Mike Roberts a �crit:
>
> > Mike Roberts a �crit:
> >
> > > 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.
> >
> > The senators will decide the issue before them, as elected > > representatives of
>the American people. Whom does ICANN represent?
> > What people elected it? By what right does it decide?
> >
> Michael Sondow:
>
> I think you've pushed this thread in the wrong direction, so I'll
> only make the following comment.
I haven't pushed any thread. I replied simply and directly to an obvious
error in your earlier argument, in which you attempted to justify the
Board's authority by an analogy to the US Senate that was false.
> - The ICANN Bylaws were developed over a number of months and
> reviewed/vetted by a lot of folks
I've learned that when someone uses the word "folks", what they're
purporting is invariably disingenuous. It indicates that they, themselves,
know they have no support, and so they try to garner it by a populist trick.
That holds for the IETFers, and apparently for you too. The ICANN bylaws
were written by Joe Sims with perhaps a little input from Jon Postel and a
very few others.
> including specifically the U.S. Government, the
> European Commission and other governments whose voices are controlled
> by elected representatives.
There are hardly any comments in the [EMAIL PROTECTED] archives from
government representatives. But even if there were, that has absolutely
nothing to do with the requirements of the White Paper, which called for
consensus of the Internet community, not of national governments. As to the
Internet community, it was almost totally ignored during the drafting of the
bylaws, and was able only to put a tenuous spoke in the wheel of ICANN
through the agency of the BWG and ORSC, who were mollified by means of the
device of a pretended qualification of the bylaws by the NTIA, a
qualification which, to the surprise and horror of everyone, has not
deterred you from acting against the stated intent of your own bylaws: to
wit, your establishment of policy before a membership is constituted and an
elected board put in place.
> You and the Haubens have pointed out
> numerous deficiencies from your points of view about the manner in
> which ICANN was created.
This is a poor trick. You assume that the Haubens aren't respected and that,
by lumping me together with them, you will impugn the value of my arguments.
I have no association with the Haubens, although I respect their point of
view. And I'll point out to you that you aren't going to convince the
readers of these debates of a lack of worth in my arguments by lumping me
with the Haubens, or by pretending that they and I are the only ones
indicating deficiencies in the manner in which ICANN was created. Almost
everyone on these lists has done the same. Nor are they deficiencies.
Rather, they are equivalent to a total derrogation of your authority, which
has been granted you by no one. No one, that is, besides an unelected Board.
> The bottom line for the Initial Board is
> that the USG has asked that it take up these responsibilities in
> fulfillment of the White Paper. That is a sufficient authority
> for us to proceed.
Not the US Government, Mr. Roberts. Only certain individuals in the Dept. of
Commerce. Other members of the US Government have called into question
everything that I and the others here have questioned. I'm referring to Tom
Bliley and the House Commerce Committee, which has oversight of commerce and
tends to take a very scant view of oppressive regulators with vested
interests who attempt to restrain free trade. The US Government, in its
capacity as legislator and executor of the will of the American people, has
not spoken on these matters. Not yet.
But even were the US Government to grant ICANN the authority to regulate the
DNS and the Internet against the interests of free trade and free
enterprise, your own bylaws deny to you and this board the power to do so.
You are incorporated under a law - the Law of Non-Profit Corporations of the
State of California - which obliges you to act in accordance with it and
with your bylaws, which do not give any board of ICANN, no matter whether it
be called interim or initial or anything else, to initiate policy when it
does not have a mandate to do so from its membership.
You are in flagrant offense against your own bylaws and the law of the State
of California, and are at this very moment, as a consequence of the coercive
accreditation guidelines that you have published, open to and inviting harsh
legal action. I point this out to you because you seem to be impervious to
the calls of conscience, and perhaps a reminder that a democratic system of
laws can punish law-breakers may, in the absence of moral restraints,
convince you to act rightly.
> - ICANN has embarked on an open and participatory process to
> develop a representation and election model and to implement it.
If that is so, which your refusal to use open mailing lists and open
meetings for discussion belies, then you should await the formation of a
membership and its election of a legally constituted board before proceeding
to create policies that will affect that future membership. This is your
clear mandate. And since you are not acting in conscience to fulfill it, one
must also question whether your tardiness and apparent indifference towards
the process you mention above isn't a device for prolonging the constitution
of a membership until you, the illegally constituted board, has accomplished
its illegal mission.
> >From all indications, it is being supported by the community
Not any community of which I am aware. But perhaps your community, to which
you make reference, isn't on the Internet.
> and is proceeding well toward a coherent analysis of workable
> alternatives and will present those in open sessions in Singapore
> (and, of course, via postings and Web casting to the larger
> net audience).
And decide upon them in a closed session. But regardless, you are at the
same time making policy, and that, you have no authority to do.
> If you see deficiencies in that process, which
> is leading ICANN to an elected At Large set of
> Directors, there is ample opportunity for you to air your
> views on the membership list and elsewhere.
The deficiencies are glaring. They make a lie of the process. And the
opportunities for airing my views are at a polar extreme from ample. They
are almost nonexistant.
Please let me tell you, Mr. Roberts, that I am not so easily fooled into
believing that airing views is equivalent to being taken into consideration.
I know when I am participating in a forum of mutually respectful equals
where my ideas are being integrated into the outcome, and when I am being
tricked into wasting my time by arrogant authoritarians who have already
made up their minds. And the other people on these lists are just as
conscious of this difference as I.
But once again, yours is not a logical discussion because, regardless of the
validity of the process towards creating a membership and electing a board,
you have no right to make policy until that elected board is in place.
> - A couple of people have asked who elected me.
Not I. You have put in all this about your position as President as a
smokescreen to obscure the true question: Do you and this board have the
right to make policy, whether for registrars or registries or registrants or
even the vacation time of ICANN's office staff, or not. I say you do not.
And the law will uphold me. It may have to be put up to the Supreme Court of
the United States, perhaps even to the Court of the European Commission,
even the Hague, but the law will uphold me. You may not make policy for
people who have not elected you. It's as simple as that.
