Re: [ga] At-Large

["Ray Fassett" <ray@fassett.org>]

Kristy Mckee writes:

"Too bad ICANN does not believe every citizen deserves the right to vote."

I believe it was James Love who quoted Esther Dyson running around
Bucharest preaching how "not all governments believe in Democracy".

And now there is the Joe Sims version of democracy & ICANN (of course,
under the "consensus" umbrella):

"Gilmore is one of a group of American critics who assume that American
values and reactions are and should be determinative in decisions about
ICANN...."

"To Gilmore, there apparently are no other relevant governments
other than the US government..."

It's not just about the right to vote, a basic democratic freedom.  It is
about many other values America is built upon such as free market
competition, rights to due process, public accountability, and checks and
balances (all included in the White Paper, btw).  It is true that Americans
tend to make a lot of noise when these basic democratic functions are non-
existent even to the point to where this noise is "not coincidentally far
louder than the non-American critics".  No kidding.  So, I guess we are
supposed to just shut up instead of going on and on with our "head-in-the-
sand attitude [that] is unfortunately quite common among ICANN's American
critics" (Joe Sims).

I frankly don't give a damn about non-democratic governmental views that
are "not uniformly consistent" with a democracy as this relates
specifically to ICANN decision-making processes.  I am unclear why Sims or
ICANN believes it should.  There is no world flag of higher ground than the
rights of the free world that America leads (and Sims demeans via
backhanded insults to both Gilmore and Aurbach).  There should be no "geo-
political issues swirling around ICANN" that in any way move away from
basic democratic governance of the Internet where ICANN is concerned.
Delegating to non-democratic ccTLD operators the ability to operate their
TLD however they please is as far as ICANN needs to go in its "consensus"
process.  This is one area where the ITU gets it right.

To suggest non-democratic "geo-political issues" somehow interesect with
ICANN decision-making processes (as Sims and Dyson both do) is
irresponsible as is the demeaning of Americans that believe till the death
basic democratic rights by characterizing this as having "their head in the
sand".  Perhaps Mr. Sims the lawyer would like to try arguing this one to
DoC as justification to remove elections, competition, due process from
ICANN towards forming a functional consensus process.

Kristy McKee says "Too bad ICANN does not believe every citizen deserves
the right to vote."  Look at what Sims and Dyson are saying...they explain
themselves quite well.

Ray



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