> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Roberto > Gaetano > Sent: Monday, January 04, 1999 8:05 AM > To: IFWP Discussion List > Subject: [ifwp] Individual Membership [Was: RE: How not to define > membership clas ses] > > <snip> > > The problem is that Congress or the President don't have to take decisions > that impact "mainly" GM or ATT. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but I believe Congress and the President originally blessed the creation of AT&T in its monopoly form, and then took it apart again when it was felt that form no longer served the interests of the people. > Last but not least, most of the problems and implications (technical and > economical) of the choices ICANN will have to make are widely > unknown to end > users, but have heavy impact on some organizations (and ultimately to the > whole Net). Let me try to word it out better: the individual, as an end > user, will only be interested in having better and cheaper service, but > would not even be interested in discussing what to do to get this result. Why do you think individuals would not be interested in discussing what to do to get the desired results? Corporations are made up of individuals. The interests of corporations will always be attended to by natural human beings. Corporations and other organizations will always have a greater ability to amplify the group position by nature of their collective resources, and need no special recognition or elevation of power. Isn't the ability of a corporation to subsidize the participation of an individual member sufficient to ensure that the corporate position gets fair exposure in the marketplace of ideas? Isn't the ability to use mass communications to propagandize for the corporate position an additional advantage? Why should an artificial, special purpose construct like a corporation be elevated above, or even to parity with, a natural human being? > This does not mean at all that individuals that feel interested > or concerned > should not be allowed to become ICANN (or DNSO) Members, it just > means that > we cannot afford to have this one as the only constituency. I would suggest that an ICANN (or DNSO) that recognizes entities other than human beings as members runs a great risk of being valueless and amoral. This is not the kind of organization that I would like to see looking after a widely shared communications medium. David Schutt __________________________________________________ To receive the digest version instead, send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To SUBSCRIBE forward this message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNSUBSCRIBE, forward this message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Problems/suggestions regarding this list? Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___END____________________________________________
