On 10-Feb-99 Mike Roberts wrote:
> With respect to the rest of the email, you present a compelling
> case for your vision of the future of the Internet name and
> address system. However, it is your case and your opinion,
> to which you are richly entitled in our democracy. Others
> may have other views and reach other conclusions. It seems
> to me to be unreasonable for you to conclude, with a lot of
> value laden adjectives, that those who may disagree with you
> are less worthy of having their opinions heard in the councils
> and public processes of ICANN. Gordon and others have been
> critical of the SJ Mercury article quotation in which I said
> that critics of ICANN needed to distinguish between being heard
> and having their way. This is the essence of the kind of
> republican democracy we have in the United States. It's going
> on right now in the Senate. The House Republicans have been
> heard, and their assertions are being weighed and measured
> by the Senate and a vote will follow. The ICANN Board's duty
> is to HEAR everyone who wishes to be heard and then to DECIDE.
> Those who are "affected" and aggrieved by Board decisions not
> only have our reconsideration policy as a remedy [see post of
> draft policy from yesterday on our Web site], they obviously
> have recourse to the courts, which we are frequently reminded of,
> most recently this morning.
First of all Mr Roberts, I'd like to say I am appreciative of your joining in
on the discussions here on the list. I think it is a great step for you to
take, and I hope to see it continue. I may help build more trust in this
process.
I would also like to point out one part of a republican democracy, is that the
governors rule with the consent of the governed, and as such is obligated to
give an increased weight to their opinions and comments.
To paraphrase Dr Lyman Hall, delegate from Georgia to the Second Continental
Congress in 1776, when considering whether to vote for or againt independence,
where he personally agreed with it, the people were opposed to it, and until he
worked out exactly where his responsibility to the people layed, he was better
to err on the side of the people.
I would apply this to the current situation by saying that until ICANN is
formally established in its roles, and an actual board is in place, the
leadership would do well to heed the consensus of the participants over their
own personal opinions. This is not about you or Esther or the other board
members. It is about your responsibility to us, and all who make up the vast
term stakeholder.
Please keep that in mind when you recommend and implement policy, especially
when you elect to do so without significant input from us.
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E-Mail: William X. Walsh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 09-Feb-99
Time: 19:26:10
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"We may well be on our way to a society overrun by hordes
of lawyers, hungry as locusts."
- Chief Justice Warren Burger, US Supreme Court, 1977
