With Tom Lowenhaupt, I too am
> interested in seeing that the Internet's governance system
> represents all those upon which the net has a social or economic impact
but I doubt I will ever 'run' for 'office' -- because I believe the aims
and intentions of Internet governance should be directed towards
the *redundancy of human actors in the system/ structure by which
the wishes of this "very large group" will be carried out.
The feasibility of this aim is already evident in the valiant efforts to
design a scheme of representation for the membership bodies
under ICANN which, as a simple linear tree, can be neatly mapped
in ASCII by its correspondence with that other tree we all know so
well, the DNS. (That so much time and effort is still being devoted
to this most fundamental of organizational procedures certainly
suggests that something needs to be done!)
The "." root is that ideal of all governance, 100% unanimity.
The TLD is ICANN, which comprises 18 'servers' or Members of the
Board.
The 2LD is SO, which has 3 or 4 servers, or supporting
organizations.
The 3LD, where relevant, is ORG.
INDIV@[3LD.]2LD.TLD is the 'fully qualified name' of a member
('subscriber'). Examples:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
--------------
Several points are immediately clear; for instance, (i) as domain
names are unique, so is membership; (ii) as any subscriber can
change his or her service provider at will, so can any member
change her place in the 'hierarchy'; and that (iii) every member is
on a par, regardless of the qualifications of the name.
But more significantly, this scheme also shows:
1. no member should have two 'names' *simultaneously (i.e. for a
given vote -- call it V1).
2. no organization can *simultaneously both 'represent' its clients
or employees or subscribers and have an independent vote; that is,
if [EMAIL PROTECTED] exists in the 'rolls' for V1, all
JoeDoe??@ibm... are disqualified.
3. nothing is said about 4LD; e.g., an organization can have any
number of contributing organizations.
4. each MoB_n (e.g. Mr Com or Ms Net) is 'elected' by its
members, not by its subdomains;
(a) which is which is immaterial to its continuing operation as a
root server, *unless and until some kind of enforceable 'charter' is
established* (e.g. geographical representation);
(b) by 1, JoeDoe cannot vote for more than one MoB *unless the
terms of office are asynchronous ('staggered')*.
--------------
Note: These comments are not to be read as support for the
present structure of the DNS, any more than they are criticisms of
the pro- tem incumbents of the 'nodes.' They are intended simply to
show how *programmatic the overall ICANN structure is and where
its implementation in software needs only minor detailing to
comport with the procedures outlined in the Bylaws.
Its my hope that this sketch will help to put the tortured
discussions of 'validity' or 'authenticity' in perspective (particularly
in view of provision (e) of the May 6 recommendations of ICANN's
Membership Advisory Committee (see Ref.) and to highlight where
further 'debugging' is most needed.
For instance, if monetary committment is the efficient way to
control multiple naming under condition 1, then the category of
members who cannot afford that commitment can be treated in a
number of ways - a subsidized subdomain, say. Further, since
validity is an issue only on the occasion of a vote, 'membership'
need not be persistent , and thus membership fees can be
designed *per vote* rather than per member.
Indeed, persistence is the only reason for aggregating at all, up to
and including the TLD -- surely the test of whether the structure
*works is that it relieves INDIV of the obligation! By the same
token, then, it is obvious that if INDIV *accepts the obligation, then
it should be compensated. In simple words, if loyalty (an old word,
used here to refer to voting - or inputting, see below - in multiple
V_n) is rewarded by lower membership costs, then the fee
schedule most appropriately applies to *changing* names,
specifically, to moving from ORG to ORG or MoB to MoB in some
sort of charade.
More generally, I would like to imagine that the full development of
such a DVD (Distributed Voting Device) could prove highly
applicable to the elaboration of all the ifs, ands and buts which
comprise any specific matter to be voted on; that is, an 'issue'
could be broken out in much the same way, with a hierarchy of
'constituent sub-issues' where the "." consensus is the summation
of judgements. (Perhaps a rebate could be implemented, so that
members could balance their voting 'right' (or rather its cost)
against their inputs defining the decision-tree!)
Cheers,
kerry
======
Ref. (emphasis added):
> 1. At-large membership should primarily represent those
> individuals and organizations that are not represented by
> the Supporting Organizations (SOs). The goals of the
> at-large membership are as follows:
> (a) to include any Internet user with access and
> *verifiable* identity in order to reflect the global
> diversity of users (membership should not be limited to
> IP address or domain name holders),
> (b) to elect Directors to the ICANN Board by procedures
> that are valid and *authentic*,
> (c) to ensure that ICANN�s corporate structure operates
> for the benefit of the Internet community as a whole, is
> not captured, and continues to provide *fair* and
> proportional representation of the entire user community,
> (d) to provide input from the user community to the ICANN
> [Directors] and
> (e) to do so in a *cost-efficient* manner.
>
========
