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· by Karl Auerbach · Read in about 9 min · (1813 Words)
documents

Internet Governance

Bookmarks Description
Thoughts on the NTIA Green Paper This is a copy of the NTIA “Green” paper of January 30, 1998 with some of my comments interleaved.
The National Science Foundation (NSF), the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS), and The Privacy Act of 1974 This is a collection of pages from 1998 describing the role of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the domain name system.
What I would say to the House Commerce Committee were I invited to testify July 17, 1999
Suppose ICANN Had An At-Large Membership Drive Humor - Suppose ICANN hired a telemarketeer to try to get you to join. What might that be like? August 22, 1999
Structural Principles For Internet Governance Materials for the Meeting of the UN Internet Governance Forum.
Stakeholderism - The Wrong Road For Internet Governance Submitted to the the Meeting of the UN Internet Governance Forum.
Request for Independent Review After ICANN rejected my Request for Reconsideration of ICANN great giveaway to Network Solutions (now Verisign) as being in violation of ICANN’s procedures, I submitted this Request for Independent Review.
Reconsideration Request Way back in 1999 ICANN began the great giveaway of the crown jewels of the internet to Network Solutions, nee Verisign.
Questioning Authority - Searching For Stability In Internet Governance I spoke on the weakness of ICANN’s legal and technical foundations, and the potential collapse of ICANN as a result, at Signifiers in Cyberspace: Domain Names and Online Trademarks at the Center for Law, Technology, and the Arts at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, November 12-13, 2009.
Why Louis XIV Would Have Loved The Internet King Louis XIV of France, a man who treasured control over chaos, would have loved the Internet.
This is a presentation I gave at Cal Tech and Loyola Law when I was named a Fellow of Law and Technology in 2001.
My Comments at the Conference on The Internet and Governance, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University Let me declare that ICANN has been a successful experiment in governance of the Internet. But there is more to say…
My Senate Testimony on ICANN of February 14, 2001
My testimony before the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space of the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. June 12, 2002
My submission to the Communications subcommittee of the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation July 31, 2003
My comments to NTIA’s “mid-term review” of its ICANN “JPA” agreement. My comments on NTIA’s “The Continued Transition of the Technical Coordination and Management of the Internet’s Domain Name and Addressing System: Midterm Review of the Joint Project Agreement”
Internet Governance - By Whom? This is a note written not long after ICANN got started - and it reflects on how poor a start it was and how it established the pattern for the ICANN we have today. May 1, 1999
ICANN Mission Statement Generator Are you a prolix pleonast? Do mission statements amuse you?
Fragmentation of the Internet This is a presentation that I gave at the American Bar Association (ABA) National Institute on “Computing and the Law: From Steps to Strides into the New Age”. San Francisco, June 2007.
Evaluation of ICANN As my last act as a director of ICANN and during the course of a public meeting I tendered this report to ICANN’s Board of Directors. ICANN has never acknowledged this document; nor does it appear in any ICANN document collection or website. Adobe Acrobat format, 13 pages. June 2003
Decision Diary During my term on the ICANN board of directors I kept a written, public diary of my decisions. This is that diary. It spans the entire duration of my term, November 2000 through July 2003.
A Prescription To Promote The Progress of Science and Useful Arts January 2002 issue of Internet Law & Business,
Contracting the Internet: Does ICANN create a barrier to small business? This is a statement made before the Committee on Small Business, U.S. House of Representatives
Containing the whole Science of Government This is a chapter from Charles Dickens' book Little Dorrit (1857) The chapter describes the Circumlocution Office. It may, and should, call to mind a certain existing institution of internet governance.
Campaign Platform - Election for North American Director of ICANN This is my campaign platform for the year 2000 election for the North American seat on the ICANN board of directors. There is a fair amount of material here, much of it is still relevant today. November 10, 2000.
Boston Working Group Submission to NTIA This is the Boston Working Group (BWG) submission to NTIA on NTIA’s plan to form ICANN.  September 29, 1998
A Plan To Reform ICANN: A Functional Approach This is one of several papers that describes a way to structure bodies of internet governance, such as ICANN, into tightly constrained units that are less likely to go astray or suffer from mission bloat. April 2002
A note to NTIA for their review of their “transition” to ICANN. My submission to “The Continued Transition of the Technical Coordination and Management of the Internet Domain Name and Addressing System
Review of the At‐Large Advisory Committee. My “Concurrence” (Appendix 3) contains my arguments why ICANN needs a much broader base of public representation on its controlling body, the Board of Directors. My portion begins on page 32.

