[ncdnhc-discuss] Re: [ga] At large presentation

[J-F C. (Jefsey) Morfin]

Leah,
the people believing that the ICANN is of use are in Bucharest. Those who 
do not are not. So we may reasonably think that the 5.500 or so people 
round the world who pay attention to the ICANN are more represented there 
that the rest of the 550.000.000 of Internet users. I am glad Jamie sees by 
himself it goes to nowhere. The $.25 tax would be a gift to all of us. $ 
8.750.000 tax paid to a US secondary government. The ccTLD would organize a 
Tea Party II in Boston.... The dispute would be huge over tax exemption for 
non-profit .org-ers.

The tax-liberated-domain (TLD) would quickly flourish :-)  Great fun ! The 
"AmerICANN Joke" phrase was GAC originated, may be they will come with a 
better one now they want to introduce the Tobbin Tax in disguise.
jfc

On 09:56 26/06/02, L. Gallegos said:
>Jamie,
>
>If only you could clone yourself a few million times, maybe your voice
>would be a force.  It's a shame that people seem to have given up due to
>the obvious futility of the individual's fight to exist in the ICANN
>framework.
>
>Personally, I was proud of you and would like to thank you for
>attempting to put a voice to the frustrations of most of us in the user
>community.
>
>Leah
>
>
>On 26 Jun 2002, at 3:38, James Love wrote:
>
> > I'm in the GA, and Denise, Esther, Vittorio, and Izumi Aizu and on the 
> panel
> > to present a report on the at large organizing effort.
> >
> > Denise:
> > In Accra, the board has called for bottom up at large "structures."   She
> > reports $17k in contributions for at-large.org, and asks for more money.
> > 16 "at large structures" have been created or designated by the 
> effort.  The
> > implication is that all the groups who are listed on the at-large.org web
> > page are on board with this new approach.  There is some talk of 
> creating a
> > "structured role" in policy making, and input into the board decisions.
> > She ends with a slide that says that greater involvement of governments 
> and
> > establishment of 'meaningful' participation by individuals are not
> > necessarily mutually exclusive.   Esther then jumped in to say some people
> > didn't support a greater role by governments.
> >
> > Izumi Aizu and Vittorio Bertola appeared on the pane with Esther and 
> Denise,
> > and were generally supportive of the presentation by Esther or Denise.
> >
> > Esther made a confident (almost smug) presentation.  She said "I hope you
> > walk away with an appreciation by the huge amount of progress that has 
> been
> > made."  Earlier the at large was an "incoherent" idea, now it is something
> > with .5 million people engaged through the 16 groups, and a structure in
> > place to provide input.  If ICANN becomes government controlled, it will
> > become too powerful.  It is really important that ICANN be controlled by
> > users, by the participants, than by governments.
> >
> > I just had my time at the mike from the floor... and went through the
> > basics...   The proposal for "at large structures" eliminates any votes by
> > individuals.  The White Paper gave individuals 8 of 19 board seats.  In
> > Cairo this was reduced to 5.  In Accra, the 5 elected seats were phased 
> out,
> > but there was some hope that there would be an at large SO with maybe 3
> > seats on the board.  Now you have an at large "structure" that at best can
> > place 1 member on a 19 member nominating committee for some board 
> seats, and
> > no one can explain even how that 1 person is selected.  To present this 
> as a
> > success for enhancing the power of individual internet users is absurd.  I
> > said it was not true, as implied by Denise Michel's presentation, that the
> > groups listed as part of the at-large.org effort support the 
> elimination of
> > elections for ICANN board members or the proposals in the blueprint to
> > dismantle democratic mechanisms 
> (http://www.at-large.org/at-large-members.htm).
> >
> > Denise said that CPSR was in fact supportive of the new "at large
> > structures" approach, and had joined in submissions on this to the ICANN
> > reform.    I'll let Andy Oram and Hans Klein respond with any helpful
> > clarificatons on this point.
> >
> > This was followed by a presentation on the Canadian Internet Registration
> > Authority (CIRA), which recently concluded its elections.   Alexander
> > Svensson then asked a series of good questions, asking about how the 
> elected
> > members addressed issues of mission creep, why participation has 
> declined in
> > elections, and about "outreach" in the elections.  I asked if there was
> > fraud?  And also, how much does it cost to audit the elections?  The CIRA
> > rep said that mission creep had not been a problem, the board had kept
> > things fairly narrow, and that many people seemed satified with the CIRA
> > operation, and were just didn't feel the need to be bother as long as 
> things
> > were working ok.   The last CIRA election had about 1,000 voters.  The 
> CIRA
> > has an external audit function, which ended up questioning about 100 
> votes,
> > and ended up rejecting about 10.  The cost of the audit and verification
> > proceedure was about $3,000 for the June 2002 election.
> >
> >
> >
> > ------
> > James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
> > http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love at cptech.org
> > voice: 1.202.387.8030; mobile 1.202.361.3040
> >
> >
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