Let me first say that I don't speak for the entire MAC committee; I can only
expose my own reasoning.
Our study revealed many equally legitimate, but often conflicting needs. In
choosing between them, I sometimes opted for short-term benefits over
long-term. Depending on the issue, it might be because long-term benefits
were less certain or because the costs are beyond ICANN's current means.
Most often, though, it was because I feel the most important goal of the MAC
is to get a democratically elected board of directors in place within the
year. IMHO a stripped down, bare-bones initial membership organization has
the best chance of making that happen. It would take months just to set up
verifiable photo-ID procedures, for example. An elected board can then make
the long-term structural decisions, including adding many of the outstanding
proposals mentioned on this list
We are now looking at mechanisms to spot check initial voter enrollment for
possible fraud and capture.
Richard J. Sexton helpfully suggested:
> I agree. With no "skin in the game" it rapidly becomes a joke and I
> can't figure out why the international thing was so tough to figure
> out. Make it twice the local price of a lof of bread, or 5 times
> the price of a can of coke. Some things are universal
The problem isn't setting the scale, it's funding it. Estimates were that it
would cost US$10+ to process each member and hold the first election. The
postage alone is more than twice the local price of a loaf of bread. So it
could lead to serious deficits, depending on how many people sign up and where
they're from, and those figures are just guesses. Another value we made is
that wealthier members shouldn't be subsidizing the less wealthy without their
consent. So, in terms of setting up the first election, we didn't want to make
this judgment. The elected board would be a better body to make that choice.
Again, if ICANN has another source of revenue, then the cost of free
memberships can presumably be absorbed, but that setting domain fees was
beyond the scope of our committee.
One argument made by domain holders is that they do expect domain fees to be
increased to support ICANN, (through their registration expenses) and they
felt that they shouldn't have to pay an additional fee for the privilege of
voicing their opinion about the management of the DNS system. It was viewed
as a poll tax. Personally, I don't share that view and believe the costs of
voting should be assessed against voters and not against those who chose not
to vote. For the first election, though, getting out the vote is important
enough to me to make the tradeoff. Fees can be assessed down the road if
necessary.
Ellen Rony raised some thoughtful concerns:
> IMHO, a membership that is all-inclusive moves ICANN closer to center stage
> as a governance body -- a thought which makes me shudder. While we know
> that ICANN was established *solely* as an administrative body for the DNS,
> I can imagine that a universal, no-barrier membership body may have
> different assumptions or expectations of ICANN's corporate role -- turning
> to it for complaints about spam and porn and copyright infringement, none
> of which are issues for ICANN.
>
IMHO it's a long way between these two. I can't even see the state of
Tennessee ceding authority over online pornography to ICANN, much less Iran.
Independent governments will wish to make such decisions for themselves and
seem less than willing to let some obscure ICANN council have any say over
such important domestic issues. I personally don't think that an open
at-large membership will have much impact on these forces at this time. If
every Netizen on earth joins, that is still less than 10% of the world
population.
There was a lot of discussion within the RCS study on the relative merits of
planning for a large-scale membership versus planning for a relatively small
membership. Some of the mechanisms for one won't work at all well for the
other. For example, if only 400 people apply for at-large membership, a lot
of the authentication and fee issues become irrelevant because its a small
group and easy to afford and authenticate. Some of the capture issues become
more critical, however, because a relatively small number of people could
capture a small membership (something that would be harder to do if the there
were hundreds of thousands of members). We couldn't always find solutions
that scaled. Maybe future studies will do so.
> DNS administration includes profoundly complex issues, and IMHO, the most
> basic qualification for membership would be some connection to the system
> ICANN will be administering. Why should ICANN membership be thrown open to
> my elderly mom just because I sat her down at a computer once to view our
> family website, or to my young son just because he likes to use the
> Internet to find new Pokemon cheats?
>
Many SO technologists use this argument to justify limiting all the decisions
concerning administration of DNS to engineers. IMHO, domain owners are not
necessarily better informed about complex issues than Pokemon players, and I
don't think it's ICANN's place to decide who knows enough to qualify. Maybe
some elderly moms can't get their own domains because of restrictive access
policies in their nations. If you only allow the people already in the system
to vote, then the outsiders have trouble getting in.
> The people who have made an investment in the domain name system -- through
> infrastructure, management, registration, hosting, etc. -- are the ones who
> rightfully should be involved in decisions about its administration. For
> those who remain unconvinced, realize that it is always easier to relax the
> qualifications later than to tighten them once this new membership
> experiment is underway.
>
This was argued strongly by Mssrs. Kaplan and Langenbach. Most people expect
that this group will constitute the bulk of the membership and it certainly
would be the easiest to process. One suggestion was to include membership
enrollment in the domain registration packages. The counter argument is that
America Online (as an example), which is the single largest holder of 2LDs,
has interests that are different from its subscribers and therefore shouldn't
be the one party allowed to represent all X million of them. AOL subscribers,
as paying customers, are the ones who actually pay for AOL's domain
registrations, consequently they should have a voice. Further, domains aren't
the only game here. Actual access, which is affected by IP address
assignments, is another set of policy decisions affecting users.
Michael Sondow opined:
> You want good things. It's unfortunate that you think they will
> happen by avoiding structure and hoping for the best. They won't.
> All you will accomplish by that is to allow those with an agenda to
> take control. Anyone with experience in the formation of large
> organizations knows this. But you and the other people chosen to
> deal with these questions have no experience in the formation of
> large organizations, and are living in a fools paradise. Your good
> intentions are paving the way to hell.
>
Good gracious.
As I said earlier, the meeting notes you quoted were phrased as bullet
points. If you read our recommendations and reports with all their details
you will find a bit more structure. ICANN can't afford to travel first-class
yet, and there are many who feel that it should never be operated at that
price range.
Diane Cabell
MAC
