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

[Kent Crispin]

On Thu, Aug 30, 2001 at 12:10:18AM -0700, Barbara Simons wrote:
> Unfortunately, Alexandro, some of us won't be in
> Montevideo and therefore won't have the opportunity
> to discuss the report with the ALSC there.
> 
> For my part, I couldn't care less about their reasoning.
> The bottom line is that the representatives of the public
> can be outvoted on every single issue, especially
> bylaw changes.  The reality is that the at-large will be
> made politically powerless.

Note the following quote from the draft report:

   Based on our view of ICANN as a balance among developers, providers
   and users, we would recommend that the At-Large membership select a
   third of ICANN's Board.  We have found that more narrow interests
   could seek to influence the ICANN process through all three avenues,
   but that wider and more public interests can also be found in all
   three. 

It is not surprising that Barbara won't deign to reply to any serious
disagreement, since statements like her above paragraph are simply
thoughtless emotional reactions.  Her above paragraph makes the
completely unrealistic assumption that the interests of the at-large
directors will be completely aligned, and that the interests of the
other directors, coming from the SOs, will be completely aligned in the
opposite direction.  That is, to put it mildly, highly unlikely. 
Moreover, she apparently also suffers from the delusion that the
at-large directors would somehow represent the "public" (whatever that
means in this context), and not simply be industry representatives
elected through manipulation of the votes. 

> Other details, such as the
> anti-democratic imposition of a poll tax (how do they plan
> to collect it in countries such as Nigeria, Romania, Vietnam,
> Honduras, etc?)

To quote again from the paper:

   To help ensure that this approach to At-Large membership is not an
   impediment to those who want a domain name and want to participate in
   an ALSO, the ALSC suggests that the ICANN community identify and
   encourage organizations that could provide appropriate assistance to
   such users.  We encourage input on this and hope to include specific
   suggestions and named institutions in our final report. 

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