a useful neologism - crowdstamping

[Avri Doria]

Hi,

No.  I do not think ICAN is some sort of government.

Yes it deals with governments and kowtows to them a bit much for my personal taste, but it is not some form of government.

I see it as an experimental form of governance, which is quit different from a government that presumes to control the lives of the people it claims sovereignty over.  ICANN does provide a kind of regulation of a very small facet of a global resource and makes a real effort to adapt as it learns what it meant to do so in a multistakeholder manner.  Yes it often seems to galumph along sometimes looking quite awkward, but to me it seems to be trying to constantly improve itself.

As for stepping back and looking at the institutional design of ICANN, yes, it seems quite rational to me, though it is a design that has many details that are thorny to work out because of human nature - e.g. the proper role of the various staff components vis a vis the volunteers who should run the organization.  I also find some government designs quite interesting and rational as well - but mostly object to the forms of authoritarian control they all resort to when they decide it is time to "protect us."

I have no idea how the " tech community habitually view it"  and have no idea whether the way I view it falls into that category, though from the tone of your note, I assume you think I do.

a.



On 5 Aug 2010, at 01:56, Dan Krimm wrote:

> This is reassuring to hear.
> 
> Nevertheless, you seem to imply that ICANN is not a form of "government" of
> some sort.  But rather, isn't it absolutely the case that it *is* a form of
> government in its own right?  It has been granted formal governing
> authority by a national government to address policy areas that the
> national government feels unequipped to handle, for whatever reason, and so
> it acts in effect as a partly autonomous branch of that government (not to
> mention the GAC and its influence on policy-making).  Just with a little
> less formal oversight from publicly elected representatives.
> 
> I think it's a useful exercise to examine what makes ICANN's governance
> similar in some ways and different in other ways from other forms of public
> governance, and to examine what is effective and what is ineffective in
> these various forms of governance.  The institutional structures of these
> governing bodies shapes how they govern, and I'm sure they both have their
> different strengths and weaknesses.
> 
> Viewing public government as a joke, the way many in the tech community
> habitually view it, implicitly prevents viewing alternatives as equally
> humorous, which they generally are.  I mean, when you step back and take a
> look at the institutional structure of ICANN's policy-governing apparatus,
> does it look rationally designed to you, any more than, say the federal
> government?  In my mind, the federal government at least has a core
> strategic design (formal institutional separation and balance of powers,
> and formal accountability down to the electorate) inside of all the ad hoc
> structures that have been appended to it, whereas ICANN seems to be
> entirely ad hoc with no strategic core so far as I can tell -- just the
> Board with unilateral policy-making/judging power, according to the
> often-vague parameters of the AoC, surrounded by this fluctuating
> hodge-podge of advisory bodies.
> 
> Of course, in both cases the flow of wealth influences a whole lot in the
> final results, and it may not matter that much what the institutional
> structure is.
> 
> Dan
> 
> 
> --
> Any opinions expressed in this message are those of the author alone and do
> not necessarily reflect any position of the author's employer.
> 
> 
> 
> At 7:09 AM -0400 8/4/10, Avri Doria wrote:
>> hi,
>> 
>> For the most part  i do not believe this happens.
>> 
>> i have been in many groups where changes were made in the plans because of
>> comments.
>> 
>> but as usual, not everyones comment changes things.  the people who worked
>> in the groups discuss, and often have reasons to change what they are
>> doing, but sometimes don't.  So when i make a recommendation and it does
>> not change things i may decide they never listen to anyone, but they do.
>> and in many case there are countervailing opinions.
>> 
>> so it may be a cute new word, and i am sure it can be applied in many case
>> to what governments do - when they even bother to collect the opinions,
>> but i do not think it applies to ICANN in the majority of cases.
>> 
>> a.
>> 
>> On 3 Aug 2010, at 23:53, David Cake wrote:
>> 
>>> 	A useful neologism for ICANN processes (via Lillian Edwards twitter
>>> feed)
>>> Crowdstamping - going through the motions in asking the public about a
>>> policy but rubberstamping it anyway.
>>> 	(term apparently coined by Uk web developer Stef Lewandowski in
>>> reponse to UK government consultation that, in response to 9,500 public
>>> submissions,resulted in every responding government dept uniformly saying
>>> they should keep doing exactly what they were doing)
>>> 	Regards
>>> 		David