Subject: Who's Running the Show? Larry Irving, Becky Burr or Ira Magaziner?

From: Gordon Cook <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 15:47:07 -0500

I have received some interesting feedback that explains why people get
huffy when I criticize Larry Irving

Privately this morning to me from a Washington DC based telecom attorney:

"Larry Irving, as a former assistant to Marke, is fairly innocent of
technical insight. Most members on the House telecom committee and the
Commerce committee as a whole like him personally, as do their staffs. But
they do not respect his knowledge of the field.

Irving is a dramatic contrast to Janice Obouchowski, his immediate
predecesor, who with significant FCC and private sector experience had
personal hands on knowledge and command of the facts.

[Greg] Simon and Irving's staff will defend him because his dependence upon
them
actually gives them great power.  This is from several senior NTIA
officials who recently departed."

The message was signed with a DC phone number.  I called and spoke with the
author for over an hour.  He's genuine.  We found that we could fill each
other in in fascinating ways as to what has happened since last October.
According to him Brian Kahin and Becky Burr were indeed hard at work in
September and October trying to through the outcome of the NTIA rule making
into the hands of ISOC, the POC, and the MOU in order to dismember NSI.
According to him they indeed were working privately with IBM and ATT to
affect this outcome.  He gave me permission to use his words and describe
him as I have and promised to provide me further assistance if he possibly
could.

I am getting credible reports that Becky believes that she knows better
than Ira how to run this show.

Also this morning from Harold Feld on the cybertelecom list:

We [Domain name rights Coalition] have tried to present this [our] view at
various conferences and to law
>>>and policy makers.  Some have proved receptive, others have proved
>>>downright hostile.  I also have my concerns about Brian Kahin and Becky
>>>Burr.  Both were supporters of the IAHC, until that became politically
>>>unfeasible.  Neither one seems overly concerned with maintaining
>>>entrepreneurial opportunities on the Internet.
>>>
>>>In December, DNRC met with Magaziner and Burr.  We pressed (and
>>>continue to press) a two-front strategy.  First, any Internet governance
>>>structure must embrace core principles of openness and
>>>entreprenuerism (again, check out our web page if you are interested in
>>>details).  Second, the .US domain should be reorganized (proposal on
>>>how to do so also available on our web page).  We came away from the
>>>meeting impressed with Magaziner, his openness, his concerns, and his
>>>willingness to listen.  In fact, he asked us to submit a detailed
>>>proposal on
>>>reforming .US.
>>>
>>>We then found out that forces within the administration were moving to
>>>oppose our proposals.  The opposition took the form of shifting the core
>>>principles down to .US, then killing the .US reform proposal later (after
>>>the Internet governance structures were firmly in place).

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From: "Carl Malamud [IMS]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 23:18:51 -0500 (EST)

Jeez Gordon.  You've posted this note to com-priv, ietf, telecomreg,
and several other places.  Are your prononouncements really of such
earth-shaking importance that they are of interest to that many
mailing lists?  Perhaps you're simply grandstanding a bit and could
go a bit lighter on the cc: lists?  In particular, perhaps you
could lay off the ietf list as a daily cc?  This is/was a technical
mailing list, at least to some approximation of reality.

> huffy when I criticize Larry Irving

[political machinations deleted]