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ISOC Hires MPAA Executive Paul Beringer
First time accepted submitter imwilder writes "The Internet Society has hired Paul Beringer to head up its operations in North America. Beringer was formerly Chief Technology Policy Officer for the MPAA, and Executive Director of Internet and Technology Policy for Verizon Corporate Services. Does this challenge the notion that ISOC is a 'trusted, independent source of Internet leadership?'"
Where "independent" and "objective" simply means "giving the bad as much airtime and consideration as the good."
... we now have a case of the fox and a platoon of his buddies guarding the henhouse?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
:-|
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
He was only at the MPAA for a year, and from what I hear, that was no accident. I know people who know him, and they say that he understands the Internet and didn't agree with what the MPAA was doing, and was described to me as "one of the good guys." We shall see, but he won't last long at ISOC if he isn't.
Not Beringer, Brigner.
When you hire someone, you don't magically become a shill of that person's past employer.
While true. You don't appoint the former CEO of a national beef conglomerate to be head of PETA. You don't appoint a former devil worshipper as pope. You don't appoint a former member of the pirate party as an executive of the RIAA.
The fact that you were a chief executive of an organization such as the MPAA says something about you. And what it says is largely inconsistent with the values of the internet society.
You choose executives whose personal views are consistent with the values of the organization, or who at least are not widely known as having opposite views; such as the scope and capabilities of the internet should be heavily restricted in order to protect media companies.
You don't appoint the former CEO of a national beef conglomerate to be head of PETA.
You don't appoint a former devil worshipper as pope. You don't appoint a former member of the pirate party as an executive of the RIAA.
Allow me to play Devil's Advocate here... Why shouldn't you hire such people? People can change, and such people often have insights that lifetime partisans lack. For example, an ex-satanist who finds religion might make a good pope, in that he'd have an intimate understanding of what could drive people to devil worship and what could bring them back. The RIAA would likely benefit from having a former pirate party member at its helm, because that person would understand piracy in a way the organization currently doesn't and could drive sane policy changes.
What you're promoting seems to be ideological purity at the cost of maybe not expanding or improving policy. It's an innately defensive posture, used by people who are playing to not lose rather than to win. Maybe such a posture is better in this case, but I wouldn't say that that's always the case.
Leopard. Spots.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
How does one go about boycotting this?
There's a 'how to' video on boycotting this, but it's not available online. You have to provide two forms of picture ID to order the physical media, register your IP address, sit hrough an FBI warning and promise that only you - and you alone - will watch it. Sharing it with others, making copies, posting it online or selling it as used is strictly forbidden. A 'how to ' video about acquiring their videos is being prepared by their lawyers in conjunction with the US government and Interpol.
Allow me to play Devil's Advocate here... Why shouldn't you hire such people? People can change, and such people often have insights that lifetime partisans lack. For example, an ex-satanist who finds religion might make a good pope, in that he'd have an intimate understanding of what could drive people to devil worship and what could bring them back.
CEOs are not just people with insight, they are also leaders. Leaders are figureheads as well, models, people to set an example for others. People can make major changes of their point of view, but it's not a sign of the stability and consistency an organization would expect from a leader. Leaders are expected to draw upon their own vision and insight from those they lead.
Someone may have the perfect technical characteristics to be leader, but still not be suitable because of their public image or past history. Because their image, their past, and how the people they lead view them have a major influence on their ability to do your job. Good leadership is basically impossible if those you lead see an inconsistency in what you do or what you have done versus what you exclaim.
Just because a criminal has reformed and because of their history has a deep understanding of the ways of criminals does not mean they belong as Chief executive over the FBI; that's not to say they necessarily may never work for the FBI, and not to say they might never be allowed to share their insight with a Chief executive, but their past is incompatible with being that executive.
Just because a tax cheat has reformed and has detailed insight into how to better catch tax cheats, does not mean they belong in charge of the IRS.
Anybody who has seen both Sean Doran's brilliant screed "It Seeks Overall Control" and watched the IAHC committee where ISOC made the deal with the devil for control of the DNS which it then presented to the USG as the final solution, can not be surprised at this.
After the US government threatened to make Jon Postel "go away" for his ideas about expanding the DNS to make NSI "one of many" registires (instead of the current plan to have 10,000 sales agents for .com) per the original NSF cooperative agreement with NSI/General Atomics/ATT, the USG (really Commerce) made their own version of IANA run by intellectual property lawyers, starting at the top with WIPO from Geneva being involved in the earliest secret (!) meetings about the DNS delivered on a platter by ISOC; this was initiated when Don Heath (ISOC) ran into Albert Tramposch (WIPO) and Bob Shaw (ITU) at an OECD workshop in Ottawa at about the time Jon was trying to expand the DNS namespace around the time the Vint Cerf's FNCAC advised the NSF to instruct NSI to began charging for domains.
ISOC, and really any of these organizations that start with an "I" are really a "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" old boys club - look at their salaries on their organizations tax forms, they're 2 to 5 times for equivalent government work and lets face it if you saw FCC staffers in kayaks at a five star hotel Costa Rica claiming it was "bottom up multistakeholder consensus making" - one of four junkets a year - heads would roll and never mind the FCC has stated the multistakeholder model is rubbish.
But how else can they let the intellectual property crowd and speculators have as much as a say as all those people that actually own and operate nameservers?
Need Mercedes parts ?