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We
followed up last night's post with a phone
call to Ira Magaziner's office [White
House]. He returned the call about 90
minutes ago. We stated our concern about
allegations that the Interagency Working
Group would be announcing policy tomorrow,
and that according to Dave Crocker's
conversations yesterday with Chuck Gnomes,
NSI's front line manager for DNS, IANA,
would soon be asking for the inclusion of
the seven CORE gTLDs in the root servers.
That according to Crocker "there is
nothing unknown about the request that
will be issued, except for the precise
date and we know that date is approaching
quickly."
We restated our
concern about the harm that would come
from such a disruption of the status quo
adding that people who knew the Internet
far better than Brian Kahin and Becky Burr
and Mike Nelson were convinced that there
was no crisis of any immediate nature that
demanded any immediate action on the part
the Clinton Administration to disrupt the
status quo ,which we understood to be that
the National Science Foundation had, with
the full approval of the Inter-Agency
Working Group last summer instructed
Network Solutions NOT to add any new gTLDs
to the root servers.
On record, Mr.
Magaziner said that there are lots of
discussions going on among lots people
both inside and outside of government.
There is a lot more discussion and
consultation that has to take place before
any decisions are made about what the
government should or shouldn't do, and
that there is nothing on the immediate
horizon that will in any way change the
status quo. Moreover these discussions are
going to need to ripen and take place over
the next weeks and perhaps even months
before any decisions are made that disturb
the current situation.
From Magaziner's
statement we can assume that -- other
press rumors to the contrary -- neither
Kahin, nor Burr, nor Nelson, nor NTIA, nor
DOC will have any new policy to announce
on behalf of the Clinton Administration
any time soon.
[PLEASE NOTE
-- Cook filed an October 7 Freedom of
Information Act request for communications
between Mr. Brian Kahin, Ms. Becky Burr of
NTIA, Dr. Mike Nelson (former OSTP analyst
and currently at FCC) and any other
relevant government officials, trying to
establish their dialogue with media
companies. Reply is pending. On November
14, Cook published a leaked November 13
memo from Crocker about the CORE
implementation schedule and governmental
support, which said the US government
"crew" (Magaziner, Kahin, et al) aren't
getting "the point" that the "requirement"
for adding seven new TLDs is "imminent,"
that other national governments are not
"sanguine" about the US claiming DNS
control.]
[Addenda:]
You might mention that the latest take is
that they have given up on the idea of the
seven gTLDs going in the root for now. I
have gotten anguished complaints from the
other side about THAT! Because that means
a lot of CORE registrars may loose some
money.
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