mail list as to what had and had NOT been accomplished - during the week just finished - within NSI and within ARIN. Well it might not have to be every week but could be as often as she feels necessary, Don replied. Fine, I answered. Absolutely. But let Kim understand that it is *her prerogative* what to write and that it does not have to be cleared in advance within NSI before she puts it out. Make a repeat of today's situation where I had to be bugging Don about something that looked reasonable to him but that looked like one helluva nasty problem to the outside world impossible. Impossible because Kim would keep everyone adequately informed. OK sounds reasonable, I can agree to that, said Don. I went over my notes of the discussion with Don, asked if he agreed to them and if I had his permission to go public with a write up this evening on the net. He agreed. So here it is Don, and I thank you for taking the time to hear my message. PS -- let me re-emphasize one more thing. ARIN's goal is to achieve complete financial independence from NSI as soon as possible and in any case before next April. That its goal is not to take in more money than is necessary to cover its expenses. That its members will see the balance sheets and that it fully expects its members to tell it to lower its rates, if it appears that income is exceeding expenses by too unhealthy an amount. ARIN will be an entity that will become independent from NSI as soon as its fees can cover the costs of its operation. It will be an entity controlled by and run for the benefit of its members. I personally hope that one of Kim's earliest progress reports will be the announcement that ARIN is accepting members. I am convinced that she is totally committed to the integrity of the IP number process, and that if any group of "nasty big boys" every tried to pervert things so that they held a knife to the throats of smaller ISPs, that she'd blow the whistle damned quick and resign if need be to see that it didn't happen. As Avi Freedman said today on inet-access: "Rule number 1. NEVER EVER LIE TO KIM." ************************************************************************ The COOK Report on Internet For subsc. pricing & more than 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA ten megabytes of free material (609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) visit http://cookreport.com/ Internet: cook () cookreport com On line speech of critics under attack by Ewing NJ School Board, go to http://cookreport.com/sboard.shtml ************************************************************************
Current thread:
- IP: News from Don Telage about ARIN from Gordon Cook David Farber (Jul 16)