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

[George Sadowsky]

All,

I fail to understand why advocating a careful reading of a document 
before discussing it is a denial of anything.   I thought Alejandro's 
response was a measured, neutral, and sensible comment.

True denial is ignoring what Dave Crocker and Kent Crispin are 
saying.  You may not like the tone they use, or the tactics to get 
your attention, but to deny the content of what they say is extremely 
shortsighted.   Furthermore, it comes from years of experience 
working in the Internet community in a number of different roles. 
That experience deserves considerably more respect than this group 
gives it.

Barbara, I appreciate your intervention, I would agree that the 
public interest is not a special interest group, but let's disabuse 
ourselves of the myth that the current membership of ICANN, and even 
the future membership for a long time to come (if ever), represents 
the public interest.  The public interest is very difficult to 
define.  You can, of course, define it by majority vote, but that 
assumes adequate and appropriate representation of the relevant 
subset of the public, an informed electorate, and a responsible 
exercise of choice by their elected representatives.  And in this 
case, the relevant subset of the population is a concept over which 
there is substantial disagreement.

ICANN is NOT Internet governance; it's Internet administration in a 
narrow sense.  the majority of Internet administration occurs in a 
decentralized manner, along with other coordinating groups such as 
NANOG.  I think Kent has it exactly right when he says:

>  The "public" simply does not care about DNS policy; to the
>"public" DNS policy is an extremely obscure, boring, and uninteresting
>topic.

Internet administration has both a technical and a policy component. 
I care a lot about the policy issues, and in my current position 
we're working to help developing countries develop "good" policy  -- 
policy that allows the Internet to spread as rapidly as possible in a 
manner that is accessible, affordable, and unfiltered.   But 
technical issues ARE important, and administrative experience based 
upon that technical experience is a valuable commodity, while policy 
based upon ignorance of technical issues is likely to be 
fundamentally flawed,  I think that this group does not believe this.

In the IETF, there are compelling reasons to come to rough consensus 
on technical issues, and the process works quite well on the whole. 
In this arena, there is no compelling reason to come to consensus; in 
fact, there appears to be a perception of strength in continuing to 
hold positions that are incompatible.

One might even ask to what extent the composition of this 
constituency is in any way representative of the enormously large 
global community of organizations that it purports to represent.  The 
vast, vast majority of  not-for-profit organizations, large and 
small, are not present.  While some may not know of the constituency, 
many major organizations do know of it, and they are not here.  They 
have not chosen to join, which supports Kent's point.  It's not 
relevant to their concerns.

Whose interests _are_ being served by the discussion on this 
listserv?  The constituency's?

Regards,

George Sadowsky




At 12:40 PM -0400 8/29/01, Milton Mueller wrote:
>Chun is absolutely correct.
>
>Every time we have a vote, whether on line or in person, the
>support of the members of this constituency for greater
>representation is overwhelmingly supported, whether in
>the context of the at-large or the new individuals'
>constituency.
>
>I appeal to the REAL members of the NCDNHC on this list not
>to bother to respond or argue with Crocker or Crispin and to
>ignore the "denial" tactics of Alejandro. It is really a waste of
>time. They are not interested in exchanging ideas, only in
>obstructing our work. Don't encourage them.

-- 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

George Sadowsky, Executive Director                64 Sweet Briar Road
Global Internet Policy Initiative             Stamford, CT  06905-1514
Center for Democracy and Technology               Tel: +1.203.329.3288
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Tel: +1.202.637.9800                 
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