Forwarded for informational purposes.
-----FW: My resignation from the IDNO Steering Committee-----
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 15:03:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: "William X. Walsh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: My resignation from the IDNO Steering Committee
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
As I told the members of the SC yesterday, I find myself in the unenviable
position of no longer being able to support this IDNO as an organization
representative of Individual Domain Name Owners, or to lend my name to its
Steering Committee, which has been stripped of its ability to work by one
person who is not even a member of that committee.
This organization no longer espouses the principles of which myself, and many
others, joined in order to lend our names, voices, and support to. I joined
because I believed that this organization would be a shining example of how all
the principles we have long criticized ICANN for not following CAN be enshrined
and can work. Unfortunately, that has not happened, for reasons that are now
perfectly clear.
The IDNO has been a victim of an overly protective and manipulating parent, who
rather than letting his child grow on its own, and develop on its own,
espousing the values that he helped to ingrain in it, instead saw it making
decisions and taking actions he did not agree with, and so rather than accept
that his child would not always make the same decision he would in the child's
place, he did everything he could to undermine the child's ability to make
those decisions, to manipulate it into making decisions that he wanted, and to
have a level of control that no one person should have.
The thought of his child disagreeing with him, even over a relatively small set
of issues, was something he could not accept. So he attacked the child,
belittled him, discounted his opinions as inconsequential, questioned his
motives, called him names, and did everything he could to undermine his resolve.
He made it so bad for this child that the child was not able to decide anything
anymore for itself.
That child is now a lot less than it had been, and no longer has faith in the
principles its parents tried to instill in it.
I could go back and pull out the messages Joop made when the SC election was
pending, and then after the SC was elected, and the mandate he foresaw for the
SC, and then compare that to his messages in this last couple weeks, and show
how he has placed the SC into such a conflict, but then Joop already knows
there is a dichotomy between his views that cannot be resolved.
Many times parent's make mistakes with their children, what is regrettable is
when the parent cannot admit to the child that they made a mistake, and thus
give the child it's freedom.
The membership of this group elected me to their SC, a position I did not seek,
but to which I accepted a nomination after being asked. However, I can no
longer in good faith tell the membership that the SC is able to do the work
that it was charged with. I have already spelled out the reasons why.
I urge this membership to think long and hard in the coming days. I urge them
to become active and let the self appointed new leadership know how you feel
about these issues. What they have done is created a system that lets them
control the structure of the IDNO on their own.
How does a system where all decisions are placed before the membership do that,
you ask? Let me spell it out, for we have already seen it in action.
How many of you, as members, have the time to get fully up to speed on all the
issues and the idiosynchroncies of all the many matters that these "leaders"
are insisting be voted on by the membership every time? Every time there is
something to be voted on, will you have the time to get into the heart of these
issues, and really look at what the consequences of both decisions are? No, so
what you will do is look at the list, and pretty much go with what the most
active people are saying, or just not vote at all, since you can't form an
opinion.
This means that we will have decisions being made always by a small group of
active members. There is no way around this. The very nature of this type of
organization means this has to be true. The history of this group has already
shown it to be true.
There is a better system, and one that will better represent your interests.
That was the system that we originally set into place, where the membership
would be consulted on all issues of importance, and then their elected
representatives would make the decisions based on that input. That regular
reports of the decisions would be made publicly, with a full accountability for
all decisions. This means that on issues where you have an interest, and/or
have knowledge, you can contribute in a much more solid fashion, and without
having to commit more of your time than you have.
Don't like the trends, then you have a voice, and a vote. The SC would be
unlikely to ever vote against a position where there is a clear consensus in
the membership, it would go against every principle they believe in.
Capturing an SC would be near impossible if we got a decent voting system in
place. The required votes would present in insurmountable obstacle. Having
less frequent votes means that members are more likely to participate in those
votes, because the time investment overall would be so much less.
To capture a single issue vote would be something rather easy. I counted
myself this morning how easy it would be for me to get enough members added to
the IDNO to insure passage of the ORSC rules (not that I was proposing to DO
this, but just to see for myself how easy it would be). So I counted the
family members and close friends who are domain name holders, and added that to
the number of members who are solidly behind the ORSC rules. Then I assumed
that ALL of the rest of the active members (those who would actually vote on
such an issue) would blindly follow Joop and Chris (though I do not believe
they would do so, I wanted to assume the worst, to show that even in the worst
scenario it would be possible). Trust me, it would of been an easy matter to
do, and could of been done with very little chance of it being noticed.
But I do not work that way, actually going down that path was not something I
would consider. But I guarantee you our enemies would, and I guarantee you
that they have thought of this, or will think of it, and see just how easy it
would be to insert just enough guaranteed voters to make things VERY VERY
difficult in the IDNO to accomplish anything.
But could I have gotten enough of members to actually steal an SC election?
VERY VERY unlikely. First of all, it can be expected that on an SC election,
voter turnout will be higher. Secondly, with a good voting mechanism in place,
the required threshold to get enough SC seats to be able to "control" any
decision make process would be way to high to even be an attractive option.
Don't take my word for it, run the numbers yourself.