Internet Governance / ITU meeting on IG (Feb 2004)

Materials presented at the ITU meeting on Internet Governance in Geneva, February 2004

Bookmarks Description
Panel presentation and speakers notes
Governing the Internet, A Functional Approach
First Law of the Internet
Deconstructing Internet Governance

Internet Technology

Bookmarks Description
Design Alternatives for Computer Network Security This is a Google Books scan of a paper we wrote at System Development Corporation (SDC) in 1978 on the topic of network security.
The actual content begins on page 6.
My name is misspelled in the list of contributors.
1978
1980 Letter to CACM on Security This is a letter I wrote to CACM after which they claimed I had revealed classified material even though 100% of the sources were open and unclassified.
A UNIX(tm) Subsystem On The CRAY Time Sharing System (CTSS) - 1986 We ported Unix System III to run on the Cray Time Sharing System at the Lawrence Livermore Labs' Magnetic Energy (MFE) project.

Note: Our paper begins on page 211 of these proceedings.
RFC 1001 and RFC 1002 This pair of RFCs are a full Internet Standard defining Netbios over TCP

I was the chair of the working group and editor of the resulting documents.

This work was instigated by the US Air Force’s ULANA procurement intended to push for good interoperability of network products.
Building the Interop Show Network - 1993 This is a 1993 video made showing our team building the Interop Show Network.
Management by Delegation: Network Management for the Real World This is a thought piece I wrote describing where I wanted to take my company, Empirical Tools & Technologies. These ideas remain valuable but largely undeveloped.
March 1993
Management by Delegation: Network Management for the Real World - Presentation This is a presentation on the Management by Delegation idea. These ideas remain valuable but largely undeveloped.
March 1993
Towards Useful Network Management This is a paper written by Chris Wellens and myself regarding ways to better manage networks. Several of these ideas remain valuable but largely undeveloped.
July 1996
On Entity Associations In A Cloud Network This is a paper I wrote in 2010 about issues that arise when naming things that exist in a cloud network. Most particularly this note deals with issues concerning persistent network relationships between entities that exist within a cloud-net.
My presentation on Internet Naming to the US National Research Council The Domain Name System is often touted as a kind of global, uniform name space for the internet. It is not. This note describes various ways in which DNS lacks those properties that people and bodies of internet governance assume that it has. (Powerpoint format), July 2001
Protecting the Internet’s Domain Name System The Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the few parts of the internet that can be considered a single point of failure.
From Barnstorming to Boeing - Transforming the Internet Into a Lifeline Utility - Speaker’s Notes 8th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management, Colorado Springs, Colorado, March 26, 2003
From Barnstorming to Boeing - Transforming the Internet Into a Lifeline Utility (.pdf)

From Barnstorming to Boeing - Transforming the Internet Into a Lifeline Utility (powerpoint)
8th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Powerpoint format, March 26, 2003
Fast Path Characterization Protocol (FPCP) What is “proximity” on the internet and how do we measure it?
Internet: Quo Vadis (Where are you going?) I do not believe that the future internet will be a Utopia. Nor do I believe that the future internet will be like some beautiful angel, bringing peace, virtue, equality, and justice.
Instead I believe that there are strong, probably irresistible, forces working to lock-down and partition the internet.
2016
Domain Names Are Fading From User View The Domain Name System - both the technology of DNS and the deployed naming hierarchy we all use - are among those aspects of the internet that, although they feel solid and immutable, are slowly changing underneath our feet.
2017
Network Operations On A Public Utility Internet - keynote presentations at NANOG (North American Network Operators' Group) in the fall of 2019. I gave one of the two keynote presentations at NANOG (North American Network Operators' Group) in the fall of 2019.

The first part deals with the responsibilities, obligations, and liabilities of being an operator of parts of an Internet that was becoming a lifeline grade public utility.

The second part shifts to ways we design and implement the Internet to improve its resilience to errors, problems, and attacks. I suggest that we look beyond traditional methods of designing and implementing computer systems. In particular I urge that we take a look at the methods used by living things to improve their ability to survive.

2019

Miscellaneous

Bookmarks Description
SENATE REPORT NO. 93-1183 (Privacy Act of 1974) I scanned and OCR’ed a paper version of the Senate Report on what was to become the Privacy Act of 1974.
History of the Privacy Act of 1974 I did not write the main body of this document; I merely resurrected it from paper format.
Beware the Tactyldactyl!) A fun (and quite short) story.

External Links

Bookmarks Description
My Lawsuit Against ICANN During my term as a Director of ICANN ICANN’s staff (and several members of the board) obstructed me when I tried to perform my duties as a director. It became necessary to obtain a court order to compel ICANN to cease its unlawful behaviour. This link leads to the case file.