Re: [discuss] Individual representation

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Sun, Jun 27, 1999 at 05:00:02AM +0000, William X. Walsh wrote:
> Sorry, Kent, but all I see here is a fear that it will not be captured
> by those who support the CORE/ISOC/Trademark interests positions.  If
> this constituency is formed without a core basis of being supportive
> of your views, then in your eyes it has been "captured."
> 
> You say the likelihood of ICANNs membership being large is pretty low,
> and that is about the same likelihood as the capture scenario you
> present above. 

There are 150-odd members on the ifwp list, 50-odd members on
discuss@dnso.org, and, according to Joop's just released figures, 101
on the idno list -- all with significant overlap.  There was
something like 2500 attendees at the last IETF I noticed, and there
are 6000 members of ISOC (significant overlap, of course), 7500
members of INTA, as I recall, all of whom have been informed by their
organizations of the existence and importance of ICANN.  The contrast
in interest level is fairly striking, I think, given the supposed
importance of all this.  There were maybe 50 people who attended the 
NC meeting, counting virtual attendees.

In fact, what is absolutely striking about all this is how few 
people participate.

Furthermore, the 250 individual people who have expressed concrete
interest by their participation in the lists and the meetings,
despite their quite vociferous disagreements, indeed represent a form
of capture.  Everybody agrees that there are hundreds of thousands of
people, at least, who have direct and legitimate standing.  There is
no way that a self-selected group of 250 (us) can possibly be said to
represent those hundreds of thousands.  Instead, we quite clearly
represent a few special interests.

So, I disagree -- the capture scenario is very possible, and all the 
REAL evidence indicates that the number of people who will 
participate individually is very low.

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Do good, and you'll be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain