Re: [ga] FYI: Working Paper on At Large Advisory Committee

[kent@songbird.com]

On Tue, Jul 23, 2002 at 08:18:05PM -0700, Karl Auerbach wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jul 2002 kent@songbird.com wrote:
> 
> > > And it is accountability to the public that is so completely lacking from 
> > > ICANN.
> > 
> > How is Microsoft accountable to the public?
> 
> I am surprised that you don't know this.  Please turn to page one of
> Shareholder Rights for Dummies:
> 
> Call up a stock broker, buy one share of Microsoft common stock (which you
> can do today for a few dollars) and you get:
>
>   - A vote for directors (and often a vote to recall a director.)

[...]

So you believe, therefore, that ICANN should sell votes? :-)

Seriously, you are confusing two different things.  There is a
substantial difference between accountability to *shareholders* and
accountability to the *public* -- the interests of shareholders and the
interests of the public are often at odds.  Shareholders in Microsoft
are a small minority of the public, and no one would claim that
accountability to shareholders is sufficient.  In fact, shareholder
accountability is essentially equivalent to "stakeholder
accountability", in the ICANN millieu, and this is something that you
have argued vehemently against. 

Moreover, in the case of a public company like Microsoft, large monied
interests totally dominate, and the "rights" you claim that you get as
the holder of a single share are theoretical, rather than practical. 

In the case of a public company like Microsoft, accountability to
the *public* comes through totally different mechanisms, of which the
salient one for our purposes is anti-trust.

[The most powerful form of accountability for a for-profit company is, 
of course, the market.]

Anyway, sorry for the distraction from Alex's working paper.

Kent
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