[ncdnhc-discuss] ICANN committee recommends voting restrictions,fewer At-Large di rectors

[Kent Crispin]

On Tue, Aug 28, 2001 at 10:37:50PM -0700, Barbara Simons wrote:
> Dear Dave,
> 
> We have seen in US politics how genuine special interests,
> such as the oil industry, refer to other groups, such as those
> that are trying to protect the environment, as "special interests",
> even if those "special interests" consist of people who are devoting
> their time and frequently their money with no possible financial gain.
> These politics involve equating in the public mind environmentalists,
> who are working for the long term public good, with those who are
> pushing legislation because they will profit financially.

The issue of financial gain is largely an empty rhetorical red herring. 
Fanatics can be just as distructive as greedy capitalists; capitalists
can as altruistic as anyone else.  Lot's of rich people are members of
"politically correct" organizations. 

> Dave, I know you are far too honorable a man to attempt
> to use such a tactic when discussing ICANN.  Surely, you
> would not suggest that the public is a special interest, nor
> would you argue that the at-large does not represents the public.

It is a simple fact that the at-large does not represent the public. 

> As far as public interest goes, ICANN expected 5-10K
> people to register to vote in the last election, and they
> were overwhelmed when 158K actually succeeded in
> registering, in spite of the fact that many people were
> unable to do so because of ICANN's lack of preparation.

That is largely explained by two factors: 1) the publicity presenting
ICANN as the "government of the Internet"; and 2) nationalistic
competition, especially in the asia-pacific region.  The ALSC sent out
an announcement to every single email address in the at-large database,
just asking those people if they wanted to be on a list to receive
announcements.  Of the 76000 people contacted, less than 10% were
interested enough *just* to be on the announce list (5839, according to
the draft report).  A total of 59 people bothered to participate in the 
at-large forum.  The ALSC had an extensive outreach effort; the results 
were underwhelming, to say the least.


> So, I am having some trouble understanding your claim
> that there is little public interest.

You are having trouble understanding it because you are ignoring obvious
facts.  The most obvious fact is that those interested in the at-large 
are *clearly*, by any reasonable definition, a special-interest group.  
This is, as my brother used to put it, as obvious as the hair on an 
ugly dog's face, and it takes a most amazing form of doublethink to 
ignore it.  The "public" simply does not care about DNS policy; to the 
"public" DNS policy is an extremely obscure, boring, and uninteresting 
topic. 


-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent at songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain