Re: [ga] Individual Stakeholders Constituency

[DPF <david@farrar.com>]

On Fri, 17 May 2002 16:06:56 -0400, "Joe Sims" <jsims@JonesDay.com>
wrote:

>For obvious reasons, I hesitate to jump into this debate, but what the heck
>-- I offer, as should be obvious, personal views only.
>
>What Kent has proposed and Bret has endorsed is simply a varient on what
>Esther and Denise and others are trying to do:  create some structured way
>to organize and present input from individual users (whether domain name
>holders or not).  

There are two issues here which are related but still distinct.  The
first is of individual registrants as a recognised stakeholder in the
DNS decision making process (currently the DNSO).  The other is
whether internet users (however defined) should have significant or
even majority control of ICANN (the at large).

>On this point, I agree with Jamie Love and Bret that all
>Internet users that are interested in doing so should be able to
>participate and make their views known in ICANN.  The debate has not been
>over this point, 

There is no debate over this point because it is impossible to not
have this happen.  Unless one closed off all forums and e-mail
addresses you can not escape internet users making their views known.
Acknowledging this is not a concession.  

>but over what kind of mechanisms are acceptable or
>workable, with the latter incorporating notions of informed participation
>as well as the pure logistics of the mechanism.  In my view, global on-line
>voting is not workable today, so it does not pass the test; 

The ALSC disagreed of course but that doesn't mean they are right.
Could you be more specific with why you think it is not workable.  The
suspicion of many people is that there is an ideological aversion to
"user control/dominance"  and so that barriers to this are found
rather than an alternate approach of "There are some difficulties with
online elections but lets try and find a way to minimise or solve
them".

>Having said this, some of Bret's earlier postings do not make sense to me.
>                                                                                          
> If an ICANN policy benefits registries                                                   
> and registrars, but is detrimental to registrants and other end-users, then              
> ICANN has failed. Note well that the converse is not true.                               
>
>Bret, do you really think that the converse is not true?  How could
>registrants and other end-users be served if there were not sufficient and
>functional registries and registrars?  

A policy can be detrimental to their interests but still leave them
functional.  For example a policy allowing a registrant to cancel a
domain within five days of registration for no charge (as proposed in
.nz) would be good for registrants and bad for registrars and
registries yet isn;t going to bankrupt them to say the least.

>Isn't the real point that there
>needs to be a balance?  I even think I agree with your point that no
>interests are more important than those of end users, and that registrars
>and registries are servants of those interests, but that still leaves a
>question of how those end user interests are best served.  

That is good to know.  With the behaviour of Verisign towards
transfers though many people do not feel ICANN is succeeding in
serving these interests.  Likewise allowing Verisign to stay registrar
and registry.

>  I agree with the first point, and think that is in fact the crux of the
>debate.  There is, as best I can tell, significant disagreement over
>whether "the opinions expressed by those who choose to participate in ICANN
>are sufficiently characteristic fo the concerns of the larger community."

On a smaller scale we have had this debate in .nz.  Over some time
there was an increasing amount of criticism over how .nz was managed
and those running .nz insisted that the critics were not
representative of the larger community and were just a few maladjusted
individuals.  

However things came to a crunch and it became very obvious that the
internet community were very dis-satisifed with .nz management and it
got changed.  The critics were not just a few "venomous reptiles" to
quote a former official.  (Note I was one of the leading proponents of
change so my views are obviously coloured).

The lesson here is that having an open membership structure where
individuals can join and participate has worked.  It won't be perfect
all the time but it is better than no representation.

>deals with the point.  Small relative sample sizes of the sort we are
>talking about here -- which are clearly not representative of the great
>mass of end users -- does raise very serious questions about whether ICANN
>would be making informed choices if it acted on the views of that very
>small sample -- at least if you believe that serving the best interests of
>the mass of disinterested end users, not just the interests of the small
>group that actually participates, is the goal.

If one gets into statistical theory then the chance of a sample being
representative of the entire population is independent of the size of
the entire population.  ie a 1,000 string sample is just as likely to
be representative of a population of 1 million as it is of 100
million.  Now ICANN participation is not randomly selected but self
selecting but nevertheless there is guide to us that our goal should
not be some arbitrary percentage of particpants/user population but
more deciding what minimum size is needed for participating users to
be deemed fairly representative  of the wider user population.

DPF
--
david@farrar.com
ICQ 29964527
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