At 2:17 AM +0800 8/8/09, David Cake wrote: >At 8:08 PM +0300 6/8/09, Alex Gakuru wrote: >>I am tempted to write an email from Nairobi to President Obama >>complaining about NCUC mistreatment by ICANN. Would it be appropriate? >> I need your advice. Would you like me to send my draft on-list for >>the NCUC Editor to polish it up? > > If you are sending something to the US govt complaining about >ICANN, make sure you also send it to Henry Waxman, Chairman of the >House Committee on Energy and Commerce. He has more direct influence >into the Dept of Commerces relationship with ICANN, which is >something that is very senstive to ICANN right now. > Cheers > David Speaking of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, there are a few other members of that committee who have been sensitive to public interest and the Internet over the last few years: * Rick Boucher (Chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet) * Edward Markey (wrote the Net Neutrality bill that may get reintroduced this session -- member of the subcommittee) * Anna Eshoo (another strong Net Neutrality supporter, though being a representative for Silicon Valley I don't know if she also has ties to folks like Vint Cerf at Google, former ICANN chair with perhaps less than a totally supportive attitude toward NCUC -- anyone here have any thoughts about that? -- also a member of the subcommittee) http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=160&Itemid=61 And, what about including Susan Crawford, former NCUC-sympathetic ICANN board member, who is now Obama's Special Assistant for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_P._Crawford She would be a significant person to address this sort of stuff in the current administration. I would guess she may well be aware of what's going on here to some extent, and presumably bothered by it to the extent that it is on her radar. But legitimate external ammunition is always helpful to people who want to advocate for something internally in a large administrative hierarchy, as well as helping to focus their attention. Dan -- Any opinions expressed in this message are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect any position of the author's employer.