On Tue, Jan 12, 1999 at 04:21:14PM -0500, Martin B. Schwimmer wrote:
>
[...]
> >Interested individuals -- Elen Rony. Karl Auerbach. Dan Steinberg.
> >Marty Schwimmer. Dave Farber. Joop Teernstra. Milton Mueller.
> >Patrick Greenwell.
>
> What if my firm belonged to one of the other constituencies?
That's fine. But wait, you ask -- what happens if your firm is huge
and you pay everyone of your employees a $500 bonus to join the
at-large constituency, and vote as your company directs?
The answer is that I don't think this is a realistic concern, in
either the fanciful way I stated it, or otherwise, for several
reasons.
First, you can't guarantee control of the at-large, regardless
of what you spend -- your competitors can do the same thing; every
company in every other constituency could do the same thing; the
irate Internet users could join en masse. It's an expensive gamble
with a very uncertain payoff to try to stack the at large.
Second, even with total control of the at-large, you still don't
control the names council. All the other constituencies have their
nominees -- even if your company is a member of every constituency
you can still only replace 1/3 of the nc members in a year.
Third, ultimately, you have ICANN looking over the whole thing.
There is a requirement for fair and open processes; an attempt to
capture the names council would invalidate that, and presumably
invalidate any contract between dnso and icann. A new dnso would
have to be formed, etc etc. Remember, also, that the dnso policy
recomendations are not just accepted blindly by ICANN -- there are
certain sanity checks required.
But wait, you ask again -- won't the at-large be taken over by
nutcases? quite possibly, I answer, but the nutcases won't have a
unified point of view. In fact, the reasoning above applies to any
point of view, not just a particular corporate view: it is difficult
for a single point of view to capture the at-large, regardless,
because alternate points of view will join, and there is enough
inertia in the system to deal with short-term fluctuations.
> >A domain name pirate.
> >
> >A website owner with a virtual domain who has been impacted by a
> >domain name pirate.
> >
> >An individual fed up with harvesting of email addresses in whois
> >records, or otherwise concerned with privacy matters associated with DNS.
>
> Realistically, how many of these would pay the dnso fee and bother?
> Wouldn't they rather vent on an open dnso list?
I don't know. I think they would do both -- note that Mikki Barry
says she is a member of INTA, which costs hundreds of dollars.
> >A person with a point of view on dispute resolution that they don't
> >see reflected in another constituency.
> >
> >I could probably go on for some time. Basically, any entity that didn't
> >feel their interests were represented in another constituency. Note
> >that the operative definition is what *they* think about the matter,
> >not what the definitions of the constituencies are.
>
> Does that comment apply only to at large or to all? If I am prepared to
> pay the ISP fee, can I join the ISP constituency, even if I wans't an ISP?
No -- each constituency has its own membership criteria (which are
required to be reasonable, and fairly applied, of course); and there
is an appeal body that deals with disputes over membership in a
constituency.
--
Kent Crispin, PAB Chair "Do good, and you'll be
[EMAIL PROTECTED] lonesome." -- Mark Twain
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