Re: [ga] Motion to Condemn the Propsed "theft" of the .BIZ tldby ICANN

["William S. Lovell" <cereba@oregonvos.net>]

My wife spent 2 years in Africa in the Peace Corps, and in the course
of all that learned quite a bit about underdeveloped countries. One of
the things that she learned was that it makes little sense just to throw in
some voting procedure in a country that has had no experience with
democratic processes.  The GA is an underdeveloped country.

In consecutive posts here, I see two different meanings of the term
"consensus;" that of Sotiris I believe not to be correct. Jefsey raises
the issue of whether a domain name space policy should be drafted.
This post concurs that it should be discussed.  Sotiris says "Consensus
is anything we agree is important enough to engage in discussing among
ourselves," when in fact a consensus represents a conclusion on an
issue, not just the idea of discussing it.  And not to knock any of these
ideas as such, we see Joanna Lane proposing methods for getting some
proposal raised to the stage of being given consideration by the GA;
Eric Dierker evidently thinks that no opposition means approval,
Earl Heather says, in effect, "let's vote right now," etc., etc., the
point being that everyone is popping out with ad hoc procedural
means and interpretations, when in fact the DNSO, through the AG
Chair, now has procedures established on how to bring things to a
proper vote within the GA.  The people popping out with all these
various notions, so far as I can tell, all come from developed countries
that have a tradition of democratic processes, with all their rules for
how things are done, and why these same people forget everything
they know and want to fly the GA by the seats of their respective pants
is quite beyond me.

One does not just throw in a motion and then complain that there has
been no action on it. As I noted earlier, when someone does that, one
can still respond with a "second" or whatever, just to keep the thing
moving, so long as one realizes that there will be no official "vote"
that comes out of such a method. But whether started by that means,
or by Jefsey saying we need such and such, that is not the time to
re-invent the wheel.  That is the time either to discuss the merits of
the proposal ("yes, we should draft a policy statement;" "no, we
don't want a policy statement") or else say "trivia, we're not
interested, let's not get into that." If the merits are addressed, then
some consensus may or may not emerge, but at least something
of substance would have been addressed. It is the responses to
the merits of a proposal that determine whether any consensus
will emerge, and whether the thing should be discussed should
not be determined by a debate on THAT -- that determination is
made operationally: either people start to discuss, or they don't,
and that's the end of it unless something in the way of a consensus
is seen to emerge, at which time there is something of substance
that the Chair could recognize and then advance into the formal
DNSO procedure.

The need to invent new procedures every time some new thing is
dropped into the GA hat ranks third with me among the things that
paralyze the GA (the first being flame wars, the second being those
who attempt to take over the GA with their personal agendas, often
of the hair-brained variety, and around which some little clique of
"yeay- sayers" is collected for a time until that distraction disappears).
The common result of all of these is fragmentation: everyone is running
in different directions all at once, and simply cannot stay on point on
any single issue long enough to get anywhere. Indeed, the only
mechanism that can serve to prevent that is the specific DNSO
voting procedure that has the necessary degree of formality (one
must register to vote, one must then vote, etc.) to direct, at least
for the moment, the attention of everyone to some one thing on
which a decision must be made.

In other words, instead of re-hashing for the nth time how to
discuss, why not JUST DISCUSS?  I don't get up every morning
and re-instruct myself on how to walk,  how to breathe, or what
I'm supposed to do in the bathroom.

As Nike would say, "Just Do It."

Bill Lovell

Sandy Harris wrote:

> Jefsey Morfin wrote:
> >
> > Dear Sandy,
> > there are three different things here.
> > 1) a consensus about the need of a global name space policy to be draft.
>
> Certainly we need to discuss name space policy. That's what the GA is for.
>
> However, I doubt that currently, or anytime soon, we have the consensus
> required for a clear policy formulation. Documents setting out various
> non-consensus views are certainly possible, but it is not clear that we
> need more of them :-).
>
> Some one might even tackle writing a document giving a statement of the
> issues without embracing any particular solution. That would be tricky.
> I'm not sure how useful it would be.
>
> > I suppose you do not agree that the "historic" iCANN policy on the
> > matter is to be drafter by Lynn alone.
>
> No, though I do feel he's made a fair statement of that policy.
>
> > The consensus is not on the policy but on the
> > need to discuss it. At least I hope so since for three months every thing
> > is made to impeach that?
> >
> > 2) a vote of the Members of the DNSO about a political move. There is no
> > consensus reasearch. This is only a motion to be voted. Like we voted last
> > year against the Cybersquatters? How can you oppose a vote?
>
> As I said, without consenus the vote is pointless.
>
> If we were a parliament of some sort, composed of elected representatives
> of the net.community, voting would make sense. For a self-selected body
> composed of whoever knows about ICANN and cares enough to be here, it makes
> none at all.
>
> Perhaps you've encountered the terms 'bolshevik' and menshevik'? They
> originally meany 'majority' and 'minority', but acquired another meaning
> when Lenin's faction won some vote at a party congress and began using
> the labels for themselves and their opponents. Having a vote when there's
> no consensus might encourage use of that sort of propaganda manouevre
> here.
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