Re: [ga] IPC on ALAC

[kent@songbird.com]

On Wed, Sep 18, 2002 at 07:50:10PM +0200, Jeanette Hofmann wrote:
> On 17 Sep 2002, at 22:59, kent@songbird.com wrote:
> 
> 
>>> "The report seems to suggest that a regional at-large structure with as few 
>>> as 200 individual members could be accredited to exercise responsibilities 
>>> including direct appointment of a member of the Nominating Committee.  This 
>>> number appears far too low to justify a claim of representativeness of the 
>>> range of "individual Internet users" from any region, and certainly from 
>>> regions in which there are tens or hundreds of millions of such Internet 
>>> users."
>>> http://forum.icann.org/reform-comments/alacag/pdf00000.pdf
>>> 
>>> As of March 2002, the IPC had only 66 members.
>> 
>> Your comparision is completely off base.  Most of the IPC members are
>> not individual members, but rather are organizational members which
>> collectively represents tens of thousands of members.
>> 
>> I know you know this.  Why do you deliberately make such a 
>> misrepresentation? 
> 
> The IPC with its 66 members representing "tens of thousands of
> members" is as unrepresentative as any other club on the Net.  The
> concept of representativeness the IPC report is referring to does not
> and will never work on the Internet.  Only electorates with enumerable
> citizens can generate representative bodies.  Internet users are not
> countable.  Thus, an At Large membership can never be representative "of
> the range of individual Internet users". 

Thanks for that very succinct and clear statement of the fundamental
problem with the idea of an At Large membership.  I've been trying to 
say it for a long time, and I'm very glad to see that you have come 
with such a clear description of the problem.  :-)

> I assume the IPC is aware of this.  Why then does the IPC repeat this
> misconception again and again?

Acutally, I'm quite sure that the IPC is very well aware of this. 
However, there is such a cacaphony of voices shouting about
"representation" that it is easy to fall into the trap of responding in
the same vein.

Happens to me all the time. :-)  

Now that you have given such a clear statement of the fundamental
problem, perhaps we can all avoid that trap.

Kent

Speaking only for myself, of course.
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