On Wed, Feb 09, 2000 at 07:08:56PM -0800, A.Gehring wrote:
>
> Richard J. Sexton wrote:
>
>
> > >I believe one of the reasons we are in Year 2 of ICANN without an At
> Large
> > >membership is because that membership was defined too broadly. That
> >
> > You mean you don't think I should be able to walk across the street
> > to the Bannockburn general store and tell old Harry that he's a voting
> > member of internet government?
> >
> > Limit it it to nameserver owners. That's who it's supposed to be
> > coordinating isn't it? (Like they ever asked to be coordinated).
>
> Provided that 'Old Harry' and his children will never be impacted in any way
> whatsoever by the Internet, I would then and only then emphatically agree
> that they should not have an avenue for their voices to be heard within the
> halls of Internet Governance.
>
> Nobody wants to be coordinated. But that is exactly what government does.
> Whether her mandate is narrow or broad THE ICANN WILL COORDINATE ALL OF US,
> not just those of us who own nameServers. We all ought to get in on the
> voting. Even Harry.
>
> Arnold Gehring
A nice sentiment, but simplistic to the point of uselessness. The
fundamental complexity in this situation stems from the fact that the
Internet is largely owned by private interests. To be concrete, Old
Harry doesn't have any right to tell me how to run my computers -- not
directly, and not indirectly through the medium of ICANN. Nor does he
have the right to tell ISPs how to do things, except through the medium
of the market. The fundamental issue here is the assertion of
authority over private entities that actually own the Internet
infrastructure. The issue is not individual rights, at least not in
the sense that ICANN would be considered as a representative organ of
the "people".
ICANN has no authority to tell ISPs how to do things without their
consent. Though proponents of internet governance would like it to be
otherwise, it is the ISPs and other infrastructure providers that are
the "governed" in this situation -- not individuals. This is the
fundamental reason that individuals have little power in the ICANN
structure, and there is essentially nothing that can be done about it
unless you turn ICANN into an arm of government.
That is, if you were to modify the ICANN structure so it was operated by
popular vote of the "people", then the ISPs, registries, IETF, etc would
simply ignore ICANN, and the "people" would have no more power than they
did before.
--
Kent Crispin "Do good, and you'll be
[EMAIL PROTECTED] lonesome." -- Mark Twain
