[ga] Parties

[DannyYounger@cs.com]

Excerpted from "Challenges for Domain Managers", by Esther Dyson 
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/05/27/B

U171918.DTL&type=printable
(Thanks to Alexander Svensson and Thomas Roessler for providing this citation 
on the @Large forum).
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Right now, there is some lively discussion of all these issues. But it is 
still difficult for points of view, rather than specific people or 
nationalities, to get votes. People outside the United States and Europe 
often feel marginalized in ICANN's English-only deliberations. Those who lack 
Web access, and communicate primarily by e-mail, can't use its current 
Web-centric facilities. 

What ICANN needs ultimately is the equivalent of political parties. Perhaps a 
No New TLDs party, or a Free-IP Rights party (which would support a totally 
free market in domain names), or the Alternative-Root party, which would 
support alternatives to the domain-name system. 

Each of these parties would then have to provide coherent explanations of how 
its policies would work, and to win adherents. These parties should not be 
organized by ICANN (unlike its three supporting organizations, which 
represent specific interests and already elect half of ICANN's board). 

Would this approach work? It would still be an experiment. Proper voting 
policies would need to make sure a party didn't simply buy votes. But a 
marketplace for ideas is a lot better than one for people. 

In the end, ICANN as an effective system, not just an organization, depends 
on input from the public in addition to a set of formal rules governing how 
board members can vote on ICANN's policies. 

That is, it depends on independent action by self-appointed, self- organizing 
stakeholders around the world. That means you. 

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