> Earth to Karl: You get as many votes in NSI as MONEY CAN BUY.
> *Every* vote in NSI is a BOUGHT vote. There is no required
> representative structure whatsoever. Furthermore, the only entities
> that have meaningful power in NSI are entities that control large
> blocks of shares. That is, you have *precisely* as much power as you
> have money.
You obviously have never heard of a "derivative action". One share is all
it takes to give standing to bring an action that can bring down the board
of directors or officers who violate their duties.
And in the right circumstances, the corporation can even end up footing
the legal bill.
One share is all it takes to attend a shareholders meeting.
Zero shares is all that is needed to obtain the various SEC and state
filings that NSI is required to file (and does file).
Sure, more shares gets you more votes.
But that's a lot better than the zero votes that individuals and
non-commercials get in ICANN today.
And the information you can get from NSI is a lot more information than is
available from the opaque ICANN of today.
ICANN publishing "donations" is not financial disclosure that even
approximates what NSI has to publish. Compare the ICANN web page with
NSI's 10K filing. That's one small page of disclosure for ICANN and one
book for NSI.
As for the MoU -- ICANN's first priority is living up to its organic
documents. It is too bad that ICANN feels that it is more important to
quash NSI than it is to establish an entity that is more a dictatorial
Soviet with a life expectency beyond a few more months.
But whether there is a MoU or not. ICANN is not publishing anything near
the amount of information that NSI or any other publicly held for-profit
corporation does, nor does it have external controls by shareholders
or members that come even close to those given to shareholders.
I can say "I told you so", and I will - I told you so -- In my Green Paper
submission, I mentioned (as did many others) that the non-profit form that
IANA proposed for ICANN was one that could easily lead to exactly what we
have -- a closed, self-driven, non-responsive, opaque form of Internet
Governance.
--karl--
