Re: IANA "stuff" (was Note 2.1.1.b was Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-dnsext-axfr-clarify-06.txt)

[Dean Anderson <dean@av8.com>]

I'll try to limit comments to AXFR-clarify and to the roles of Nomimum,
ISC, and Ultradns, and IETF staff.  There are some other acts by Conrad,
Vixie and others, but which were not related to AXFR-clarify. These are
acts will not be cited here.

On Thu, 24 Jan 2008, Paul Vixie wrote:

> mr. anderson wrote:
> 
> > ...
> > Second, the misconduct alleged on the AXFR-clarify draft from 2000 to
> > 2003 happened while David Conrad was the CEO of Nomimum, and shared an
> > office with Paul Vixie. The original AXFR-clarify draft was submitted by
> > a Nominum employee. The false assurances that no wire changes were made
> > by a Nomimum employee. People relied on these false assurances.
> 
> the nominum employee you're referring to has such a strong personal
> ethic and reputation that it is hard to imagine him parroting anybody
> else's ideas or writing anything in an internet-draft that he didn't
> personally believe in.

A character reference of "Strong personal ethic" doesn't mean that one
hasn't engaged in wrongdoing. However, no one has accused Gustafsson of
"parroting anyone else's ideas". Gustafsson is accountable for the
AXFR-clarify statements; He's a participant and participation is
evidence of agreement to advance the enterprise.  And Conrad is
Gustafsson's boss at Nomimum.

> > During this period (1996-2002), Paul Vixie misled the internet
> > community that MAPS was a non-profit enterprise. Sharing an office
> > with Vixie, Conrad must have been aware of the true facts about MAPS
> > status, but kept silent.
> 
> maps was a nonprofit enterprise.  it was never a federally recognized
> 501c3, due to various administrative errors i made when i ran it, but
> when david shared an office with me (oh such halcyon days of yore) he
> never had any reason to believe that maps wasn't just a nonprofit
> drowning in lawsuits.

Excuses of that sort are meaningless. MAPS was _never_ a nonprofit; And
instead doing the right thing of revealing the true status of MAPS, or
completing the non-profit status, or revealing that non-profit status
was denied, in 2002 MAPS announced that MAPS was for-profit, and
Vixie/Rand took the money raised as profit.  Assuming Vixie made errors
on getting the non-profit tax status setup, good faith in that instance
would have been to either 1) reveal that fact, 2) complete the tax
status or 3) to transfer MAPS assets to another non-profit. Bad faith is
to take the money raised as profit, which is exactly what Vixie and Rand
did.

[Snip--legalese and excuses for facts asserted regarding Exactis V.  
MAPS, though somewhat true in general, but not true of Exactis V. MAPS
specifically, will be ignored.]

> > Mr. Conrad was a member of NANOG at that time, but he kept silent.
> 
> nanog does not issue membership cards, and there is no membership
> agreement.  to be a "member of nanog" is meaningless.  someone can be
> a member of the nanog mailing list, and someone can pay an entrance
> fee to a nanog meeting, and someone can be invited to speak at nanog
> meetings.  but it's not a membership society,

Conrad is a member of an identifiable group, called NANOG.  Membership
cards are never necessary. In every case (legal or illegal, incorporated
or unincorporated), participation demonstrates membership. Conrad
participated in NANOG.

> and david cannot be held responsible for the childish threats you say
> were made against you by someone else on the nanog mailing list.

I do not consider threats of physical violence of the sort "let's hope
Dean attends a meeting so we can get him in an alley" to be merely
"childish".  The threat was made by Jeremy Porter, a long time (by then)
participant in NANOG.  The threat was made because I asserted
(correctly) that the ECPA applied to ISPs.

Possibly Conrad cannot be held legally liable for Porter's act,
directly. However, silence in such a case is shameful and unethical.

The threats did further the RICO enterprise of which Conrad was a part.  
So indirectly, Conrad is responsible, through responsibility for the
RICO enterprise.

