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

[J-F C. (Jefsey) Morfin]

Dear Barbara,
why not just to say what all of us known all the way long and that Joe Sims 
spent his time telling us and that GAC Members explained to us from the 
very beginning and that we partly failed at correcting using the 
"democratic tool"?

The "A" in ICANN really stands for "Agency", what a GAC Member described as 
the well-known "AmerICANN". This Agency as any other Gov Agency in the 
world is here to enforce the law to the benefit of its country and of its 
citizens. In this case (47 USC 230 (f)(1)) the control by the USG, under 
the jurisdiction of the Congress, of every computer in the world plugged 
into a packet switch network interoperable with US resources. The flaw 
comes from the US constant data networking doctrine (and Arpanet 
architecture): the datanetwork is an access to a computer club, priority 
now to the US critical infrastructure club. Such a network has no/few 
specific reality by itself and offers no internal services to the users. 
Services are on the edges (what one might name 1D network vertical 
architecture, by opposition to 2D horizontal architecture including 
ancillary and added services and to 3D architecture extending to the global 
relational usage). Such a vision does not technically care about users. 
Only "3D" does, hence the imbalance between their offer and our expectations.

What was a fair commercial and political attempt to control the world 
through a cross contract policy too complex to unknot, has become since 
Sept/11 a US national security issue. Stuart Lynn never called on the Govs 
for money, but to determine who was supporting the US security policy and 
who was interested in being protected by the US e-umbrella. The @large 
smokescreen maintained by Mike Roberts, just in case, was initially 
evaluated as a source of risks and then kept at as a low cost and still 
possibly useful diversion. The ERC is just adapting the ICANN structure to 
a standard Agency structure. GAC and ITU are the ways to handle the Govs. 
ccTLDs as such are not of any real interest; they were ways to relate with 
their Govs.

The same as Shanghai Beijing oriented, I read Amsterdam as the nearest 
place from Brussels ICANN could chose to try a last attempt to enroll 
Europe, trying to use the still different internal European attitudes, 
knowing that within a few months the European position will be quite 
united. I suppose that by Dec 15th the US global position will have been 
settled among Gov and Industry stakeholders.

In this the @large and Civil society members are just talking, while 
politics are getting together towards positions and industry and some Govs 
are acting. Guess who will win?

I think that we are a single network and that therefore nobody should win: 
we should adapt to each other's and ally. I am afraid the momentum by White 
House/ICANN is such that we cannot do anything now, unless we put our 
efforts together and come up with realistic propositions (like 
http://dot-root.com ) and/or very convincing arguments, like Todds ones, 
helping them understand where their strategy is partly wrong.

1. TCP/IP is the problem. Todd we agree. But I do not think that this has 
been overlooked. I would be very interested in the working viable 
alternatives that some may start experimenting now. 2005 Internet maybe 
rather different from the 2002 one.

2. US Cyberspace security propositions claim to be local, regional and 
national to address a threat which is correctly assessed as global.
- one must accept that the response to a global threat is a global protection
- one must accept that there is a problem in the "global" understanding. 
"global" does not means "universal", the entire world with the USA as a 
central stronghold, but means that every nation must be considered as a 
place to protect and that true security will not come from a centrally 
protected USA e-colonizing the world with its security logic, but from 
mutually resilient interconnected and locally adapted security policies.

This means for example that we must build a coherent, equal and stable 
numbering system where every country should receive a national IPv6 block 
and accept to dedicate the same secondary block numbers to critical systems 
in case of emergency situations. For justice and security. So the US, the 
French or the Iraqi laws may decide to filter-out the traffic from another 
country or to maintain calls from critical systems only depending on 
situation, like in telephone.

As long as we leave the Internet to a few private interests, commercial 
greed and changing civil servants we will lack the policy stability and 
innovative spirit we need.
jfc



At 19:55 27/10/02, Barbara Simons wrote:

>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.
>
>_______________________________________________
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>
>
>
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