RE: [Membership] MAC reports and models-New URLs

["Joseph LeBaron" <Joseph@LeBaron.net>]

I agree with George Conrades in his support for Esther Dyson.  There is a
high standard that ICANN should be held to, but personal attacks such as the
ones below have no place in this list, in my opinion.  I imagine Esther has
a thick skin, so Mr. Smith's comments probably had little impact, but such
flames will make ICANN less communicative rather than more.  They just take
us backwards.


-----Original Message-----
From:	owner-membership@ISI.EDU [mailto:owner-membership@ISI.EDU] On Behalf
Of George Conrades
Sent:	Saturday, February 06, 1999 8:02 PM
To:	'a@help.org'; membership@icann.org
Subject:	RE: [Membership] MAC reports and models-New URLs

Esther, just let me publicly say Russ has little appreciation  as to the
effort you are putting in to this and how thankless a task it is at that,
witness this thoughtless and sarcastic posting which adds no value to the
issues at hand.

-----Original Message-----
From: a@help.org [mailto:a@help.org]
Sent: Friday, February 05, 1999 10:32 PM
To: membership@icann.org
Subject: RE: [Membership] MAC reports and models-New URLs


Esther Dyson makes a living based on her association with some of these
organizations.  She sells newsletters and books that often describing the
activities of these organizations and I expect the majority of the
subscribers to her newsletter (about $800 per year?) are these
organizations.  I have read several things she has written in these
publications and the information is often incorrect or misleading and many
times the stories are simply meant to praise these organizations and give
them publicity.  Furthermore, Esther has little or no technical knowledge of
computers or the DNS system.  She is good at public relations, putting a
'spin' on issues, and getting lazy reporters to take her picture in the
Lotus position.  There is also a quote from her at
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,373885,00.html that states
"In some sense, yes, all you can do is either trust us or walk away."  She
was also instrumental in setting up this TRUSTe system which has turned into
a disaster as far as the protection of the privacy of Internet users (I
understand, according to a posting by Declan M. of Wired, that Mr. Roberts
was also involved in setting up TRUSTe even though it is not mentioned in
his bio)

I have no confidence in anything Esther Dyson does or says and I do not
believe ICANN will have any legitimacy as a technical organization until she
is gone.  Unfortunately, she is involved in much of decision making now
which could cause many more problems after she leaves.  The only possible
value she could add to the ICANN board is if they started charging her a fee
every time she uses an ICANN meeting to promote her book.  I suspect this
could be enough money to fund ICANN for years to come.

Russ Smith
http://consumer.net




-----Original Message-----
From: owner-membership@ISI.EDU [mailto:owner-membership@ISI.EDU]On
Behalf Of BRPWIT@aol.com
Sent: Friday, February 05, 1999 9:30 PM
To: a@help.org
Cc: membership@icann.org
Subject: Re: [Membership] MAC reports and models-New URLs


Russ:
You are correct on who makes the decisions.
I asked that they look at a structure similar to the world wide technical
and
professional societies. These groups all have tecnically competent sub-
committes to deal with issues.

Esther told me that they were subsequently going to talk to these
organizations -
I have no idea what she decided to do
thanks
steve witkin