> > More injury from this enterprise has happened since 1998, some of
> > itin connection with the AXFR-clarify scheme, even.  When a
> > non-profit is involved, economic harm can be the unlawful object of
> > a RICO enterprise, in addition to economic profit.
> 
> i'm curious.  i wonder if you might indulge me on a framing question.  
> when i found out that BIND4 and some early BIND8 servers were
> unwilling to accept perfectly valid AXFR's from the Microsoft NT 3.51
> Resource Kit due to stupid bugs in BIND, and i fixed those bugs so
> that BIND would do what the RFCs said and so that Microsoft's
> customers would stop complaining to Microsoft, what role do you think
> all this played in the "AXFR-clarify scheme"?  do you think i was
> misdirecting folks, trying to gain trust and credibility, before
> clamping down on the industry with my iron claw?  (i really do want to
> know.)

I have never used the phrase "clamping down on the industry with my iron
claw".  This incident with Microsoft is not part of the AXFR-clarify
scheme, and was not discussed on the namedroppers list. I'm not aware of
any false statements in that incident.  That you didn't do a bad thing
once is no proof you've never done a bad thing.

The facts I cite in the AXFR-clarify scheme are the false statements
that were made to the WG by Nomimum that others relied on. That is, that
there were no wire changes to the AXFR protocol in the AXFR-clarify
draft.  ISC and Vixie made changes to BIND which would profit from the
scheme. And, again, for the second time, Vixie and Conrad were in the
same room for something bad, this time the AXFR-clarify scheme. Conrad
and Vixie both stood to benefit from the scheme.

I also cite the abuses of IETF policy by then WG Chair Randy Bush in
deleting messages from Bernstein that revealed the false statements. I
also cite Bush's publication of Bernstein's subscription address,
enabling forged unsubscriptions. That's two acts;  Bush is also
"associated-in-fact with the RICO enterprise.

The blind eye that then IETF Chair Harald Alvestrand and the IESG turned
to the issue shows "Willfull blindness" to wrongdoing that furthers the
RICO enterprise.

> you have not even tried to show any connection between the
> exactis/maps law- suit and the axfr-clarify issue.  is that an
> oversight, or are you honestly unable to imagine some way in which the
> AXFR-clarify scheme and the lawsuit are connected?  (i think i
> remember you saying, years ago, that there was a connection, so, i'm
> assuming that this is an oversight on your part.)

No oversight on my part. You just didn't read closely. I said the RICO
enterprise consists of and benefits Nominum, ISC, UltraDNS, at least.
[there are definitely others, but no need for all that here] The RICO
enterprise can have multiple schemes and not each person needs to
participate in each scheme. A person (or any entity that can hold
property) only needs to participate in two or more acts furthering the
enterprise.

To violate just the conspiracy part of RICO, all that is needed is
agreement (for an unperformed act) or just one act which furthers a RICO
enterprise. An act implies agreement.  Two or more acts makes one a part
of the RICO enterprise in contrast with a conspirator who isn't part of
the RICO enterprise, but has only agreed to help it.

Conrad is in the same room with other schemes, and he participated in
scheme furthering the RICO enterprise.  

I have some more acts by Mr. Conrad, but I won't detail them here.

> > ... Mr. Conrad was in the same office as Paul Vixie, overseeing in the
> > AXFR-clarify scheme involving false statements (the fact that there were no
> > wire changes in AXFR-clarify) that people relied on (the members of the IETF
> > WG).  Nominum, ISC and UltraDNS were the benefactors of that scheme.
> 
> so, the connection between the AXFR-clarify scheme and the lawsuit is that
> david benefitted from the one while observing me closely during the other?

No, The connection is that there is only one RICO enterprise engaged in
multiple schemes.

> > Without commenting on whether any laws were broken, there are clearly
> > ethical problems and serious misconduct of IETF officials and other IETF
> > members, including Mr. Conrad.
> 
> you keep using that word: "clearly."  i do not think it means what you think
> it means.

And I thought we would disagree on what "ethical" means. But "clearly"  
is just a filler word.  It should always be deleted on edits.

Perhaps this is better:

Without commenting on whether any laws were broken, there are ethical
problems and serious misconduct of IETF officials and other IETF
members, including Mr. Conrad.

		--Dean


-- 
Av8 Internet   Prepared to pay a premium for better service?
www.av8.net         faster, more reliable, better service
617 344 9000   




--
to unsubscribe send a message to namedroppers-request@ops.ietf.org with
the word 'unsubscribe' in a single line as the message text body.
archive: <http://ops.ietf.org/lists/namedroppers/>