[ga] Fallout From An Exchange of Emails with Esther Dyson About ICANN Disenfranchising Internet Users Right to Vote For the ICANN Board Governing the Internet

[cpart@interaccess.com]

Hey everyone 

1.  Juliana Gruenwald just wrote an article on ICANN on page 12 of the September 18, 2000 issue of Interactive Week.  You can also read it here:
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2628751,00.html

We are getting some good coverage on this issue.  Unfortunately she missed some important points
     (a)  She didn't report on who the real ICANN member/shareholders are.  Those are the people who get to vote for the people who appoint the 10 non-elective positions.  We never hear about these member/shareholders.  
     (b)  She didn't explain how the 5 "elective positions" can be eliminated at the election of the 10 appointed members. 
     (c)  She didn't discuss how it is that even the "pseudo members" number only 76,000 (out of hundreds of millions of internet users) because of the electronic equivalent of the games played by Southern Politicians in the 50s to keep discourage black voter registration.

2.  In the same issue, there is an article about how NSI is squatting on 1,000,000 expired domain names.  http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2628748,00.html

3.  You know its pretty foolish that ICANN is unable to conduct a vote without using paper and is using that as a rational to keeping the pseudo membership so low.  

Would anyone be interested in running our own open election outside of ICANN and presenting ICANN real voting members 15 a board of 15 freely elected board members to either accept or reject?  They would reject such a board, but then we could take this board to the applicable congressional committee and ask them for help. 

It would sort of like be conducting a shadow vote in Serbia, Peru, Nigeria, or Iraq, then showing up to take office.  Only it  might be that there would be a congressional committee to supply some adult supervision.  

You know, ICANN, NSI, what's the difference?   What is it about the internet that brings out the passive aggressive worst in people?  Not enough eye contact? 

Anyway, there are several internet companies in the business of conducting votes over the internet.  I bet they could conduct a vote without having to rely on snail mail as ICANN does (the concept of ICANN using land mail to conduct an election just continue to amaze me).

Any volunteers to stir the pot on this?  Does anyone know who these internet voting companies are?  I've read of them.  I think they are all located in the Washington DC area.  Does any of you know anyone at any of these companies? 

4.  Here is a collection of resources for anyone who wants to learn more about ICANN vs. Internet Democracy.
http://www.media-visions.com/icann.htm (Analyzing ICANN - a page with a very good set of links to pages containing well researched and reasoned critical analysis of ICANN)
http://www.ADOR-DOC.ORG/wipoletter.html (you can't understand how outrageous has been  ICANN's behavior with respect to favoring large corporations in domain disputes... unless you read this) 
http://www.news.com/Perspectives/Column/0,176,459,00.html (article by by Brian Livingston of cnet about ICANN bias in domain name arbitration)
http://www.Icannwatch.org (regularly updated website monitoring ICANN activities)
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/full_coverage/tech/domain_names_and_registration/ (100s of articles written by reporters who've been covering these issues)
http://www.flywheel.com/ircw/overview.html (an overview of the domain names controversy - starting pre-ICANN with an extensive and thorough  set of related links)
http://www.icann.org  (ICANN's Web Site)  
http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/gao-icann/DNS-Proposal.txt
http://umcc.ais.org/~ronda/ (background on the development of the Internet and the role of the government)
http://www.domainhandbook.com/toc.html 
http://www.iciiu.org/ (International Congress of Independent Internet Users)
http://www.domainnotes.com/ 
http://www.eff.org/ (electronic Frontier Foundation (the ACLU of the Internet)
http://www.media-visions.com/newdom2b.html (links to government and industry leaders)
http://www.media-visions.com/icann-involved.htm (steps you can take to help this problem)


5.  Please pass this email along to anyone who might want to be added to the distribution list.


Curtis Sahakian
1-847-676-2774



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