Ronda,
I credit the earnestness of your position, and I certainly don't view your
position--as I roughly understand it, that the U.S. government nurtured the
Net, and that the White Paper's framework of turning certain key technical
functions from the USG over to a private, public trust entity like ICANN is
a betrayal of important social values and responsibilities to the avatars
of commerce--as out of line. I respect it.
That said, I very much supported cutting you off at the microphone after
you'd (to be sure, just in my and some others' view, clearly not yours!)
abused the privilege to speak at it. I'd like to explain why. The
archives are all online at <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rcs/>, so
others--at least those with the capacity to run the free Realplayer
plugin--can see how it went for themselves and come to a view on it.
There were two plenary panels, about an hour and a half each, in the
membership study workshop. As you point out, a number of panelists had
been invited to each one. As the meeting opened it was explained that
there exist people who think ICANN is just a terrible idea from the start,
and that without rejecting that view our own purpose was to indulge the
hypothetical that ICANN was going to happen--indeed, was happening--and to
see what membership structure would work best for it assuming that it was
to exist at all.
Your view, expressed repeatedly and often, rejects that assumption,
consistently with what you've said all along, and across so many media--on
lists, in public meetings, and in your papers (one of which, after you
submitted it, has been placed prominently in our web site, and which we
photocopied and made available to all attendees at the workshop). You
expressed it again at the meeting, an attempt to change the agenda to the
threshhold question of whether ICANN should exist. You were allowed to
express it anyway--indeed, across multiple trips to the mic, you spent a
full sixteen minutes expounding that view! This is more time than any of
the invited panelists got, and that most of them took including answers to
questions, to speak.
I will understand you if you say that this is a form of civil protest, a
desire to singlehandedly take the meeting where you want it to go and to
have it listen to your urgent message that the whole path is wrong. Taking
the meeting in one direction necessarily means taking it away from
another--it's a synchronous space, one which while you speak others must
listen and cannot themselves speak. I truly believe that if you hadn't
been cut off you'd have spoken for the entire rest of the meeting--indeed,
that there was no amount of time sufficient for you to feel properly heard,
unless people at the meeting were to come around to your view. I'd then
hope you'd understand why an infinite amount of time for one person at the
meeting--no matter what she came to say--is a stealing of time from
everyone else at the meeting who wishes to speak.
ICANN is an experiment. It may fail. If it does, the US government will
be first in line to pick up the pieces. I don't blame you--given your
view--for wanting to hasten that day. I don't see why your agenda, and
your willingness to stake out a position at a mic and not cede it to anyone
else in line or elsewhere in a room, should trump everything else.
In the meantime, we've been developing means of electronic
participation--both tuning in to events at a physical meeting, and
contributing comments to it--that don't expect internet users to have the
latest and greatest PCs and fastest internet links.
Jonathan
P.S. For what it's worth, I saw several people with your paper in hand,
reading it.
At 01:49 PM 3/10/99 , Ronda Hauben wrote:
>
>"Bret A. Fausett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> responding:
>>Ronda Hauben wrote:
>
>I was at the Berkman Center meeting in Cambridge in January and
>someone who had formerly been an advisor to the U.S. Vice President
>Gore was there, having been sent by the Kennedy School of Government
>Dean. She expressed her understanding that a membership organization
>was an inappropriate form for an entity that would have control
>and power over the economic life of people. No one on the Board
>who was there, and there were a few members, asked her any
>questions or since then have raised any of the issues she expressed
>concern about.
>
> ...
>>But that's not meant to undercut the point you make here, which is that
>>ICANN (and the DNSO, the other SOs and the General Membership, for that
>>matter) *must* make on-line participation a priority. In advance of the
>>Berlin meeting, I would like to see further discussion about how to make
>>real-time, remote participation a reality. Perhaps the people at the
>>Berkman Center, who have been doing wonderful, experimental things with
>>on-line classes and webcasting, could assist us in that effort. (The
>>Singapore meeting was webcast, but we need to have a better way of moving
>>information and questions in both directions.)
>
>I appreciate your agreeing that online participation is a priority.
>
>And I welcome the discussion on this. However, I don't have the
>capabilty for real-time participation via webcasting etc.
>
>And if the Internet community is to be involved there need to
>be more discussion about how and in a way that people who have
>minimal Internet connectivity can participate.
>
>That takes work and effort, *not* easy solutions that only allow
>those with expensive technology to be involved.
>
>And the Berkman people wouldn't even allow and support people
>who came to their meeting on Jan 23 to participate, let alone
>people who can't afford to come to their meeting.
>
>They supported cutting me off from the microphone when I was
>trying to say that the agreement among people online is that
>they are online "to communicate". But that isn't the agreement
>of the Berkman Center or the White Paper or the Green Paper.
>
>These are narrowly cast in the objective to support e-commerce,
>thus substituting the narrow particular objective of a small
>set of users with the broader generic objective of all
>Internet users.
>
Jon Zittrain
Harvard Law School
Executive Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu
Lecturer on Law
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/is98
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/msdoj
+ 1 617 495 4643
+ 1 617 495 7641 (fax)
