Re: [ga] Consumer/Registrant Protection Consitituency

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Sun, Aug 05, 2001 at 07:59:46PM -0400, James Love wrote:
> Kent, your comment was pretty unfair, IMO.

Thanks for sharing that with me.

> The problem is the other way
> around. ICANN itself has set out an agenda which is much more than
> technical. Why do we have a handful of TLDs?  Technical problems?  Why
> do we have a UDRP?  Technical issues?   Why do we have anti-privacy
> policies?  Technical issues?

Sorry, it is purely nonsense to claim that ICANN is setting this agenda. 
Essentially everything significant about ICANN's agenda was set before
ICANN was established, and ICANN has been held to that agenda fairly
tightly.

> When you make policy decisions, then
> people care who has the power, and how they are selected.

Yes, and 2 + 2 = 4.  I have always been impressed by your ability to 
make tautologies look like they are meaningful statements.  

Unfortunately, whenever we get down to precisely what "power" is 
involved, or who "the people" are, or the real significance of the 
"policy decisions", you never seem to have much to offer.

When we do look in detail at what "the power" is, we find that it is in
fact incredibly constrained by external forces.  When we look at the
"policy issues" we find things important to a vanishingly small fraction
of the human race.  When we look in detail at "the people" who are
heavily involved we find almost entirely TM interests, domain
speculators, registry/registrar interests, people fascinated by the idea
of internet governance in general, and an oddball assortment of people
who have various personal agendas -- lunatics like me, and paid
political operators like you.  Despite the best efforts of many
people, there has never been any serious evidence of a larger body of 
interest.  Domain name policy is, IN FACT, an extremely obscure and 
highly technical topic that puts most people to sleep instantly.


> On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Kent Crispin wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Aug 01, 2001 at 08:43:45PM -0700, William S. Lovell wrote:
> > > Which puts you in the position of ratifying ICANN's claim to be
> > > a policy making rather than a technical coordinating body, does
> > > it not?
> >
> > It is a sad irony that those who most vociferously complain about ICANN
> > exceeding its mandate as a technical coordinating body are precisely the
> > ones who exert the most pressure for it to become a global internet
> > governance organization, with large scale global elections and an
> > elaborate representational structure that some have compared to the UN.
> > It is a great pity that those individuals, some of whom are otherwise
> > quite intelligent, are simply oblivious to the intrinsic contradiction
> > in their position, and to the inevitable consequences of that
> > contradiction...
> >
> >
> 
> -- 
> --------------------------
> James Love, Consumer Project on Technology, http://www.cptech.org
> love@cptech.org, v. 1.202.387.8030, f 1.202.234.5176

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain
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