a useful neologism - crowdstamping

[Avri Doria]

Hi,

Then again maybe you are right about ICANN seeing itself as a country with sovereign rights, e.g.  to recognize the existence of other counties.  Under board decisions last night was the following:


	a.  Occupied Palestine Territory 

Whereas, the Occupied Palestinian Territory is a country currently listed in the ISO 3166-1 standard.

Whereas, فلسطين ("Falasteen"), encoded as "xn--ygbi2ammx", is a string that has been deemed to appropriately represent the Occupied Palestinian Territory through the IDN Fast Track process.

Whereas, ICANN has received a request for delegation of فلسطين. to the Ministry of Telecom and Information Technology of the Palestinian National Authority.

Whereas, ICANN has reviewed the request, and has determined that the proposed delegation would be in the interests of the local and global Internet communities.

RESOLVED (2010.08.05.14), the proposed delegation of the فلسطين. domain to the Ministry of Telecom and Information Technology is approved.

I have absolutely no issue with the board having following the Fast Track process where ISO 3166-1 listing + technical requirements means being added to the root. Well I have issues with the Fast track, but they have nothing to do with xn--ygbi2ammx".  But to have the ICANN Board recognize them as a country as opposed to as a territory, which under International Law is what they still are,  is a bit bemusing, and perhaps goes someway to making your argument about some in ICANN's view of the organization's importance and role in the world.

a.


On 6 Aug 2010, at 00:12, Dan Krimm wrote:

> I guess we can agree to disagree here.  If there is "governance" there is
> "government" in my book.  There is also governance by for-profit
> corporations, for example, even when it is not authorized per se by a
> public entity (i.e., when the public entity leaves the particular policy
> realm open, and private powers step in to fill the vacuum).
> 
> ICANN does control the lives of people in a particular way (and some parts
> of the organization seem to want to expand that control).  It may be less
> than fully broad-based government, but government it is, as long as it
> retains authority.  That authority is inherently coercive, regardless of
> the decision-making process.  Once the result is decided, penalties follow
> if not adhered to.
> 
> As for details that are thorny to work out, some of those thorny details
> may be exacerbated by the very structure that shapes them, which may be
> abjectly part of what is making them thorny in the first place.
> 
> After all, how can we expect volunteers to run an organization populated
> with paid staff?  Inevitably they become dependent on staff, simply because
> of lack of time and other resources, and staff can practically shape things
> that should be decided by the volunteers because they have the time and
> resources that the volunteers lack (though some volunteers are given
> resources from their paid occupations, which skews the balance of power).
> The practical nature of the structure sets up the thorny problem, and
> without changing the structure you may never be able to fix the problem.
> 
> As for authoritarian control, this is not the exclusive realm of "public"
> government/governance!  In the absence of publicly-accountable coercion,
> private coercion will inevitably step in.  I'm not suggesting that we've
> ever solved the "principle/agent" problem in representative institutions,
> but at least if there is a formal process of broad-based accountability,
> there is a *chance* that we might improve it.  It is not likely that we can
> do away with the agents and all become active principles and make the
> system work in practice.
> 
> I do assume that you think badly of traditional forms of public governance,
> and think rather more highly of the ICANN structure in comparison.  It is
> also my impression (though correct me if I'm wrong) that ICANN's founders
> had a consensus in which they thought badly of government and intended to
> try "something new" in the case of ICANN (actually, it wasn't entirely
> unprecedented: based on the IETF model, IIUC), specifically to keep it out
> of the hands of government.  Yet, what they created was government all the
> same.
> 
> My impression is that ICANN has become rather worse than public government
> in doing what it is supposedly intended to do, not because any individuals
> involved in the advisory groups are any more of a failure than your average
> human being, but because the structure that was set up seems based on an
> incorrect assessment of human nature, and therefore the structure does not
> fit the goal, and has a raft of unintended consequences.
> 
> It is also my impression that "improving itself" means something very
> different to some folks at ICANN than it does to others, and that is part
> of why it finds itself constantly at cross-purposes.  (BTW, this is
> entirely natural and expected in traditional forms of government, which
> make some attempt to design for it if they are reaching for democracy.)
> 
> I'm sorry, human beings are capable of bad faith, and participants in the
> ICANN institutional structure can also behave in bad faith, especially when
> they justify it by believing that others are acting in bad faith.  Lack of
> trust is infectious and tends to expand exponentially.  People act in bad
> faith in "traditional" public governance institutions too, and in spite of
> structures set up to counteract those tendencies, we can't get rid of it
> entirely.  And sometimes vested power can tweak the structures to its own
> advantage, anyway, and make things worse.
> 
> If that can happen in the "old" system(s) it can happen at ICANN as well.
> 
> You, personally, I believe have always acted in good faith, in all of my
> observations of your significant contributions to ICANN.  I wish I could
> say that of everyone who contributes to the organization.  I have also
> attempted to act in good faith in all of my dealings with this organization.
> 
> The point of designing an effective governance institution is to take real
> human characteristics into account -- not to idealize them, but to
> reinforce the good things and obstruct the bad things.  That requires
> acknowledging the bad things and designing the governance structure to
> neutralize them, rather than just hoping that the good things will dominate
> with "enough good faith effort."
> 
> I don't expect to persuade you to change your mind, as this begins to get
> ideological (and tribal) at root, and logic does not have the power to
> overturn dearly-held ideology or tribalism, even in the most intelligent
> individuals.  I include myself in the ideological tribalism (I'm
> unquestionably a progressive, and I believe that we cannot have a
> successful society without strong protection of the collective public
> interest in the most broad-based manner), if not necessarily in the "most
> intelligent" category.  I also believe that anyone who denies that they are
> ideological and tribal is not entirely self-aware, as this is a foundation
> of the human condition.
> 
> Just as behavioral economists plead with us to understand Homo Sapiens and
> not to design economic policy around the fiction of purely-rational Homo
> Economicus, I would encourage anyone involved in designing a human
> governance structure not to get diverted by imagining a fictional Homo
> Politicus based on pure rationality and the domination of good faith.
> 
> Better, in my view, to prepare for the worst in people when it comes to
> designing power structures, and to look for strategic ways to undermine the
> bad faith that humans are capable of, rather than thinking you can just
> persuade them to act in good faith with the power of words.  Some
> institutional structures are better than others at bringing out the good
> faith and suppressing the bad faith, and it usually has to do with the flow
> of coercive force or authoritative power in one way or another (which may
> be informal where formal structures are not set up to channel it).  It
> seems to me that should be the foundation upon which any governance
> structure is designed, with eyes wide open.
> 
> In any case, I'll leave it there, as my own individual opinion.
> 
> I still wish you the best in trying to stand up for the public interest in
> all of this, and I don't think you have taken on an easy task.  It just
> seems to me that sometimes it is a lot more difficult than it ever needed
> to be, simply because the institutional designers based the design on
> premises some of which were and are faulty, and they keep trying to tweak
> the design without examining the premises.
> 
> Best,
> 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 7:04 AM -0400 8/5/10, Avri Doria wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> No.  I do not think ICANN 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