Re: [ga] Unfair?

[Michael Sondow <msondow@iciiu.org>]

Cade,Marilyn wrote:
>
> sigh,) I'll face days or weeks of postings about how devious and underhanded
> I am as a representative of a large corporation, but I will try this > anyway.

I doubt it, Marilyn. Most of the people who are or were subscribed
to this list have dropped out since the Names Council repudiated the
GA's choices for board seats and effectively renegged on its
agreement in Singapore to share power in the DNSO with the General
Assembly. After all, people can't fool themselves forever that they
are investing their time in a worthwhile pursuit.

> Gathering up the interests of users is a challenge. And yes, individuals are
> extremely important, but the good of society sometimes overrides... that is
> the genesis of the U.S. constitution, isn't' it?

Society is usually taken to mean the majority, isn't it? That's the
only effective measure for justice, fairness and democracy that's
ever been found. In the case of the Internet, the majority of users
are individuals. If this weren't so, ecommerce wouldn't be
important. Companies can't sell their products just to each other.
So individuals are the majority of Internet users and as such have a
controlling interest in how it's regulated. That's why ICANN is a
conspiracy: because it only represents the interests of a minority,
as evidenced clearly by the Registrar Agreement and the UDRP, which
only recognize the rights of businesses, and big businesses to boot.

> You might not like it, but business is being
> conducted on the internet and that means stability issues, consumer fraud,
> and trademark protection are relevant issues.

Relevant, of course. But not paramount. Trademark protection lawyers
have used this revindication - that their issues are relevant - to
parlay their influence into an overriding one. The problems with
ICANN are not really ones of substantive definition, only of degree.
The issues that concern you are relevant and must be solved, but
they are not the overriding, paramount concerns that should be used
as a basis for the Internet's regulation. (Please read the quote in
the sig at the end of this post, and give it some thought.)

> You can categorize me as only concerned about big business. but you are
> missing a point which I know you will care about because you care about
> individuals: there's a lot of consumer fraud associated with the misuse of
> trademarked names. We are fighting that and protecting consumers... you
> don't want to see that grow...

Good. Fine. I salute your efforts to that end, if they are sincere,
which I believe yours may be. Nevertheless, they are exaggerated in
the world-wide historical scheme of things. The protection of
consumers from
ecommerce fraud based on trademark misuse is not the overwhelming,
worldwide problem of the Internet. Rather, universal access is.
Unless, of course, you conceive as the function of the Internet to
sell goods in a one-way, non-interactive communication between
producer and consumer. However, the function of the Internet has so
far been to allow all - all people not all producers of goods - to
be able to communicate in an interactive way.

Perhaps the individual choice between those two functions will
determine one's priorities. But I think it's still (for how long?)
clear which has been the chief priority.

> Can't we share some concerns about the individual consumers?

Then first of all they must be expressed in ICANN's agreements and
practices, as the rights of the users/registrants. Either domain
name registrants have a right to continuous, uninterrupted use of a
domain name so that they are universally accessible, and no one, not
registrar, registry, nor ICANN can take away that domain name
without proving just cause for doing so, or they do not. 

As things stand now, they do not. ICANN's documents define and
create an Internet without the right of access, except for big
business, whose rights to domain names and access is nowhere
questioned. This single element - the lack of a right of all
individuals to have and keep a domain name - will be the basis for
relegating the Internet to the situation of cable TV: a one-way,
non-interactive, restricted access medium for the sale of product to
consumer/victims. That is the trajectory of every new medium of
communication so far invented in the U.S.

Michael Sondow
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