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

[Barbara Simons]

Dear George,

Not only do I not like the tone used by Crocker and Crispin -
I find it offensive and juvenile.  When I give in and respond to
some outrageous claim made by one of them, I usually regret
it afterwards.  They are a destructive force, both because of
their lack of civility and the frequency of their postings.  I agree
with Milton that people should not respond to them, and I
apologize to the list for having broken my own rule by responding,
yet again (sigh).

Regarding your comments, while it's true that it's difficult to define
the public interest, I claim that the at-large is the closest thing we
have for representing those interests.  Surely, the supporting
organizations do not represent the public, nor do they claim to.

After the election, several of us asked ICANN to assist us with
increasing the membership of the at-large and opening channels
of communications within that community.  Our recommendations
were treated with derision publicly by one prominent staff member,
and otherwise ignored by ICANN.

Now the argument is made that the at-large is not adequately large
or representative.  Of course it's not.  All outreach attempts have
been soundly squelched.

I feel betrayed by the ALSC report.  I felt sick when I read it,
and I feel angry now.  If implemented, I am convinced that it
will destroy any hopes that we have had for democratic input
into ICANN.  A minority that is too small even to prevent the
passage of bylaw amendments is a powerless minority.  That is
the sop given to the at-large community, and as far as I can
tell, it is a cynical attempt to cover up the total destruction of
public input into ICANN.

I'm going to bow out of this discussion for now, because I don't
have the time to invest in it.

Regards,
Barbara

George Sadowsky wrote:

> 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
> 1634 I Street, N.W.             George.Sadowsky at internews.org
> Washington, D. C.  20006-4003          http://pws.prserv.net/sadowsky/
> Tel: +1.202.637.9800
> http://www.gipiproject.org/        Voice mail and fax: +1.203.547.6020GIPI is a project of
> Internews & the Center for Democracy & Technology
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