Fwd: Re: [NCUC-DISCUSS] Names for the Working Group on InternetGovernance

[Adam Peake]

Karl, the constituency's discuss list is archived here
<http://listserv.syr.edu/archives/ncuc-discuss.html>

Thanks,

Adam


>Delivered-To: ajp at glocom.ac.jp
>Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 19:09:44 -0700 (PDT)
>Reply-To: Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com>
>To: Milton Mueller <Mueller at syr.edu>
>cc: ajp at glocom.ac.jp, NCUC-DISCUSS at listserv.syr.edu
>Subject: Re: [NCUC-DISCUSS] Names for the Working Group on InternetGovernance
>X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/1.0.3 (Seattle Slew)
>From: Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com>
>
>
>On Fri, 20 Aug 2004, Milton Mueller wrote:
>
>>I appreciate your willingness to bluntly express
>>opinions about nominees.
>>
>>But I don't agree with your assessment of Karl at all.
>
>I'm only seeing a partial flow of these messages.  So I did not see
>any "assessment" and I not been informed of the nature and quality
>of the contents.
>
>As for people having opinions about me and what I did (and continue
>to do) regarding ICANN:
>
>I don't expect everyone to agree with me.  Many of my positions are
>very nuanced.  For example, I agree with the concept of commercial
>enterprise and do not consider those who push for commercial gain or
>advantage (within the limits of law) to be acting improperly.  Nor
>do I find anything wrong or undesirable about the general concept of
>"government" - government can be the kind of good thing described in
>the Preamble to the US Constitution.
>
>My own approach is to try to define and refine bodies of principle
>and process that shape and limit the ways in which governance powers
>are applied to concrete situations.  It is my belief that through
>long term expericence applying and refining such principles that we
>will eventually come to a regime of internet governance that is
>acceptable to most of us. I have been very disappointed by ICANN's
>failure to raise, much less address, questions regarding the
>principles that should govern (or release from governance) the
>internet.
>
>I ran in an open election against 6 well qualified candidates.  My
>platform was published to the public (it is still online).  I won
>that election.
>
>One might argue that I was elected by a small number of the
>potential voters.  However, I was elected by those who actually
>bothered to take part.  And should such an argument be used to try
>to detract from my legitimacy I would hasten to point out that that
>argument, were it valid, would apply with rather more force to
>others who occupy much higher offices.
>
>It is a moot question whether I would have won re-election: ICANN
>dismembered (pun intended) its public election system and
>intentionally deprived the community of internet users of even a
>token voice.
>
>It is an extremely difficult job trying to speak on behalf of more
>than 300,000,000 people.  During that time I was the only board
>member who maintained a written public journal of what I decided and
>why.  Anyone who wished to discuss my decisions with me was free to
>do so.  And many did. Several of those discussions altered my views
>and votes.  I, nearly alone among the ICANN board members, did honor
>the ICANN structure that designated the then-DNSO as the primary
>source of authority on DNS related matters that should be overridden
>by the board only on the basis of clearly articulated and compelling
>arguments.
>
>I do not believe that any other member of ICANN's board, past or
>present, or any member of ICANN's "staff" can show a record of
>disclosure, open minded discussion and evaluation, or adherence to
>articulated objective principles that amounts to even a thin shadow
>of what I did.
>
>There are those who like to try to describe me as acting to oppose
>ICANN in all things.  The truth is that I voted with the majority on
>ICANN's board on something like 86% of the questions that came
>before us.
>
>It was interesting that all of this played out against the backdrop
>of commercial boards of directors that, like ICANN's directors,
>failed, and unfortunately continue to fail, to honor their
>obligations to make independent informed decisions.  Consider how
>things could have played out differently had the directors of Enron
>pursued their duties of inquiry and independent judgement.
>
>Those who are affected by what ICANN does, the community of internet
>users, the majority of whom engage in non-commercial activities, is
>almost entirely nullified by ICANN's processes.  The community of
>internet users even though they bear, usually indirectly, huge costs
>from ICANN's bloated bureaucracy and from ICANN's system of propping
>up prices for domain names.
>
>Unfortunately there are certain industrial actors who find this
>situation to be to their liking, who have benefited greatly from it,
>who have apparenly no regard for the costs imposed onto the public
>at large, and who have obtained effective control over ICANN's
>decision making processes.
>
>I have come to the belief that ICANN has run off the rails and that
>the remedy requires a return to fundamentals and a willingness to
>make deep changes to the status quo.
>
>Why do we have ICANN in the first place?  We certainly don't need
>yet another legislature enacting laws of trademark policy.  But
>that's what we have in ICANN.  And we certainly don't need another
>regulatory agency, particularly a regulatory agency run by
>commercial incumbents, that dictates who can and who can not enter
>the domain name business and under what terms.  But that's what we
>have in ICANN.  But we *do* need some body to make sure that the
>upper tier of the internet's DNS system runs reliably, efficiently,
>and accurately 24x7x365.  And that we do *not* have from ICANN.
>
>Despite it being ICANN's reason for existance, ICANN has entirely
>disengaged from matters that actually concern the reliable and
>accurate operation of the top layers of the internet's domain name
>systems.  ICANN has abandoned oversight of root server operations
>and IP address allocation.  We, the community of internet users
>expected ICANN to be a fire-department to protect DNS and IP address
>systems from danger.  This we did not get.  This abrogation of
>responsibility by ICANN has left the internet badly exposed to
>accidental or intential disruption.
>
>ICANN has instead usurped the powers of national legislatures by
>acting as a supranational legislature enacting economic policies
>that amount to de facto laws of domain-name based trademarks and
>imposing arbitrary and anti-competitive business regulations on
>those who wish to engage in the business of buying, selling, and
>using domain names.
>
>I have proposed remedial measures.  These are visible on my website.
>These measures require explicit definitions of powers and
>authorities and the creation of governance bodies that precisely
>encapsulate those powers. The absence of this kind of clarity has
>led to much of the difficulty we have had with matters of internet
>governance. The methods and structures that I have proposed are
>quite consistent with the majority of discussions on these topics
>that are occuring in fora outside of ICANN.
>
>>Regarding communication, Karl appeared in as many if
>>not more NCUC meetings than any other Board member -
>
>I'm not sure about that.  I was stretched so thin (being on the
>board took well in excess of 40 hours/week) that I had to focus more
>on some matters than on others.  Andy M-M may have attended more
>than I did.
>
>>.... It is true that he showed more interest in At Large than
>>NCDNHC most of the time.
>
>I am very much of the belief that the atomic unit of legitimacy is
>the individual person.  It is my strong belief that an organization,
>commercial or not, only has derivative legitimacy.  The force of
>that derivative legitimacy ought to be in proportion to the degree
>to which the organization reflects the positions of its members.
>
>By-the-way, I do not use the term "at large" in the crippled way
>that it is used in ICANN's current vocabulary and manifested by the
>ALAC and its myrid of tributory structures.  Rather, I consider "at
>large" to encompass all people who are affected by the internet
>(with the phrase "affected by the internet" read very broadly to
>encompass not merely those who use the net but also those who's life
>and actions are changed by the existance of the net - in a word,
>everyone.)
>
>               --karl--