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Karl Auerbach Wins Right To Inspect ICANN Records
Siobhan Hansas writes: "Karl Auerbach was in court today fighting for the right to inspect and copy documents he first asked to see in 2000, shortly after he became a member of the Board of Directors. Salon have the AP story. Auerbach won the right to inspect documents, but not to copy them, and was required to give ICANN 10 days notice of release of any information marked "confidential" to give them the opportunity to seek a court order stopping him." M : A first-hand report from the hearing makes good reading.
UK English considers companies and organizations plural - e.g. Salon have posted xyz, or Manchester United are a severely overrated soccer^H^H^H^H^H^Hfootball team.
For those of you just tuning in, Auerbach was elected to the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) board in November 2000 by the public at large. According to a Salon primer, ICANN "had already earned a reputation for ineptitude and closed-door policies that favor corporate interests. ... Auerbach intended to guide ICANN toward reform." He requested access to the financial records, he says, "[T]o find out where the money goes. Why does it take $2.4 million (47 applicants paid $50,000 each) to evaluate seven top-level domains?" As a director, according to California law, he was entitled to "the absolute right at any reasonable time to inspect and copy all books, records and documents of every kind," but ICANN thought otherwise, and the suit whose outcome is the topic of this story followed.
I hate call waitin`~+~~~
NO CARRIER
> does this seem to anyone else as just a pitiful bid for extra time? auerbach has been working for two years to get ahold of these documents. what could an extra 10 days possibly do for ICANN? they're just trying to be difficult on principle...
If there are enough of these 'confidential' docs, and he has to give 10 days' notice for each of them (..or is that notice good for a group of docs? The article didn't say), then he might find himself voted out of office before he can get all of them.
The judge can specifically state that an appeal will not hold up his access to the data or request that this be granted by an appealate judge.
IANAL, obviously, but it's no uncommon for a ruling to be held while the appeal is ongoing.
The judge is well aware of his lack of time and any appeal judge would certainly respect the meaning of the original ruling allowing Karl to see the documents while the appeal was still in court.
-davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
The EFF has the court ruling in HTML thanks to Cryptome. You can also read the press release.
-- Are you an EFF member yet?
- Having considered the applicable law and the undisputed facts presented herein, he court concludes that paragraphs 3, 5, and 6 of the Inspection Procedures conflict with section 6334 and Art. V, 21 of the Bylaws by unreasonably restricting directors' access to corporate records and depriving directors of inspection rights afforded them by law.
- Furthermore, Lynn's 10/5/01 letter violates both section 6334 and Bylaws Article V, Section 21 because it deprives Auerbach of the inspection rights he has under law and imposes such unreasonable requirements as having to sign a confidentiality agreement and having to pursue burdensome review in any effort to enforce his inspection rights.
- Additionally, the Inspection Procedures here apparently have not even been adopted by the ICANN Board of Directors, but were promulgated by an ad hoc group of functionaries consisting of the Audit Committee, Louis Touton, Diane Schroeder, and Lynn (Auerbach Dec. Ex. 17, 18, 21).
- Based on the undisputed facts, there is no triable issue as to any material fact and Petitioner Auerbach is entitled to judgment as a matter of law granting his Petition for Writ of Mandate.
I'd say - that is clear.From the www.opennic.unrated.net website
The OpenNIC is a user owned and controlled Network Information Center offering a democratic, non-national, alternative to the traditional Top-Level Domain registries.
Users of the OpenNIC DNS servers, in addition to resolving host names in the Legacy U.S. Government DNS, can resolve host names in the OpenNIC operated namespaces as well as in the namespaces with which we have peering agreements (at this time those are AlterNIC and The Pacific Root).
There ya go ... problem solved ...
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Now, if the TLDs got more uppity and took a page from the US's book on paying its UN dues, well, maybe this wouldn't be an issue.
Incorporated companies, limited companies, etc... limit the liabilities of the owners or shareholders of companies, not the directors. If you are a director (or officer) of a company you can in fact be held personally liable (both in a civil sense and a criminal sense) for quite a few things.
Oh, the parent quite clearly meant Department of Commerce, as in the US DoC. As I recall, ICANN was chartered by the US DOC, therefore if they were to fail to execute their contract, ownership would fall back to the US DOC. Should the Internet be an international non-political entity? Sure, but I don't think anyone has enough crack to actually believe that will ever happen. At best the US will charter an organisation that has elected representation of the largest internet-using countries as well as a number of unaffiliated representatives.