ICANN's insistance in employing
the services of "independent" third parties whom actually have associations and previous
experience with some of the applicants that they are apraising only serves to devalue
the credability of their opinions, tarnish the image of ICANN and harm the process
in general.During the first forum someone made a general remark against the image
online application, someone was unimpressed withthe remark and they received the
reply that they should go back to "wine.com" or words to that effect.
I didn't
understand the remark ath the time and thought nothing more of it until I read that
Robert Olson of the technical advisory team was the co-founder of Wine.com / virtualvin.com
- a successful on-line wine shop.
This is significant because of course Virtualvin.com
is a chartered member of Verisign's Website Partner Program
(http://www.verisign.com/clientauth/sites.html)
And
Verisign itself has a clear vested interest in the Afilias proposal in so much as
it just paid $21 billion for Network Solutions. A price that many see as an over
valuation given the saturation of NSI's present market.
(http://www.informationweek.com/777/verisign.htm).
It
is unfortunate, given the scope of the Internet and the vast number of industry contacts
that ICANN has access to, that they have systematically sought advice from individuals
that may well have had pre-determined opinions.
This parody is highlighted by the
fact that after all of the evaluations, the ICANN board found it necessary to over-rule
them anyway and allow IOD access to the short list after all. We are told that is
the postings in these forums that tipped the balance:
(http://www.icann.org/tlds/report/report-iiib1a-09nov00.htm)
So
far there are only two members of the three outside advisory teams that do not have
alleged links to any of the applicants.
Technical
Charles Neuhauser
Robert
Olson - Verisign (Network Solutions / Afilias)
Peter Reiher
Business
David
Nolte - Arthur Anderson (Core / Afilias)
J.D. Tengberg - Arthur Anderson (Core
/ Afilias)
Tom MacKinney - Arthur Anderson (Core / Afilias)
Legal
John
Funk - Jones Day (Network Solutions / Afilias)
Paul Goldean - Jones Day (Network
Solutions / Afilias)
Since the death of Jon Postel, Jones Day has been at the very
heart of ICANN with Joe Sims and Mike Weinberg apparantly being strongly associated
with both parties.
Jones Day has previous dealings with Network Solutions as described
here:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/cairo/archive/scribe-icann-031000.html
And
this was raised at the ICANN board meeting in March.
With reference to $450,000
+ legal fees to Jones Day, it was commented that "these checks reflect half a year
of legal services from Jones Day covering half a year of extensive legal services
including two congressional hearings and extensive negotiations with USG and NSI
[Network Solutions].
Furthermore "the NSI [Network Solutions] payments allowed
us to pay Jones Day".
Jones Day are arguably the stongest player in the world of
internet law and certainly seem to have influence in the directions that ICANN takes.
(http://www.cookreport.com/whorules.shtml)
The
question is - is it really appropriate for the same people to be asked to give inpartial
views on the legal attributes of individual applications?
Could it have been done
any worse?