John Gilmore's little interview in Salon about the machinations inside ICANN has created quite a stir. Dave Farber posted the article in his 'Interesting People' mailing list and Declan Mccullagh posted it in Politech. Now ICANN lawyer Joe Sims has sent a response which can be read here.

Gilmore is one of the original cyberpunks. There is some highly educated paranoia in that interiew. If you can ignore that, he raised some good points. There is also some corroboration here of his comments about the pressures that were brought on John Postel (one of the seminal figures of Internet):

"From your editor and from Jon's friend and thesis advisor. It is unreasonable for someone with independent means like Gilmore to say "Jon didn't have the spine..." His University, his organization ISI made noattempt to help him. What was said to him was a threat to end his career (which he loved) and no one with the resources and connections (both of which USC and ISI had) defended him. Jon had no resources except his love for the net.".

I would still like to believe that his accusations against Vint Cerf are untrue.