Re: [ga] 305 Voters

["William S. Lovell" <wsl@cerebalaw.com>]

"Cade,Marilyn S - LGA" wrote:

> William, might it also be that many users of the Internet think that it just
> works, and they are busy running their personal lives, and their businesses,
> and they want to take Internet operations for granted?

Marilyn:

That's really it in a nutshell. Also, the GA attempts to do stuff in the wrong
place. The problem is that the GA is supposed to be a technical advisory
body on domain name issues, where technical expertise is indeed necessary,
but the GA more often falls into the process of carrying out what the
"at-large" group would do, if there were such a thing. The attempts by
Younger and Corliss to get things focussed on the actual "charter" of the
GA by way of the mailing lists, instead of being a place to vent every gripe
known (along with beating up the other guy, etc.), creates yet another
thing to gripe about, and the real business gets lost.

> For instance, I often speak to busienesses through trade associations about
> ICANN. Most of the executives and managers whom I brief usually say:  glad
> you are paying attention; think that our association staff should. Now, I
> have to get back to work. Give an update in about 3-4 months, won't you?
>
> I'm struggling to think about other organizations and how they have
> developed "representative democracy".  I think it deserves some more
> thoughtfulness.

I gave the examples some time back of two organizations that are run quite
professionally and serve their own special public very well. One of these is
the National Writers Union (free lance writers) and ASCAP (songwriters)
-- for which there is another one -- BMI. (ASCAP and BMI are not exact
parallels, since they are for profit, but the structure is similar.) What the
National Writers Union has is local chapters, that have meetings and the
whole schtick. Others that are massive and to which I also belong are
the American Chemical Society and the American Association for the
Advancement of Science. But these, of course, are directed at specific
subjects (more or less) which constitute the actual professions of their
members.  Except for registrars, ISPs, etc., "the internet" is not a
profession, but a tool, and users thereof typically don't give a rip about
the nuts and bolts: "can I get on line and get to where I want to go and
send an email to whoever?" is the extent of their interest. It's like computers:

who wants to know how the inside works, as long as it does? And
why not? These people may be dentists or bankers or truck drivers, etc.,
with their own professional and job concerns. So the bottom line question
is what you said: can that kind of range of people be given an incentive
to become involved enough to join in on something that would function?
The bones of such a thing exist in ICANN, namely, the supposed "at-
large," but there's no meat, and instead we have the GA playing at that
role instead of doing its own proper function.

An internet issue that should be of wide interest: your ISP gets bought up
by megacorp #1 which in turn is purchased by megacorp #2, the service
plummets, and although you are told that "you don't have to change your
domain name," nevertheless a couple of months later you do -- what was
once teleport.com became some other screwball thing, and then onemain.com
(or maybe the other way around -- who can follow?), and on date X there
will be no teleport.com addresses whatever, either you move (to the new
thing, preferably!) or you're toast.  And never mind that you have a lot of
time left on your annual contract.  That kind of thing might help generate
some interest, but this whole "root" bit and a lot of the rest of it will never
capture the fancy of the general public, which is why there are 305. The
root thing is the right thing in the right place, but not something that will
draw out a crowd. The DNSO/GA is not the place to do what a lot of
the people in the GA want to do.

(And actually this bit I should have put in ga-icann -- my mouse sometimes
takes on a life of its own.)

Bill Lovell

>
> Marilyn
> -----Original Message-----
> From: William S. Lovell [mailto:wsl@cerebalaw.com]
> Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2001 5:19 AM
> To: ga@DNSO.org
> Subject: [ga] 305 Voters
>
> Interesting who one sees there and who one does not.
> Some people post but don't vote; quite a few more
> vote but we never see them post. 305 people speaking
> for millions. Amazing!
>
> Is it possible that the purported lack of any "bottom up"
> operation by ICANN might arise because it has almost
> no "bottom?"
>
> Bill Lovell
>
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--
         Bill Lovell

http://cerebalaw.com/biog.htm


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