[ncdnhc-discuss] CYBER-FED No.15: The User Voice in Internet Governance -- ICANNatlarge.org

[Barbara Simons]

What does it mean for users' collective voice to persist?  It certainly
doesn't mean that users have any meaningful input into policy making, let
alone meaningful power.  To even suggest otherwise is to play into the hands
of those who claim that ICANN is representing everyone.

Why not come out and say that the so-called ICANN reform was a palace coup
that disenfranchised the user community and eliminated any remaining
vestiges of democracy within ICANN?  Why pretend otherwise?

I would have no problem with the elimination of user input if ICANN would
restrict itself to technical issues and not get involved with policy.  But
so long as ICANN also makes policy decisions, the lack of user input means
that only the voices of powerful special interests are heard.

Barbara

On 10/26/02 1:31 PM, "James Love" <james.love at cptech.org> wrote:

> ANother view is that icannatlarge.org is completely screwed up right now,
> largely because Hans as acting chair just eliminated any structure to
> decision making and just started announcing all sorts of policies on his
> own, without panel approval, and there does not exist anything remotely
> close to best or even ok practices in terms of how the group makes
> decisions, and this has lead quickly to several panel members just
> announcing their own policies and decision making processes, none of which
> are approved by the group in any formal way.   All of this could be fixed, I
> guess, if one wanted to.  But right now it is a mystery how decisions are
> made in the group.
> 
> jamie
> 
> 
> Hans Klein wrote:
>>                      Please forward
>> 
>>  ******************************************************************
>>      Cyber-Federalist No. 15         25 October 2002
[snip]
>> 
>> ICANN has been a bold experiment in many areas, not least of which is
>> giving users a role in Internet policy-making.  However, user
>> representation on ICANN's board has been vigorously contested, and
>> ICANN's current board seems likely to eliminate it.  Nonetheless, even
>> if users are excluded from ICANN, their collective voice will persist.