The other alternative, presuming there are no parties that want to infiltrate
and control the decisions or by their votes make consensus incredibly hard to
achieve, would be that the uninformed membership who doesn't have the time to
get up to speed on every issue that is being brought before the membership by
this silly structure, is that they will simply take the say of the people whos
names appear the most, and who make the most compelling comments.
I'll give this to Chris, his writing style is quite good. He has a way of
writing that makes it difficult to see that there is another side to the issue.
Without a careful analysis of what he is actually saying, it would make the
issues appear to be much more black and white than they are. I would of loved
to have had his expertise in college forensics competitions. Joop's messages
carry weight because of his position as "founder" though he lacks the abilities
of Chris to word his comments in such a way that the command assent if not
reviewed carefully and sentence by sentence.
So then you have a case where two or three active members, posting their
positions and their assent to certain issues, can have such an influence by
nature of there being no equivalent dissection of their comments, that they get
their way. Then you have rule by two, not rule by democracy.
There is a simple fact why there are no democratic systems, but republic
systems flourish. To expect active voter participation in every issue is just
expecting too much, and only serves to lower the threshold for undue influence,
and/or out and out infiltration. With the system they propose, why even HAVE a
steering committee?
What may be more appropriate, and more workable, would be a system for the SC
to make the decisions, subject to full accountability, public archives of the
lists and votes, etc, and for the membership to have some sort of
"propositional" power, where issues of VITAL importance can be brought before
the full membership from time to time.
Such an action might be done by the SC, who decides an issue is so contentious,
that for them to gauge the issue would be inappropriate, or by a certain number
of members themselves, who feel strongly about an issue. The thresholds, and
other details would have to be worked out, of course. I've not the time this
week to get into that aspect of detail, but something along these general lines
would be a much stronger system, that would not weaken the IDNO, or the power
and ability of its membership.
But unfortunately, false accusations and mud slinging by someone who has such
respect on this list (and indeed even amongst those whom he is slinging mud at)
has made the current SC ineffective and impotent, without the ability to do
anything but sit on its hands and be dictated to by someone acting like he
knows their best interests better than they do. I will not stand by and be a
part of that structure.
So effective immediately, I tender my resignation from the Steering Committee.
I will, for now, retain my membership as an individual domain name owner,
though I have great reservations about whether this organization can any longer
claim to have a mandate to represent their interests within the ICANN
Structure. If I was asked by ICANN today, I would have to say that the IDNO
as it is currently constituted, is not properly established enough to have any
mandate for representing the constituency which it seeks. I still believe that
an individuals constituency is needed and should be mandated. I just have
serious doubts as to if the IDNO should be the embodiment of that constituency.
With all of these things in mind, I will also accept the nomination to the next
steering committee. Though this is not a position I "seek," if enough members
decide to vote for me to that position, then I will consider that as meaning
that enough members support the positions which I have spelled out here, and
consider that a mandate to represent their interests in the SC.
I have held off for sometime in accepting or declining this nomination, because
of my own uncertainty about what was going on in the IDNO and the SC. While I
feel I must resign at this time from the SC, to show my clear reservations
about the course that is being taken and the actions that have been taken, I
still hold out hope that the membership will repair the damage that has been
caused by the recent actions that have led to myself and others considering our
resignations.
So what do we have? We have 2 people who have been actively pursuring their
own agenda, who then did everything they could to discredit and malign 8 other
members who voted and endorsed something they did not agree with, and engaged
in a systematic effort to discredit those members, attack them and their
motives, accuse them of being enemies of the IDNO, and everything else they
could do to try and portray themselves as the only voices of reason in the IDNO.
When considering the upcoming election of those two people seriously take those
points into consideration.
They are now assuming that the membership agrees with their charter drafting
effort, by its silence. I urge all members to carefully look at what I have
said here and speak up about the process these two are creating and how it will
cripple rather than empower the membership and the IDNO. We do not need a
charter for the sake of having one before the Los Angeles meeting if indeed the
current draft is so flawed that it needs to be tossed out and started over.
Better to take our time and do it right, than to make a hasty decision that
will be difficult at best to repair.
I suggest to the membership that the announce list be removed from Joop's
control, because of his clearly biased position on the issues before the IDNO
right now, and that instead someone who is not biased, and is clearly impartial
be placed in control. I would suggest Sri, strictly because I know he does not
want it, and because I know that regardless of his personal opinions he will
never let them interfere with the announcements he makes. And I make this
suggestion knowing that in most of these matters he sides with Joop. But I
have sufficient faith in his personal integrity to trust him in that position.
I would ask, for sake of form, that whatever of the SC is left after dismissing
themselves in disgust, consider this my final motion there, and direct the
manager of the lists to change control to someone other than Joop.
We no longer have an SC, people. We are back where we started over 4 months
ago, with no clear consensus on where we are going (I guess that means we are
actually even further back than that).
I remain hopeful that an appropriate vehicle for individual representation
inside the DNSO and ICANN will be developed. I regret that the IDNO as it
stands at this time is not that vehicle.
I remain at your service,
William X. Walsh
Former member of the Initial IDNO Steering Committee
--------------End of forwarded message-------------------------
--
William X. Walsh - DSo Internet Services
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fax:(209) 671-7934
Editor of http://www.dnspolicy.com/
